This is not the blog I was going to write.
Circumstances changed it.
The circumstance was the death of George Floyd in police custody.
As a hip hop theater collective, we stand in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement and the protesters in the streets.
There’s No Excuse
There is no excuse for what happened to him.
The sad fact is that innocent, unarmed black people are killed by fellow citizens, quasi-police, and police all too often.
The sad fact is that there are people who are trying to change the conversation. The point is not that there is property damage during the protests. That is a side issue to the protests.
Just as was the case in the Boston Tea Party, if all you want to talk about is how those poor tea companies were injured by the protests you have missed the point.
The Fact is Racism Still Exists
The fact is that there is still systemic institutional racism in this country. It underwrites and justifies individual acts of racism.
As theater artists, our mission is to hold up a mirror to this society. As hip hop theater artists, we do this by creating works of theater to tell seldom-told stories of the community.
Black Lives Matter. So do the stories of those lives.