When Willie “Prophet” Stiggers founded the Black Music Action Coalition at the height of racial justice protests in 2020, the world’s attention was on righting historical wrongs. Five years later, it’s a very different environment for that work — from the federal government on down to an exhausted and angry citizenry.
How can a group dedicated to diversity, equity and inclusion keep momentum going in the face of hostile executive orders, investigations and a general corporate retreat from responsibility? On top of that, with Altadena — one of L.A.’s most cherished neighborhood for Black musicians — destroyed by January’s Eaton fire, the need for support is both immediate and existential.
The Times spoke to Stiggers about the group’s gala raising money for Altadena relief tonight at the Beverly Hilton (with Irving Azoff, John Legend and Kai Cenat being honored), how Altadena can keep its soul and if freedom of speech will ever truly extend to Black artists in court.
The gala tonight is dedicated to raising funds for Altadena, long a cherished neighborhood for Black musicians. The fires are less visible of a tragedy now, but the pain is ongoing. What will these funds be used for?
When the news cycle shifted, the nation’s attention and energy went as well. This fund is targeting people who lost homes and were not insured. Right after the fires, we immediately deployed $400,000 for a round of income support and connected people with the resources they needed to help them.
But there’s a tremendous amount of bureaucracy. People have had to submit so much paperwork just to get a few dollars. We knew that in the onset, though, in the stories we heard about about people not being able to find place to live, autos that were lost, finding down payments for temporary housing, even down to replacing Christmas toys that burned.
What have you learned about what works most effectively in helping these families?
Direct cash support always works. These are not people trying to figure life out; their lives were disrupted. They didn’t need education or financial literacy; they were homeowners, recipients of generational wealth and established there. They needed the ability to feed their family because people were sleeping in cars. The tragedy was devastating, and the only way to get to a point of healing was to get cash immediately into the hands of people in need.
There are big fears about how Altadena will be rebuilt and who will benefit, and at what cost to its cultural soul. How can people preserve that as real estate interest descends on desperate people?
Music and cultural contributions exist in cities like Altadena all over the country. For me, what was most significant is remembering how Altadena came to be. Black people couldn’t buy homes elsewhere, so they settled in this town, and the town became the beneficiary of a beautiful cultural expression. It’s another example of that resilience and creative output that Black people have always provided for America.
My best hopes are that the spirits of people here remain intact. That’s been remarkable, how people lost everything except their faith. Everyone we spoke to had a level of optimism, which was mind-blowing to me — the ability to see a rainbow in the midst of a thunderstorm — and I would love to hold onto that. But as Altadena rebuilds, I truly hope it doesn’t turn into an investor pool snatching up homes for pennies on the dollar because people didn’t have the capital to rebuild. It costs hundreds of thousands to rebuild even a basic home — if you didn’t have a war chest, that’s huge, to find those resources. Our goal is try to get people on the road to finding resources so they don’t have to decide. Many people are selling their properties out of desperation.
It’s a reminder that the need will be ongoing for years and people are making hard, desperate choices now.
It’s very humbling when we speak to people. We’ve already impacted over a hundred families, and when we have conversations with those families, we want them to know the commitment we’ve made. This is not a drive-by charity; we’re here for the long haul.
Your work with BMAC began in 2020 when there was so much momentum around racial justice issues. It feels like a different world now. How has the environment for your work changed?
There’s now this federal mandate to attack DEI, but to me, if you want to get rid of DEI, then fine, get rid of pay disparities, get rid of the glass ceiling for women, get rid of all of it. The idea that there’s now this federal mandate against efforts to right wrongs in this country, it’s been remarkable to see how blatant it’s been.
Perhaps it’s not surprising from a far right–wing government, but it’s a real mask-off moment for corporations who were all in back in 2020.
We knew that would happen; that’s why we formed — we needed to hold them accountable to their public declarations. Our eye is not off those corporations that scaled back their efforts, and we’re going to discuss and expose that. We think corporations that turn back on the concept of DEI have to be exposed, and consumers need to be very clear about how they spend their dollars.
We see Target, and have seen how a boycott affects their bottom line. There are also those keeping a DEI title to stay off the radar, but they’re not creating systemic change. They’ll do a cultural potluck but not change their hiring practices. Our goal is to expose that and sort out who is morally accountable.
