Centering Black working class hustlers

Project Hustle is a Black, queer, hood feminist-led transformative organizing project in Southeast Louisiana. We center Black working class hustlers through people-power building, popular education, and storytelling projects that capture our creativity and ingenuity as Black women, Black femmes, and Black queer workers.

Building cooperative economies

As Black women, queers, and femme hustlers in New Orleans, we are building worker cooperatives and collectives as an alternative economy – to share in economic gains and to flourish outside of an unjust labor market.

Recognizing Black women workers in New Orleans

In a state that is frequently ranked "the incarceration capital of the world,” Black women’s work in caring for and supporting loved ones as they are prosecuted and incarcerated is unrecognized and unseen. Black women in New Orleans work in some of the lowest paid jobs and industries in part to pay court fines and fees, fill JPAY cards, fill commissary accounts, afford transportation to rural prisons, pay lawyers’ fees, and pay bail and bonds. Project Hustle celebrates this work.

Celebrating stories of resistance

Our stories forefront the hustle economy as a form of resistance against racialized and gendered occupations that push more Black women, Black femmes and Black queer workers into dead-end jobs, unsafe working conditions, and poverty wages. Project Hustle celebrates how Black women have imagined and made alternatives to job exploitation by building the infrastructure to support one another, get loved ones free, and resist in the incarceration capital of the world.

I did deal with the temp agency stuff longer because I knew I needed that check next week, because he needed money on his books, or we might need to go pick him up, what’s he going to do when he comes home, or all of it, that was intense."

Geneva Joy

Waist Love, Comedian,
Founder of The Black Girl Giggles comedy festival

The work Black women do, to support our loved ones targeted by criminalization goes invisible and unseen, way too often."

Toya Ex

Project Hustle, Black Liberation Coop Academy

I was doing hair. I always had a side hustle. I was braiding hair, doing hair on the side. Every day I was doing hair, any time somebody wanted their hair done, I was doing it. I wasn’t letting no money walk away. Meaning if I was getting off at 10 o’clock at night, you could come at 10, I could do your hair at 10 o’clock when I get off of work."

Tamara Nelson

Watch the Waistline,
mother, former corrections officer

[Hustle is] a spirit of resistance. You know, a spirit of power. Where we can financially give forth a product and receive energy in return and receive money in return. It’s makes me feel powerful like I’m in control. Like I’m the one in control."

Ayanna Molina, "Mama Fiyah"

Storyteller, poet, hip hop artist, off-the-grid therapist