Alie Jones

Alie Jones is a self-care advocate, writer, artist, and Creole mermaid. Currently pursuing a Masters in Creative Writing and Literature at Mills College. She is the Director and Cofounder of Black Freighter Press, a revolutionary press committed to the exploration of liberation, using art to transform consciousness. The founder of Bodacious Bombshells, a wellness collective in Oakland. Alie is passionate about centering our breath work as sacred and hopes to build a legacy of awareness and expression. Co-creator of Beloved, An Insistence a community art installation on E. 14th (International Blvd) embedded with PPE and resources. 

Currently, she is pursuing a Masters in Creative Writing and Literature at Mills College. Alie graduated with a BA in Cinematic Arts & Technology from CSU Monterey Bay and a minor in Creative Writing and Social Action. She received her MPA from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies. In 2020, she co-curated Unbound Roots, A Paradigm for Intentional Healing at SOMArts Cultural Center in San Francisco. Her work on Black Mental Health and self-care has been featured on Afropunk, xoNecole, and Medium.com. Alie is the host of the podcast called Chit Chat with Aliecat , she explores self-care practices and journeys of self-love in community.

André D. Singleton

André D. Singleton is a Bay Area based educator, human rights activist, and multi-disciplinary artist born in Kansas City, Missouri. Widely known as the co-creator of ‘The Very Black Project,’ a well-known and revered social awareness initiative that celebrates the African Diaspora.

He is a thread within a fabric of pioneers on a mission to unite people from an abundance of cultural backgrounds. Continuously enduring the long term side-effects of a terminal illness and embracing his sexuality as Black gay man in a very anti-Black, anti-sick and homophobic society has empowered Singleton to approach life with a fierce determination to be free and embracing of his truth while inspiring others to get and stay free.

Singleton’s work continues to inspire courage, pride, and vulnerability, encouraging people all over the world to respect one another so that our communities might remain enriching for us all. Very Ubuntu.

Danielle Hirokane Payton
(They/Them)

Born & raised in the Bay and currently settled on Ohlone Land, D is a genderqueer Japanese & Irish educator, Reiki medicine holder, community cultural worker, organizer, writer, film photographer, and abolitionist. Their goal is to use these practices as tools of liberation, providing others with perspectives & experiences that build acceptance, radical compassion, interdependence, and self-determination. They are honored to be in right relationship with our Mother Earth, sharing the practices of veneration, respect, and offering they have learned from their teachers and guides.

As a Reiki medicine holder, D works directly with Great Spirit to offer a clear pathway for others and their own inner healing. Raised with Buddhist and Shinto ancestral practices and impacted by incarceration through both family lineages, D has dedicated their life to studying and healing their own trauma in order to share this perspective with others. They believe Reiki is a form of living reparations, and is indebted to share with those who may benefit most ~ houseless, queer, trans, Black, Indigenous, incarcerated, poor, and young folks.

D encourages the development of spiritual and cultural ancestral practices as a form of personal liberation and a way to actively push back against the systems and forces of capitalism, colonization, and imperialism.

Isha Rosemond

Isha is an Oakland-based Haitian artist who partners with Spirit, loved ones, and multiple mediums in order to shape spaces and experiences that remind us of our connection to each “other” and the Earth. Her passion for creative liberation and her work with holistic healing has led her to founding the Black Freedom Fellowship.

The Black Freedom Fellowship is a movement that liberates remembrance for vital futures by cultivating spaces for Black and Indigenous artist-activists to rest, embody free expression and learn together all over the world. As the founder, she is currently preparing to guide a trip from Oakland to Jacmel, Ayiti where a group of 10 artists will invest in and exchange with local community-led groups to uplift the needs and genius of Afro-diasporan folx.

KaliMa Amilak

KaliMa Amilak is an Afro-Caribbean photographer, business owner, herbalist, and multidisciplinary artist native from Brooklyn, New York. In their experience as a photographer, they have sold and exhibited artwork in various galleries in Brooklyn and the Bay Area, such as BatHaus Gallery, SOMArts, The San Francisco Human Right Commission Center, Ashara Ekundayo Gallery, and The Richmond Arts Center. They have also been published in online publications such as AFROPUNK.

Through their intentions in art, they are devoted to self-expression and celebration for black queer people sharing their life experiences as a means of healing through empowerment.

Salimatu Amabebe
(he/they)

Salimatu Amabebe is a Bay Area-based chef, multimedia artist and the founder/ director of Black Feast, a dining event that celebrates Black artists and writers through food. Amabebe's work focuses on the intersection of food and art, drawing from family memories, Nigerian recipes, and Black culinary history.

@salimatuamabebe @black.feast

Samantha Maria Xochitl Espinoza

Samantha Maria Xochitl Espinoza is a Chicanx artist coming from a Mexican and Salvadoran family. She grew up in L.A and in Denver, CO and currently resides on Lisjan Ohlone land (Oakland).

