As fans fill Boston Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts on June 23rd the National Black Justice Collective (NBJC) released an open letter signed by members of the African diaspora including civil rights allies, advocates & clergy urging Ghana's leadership to reject pending legislation that would criminalize LGBTQ people & those who support them. The letter comes as Ghana continues to position itself as a global leader in the reparations movement through initiatives such as the Year of Return & Beyond the Return while simultaneously advancing legislation that would impose prison sentences on African LGBTQ people, advocates, educators, journalists, healthcare workers & organizations. David J. Johns, CEO & Executive Director, National Black Justice Collective stated, “Ghana has been a global leader in the reparations movement, with an open invitation for the African diaspora to come home & learn its history & ancestry. But a homecoming with conditions is not a homecoming. It is a velvet rope. Anti-LGBTQ+ criminalization is not an African tradition. The reparations movement asks us to confront & dismantle the legacies of colonialism, not deepen them. We write this letter in love & in grief, asking Ghana to extend its invitation fully & without condition, because liberation that excludes some of us is not liberation at all.” The letter argues that the legislation stands in direct contradiction to Ghana's leadership on reparative justice and Pan-African solidarity noting that many of the anti-LGBTQ legal frameworks being expanded today originated under British colonial rule. The National Black Justice Collective is America's leading civil rights org dedicated to the empowerment of LGBTQ people including people living with HIV.
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