How We Stay Free by Christopher R. Rogers

Author:Christopher R. Rogers
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Common Notions

1. Excerpted and edited in collaboration with Christopher R. Rogers.

Goin Home Suite: Finding Hope, Wellness, and Freedom

Gabriel Bryant

“Goin Home” Revisited

The beat for “Goin Home” was the first one producer and DJ Oluwafemi (Femi)1 sent me when I asked him for production for an EP I wanted to make. It was April of 2020, and the world was in the throes of COVID-19. My father had just come home from being hospitalized with the novel coronavirus and I knew that I wanted to document this period through hip hop. My initial idea was to make an album speaking to the myriad emotions that enveloped that moment—the pain, loss, despair. I began framing ideas as I always do with any new production: writing down thoughts and lines as they came to me throughout the day. As the beats continued to come, I felt great about what this EP could turn into.

Then May 25 happened and everything changed. That week saw the murder of George Floyd, rebellion in Minneapolis by the following day, and an uprising in Philly by the weekend. It prompted me to send Femi a message via text: “The nature and content of this album just changed, bruh.”

Even as I shifted the ideas for the songs that framed the rest of the project, the feelings that the beat for “Goin Home” gave me remained the same. The tempo, hard-hitting drums, and sample gave me vibes ripe to tell a story. Or maybe a couple of stories. At the time, local activists and organizers were rallying to support the annual campaign of the Philadelphia Community Bail Fund—an entity I helped to organize in its early years—and the work of the Mama’s Day Bailout, an effort launched in 2017 to amplify the need to “Free Black Mamas” and bail out mothers and caregivers from jail. This experience would essentially set the tone for the first verse of the song. The cries to defund the police, to abolish the police—hallmarks of the 2020 summer protests—also informed the lyrics.

As a long-time organizer with Mobilization4Mumia, the Campaign to Bring Mumia Home, and a MOVE supporter, I have witnessed the tragic outcomes of mass incarceration up close and personal. The tentacles of white supremacy and anti-Blackness have a firm grip on a justice system that is in fact, criminal, with Black and Brown folks suffering in its traps every day. Ending this scourge on my people has become more than some volunteering, or even work, but truly a calling.

Active in the field of behavioral health, I also saw firsthand the mental health challenges that people were having as the world shut down around them, including those who found themselves working from home. Though many acclimated fairly quickly, for others, the excitement that came from a morning commute turned into daily, dreadful mornings; the fresh air and recharge that came from walking to lunch or during breaks turned into slow walks to the kitchen and being trapped by the same four walls for hours on end. It was claustrophobic, suffocating, and depressing.

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