Freedom can you imagine that

As a Black American, when I think about abolition, my mind immediately goes to music as being the first means of crafting our liberation, post-colonization.

When we were not allowed to speak our native tongues, we created a new language in the Blues. In this piece, we use sound and visuals as a means of recalling a lineage in which our traumas are not commodified for entertainment or media fodder. We use repetition to help break through the mental fog of false constructs like racism and sexism. This piece aims to highlight the pace at which abolition occurs.

It lasts longer than a moment, more than a lifetime, spanning generations of seekers. Choreographer Kyle Abraham puts the moving body in front of us, because it is the most important part of actualizing our vision of abolition. These images become chapters. By documenting his existence, he becomes the most photographed man of his time, verifying his body and mind.

The dance verifies the body in the moment, responding to the sound. When we feel we are static, much energy is stirring for the next gesture, to give the smoke a shadow. As a society we have been conditioned to be creatures of comfort.

We artificially sweeten inconvenient truths to make us feel good. We hold onto lies to make us feel right. Imagine a society where we all feast on love and nurture each other in a way that uplifts every individual's inner light.

Through this work, I have learned more about myself and the creative process than ever before, and have also clearly seen the way in which music can humanize any and every experience, even in those settings that attempt to dehumanize the most. It is a testament to the possibilities in each of us to look beyond our own inherent bias, to see all human beings as deserving of true restorative justice and to consider all of the intersectional societal factors at play in any given situation.

It is a call for us to reimagine our carceral spaces and expand our imaginations. LAPD Sergeant Dan Cook said the song was sung to officers by five children who were sprayed with a tear gas grenade they found at a Black Panther building and accidentally triggered.

Off the pig! No more brothers in jail. The revolution has come. Time to pick up your gun. Put the pigs on the run. Oink oink, bang bang, dead Pig. The boy accidentally pulled the pin on the grenade and sprayed himself, his two brothers, and two sisters. They were treated at Central Receiving Hospital for minor eye irritations and released. Cook said no arrests were made in the tear gas incident but an investigation was being conducted.

I first learned of abolitionism and activism through my grandfather, the late Big Chief Donald Harrison Sr. These maroon clans have stood in open opposition to the injustices of this land since the first decade of the s. I often find myself looking to the lessons of my childhood for guidance, and deeper understanding of what has happened before. As chief carrying on this fight, our fight, his fight, their fight, is a mandate that cannot be ignored.

He taught us that the ire of the fight for liberty in this land was rooted in those unwilling to yield to the shadow of injustice. That this fight is also the fight of all those within you, and most importantly, those who would become. Those whom your actions will inspire. The countless volumes of liberators who now speak through you and I.

As we continue to endeavor this country into light, it is paramount that we do so tethered to the force and energy of their lifetimes and sacrifices, pulling every fathomable resource rooted in light to our cause in ending the campaigns of hate and fear once and for all. With gratitude, Xian AdjuahWith gratitude. With an intimate and introspective tone, these voices unfold a powerful inviting message to openness, dialogue, and a much needed change in order to build a better future.

This winter season, covered in massive drifts of white and a sky of endless grey, represents the construct that White Supremacy is held in unrelentingly. While the extreme cold is absent of forgiveness and redemption it holds a palpable reflection of the prison industrial complex.

Yet, above the clouds and below the surface, there is a bold collective conscienceless of humanity—in all its color. Unity, power, and urgency reimagines the energy needed in the dismantling of this brutal seasons system with diligence and directed clarity. Lyrics: Where is the love? Open your heart. Where is the love? Please believe, capacity lives within us to imagine something different Where everyone has what they need and is cared for.

Open our hearts. In , Ms. In she released the Grammy Award-winning album, The Mosaic Project , featuring a cast of all-star women instrumentalists and vocalists, and in she released Money Jungle: Provocative in Blue , which also earned a Grammy Award, establishing her as the first woman ever to win in the Best Jazz Instrumental Album category. To date, Ms. Additionally, Ms. In Ms. Carrington was granted the Doris Duke Artist Award, a prestigious acknowledgement in recognition of her past and ongoing contributions to jazz music.

It is not just enough to hear the voices of the speakers who speak at the mass meeting. It is also very important to know what was created as an articulate voice by those hundreds of people who gathered as a part of that struggle. These songs are very important in capturing the culture. News reports covering the Movement always used the singing as a way of trying to tell the story of the power of what was going on. So when you talk about the culture of the Movement, it is important that you draw from the rich music database.

If you draw indiscriminately, you miss the opportunity to tell a much more detailed, articulate story that comes from the collective voice of the people whose participation created and sustained the mass mobilization campaigns.

If you're walking toward me, you're walking inside the sound of my voice. There are stories about protesters being in jail, and the jailers saying, "shut up that singing. The singing I talked about before was all church songs, but the minute you get younger people involved, you get at least three additional genres of music: first, fewer hymns and more gospel music; second, concert spirituals; and third, songs from the top 40 rhythm and blues charts and new songs written to tell the story about specific events.

