Here’s your primer on Afrofuturism

“Around the Corner” is a PhillyCAM show that offers local social impact leaders the opportunity to share what impact their work is having on the Philadelphia area. 

How do Rasheedah Phillips’s two passions — law and Afrofuturism — relate? Easy. As she’s seen in many of her clients at Community Legal Services, those who are oppressed are typically “denied access to the future.” Afrofuturism can offer that access.

For those who don’t know, Afrofuturism is a future-focused and speculative culture and genre of art examined “from the concerns of Black people across the diaspora,” as Phillips puts it.

Phillips is both the managing attorney of landlord-tenant housing at CLS and the founder of The AfroFuturist Affair, which brings the ideas of Afrofuturism to underserved communities that might not have access to them — for instance, those who don’t have access to the internet, and therefore can’t easily read speculative stories.

In her Around the Corner interview with Generocity Community Manager Mo Manklang, Phillips explains the benefits of Afrofuturist thinking and the impetus for the Afrofuturist Affair’s newly opened Community Futures Lab in North Philadelphia.

PhillyCAM is Comcast channel 66/966 HD/967 and Verizon FIOS channel 29/30 in Philadelphia.