At the heart of 1919 is the need to partake in and encourage liberatory ways of thinking (specifically, through dreaming and re-imagination). There is a realistic understanding that currently, we are not free. Freedom requires a collective rejection of the present, and the constant effort to reimagine a better future for us all.
Reimagining Community vision board. Photo by Ilhaan Dahir
In our print publications and our civic work, we pose questions to our community to encourage this type of thinking and cultural production: “What does reimagining community mean to you? Can you dream freely? Can we? Why not? How can we use our dreams and the art they birth to take us to a new future?” These are important questions we ask ourselves and others in an effort to create connections not only with one another but towards a new future.
The direction of each print issue, civic project, program, and community event we organize is informed by a conceptual understanding that is reinforced and made up of historical precedents and legacies of international struggle. We understand the evolution of the printing press as being a fundamental tool both for society and significantly, the state, in their attempts to manufacture consent in the production of news and media. Alternatively, the Black grassroots press has always been associated with connecting art with resistance and struggle with liberation. Pamphlets, flyers, and newsletters have been critical elements aiding Black freedom struggles internationally because of their ability to mass communicate messages, ask questions, and critique in public space. Black freedom movements have utilized art along with the printing press as principal instruments in their struggle. 1919 is no different.
Reimaginning Community issue 4 cover. Model: Angaer Arop, Photographer: Kelvin Mendie
Our publication is grounded upon this history and thinks through what a print publication means for grassroots voices within African and African-diasporic communities today. So fundamentally, and going back to why 1919 started, there has always been a disconnection, an agenda of erasure sanctioned by the state aiming to limit and restrict African-diasporic communities speaking and grounding with each other in public, in private, in the classroom, and in text. When we speak of “groundings” we call back upon the work of Walter Rodney who coined the term in his book The Groundings With My Brothers, as more than just a method of teaching, learning, or knowledge production. Groundings meant breaking out of academic isolation and engaging in the mutual exchange of knowledge with those struggling on the ground. We use Rodney's lessons on “Groundings” as critical pedagogy to connect our community to the collective challenge of rejecting oppressive and exploitative systems of power.
1919 is committed to actively responding to the material needs and suggestions of our community by being flexible in our programming, accessible in our delivery, and offering a space for members of our community to contribute to our work how they see fit. We are focused on addressing the needs of Black and racialized peoples because we understand that these groups continue to feel the violent effects of global colonialism and now remain subjugated under the pretense of a multicultural state where whiteness is still the key to opportunity and power, and this fact is reinforced daily by traditional media. Black art should radicalize the people to fight for power and against oppression. Liberation will always be the goal for 1919 and we’ll continue to see it through.
