In October 2006, Community Healing Network, Inc. (CHN), a small New Haven, Connecticut nonprofit, boldly launched a global movement to overturn the false hierarchy of human value that holds that whiteness is superior and blackness is inferior—focusing on its adverse effects on Black people. Today, in commemoration of its 20th anniversary, CHN announced: 1) the broadening of its mission to include a focus on the effects of the hierarchy on all people; and 2) the deepening of its work in its hometown.
Founded by Enola G. Aird, a visionary lawyer turned activist mother, CHN is the only organization focused exclusively on mobilizing Black people globally to heal from and extinguish what it calls the “lie” of the hierarchy. Under Aird’s leadership, CHN put into place groundbreaking initiatives to build the global grassroots movement for freedom from the lie, including: 1) the annual celebration of Community Healing Days, endorsed and promoted by the late Dr. Maya Angelou; 2) the innovative Emotional Emancipation Circle self-help support group process developed in collaboration with the Association of Black Psychologists, and for which seeds have been planted in more than 50 cities in the United States, Africa, Europe, Latin America, and the Caribbean; and 3) the Global Truth Campaign and Tour designed to put the issue of freedom from the lie on the global African agenda by the year 2030.
That goal was realized well ahead of the 2030 target date when CHN’s contributions were recognized by the MacArthur Foundation through a 2021 Equitable Recovery Grant. Aird, who is now President Emerita and Elder Griot of CHN, was appointed Co-Lead of the Healing Working Group of the Global Circle for Reparations and Healing, a coalition of MacArthur grantees, which is advancing an international agenda for organizing and advocacy for Africa and its Diaspora. The Circle’s March 2025 Summit on Centering Healing Across Global Africa (the proceedings of which are chronicled in a documentary of the same name), issued the Accra Declaration on Centering Healing. That Declaration committed “to building a global movement for freedom from the false hierarchy of human value…the root cause of the dehumanization of African people…worldwide.”
“The hierarchy,” said Aird, “is what we’ve been fighting against all along, just zeroing in on Black people. The hierarchy puts white people at the very top and Black people at the very bottom, and sometimes not even in the circle of humanity at all. That is a bankrupt way of looking at the world. And because we are at the bottom, we are in a unique position to topple it. Now is the time to say, we’re after the whole thing, we’re after the entire hierarchy, locally and globally.”
A. Chandra Roxanne, CHN Executive Director, added “We’re celebrating the 20th anniversary of CHN by adopting a laser-like focus on dismantling the hierarchy of human value.” Roxanne who served as CHN’s Ambassador for the Global Circle’s Accra Summit I and II is building on CHN’s achievements. Under her leadership, CHN has launched a new membership initiative and the Emotional Emancipation Circle (EEC) program has evolved and deepened into an ongoing cultural practice. Members flow between the EECs and a newly designed and successfully piloted integration experience that centers art and storytelling as pathways to healing for a deeper embodiment of the EEC principles in their everyday lives.Building on the insights gleaned from her listening tour in New Haven, Roxanne is also expanding CHN’s platform with Pop Up EECs and a workshop on building cultural trust, which she co-developed and co-facilitated during the Accra Summit II in 2025. While remaining committed to Black families and communities, CHN will use these tools and resources to serve all people trapped by the false hierarchy, initially targeting interracial families. To accomplish its renewed mission, CHN will be working with a growing group of partners and allies within New Haven’s diverse communities and neighborhoods to deepen its roots in its hometown and to make it the world’s first Emotional Emancipation Model Village. According to Roanne, “we will bring our international learnings to bear in the City and share what we learn locally with our global partners and allies.”
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