Ethel Cee

As an hip-hop artist who has been active in Philadelphia for several years and a recently named Creative Ambassador for the City of Philadelphia, Ethel Cee seeks to create a space for artists to use their art as a vehicle to discuss pertinent and important issues within the hip-hop community. Having previously created the event SPREAD to raise awareness of the issue of HIV/AIDS, she plans to create a new installment of SPREAD, this time allowing the artists to showcase work that speaks specifically to rising above the violence or oppression in their environment. Each performance will be professionally recorded and edited for the purpose of being continuously streamed on the internet for the general public to view after the live performance. This will help to spread an inspiring message about peace and create an atmosphere of social change with regards to how people, specifically youth, treat each other.

Ethel will create a documentary, which will include footage shot at the Oakland-based 40th reunion of the Black Panther Party (BPP), about her life in the BPP in the 1960s. Having shared with a researcher her role with the Breakfast for School Children program and later finding her role excluded from the book he had written, Ethel decided to create this documentary to tell her story and that of other women in the BPP. This documentary gives a first hand look at the BPP from a women's perspective through Ethel and her cousin's, Regina Jennings, experience and shows how they became culturally and politically educated through the BPP. Ethel and Regina's story offers young women today possible models and vision to change their communities and know that they are an important part of this change.