There is a great example of songs being changed to speak to the moment during the Freedom Rides. When the riders finally got to Mississippi, they were arrested and ended up in Parchman Prison.

They sang non-stop, pulling songs from all those genres, and refashioning the lyrics. After the first organized loads of bus riders were jailed, people in other parts of the country began to pair up racially, get on the bus and decide they are going to sit differently.

They started to do it in small groups, rather than being directed by a larger organization. When the freedom riders locked up in Parchman got the news that more riders were on the buses coming south, they started singing, "Buses are a'comin, oh Yeah," In one situation, Bernard LaFayette recalled that the prison guards tried to stop the singing.

They said to the singing freedom riders, "if you don't shut up, we'll take your mattress," the protesters would sing, "You can take my mattress, you can take my mattress, oh yeah, you can take my mattress you can take my mattress, I'll keep my freedom, oh yeah There is a story of a policeman beating a demonstrator on the ground and the man being assaulted began to sing, "We Shall Overcome," and this particular policeman could not continue the beating.

This did not happen in every case, however. People who were against the Movement had strong reactions when faced with powerful, solid freedom singing. And the singing was essential to those of us involved in the action, it was galvanizing, it pulled us together, it helped us to handle fear and anger.

I am talking about full and rich singing, when people are singing at full power. When the song started you usually had at least three-part harmony and the sound filled the air -- it was powerful music, the freedom songs. Singing in the Face of Danger I was in a mass meeting in in Mississippi, and the sheriff walked in.

And Fannie Lou Hamerwas up speaking, and she called out that sheriff, just flat footed: "I know you, I know your name. That sheriff and Fannie Lou Hamer lived in that community.

In those environments you understood the tension and the danger of what local people did who were active in the Movement. Songs raised in those moments served to hold everybody, helping to manage the tension that came when the sheriff and deputies came to see who from the community was in that mass meeting.

There was a very strong "stay away" feeling about the law. The law was not there to protect you. The law was a danger to you. Just their physical presence would create a chill. And the singing helped you to navigate that energy inside of your body. I'm talking about sound moving through your body and helping you to breathe through that tension.

It's very important not to suggest that singing made fear disappear. Because you really knew the danger, and that did not go anywhere. But singing could help you to stay and hold your stance. Freedom Songs and Popular Music Young people pulled songs from the hit parade and used them as freedom songs.

Ray Charles more than any other recording artist had songs that became freedom songs, because of his voice, the way he used his piano, and a very strong blend of churchy, bluesy energy.

We came up with a new word to describe the new genre. We called it "soul. Ray Charles' music was familiar and new. It was accessible. Sometimes he would take a specific church tune and put love song lyrics to it. But even when he didn't do that, there was a synthesis in his voice that crossed the musical lines between what we would call the secular and the sacred.

The movement itself then was primarily hosted by the church — in a community, you had to somehow find a space where larger groups could come together, and churches hosted the movement in many, many communities. Churches were also the places we left, to go out into the street and go to jail. The whole idea of the church moving into the street, the church moving into jail, is captured in this kind of music.

My cell had no windows And the air couldn't come through And I felt so hot and stuffy That I didn't know what to do That's why I'm fighting for my rights National Performers and the Movement There were always performing artists who found ways to support the Movement's activities. One of the strongest was Harry Belafonte. Mahalia Jackson sang with and organized fundraisers for Dr.

The Civil Rights Movement challenged racism, and the dominant areas of organizing took place within southern segregated communities. However, the Movement happened to the entire nation. There was no place one could be where there was not someone responding in some way to what was happening.

The Freedom Singers were invited to perform at the Newport Folk Festival, and for several successive festivals there were groups of songleaders who were on the program to sing the songs that came out of their local campaigns.

The dominant popular commercial music genres were folk and topical songs. The freedom songs and the Civil Rights Movement that birthed the songs and singing charged the national music culture. Popular music followed the concerns that were raised about justice, about getting along with each other, about challenging injustice.

Black and White musicians of the day explored those issues in their music. The second part of Eyes on the Prize moves into the s and dealing with some of the things that happen when these energies move into urban Black communities outside of the south. The struggles and language of organizing changed.

There was a strident, impatient and often angry tone. Many were concerned that it was not as focused and organized and controlled as the southern based campaigns. There were urban rebellions, there were national and regional conferences, there were poets who spoke and sang their lines and new songs from Black musicians. The music and the word was about the redefinition and repositioning of Black America, about Vietnam, about surviving in a racist nation by recentering one's cultural core.

Africa and beauty and Blackness were redefined and it was all there in the music, in the poetry, in the hair, in the dress, in the food — Black power, Black pride, Black consciousness, Black studies. Black people reshaping their cultural ground. It doesn't matter to me if you write song lyrics, poetry, or prose — if you are concerned about what's happening in your world, and especially if you take issue with it, songs, poetry and short stories are very important ways to express what you are feeling.