We Are H.O.L.L.A

How Our Lives Link Altogether! (H.O.L.L.A!) is a transformational grassroots youth program providing healing-centered youth organizing training, youth development services, political/cultural/spiritual education, and non-traditional approaches to healing, education, and community relationship building centered grassroots movements learned lessons; we facilitate youth development as a radical healing process of Healing Justice.

The history of H.O.L.L.A! stands on experiential roots and wisdom from living, working, surviving, and being educated in poor urban communities in New York.

Founders Bill, Marlon, Arocks, Shaq, Spud, Butta-Lab Cory, and Terrell met while in Otisville, a New York State Correctional Facility. While in prison, the group diligently worked to develop the framework for H.O.L.L.A! while trying to better understand their individual and collective journeys into the injustice/punishment system. After three years, the men began returning to their communities with a new plan of action. Terrell joined during the second organizational birth, outside of prison, and implemented community based programming.. Despite the negative public depiction and narrative of them

and other black and brown youth, H.O.L.L.A! founders were inspired to collectively develop programs within the kind of communities from which they have come.

H.O.L.L.A! programs a love that is communicated to youth from overlooked communities by reaching out to middle and high schools, churches, detention centers, and people we meet in our neighborhoods.

H.O.L.L.A! is a story of multiple narratives, personal and collective experiences. These stories involve the pain of imprisonment, and a revolutionary belief in ourselves, our communities, the youth, and a new tomorrow.

The Problem/The WAR

H.O.L.L.A! is organizing to build Black Liberation as a practice of building collective capacity and consciousness to fight against and heal from The WAR. The WAR is largely conceptualized as the Afrikan Maafa ((Degury, 2017), describing the destruction of Afrika/Afrikans’ cosmological origin story; the european and indo-european enslavement, colonization, and killing of African ancestors, culture and land. The WAR represents the continued cultivation of white supremacy violence onto Black, Brown and Indigenous youth and communities through the development of federal, state, city and societal institutions that attack and do not serve Afrikan & Indigenous cosmology, healing and human development. Particularly, for youth/communities impacted by the seven phemonema - the seven (7) neighborhoods in NYC that feed over %75 of the New York State Prison system. This includes the communities of Brownsville, East New York, Crown Height, South-Side Jamaica Queens, Central Harlem, Lower East Side and South Bronx (and similarly situated communities - these neighborhood demographics may shift from time to time -inside & outside NYS prison). We situated the The WAR on Black, Brown and Indiegnous peoples within a framework of genocide & posist it is sustained at multiple levels and intersections of violence over generations and geogrpahy: 1) Historical Violence (Trauma); 2) Structural Violence (System of Oppression); 3) Interpersonal Violence (Community harm); 4) Intrapersonal Violence (internal harm). This project's focus on historical violence is a major aspect of The WAR that prohibits Black youth/community from accessing healing powers of spiritual renewal & revolutionary historical consciousness.

As it stands, nonprofit providers aiming to address system-involved youth or those likely to have system contact, as well as those who offer reintegration services, remain ill-equipped, myopic and/or under-resourced to address the underlying issues of The WAR, much less human flourishing and grassroots movement building power building. There is a gap in practical and empirical works with developing scholarly works that co-create the conditions where youth of color are sheldied from impact of the WAR. There are limited examples of research considering the developmental qualities within grassroots movement ecology for youth resurrection (Rivera, 1995). In addition, very limited research to this point has examined the historical, cultural, and sociopolitical factors within grassroots movements that produce healing for youth navigating The WAR (Watts, et al., 2003). There is much needed room to engage community practices to analyze youth development to better understand how grassroot social movements’ transactional and ecological features contribute to urban youth development or not (Watts, et al., 2003). There is a need for fresh (i.e.new) & and innovative community specific (i.e., non traditional) approaches to youth development that address the theoretical, and practical significance of historical trauma, hopelessness, and cultural renewal (Ginwright, 2010). More grassroots practice and empirical clarity is needed on how youth community organizing group settings and cultural rituals promote healing for Black youth - with a focus on the historical level.

Our Grassroots Model to Sustainability

Our trainings, workshops, keynotes speeches, technical assistance, consultancy, and community panels not only stand at the forefront as weapons of knowledge for our communities, they also generate the financial support required to carry out the initiatives we fight for.

We are dedicated to the practice of self-sustainability. All of the revenue we bring into the organization is distributed right back out to support the needs of our operation, our staff, and the development of our training resources and programs.