We should also clarify why we endorse you, @mesrenyamedogbe :
this is due to your tireless word on behalf of the African communities, and your courage to stand up to injustice in resource distribution, as well as to the inherent racism in PSF, and the ways in which it is hiding.
Much of it is already highlighted in your 2023 open letter to the PSF.
https://pythonafrica.blogspot.com/2023/12/an-open-letter-to-python-software_5.html
To anyone, this letter clearly evidences political leadership skills, competence, a great amount of courage, awareness of the key issues and mechanisms around the topic. Therefore, in our view, you are clearly a top candidate for anyone who would like to empower local communities worldwide, and also, specifically, the African communities.
Regarding our disagreements, I think it is also worth discussing where they are probably coming from. Below is my own estimate, but please feel free to add your views and opinions.
First, I want to confirm that we are not “in cahoots” or coordinating in any way. This is absolutely true, and there have not been any activities, covert or overt, to coordinate our campaigns. Still, we think you are a top choice aligned with our vision, see above – you are one of few people who advocate strongly for empowerment of communities, and you are one of a very small set of people who have historically dared to stand up to the PSF mainstream.
Second, if I am reading your programme correctly, you are advocating cautious reforms and cooperation with the close-knit PSF mainstream. You probably fear that association with the Federation initative will make your reform programme less likely to work in the eyes of your base, even if this is not real but only in public perception.
Here our views diverge: I think cautious reform and working with PSF mainstream is not going to be effective at all. Attempts will lead to stalling and eventual frustration of your efforts, and this outcome will be not incidental but systemically intentional.
As you have roughly outlined in the letter, there is overt racism and covert racism at work. The latter is harder to detect, as it tends to masquerade with nice window dressing, often under false promises of reform if you just play along supporting the system. Truth is, there are people who would rather eat their own excrement than give a black person real power, and they are willing to go lengths to prevent this. In the case of covert racism, under masquerade, i.e., under elaborate mechanisms that confer plausible deniability.
As an example, the indignities referenced in your 2023 letter, for instance, that historically disenfranchised communities being were denied support because they supposedly discriminate other disenfranchised communities, is nothing else but racism dressed up as DEI. More generally, the same principle can be used to construct any kinds of double standards, to withhold power or funding from any discriminated group. And at the end of the day, it is mostly white – and here: US American - elites who just happen to end up as the judges, juries, and executioners on these matters.
You correctly imply in your letter that the argument is a contrived double standard – to deny African pycons, it somehow matters, but ongoing discrimination of minorities in the USA itself - even the same minorities, plus the very black communities that are being denied funding, does not seem to stand in the way of the millions of dollars being spent by PSF on much larger American events. Hence, vicious racism, but not a very obvious form thereof.
Ultimately, we – from the Federation initiative – think that all of this judging and gatekeeping must be removed, and it will not disappear by itself, or by cautious reform. Let there be an African network of institutions who can decide on their own fortunes, and which draws legitimacy and empowerment directly from African communities. Self-determination is your innate right, it is not a privilege to bestow in repeatable, limited amounts. If anyone from the US wants to tell you how to run Python Africa, they can do, at best, as equals, and in no case as gatekeepers or dictators.
Regarding my own position above, I realize obviously that I am geopolitically privileged, as European citizen. Though I do also have a very good first hand view of discriminatory mechanisms, due to my migration background. Still privileged, I think I have a duty to use this privilege *not to tell you what to do*, but to *establish a situation where you are empowered in full autonomy*.
For this reason, even if you do not support our initiative, we still support you, unconditionally, in order to help establish this basic degree of empowerment that you have been historically denied. Therefore, should you ever need our help as allies, please do not hesitate to reach out.
), then why would we trust you to uphold those principles in a much larger and more complex setting?