For my piece, I explore the tension between progress and loss –
How does a community mean?
How do we continue to hold hope for building something new while existing in the byproduct of historical wrongs?
What exactly fulfills us?
There exists no immediate commensurate remedy against a violent system that continues to weave and feed into itself. Hope remains resonant; unabating. The ebbs and flows of progress and loss are two realities that we must learn to hold concurrently.
Losing sight of what really matters undercuts our ability to reimagine.
It’s not only imperative that we continue the fight for a better world. It’s also honoring the beauty in the journey of finding out who we truly are when we are free.
A New Foundation
Published in 2024
You can read the piece here! https://newfoundation.shorthandstories.com/the-unreasonable-man/index.html
A New Foundation seeks a more abundant and dignified future where wealth is a tool for catalyzing human flourishing and honoring intrinsic prosperity.
This editorial ensemble examines the language and systematic realities of generational wealth building through the lenses of homeownership and business starts and growth. Anchoring in the six Homeownership and Business Ownership cohort cities, we utilize qualitative and quantitative data to analyze racist systems and generations-old inequities in wealth.
A New Foundation uses human-centered storytelling and creative expression to highlight existing abundance in BIPOC communities and push our imaginations about what is possible when we organize and ask: What does it look like to shift the center of wealth away from whiteness? What does it mean that the communities with the least historical monetary wealth are often the richest in culture, art, and expression? What would be the impact of reorienting our comprehension of wealth as something more human, more dignified for all?
Towards an Abundant Future: A New Foundation is a storytelling initiative by Living Cities and Gumbo Media that builds on the explorations of the Reckoning With Race series – pushing us deeper through questions of wealth building and sustained abundance. I was chosen as the narrative storyteller, writer and curator for Rochester, NY.
This playlist iterates on themes of progress, loss, community, and Blackness. Opening with Nina Simone’s dark, layered optimism in her 1965 hit “You’ve Got To Learn”, to Little Simz’ honest, piercing nuances on being broken and alive, each song follows the push and pull of the Unreasonable Man — weaving us through a kaleidoscope to contrive meaning of what it can mean to be truly free.