Black August is a sacred container for honoring those living within and beside the prison industrial complex while fiercely protecting the joy that sustains us. We invite you to release what no longer serves your liberation and root deeply into practices that keep you alive and lively. We have curated a mixtape for the month that reflects how we are holding space.
- In America, A Love Story, Camille T. Dungy offers a clear-eyed testament to loving Black life and family within a nation marked by violence, framing patriotism not as abstract loyalty but as an intimate, painful commitment to healing and justice.
- Camilla Griffiths, Trevor Smith, Christina Pao, and Justin Morgan argue in “We Need to Close the Hope Gap” that we must bridge the divide between support for justice and belief in its feasibility, thereby transforming public exhaustion into grounded, radical hope.
- Namwali Serpell’s On Morrison invites us into Toni Morrison’s work not as a static monument but as a living, breathing force that transforms our reading practices through love, memory, and the radical reimagining of Black humanity.
- London-based artist Zoe Gyamfi explores West African folklore using brilliant colors and indigenous African motifs (“Anansi’s Vigil: The Boy Who Heard God” pictured above).
- We’re returning to Carmen Phillips’s 2020 “Black August: A Feminist and Queer Syllabus for Black Liberation,” which reminds us that centering Black women and queer voices in the struggle against the prison-industrial complex is not just an act of inclusion but a necessary reclamation of radical history and collective power.
- In “What If Releasing Was Not a Sign of Failure But a Courageous Act of Leadership?” by Alexandra Urdaneta and Iman Mills Gordon for Leadership Learning Community, releasing outdated practices is framed not as failure but as a courageous act of liberatory leadership that composts old patterns to make space for bold, intentional movement grounded in collective wisdom.
- We are floored by this recording of “From Lessons on Being an African Immigrant in America” by FreeQuency, a spoken-word poem that calls us to confront the pressures, demands, and erasure imposed by American assimilation.
- The National Black Women’s Justice Institute dismantles pathways to criminalization for Black women, girls, and gender nonconforming people by replacing punitive systems with healing-centered justice that centers community care and liberation….
- …while The National Reentry Network for Returning Citizens builds a peer-led national network that supports formerly incarcerated individuals in reclaiming their dignity and rebuilding their lives through holistic care, advocacy, and community restoration.
- Hosted by Trina Greene, the Parenting for Liberation Podcast offers intimate conversations with Black parents and activists who are healing from historical trauma and interrupting intergenerational violence to raise resilient, joyful children in community.
- We are digging deep into the archives of the Brooklyn Public Library’s Justice Initiatives zine, Bridges, created by library patrons incarcerated in New York State prisons and jails, offering poetry, prose, art, games, and resources for incarcerated people and their families.
- Healing Justice Ldn’s “The Power of Somatics for Racial Justice” panel (with Nkem Ndefo, Temi Mwale, Melz Owusu, and HJL’s Rebekah Delsol & Alex Augustin) explores how true liberation requires us to move beyond intellectualizing oppression and instead reclaim our bodies as sites of collective healing, transforming the cellular impacts of racism into embodied resilience and radical change.
- We are drawn deeply to the multimodal artwork of Francheska Alcántara (pictured above), a queer Afro-Caribbean interdisciplinary artist who “plays at the intersection of gesture, ritual, and myth within the Black diasporic imagination.”
- “I feel at home / Anywhere that I go / Spirit in my soul / Spirit in my soul”—Leon Bridges’ “Peaceful Place” is on repeat, reminding us of the grounding, calm, and expansiveness that we can cultivate inside ourselves.
Some Black Brilliance from the Change Elemental Archives
Naima Yael Tokunow- Reflect & Conjure: A Black August Map
- July 5, 2020 | See Seer Seeing Seen
- Practicing LANDS
- Re-membering with Trees: A Practice for Black August and Always
- Beyond Survival: Black Joy, Dreaming, & Play
- The Wisdom of Cicadas
- Inner Work: Intactness for the Long Haul and Part 2
- Black Feminist Roots of a Theory of Transformation
- For Colored Girls Who’ve Considered Suicide When The Rainbow Is Triggering, And The Toolbox Is Not Enuf (With All Gratitude and Respect Due to Ntozake Shange)
- Black History, Present & Futures Month Mixtape
- Tools & Tinctures for the Future We Want
- People Stitching Earth | Oppression, Healing, Liberation, and Navigating the Terrain In Between
