Sindiso Mnisi Weeks and Dan Weeks will be speaking on “Amos Fortune: Beyond Abolition to Ubuntu” at the Amos Fortune Forum Friday, Aug. 5 at 8 p.m. at the Meetinghouse in Jaffrey Center.
SindisoMnisi Weeks, a first-generation American of African origin, and Dan Weeks, a 12th-generation descendant of settler colonizers, discuss the complicated legacy of African enslavement, subjugation and striving in New Hampshire, in order to uncover what Sindiso has described as the “hidden pasts, forgotten futures and rejected ways of being, seeing, and knowing” that is referred to by the shorthand of “ubuntu.”
Drawing on Indigenous social and political thought, as well as the lived experience of Granite Staters of African descent, from Amos Fortune to their own three children, they will explore how people of all backgrounds can help move society beyond color-blindness or even abolition to ubuntu, a robust understanding that humanity is inextricably entwined.
SindisoMnisi Weeks is associate professor of law and society in the School for Global Inclusion and Social Development at the University of Massachusetts Boston, and the School of Public Law at the University of Cape Town. Her scholarly activism has combined research, advocacy and policy work on women, property, governance, dispute management and participation under Indigenous law and the South African Constitution. She is the author of “Access to Justice and Human Security” (2018). A Rhodes Scholar, she received her doctor of philosophy in law from the University of Oxford. She serves on the boards of New Hampshire Legal Assistance, City Year New Hampshire and the Warren B. Rudman Center for Justice, Leadership and Public Service at the University of New Hampshire.
Dan Weeks is vice president of business development at ReVision Energy, an employee-owned B Corporation, and the region’s largest clean energy company. Together with his 350 co-owners, he seeks to use business as a force for good in combating the climate crisis and promoting social justice. He was named one of New Hampshire’s Most Influential Business Leaders in 2019 to 2021 by NH Business Review. In 2012 and 2013, he traveled the United States by bus on a poverty-line budget of $16 a day researching poverty and political exclusion on a fellowship from Harvard. He is the author of “Democracy in Poverty: A View from Below.” He has written on racism and reform in The Atlantic, New York Times, Boston Globe, Christian Science Monitor and other outlets.