They say The People could fly. That not long ago Our People had black shinin’ wings of every kind of feather and bone. Wings of ancestral memory inscribed with wisdom only accessed through the embodiment of flight. The story goes that it was in the overcrowded slaving ships meant to separate Mama Afrika’s power from Hxr land, in the mission school houses meant to “kill the Indian and save the man”—that The People lost (forgot or hid) their wings.

But one day, amidst the stifling heat of the most oppressive circumstances, an old soul—call ‘em Toby, broke through with a laugh like a river and sighed the magik words never forgotten. The People remembered the truth of their Being, that they are The People who fly! And they rose up in the air like climbin up on a gate, spiraling up and up in counterclockwise rings shouting all the while. They rode those hot breezes like currents, singin’ and wingin’ their way to Free-dom Land!

What happens when we arrive at Freedom’s shore? What liberatory alternatives do we build? This haus of liberatory praxis is for the Tobys, the Harriets, the Laveaus, the Octavias, the Audres, the Ella Bakers—who have fiercely dedicated their lives to guiding the many to more empowering shores. The ones who have had the courage, creativity, and Vision to make a way out of no way. To work with what’s in our hands regardless of its humble, unassuming nature. We are the ones who turn meal and water into hot-water cornbread, chart secret maps to promised lands in the stars, hide our origin cosmologies on ledger sheets and in field sung spirituals!

Who holds space for such liberatory leaders? Who guides us back to the transformative power of our creative practices? Conjures ancestral rings for our healing? Let the affirming light of a community of fellow Freedom F(l)ighters inspire us to shine brightly as we navigate the unknown inner-and-outer depths of terrain uncharted and ever-expanding! This boundless expanse known as Freedom Land!