Join us as we host a trailer screening of Belly of the Beast and panel discussion with Kelli Dillon, Executor Director, Back to the Basics and Felica Jones, Executive Director, Healthy African American Families (HAAF) moderated by Adjoa Jones, SLA/SB AAIMM CAT co-lead about the history of forced sterilizations in underserved populations within California and how these victims deserve reparations.

We would like to invite you to join us this Friday, as we discuss a most important injustice against women, especially women and their reproductive rights that has impacted their right to choose, the autonomy over their bodies, especially their ability to reproduce and to choose their own birth control methods.

Our SLA/SB AAIMM CAT VirtualiTEA comes on the heels of the alarming news coverage of forced sterilization in the ICE detention centers. 2020 has forced us to unearth the out-dated patriarchal sentiments our society has constructed. Our survival hinges on how we stand up and speak out against these views that disproportionately affect women in communities of color. Throughout history, sterilization has been forced on underserved and disenfranchised women and men; in hospitals (health care systems) and prisons (judicial/correction systems) across the nation.  To us it appears that these systems have weaponized the reproductive health rights process as a means of population control within communities of color.  When will this war against our basic reproductive rights end.

Who should attend: We encourage African American/Black women, fathers, and families, advocates, community/faith-based organizations, allies, and providers (perinatal clinicians, mental health providers, doulas, midwives, caseworkers, etc.) who live in and serve South LA, Inglewood, Hawthorne, Gardena, Compton, and Long Beach to attend.For more information, please visit Black Infants and Families on Facebook @BlackInfantsandFamiliesLA and IG @BlackInfantsandFamilies.

Attendees will receive a digital link to the meeting when they register, 48 hours prior, 2 hours prior, and 10 minutes before the virtual meeting begins.

Please note this conversation can be triggering, so we would like to inform you in advance, though this offering is to educate, push and mandate a change to these systems that have destroyed lives, families and with your involvement we can continue to create interventions, strategies, policies and programs for change for our communities.