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About AFRU We believe in the power of art to spark meaningful conversations on justice — as well as the other way around.

Shalawam! 👋 AFRU is a Black-led and Black-owned startup that combines art and fashion with lifestyle commentary to create a strong social justice brand that is relevant to folks from all walks of life.

We believe in the power of art to spark meaningful conversations, as well as the other way around. We also realize that people don’t want to be preached to all the time. That’s why our imprint magazine stitches together light everyday topics with navigation of more difficult intersectional spaces — all while allowing for the kind of messiness that is part of human nature. Our visual and intellectual branding therefore nurture each other in an perpetual spiral of trendsetting justice.

The AFRU Justice Spiral™

In addition to our activism and art, we also seek to work with companies that align with our ambition to help younger global audiences navigate what it means to be part of transformational change.

Equity is finally allowed to come out and play

Our beautiful pages feature work and writings from folks from all backgrounds, but that’s not enough. Our action-first equity model for artists is creating a fairground for Black work to be seen and heard, where untapped Black genius can come out and play.

Core beliefs motivating our work

  • Unapologetically celebrating folks from all backgrounds and walks of life.
  • Less talk, more action.
  • Launching novel explorations into intersections of identity and culture.
  • Community and shared IRL experiences. Social media is bad for us, actually, and especially for folks from marginalized communities such as teen girls.
  • Building global consciousness and emotional IQ through uplifted conversations.
  • Protecting our beloved AFRU family from online harm.
  • Believing that science is true, and that knowledge is power.
  • Subverting capitalist corporate culture (the CCC), and;
  • Supporting Black businesses. Developing, and reveling in, corporate Blackness as an aesthetic and mode of being.
  • Disruption through creamy good writing that moves beyond author/reader power dynamics; writing that actually listens.
  • Creating brain sizzlers and brain dazzlers, responsibly.
  • Integrating smart global thinking into hip culture, and vice versa.
  • No minutiae of life or culture are insignificant in the changemaker mindset. It matters.
  • Celebrating nerds, and nerding out.
  • Global values, locally.
  • Customer care is audience care is customer care.
  • Fact check true: corporate social responsibility is necessarily smarter business, more diverse business, and ultimately more productive business.
  • Being messy is valid.
  • Every human is a storyteller worth leaning in and listening to.
  • Self-care and spoiling oneself is essential to collective transformative change. “A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.”
  • Serving and nourishing the demographics of tomorrow with smarter and more empathetic content.
  • Giving folks the tools to become radiant sunshines, spreading juicy pastel colored kindness into the world.
  • Searching for the next big story in global consciousness.
  • Lifting up voices. Lowering down others.
  • The conversation must be had. Now is always the time for it.
  • Fully believing in power of transformative conversations to move awareness forward.
  • Being freaky-deaky.
  • Allowing sunshine to fill our lives and social interplay, and even become an adjective. “That’s so sunshine of you!”
  • Staying in one’s own lane. As far as possible (realistically not always), people depicted in story photography should be roughly on the same intersectionality axes as the author and/or assigned editor.
  • Karen control. Absolutely.
  • Tactical emoji deployment.
  • Believing that being on the side of good is not only a noble moral virtue, but smart.
  • Designing reads so that every act of consumption is another booster shot for the mind.
  • Being excellent. Being kind to all. Being sunny.

Disclosures

AFRU is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for website owners to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com, and any other website that may be affiliated with Amazon Service LLC Associates Program.

Buy our cool stuff — or just hit us up

Join us on our journey towards a better future. Let’s use art as a tool for change, and let’s have the courage to make a statement with every step we take. With every purchase from AFRU, you are not only making a bold statement: you are investing in a people-community that is most effectively working towards a more just and equitable future for all.

Reach us at [email protected].

PS. The A Black Woman Is Speaking mug is a standing invitation to sit down, shut up, and engage in the wisdom shared by Black women. Lord knows the world needs it right now.

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