Collaboration with Lead to Life | Oakland, CA

Portraits and photojournalism of live events.

Lead to Life is a trans-local collective led by black-diasporic and queer artists, healers & ecologists devoted to embodying Mark Anthony Johnson’s prayer that “Black wellness is the antithesis of state violence.”

Bridging racial and environmental justice through ceremony and art practice, they are commited to decomposing systems of oppression through what we call applied alchemy - wielding alchemy to provoke radical imagination toward justice.

For Lead to Life, I created these portraits in the greenhouse of their team at Planting Justice, and documented their Reclaim King’s Radical Legacy Ceremony. *Photos below.

A woman with braided hair holding a shovel above her head inside a greenhouse.

A group of people performing a traditional ceremony around a table with candles, candles, and food, wearing cultural costumes with headdresses made of sticks. The scene appears to be indoors with an audience watching.

A young woman with curly black hair, wearing a yellow beanie, an orange patterned shirt, and green overalls, stands inside a greenhouse holding a shovel over her shoulder.

A young individual with short dark hair, glasses, and tattoos holding a shovel on their shoulder inside a greenhouse with plants around.

A young woman inside a greenhouse holding a shovel on her shoulder and flexing her arm muscles.

Multiple people wearing protective gear handle a large fire at night, with smoke rising.

Four women gather closely together, reading and singing from sheets of paper at night in an outdoor space, with fireworks and city lights in the background.

Reclaim King’s Radical Legacy Ceremony

On MLK Day 2019, Lead to Life hosted the sunset ceremony to close out the annual People’s March to Reclaim King’s Radical Legacy organized by Anti Police-Terror Project (APTP). In front of Oakland City Hall, in honor of the 10th anniversary of Oscar Grant’s murder by BART officer Johannes Mehrsele, Lead to Life’s lead metal casting artist James Brenner and local Oakland metal artists held a live-gun melting ceremony and transformed the weapons into metal stars - the constellations that were in the sky above Oscar Grant when he was murdered on January 1st, 2009. They then planted those stars as plaques with trees across the East Bay (occupied Ohlone territory) with their shovels made from guns at sites impacted by legacies of violence and environmental desecration.

Dancers from local Oakland African diasporic folkloric group Oya Nike embracing one another before the gun-melting ceremony.

Dancer from local Oakland African diasporic folkloric group Oya Nike standing in front of altar to Ogun.

Dancers from local Oakland African diasporic folkloric group Oya Nike dressing one another before the gun-melting ceremony.

This little one came up to brontë from the Lead to Life team with their mother as they were prepping for the ceremony and said they wanted to be a part and asked how could they get involved. They got painted as Eleggua (the orisha that opens the way for the prayers to enter so that the other orishas may hear them, the trickster that allows aché to move where it must), learned the “Ancestors watching” chant immediately and joined the brilliant children from Abundant Beginnings, radical Oakland community education program to open this beautiful evening processing candles to the altar.

Folks present for the ceremony give offerings to the community altar. Present in the photo is also Ra Imhotep, co-founder and co-convener of The Church of Black Feminist Thought whose pedagogy deeply informs our practice.

Guest of ceremony offers cedar to the altar.

Community altar that folks present at ceremony could contribute to. Offerings to Ogun were laid down at the altar. They honored "plantcestors" who were traumatized during slavery (indigo, rice, sugar, tobacco). They honored the black ancestors’ labor and dreams who brought us to this moment in their practice (Dr. King, Harriet Tubman, Ida B. Wells). They honored those we have lost to gun violence.

Rep from United Playaz shows love at the altar wearing their motto “It Takes The Hood to Save the Hood.”

Representative from United Playaz places down an offering at the community altar.

Members of Thrive Choir and Lead to Life offer song to open ceremony (Kyle Lemle, Jiordi Rosales)

Kele Nitoto from Thrive Choir offering song during the ceremony.

View of those present for the ceremony at Oakland City Hall. Reps from United Playaz take their seat.

Lead to Life team (brontë, jazmín, and Liz) & the co-founder and co-convener of The Church of Black Feminist Thought (Ra Imhotep) gather together at the altar to prepare their voices.

The young elders from Abundant Beginnings, radical Oakland education program for youth, opened the ceremony singing “Ancestors watching, I know they’re watching, Ancestors watching, I know, I know” and processed candles to the altar.

Dancers from Oya Nike open ceremony in dance, praise, and offering to Elegua for the community's prayers to be carried through. They dance with Lead to Life’s shovels made from guns to bring them to the altar.

Guest of ceremony practicing tactical urbanism brought a projector to display #ReclaimMLK onto Oakland City Hall along with MLK quotes.

