Mission
The Healing Underground (HUG) is a grassroots abolition, healing justice, and art collective rooted in ancestral Multnomah, Chinook, and Clackamas lands (so-called Portland, OR), and the home of the Houma, Choctaw, and Chitimacha peoples (so-called New Orleans, Lousiana). A queer Black, Indigenous, and POC-led project, our mission is to utilize abolitionist and decolonial ethics to build generative gathering spaces that are accessible, intergenerational, non-transactional, and open to all skill and education levels.
Theory of Change
We dream and practice building a next world that centers justice, liberation, and joy, and directly apply our politics in our relationships with one another and our communities, as well as through action.
Our collective grew out of a recognized need for safe and free local community spaces curated by and for Black and brown people. Everything we do is oriented toward sharing joyful relationships through art, education, organizing, and action. We experiment with (re)building life-sustaining systems that invest in community care while firmly believing in providing reparations - wealth redistribution, rematriation, and land back - for all peoples harmed by the settler colonial state. Ultimately, through our programming, we hope to reaffirm the the radiance of queer Black and brown joy and life.