THE WRETCHD MISSION STATEMENT

Soul. Culture. Community. History.

Buried in a heap of books, I see their faces. Malcolm X, Franz Fanon, Assata Shakur, George Jackson, Audre Lorde, Marcus Garvey, Huey Newton, Fred Hampton, Albert Woodfox, Angela Davis. I see a safe place, a library, a thinking place, where the freedom-working native intellectual can be amongst others. 

Here in our commons, we live and share our thoughts, art, academia, poetry, activism, and in ways that are not mired in white supremacy’s definitions of knowledge. Speaking and dancing of political transformation, rapping for cooperative economics, essaying on the psychology of the colonized mind- we are no longer speaking into the dark. Here, we unfold our sermon to a coalition of comrades who manifest the same fate- rupture.

We build for third world solidarity- a peoplehood- by any means necessary. 

I want The Wretchd as Frantz Fanon named in “The Wretched of the Earth: a study of race and colonialism in the world” to be a collective where we can come together. Where emerging voices of young people can be amplified and newly published. Where we can speak truthfully and purposefully of our present/past colonial relationships. This is our library where we can laugh freely, dance recklessly, sing soulfully, organize spiritually, and build fiercely. Here, we break bread and enact the intellectual, emotional, labor to actualize the future presently. To actualize the future we want for our progeny, presently. 

The Wretchd are called the wretched for their desire to end the world, the end of this existing, the end of exploitation, and the end of the status quo that is never for all to be equitable and victorious. 

The Wretchd in us is the spirit of our ancestors that believed in their strength when all evils were set up on them. When the rules and leaders, the masters of their reality proclaimed that no other worlds but the ones of colonisation and enslavement could persist. We are the offspring of the anointed that fought, lived, and perished for their soul, culture, community, and history. Our ancestors inside us are guiding us. Our ancestors believed in growing the family tree of the virtuous. We carry forth their heritage. 

Here, we challenge ourselves. We share more with those younger than us. Here, let us not worry about the technical critiques of white academia and its marginalising authority over non-white thinkers. This living space is where we strive for excellence as poets of the world. We show our ideas with clarity, organisation, and direction. We make our power accessible to mobilise words into actions; to lift our successors higher upon our spirit.

We celebrate all forms of expression, art, media, essays, writing, research, music, poetry; all that seeks self-determination and impact. From the depths of the Global South to the City upon a Hill, all our welcome. Enter into this warm room. We have bookshelves, coffee brewing, an altar from where our prophets gaze over us. Nina Simone and Gill Scott-Heron croon to us as we discourse, as we take care, as we get to work. Leave your shoes at the door and step into this protected place. Welcome, beloveds.