The Diaspora Solidarities Lab

It’s giving New Orleans in May with the people who are changing the conversation around Black data. 🎶 Free tickets are now live — register at the link in bio before they’re gone.

Celebrating Dra. Mayra Santos-Febres, writer and professor, founder of @centro.prafro and José Arturo Ballester, photographer and artist, both co-founders of Yagrumo, an organization for the arts and letters in Puerto Rico!!! We love to see the work of Santos-Febres and Ballester featured in the latest issue of Afro-Hispanis Review: "Dossier: Mayra Santos-Febres y José Arturo Ballester-Penalli" with work by Mayra Santos-Febres herself, Dania Abreu-Torres, Nadia Celis Salgado, Zaira Rivera Casella, Carlos Ortiz Burgos, and a gallery of work by Ballester-Penalli. Yagrumo is a LifexCode community partner and their writer's space, Limaní, was the host of @dslprojects 2023 Rememory Lab.

"We have also been developers of vision, that vision that has kept us keeping on during those very brutalizing times. "The notion that we know there is a better way, we know that old people do not have to eat dog food, we know that there ought to be more options for our brothers than the armed services, or prison, or the street, we know there has to be more options for our sisters than welfare or the street, a better way, another way to be in the universe, a more human and responsible way, that vision of that possibility, that's very much kept alive by Black women, the community of women." -Toni Cade Bambara lecture, "Black Women as a Political Force," 1974 Faces and moments from Toni Cade Bambara Weekend, day two

"The role of the artist is to make the revolution irresistible." Toni Cade Bambara Obsessed with these ladies. Faces from day one of Toni Cade Bambara weekend, "Sisterhood is a Verb" 🌱✨️

Baltimore folks! Come celebrate Toni Cade Bambara this Saturday night with a screening of TCB - The Toni Cade Bambara School of Organizing, made possible by @muse.360 and @mdffparkway . 🌷 Following the screening, founding Director of @muse.360 Sharayna Ashanti Christmas will moderate a conversation with the film’s director Louis Massiah and scholar Angela Carroll. Tickets can be found at the link in our bio, use code Muse360twenty for 20% off!! Hope to see you soon.🌟

We love to see labs, seed labs, and members bringing research to the people. Revisiting this set of reading lists created by seed lab @tallerentreaguas around the Bad Bunny hafltime show. If you missed it, check it out.... #repost @tallerentreaguas We’re still basking in the glow of Bad Bunny’s Superbowl performance, so we curated a reading list inspired by his set! What books or articles would you add?

Congratulations to our DSL (@dslprojects ) Faculty Mentor Aurora Santiago Ortiz (@sant_aurora_ ) and her new book, co-edited with Jorell Melendez Badillo (@jmelendezbadillo ), on the future of Puerto Rican Studies! Congrats to you both!! Interrogating The Future of Puerto Rican Studies brings together emerging and established scholars from a wide range of disciplines to examine the disciplinary and epistemic transformations that have given way to new understandings of the field of Puerto Rican studies. Documenting the intellectual contours that have shaped the field of Puerto Rican Studies in the last decade, a diverse range of contributors survey the field with new lenses that are attentive to gender, queerness, disability, and Blackness among other things. A foreword by Yarimar Bonilla situates the volume in the context of the field’s shift, specifically in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, while other sections, including “Queering Puerto Rican Studies,” “Centering Blackness,” and “Disaster Studies and Environmental Studies,” as well as “Puerto Rican Studies in Broader Fields of Knowledges,” “Prefigurative Politics and Social Movements,” and “Legal and Political Disruptions,” create a vibrant archive of conversations taking place within the field of Puerto Rican studies with the aim of interrogating its future. Contributors. José Atiles, Bárbara Abadía Rexach, Yarimar Bonilla, daniela crespo-miró, Marie Cruz Soto, Yomaira Figueroa-Vásquez, Marcela Guerrero, Gustavo García López, Mónica Jiménez, Lawrence LaFountain Stokes, Marisol LeBrón, Pedro Lebrón Ortiz, Beatriz Llenín Figueroa, Jorell Meléndez-Badillo, Sarah Molinari, Marisel Moreno, Daniel Nevárez Araújo, Aurora Santiago Ortiz, Karrieann Soto Vega, Daniel Vázquez Sanabria, Roberto Vélez-Vélez, Joaquín Villanueva, Jacqueline Villarrubia-Mendoza

Our first Ecosystem Notes is up! Weekly roundups of what is happening around LifexCode. Subscribe at lifexcode.substack.com.