Lead metal casting artist Jim Brenner and local Oakalnd metal artists (Ivan Berejkoff, Kailas Rajan, Cassandra Kise, Christopher Keating, Kyle Milligan and Kim Ayotte) preparing crucible for gun melting ceremony in front of Oakland City Hall

Singers and drummers from African diasporic folkloric group Oya Nike play to open the ceremony.

Lead metal casting artist Jim Brenner prepares the crucible to melt guns.

Jennifer Johns opens the ceremony powerfully in song.

Brenda Salgado, director of East Bay Meditation Center, offers opening blessing and a land acknowledgment to presence that we are in occupied Ohlone territory and to ensure we open with the prayer and intention of being in right relationship to the original people of this land. She reads a statement from Corrina Gould, Co-Founder of Sogorea Te’ Land Trust and Indian People Organizing for Change, who could not be present.

Konda Mason, co-founder and founding CEO of Impact Hub Oakland, pours libations as an offering to open the ceremony.

Ra Imhotep, co-founder and co-convener of The Church of Black Feminist Thought offers opening statements regarding situating Dr. King’s work in the lineage of black feminists who made his work possible.

Before Lead to Life and The Church of Black Feminist Thought recite a prophecy together, brontë from Lead to Life shares about Alexis Pauline Gumbs’ Black Feminist Breathing Chorus practice and dedicates their prophecy to Marielle Franco, the Afro-Brazilian lesbian city councilwoman and activist who was assassinated in Brazil last year by the state.

Folks from the Lead to Life team (brontë, jazmín, and Liz) & the co-founder and co-convener of The Church of Black Feminist Thought (Ra Imhotep) recite an afro-futurist prophecy together written by brontë on ecologizing black liberation, decomposing white supremacy and the future of climate justice.

Dancers from Oya Nike wash guns in water and bless them with plants, smudge, and alcohol before they are processed to the furnace by folks impacted by gun violence in the community to be transformed.

Pati Navalta Poblete, Editor-in-Chief of San Francisco Magazine and founder of The Robby Poblete Foundation, shares about creating her foundation in honor of her son Robby who was killed by gun violence and how she is reimagining a world without violence through her work.

David Monroe, Program Coordinator at United Playaz shares with us his story as a previous perpetrator of gun violence and the path of redemption, healing and transformation.

Dancer from African diasporic folkloric group Oya Nike holds space with lantern as Pati Navalta and members from United Playaz process to the crucible to offer a gun to be melted and transformed.

David Monroe, program coordinator of United Playaz, invites everyone present from United Playa to join him down at the altar to reflect how many lives have been transformed by their work.

Thrive Choir & Jennifer Johns offer a song as the first gun is brought to the crucible to be transformed.

Lead metal casting artist Jim Brenner and accompanying local Oakland metal artists pour molten gun metal into molds that reflect the stars above Oscar Grant the evening he was murdered 10 years prior.

Yolanda Banks-Reed, founder of Mothers Fight Back, mother of Sahleem Tindle who was shot and killed by police in Oakland in 2018, shares her and Sahleem’s story and offers a song and prayer to protect the children.

Barbara Doss, mother of DuJuan Armstrong, who was killed by authorities in Santa Rita Jail in 2018 shares her and DuJuan’s story along with a call to end violence and a request for support for advocacy and for redistributing grief.

Cat Brooks, founder of Anti Police-Terror Project, offers a prophecy for Oakland without state and economic violence, an Oakland where all black people are housed, an Oakland where all black people are safe, well & free. She stands alongside Turha AK also repping APTP.

Brenda Grisham, mother of Christopher Lavell Jones shares her and Christopher’s story. Christopher who was killed in 2010 by gun violence. Her request to the community was to support the redistribution of grief when we lose children in our community and to keep the families who have lost their children to gun violence in our prayers. She also offered up her visions for an Oakland without a gun violence.

Guests of ceremony are led into a community pledge by Turha AK from Anti Police-Terror Project to commit to finding what their gifts are and how they will weaponize them on behalf of the people because “The People are the Power.” He invites us to wield the ceremony as energy towards a call-to-action to interrupt and end the oppressions imparted by white supremacy and state violence

Lead to Life team and curators/producers of the ceremony offer their gratitude to the community for all the beautiful work it put it into make this dream come to life! Pictured is (Kyle Lemle, brontë velez, Liz Kennedy, jazmín calderon torrres and Stormy St. Val)

When asked “Who did we miss?” in our gratitudes, this little one requested the mic to offer their prophecy to the guests and humbled us to listen to the future beings and pass the mic.