I’m fulfilling my Nia as a truth-teller and telling the truth about the brick and mortar plantation

By Adilah Didi Adi | December 27, 2022 | @AdilahDidiAdi

Image description: illustration of a brown skinned African-American woman with her eyes closed and wearing her natural hair out. She is wearing a red sweatshirt with the words “The heart of justice is truth-telling” written on it in a lighter pink-white color. The background is pink. Source.

Heri Za Kwanzaa everyone! ♡♡♡

Habari Gani? Umoja (unity), Kujichagulia (self determination), Ujima (communalist work and responsibility), Ujamaa (communalist economics), Nia (purpose), Kuumba (creativity), Imani (faith).

I’m reaching out to affirm Naomi and Katt’s story and share some truths about my experience while living at the Brick and Mortar House in Detroit, Michigan. I’m doing this in honor of the Kwanzaa principle of Nia (purpose). I believe one of my purposes is to be a truth teller.

When I started this journey, I was worried about being too outspoken, or singled out, or losing support, or labelled a troublemaker or disrupter. Now, I am able to move in alignment with my principles and purposes, despite some fears and wariness. Part of why I have grown into this person is because of the love I have received from my village.

So I’d like to dedicate this call out to my Black Ancestars, my Black spirits, my loved ones, my communities, the House of Maroon, and every Black Q.T. in struggle for our communal liberation.

♡ Thank you all so much for nurturing my growth and courage. I’m grateful for us and rooting for us always. ♡

I moved into the Brick and Mortar House in 2017. When I moved in, I communicated to the members that I wanted to live in an affordable and affirming housing. I also communicated that I could not afford to pay the $350 in rent because I was low-income and undocumented.

Ian Matchett said that he was also low-income and the collective was a low income organization so I could only pay a sliding scale rent if I worked more hours to make up for the rent reduction. I didn’t like the sound of that, but I had limited options, and Ian said he and the collective were low-income, so I agreed.

Since moving in and until now, a lot of violent and harmful experiences have occurred. Some lessons too and a whole lotta growth in courage on my end.

Brick and Mortar still has my pictures on their social media pages for cosplay after blocking and censoring me.

As of today, I know 5 things for a fact.

1) Ian Matchett is not low-income and was not low-income at the time I met him.

2) The Brick and Mortar House is not low-income and was not low-income at the time I met them.

3) The Brick and Mortar House is a white supremacist labor trafficking scheme to extract unpaid labor from low-income to moderate-income Black people.

4) The Brick and Mortar House creates fictitious debt and narratives to trap low-income Black people in exploitative conditions, and

5) The Brick and Mortar House cosplays as radical but prioritizes the priorities of rich white patriarchs and all whose interests align with rich white patriarchy.

This is why I need to speak out. I can no longer be a neutral bystander to this level of white supremacist violence.

Source

Between the time I lived at the Brick and Mortar House and now, they have held multiple fundraisers in Detroit and raised money from low-income Black people as rich white people exploiting the Black members whose faces they spread (sometimes non consensually) throughout their social media to make themselves look radical, leftist, progressive, pro-liberation, and anything else but the truth of who they really are — white supremacists and reverse robin hoods that steal from the Black poor to give to the white rich.

I hope that after reading this call out, working-class Black people and Black community organizers realize that they shouldn’t give any more communal coins to these rich white people. If more Black people are aware of who these predators are and move accordingly, then we can be more protected and able to continue building our communal power in safety.

Brick and Mortar Collective, Ian Matchett, Lyz Luidens, Zachary Rioux, Aiko Fukuchi, and Jazz Washington do not need any more money, resources, platforms, legitimization, and power in Detroit, Michigan. Any resources they receive through cosplay are thefts from Black communities and organizers doing actual liberation work.

I have some evidence of what I am sharing but I don’t have all the evidence I need because some of these harms happened so quickly and randomly that they couldn’t be documented, and others are in the Google Drive or Slack and I have been removed from those (and blocked from Facebook and Instagram) because I told them to stop cosplaying with Black women and stop endangering Black women by bringing a white biracial misogynoiristic predator around Black women.

Part of my ask from their friends, family, supporters, and pods who claim to be truth-tellers and who will be holding them accountable is to enter into their Google Drive and Slack and find the meeting notes and messages we need to bring more clarity and truth to this call out.

1. Ian Matchett is not low-income and was not low-income at the time I met him.

Ian Matchett is not low-income. Ian Matchett owns/ is the landlord at the Brick and Mortar House. Ian’s parents own 2 homes that I know of (a home that they live in and another home that they vacation in for Matchettland)

Ian inviting members of the Brick and Mortar to go with him to Matchettland in the summer. I said no because I was a public bus rider and Matchetland had no public buses so if I was in an emergency there, I would be trapped.

