Aishah Shahidah Simmons at the screening commemorating the 25th Anniversary of the Making of NO! The Rape Documentary, Becca Haydu, Photographer
#FromNO2Love (From NO! to Love) was a free, accessible international conference held in Fall 2019, bringing together survivors, advocates, artists, and organizers to engage questions of child sexual abuse, healing, and community accountability. The gathering centered diasporic Black survivors and created space for complex, intergenerational dialogue. Subtitled video archives of the conference remain available on the schedule page, AfroLez® Productions’ YouTube and Vimeo channels.
design by Kathryn Bowser
Black Feminist Herstory
There was no more urgent time to lift the courageous, intergenerational, diasporic Black voices inin NO! The Rape Documentary, and love WITH accountability: Digging Up the Roots of Child Sexual Abuse anthology than Fall 2019.
That moment marked both the 25th anniversary of the first pre-production meeting for the internationally acclaimed documentary film NO! and the publication of the love WITH accountability anthology. Each of these works is a groundbreaking prevention resource that centers diasporic Black survivors of adult rape and child sexual abuse.
To mark this convergence, Aishah Shahidah Simmons, award-winning director of NO! and editor of the anthology, partnered with the University of Pennsylvania, the Just Beginnings Collaborative, the Feminist and Gender Studies Program at Colorado College, Scribe Video Center, the African American Museum in Philadelphia, the Leeway Foundation, and other sponsors and partners to present #FromNO2Love: Black Feminist Centered Forum on Disrupting Sexual Violence, held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, October 31–November 1, 2019.
The gathering lifted both long-standing and emerging survivor-led work that addresses, disrupts, and seeks to humanely end child sexual abuse and adult rape in Black and marginalized communities.
In June 2020, eight months after the historic #FromNO2Love gathering, and during the global COVID-19 pandemic, Aishah Shahidah Simmons received the 2020 Lambda Literary Award for best LGBTQ anthology for love WITH accountability: Digging Up the Roots of Child Sexual Abuse (AK Press, 2019).
#FromNO2Love attendees/presenters (alphabetical order): Liz S. Alexander, Sultan Ali, Esther Armah, Bahamadia, Charlotte Pierce-Baker, Luz Marquez-Benbow, Amadee Braxton, Joan Brannon, Aminata Cairo, Edxie Betts, Sevonna Brown, Joel Byrd, James Claiborne, Pat Clark, Johnnetta Betsch Cole, Carole Nawo Crawford, Adrienne Davis, Nicole “Kqueen” Denson, Kia Steave Dickerson, Lex Draper, Orleana Clark Edwards, Cecelia Falls, Paul Farber, alicia sanchez gill, Farah Jasmine Griffin, Adenike A. Harris, Nikki Harmon, Ahmad Greene-Hayes, Linda Janet Holmes, Monique S. Howard, Audree Irons, John L. Jackson, Jr., Tanisha Esperanza Jarvis, e nina jay, Denise C. Jones, Grace Sanders Johnson, Barbara Kigozi, Gail M. Lloyd, Tonya Lovelace, Thea Matthews, Tynesha McHarris, F. Reanae McNeal, Tina Morton, Sharon Mullally, Chevara Orrin, Faith Pennant, Evelyne Laurent-Perrault, Mel A. Phillips, Jey’nce Mizrahi Poindexter, Rachel Afi Quinn, Ignacio G. Hutía Xeiti Rivera, Dorothy Roberts, Lynn Roberts, Loretta J. Ross, Sonia Sanchez, Beverly Guy-Sheftall, Aishah Shahidah Simmons, Gwendolyn Zoharah Simmons, Michael Simmons, Tyree Cinque “DJ Drama” Simmons, Karen Smith, Janine Spruill, Amita Swadhin, Farah Tanis, Deborah A. Thomas, Salamishah Tillet, Scheherazade Tillet, Tashmica Torok, Malik Washington, Traci C. West, Dagmawi Woubshet, Giscard Xavier, and Tamara L. Xavier
All scheduled #FromNO2Love events were free and open to the public. Each of the three venues were wheelchair accessible, and there was ASL interpretation.