Ira X. Armstrong, they/them
(FKA NaNCI Armstrong-temple)
Founder of Peace out loud
Ira X. Armstrong is is a front line Blacktivist and Social Permaculture specialist who grew up in a culture of transformative justice before the field was named. They have been teaching nonviolent direct action through the arts for over 30 years and freedom-based economic self-determination and consent based community care since 2008. They are the child of a Black revolutionary/former Black Panther father and a white abolitionist Unitarian Universalist Mother. A lifelong practitioner of self-determination, disobedience, non-violent resistance and peaceful communication practices, Armstrong is able to sit down with almost anyone in order to listen deeply and help co-create a life and a world more in alignment with one’s own gifts and integrity and highest good for family and community.
Bay Bridge shut down action to reclaim Martin Luther King's radical legacy in January 2016
Ira has taught and begun music, dance, garden, coaching, and musical theater programs in Alameda, Oakland, Berkeley and Los Angeles unified school districts, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, churches, the YMCA and street parties up and down the 101 and back.
Their gifts are direct action through song, grassroots community organizing, strategic planning, and coordinated shut down of major hegemonic infrastructure, especially bridges, freeways and city halls as a call to realize beloved community.
They have eleven year old twin girls who are the light of their life, and they wake up every morning grateful to get to be the parent of two such wondrous people.
Ira lives an embodied praxis at the intersection of theory and practice. They hold a BA in Educational Anthropology from UC Berkeley, are a co-creator of PEACE Out Loud, a member of the #BayBridge25, part of the Anti Police-Terror Project’s Black Leadership Committee, an unapologetically Black queer, Mama to twins, and a fierce advocate for love and community self defense.
Cara Kelsey, They/Them
executive director of peace out loud
Cara Kelsey is a bodyworker, sexual health educator, artist, adventurer and mom. They are a somatic practitioner with over 15 years in recovery-based models of community building and restorative justice. They also have been teaching consent-based models and workshops for over 10 years. Since becoming a mom they have tried to involve their child in as much of their work as possible and dedicated their time and energy learning from, teaching, creating and cultivating a community of parents. They have done Parent/Child massage events, costume and prop making and performance art pieces with their child. They has been featured in articles about consent and social justice informed parenting as well as in the book “the ultimate guide to sex during pregnancy and motherhood”. Peace Out Loud has been a wonderful container for them to utilize and practice all of these skills as well as to build new skills rooted in activism and playfulness.
Noémie Hakim Serfaty, summer camp director
Noemie is an Oakland-based educator, filmmaker and community media maker. Her film work explores how art can be a tool of resistance, liberation and community building. As an educator, she loves the challenge of creating a just, safe and encouraging environment for kids to grow into their full selves. Working at PEACE Out Loud has been a wonderful opportunity to ground her social justice organizing in community, by weaving relationships with kids and families from the neighborhood she lives in.