The Scroll Down: September '25
From Black August to Back-to-School—plus perks for our people.
A Month of Reflection & Renewal
Welcome to the September issue of The Scroll Down—our monthly update on what has been happening in the Blacks of Are.na community. Yes, it is true… We are officially baaaaack! Thank you all for the grace extended following a busy summer packed with drops, milestones, travel, and so much more.
This month in the Blacks of Are.na-verse is all about expansion, stepping out of our comfort zones, and reintroducing ourselves to a more steady pace as we begin to prepare for a new academic year and the holidays.
Before we get into September, we want to honor Black August. Initiated in the 1970s by the Black Guerrilla Family, Black August was created to commemorate the deaths of George and Jonathan Jackson—Black political prisoners whose lives were cut short in August, including during the 1971 uprising at San Quentin State Prison. What began inside the walls of incarceration, became a month of remembrance, study, and discipline to educate our people on the sacrifices required for liberation. It calls us to reflect on fallen revolutionaries, honor the ongoing struggle for Black freedom, and recommit ourselves to practices of resistance, education, and collective care.
August carried important milestones throughout the diaspora —Caribbean Emancipation Day 🇹🇹🇧🇧🇬🇾 (Aug 1), Ghana’s Founders’ Day 🇬🇭 (Aug 4), Jamaica’s Independence 🇯🇲 (Aug 6), and Namibia’s Heroes’ Day 🇳🇦 (Aug 26)—each a reminder of the interconnected freedom struggles across the globe.
Now, September invites us to continue that reflection and celebration with Guinea-Bissau’s Independence 🇬🇼 (Sept 10), Mali’s Independence 🇲🇱 (Sept 22), Botswana’s Independence 🇧🇼 (Sept 30), and Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Day 🇬🇭 (Sept 21).
In the States, September also means the return of the school year and Labor Day 🇺🇸 , a time to reflect on the dignity of work and the need for rest.
That said, we also want to recognize those who don’t actually get the day off—folks holding it down in service jobs, retail, healthcare, and beyond. We hope you run that holiday pay clock all the way up!
Most importantly, we extend love and solidarity to those who have not yet received documentation yet whose labor is relentlessly depended on, taken for granted, and exploited, even as they face terrifying uncertainty in this country. You deserve safety, dignity, and rest too.
So here’s to September—a season of reset, remembrance, and re-entry. Let’s stretch, breathe, and continue building together. Keep reading for a full recap on the month of August and glimpse into what this next month entails.
Looking Back: What Took Place During our Break
Gift Shop Updates + 25% off Merch at The Are.na Gift Shop !
This summer, we dropped our first-ever merch in honor of Juneteenth—designed by Houston painter Mitchell Reece. These special-edition shirts celebrate Black literacy and the roots of Juneteenth, and 25% of net proceeds support The Reading Room, a Houston-based library dedicated to Black art and culture.
Folks have been sharing how much they love the quality and the feel of the fabric, and that the designs truly come alive once you see them in person. We’ve loved seeing the shirts travel from Houston to London, New York to Accra—and there’s still time to grab yours!
Back to School Sale
With the intention of making this drop more accessible and to honor the heart of the project as it connects to our return to classrooms and books we are kicking off a Back to School Sale. Blacks of Are.na Newsletter subscribers will get 25% off all merch with an exclusive discount code landing in inboxes this weekend. Be sure you are subscribed and keep an eye out so you can secure your piece as soon as the sale goes live.
Subscribers get 25% off
Free vinyl logo sticker with every shirt
Codes hit inboxes this weekend
Black August Recap
We closed out Black August with moving + still collages by our very own Baaba (@sun.sonics). Baaba is an incredible artist and one of the newest additions to the BoA team. Her work carried the voices of Georgia Jackson (mother of George Jackson) and Angela Davis, reminding us that resistance is never just wrath: it’s clarity, consistency, study, and care.
We also hosted a pop-up screening of “The Black August Hip Hop Project” (2010) via the Discord server. The documentary was presented to us as a great educational resource by Baaba and was directed by Dream Hampton, in collaboration with the NY chapter of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement.
You can stream the full film via Vimeo in case you missed the screening.
In The Press
Blacks of Are.na President, Darrel Kennedy, chatted with cultural commentators Ben Dietz and Kyle Raymond Fitzgerald on the Hip Replacement Podcast. If you’re not familiar with Hip Replacement, it’s a podcast where the hosts spend each episode discussing trends and current events with a different and young cultural creative to “fully bridge the generational gap between Gens X, Y, and Z.” In this episode, the conversation touches on topics like nostalgia, identity, and the future role of AI. Get in on it!
What’s Ahead: September Forecast
Upcoming Events
Cinema Club - BoA Cinema Club is Making a Return !
We know you all missed Cinema Club… So did we! This month we’re returning with a new direction and a new host! Introducing BoA’s newest Film Programmer, Paris Vincent.
Paris Vincent is an interdisciplinary artist/researcher studying audiovisual aesthetics and media culture through musicality, Blackness, and experimental pedagogies. Their love for the craft of film originates in music video and film editing, which has led to their consistent engagement with subcultural media, sonically-driven storytelling, and experimental aesthetics. They aim to bring an educational approach to film curation and programming, and to continue supporting film exhibition spaces centered on marginalized narratives, especially filmmaking and audiences speaking toward experiences of Blackness, queerness, and southern-ness.
