Columnist: Esther A. Armah

EMOTIONAL JUSTICE is a framework created by Esther A. Armah to confront, explore and work to heal a legacy of untreated trauma due to global histories of systemic brutality and injustice – Colonialism, Enslavement, Apartheid – and their contemporary manifestations that continue to shape our societies, organizations and institutions. It reimagines our relationship to and understanding of histories of Enslavement, Colonialism and Apartheid in order to transform our movements, politics, educational institutions and justice organizations. Emotions in the context of race, gender, or culture create a roadmap that leads to systemic and structural inequality. When emotions take on a color, a context and a consequence, it becomes a racialized emotionality. The Emotional Justice framework is used to engage us in a transformative process creating a system that replaces inequality with an emotional justice, where emotions become human and universal for all, not color-coded for some with deadly consequences. Twitter @estherarmah  Esther A. Armah is Executive Director of The Armah Institute of Emotional Justice (AIEJ. It provides emotionality education in the context of race, gender, culture via the Emotional Justice framework through Projects, Training, Thought Leadership working in Accra, New York, London. She is Director of EAA Media Productions. Esther has travelled and worked in Accra,  Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya, Lesotho; New York, Washington DC, Chicago, Philadelphia and London. She currently lives in Accra, and works between Accra, New York and London.In Ghana, she is a Front Page columnist for Business & Financial Times focusing on media, gender, policy and violence. She is Host, Creator and Executive Producer of The Spin, a weekly one hour all women of color round table podcast that airs in the US, London, Ghana and Nigeria. The Spin was named by Clutch magazine as one of New York’s Top 10 Podcasts. Her Ghana projects on gender via EAA Media Productions include: #IAmBecomingGH inspired by Michelle Obama; #TimesUpGH specializing and regionalizing the global #MeToo and #TimesUp movement; and #WeAreThe52percent – honoring the activism and issuing a call to action on  political representation by women across Ghana’s political landscape. Armah is a Media Communications Lecturer with Webster University, and has also taught at Ashesi University, African University College of Communications (AUCC). Esther is Creator of Ghana’s annual media summit: #reImagineGH: stories, standards and sex focusing on Ghana media’s reportage of issues on sexual violence. Esther is a member of Ghana’s Coalition Against Sexual Abuse (CASA); and the Alliance for Women in Media Africa (AWMA). As a playwright, her fifth play #safeCARGO was produced and performed in Accra.In New York, Esther was an award-winning Morning Show Host of WBAI’s Wake Up Call. She appeared on  CNN, MSNBC, and BET. In 2012, she was named “Most Valuable NY Radio Host” by The Nation’s  Progressive Honors List. She was a winner at New York’s “Black Women in Media Conference” and a winner for her “Emotional Justice work” at Washington DC’s Valuing Black Lives Global Emotional Emancipation Summit. As a writer, Esther’s essays and articles have been published in Huffington Post, AlterNet, Gawker, Essence, Ebony, Salon.com and Global Grind. Her pieces and essays have also been published in the following books; Charleston: Readings on Race, Racism and Racial Violence and Black Cool – a collection of essays edited by Rebecca Walk. Her “Emotional Justice” essay “Colliding Traumas” will appear in the #LoveWithAccountability anthology edited by Aishah Shahidah Simmons; and ‘Intimate Reckoning Jay Z 4:44’ appears on the #444Syllabus – named after Jay Z’s last album. Esther is a playwright. She has written 5 plays. Four were produced and performed in theaters in New York and Chicago. They were Can I Be Me?, Forgive Me? Entitled! and SAVIOUR?   In London, Esther worked with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) for 10 years. She worked across BBC Radio 4, BBC World Service, BBC Radio 5  Live, BBC 1 Xtra and BBC TV. She worked on mic as a presenter and producer, she was in front of camera and behind the camera as a producer. She travelled to nations in Africa making radio documentaries for the BBC global audience – those nations included Kenya, South Africa Her written features were published in The Guardian, The Weekly Journal and West Africa. Website: www.theaiej.com Instragram @eaarmahFacebook Emotional Justice By Esther Armah