- In the summer of 2020,
a group of extraordinary people
decided to use their collective power
to provide a restorative space
for Black folks to rest, recharge,
and simply exist after weeks of protest.
These friends, colleagues and neighbors came together
in a public park to center Black expression,
Black presence and Black visibility.
Together, they've created a safe haven
and social demonstration of love and resistance.
Meet The Lay Out.
- [singing] Joy. Pump, pump it up.
- [singing] Joyful, joyful.
[laughter]
- What's really interesting is,
especially now,
everything is about Black joy.
- Everything is about Black joy. - Everything, everything.
It's--it's the commodification of Black joy.
We're watching it in real time as a direct antithesis
to last year and last summer with the uprisings, right?
So, it's, like, let's hurry up
and make sure everything is okay and put this big, like,
Black joy Band-Aid on everything.
- Right, right. - Highlight it.
Everything is okay.
The Blacks will be fine in the country.
And I think--
thinking about what our joy actually is,
it's--it's not a hashtag, right?
It's the way that we are taking up space now.
Like, it's--it's the being for me.
- Hello, hello.
Hi.
Yay. [laughter]
Whoo-hoo. Sorry. Okay.
Hi, my name is Emily and I do--
one of the co-founders of The Lay Out.
We are so excited to welcome people back
for our second year.
Funny enough, this actually coincides
with the one year anniversary of the first one.
So, thanks y'all that came back. - Whoo!
- So... - It's a reunion.
- It's a reunion.
- Peace, y'all.
Make some noise, please.
Let me hear some voices. Let me hear some energy.
Let me hear some soul. Let me hear some spirit.
[cheers and applause] There we go, 'cause we alive, y'all.
Like, let's just start there.
Like, we woke up this morning
and we came to the park to enjoy each other
to stand in communion and so,
amongst the team, we are so thankful
and grateful to have you.
And we hope you enjoy yourselves today,
we hope you enjoy yourselves tomorrow,
and every day that you get blessed with after that, all right?
[gentle music]
- The Lay Out for me is just such a wonderful magical story
because it is everything about Black joy,
Black hope, Black community,
are the way we just are magnetic
and, like, attract each other.
So The Lay Out really started last year
following George Floyd's murder.
I know for all of us that
watching George Floyd's murder
but then seeing all the protests and things
were happening in New York,
and I think for many of us that have been spending time
in the park, it just felt like we needed each other.
We knew that we just wanted something to come together
and I think just through the magic of, you know,
speaking something out loud to one another,
and it came together so quickly.
Bri and I were, like, talking on a Thursday...
- Literally, in the park.
- Literally in the park. - Right over there.
- On the edge of the park, though.
And for me, even the symbol as we were sitting
on the edge of the park,
looking out into the park and not seeing Black faces.
- Yes.
- Protests got pretty heavy in Fort Greene, right?
- Right on DeKalb. Yeah.
- And as part of the protest that night,
a police van ended up burned--
like, having a Molotov cocktail thrown into it, exploding.
And I remember getting up that next morning after, you know,
meeting Manushka to actually, like, clean up because I live
right in the neighborhood and--
everything was gone.
It was like--like, it had gone from looking like
a Jerry Bruckheimer movie to...
- Pleasantville, you know? - Nothing. To Pleasantville.
- Yeah. - Literally, like Stepford life.
Like, it was crazy.
Like the farmers... - The farmers market.
- The dogs are back out like [humming] tududu.
There wasn't any pain or anything
to be seen before.
- But the only thing that was left over
from the previous night was the letters
Black Lives Matters,
or the word Black Lives Matter spelled out
in the ashes of the police van.
And--and I feel like even for that,
just getting to that moment
and so we just very quickly came together.
Literally, from we started talking about it
on the Thursday-- Bri and I started talking about it.
We connected with Cy and brother Michael
who's not here and then Manushka was already part of the gang.
And we went from, like, Thursday talking about it
to Friday at 1:00 p.m. I'm saying,
"All right, we're putting up a flyer, let's do this."
