Help Axe Oakland! Community Support Needed!

Axé Oakland serves as a sacred and diverse Afro-Brazilian Community Center and Capoeira* School in West Oakland. Its founder–Mestre Chipa of Salvador, Brazil–has nurtured a space that thrives in unity through music, movement and culture. Axé Oakland has served over 300 youth, families, and capoeira students over almost five years in its current location. It became a lifeline for many during the pandemic, when people needing to create community found safe outdoor space to do so.

In the past year, Axé Oakland has endured targeted harassment through approximately 55 unfounded calls to police and animal control with fictitious claims from 1-2 known neighbors. Starting in October, this escalated to include five incidents of large-scale defacement and vandalism of our facade and fence. To move beyond the vandalism, they recently put glue in the inside of our key lock, thus shutting us out of our own building prior to a kids’ dance class.

Community is the heart of Mestre Chipa’s work. Amidst these globally and locally challenging times, this community radiates as our main source of strength and resilience. Each time vandalists break our cameras and spray profanities on our center; we repair it. They cover our windows in paint, we razor it off. Each time this aggression happens, we file a police report. In the month of October alone, different members of our community have filed at least 5 police reports. We are concerned for the safety of our space, our members, and the future of our community if we continue to be targets of defamation.

We do our best to resist these attacks but we need broader community support. Please, come take action in solidarity with us! Let’s combine resources, whether financial or social capital. We welcome all donations (monetary donations are tax-deductible), pro-bono expertise and any introductions towards helpful lawyers, mediators, community groups, journalists, etc. We are seeking to build stronger security systems, backpaying tools and supplies for damage repair to help navigate these repeated targeted attacks to our Afro-Brazilian Community Center and Capoeira School.

Thank you very much for your love, understanding and support!

*To provide context on the Axé’s central cultural focus, Capoeira emerged as a form of resistance to slavery in Brazil. Previously outlawed in Brazil for its association with enslaved people, it now stands as a beloved aspect of Brazil’s culture and–as of 2014–holds a place on the list for UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. It blends martial arts, dance, acrobatics, music, history and cultural expression in a game that people of all physical abilities can play. While Capoeira centers young Black and brown voices, our community also includes members of diverse races, religions, economic positions, and backgrounds.