The Hip-Hop Foundationally Intentional Revolutionary Movement (The F.I.R.M.) is an Organization Development (OD) consultancy firm, designed by educational architects to manifest healthy learning & youth development practice(s) educationally, socially, and emotionally with a clear understanding of Blackness both currently and historically.
The mission of The F.I.R.M. is:
To Provide a transformative, participatory educational experience;
To Empower youth through reimagining, restoring, and revisioning learning and instruction;
To Implore healing, safety, and L.O.V.E., and finally
To Explore space and place through Hip Hop's culture of resistance and celebration.
We accomplish this through a multidisciplinary application of integrated thinking of appreciative inquiry and liberatory design thinking. This OD integrative thinking happens at academic intersections of Hip-Hop, Critical Theory, and Womanist theory through a Social Justice Praxis.
The F.I.R.M. affirms:
L.O.V.E. as Liberatory Opportunities for Voice and Empowerment
The S.P.I.R.I.T. of Hip-Hop as Socially Equitable, Participatory, Intuitive, Restorative, Intentional, and Transformative
R.A.C.E. as Rarely Acknowledged, Connected, or Embraced
Towards
H.O.P.E. as How Oppressed People Evolve
Our Vision:
A F.I.R.M. Vision:
We strives to impact learners utilizing, Hip-Hop’s intellectual and revolutionary origins of resistance (poverty and paranoia) and celebration (Black and Young people). We envision making this impact through the application Organization Development (OD) theory within learning and youth development spaces.
A Call to Action To Change the Odds for Black and Minoritized Youth
The United States of America is home to the American Achievement Gap (Porter, 2007; Ansell, 2011; American University, 2019) and the School to Prison Nexus (Meiners, 2007; Alexander, 2011; Thomas, 2018; Ghandnoosh, 2015). These epidemics represent a deeply intertwined relationship between educational inequities and over-policing which result in epistemic violence disproportionately affecting Black and systemically minoritized youth and their communities.
Black youth are at risk for many types of school failure such as poor test scores, high dropout rates, low grades, and high suspension rates both in general and comparative to their non-Black counterparts (Ricks, 2014). According to We Dream A World: The 2025 vision for Black boys and men: “Black boys are three times more likely to be suspended or expelled from school than White peers, therefore missing valuable learning time in the classroom.” (Tsoi-A-Fatt, 2010). And conversely, in schools, Black girls confront both tacial and gender bias: “An analysis of national U.S. Department of Education 2015-16 civil rights data by the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC) and The Education Trust found that Black girls are five times more likely than White girls to be suspended at least once and four times as likely as White girls to be arrested at school” (LePage, 2021).
At the national level, we know that one in every three African American males born in 2021 will experience a criminal conviction and spend time behind bars (NAACP, 2017). Educational data has shown a consistent trend acknowledging one out of every four African American boys is tracked into diverse learning (special education) systems (NAACP, 2017). Due in part to invisibility politics, the needs of Black girls are often overlooked by teachers, administrators, and policymakers because of a deficit and nefarious focus on Black boys. This oversight has contributed to a lack of educational programming and policies that address the impact of the intersection of racism and sexism on the educational experiences of Black girls (Ricks, 2014).
These data markers represent a real opportunity to make a shift in both our collective knowledge and practices towards healing and safety for these youth.