Christopher R. Rogers - How We Stay Free: Notes on a Black Uprising

As a loud and proud West Philadelphian, I found this volume to be a visionary and genuinely inspiring approach to chronicling the momentous events of 2020. How We Stay Free, with its offering of poetry, history, context and practical organizing strategies is a book that so many of us didnt even know that we needed. I am persuaded that the spirit of onetime West Philadelphia resident Paul Robeson moves through pages, which attest to Black identity as an infinite plurality and Black love as Black collective action.Asali Solomon, author of The Days of Afrekete

How We Stay Free is a foundational text and map that builds on the legacy of the Black Radical Tradition as localized in Black Philadelphia. Through this eloquent mix of poetry, prose, interviews, and archives of Phillys Black Uprising, this text places our fight for justice that year within a much longer history and future of radical revolt. This is must read for community residents, activists, organizers to model ways that Philly has paired arts-based resistance work with organized protests and mobilization to build sustainable radical coalitions for freedom.Dr. Christina Jackson, scholar-activist, community facilitator, and Associate Professor of Sociology at Stockton University

Christopher Rogers and Fajr Muhammad have curated an urgent and timely collection. How We Stay Free documents how the 2020 Black uprising in Philadelphia sparked the political imagination. Produced in collaboration with the Paul Robeson House and Museum, it illuminates how Paul and Eslanda Robeson remain inspiring symbols of the radical social change so urgently needed today.Jordan T. Camp, author of Incarcerating the Crisis: Freedom Struggles and the Rise of the Neoliberal State

This powerful volume provides a maroon archive of Black resistance, historical memory, and survival work during the 2020 uprisings in Philadelphia. From the founding of the Philadelphia Black Radical Collective to the emergence of the Black Students Alliance in July 2020, the writings and spoken word in How We Stay Free remind us that, Freedom is not a destination. Its a process.

By documenting Black Philadelphias activist praxis during the United States largest popular mobilization in history, this edited collection unearths the precious artifacts of local struggle through voice, material culture, poetry and prose. It connects past, present, and future by interweaving the histories of the Paul Robeson House and Museum and Hakims Bookstore in West Philadelphia to the contemporary practices of mutual aid and survival developed by the Black and Brown Workers Cooperative to ensure that Black Trans Lives Matter.

How We Stay Free is a rich tapestry of political work and freedom dreams that is essential reading for understanding our city and the larger world beyond as we reckon with the COVID-19 pandemic, the scale of state violence at home and abroad, and unprecedented ecological crisis. Underneath all we do, Mike Africa, Jr.s reminds us that the overall mission, the grand mission itself must be to protect life.Donna Murch, author of Living for the City: Migration, Education, and the Rise of the Black Panther Party in Oakland, California and Assata Taught Me: State Violence, Racial Capitalism and the Movement for Black Lives

How We Stay Free is a living archive built by a community of freedom fighters. In its pages, readers walk the streets of West Philadelphia, stepping into Hakims Bookstore, marching up Broad St. with the Philly Black Student Alliance, sharing food at the Bunny Hop in Malcolm X Park, or sitting in the parlor at 4951 Walnut where Paul Robesons voice still thunders in the walls. This is poetic record of resistance from the 2020 uprisings. From the ashes of the MOVE bombing to the surviving nail where Frank Rizzos statue once stood, these are blueprints for a future being made in the present. A beautiful compendium of struggle.Christina Heatherton, coeditor of Policing the Planet: Why the Policing Crisis Led to Black Lives Matter

How We Stay Free: Notes on a Black Uprising

2022 West Philadelphia Cultural Alliance (editor)

2022 Christopher R. Rogers, Fajr Muhammad, and individual contributors

This edition 2022 Common Notions

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/

ISBN: 978-1-94217-350-2 | EBook ISBN: 978-1-94217-362-5

Library of Congress Number: 2021948798

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

www.commonnotions.org

info@commonnotions.org

Discounted bulk quantities of our books are available for organizing, educational, or fundraising purposes. Please contact Common Notions at the address above for more information.

Cover design by Josh MacPhee / Antumbra Design

Layout design and typesetting by Morgan Buck / Antumbra Design Antumbra Design www.antumbradesign.org

Notes on a Black Uprising

Edited by Christopher R. Rogers, Fajr Muhammad, and the Paul Robeson House & Museum

Brooklyn, NY

Philadelphia, PA

commonnotions.org

The editors of this anthology, in solidarity with the community of contributors that made this project possible, offer this special collective dedication:

We honor those who have transitioned, some in 2020 but also before, from whom we have inherited the struggle.

Conrad Africa. Consuewella Africa. Delbert Africa. Delisha Africa. Doretha Africa. Life Africa. Lil Phil Africa. Merle Africa. Netta Africa. Nick Africa. Phil Africa. Raymond Africa. Rhonda Africa. Tomaso Africa. Tree Africa. Melody Ellen Beverly. Edward Collier. Charles E. Crews. Beryl Davis. Dominique Remmie Fells. Robert Forbes. Garrett Foster. Loretta Garcia. Kelly Girl. Dawoud Hakim. Norise Harris. Louise Elizabeth Jones. Gail Wendy Lowe. James T. Lowe Sr. Adrian Erik |McCray. LJ McFarland. Saboor Muhammad. Barry Perkins. Linda Richardson. Mario Riley. James Juju Scurlock. Frank Lloyd Stephens. Na Tany Davin Stewart. Summer Taylor. Jacqueline Tindal. Walter Wallace Jr. Geneva Young. Paul and Eslanda Robeson.

We honor those who may be currently locked inside or standing trial, recognizing that our road to liberation is bound with their freedom.

Mumia Abu-Jamal. Lore Elizabeth Blumenthal. David Bobo. Matthew Early. Pete Guerra. Leaf. Nichol Lee. Russell Maroon Shoatz, Sr. Ant Smith. Kwame Teague. All political prisoners, until all prisons cease to exist.

We lift up the names and lives of our next generation, those newly entering this world, to whom we will pass the baton to continue the worthy work.

Sumiaya Abdur-Rasheed. Fuseina Dashini Abukari. Amara. Ayah. Journee Ayers. Kamila Skye Blackburn. Brielle. Kameron Brown. Keon Brown Jr. Coltrane. Compton. Emma. Evelyn. Aiden and Adeline Frey. Jamie. Jeremiah. Luca. Mathias. Mia. Avery Miller. Dahra Mshinda. Nafis, Elijah and Zameer Muhammad. Thelonious Palacio. Prince. Gary Richardson III. Mia, Emory, and Eli Rogers. Logan Serraty. Theo. Sean. Shiloh Sage Amaris Wilson. Zakiya. To all our Black children.