- And thinking about
how deeply of a balm it was
in the middle of COVID,
in the middle of the uprisings
to have Black folks congregate
and come together for no other reason,
not in protest, and not in pain,
not in anger, to hold space and breathe.
Reclaim and reclaim the space
in an open, shared public park.
Why not? - Yeah.
- Why not just come and be?
There's a moment for rest.
There is a moment to just tap back in to community
to hope, to our faith, to the thing that--
that tethers us to each other.
I mean, it was so beautiful.
And then, people have continued to say
that, like, "Y'all saved us last summer.
Y'all literally saved us."
- Joy is a form of resistance.
Rest is a form of resistance.
- We should not still be here.
And we are because we have this joy
about us that overcomes anything and everything.
- Yeah, finding the beauty in life,
no matter the circumstance,
no matter the environment or the conditions.
And I think we all,
knowing our history only strengthens that,
that connectivity to true human emotion.
The ability to smile, regardless of...
- And that connectivity to each other, right?
- And that's what builds the community because we--
it's a connective thread, connective tissue amongst all of us.
Here we go. I...
all: I am. [overlapping shouting]
- Here we go. I am here. all: I am here.
- I am present. all: I am present.
- I am loved. all: I am loved.
- And I am...
all: I am... [overlapping shouting]
- There we go. I love that.
- Joy and rest are synonymous
when we're talking about resistance,
especially for Black people.
Yeah, and I-- and I feel like, self-care,
that hasn't been something
that we've been able to prioritize.
We haven't been given
that opportunity to prioritize that in our lives.
And I think a lot of us, we struggle with self-care.
We think--we think about the luxuries
like what we can afford to do, like, going to the spa
versus looking at self-care as, like, self-worth.
Like, you don't even know when to turn things off.
You don't know how to set certain boundaries
in the workplace-- constantly performing
so that your Blackness isn't the first thing
that people see, and like you said,
it's like a always on thing, and it's exhausting.
- Exhausting. - So, I mean,
self-care is something that I--
I'm not just doing it on a Sunday.
I'm not--I'm not-- I'm not participating
in self-care for the hashtag.
It's literally something that I have
to prioritize day in and day out
because in the past,
I didn't even know what that looked like.
Didn't even know how to self-care properly.
And it's definitely something that--that is moving
through our community and it's becoming normal.
And I love that for us. - Mm-hmm.
Hope and faith are like the--the drumbeats
of--of our community.
It's--
it's the due north that is continuing to keep us
on the path of striving, surviving,
trying to thrive in spite of dot, dot, dot.
Everything that this country keeps throwing at us.
And hope is the thing
that allows us to also just be
and I think that there's a sacredness to the being.
And it's--it's powered by hope.
It's elevated, supported.
It's--it's, there's so much love in the hope
that we all have for our collective selves
that all we got is us.
And there's got to be better.
- Not to like, diminish it,
but I think hope is a byproduct of a stronger force.
I think what really exists at that core,
really at that centering is love.
And whether we have a full understanding of love,
whether we have a grasp of love with our--
no matter how we've experienced love,
or even the opposite of, the adverse,
that's the light that continues to just pull us
in a certain direction.
That's the thing that lends us to faith.
That's the thing that lends us to optimism.
Love is a source that pushes us even when we don't have
a clear sight of what's ahead of us
or what we're moving toward.
I think that is the beauty of our human existence
and our experience that is, you know,
what magnetizes the resilience,
that's what straightens our back.
When we, you know, when we feel slumped down
when we've gone through too much,
when the weight is overwhelming.
It really is love and no human
has the perfect definition of it.
But we are the perfect definition through our actual being,
through our ability to just breathe and to have this life
and to continue moving forward and to continue waking up
and to continue making choices and decisions,
and to continue speaking, hugging,
and all the things.
- The poet, everybody. - The poet.
- I forget, I'm like... - Magnetize.
Go ahead, mag-- somebody give him a mic.
Somebody give him a mic! - Yes.
- Get it.
[slow funky music]