Kinfolk

Join us on Wednesday, August 13 at 6:30 pm ET for our fourth and final installment of The People’s Archive Teach-In series in partnership with The Laundromat Project!

Inspired by Fannie Lou Hamer—sharecropper, organizer, co-founder of the Freedom Farm Cooperative, and tireless advocate for economic justice—this session featuring Ariana Faye Allensworth, Niki Franco, Shanna Sabio, and Ajamu Kojo examines reparations not as compensation for the past but as an investment in radical futures. Hamer understood that political rights without economic power meant continued subjugation, that land and resources were the foundation of true freedom, and that Black people deserved not just a seat at the table but ownership of the means of survival and self-determination.

This session is also inspired by Kinfolk’s “Zones of Imagination” of Reparations and Radical Futures.

📅 Wednesday, August 13
🕡 6:30 PM EDT on Zoom or IRL at 1476 Fulton Street, Brooklyn, NY
🔗 Link in bio to register (limited capacity for the in-person panel)

ASL interpretation will be available.

On July 4, 1776, the then thirteen colonies signed the Declaration of Independence, and voted for Independence from Great Britain. With a new vision for governance, they declared, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Yet and still, the authors of this foundational document were settlers on unceded land, and the majority of them supported the institution of slavery.

Today, 250 years after this document was signed, we stand at a crossroads, wanting to believe the words that the founding fathers wrote, while also seeing the contradictions in this declaration, the Constitution, and the “mainstream” narratives. Through Kinfolk Tech’s 250th Campaign, we will point out the contradictions within the American empire; and –more importantly– highlighting the histories and contemporary realities of Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian, q***r, religious minority, low/no income communities who have dreamed up and organized toward liberated ways of being. Anchored in Brooklyn, New York (land that the initial stewards called Canarsie), New Haven, Connecticut (land that the initial stewards called Quinnipiac), and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (land that the initial stewards called Lenni-Lenape), we will explore the following themes: Making Home and Cultivating Belonging, Building People Power, Creative Culture for Survival, Dreaming and Being Otherwise.