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JL Umi-lario

@jlcreator

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Backup @re_memberingsofacolonizedchild @kapwatarot
Creator. Creative/Healing Justice Organizer. Liberation Educator. Transformative Community Builder.

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For the past 3 weeks a group of intergenerational Artists and Community Volunteers took part in the Campamento Defend! ¡Pa’lante! Mural project where we worked in collective community to create a mural for our historic building on the corner of S 4th and Roebling in the Southside (Los Sures) of Williamsburg, Brooklyn.The mural centered on this year’s Arts and Cultural Organizing theme “Defend! ¡Pa’lante!” uplifting the ongoing work of all communities who are fighting for liberation and self-determination alongside @elpuentepresente who has been serving our community for the past four decades in the face of continued racial and economic, housing and education injustice.

“Defend! ¡Pa’lante!” there’s a call for resistance, protection, and the imagination and manifestation of powerful collective movements forward!

Please follow the work of @elpuentepresente and support us as we continue to fight for our place, our programs and all the families and peoples that we serve amidst budget cuts, layoffs and the impending loss of our headquarters heart home in Los Sures.

Stop by our building to connect with the stories and messages embedded in our newest @losmuralistasdeelpuente piece and join us for our upcoming WEPA! Festival on September 27, 2025, 12-5pm as a Volunteer, Vendor or Guest.

🙌🏽 🇵🇷 🐸 Watch to end of the Reel for a lil’ something from our founding elder Gino Maldonado

Music for the culture and movement: @badbunnypr

#muralart #mural #losmuralistas #defend #palante #badbunny #elpuente #puertorico #wepa #art #community #solidarity #presente #liberation #newyorkcity #newyorkart #nyc #brooklyn #williamsburg #williamsburgbrooklyn #lossuresbrooklyn #paint #painting #justice by @jlcreator

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a year ago

In 2024 I took a position of legacy leadership at @elpuentepresente- to rebuild, vision and move the next generation of Artists Educators/ Activists in our Movement lineage to do the sacred Creative Justice work of El Puente. After 43 years the sole Artistic Director of our organization And my mentor, Frances Lucerna stepped down from her seat and I became the first Arts and Cultural Organizing Director at El Puente, and along side this role my partner in creation, Jessenia Mera as Coordinator, structured and held all the artists at El Puente in beloved community and collective Leadership to establish the El Puente Arts and Cultural Organizing Collective. We lock arms in creative movement work as remarkable Artists, Activists and Educators holding our community children in ways that have protected and elevated their creative spirits. To create together in a container of commitment, generosity, graciousness, integrity, justice and love being poured into our sacred work is our aligned purpose.

We arrive in year end retreat held by the powerful intentional community and land of @thewatershedcenter in deep reflection, and also in readiness, holding each other more than ever as we find ourselves strong and fortified in our unity, but also faced with vulnerability and instability because of the external forces that threaten our work and our people.

We are grieving. We are tending to so much damage and destruction in our communities that we have already centered our lives in defending and creating forward from- but we also now face the loss through layoffs and cuts relative to a massive termination of funding from the federal government in our Environmental Justice and Arts work. Layoffs that mean our collective is impacted yes in the work, but even deeper in our embodied justice relationships we have forged with one another- members of our movement family are being stripped from us and the young people and families we serve.

We imagined the end of this year would be the start of our strongest year ever, and we still center this as truth, but we also grieve and call our community to cultivate our loving grief into action&everything we do will be call and response. taken in The Watershed Center by @jlcreator

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a year ago

We are on the right side of history.
We will not betray our ancestors.
We will not betray ourselves.

We must remember our history as we also rise in making it today. Do not be the ones that turned away. You do not have to be in the streets, not all of us can, but support and uplift those who are! Speak with them in protest wherever you arrive. Demand what they do for our lives.

Echo our ancestors the way that those who fought and won prayed we would. We can cry out louder than those before us because they taught us how. by @jlcreator

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a year ago

Don’t be fooled by systems
that make us believe
we have to ask them
for permission
to save our own lives.

Our collective self determination
is something they never want us to have
Because it will be
what destroys their power
over our lives.

Who keeps us safe?
Who keeps us alive?
Who keeps our lives honored?

We do. by @jlcreator

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3 days ago

It’s days like these, that I wake up, blessed that I am equipped and aligned and purpose to support my community to use their voices to express their truths and to raise them up alongside the voices of so many who are silenced. I’m sharing this piece, written and performed by one of my mentees who I’ve known since she was 15 years old, she’s been in my life for over a decade and I’m so proud of the Woman that she continues to become.

I remember when I asked her to write this piece, and how she told me that it was just a stream of thought, and all I could think about is how humbled I was to have had even a small role in supporting her to be in her voice so powerfully.

I’m sharing this today with the group of young people that I’m now grounding with, and if anyone else feels like it would be supportive for you to share it with your young people too-I hope you do.

Abolish ICE! ICE out of NYC!

I love you @jaylintheunicorn by @jlcreator

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4 days ago

For anyone who wields power
that is maintained through
degradation, destruction and death
their greatest threat
will always be
Creators.

To be led by creativity
is to tap into power
that is limitless
because creative minds and bodies
are Free. by @jlcreator

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12 days ago

The revival of @preexistingconditionplay off Broadway at the @greenwich_house written by Tony Award nominee Marin Ireland and directed by Maria Dizzia.

