Notes On Our Rebuild, Issue 3: A New Compass
Sacred Self Worth, Wayward Imagination, and Radical Connection are the North stars
Hey Y’all,
Growing up, my grand-parents lived across the street from each other. Their being neighbors was unlikely, yet divine: one set arrived to the block in the early 60s from Alabama; the other, a decade later from Haiti. Their children would become high school classmates, then friends, then something more before marrying and becoming my parents.
As a little kid I spent weekends and holidays between my grandparents’ houses. Like in many families, the kitchen was the gathering spot, church, and classroom, where I learned language (southern AAVE and Haitian Kreyol), was well fed (baked mac & cheese and griot), and witnessed faith of all kinds. Around these tables, I absorbed stories and cultures that converged like rivers meeting an ocean: expansive, generative, teeming with possibility.
They’re also where I first learned the power of self-worth, creativity, and solidarity as lifelines. Those lessons are woven into You Had Me at Black, and they’re the roots of our values: Sacred Self Worth, Wayward Imagination, and Radical Connection.
Sacred Self Worth
An intention I set for You Had Me At Black from the beginning was for it to be a place where we could step into our fullest selves. Sacred self worth builds on this desire: honoring the divine within ourselves and each other by affirming our inherent worthiness and cultivating a space that dignifies our full humanity.
While our histories are being rewritten, our people are being snatched off the street, and society is questioning who is worthy of basic rights and humanity, sacred self worth is the collective act of reminding each other: you are enough.
This looks like rejecting respectability, making our offerings as accessible as possible, and leaning into the knowledge of our ancestors -- knowledge that has held and served us across time and place.
Wayward Imagination
Waywardness is an exercise in refusal, possibility, and play. As we reimagine the next chapter of You Had Me At Black, wayward imagination is an invitation to dream of what doesn’t yet exist, to sketch blueprints that bend the rules, and to refuse the limits we’ve been handed.
It’s what motivated the questions: what if we preserved and shared our stories in ways that honor collective ownership? How can our stories serve our everyday lives as a source of memory, learning, and connection? How might we transform this tradition into a foundation for cultural and economic well-being?
Wayward imagination is our permission slip to design the answers.
Radical Connection
In a world that often trains us to compete, isolate, and devalue one another, radical connection reminds us that our strength is relational: how we treat each other, how we protect each other, and how we create space for one another to thrive.
It is showing up for one another in ways that defy the systems of domination we’ve been taught to accept as normal. It is the intentional choice to center love, kinship, and solidarity in every interaction.
Cole Arthur Riley writes, "To be human in an aching world is to know our dignity and become people who safeguard the dignity of everything around us.” Radical connection is our way of remembering that truth, despite a world that tells us otherwise.
It looks like making relationship-building tangible in our programs, cultivating care in our culture, and rewriting the standards for how we interact with one another.
These values are our new north star. They are declarations (this is what we believe to be true), they are challenges (what if we moved like they are true?), and they are manifestations (this is what will become true).
And they’re not mine alone. They’ve been shaped by brilliant thinkers, scholars, and artists whose words I return to often: Cole Arthur Riley, Saidiya Hartman, and Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley.
I’d argue that these values are the most important aspect of this entire endeavor because they are what this work should embody, and what our success in this experiment will be measured against: how well will we live up to them?
You’re invited: A West-Coast friendly Community Salon
Join me for another Community Salon where we reflect, imagine, and respond to what’s unfolding together. This time at a West Coast-friendly time!
📅 Wednesday, Sept 3 at 9pm ET
🖥️ On Zoom
We’ll exchange ideas, dream aloud, unpack what’s been shared so far, and connect more deeply around the vision for this next chapter.
All I ask is that if you missed the People’s Assembly in June, you catch up on the 15-min replay before attending.
Peace,
Martina
