Change Agents The Podcast

Rhymes & Resistance: King Moosa uses creativity to advance voting rights

• Reparations Media • Season 5 • Episode 1

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“Rhymes & Resistance: King Moosa uses creativity to advance voting rights”

Did you know that individuals with felony convictions in Illinois still retain the right to vote? Rockford-born hip-hop ARTivist Brian Harrington, aka King Moosa, is trying to spread the word. 

Sentenced to 25 years in prison at the age of 14, King Moosa experienced the isolating effects of incarceration firsthand. Through the support of community members and grassroots movements, he was encouraged to draw, write, and perform, bringing awareness to his story. In 2020, after 13 years behind bars, he was granted clemency. Now, he uses his talents to create narrative change surrounding incarceration and its effects in America. 

Through his art, advocacy work, and collaboration with Chicago Votes, he continues to fight for change in the legal system, using community and individual healing as a powerful crime-prevention tactic. 


Produced by Maddie Voelkel and Matthew Warakomski for Reparations Media NFP | In collaboration with King Moosa https://www.kingmoosaartivism.com/about 


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SPEAKER_01:

God bless you.

UNKNOWN:

God bless me now, seeing how Michelle be rolling.

SPEAKER_00:

That's Brian Harrington, better known as King Musa, hailing from Rockford, Illinois. Musa is a self-proclaimed hip-hop artivist, a portrait artist, spoken word performer, community organizer, and a loving father and partner. But before this, he served 13 years in the Illinois Department of Corrections. I

SPEAKER_01:

was still under that impression that here I am a child, I'm going into this interrogation room with these detectives without my mom, that oh, this is where I would get help from legal people. Like, these people are in a room to help me. They're going to walk me through it. That's not what happened.

SPEAKER_00:

This is an interview with King Musa for Change Agents, the podcast. I'm Matthew Warakomsky, and my co-producer is Maddie Volko. At the age of 14, Lusa was sentenced to 25 years in IDOC for first-degree murder after a gun deal gone wrong. I

SPEAKER_01:

felt unjust because I didn't understand what was happening to me. I didn't know none of the legal terms that they were using. I had successively graduated eighth grade, so technically I had an eighth-grade education. going up against people who went to law school, them trying me as an adult felt wrong. I didn't know why it felt wrong. I just knew like something's not right about this process. Like kids in America usually get help in these circumstances, you know?

SPEAKER_00:

Tried as an adult, Musa entered adult prison at the age of 17.

SPEAKER_01:

That's your developmental years mentally, physically, spiritually. Like them years where you're going through your emotions like you're a teenager. You go through those teenage emotions where you don't even have the ability to identify with your emotions at 14, 15, 16, 17, 18. Like you're just now discovering that. I went from being this bubbly, outspoken, loving person person and just like full of life and creative to all of a sudden not knowing how to interact with people. I don't recognize myself. I have no certainty. I just started dealing with pain. I just was a person that woke up dealing with pain and I just kept it all in.

SPEAKER_00:

Shortly after arriving at Menard, Musa came to the realization that if he was going to survive his prison time, he would have to adjust his thinking. I'm

SPEAKER_01:

like... Damn, is this feeling that I'm that I'm feeling about to kill me? Shame and guilt and remorse and all of the things that sat on my chest around that time. I'm like, nobody make it through 25 years of this. Like, no way you could feel this. So I started to out of survival, like write down my thoughts, like in search of just like, I guess I don't even go lie. Like, I don't even know why I did it, but it proved to be therapeutic.

SPEAKER_00:

And then one night, Musa was encouraged by his neighbor and cellmate to rap for them.

SPEAKER_01:

After I rapped, I got all of these people, when they see me again, was like, hey, you cold. That was the first time I knew that I can move people with it. And then performing it gave me invigoration. I don't speak on much, but when I performed it, I felt exhilarated. I felt relieved. It was almost like if I was holding all of this stuff in and y'all put a punching bag in front of me or something.

SPEAKER_00:

Moose's artistic abilities grew beyond the walls of his cell. He started getting commissions for his work and performed his music at various events from prison via phone. Here is a spoken word piece that he recorded over the phone from Miami, Florida's Smoke Signal Studio. As

SPEAKER_02:

a child, the school teacher asked, what do you want to be when you grow up? I looked up, and I was overcome by a feeling of greatness. Hiding behind dark clouds or multitude of black oppression lies a solid mass of pure potential. An iron whip persistently chips away at its surface. Shreds and chunks fly here and there. Some land in fields. Some land in the sea never to be heard from again.

SPEAKER_00:

Some listen

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to that voice...

SPEAKER_00:

Musa's spoken word gave people access to his story and allowed him to create an identity separate from who he was in prison.

SPEAKER_01:

So now I got evidence that I'm not just a person in a sail no more. I have wings, I can fly. This art has given me the ability to transcend people that I'm not in front of. The ability to move people I'm not in front of.

SPEAKER_00:

With growing support, Musa tried to appeal his sentence, but initially found little success. Then, on April 9, 2020, Governor J.B. Pritzker granted him pardon 12 years before his intended release. In prison, Musa learned the value of art as a pathway to healing. That knowledge and his talent have led him to work as a trauma outreach specialist for the Live Free Organization's Community Healing Resource Center in Rockford, Illinois. I

SPEAKER_01:

want to be an activist, but I'd rather be Focusing on juvenile justice with an overall theme of letting the world know that healing can be a crime prevention tactic. And the thing happened in healing where you have to unlearn something. In my household, I couldn't cry. I wasn't supposed to cry. Males not supposed to cry. But what happens to that toxic salt that comes out of my eyes when I don't cry? That turns into something internally, which turns into illness. And if it don't turn into something and I don't implode, then I explode. And so these are the moments we read about where we like, damn, why did dude come and shoot up five people? Because maybe he didn't know how to grieve properly. Maybe nobody ever gave him the tools to cope with death.

SPEAKER_00:

As a board member of Chicago Votes, Musa is also helping returning citizens find their voice through civic empowerment.

SPEAKER_01:

The role I play with Chicago Votes now is more so a real ambassador role. They taught me the importance of your voice when it came to voting. And I didn't realize that I even could vote when I came home. My role with Chicago Votes, though, has been just to bring awareness to that people with felonies, you do have the right to vote.

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In the state of Illinois, there are nearly 550,000 residents with felony convictions. King Musa wants them to know that there is great power in exercising their right to vote.

SPEAKER_01:

We've been losing to all type of races, like state representative races by 900 votes, automatic races by 60 votes. If people knew that they can vote that have felonies, that many people can sway any election.

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For Musa, healing is an ongoing process.

SPEAKER_01:

Prison is always on my mind. And it's like, I do want to get past prison. I don't want prison to be the only thing that's part of my story. I went to therapy for the first time last year. I'm going to unmarked territory for me and my family. That's pride to me.