Interview with Hakim Bellamy

Hakim Bellamy

Title – Social and Community Programs Coordinator

Organization/Agency – New Mexico State Office of African American Affairs

Pictures by Christina Gavino Gray

What inspires you about your work?
I’ve had the pleasure of occupying 3 dimensions of the Non-Profit Universe. As a performance artist and poet who is community and politically inclined, I have been a contractor and service provider to many non-profits that champion causes that I support 40 hours a week. It is always inspiring to work with the people who compose these non-profits because they inspire me to keep finding away to articulate in a poem or song or article, what they live on a daily basis. As a community organizer working for a non-profit, I’ve been able to be on the frontlines, at ground zero, where the money meets the mouth and where our victories and defeats have an impact on our community for years to come. That is inspiring in a high stakes, boiler room kind of way. Even though my artistic activism may take a longer arc towards changing hearts than the immediacy of winning an election or changing policy, it is precisely because I can remember that immediacy that I feel I can often create my politically charged art with such urgency and authenticity. And now, as a bureaucrat working for the state, I get to be on the institutional side of the non-profit sector and see first hand how our sector fills the gaps that are left by attacks on social programs and budgets. When the government can’t, non-profits can. I get to act as a facilitator for connecting non-profits and state government.

How will your career impact New Mexico/the social profit profession?
It’s a hard question to answer humbly. Perhaps I can say as Hip-Hop artist/actor Mos Def said, I’ll shake “up the world like Ali in six-three.” In all seriousness though, I think I am just part of a generation of social justice artists who have bought into the philosophy that all art is political, even art that prolcaims not to be. Yes, we believe there is value in art for arts’ sake, but we also see that there is concerted attack on any art that challenges the status quo or values community  interest over commercial interest. A generation that realizes that with the privilege of this voice, this pulpit and this audience, one must advance art as much as messages that are for a good/profit that benefits more than just the artist. This generation of arts activist social profiteers that I am but a product of, is coming of age in a moment where funders and foundations who support social causes (political and non-political) are seeing a value in wielding the influence and insight that we are able to share and spread through our art. They are looking to escape old paradigms of reaching and engaging people with innovative ideas, and rather than seeing artists as a reflection of times, they are reconceptualising the artist as a prognosticator or soothsayer of the times. This confluence of talent and resource in the sector can allow artists to champion causes proactively instead of responding to defeats within our sector reactively.

Why are you a member of YNPN?
Simply because I think it is a worthwhile exercise to take a sector so vast and look at finding ways to organize across varied interests and diverse missions. It also an sector that suffers from  a lack of talent development. I think YNPN is a unique tool to assist with the supply side of that equation. It is also a place to discuss, with the assistance of the advisory board and the mentorship program, how we impact the demand side of that equation. How to facilitate healthy turnover and influx of new vision and energy in organizations that have plateaued in their effectiveness or have not had a leadership progression since the organization was founded.

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