BNG MAG® September 2014 (Vol.-1/Issue-2) Side-B | Page 5

AURIELLE LUCIER

YOUNG , BLACK, AND POLITICALLY INVOLVED.
I’ve always had a particularly powerful attraction to community
involvement, specifically spaces that support young people and their
narratives. In Afrocentric culture, artistry is a communal dialogue,
a sort of artifact of self expression and awareness of the world
around you. I remember performing under the balcony where King
was shot, at the Lorraine Motel. It was such a dope experience. We
were just kids then, but this very tangible energy consumed us as
we sang about police brutality, institutional inequality, and street
violence. I remember crying as we left the stage, full of something...
That same spirit has really charged me as I’ve held space in a ton of
different organizations. Whether its Young People For Atlanta Word
Works or now #ItsBiggerThanYou; whatever movement I’ve been
involved with, I feel that it’s truly my purpose to continually promote
the potency of young people and art.
-Aurielle

How did #ItsBiggerThanYou come about?
The #ItsBiggerThanYou campaign was an idea
that I feel came from a power bigger than me. I
was sitting in my room, tweeting (along with the
rest of the nation) in response to the execution of Mike Brown, and the events in Ferguson.
I suddenly thought: what if young people took
these tweets to the streets? What if we made
our voices heard, in real time? So I put my number out via Twitter and asked for ten people. Just
ten. The first night we had seven. The second,
there were fifteen. We expected five hundred
people at the CN 8