We took a surprise trip to Atlanta last month for the #StopCopCity Week of Action with a contingent of youth and adult allies from the #NoCopAcademy campaign in Chicago. We participated in a Black-led march, and screened a rough cut of Soap Box Productions’ #NoCopAcademy documentary for ATL organizers! It was a huge honor to share space with such a powerful movement, to link our battles crosscountry, and to show solidarity in the long fight to abolish police.

April is a lighter month because we’ll be spending much of it in Puerto Rico, building on the relationships begun during our Navigating Blackness/Navegando lo Negro exchange last summer. We’ll be practicing our Spanish, doing some research for our performance World After This One, and reconnecting with our loves at Espicy Nipples and LaBoriVogue before returning back to Chicago to continue our regularly scheduled programming, including the second quarter meetup with Chicago Dancemakers Forum’s Lab Artist cohort on the 28th.

We’re ecstatic to join Asha Ransby-Sporn and Timmy Châu for a virtual conversation with Dean Spade through the Barnard Center for Research on Women on April 25th at 6pm central titled “It’s All Policing, It’s All War,” delving into the connections between prison abolition and demilitarization through an internationalist lens. Dean has been hosting an amazing series of discussions with BCRW, and we’re grateful to join some of our closest comrades in keeping the effort going. You can register to watch that talk live here, and there will also be a video recording available afterward on BCRW’s YouTube channel, all with ASL interpretation and closed captioning.

See you next month!

BH