She references living in between worlds, identities, and homes as a marker of her queer, Chicanx experience. Her work reveals her historical and personal traumas as openings for wider conversations on racialized, gendered, sexual and capitalist oppressions. Her work is meant as a gift to fellow brown women in the hopes that they will see parts of themselves reflected or whispered within her work. She is a youth educator, organizer, daughter, sister and falls in love frequently.

Shushan Tesfuzigta (she/her)

Shushan Tesfuzigta (she/her) is an Eritrean-American interdisciplinary artist, environmental designer, educator, and community planner dedicated to improving the well-being of Black communities around the world.

Employing Black feminist practices, cradle to career initiatives and just transition strategies, I hope to disrupt oppressive systems and practices from the interpersonal to the global scale. The city and community scale is where I have decided to position myself with this task, for this is the moment where both edges are rooted.

My work varies from poetic manifestos to qualitative research. I hope to produce work that is as dynamic and prolific as the places I call home.

SPULU

SPULU is a creative mover, storyteller, dance maker, fashion designer, and a interdisciplinary performing artist born and raised on Chochenyo, Ohlone land (Oakland, California). SPULU’s home roots begins in the South Pacific specifically the island of Tonga.  These two homes are a reflection of their artistic work. SPULU’s work has been featured on many stages and media platforms around the world in response to Pacific Islanders stories of struggle, bravery, and resilience in the United States and around the globe.

They use art and movement as a form of resistance and protest. His recent work was featured in the Levi’s Pride 2019 international campaign and also co-created a Nike shoe; which sold out the the first few days of launch. Their work also continues to grace the streets of Oakland, California during the 2020 Black Joy Parade as the first Tongan Pacific Islander contingency at the festival. Follow SPULU’s journey and take a step in his shoes. #spulunism

Asya Abdrahman 

Asya Abdrahman is an Oakland and San Francisco regenerative world building, multi-disciplinary artist, curator, and  entrepreneur who considers the intersection of cultural identity, human rights and the environment in her work. Of Somali, Eritrean, and Ethiopian heritages, she fled her East African homeland during a time of regional wars.

Abdrahman’s work promotes cultural and ecological survival, advanced through her use of human, technological, natural, found, and recycled resources. In addition to exhibiting her art, Abdrahman is the founder of Kindness Grocery Coop which produces regenerative practices on the future of work, commerce and community events like Bath Party.

asyaabdrahman.com

Corrina Gould

Corrina Gould (Lisjan Ohlone) is the chair and spokesperson for the Confederated Villages of Lisjan — she was born and raised in Oakland, CA, the village of Huichin. A mother of three and grandmother of four, Corrina is the Co-Founder and Lead Organizer for Indian People Organizing for Change, a small Native run organization that works on Indigenous people issues and sponsored annual Shellmound Peace Walks from 2005 to 2009. These walks brought about education and awareness of the desecration of sacred sites in the greater Bay Area.

As a tribal leader, she has continued to fight for the protection of the Shellmounds, uphold her nation's inherent right to sovereignty, and stand in solidarity with her Indigenous relatives to protect our sacred waters, mountains, and lands all over the world.Her life’s work has led to the creation of Sogorea Te’ Land Trust, a women-led organization within the urban setting of her ancestral territory of the Bay Area. Sogorea Te' Land Trust works to return Indigenous land to Indigenous people.

Based on an understanding that Oakland is home to many peoples that have been oppressed and marginalized, Sogorea Te works to create a thriving community that lives in relation to the land. Through the practices of rematriation, cultural revitalization, and land restoration, the Land Trust calls on native and non-native peoples to heal and transform legacies of colonization, genocide, and to do the work our ancestors and future generations are calling us to do.

sogoreate-landtrust.org

Crystal Wahpepah

Crystal Wahpepah is an enrolled member of the Kickapoo nation of Oklahoma. She was born and raised alongside a multi-tribal community in Oakland, CA where she learned Ancestral food ways as well as the formalities of running her own catering and food business.

She is the first Native Chef to appear on food networks and chopped Crystal’s was Inducted into the Native American Almanac her passion to create food by honoring the origins and land of each ingredient, as well as cultivating connection to indigenous farmers and land stewards makes her a unique game-changer in the food industry.

One of her clients says, “I take my time eating this because I know where it comes from.” Watch the horizon closely for Crystal and Wahpepah’s Kitchen, as she takes Ancestral food ways and brings them to the forefront with laughter, joy, playfulness, honor, respect, gratitude, reciprocity and collaboration. Crystal and Wahpepah’s Kitchen are the embodiment of how food can heal communities and society at large.

wahpepahskitchen.com