The Collective

The Collective

We are BIPOC activists and healers who have been engaged in spiritual community seeking and educating for social justice and liberation.

K. Melchor Quick Hall

K. Melchor Quick Hall (she/her) is a popular educator and community-based researcher, currently working as a 2023 – 2025 postdoctoral fellow for Wellesley College’s Anti-Carceral Co+Laboratory. She is the founder of Solidarity Arts & Education Decolonial initiatives (SAEDi) Collective, an organization working at the intersection of Black reparations, food sovereignty, and prison abolition movements. Hall is the author of Naming a Transnational Black Feminist Framework: Writing in Darkness and the co-editor, with Gwyn Kirk, of Mapping Gendered Ecologies: Engaging with and Beyond Ecowomanism and Ecofeminism.

DSL they/them

DSL is a healer and community builder, and a Black queer non-binary mama of Haitian/Canadian descent. They are a seasoned engineer who creates spaces of refuge where Black and queer people are supported to engage in deep healing relationship with land, one another and themselves. DSL served as Executive Director of the Brooklyn Zen Center from 2015 to 2019, and is a co-founder and space holder with Love Circle Sangha. Their background includes fundraising, real estate development, city and regional planning, and green manufacturing at a B corp. They helped establish the Senegalese Ecovillage Network over 20 years ago. Ordained as a member of the Order of Interbeing in Thich Nhat Hanh’s Tiếp Hiện/Zen Vietnamese Buddhist tradition, DSL aspires to center healing justice in their efforts – as defined by the National Queer and Trans Therapist of Color Network – to support intergenerational healing. “Your silence will not protect you.” – audre lorde

Shoshana Brown

Kohenet Shoshana A Brown, LMSW is a healer, educator, and organizer. As an abolition organizer they are a cofounder of the Black Jewish Liberation Collective and a member of Jews for Racial and Economic Justice where they host Beyond The Pale, a radio show on WBAI 99.5FM. Shoshana is the US Director of Pedagogy for the Diaspora Alliance and has developed an expertise in Restorative Justice Practices. They are a Black- mixed race Jewish femme who generates liberation and full self-hood in the essence of love.

Veleda Roehl

Veleda Roehl is an award winning professional dancer and ensemble performer. She is also a dedicated educator, doula and yoga instructor. She began apprenticing as a yoga teacher under her mother Diana Roehl, and also obtained multiple certifications through Yoga Alliance. In addition to her yoga teaching certifications, she trained with DONA as a doula, and apprentices under Master Midwife Nonkululeko Tyehemba as a member of the Harlem Birth Action Committee. She has published and presented her research on the positive effects of dance and movement on the parent-child bond and dedicates her career to the study and benefits of movement for community and personal development.

Tanya Zanglaglia, M. D.

Tanya Zanglaglia is a family physician currently practicing in New York City. She practices the full range of primary care medicine including, adolescent and women’s health, urgent care and chronic care management. She received a Medical Doctorate from the University of Cincinnati, College of Medicine and completed residency training in Family Medicine/Social Medicine at the Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, New York. Early in Tanya’s career she served as Director of Education and Training for the AIDS Center at St. Vincent’s Medical Center in Manhattan. Also at that time she was the Curriculum Coordinator, responsible for Curriculum Development, and lecturer for the New York/Virgin Islands AETC at the Joseph Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University.

Tanya’s continuing interest is in community health literacy and education. To this end, she has provided over 500 lectures on health-related topics impacting individuals, families and communities for the NY/NJ AETC and the AIDS Institute. Tanya has also given lectures on general health topics for universities and medical centers throughout the United States and abroad. Tanya’s audiences have included physicians, nurses, administrators, lay audiences, law enforcement, MTA employees and Houses of Worship. Tanya is now seeking new career challenges where she can be part of a team, in an environment where patients, staff, and physicians share a camaraderie and a sense of personal satisfaction.

David Ragland

Dr David Ragland is a writer, scholar, activist, and educator.. He is one of the co-founders of the Truth Telling Project and is currently the director of the Grassroots Reparations Campaign. He recently published a series on reparations in Yes Magazine. and currently teaches at Pacifica Graduate Institute in Community Liberation, Depth and EcoPsycology.

David’s work has been rooted in his home community near Ferguson, Missouri. He weaves his personal experience of growing up in segregated St. Louis with the history of that city and nearby Ferguson, explaining how Ferguson became the new center of American racism and Black resistance. In the early days of the Ferguson Uprising, David co-founded the Truth Telling Project so that marginalized voices could be heard and move society to lay a groundwork for healing, reconciliation and social transformation.

Recently, Georgetown University’s Advocacy lab included Dr. Ragland’s research as part of the “most important research on advocacy” in the last forty years. David was recently inducted into Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Collegium of Scholars at Morehouse College. He served as the Senior Bayard Rustin Fellow at FOR and as a board member for the Peace and Justice Studies Association.

Orion Gordon

Orion Gordon is an Emmy award-winning sound engineer, producer, performing artist and filmmaker based in Brooklyn, NY. Originally from Trinidad and Tobago, Orion is the CEO of an independent media production company, Rah Productions LLC, which he started in 2008. He has an extensive background in radio production and podcasting. He also works as a location sound engineer and sound supervisor for film and television with works featured on PBS, FX Network, Hulu, and HBO. In addition, Orion’s work as a director and cinematographer includes documentaries, independent films and nationally syndicated commercials.