This place has a spare witness to the experiences of a woman and her healing path after leaving a relationship where she experienced violence from her partner. We don’t see the abuse on stage, what we bear witness to as an audience is the struggles and the transformations that come after we have faced trauma, how it affects our day-to-day lives, our relationships with others, and the relationship that we have with ourselves. This is the type of theater that asks you to not look for spectacle, but rather to connect to the honoring of stories in the bodies of human beings who have mastered the craft of living out the lives of others, to share important lessons and understandings that are uncovered through intimate lived experiences.

If you were looking for a show that will ground you in your humanity- Pre-existing Condition will open you to the vulnerability of what it means to survive some of the difficult realities of violence in our relationships, and the traumas that feel unshakable, that will change us forever.

Thanks for taking me @augustina_creates 🫀🙏🏽 by @jlcreator

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12 days ago

I got my tickets for Todrick Hall’s new musical @midnight 2 months ago not realizing that it was going to end up being their opening preview night at the @darylroththeatre , and I believe everything happens exactly as it should. The energy in the theater last night was electrifying, there was a unifying synergy created by this show that connected its phenomenal performers and the audience to each other in a way I have now felt. We were IMMERSED, in the world created by Todrick Hall and spirits were raised as they welcomed us to experience the stories of characters living with visions of change leading their hearts.

The show asks us to put a mirror up to the world and took great risks in depicting a past turned on its head and inviting us to vision a speculative future that will bring the justice to so many who have lived and died from the hateful beliefs and obsession with power that has continued to divide and destroy us. This is a story all about Love, that lives beyond generations.

I feel grateful to have witnessed this work and its beginnings and I’m so excited to see how it continues to evolve, grow and impact the lives of those that come to witness it.

This is a show that I believe all of us should engage with the time that we live in. It is a call for change, revolution and Loving Justice.

Dress: @casamuza @polet_muza by @jlcreator

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17 days ago

We got the hook up from @nyc_super_mom to pack the seats at Regal Theaters in Union Square for a preview of @forgottenislandmovie

Ya’ll… it’s hard to fully encapsulate everything that moved through my body, mind and spirit in that theatre, but watching this film was such healing inner child medicine. Girl, as a little girl, I used to have dreams of working in animation. I used to carry my Disney VHS of the little mermaid in my backpack and beg to watch it when we would arrive at other people’s homes and spent hours tracing the covers of those tapes, will also learning from pausing images on the screen how to draw the characters well also drawing in myself in versions of them, or creating new characters that were me beside them. My parents weren’t so encouraging, of a pathway that was artistic, and so I abandon those dreams pretty early in my life, but my family has always known how much I loved and could fully express myself through my drawings without any formal training.

I still found my way to center art in my life, and took the path of performance and education, rooted, and social justice, and worked on so many bodies of expression that were all about reclaiming space to fully discover and proclaim my identity as a Pilipin@/x in solidarity with other colonized peoples, who through the decades that I’ve lived, have sought the same, the ability to be fully expressed of who we are, honoring our ancestors and ancestral lands and seeking a freedom to create a world that honors us wholly in the future.

Sitting next to my five year-old daughter, and having her proudly screaming as we’re walking down the block in NYC heading to the theater “ forgotten island is about Filipinos! I’m Filipino!” was even more healing. I spent moments during the movie turning to her as she was locked into the film. She laughed, and cried, and reached for my hand for connection, and leaned in closer to me to be held, and I knew what she saw was Us.

Congratulations to all of the hearts and creators who poured into this film, and I know have labored their lives, and given their creative force to make a moment like this realized.

Forgotten Island opens for all on by @jlcreator

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19 days ago

Solidarity, Is not safe.
It is not just risky.
You will experience loss
when you stand against oppression.

But the one thing
that you can trust
And you will gain with conviction-
is that you
are not alone.

I believe in us. by @jlcreator

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23 days ago

Tonight is the last chance to catch “Public Works” @publictheaterny Delacorte Theatre

Kalilaya and I swooped up some last-minute lottery tickets and made our way to Central Park to catch this breathtaking show. The interweaving of stories in this piece is masterful and raising emotions and spirits. Anyone who was in New Yorker, who loves New York, or who has visited and felt the power of our city, will be moved by this work and be so fuckin’ proud.

It will make you fall in love with the greatest city in the world. And the people who make it a place of powerful manifestation, creation and life lived in its fullest. Even Kali lifted her voice to proclaim her love for her City again and again in this piece and she joined us all on the journey we were brought on reflecting on being birthed into a life that would bring us here, to fall in love, to create our lives, to fulfill our dreams, to live out what we never could have imagined we would and to build the relationships and community that would shape us.

Over a hundred cast members cultivated and choreographed to create a soundtrack of our lives. Honoring life and death and love and all that is experienced in between.

Check out “Public Works”
Written by Lisa Sanaye Dring
Concept and Creative Direction by Dan Canham and Emily Lim
Original Orchestrations & Music Supervision by Michael Thurber
Co-Directed and Choreographed by Dan Canham
Directed by Emily Lim

Based on an original concept by Emily Lim and Dan Canham, Musical Supervision and Songs by Ross Millard and Words by Stewart Pringle taken in Delacorte Theater, Central Park by @jlcreator

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a month ago

We have so much more to live.
This is my prayer for all the Beloveds who are co-liberating in Collective Dreaming:

Individual dreams are limited.

I honor that my life
is greater than my solitary imagining.

I know the visions that move through me
are magnificent,
I have manifested dreams I’ve held
with integrity
and discipline
and love
and also, with an expansiveness
I open myself with the belief
that I am yet to live
even greater dreams into reality.

Because my life is visioned in Co-liberation
with beloved community,
with ancestors,
with descendants
with great spirit
and all the cosmic forces that
collectively dream our lives
beyond limitation. by @jlcreator

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a month ago