Audience members nodded along, their lips moving with the words
many seemed to know by heart. Some listened with their eyes closed
when the Long Hairz Collective took the stage Friday night, as the
group brought their blend of “hip-hop, poetry, folk and blues
music” to the East Quad Residential College Auditorium.

Re-uniting for an afternoon workshop and evening performance as
part of the 17th Annual Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Symposium, the group of University alumni shared a message of
activism and hope with the more than 75 concertgoers and 40
workshop participants.

The workshop — titled, “Lather. Rinse. Repeat.: Long
Hairz Collective Workshop on the Integration of Art, Activism, and
Culture” —brought together community members to discuss
the state of social justice today.

“Their spoken word is really centered around social
justice and identity, and this relates to the MLK Symposium so we
wanted to bring them here,” said event organizer Stephanie
Chang, United Asian American Organizations external chair. Chang,
an LSA junior, said she had seen the group perform before and was
inspired by their music and their message. “Plus,
they’re just really good so we wanted to bring them back
again.”

The workshop was about a spiritual, emotional and social kind of
learning, said Long Hairz Collective member Joe Reilly, emphasizing
the benefits of experiencing the University in more than just an
academic sense. “It was an amazing group of people coming
together to learn,” he said. “Learning is so much more
than what happens in a classroom or in a book.”

Workshop participants individually composed written reflections
on social issues and their hopes for the future. Then they shared
their writing in teams, combining their work in impromptu
collaborative performances, one of which was also presented at the
concert.

RC sophomore Lindsay Germain said she found taking part in the
workshop motivational and powerful.

“These are people I’ve never met before but I feel
like we’ve connected on such a deep level in such a short
time,” she said.

She added that she looks forward to taking the energy and sense
of community from the concert and the workshop back to groups she
is involved with on campus, such as Anti-War Action! and
Environmental Justice.

“I feel very empowered to make activism a big part of my
life,” she said. “[The concert] was even more
remarkable than the workshop because it brought it to a larger
audience. Everyone was blown away. … Everyone was laughing
together and crying together, it was quite an
experience.”

Long Hairz Collective member Brian Babb, a University alum, said
he traveled from Oakland, Ca. to honor Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
and to join with students as part of the legacy of a symposium
dedicated to making MLK’s dream a reality.

“The MLK Symposium is like no other commemoration
I’ve been to,” he said. “What you have is a lot
of folks from different (backgrounds) celebrating his work,
celebrating his life, celebrating his memory and really living his
dream of peace, justice and love.”

Babb added that part of the purpose of the concert and workshop
was to remind people that they can make a difference.

“I hope that people go away with an openness to their own
voice and an understanding that their own voice is just as
significant as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s.”

LSA junior Danica Williams, who attended the concert, said the
group’s vision really resonated within her and that the sense
of community created by their art felt like meditation.

“It’s beautiful, the words and the way they’re
voiced out — you can see there’s a lot of passion and
meaning behind what they say,” she said. “I think the
message is about love, it’s about finding that peace inside
yourself and applying it to others in your life — if you have
love inside you, it’s going to come out and help others even
if you don’t even realize it.”