(soft upbeat music)
- I'm Jordyn Rolling here in New York City
for day two of the NAN National Convention.
So many brilliant influential minds,
and to kick off we start with the women.
- As black women we have withstood the deficit narrative.
The constant drum beat of verbal attacks on our character,
and even with one trillion dollars in annual buying power,
we too are still forcefully kicked
out of restaurants right here in the city.
As black women we are the fastest
growing group of entrepreneurs,
yet still have the least access to capital
to expand, scale, and grow our businesses.
- NAN's Women's Power Luncheon,
hosted by our favorite side-eye Angela Rye,
honored some of our most prominent voices,
like Valeisha Butterfield Jones and Symone Sanders.
- I think black women are such a force
seemingly because we've always had to be.
It is literally ingrained in our DNA.
If you look at the history of black women
from the inception of this world up until 2018,
we have always had to create and make change.
Black women have always had to be fixers
and change makers, and doers, and active workers.
So this isn't anything new to us.
- Often times we're raising families,
we're taking care of our parents,
we are striving in education and in our careers,
so it's kind of like, you know, we don't really have
any kind of choice but to do, but to make things happen.
I think that when you think back to even,
ya know, Mary McLeod Bethune,
or when you look at Harriet Tubman,
or when you look at Angela Davis,
I think that we've always been a part
of all the great society movements
that have really shaped our culture.
- I think black women are a force and powerful.
We are reliable, we are dependable, we are the folks that
people call on when they really wanna get something done,
and it's always been like that,
and so for this moment to be able to celebrate black women
for doing what we do best,
which is showing up and showing out, I think is phenomenal.
Whether we're showing up as victims,
we're showing up in positions of power,
not matter what we are showing up
and we are going to stand together,
so that's what this luncheon is all about today.
- Next door NAN hosted a black intellectuals panel,
where the focus was how to fit academia into the movement.
- I do think our job in intellectuals
is to produce ideas, to trade in ideas,
dangerous ideas, counterintuitive ideas,
to challenge what counts as common sense.
When I think about the best public intellectual work
I don't think about the vocal on TV,
oh that work matters, it really does matter,
but challenging fake news is important,
it's super important, especially in a moment where we can't,
it's hard for people to tell the difference.
But I also think organizing work is important,
union work is important.
- [Jordyn] One of the biggest concerns wasn't just
how to do the work, but how to be inclusive of all.
- We have to look at every single person
who has contributed to this thing
called black intellectual life.
Too often right now we ignore
significant sectors of our community, we ignore women
intellectuals, we ignore gay intellectual, we ignore
intellectuals who don't live in the university,
but might live at the local community center,
or who might teach junior high school.
We have to embrace all of them
and understand that we can't have strong fabric
if we don't have all the pieces together.
- And when it comes to the NAN National Convention,
there's one theme that weaves into every event, change.
- I know we think change is this big grandiose thing,
it happens after all of this planning,
but that's now how it works.
Change comes about because a small group of people,
or sometimes one person, decides, hey that right there
is messed up and I wanna do something about it.
So, we can do that.
We don't have to wait for somebody
to give us permission to activate, create, and make change.
- Live from New York City for BET News, I'm Jordyn Rolling.