Can you imagine a world where Black folks have gotten reparations? Not only that, but within this world, a supportive media landscape that supports and uplifts the movement for liberation and justice?
The Black Future Newsstand is filled with books, magazines, and other content from Black creators, representing a future where reparations are real as well as the media system that could get us there. The custom art installation launched in Harlem in 2023, and then went to Austin, Texas for Afrotech. Now, the exhibit is coming to Chicago’s Black-owned Gallery Guichard.
Why Chicago?
“There’s a quote from 1966, where Martin Luther King Jr. said, ‘If we can break the system in Chicago, we can break it everywhere,’” Collette Watson, one of the co-creators of the Media 2070 project and executive director of Black River Life, told The TRiiBE. “I truly believe that.”
Both are partners behind the Black Future Newsstand, along with Brandi Collins-Dexter, author of Black Skinhead: Reflections on Blackness and Our Political Future, and Media Justice. The installation is also part of a nationwide series: Cultural Week of Action on Race and Democracy. The annual initiative brings people of all identities and backgrounds together to spark action towards creating a just, multiracial democracy.
The TRiiBE briefly spoke with the senior director of Media 2070, Tia Oso, in a phone interview on Sept 26. “With regard to Chicago in particular, it’s really important for us to have the newsstand happen in Chicago.” she said. “Chicago is a great example of both a city and a Black community that is a part of a really harmful national narratives that are not coming from Chicago.”
The Chicago version of the installation will include the well-known newsstand, as well as feature a companion exhibit, called “Blue Noise,” curated by Collins-Dexter. This exhibit will be an artistic representation of how police propaganda in the media harms Black communities. Collectively, both exhibits will provoke thought, and create a memorable experience for Chicagoans.
“So much of what we understand about Black American culture, so many of those roads travel through Chicago,” Collins-Dexter said during a phone interview on Sept 26.
“Chicago is, in a lot of ways, the place that established how we understood a shared story of who we are as people,” Collins-Dexter continued. “It’s where a lot of Black media was innovated, and it’s where we gained a certain type of political identity.”
Collins-Dexter has been able to pull up a lot of different archival media pieces, as well as police records that show how police were surveilling and targeting Black organizers in the 1970s, ‘80s and beyond.
It was this information that grounded the Black Future Newsstand installation in Chicago. The exhibit is meant to counter negative media portrayals, and promote a media system grounded in truth.
“Being a co-creator of the Media 2070 project, our team understands that the city of Chicago, and the name of the city of Chicago, is so often thrown around by bad actors in the media and journalism space, who want to cast a false image of Chicagoans, and particularly Black Chicago, as an excuse for police brutality and the continued funding of police abuse in our communities.” Watson, a native of South Carolina, said. “We don’t have to be from Chicago to know that that is not the truth of Chicago.
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The Black Future Newsstand will be unveiled on Oct. 4 at Gallery Guichard located at 436 East 47th Street in Chicago. The event is free and open to the public from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.