Ian had a full-time, high-paid, social justice organizing job with benefits. Ian has access to his parent’s finances. Ian’s parents were able to fund his studies at the University of Michigan and his sibling’s studies at Stanford University. Ian has been able to have multiple cars and go on vacations out of the country in the very short time I have lived with him. Ian has ample leisure time that most working-class, low-income Black people working multiple low-income jobs don’t have. Ian is at best a comfortably middle-class, white, U.S citizen and at worst an upper-middle-class white, U.S citizen cosplaying as a low-income marginalized person.

What the Google Drive and Slack documents will show: Ian and his parents own the Brick and Mortar house. Ian has ample leisure time that most working-class, low-income Black people working multiple low-income jobs don’t have.

Interactions that happened so quickly and randomly that they couldn’t be documented: Ian letting low-income Black people who are in debt to him know that he spent thousands of dollars on the vacation trip he just returned from with his white biracial partner.

2. The Brick and Mortar House is not low-income and was not low-income at the time I met them.

The primary white members of the collective all had good-paying jobs. The primary white members of the collective all had cars and car insurance. The primary white members were able to purchase expensive items for themselves. The primary white members have families that live in (and have lived in since their births) white middle-class (and some upper-middle-class) suburbs.

3. The Brick and Mortar House trafficks unpaid labor from low-income to moderate-income Black people.

Working at Brick and Mortar is like working a part-time job and they never pay you for that work. Instead, you pay them $350 and have little to no say on how your money is spent. They use your image and more unpaid labor to get grants, loans, and fundraiser funds. You also have little to no say on how those funds that you helped raise are distributed.

When you remind them that you work other low-income jobs, or that you have certain disabilities that prevent you from working certain jobs, they are dismissive and weaponize “white anxiety” to maintain the same work structure. If you are not able to work those hours, they fine you or ask you to do makeup hours in addition to the set hours.

Most moderate to low-income Black women and queer people living paycheck to paycheck have left that collective in over $500 worth of debt to the rich white landlords at the so-called “collective.”

After I started being suspicious of how the debts were being calculated, I started keeping track of work hours and to be truly truthful, the numbers did not add up. The math was not mathing.

4. The Brick and Mortar House creates fictitious debt and narratives to trap low-income Black people in exploitative conditions.

Brick and Mortar uses their fictitious debt, “white anxiety”, and fictitious “lack of finances” to coerce low-income Black people they have harmed to stay members of the house and keep working in unsafe work conditions.

Lyz Luidens, a white comfortably middle class person, telling the so called “collective” that Black low-income people should be “held accountable” to doing every part of an unpaid job that will ultimately benefit Ian Matchett who owns the house.

Black members who were survivors of multiple harms at the house were survivors of even more aggression and violent coercion tactics when they did not properly convince the white and white biracial members that they would move with them from the North End rental to Ian’s house on the East Side.

A white biracial member, Aiko Fukuchi, talked about a “white-black” “racial binary”(lmao) in the collective to coerce Black women into accepting/not challenging misogynoiristic conditions. A white-black binary does not exist at Brick and Mortar, only a white-white biracial binary of white supremacy.

Aiko Fukuchi cannot name a time when race was talked about as though there are only Black and white folks experiences in the so called “collective.” This is because Aiko Fukuchi is a white biracial and white person.

5. The Brick and Mortar House cosplays as radical but prioritizes the priorities of rich white patriarchs and all whose interests align with rich white patriarchy.

Ian Matchett is not only a landlord but a slumlord. When Black women and Black queer members have asked that he make fixes to the house or ask the landlord of the North End house to make fixes to the house (since we didn’t have access to the landlord’s number and Ian Matchett and Lyz Luiden’s names were the only ones on the lease) he either ignored our requests or made the fixes very slowly.

When Black women and Black queer members have asked that some of the funds we raised be distributed into accountable meetings where the Black women or Black queer mediators are paid, the moneyed white members have ignored our requests.

When Ian’s white biracial sexual and romantic primary partner Aiko Fukuchi needs something to happen quickly, he does what they want quickly. Especially when they weaponize their “white anxiety” and “white women tears” even though they are a nonbinary person.

When Ian’s white co-founding members and friends Lyz Luidens and Zachary Rioux have wanted something done (or items purchased) that has been done quickly. Especially when they weaponize their “white anxiety” and “white women tears” even though they are not women.

When Ian’s friend and agent of whiteness, Jazz Washington, has wanted something done, that has been done quickly.

They move quickly for each other because their white supremacist, patriarch supremacist, and white biracial supremacist priorities align.

Brick and Mortar promised that things will change when the Black women and queer members moved in with them to Ian’s house on the East Side, but thankfully I didn’t move with them to Ian’s house, because I learned from Katt and Naomi, who moved in after me, that Ian Matchett, Lyz Luidens, Zachary Rioux, Aiko Fukuchi, and Jazz Washington continued in their violent patterns and things actually got worse. I also learned that MJ Eastin, a new white biracial member of Brick and Mortar, contributed to maintaining a white supremacist and misogynoiristic culture at Brick and Mortar.

