LAH TERE is the co-founder of Momma’s Hip Hop Kitchen: The Soup Kitchen for the Hip Hop Soul (MHHK), a multifaceted hip hop event designed to showcase women artists, especially women of color. MHHK serves as a social justice community-organizing platform that educates and empowers women of color on issues that impact their lives, including HIV/AIDS and reproductive justice. Teresita Ayala know by many as Lah Tere is a humanitarian, cultural/political activist, female-emcee, songstress, and a visionary speaker. The Afro-Antillian/Puerto Rican/Boricua sister Lah Tere, grew up in Chicago’s historic Puerto Rican community of Humboldt Park aka Paseo Boricua. She is first generation born in the mainland, and the daughter of revolutionary educators and survivors of Chicago’s notorious ghettos. Lah Tere, was a member of Rebel Diaz, an internationally known rap group that took a critical and political stance on many social issues from police brutality on the streets of New York to violence against women globally. Lah Tere was also a founding member of the Rebel Diaz Arts Collective (RDAC) in the Bronx. Lah Tere’s mission is to use hip-hop as a tool to educate others, as she has brought hip-hop and media literacy workshops to youth populations. She does this by focusing on the roots and history of hip-hop in New York while focusing on drawing the connections to the hip-hop generations’ role in taking care of its local community. Through her political and local activism, Lah Tere has worked to carve her own niche outside of the commercial hip-hop industry, and focused on building community from within. As an emcee, she has used hip-hop as a didactic tool as well as an emotional release. Lah Tere writes and performs about domestic violence issues and links popular media examples of violence against women (i.e., Chris Brown and Rihanna’s case) to secrets and silences in communities of color around molestation, rape, and other forms of violence against women’s bodies that is too often normalized and naturalized in popular culture. Lah Tere has also been active in the liberation campaign for Puerto Rican Political prisoners for 16 years. Her role as one of the political prisoners in the play, “Crime Against Humanity” significantly changed her view on life. Some of her greatest musical influences are Queen Latifah, Iris Chacon, La Lupe, La India, Jill Scott, and Erykah Badu. She has also been awarded the El Coqui Award in 2009, Uptown Girl Power! Award 2009 by the Majora Carter Group, and the Dona Adelfa Viva La Mujer Award by the ProLibertad Freedom Campaign. Her goal is to create a hip-hop after-school program at the school named after her paternal grandmother, Maria Teresa Serrano, in Carolina, Puerto Rico. www.mhhk.org
(via navigatethestream)
