We are excited to invite you to join us for Liberation Summer – a celebratory and action-packed series of events, organized in partnership with our awesome Advisory Board Member, Grammy-winning singer-songwriter, Ana Tijoux.
Sign up here to get details on tickets and details about other Liberation Summer events as they are organized.
Liberation Summer is a series of concerts, gatherings, workshops and activities commemorating 50 years of Hip Hop and challenging neoliberalism – all designed to build relationships and spark action for racial, economic, and political equality.
We will celebrate 50 years of Hip Hop and fighting injustice with music and culture that gave voice and politicized youth around the world. We will celebrate artists whose beats set the rhythm of our movement and whose words spoke the poetry of the struggle for social justice. We will celebrate the history of resistance to the neoliberal policies first enacted in Chile just as the sounds of a new musical language were emerging in The Bronx. We will celebrate our collective power.
We hope you will join us over the next several months for Liberation Summer!
Time for Some Action NYC Concert
Join the legendary Ana Tijoux, Bahamadia, Rebel Diaz and Special Guests to kick off Liberation Summer at SOB’s in downtown Manhattan. Time for Some Action will be a stirring call to action to think bigger, act bolder and move in community for justice!
The Action Lab presents:
Time for Some Action
50 Years of Hip Hop | 50 Años del Golpe en Chile
Performing Live:
Ana Tijoux
Bahamadia
Rebel Diaz
& special guests
Saturday, June 24, 2023
6 – 10 PM
SOBS
204 Varick St
New York, NY
Sacar la Voz in Puerto Rico
Join Ana Tijoux, El Hijo de Borikén, DJ Velcro and others for performances and a conversation about organizing and leadership development in Puerto Rico and Chile, and for the announcement of The Action Lab’s La Tejedora Initiative. Prior to the concert, we plan on connecting Ana Tijoux and other Chilean movement leaders to movement leaders in Puerto Rico to speak about shared struggles and ideas for cross movement solidarity. La Tejedora is being founded by two longtime Puerto Rican organizers and leaders and is designed to weave cross-movement solidarity, strategy, and action among organizations and leaders in the archipelago and in the Puerto Rican diaspora; and to connect Puerto Rican social justice movements to movement leaders globally. Be sure to sign up at the link above to get the details about how to join us.
Ana Tijoux and the Freedom Fellows
Later in the summer, Ana Tijoux will be leading the Freedom Fellows workshop, following the tradition of The Action Lab’s Freedom Writers Songwriters Lab led last year by our Advisory Board member Aloe Blacc. This year, Ana will be working with up-and-coming musicians at The Action Lab and will be creating our movement’s next anthem. An intensive songwriter’s workshop that will give independent and emergent artists the opportunity to think deeply and creatively about the stories they want to tell and the issues they want to explore. Participants will benefit from collaborating with Ana, alongside other experienced music producers, justice leaders, and artists in an environment that focuses on the craft and execution of songwriting through the lens of social justice and movement work.
Taking it to The Bronx
A month after DJ Kool Herc was throwing the first Hip Hop jam in The Bronx, there was a military coup in Chile that overthrew the government of Salvador Allende. What followed was not only 50 years of Hip Hop, but also 50 years of what we now know as the global economic system of Neoliberalism. Along with advisory board member, Rodrigo Starz of Hip Hop group Rebel Diaz, we have collaborated with The Bronx Art Space to continue Liberation Summer 2023 programming thru July and August in The South Bronx. From DJ and MCing workshops to political education panels and film screenings, to open mics and Bboy/Bgirl battles, July and August in The South Bronx is gonna be about gettin free and building community through the arts! Other events will include will include:
Shock: A conversation on Disaster Capitalism and Frontline Communities: Taking up Naomi Klein’s now-classic book The Shock Doctrine, Ana Tijoux and other partners and guests of The Action Lab will moderate a conversation on disaster capitalism, its history in the US and throughout the world, and how cultural and political organizing are naming it, framing it for the public, and fighting against it.
As with the other events and those still to be announced, be sure to sign up so you are the first to know when times and dates are announced.
The Action Lab is an interdisciplinary community of learning, innovation, care, and action working for racial and economic justice.