When Willie “Prophe” Stigers founded the Coalition of Black Music Action in the apogee of racial justice protests in 2020, the world's attention was in historical errors in order. Five years later, it is a very different environment for that work, from the federal government to an exhausted and angry citizenship.
How can a group dedicated to diversity, equity and inclusion maintain impulse in the face of hostile executive orders, investigations and a general corporate retirement of responsibility? In addition to that, with Altadena, one of the most appreciated neighborhoods of Los Angeles for black musicians, destroyed by Eaton Fire of January, the need for support is immediate and existential.
The Times spoke with Stigers about the group of the group raising money for Altadena Relief and other defense works tonight in Beverly Hilton (with Irving Azoff, John Legend and Kai Cenat being honored), how Altadena can maintain her soul and if freedom of expression will really extend to black artists in court.
The gala tonight is, in part, Dedicated to raising funds for Altadena, for a long time a precious neighborhood for black musicians. The fires are less visible from a tragedy now, But pain is ongoing. WWill these funds be used?
When the news cycle changed, the attention and energy of the nation were also. This fund is aimed at people who lost homes and were not insured. Just after the fires, we immediately deploy $ 400,000 for a income support round and connect people with the resources they needed to help them.
But there is a lot of bureaucracy. People have had to send so much documentation only to obtain a few dollars. However, we knew that at the beginning, in the stories we listen to about the people who could not find a place to live, the cars that were lost, finding low payments for temporal homes, even to replace the Christmas toys that were burned.
What has you learned about what works most effectively to help these families?
Direct cash support always works. These are not people who try to solve life; Their lives were interrupted. They did not need education or financial education; They were owners of housing, recipients of generational wealth and established there. They needed the ability to feed their family because people slept in cars. The tragedy was devastating, and the only way to reach a cure point was to obtain effective immediately in the hands of people in need.
There are great fears about how Altadena will be rebuilt and who will benefit, and what cost for your cultural soul. How can people preserve that as real estate interest?s About desperate people?
Musical and cultural contributions exist in cities such as Altadena throughout the country. For me, the most significant thing is to remember how Altadena became. Blacks could not buy houses elsewhere, so they settled in this city, and the city became the beneficiary of a beautiful cultural expression. It is another example of that resilience and creative production that blacks have always provided to the United States.
My best hopes are that people's spirits remain intact here. That has been remarkable, how people lost everything except their faith. Everyone with whom we talked had to have a level of optimism, which alternated, the ability to see an rainbow in the middle of a storm, and I would love to hold on to that. But while Altadena is rebuilt, I really hope she does not become a pool of investors snatching houses for cents in the dollar because people did not have the capital to rebuild. It costs hundreds of thousands to reconstruct even a basic home, if it did not have a war chest, that is huge, find those resources. Our goal is to try to make people on the way find resources so they don't have to decide. Many people sell their properties for despair.
It is a reminder that the need will be ongoing for years and that people are making difficult and desperate decisions now.
It is very humiliating when we talk to people. We have already hit more than one hundred families, and when we have conversations with these families, we want them to know the commitment we have made. This is not a beneficial organization to drive; We are here in the long term.
His work with BMAC began in 2020 when there was so much impulse around racial justice problems. It feels like a different world now. How has the environment changed for your work?
Now there is this federal mandate of attacking Dei, but for me, if you want Dei, then, get rid of salary disparities, get rid of the glass ceiling for women, get rid of everything. The idea that this federal mandate now exists against efforts to correct errors in this country, it has been remarkable to see how shameless it has been.
Maybe it's not surprising from an extreme right–Ala government, but it is a real moment of masks for corporations that were all In 2020.
We knew that would happen; That is why we formed: we needed to hold them responsible for their public statements. Our eye is not outside those corporations that reduce their efforts, and we will discuss and expose that. We believe that corporations that return to the concept of Dei must be exposed, and consumers must be very clear about how they spend their dollars.
