Honoring the history of Black liberation through Capoeira Angola

It was a pleasure and an honor to host Charles Hargrett (in the center, in the grey top) in Bellingham this weekend. He has dedicated much of his life to Capoeira Angola, and is the person who is directly responsible for bringing Mestre Jurandir to Seattle back in 1996. Without him, there would be no Capoeira Angola in Bellingham.

He also reminded us that we should always lift up all of the Mestres of the past who struggled mightly against impossible odds to preserve Capoeira Angola, as part of the broader struggle of Black people against physical and cultural oppression.

We were also lucky to be joined by Dr. Lowell Lewis, author of the book Ring of Liberation, in which he documented his experiences with Capoeira in Salvador at the crucial time of the early 1980s, precisely when Mestre Moraes and his students (among them Mestre Cobra Mansa and Mestre Jurandir) were revitalizing the tradition of Capoeira Angola.

As part of honoring and continuing that legacy, if you are free on Monday November 17th, you should go see the movie Do Not Resist at the Pickford Film Center, which starts a discussion of militarized policing from the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, and expands to show how it affects all of us - through it targets primarily Black People and People of Color more generally.

https://www.facebook.com/Do-Not-Resist-2016-Movie-211406

I just came out of today's screening, and it is very powerful. (The Bellingham Police Department has asked to use the same Predictive Policing software that is prominently discussed in the movie).

Also, Ava DuVernay's documentary 13th about how we went from a system of legalized slavery to a system of mass incarceration that shares remarkable features with our previous system of indentured labor.

https://www.facebook.com/13THNetflix/?fref=ts