A year end campaign supporting the latticework of who we are as a porous abolitionist community of currently and formerly incarcerated, and "free world", dancers, performers, storytellers, community builders, artists, activists, educators. Our work is ever evolving. Our work is seriously joyous, and growth filled. Our work demands of us great depth of care and visioning.

This campaign will nurture our work in three ways:

1.) Sustaining our ongoing "Freedom Fund", which exists to help support members of our community coming out of prison. Whatever form that may take, the funds are there for our system-impacted brothers, sisters, and siblings to decide what they need and when they need it.

2.) Serve as choreographic and creative funds in this third year of Freedom Time; Undanced Dances Through Prison Walls – Louisiana, New York, Ohio, South Dakota, California and San Juan, Puerto Rico. This expanded version of our work begun in 2020 at the height of the covid pandemic, reimagines writing and embodying dances beyond state and national borders. An expansive reckoning with mass incarceration through imagined dances sent out from prison bunks, embodied, danced, and presented to the world in 2025-26.

 

3.) Creation of a bedrock Operational Guidance fund, financially supporting the ongoing support staff that make this work possible. We have spent the past eight years dancing in the gym of the Norco prison, from which we have gone out to perform, create, and be in conversation with communities from Kampala, Uganda to Buenos Aires, Argentina, and from Austin, Texas to Auburn, New York. The embrace has been astonishing. Every day we are energized by invitations to continue dancing and amplifying voices of our caged dancing friends/colleagues/comrades. 

Honestly, we have had a hard time keeping up. This fund aims to ease this strain by supporting the essential administrative staff that we depend upon and cannot do the work without. 

 

It takes a community to make this work and we rely on you to join us in surpassing our year-end goal of raising $10,000. Please contribute as generously as you are able and consider amplifying this letter to your family and friends. We believe that this dancing freedom work is something that justice-minded people will support if they know about it, so we deeply appreciate your help in expanding our reach.

It means so much for us to be in community with each of you, to dance with you, to march with you, and to dream with you. And we look forward to more of that in 2025!

“Nobody is free until all of us are free.” Fannie Lou Hamer

#sustainingresilience #dancingthroughprisonwalls #carenotcages #abolitionnow