We see Target and we have seen how a boycott affects its final result. There are also those who maintain a Dei title to stay out of the radar, but they are not creating a systemic change. They will make a cultural meal but they will not change their hiring practices. Our goal is to expose that and resolve who is morally responsible.
Willie “Prophet” Stigers and Shawn “Tubby” Holiday of Bmac Talking to residents affected by fire in Altadena.
(Black music action coalition)
How has you affected your own ability to raise funds?
Many corporations that supported these efforts have recently retired completely, and that has created a challenging role for us as an organization. But then many people have now tripled in the concept, and that is where our faith is left. Our association with Live Nation has sent 20 children to the live events space to go and learn everything about that business with internships and work locations. We have an accelerator program in Tennessee State, and we are working on the policy side.
There has been a federal reaction, but also a duplication of these efforts. If the efforts of 2020 were not as effective as they were, now there would be no fight for that.
Does that extend to the music industry, which obviously depends on black creativity and experience?
With regard to corporate structures, yes; Even in the music business there are fewer black executives now than in 2019. Tags, the editors gave these positions to people for three -year contracts, and now things return to business as usual. The corporations that committed BMAC are low, and we trust in this gala to keep the lights on.
Live Nation and Primary Wave could have taken the same route, but they did not; They doubled in support.
Foreaoid has become controversial in some corners for how they spent their $ 100 million on donations. What are you doing about your work?
Foreaoid was a great company to gather Live Nation and AEG to produce a massive concert in response to mass devastation. The artist community appeared and raised a significant amount of money. That money has been deployed in many base organizations in the field. Any talk is from people who have never been in Altadena and felt their effects.
What they did was a wonderful gesture; The funds will be great use. The same people who do all this talk are creating the bureaucracy, which hinders access to government assistance. I guarantee that those same people did not donate a penny of time, resources or energy.
You have been active in a variety of legislation around AI and Deepfakes, the use of letters in prosecutions and other bills. Can anything related to these problems really happen or advance in such a hostile environment?
Everything moves significantly. No Fakes Law is a bipartisan bill introduced a few months ago to protect against Deepfakes. With the act of rap [about lyrics being introduced as evidence in prosecutions]We appreciate how the work at the federal level reached the sensitive fiber with the states, and many state bills arose as a result of the Federal Law. California signed an iteration; There are state law projects in Missouri, New York, Georgia and Louisiana.
This seems to be a moment of extreme repression of freedom of expression related to controversial issues. Do you worry that artists affect?
There are more than a thousand cases in which young blacks are in prison for letters used to process them. That is what happens at a state level. Any other thing that is happening, I am dealing with the reality of a thousand lives in prison. The act of rap is a draft liberty law, and whether you like rap music or not, that is something you should support in the hall.
BMAC is moving to international work, especially in Africa and the United Kingdom, what kind of activism will be useful in those contexts?
We go to the United Kingdom and different parts of Africa. The reason we are enclosing ourselves in the diaspora is for the success of Afrobeats and the popular music that create a lot of attention for the diaspora artists. It is extremely important to share our knowledge and experiences of protecting IP. We believe that the same cultural exploitation that occurred there, since the 1920s will occur in that continent if they are not equipped with knowledge and sets of label and editors navigation skills. The problems faced by executives and black artists in the United States are not obliged to this country.
The conversations that I hear in the rooms around an approach in Africa, for me, my antennas raise me. We need to make sure that executives, managers and African artists are equipped with the knowledge of how to navigate this, otherwise it will be what happened to jazz and rap again.
That are Do you expect in Los Angeles as recovery work continues in the long term?
I look at the people of Los Angeles for that. He lived in Atlanta after Hurricane Katrina, and many people were displaced there, and were depressed; There was a feeling of hopelessness and not knowing where to go later. But at the time I arrived at Los Angeles, I didn't feel that; There was such a spirit of resilience.
When we did our event Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, many groups were canceling their events around the Grammys. But we continue because many local suppliers trust events to generate finance to begin their recovery. The city recovered because its spirit never broke. There will be a reconstruction process, but we are taking advantage of the innate spirit of the residents here, and the world can model it.
