Welcome.
The theme of legacy emerged as this issue coalesced—legacies of bodies, of resistance, brutality, culture, art. When I think of the legacies of bodies, I immediately think of all those disappeared because of the legacies of oppression. Who is missing from this room, this canon, this legacy, this life? Who gets (a) legacy?
As someone drawn to the dictionary to help me fathom the world, looking at legacy as ‘money or property left to someone in a will’ leads to the fact that Black folks in America have always been denied generational wealth building. The deadly 1921 Tulsa race riot is just one example of the tactics of white supremacy/violence used to guarantee the destruction of Black legacy—our very lives and economic prospects for future generations. Looking at legacy as ‘the long-lasting impact of a person’s life or particular events in the past,’ one legacy of that race massacre is that in 2022, the typical white household’s wealth was $285,000, compared to the typical Black household’s $44,900. (An article in The American Journal of Economics and Sociology put the 2018 value of property and assets destroyed in Tulsa at over $200 million.)
From the etymology of legacy comes ‘a body of persons sent on a mission.’ The history of America is indeed a body of persons sent on a mission—to colonize, oppress, kill. Trump is in office again and the legacy of America marches on and on and on and on. As do the legacies of radical refusal—Harriet Tubman, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Fannie Lou Hamer, Bayard Rustin, and Recy Taylor, to name just a few—who give us hope that something different, something freer, can exist.
In this issue we celebrate and confront, often simultaneously, legacy.
I hope you’re all taking care of yourselves and each other. Resisting tyranny requires deep, intentional self-care and other-care, with mutual aid hopefully a steady practice as we continue aligning our finances with our values. To source from @imperfectactivista, mutual aid is the foundation for collective strength. AWARE-LA has an excellent guide (slide sixteen) I have found helpful in determining a basic monthly redistribution budget. (And speaking of, have you and/or your business paid your annual Shuumi Land Tax?)
I hope that we see each other in community somewhere, sometime, soon.
And I hope you’ll join me outside Zellerbach Hall February 22nd–23rd to protest Batsheva’s performances in accordance with the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement. To add your voice to the effort to convince Cal Performances to cancel Batsheva’s engagement, click here.
May we be legacy—a body of people on a mission for justice (and praxis-based) empathy.
Sending care.
Maurya
This article appeared in the Winter 2025 issue of In Dance.
