Walela Nehanda is a Black non-binary writer, cultural worker, cancer & stem cell transplant survivor, and mental health advocate from Los Angeles, California.
[11][12][13] In April 2018, the Los Angeles County Police Department (LAPD) fatally shot 30-year old, Grechario Mack, who was schizophrenic and on new medication, at the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza mall.
The artivist EP is inspired by Black activists and thinkers Toni Cade Bambara, Assata Shakur, Tupac, Gil-Scott Heron, Frantz Fanon, and Octavia Butler.
Black Voice News said the project, "exemplifies what it means to be an artist and an organizer, while proving that neither exists in a vacuum" and praised Nehanda's "surreal soundscape and vibrant wordplay".
Alongside their open mics, Spit Justice held community conversations around police violence, gentrification, colonialism, and other topics to strengthen participants' emotional literacy, critical thinking, and problem solving rooted in grassroots organizing.
[18] In 2018, Nehanda beat sixty competitors in a spoken word contest focused on the negative health effects of tobacco and menthol on communities of color.
[19] In 2019, Nehanda told Nylon that when they first began seeking answers for their physical symptoms, they were accused by providers of being "an addict" malingering for medication they didn't need.
They have stated the emphasis media, hospitals, and nonprofits put on cancer-patients looking like frail, thin, bald, white women has negatively influenced health care professionals' treatment of Nehanda as a fat, Black, queer cancer patient.
During the interview, Nehanda also commented on experiencing racial profiling as a Black person, wearing a face mask in stores in Los Angeles during the pandemic, and getting involved in mutual aid efforts to help low-income disabled people survive isolation.
Nehanda credits the self-care and provider-care they received for their mental health with giving them the strength to want to live and pursue a bone marrow transplant.