The #LetUsBreathe Collective
Mission
The #LetUsBreathe Collective is an alliance of artists and activists organizing through a creative lens to imagine a world without prisons and police. We organize artists to love and transform themselves, their families, their communities, and their cities through radical imagination and healing. The Collective produces cultural events and direct actions that disrupt oppressive systems, amplify marginalized voices, and serve people and communities most directly harmed by mass incarceration, police violence, and systemic injustice. We leverage access, power, and cultural capital to steward resources from the institutions that stole them to the people and communities who have been historically pillaged. The #LetUsBreathe Collective programs and operates The Breathing Room space, an arts, healing, and organizing headquarters and platform for liberatory and cultural work in Chicago.
Vision
The #LetUsBreathe Collective envisions a world without police, without prisons, and without global systems of oppression. We believe artists are the vanguard of revolution, and we incubate visionaries charged with the work of imagining and designing that world. Our work creates alternatives to prisons and policing for communities, families, and people who are safe, whole, self-actualized, and equipped with the tools for healing. The #LetUsBreathe Collective believes in love over capitalism, abundance over scarcity, and collaboration over control. We believe that people and communities are able to govern themselves peacefully when they have access to and sovereignty over quality education, housing, art, healthcare, nutrition, useful & prosperous livelihood, and skills for resolving harm and conflict through an anti-violent lens.