Mamie & Weaver’s Ultra
Founder
When I returned to Philadelphia for graduate school, I found my late grandparents neighborhood of Belmont, West Philly, on the verge of gentrification.
In 2015, Obama’s Promise Zone Act was awarded to Mantua, the community right next to ours.
Change was definitely coming and it was spelled G-E-N-T-R-I-F-C-A-T-I-O-N. The signs were everywhere, but the bike and coffee shops on Lancaster Avenue were the “canaries in the coal mine.”
Inspired by Hank Willis Thomas and Eric Gottesman’s creation of For Freedoms and their “50 State initiative” for the 2018 mid-term election, Mamie & Weaver’s Ultra was founded as a monument to the work of Mamie & John Weaver, to celebrate the neighborhood’s radical optimism and prevent erasure.
Since the launch, we’ve staged 3 video installation exhibitions during election years, featured the work of 33 artists, produced a newspaper, hosted an E”arly Voter” initiative and are in the process of lifting the stories of other neighborhood families in upcoming editions of the newspaper.
