We the News is a traveling newsstand
that documents, publishes, and distributes
the stories of Black immigrants and
first-generation Black Americans.
We organized a series of story circles
where we invited Black-identifying
immigrants to come and share their
stories. We typically open the stories
with a prompt, either around their
migration route or a ritual that they
share, or some of their experience of
resilience. We publish by creating a
series of zines from those story
circles that we transcribe and edit in
collaboration with the participants and
we distribute them by putting the newsstand
out in the street.
I'm a child of
immigrants I feel as though I'm just a
continuation of the story.
I feel like this by being Black period
whether I'm Black American or Black
immigrant, I'm part of a continuing story
that binds me to people from across
the world with a similar experience
I met Lizania through a friend of mine,
Al, who works at BAJI who I'm also on the
organizing committee with. I met her at a
story circle that she was having at the
caribBEING house in Brooklyn.
Today we did an activation at
Restoration Plaza and we started by
having the newsstand and having zines
available to all the folks that were
passerbyers or came into the activity and
we launched three new zines. We also had
food throughout the day, we had drums,
music and throughout this we wanted to
make sure that we were not only talking
about the newsstand itself but also
highlighting the different campaigns
that BAJI has been working on as an
organization.
What projects like We the News does is
it gives us anecdotal evidence to
certain trends that we're seeing. We're
getting everything from a grassroots
perspective, we're getting everything
straight from the first-hand account
from the people. –And as a culmination of
that we had a reading and with Julissa
Herrera which was one of the participants
and she shared her story and we had a
panel discussion around the importance
of archiving our own histories.
I believe that we all walk around holding
stories inside and we all seek
that opportunity. It's very hard
particularly in the city, busy daily
activities, when that opportunity opens
up such as in the story circle moment
where you have that cue that says
here's your comfort zone
here's that area we will not have
judgment upon you for sharing what you
need to share. I think when that
opportunity comes it somehow flows out.
To me being an immigrant means there are
a lot of struggles and responsibilities
that go along with that knowing that
you're constantly representing the place
that you're from the culture that you're
from you know existing in a place that isn't home.
We the News really became a
way for me to understand my own language
around race because a lot of the
language that exists today I was finding
was really binary and it was really from
like a Black American perspective and
I couldn't relate necessarily. I
definitely didn't feel that it was my
own, so We the News allowed me this
project really allowed me to create a
language within communities and finding
different people that felt the same way
as I do and identify it the same way. We
the News has gone to become a life of
its own that I can no longer support on
my own and I'm trying to figure out how
it can keep growing.