Join us in April for “What’s The Plan? // Toni Cade Bambara in Praxis Weekend: Lessons in Care, Sisterhood, and Cultural Work” ❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥 • @newgenerationscholars REGISTRATION IS OPEN! >> What’s The Plan? // Toni Cade Bambara in Praxis Weekend: Lessons in Care, Sisterhood, and Cultural Work April 10–11, Muse 360 and partners @life_x_code @bwcwarchive @adaglobalstudies @blackfeministfuture will present a multi-day gathering honoring the life, the work, and the political imagination of Toni Cade Bambara seeded in putting the plan to work, just as she so often asked of her comrades and of those who were becoming. Grounded in Bambara’s 16 Lessons explored in TCB — The Toni Cade Bambara School of Organizing, the weekend will feature programs at Parkway Theatre, Morgan State University, Blue Light Junction, and other community hubs to reach diverse audiences and ensure accessibility. SCHEDULE >> Friday, April 10 // Sisterhood is a Verb: Intergenerational Dialogue at @morganstateu // Sisterhood is a Verb: Black Women Cultural Worker Discussion Circle at @charmcity_cc Saturday, April 11 // Irresistible Revolutions of Cultural Work // The Toni Cade Bambara Zine Lab w/ @jtknoxroxs at @blue.lightjunction // Screening of TCB - The Toni Cade Bambara School of Organizing @tcb_doc // presented by Muse 360 in partnership with Maryland Film Festival at @mdffparkway // Lor Liberators // Toni Cade Bambara Freedom School Workshop at @impacthub_baltimore Registration is required to attend all TCB events. Sign up via LINK IN OUR BIO! 🌟

🌸🌟🌱 • @muse.360 CALLING ALL YOUNG PEOPLE + COLLEGE STUDENTS>> “Revolution begins with the self, in the self” -Toni Cade Bambara  TCB Weekend // Sisterhood is a Verb: Intergenerational Dialogue presented by Muse 360 in partnership with @life_x_code and @adaglobalstudies led by Dr. Jessica Johnson @jessicamariejohnson_ Moriah Ray @innerpeace33 & Sharayna Ashanti Christmas who are not only comrades but sisters ❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥 Join us at Morgan State University for an intimate meeting of the minds where young Black femmes can gather to discuss best practices for leading while ensuring we are caring for each other. Anchored in TCB’s radical vision for community care and creative labor, this intergenerational dialogue will focus on defining our evolving roles within liberation work through lessons learned from the legacy of Toni Cade Bambara Come ready to share, listen, and be in community with other Black femmes committed to doing this work. EVENT DETAILS:
Friday, April 10
12:00 PM - 2:30 PM
The James E. Lewis Museum of Art at @morganstateu   Link to register in our bio! #tcbdoc #tonicadebambara #muse360

Wait...So what is Who Owns Black Data? Who Owns Black Data? is series of convenings that ask: “Who really owns the Black historical and cultural record?” At WOBD I, in 2024 and in Baltimore, we gathered as scholars, librarians, activists and archivists who study Black history & culture to build strategies of resistance together. We shared intergenerational, intentionally Black space together and reminded ourselves why it is important for projects about data and the digital that also tackle themes related to Black history, culture, people, and communities be infused with love, ancestral veneration, scholarly rigor, and community stewardship. Thank you to our inaugural keynotes Jennifer Morgan, Dorothy Berry (dorothyjberry), and Bilphena Yahwon (@archiveliberia ) and collaborators like the Diaspora Solidarities Lab (@dslprojects ), JHU Sherdian Libraries, JHU History, JHU Africana (@jhuafricana ), and Morgan State University (@morganstateu ). Shout out to @semillacultural for leading the bombazo that kept us in our bodies and in our joy!! Relive the experience: wobd.blackbeyonddata.org

Opening early fall 2026—Laas / Absan / Peldía: Caribbean Cinema Cultures Is cinema dead? Is it still with us? Or is it undead? Inspired by recurring conversations around the so-called “death of cinema,” Laas / Absan / Peldía explores how cinema in the Caribbean is haunted by experiences of loss and absence. 🎥 Learn more about this upcoming exhibition, opening Aug. 22, at the link in our bio! This exhibition is the result of collaborative research produced by the Manchineel Project, a microlab of the @dslprojects , a Black feminist-led partnership between @johnshopkinsu and the @centropr . The Diaspora Solidarities Lab is made possible with financial support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Support for this series is provided by the MSU Federal Credit Union. 📸: 1 Courtesy Zoe Butler 2 Courtesy Mónica Félix 3 Richard Fung, Islands, 2002. Image copyright of the artist, courtesy of Video Data Bank, , School of the Art Institute of Chicago