The Voqal Fellowship is an investment in people as individuals and budding entrepreneurs; a talent accelerator aimed at giving those often overlooked by traditional funders a chance to enact their visions at center stage. We continue to celebrate this year’s cohort, with another look at the 2020 Voqal Fellowship poem, written by the ever-talented Molina Speaks, Collective.
II. Collective Venture
We will evolve in real time;
life: a license to share, to rearrange the body
politic,
to restore justice, alternative technologies,
curated content
outside and beyond the matrix of big data:
a collection of micro economies,
a modest reach
replacing modesty
with radical imagination.
We will reshape perceptions
and reflections on race and gender
constructed by corporate white-only-media.
We will reclaim the frames of production,
collapse the dichotomies,
and disrupt the machines crushing culture.
We will clash with media standards
that make war out of class.
We will create physical and digital spaces
to BE, a center
within the world that we wish to see.
We will research. We will remap.
We will read between the lines and write policy.
We will organize, engage
and work to answer our own questions.
We will rework, revise, remix
and otherwise flip every script
to align life with justice.
We are not here to act balanced
when we see harm, or act balanced
when it is time to take action.
We will investigate, expose, and denounce injustices
in our communities, without objectivity in the face of disunity. Time is up.
We will create news that is relevant,
informative, inclusive and joyful.
We will be irresistible in our movements.
We will offer support at the intersections,
make our love sustainable,
and inject energy into our visions.
We will catch each other when we fall.
We will hold each other when we win.
We will be irresistible, and we will win.
We will propose and develop end-to-end solutions.
We will see the work through,
for when we organize, we win.
We recognize that we are in an information war,
a content war, endless wars,
a twitter storm, a cloud of fatigue.
We will continue to sharpen our tools
and we will affirm the process
beyond our limitations
online and in-person.
And we will remember.
We will remember.
We will remember
who society has forgotten.
We will remember
who we have thrown away,
locked up,
left out,
forgotten to teach.
We will reach for our lost brothers and sisters.
We will lift them up, and we will learn from them.
We will offer the message.
We will be the example.
We will engage the most impacted.
We will share our blueprints
to strengthen the fabric of the work,
to grow the collective,
to build the next worlds
with no regrets.
Learn more about the Voqal Fellowship and this year’s cohort on our Fellowships page.