Alliance for California Traditional Arts
The Alliance for California Traditional Arts stands in solidarity with Black Lives Matter and all those showing up to defend the value of Black life, here in our California communities and beyond.
Black Lives Matter.
The Alliance for California Traditional Arts stands in solidarity with Black Lives Matter and all those showing up to defend the value of Black life, here in our California communities and beyond.
We mourn the losses of George Floyd, Tony McDade, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and countless others murdered by the police and/or by those who uphold white supremacy. These policies, practices, and systems of oppression are a direct result of white supremacy, serving to dehumanize and criminalize Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color.
We stand for community-informed alternatives to policing that are rooted in care, equity, cultural knowledge, and an understanding of systemic oppression, and for the reallocation of those resources towards equitable systems that transform housing, criminal justice, education, arts and culture, and mental and physical healthcare.
At ACTA we affirm the power and strategy in deep traditional knowledge and expression. Many of the culture bearers and groups we work alongside show us a path forward and offer critical hope.We are moved by the Lucumí rituals of remembrance offered by Oakland’s Omnira Institute at sites of police violence against Black Californians. We have learned from the griot stories of liberation, spun and woven with incarcerated people across the state by Inglewood’s Michael McCarty or San Francisco’s Rhodessa Jones. And we have remembered our nation’s past and present through the storyquilts of the late Marion Coleman of Castro Valley and the hand-built dioramas depicting experiences of Black joy, Black creativity, and Black grief by Compton’s Karen Collins. Traditional artists in our state continue to educate, advocate, and mobilize for justice through collective expression and action.
In this moment, we hold strong to our commitment to racial equity. We stand in solidarity amongst leaders of the Black Lives Matters movement, tradition bearers, artists, activists, cultural workers, funders, and other nonprofits working to disrupt white supremacy and defend racial justice through resistance, mutual aid, and traditional practices grounded in community that have guided us for generations. We stand together with you.
On behalf of the board and staff of Alliance for California Traditional Arts,
Amy Kitchener, Executive Director