Preserving the democratic nature of our screenings, Paris has curated four films which you will be able to vote on via the cinema-club channel in the official Discord Server. Each film curated serves as an expression of their personality, organically introducing you to their world and some of their personal cinematic milestones.
This month’s film roundup:
The Proud Family Movie (Bruce W. Smith, 2005)
An animated capstone to the beloved Disney Channel series, The Proud Family Movie expands its sitcom world into a zany feature-length adventure. While wrapped in slapstick humor and sci-fi antics, the film sharpens its satire on Black family life, corporate exploitation, and the absurd lengths institutions go to commodify culture. By placing Penny Proud at the center of a story about cloning and autonomy, it cleverly gestures toward questions of individuality, agency, and the value of authentic expression in a world eager to replicate and control it.
Belly (Hype Williams, 1998)
Music video auteur Hype Williams’ first and only feature is a hypnotic blend of crime saga, music video aesthetic, and spiritual allegory. Belly follows two friends caught between violence, survival, and the pursuit of transformation, rendering their choices in luminous visuals and pulsing soundscapes. Though critically polarizing, the film redefined the hip-hop epic—turning street narrative into surreal parable. Williams’ visual lexicon situates Belly not just as a cult classic, but as a meditation on the costs of power, the pull of redemption, and the possibility of self-liberation within America’s machinery of spectacle.
Afro-Punk (James Spooner, 2003)
Part documentary, part manifesto, Afro-Punk maps the lives of Black punks navigating identity, belonging, and resistance in a scene often coded white. Through intimate interviews and raw performance footage, James Spooner interrogates what it means to exist at the crossroads of race, subculture, and creative defiance. The film documents a community in real time, capturing both alienation and solidarity. Beyond music, Afro-Punk became a rallying point—its radical insistence on space-making sparking a movement that continues to shape Black alternative culture globally.
(preview of When I Get Home)
When I Get Home (Solange, 2019)
Solange’s experimental visual album unfolds as a dreamlike exploration of Houston, Black womanhood, and Southern futurism. Layering performance art, cosmic symbolism, and surreal tableaus, When I Get Home dissolves the line between cinema and soundscape. It is at once homage and prophecy—mapping ancestral memory onto the landscapes of Texas while conjuring portals toward collective imagination. The film insists on Black interiority as both sacred and expansive, inviting viewers to reimagine home not as a static place but as a living archive, ritual, and possibility.
🗓️ When: Friday, September 26th, at 12 PM CST
📍 Where: Discord
Head over to the #cinema-club channel in our Discord server to cast your vote for the film you’d like to watch with us!
Not a member of the server yet? DM us for an invite and to RSVP for the screening!
In the Community
Maroon Archives hosted by Kinfolk Tech and Black Women Radicals
Next week, Kinfolk Tech and Black Women Radicals are hosting a virtual teach-in about the legacy and memory of Black Marronage and the “cartographies of freedom” on September 9th at 6:30pm EST. You can register to attend here!
The Laboratory of Erotic Engineering
Ayana Zaire Cotton, founder of Seeda School just opened The Laboratory of Erotic Engineering – a series and practice that centers the erotic as a source of power and direction towards becoming the freest and most imaginative versions of ourselves (shoutout to Audre Lorde!).
Learn more about her worldbuilding and upcoming workshops here!
Start of The Fall Semester at The School of Poetic Computation
The School of Poetic Computation is entering their fall semester this month with classes from how to build Solidarity Infrastructures, to the Poetics & Protocols of Sampling. Admissions have closed for this semester, but don’t worry!
Tune in to their Instagram page to be the first to know when winter classes and scholarships open.
New Course Alert - Black Girlhood Studies by Professor, Dr. Kay Coghill
BoA community member, Dr. Kay Coghill, headed back to school this fall to teach Black Girlhood Studies – and they are building a collective archive on Are.na with their students! It’s already bubbling with nostalgia and some fire Black Femme moments in media – The Princess and The Frog, childhood photos, and even some songs by Megan Thee Stallion and Solange. Class is in session, and we’re seated.
Dive into more of what Dr. Coghill is creating on HoodratScholarship.com!
New Music - “LOVE LATA WORLD (DELUXE)” Streaming Across Platforms
Baltimore native and BoA OG, jvon.world (https://www.are.na/jvon-world/channels) , recently dropped a project with collaborators Certt and dayz lata. The project features vibey singles such as COOGI and fan favorite, “OUTSIDE”.
Stream “LOVE LATA WORLD (DELUXE)” on all platforms now.
Our community moves fast, and the easiest way to keep up in real time is our Instagram, where we centralize everything happening across the Are.na Black community as soon as we find out about it.
From new projects and upcoming events to shoutouts and accomplishments, our Stories, posts, and reposts are where it all comes together. Follow along and stay tapped in with the pulse of the community @blacksofaredotna.
Share With Us!
Got an event, an accomplishment, movement, or a project you want the community to know about? Email us at blacksofare.na@gmail.com. Let’s amplify each other!
Until next time, keep scrolling, keep thriving,
BoA Team
Big fat wasssssuuuppo to all of our newest team members who helped bring this to life!!! (credits at the bottom) Thank you all for being incredible.