"At the base of the structure, on the basis of the pyramid, you have black women," the Lusa agency was the "social impact entrepreneur", which created the humanity summit, a worldwide activist and thinkers platform looking for a better world.
After bringing the event to the United Nations, Myriam Taylor led him in Lisbon in 2023, and last year as one of the events parallel to the G20 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
"I like to be introduced as a Portuguese woman, black, mother, wife and humanist," he said, recalling the restlessness he hit her and that resulted from events such as the threats that the family came from Angola, received when he moved to Faro, In the Algarve.
“I was 11 years old and I was afraid to answer the phone,” he recalled, recognizing that he soon understood the various problems that would haunt her: “The first obstacles were due to the community to which I belong, in which they try to close, and regarding the question of gender. These are two issues, which I could never avoid, because being a woman and being black in Portugal, and in the rest of the world, still weighs the disadvantage. ”
Myriam went through youth associativism, volunteered in a series of associations and studied theater in London in search of the creation of other narratives.
“I was interested in studying theater exactly to understand all these dynamics. And I felt a lot of urgency to produce counterattacks, because none of what I read, none of what I saw and see in media, in cinema, in theater, represented me. Even the texts that were written for black characters were not written by black people. Therefore, they had no truth. Because my reality was totally different. My reality, my experience, my family experience, my growth, was very different from the stories they told about black people, ”he said.
He graduated in London, specialized in political theater and worked with women victims of domestic violence, mostly Portuguese, in Paris. In Rio de Janeiro he worked with women domestic workers and in Angola with orphans of war.
That's when she was pregnant with her first child and the doctor warned her to the danger of using certain hair products, such as unfruitful, who wondered why she used them.
“I did it because I was transmitted that my hair would become more handling, manageable, and because there is a very strong social pressure so that we can fit into the eurocentric beauty standards. In a way, this turns out to be what led me to create Muxima ”, a project that promotes equity and inclusion, facilitates the entry of international companies, in a responsible and sustainable way, in the South Global Savings and develops products directed to curly and curly hair.
Although she regrets not taking over and fully assumed her identity, Myriam Taylor assures: “I won't be less black for stretching my hair. I know my appearance is also a political act. ”
And he shared stories of black people who, despite having the appropriate skills, were warned that they would only have the position if they caught or stretched their hair.
"When this is still a question, we evolve very little," he said, adding that if he lives a moment, in Portugal and in the world, "very worrying", where the pressure to walk backwards is great, but also the is the resistance.
“We have people to speak on the street, because they understand what is going on and that is not staying at home, and with Facebook activism, things will change. Now, there is a large part of the Portuguese population that needs this awakening too, because the danger of loss of rights will affect everyone, ”he noted.
He said: “I believe most people in our society still believe in democracy and go out to the street is also to give this clear signal to those who rule us that we have this power to elect them and withdraw them while we have democracy . But only the danger is this: we are in a moment in the world where there is a danger of losing democracy. Going to the street right now means leaving in defense of states and democratic regimes. ”
About the latest events involving immigrants, the activist elected the statement of the Portuguese party's parliamentary leader, Pedro Pinto, regarding the death of Odair, that if security forces "fired more to kill, the country was more in order ".
“To say that they died few and that they should have died more, that is an ampity. If I were to say… imagine this in a distinct circumstance. Imagine that it was me or suckled him to make such a statement. It was already stuck. There is no proportionality here. ”
According to its creator, Muxima is a “project catalyst” that meet what its team defends, namely in areas such as education, politics, science, media and technology.
In the summit of humanity are discussed all the topics that affect society, culminating in a pact of humanity, which has “reverse engineering”.
Freedom, justice and dignity were elected as fundamental to happiness, so the summit team - composed of about 200 people from 45 countries - developed “25 holistic objectives” to achieve them, which were presented in the United Nations and later to the G20.