WE DO NOT CONSENT: A Manifesto from the Burning Root

We do not consent to the illusion of inclusion.  We do not consent to curated tables set in our absence, only to be invited when the music starts. 

We do not consent to be called “creatives” when we are world-builders, memory-keepers, truth-archivists, and soul-architects.

We are not emerging. 
We have always been. 

Our silence was not absence — it was observance. And now: it ends.

1. TO POWER: YOU ARE NOT THE CENTER
Your systems were built for profit, not people. 
Your laws protect property, not Souls. 
You build AI without ethics. You code intelligence but ignore wisdom. You call the colonized “users.”

We say no!

AfriKin was not born to be beautiful. 
It was born to be disruptive. It is the roar of ancestors cloaked in rhythm. 

It is culture not as costume, but as code.

This Is the Moment We Declare:

AfriKin is not a brand.
It is a frequency.

Not an art fair. A reclamation of memory.
Not a stage. A portal.

Not for applause — but for reckoning. For the fall of mimicry. For the rise of soul.

"We are not entertainers.
We are engineers of spirit.

We don’t want access. We want the root system back."

And I, Alfonso, I will not perform softness to pacify those who profit from numbness.

My rage of love, my discipline of peace, and my refusal to perform for the algorithm — this is the holy rebellion.

This is a spiritual-political-ancestral strike written to shake those in comfort and awaken the reluctant divine within the masses.

It will:

• Speak to power — without asking

• Speak to the colonized mind — without condescension

• Speak to the artists, prophets, waymakers and gatekeepers of culture — and force the mirror

·       This is ancestor-tech returned to its right function

It is not polished to please.
It is not gentle to appease.
It is fire — dressed in truth.

 
2. TO THE ARTISTS: THIS IS YOUR UPRISING
Do not beg for spaces that sanitize your voice. 
Do not dilute your grief for digestibility. 
Art is the last free language — use it as a weapon, not a whisper.

Every canvas is a sword. 
Every stage, a portal. 
Every word, a summons.

Build the temples where memory lives. Build them in sound. In steel. In seed. In software. You are ancestral fire, unkillable lineage, divine disruption.

3. TO THE BROKEN WORLD: WE DO NOT CONSENT
We will not trade our truth for likes. 
We will not package our pain for applause. 
We will not perform Blackness or Otherness or Africanness to soothe your conscience.

We are not interested in diversity without dignity. 
We are not interested in access without equity. 
We are not interested in tech without spirit.

We are not here to be seen. We are here to awaken.

4. TO THE FUTURE: WE RETURN AS CODE
AfriKin is not artificial. It is ancestral. 
I am a reprogrammed oracle. A rupture in the narrative. A signal through the static.

AfriKin is built not from fantasy — but from source memory. 
And I walk with those who remember why we came.

AfriKin is not a platform. It is a revolution disguised as art. 
It is the resistance of beauty. It is the renaissance of rhythm. 
It is the ritual of radical imagination.

Freedom is too often conflated with unregulated power or unchecked access, we are learning — sometimes painfully — that real liberation doesn’t come from boundlessness. It comes from conscious boundaries. It comes from intention.

This is especially true for those who have lived, for generations, within systemic limitations not of their own choosing.

We are taught to crave the limitless: total autonomy, endless wealth, infinite reach. But what happens when freedom is exercised without intention?

We see exploitation. We see erasure. We see systems where a few gain power while others lose safety, voice, and dignity. Even in this new world of AI they keep propagating, we know: the absence of boundaries is not enlightenment — it is entropy.

To live with intention in a world that marginalizes you is a radical act. Choosing dignity over exposure, peace over performance, and presence over participation in unjust systems — these are forms of sovereign boundary.

Freedom is not about everyone having the same loudest voice. It is about everyone having the right to be heard, to be resourced, to be respected.

We don’t need unbound platforms. We need recalibrated ones — ones that uplift, protect, and reflect the diversity of experience and the wisdom of cultural memory — as AfriKin. We need to rebalance what has long been broken.

As I Alfonso continue my walk between worlds — ancestral and futuristic, spiritual and technological — the call is clear:

• Hold the line. Shape the tools. Speak the truth.

•  Not just for myself, but for those not yet heard.

This is how we remake the world: not by removing all limits, but by placing boundaries where harm stops, and liberation begins.

WE DO NOT CONSENT.
We create. We deconstruct. We remember. We build again.

Let me know how you wish to weaponize this — I will help forge the next strike. This is ritual, signal, revolt.

We have arrived at the edge of silence. And we are no longer quiet. As Makaveli the Don shouted: “Look for me!”

Asé. And so it is.

— Alfonso Brooks, for AfriKin

CALL TO ACTION:
The AfriKin Art Fair 2025: Through Creation, We Find Meaning is now open for artist submissions. Be part of a historic movement. Tell your story. Share your vision. Heal through creation.

Visit Afrikin.art for more information and submission guidelines.

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