Today we’d like to introduce you to Hood Liberation, Nadia Elhawary & Amy Cardenas.
Hi Nadia and Amy, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
During the 2020 uprisings, we were all brought together to organize an All Black Everything block party. After organizing a protest to honor George Floyd and folks who have lost their life to police terror, a member brought us together to create this block party. Honestly, more shit gets done in a team of revolutionary leaders. We are a group of 8 Black and brown organizers who wanted to highlight the Black community in our city, Pasadena. Through organizing this block party in our community, we began to see our magic together as a collective, that’s how Hood Liberation was born. We are for the hood by the hood and pride ourselves from being from the city we are serving.
Hood Liberation is not your average non-profit or watered down organization that started with good intentions and ended up changing, we are a revolutionary team that is FOR THE HOOD, BY THE HOOD. We are a part of the community that we are serving and we constantly center our people’s voices in EVERYTHING that we do. Highlighting the voices that are often silenced and empowering people to know how much power we carry within us. We do this in our free time. We put in our whole hearts into everything we do. Capitalism teaches us competition and greed but Hood Liberation is our reminder that our people deserve more.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Honestly, starting Hood Liberation during a pandemic was a struggle. Often times we were faced with some tough decisions on hosting events, but we constantly center our people’s voices and are reminded that we are for the hood, by the hood, which means we always do what’s best for the community. We were not going to risk any more Black and brown lives by putting on events and being exposed to COVID because we know we are impacted by covid at WAY higher rates. Therefore, we were forced to put a hold on many of our community outreach plans. The most difficult decision was having to cancel our Rose City Market after months of planning. As a team, we then faced the challenge of thinking of creative ways to support Black and brown businesses without putting folks at risk. This led to the creation of our Black and Brown business list, that is an ongoing list for our community to support each other and put our money back into our people. To begin to invest and intentionally pour into people our community.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Hood Liberation?
One of the biggest things to highlight is everyone does this on their free time. We do this from our hearts and do not profit individually from this because we all ride for our community. Currently, we meet weekly to create this movement our community deserves, that includes events, service projects, and even soon our first Rose City Market that will highlight Black and brown businesses in our city of roses. We are known for highlighting Black and brown businesses to combat the gentrification going on in our city. We are creating so much fire for our city because we do not believe anyone is here to save us. Instead, we are here for our people and we got each other.
We recently sold ‘For the hood, by the hood’ sweaters where 100% of our proceeds are going back into our community. We do not profit, we only use the funds to go back into our people, our events, and service projects that are aimed at helping and highlighting our people. We pride ourselves in this. We are not a business. We are truly a community organization that is for our city.
It’s essential to highlight that we are about this good fight on and off the clock. For most of us our “9:00-5:00” entails working in some community aspect. Some of us work in the education, retail, and the arts field. Each individual of Hood Liberation has a unique academic, professional, and spiritual background that helps add the spices and flavor to our overall liberation recipe. Believe me, we are always working hard to cook up magic for the Dena community. More than that, we all love to see areas where synergy naturally happens between our daily work and activism work. Our team works effortlessly to make as many connections with organizations and individuals we know are already doing the work in the hood. It’s very important to our group that we never come into the hood assuming what it needs, but rather seek out what is already being done and how we can help strengthen that action. I mean why recreate the wheel right? When we can just join them and continue to the magic.
We’d be interested to hear your thoughts on luck and what role, if any, you feel it’s played for you?
Our bad luck could be seen as how our communities are affected directly by white supremacy, by capitalism, by the lack of resources and so on. But we chose to focus on the beauty that our people make with the “little” we are seen to have. We are abundant as a community, we do not have bad luck nor are we victims, but we do have the reality of what barriers we been facing since birth. We are mindful of these barriers, but we want our people to see our power. To see how much power and magic exists in our current selves. We are not here to change our community, but we are here to highlight and contribute to the magic our community is already creating. And if we can give more resources and access to our people, that is ultimately our main goal.
Our ‘bad luck’ could be seen the pandemic because it’s forced us to postpone or all together cancel our events. But this was actually a blessing, it created so much bonding and this season gave us the opportunity to get hella creative and lean on each other to accomplish our goals. During this pandemic, were witnessing firsthand the abundance that exists in our neighborhoods and the fighting spirit so many folks in Dena have. We were all blown away and if anything were truly inspired to keep on going and fight harder for the hood by the hood.
Contact Info:
- Email: [email protected]
- Website: hoodliberation.com
- Instagram: @hoodliberation
Image Credits:
Film pics by Nadia Elhawary @mselhawary
