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.
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!
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! Sign up for more information here!
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.
Announcing La Tejedora Initiative The Action Lab Style
Our announcement of La Tejedora Initiative last week in San Juan, Puerto Rico, brought thousands out to the Rio Piedras landmark El Boricua, flooding the streets in all directions. The Action Lab’s very own Rod Starz and Ana Tijoux thrilled the crowd, along with their surprise guests Talib Kweli and PJ Sinsuela and Hijo de Boriken, Ana Macho, DJ Velcro and DJ Toca Lale— definitely check out the video to get a taste of it for yourself!
La Tejedora is connecting social justice movements working towards self determination and liberation in Puerto Rico, while giving Puerto Ricans in the diaspora opportunities to participate, and to connect their work to larger movements against colonization around the world. La Tejedora will soon organize a Youth Organizing resource camp and a diaspora and Puerto Rico Encuentro in the fall and winter of 2023. Stay tuned for more on that, and get to know more about La Tejedora and its leadership here!
Launching Liberation Summer
The official launch of Liberation Summer was on Saturday, June 24, at S.O.B.s, a lower Manhattan mainstay of the Hip Hop and Afro-Latinx music scenes for decades. The performances by Rebel Diaz, Bahamadia, and Ana Tijoux have got us all pumped for the summer to come. If you were there you, you’re with us; and if not, be sure to check it out below!
The Action Lab is an interdisciplinary community of learning, innovation, care, and action working for racial and economic justice.