Reuniting of African Descendants

01/29/2026

Update: This morning, reports indicate ICE may be going door to door posing as Con Edison (gas/electric). We do not yet have confirmation of detentions. I’ll continue to share updates as we learn more.

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Family; please read and share.

There are credible reports of ICE activity in Harlem, particularly around 116th Street and Frederick Douglass Blvd. Community members have witnessed ID checks and detentions, with Black and African immigrant neighbors being targeted.

This is not rumor. This is not hysteria. This is a moment that calls for calm, clarity, and collective care.

Please take note:
• If you are undocumented, precariously documented, or unsure of your status, avoid the area unless absolutely necessary.
• If you have citizenship or legal documents, carry them with you.
• Do not open your door to law enforcement without a signed warrant.
• Do not answer questions about your status without legal counsel. You have the right to remain silent.
• Check on elders, neighbors, and anyone who may be isolated or afraid.

What’s happening reflects a broader pattern of racialized surveillance and intimidation. Harlem is not a border. Black communities are not hunting grounds. Immigrants are not disposable.

To our immigrant siblings: you are not alone.
To our community: stay vigilant; not panicked, but awake.

To faith leaders and organizers: this is a moment for presence, protection, and prophetic witness.

I’m staying connected and will share verified updates and resources as they become available.

Stay safe. Stay together. Stay rooted in love and resistance.

Warn your people.

01/01/2026

Purpose in Practice.

This year has been full of connecting, supporting, and partnering with leaders, organizers, artists, and elders committed to cultural preservation and collective care. From New York City to New Jersey, Nashville to Memphis, Atlanta, and across the diaspora to Brazil and Uganda, the work has been rooted in relationship, trust, and shared vision.

At Reuniting of African Descendants (ROAD), we’ve focused on strengthening leadership, supporting cultural workers, and investing in community-rooted practices that honor lineage while responding to the present moment. Across each place, we’ve seen how culture remains a powerful organizing force; carrying memory, resilience, and possibility.

As ROAD continues to grow, we remain committed to deepening partnerships, expanding support, and investing more intentionally in the people and practices sustaining our communities across borders.

This is not a closing ;it’s a continuation.
And the work ahead is collective.

GlobalBlackCommunity

12/31/2025

Kuumba (Creativity) 🕯️✨

Kuumba reminds us that creativity is not extra; it is how we survive, heal, and remember who we belong to.

At We Speak What We Carry, creativity wasn’t performative; it was medicine.
Breath, body, story, silence, laughter.
What we carried met what we made.

Through ROAD’s Healing & Belonging Initiative, we continue to practice creativity as a sacred technology; a way of restoring dignity, naming grief without shame, and remembering that belonging is not something we ask for, it’s something we build together.

Our ancestors created beauty under pressure.
We create safety, language, and future under the same sun.

Kuumba reminds us:
✨ What we imagine, we can practice.
✨ What we practice, we can sustain.
✨ What we sustain, becomes home.

CreativeLiberation BlackFutures BelongingIsBuilt

12/29/2025

All Roads Lead Home

As we continue honoring Kujichagulia (Self-Determination), we reflect on the 48th LGBT Kwanzaa Community of NYC, a sacred tradition founded by Imani Rashid and sustained through decades of Black q***r care, culture, and collective becoming. The gathering was guided by host B. Hawk, lifted by the choir, and grounded by elders; including elder women drummers, whose leadership remains deeply radical in traditions that have historically excluded women from the drum.

Nala S. Toussaint, President and Founder of Reuniting of African Descendants (ROAD), participated through Kuumba (Creativity), sharing the story of the Shekere; a gourd grown from the earth, hollowed to make space, and woven by hand; reminding us that sound and creativity are born through relationship. Rooted in Pan-African consciousness, the offering wove Black Femme Queen Theology, sacred God-talk, and polyrhythmic ballroom movement as practices of healing, resistance, and remembrance for gender-expansive Black lineage and chosen family.

The gathering affirmed that Black q***r and trans communities have long practiced self-determination through creativity; using rhythm, movement, and collective presence to resist erasure and create spaces of belonging.

🎥📸 Video & Photo: Rainbow Dee

12/27/2025

As we honor Kwanzaa, we also gather.
Community, culture, and care; in real time.

Join the LGBT Kwanzaa Community of NYC for their annual celebration as we continue to live the principles together.

12/26/2025

Umoja | Unity 🕯️

This video was recorded in November 2024 and shared today during Kwanzaa because unity demands truth.

In this conversation, Wegner Wilma speaks to the realities q***r and gender-nonconforming people face under anti-LGBTQ laws: criminalization, state-sanctioned violence, and the lack of protection when harm occurs.

Unity is not symbolic. It is not silence. And it is not selective.

We cannot claim unity across the African diaspora if safety is denied to Black LGBTQ+ people.
Umoja must include safety.

🕯️ BlackQueerLives

12/26/2025

REPOST | Credit to

Born in 1966 during the height of the Black Freedom Movement, Kwanzaa reminds us that our roots run deeper than oppression and that our path to liberation is strengthened when we live our values daily.

Each principle offers a foundation for building strong, liberated communities and proof that culture is power.

Happy first day of Kwanzaa. 🖤💚❤️

10/05/2025

10/02/2025

👏🏽📚 Through her Saint Heron platform, Solange has launched a free digital archive library spotlighting rare works of Black and Brown literature

09/24/2025

🌿✨ What happens when elders, pioneers, and future leaders come together?

At We Speak What We Carry (9/6), we saw it: Kineen Mafa side by side with pioneer + Elder Lynn Morrison ; living proof of why our movements must hold intergenerational space. Spaces where elders are honored, given room to lament, and share wisdom, while chosen family + future leaders are invited in.

This is how legacy is built. This is how belonging is woven. 💜

Through ROAD’s Healing, Justice & Belonging Initiative, we create circles where grief, creativity, and leadership meet across time; holding us whole.

🌟 Be part of the next gathering:
Getting Back to Basics: Grief, Transitions & Ancestral Remembrance
with

🗓️ Sat, Sept 27 | 2 PM ET | Zoom
🎟️ Free & open to all (centering Black trans + q***r fam)

👉🏾 Register today: link in bio.
💬 Drop a 🕯️ in the comments if you believe healing is stronger across generations. Tag someone you’d want in this circle with you.

Because healing grows deeper when we do it together.

09/24/2025

🕯️ This Saturday, we gather in community.

Getting Back To Basics: Grief, Transitions & Ancestral Remembrance
with Kineen Mafa ()

✨ Part of ROAD’s Healing & Belonging series, this 90-min session centers Black trans + gender-expansive leadership through ritual, storytelling, and embodied memory.

🌿 Grief as creative + spiritual power
🌿 Healing through ancestral memory + kitchen traditions
🌿 Community leadership as legacy + spiritual act
🌿 Insights from South Africa on resilience + cultural survival

🗓️ Sat, Sept 27 | 2 PM ET | via Zoom
🎟️ Free & open to all (centering Black trans + q***r participants)

👉🏾 Register now —http://TINYURL.COM/GETTING-BACKTOBASICS. Belong with us.

✨ Part of ROAD’s Healing & Belonging series, this 90-minute session centers Black trans + gender-expansive leadership through ritual, storytelling, and embodied memory.