What the Google Drive and Slack documents will show: Repeated asks by Black women, Black marginalized gendered people, and Black queer people to change structures that remained unchanged. When Aiko, Lyz, Ian, or Zach made asks, the structures were quickly changed to accommodate them.

Interactions that happened so quickly and randomly that they couldn’t be documented: Ian Matchett communicating directly, indirectly, “appropriately”, and inappropriately to the survivors of his harm that Aiko Fukuchi and himself were his only priorities in the so called “collective.”

As this direct action/call out unfolds, more details will come to consciousness, more evidence will be shared in this essay, and more demands will be made.

MJ Eastin, Lyz Luidens, Jazz Washington, and Aiko Fukuchi

Ian Matchett and Jazz Washington

You can trust Jazz Washington to always uplift, serve, and protect whiteness.

For now, I’m calling on accomplices and allies to join us in putting pressure on Brick and Mortar members, Ian Matchett, Aiko Fukuchi, Lyz Luidens, Jazz Washington, MJ Eastin, and Zach Rioux to:

1. Enter a community accountability process with survivors of their harm.

The time for in-house “accountability” processes is over. We have tried multiple times, and they have not worked. These whites, white biracials, and agents of whiteness have gone on to cause even more harm to Black queer people. The only option now is a community/communal/village/public accountability process. And the Black healers, mediators, counselors, medicine women, and community organizers who will lead that process need to be paid for their labor.

white people cannot hold themselves accountable lmao

2. Give the accountability team access to their Slack and Google Drive to gather evidence and bring clarity to the process.

3. Cancel all the fictitious debts.

4. Reimburse low-income Black women and queer members their rent and security deposits.

5. Stop using our pictures on their social media and promotional items to cosplay.

6. Stop selling paintings, buttons, and other merchandize with Black people’s images.

white rich people selling audre lorde (a Black queer person’s) buttons on their website while repeatedly harming and traumatizing Black queer people who have told them multiple times that they are harming us.

7. Move out of Ian’s house and return that stolen land/home back to Black queer native Detroiters.

8. Remove themselves from any leadership positions or positions of power in social justice organizations till they have remedied the harms done.

Read Katt and Naomi’s narrative here.

Support Katt and Naomi’s Fundraiser.

Source.

For over three months, The House of Maroon has been housing Katt and Naomi as part of our BQBNB program. Katt and Naomi have been unable to pay our low-cost BQBNB fees because they have no income and are in a crisis after being displaced from the Brick and Mortar house.

Dev and I (members of House of Maroon) have no regrets about being in solidarity with Katt and Naomi, but we are also low-income and our cost of living has doubled since Katt and Naomi moved in.

We have been able to fund our community programs and sustain ourselves so far, but since our cost of living has doubled and our wages have stayed the same, we are not able to continue being in solidarity with Katt and Naomi without reimbursements and accountability from Brick and Mortar, funding for our BQBNB program, and financial/resource support from our larger community.

We collaborated on a #GivingTuesdayToTuesday Fundraiser with the House of Kuumba to help cover some costs but were unable to meet our goals.

We raised $755 of $2552 needed.

We are still accepting funds via Cashapp at $DDSOS and $Dburt105. All funds raised will go towards the House of Maroon’s programs and bills.

February 2022 Updates!

Katt and Naomi have decided to re-release their narratives and fundraisers separately. In the interim, we are asking community members/accomplices to either:

1) Like or react to my public social media post to boost our messages so more people are aware and protected from Brick and Mortar members or

2) Reach out to Black healers + mediators + counselors + transformative justice practitioners in their networks/refer them to us or

3) Donate $5-$15 to The House of Maroon ($Dburt105 + $DDSOS) so we are able to sustain ourselves/programs or

4) Reach out to Brick and Mortar members (Ian Matchett, Aiko Fukuchi, Lyz Luidens, Jazz Washington, MJ Eastin, and Zach Rioux) directly through text message, email, social media inbox or by commenting on their social media posts asking them to set at least $1,000 aside to pay the Black healers, Black organizers, Black TJ practitioners, and Black abolitionists that will be facilitating the accountability process and communicate to us directly via email etc when that money has been kept aside or

5) Reach out to Brick and Mortar members to ask that they remove themselves from any leadership positions or positions of power in social justice organizations till they have remedied the harms done or

6) Reach out to mutual friends with Brick and Mortar members via text message to let them know what’s going on and how to take action to hold them accountable or

7) Anything else not mentioned above that is in alignment with your capacities.

♡ Thank you for reading and being in solidarity! ♡