Willie “Prophet” Stiggers speaking to fire-affected residents in Altadena.
(Black Music Action Coalition)
How has that affected your own ability to fundraise?
So many corporations that were supporting these efforts recently have pulled back completely, and that’s created a challenging role for us as an organization. But then so many people have now tripled down on the concept, and that’s where our faith remains. Our partnership with Live Nation has sent 20 kids into the live event space to go and learn everything about that business with internships and job placements. We have an accelerator program at Tennessee State, and we’re doing work on the policy side.
There has been a federal backlash, but also a doubling down of these efforts. If the efforts of 2020 were not as effective as they were, there wouldn’t be a fight over it now.
Does that extend to the music industry, which so obviously depends on Black creativity and expertise?
As it relates to corporate structures, yes; even in the music business there are less black executives now than in 2019. Labels, publishers all gave these positions to folks for three-year contracts, and now things are back to business as usual. Corporations that pledged to BMAC are down, and we rely on this gala to keep the lights on.
Live Nation and Primary Wave could have taken the same route, but they didn’t; they doubled down on support.
FireAid has become controversial in some corners for how they spent their $100 million in donations. What do you make of their work?
FireAid was a huge undertaking to bring Live Nation and AEG together to produce a massive concert in response to massive devastation. The artist community showed up and raised a significant amount of money. That money’s been deployed to a lot of grassroots organizations on the ground. Any chatter is from folks that have never been to Altadena and felt its effects.
What they did was a wonderful gesture; the funds are going to great use. The same people making all this chatter are creating the bureaucracy making it difficult to access government assistance. Guarantee those same people didn’t donate a dime of time or resources or energy.
You’ve been active in a rage of legislation around AI and deepfakes, the use of lyrics in prosecutions and other bills. Can anything relating to these issues actually pass or move forward in such a hostile environment?
It’s all moved in a meaningful way. The NO FAKES Act is a bipartisan bill introduced a few months ago to protect against deepfakes. With the RAP Act [about lyrics being introduced as evidence in prosecutions], we appreciated how the work on a federal level struck a chord with states, and many state bills came about as result of the federal bill. California signed an iteration; there are state bills in Missouri, New York, Georgia and Louisiana.
This does seem to be a moment of extreme repression of free speech relating to controversial topics. Do you worry about that affecting artists?
There are over a thousand cases where young Black men are in prison for lyrics used to prosecute them. That’s whats happening on a state level. Whatever else is happening, I’m dealing with the reality of a thousand lives in prison. The RAP Act is a freedom-of-speech bill, and whether you’re into rap music or not, that’s something you should be able to support across the aisle.
BMAC is moving into international work, especially in Africa and the U.K. What kind of activism will be useful in those contexts?
We’re going into the U.K. and to different parts of Africa. The reason we’re locking into the diaspora is because of the success of Afrobeats and Amapiano music creating lot of attention for artists in the diaspora. It’s extremely important to share our knowledge and experiences of protecting IP. We believe the same cultural exploitation that happened there since the 1920s will happen on that continent if they’re not equipped with the knowledge and skill sets of navigating labels and publishers. The problems Black executives and artists face in the U.S. are not bound to this country.
The conversations I hear in boardrooms around a focus on Africa, for me, they get my antennae raised. We need to make sure African executives and managers and artists are equipped with knowledge of how to navigate this, otherwise it’ll be what happened to jazz and rap all over again.
What are you hopeful about in Los Angeles as recovery work continues long-term?
I look to the people in L.A. for that. I was living in Atlanta after Hurricane Katrina, and lot of people got displaced there, and they were depressed; there was a sense of hopelessness and not knowing where to go next. But the moment I hit the ground in L.A., I didn’t feel that; there was such a spirit of resilience.
When we did our Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis event, many groups were canceling their events around the Grammys. But we pressed on because a lot of local vendors rely on events to generate finances to start their recovery. The town bounced back because their spirit was never broken. There’s going to be a rebuilding process, but we’re tapping into the innate spirit of residents here, and the world can model it.
This story originally appeared on LA Times
