A breakthrough year in united struggle: 2025 and your Liberation Center

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Unprecedented times

For most of us, these are unprecedented times. State violence is escalating at home and abroad, neither ruling-class party has crumbs to offer the people, and our basic democratic rights are under attack.

Yet something here is unprecedented. Not only are younger people organically identifying that the problems in our world result from systems—not individuals—but those systems seem to be in crisis everywhere. Resorting to force and suppressing rights to maintain rule is a sign of lost legitimacy.

While neither political party has a positive vision for the future, if you spend a few days at the Indianapolis Liberation Center, you’ll quickly learn that a range of activists, artists, students, organizers, and everyday working-class people can not only envision a better world but are putting in the work to make it a reality. Without our community supporters and sustainers, none of this, including the 203 actions, campaigns, and events we organized, hosted, or supported in 2025, would be possible.

We fought alongside Jada Trainor, a Black mother and veteran, to win her court case against police violence and bogus prosecutor charges. We are building a lasting movement to end police terror and secure community justice. At the Center, we offer weekly meditation meetups and yoga sessions, creating space for collective healing and connection.

We also took our next bold leap: we opened our first storefront location in Fountain Square. This move was only possible thanks to our generous donors and volunteers, who believe in our work and find ways to contribute. We are deeply grateful to all who fund the movement for an Indianapolis free from oppression.

If you stay ready…

Weeks after 2025 started, Trump took office. For months prior, however, the Center was buzzing with town halls, workshops, forums, skill shares, and organizing sessions.

While still fighting the Biden administration’s regressive domestic policies and genocidal global agenda, organizers filled the Center regularly, not to bemoan another four years of Trump but to get ready for a “We Fight Back” counter-inauguration protest to provide infrastructure for a new wave of repression. On January 20, Indianapolis was one of dozens of cities countrywide that held a counter-inauguration action. Despite the frigid temperatures, workers and organizers with Indiana AID, Queer Skate Indy, IDOC Watch, The Phoenix Theatre Cultural Center, Party for Socialism and Liberation – Indianapolis, American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee of Indiana, ANSWER Indiana, Indiana Abortion Doula Collective, Central Indiana Democratic Socialists of America, Healer, and Hope Packages took to monument circle in a display of true unity. The next day, the Center was packed for an ANSWER Indiana meeting about fighting back in this new era.

This is true on the cultural front as well. For example, Arte Mexicano en Indiana started organizing the second Levitt VIBE Cultural Series of free concerts and culture every month from April to October last year.

Immigrants, not ICE are welcome here!

While former President Biden was no friend of immigrants (in fact, he used Title 42 to forcibly remove 2,000,000 immigrants compared to the 400,00 Trump expelled under the same public health code), Trump started his 2025 term with a ruthless war on immigrants. He ordered various agencies to carry out raids, arrests, and deportations on an unprecedented scale and regardless of their legality. In some ways, this increased public support for immigrant rights.

Over this past year, dozens of large pro-immigrant demonstrations swept Indianapolis. We didn’t stop after January 20 but continued doing outreach to community members, businesses, and other institutions. We were up early on January 29 as House Bill 1158, which would mandate the Sheriff’s cooperation with ICE, was introduced in the House. Our bodies and signs showed the people oppose any ICE escalation. HB 1158 never made it out of committee.

Instead, Gov. Mike Braun circumvented the democratic process and issued an executive order requiring state agencies to cooperate with ICE. The next day, we helped organize a protest at the Statehouse that went into the night and was more than double the size of the counter-inauguration.

By staying in the streets, we don’t only mean protesting; we mean being with our people in a general sense. Center volunteers conduct street and door-to-door outreach on a weekly basis, and most of it this year focused on immigration. That’s why we were able to mobilize an emergency anti-ICE rally that drew over a thousand participants during the NBA finals. Numbers aren’t all that matter, however. After learning that Camp Atterbury was scheduled to once again forcibly detain people, we held a workshop and then a car caravan to protest outside the gates. The protest, which occurred on August 15, was the last day of the T-REX (Technology Readiness Experimentation) war exercises and exhibition. The few dozen people who took the day off to drive to the protest weren’t deterred by the helicopters they deployed to follow us. The fact that a relatively small group of people could scare the state into using such techniques demonstrates just how much unrealized power we have.

We provided other ways to create community and let people plug into the struggle, like a September letter-writing event we organized with Umeed-Hope that the Guru Nanak Sikh Society graciously hosted. We wrote letters to ICE detainees in Haitian Creole and Punjabi. The Associated Press covered the event.

The struggle to free them all and Naptown People’s Radio

The Shaka Shakur Freedom Campaign, now a nationwide 501(c)(3) that started as a loose grouping organized at the Liberation Center, ensured our comrades behind bars were at the center of our organizing. Together with the National Jericho Movement, in early March they organized a conference on establishing a united front. The two-day event, which included two Center volunteers, featured panels of former and current political prisoners in the u.s. engaging in dialogue with each other and revolutionaries from around the world, from Haiti to Palestine and Korea.

That, in turn, triggered the formation of Students and Youth L.I.T. (Liberation, Independence, Transformation). Still in formation, the network of young people and college students exists to bridge the gap in continuity of the people’s struggles, so we don’t have to start over after every wave of repression. Many of the teachers called on to train this new generation are those like Shaka A. Shakur, political prisoners or political prisoners of war trapped behind enemy lines because of their organizing and activism. Relatedly, parts of the SSFC collaborated with others to form the New Afrikan Freedom Campaign.

While the SSFC worked to reestablish inside-outside connections, they also worked diligently to spread the ideological and organizational contributions of political prisoners and to advance the call to “free them all!” They produced a new documentary, “Across Enemy Lines: Shaka A. Shakur,” which debuted worldwide on December 5, 2025. Perhaps most importantly, Shaka worked closely with a Center volunteer and SSFC member to edit and publish Shaka’s first book, Manifestations of Thought: When the Dragon Comes, which was just published through 1804 Books.

One of our founding member-organizations, PSL Indianapolis, launched a weekly podcast this summer. Co-hosted by Dani Abdullah and Derek Ford, Naptown People’s Radio (NPR) covers pressing issues facing people in our city, spotlights stories that go untold by mainstream outlets, and uplifts the voices of workers, organizers, artists, and all people changing our city on a daily basis. It delivers news and analysis from the perspective of the people, not the oppressors. More importantly, as Abdullah puts it, “because we’re organizers involved in these issues, we’re not just talking about the news, we’re making it happen.”

Shaka A. Shakur has a semi-regular segment on the podcast, “Dispatches from Behind the Wire,” which reveals the crimes committed against our family, friends, and comrades behind the walls. In addition to re-establishing the inside-outside connection, it’s materialized in concrete wins for prisoners in Indiana and across the country. Their last episode of Season 1 provides their review of 2025 and features the show’s producer, Dakota Fronterhouse.

Fighting to end police terror

This year, we helped secure two rare victories in the ongoing struggle to end police terror.

First, we supported Jada Trainor in her years-long struggle against the police and prosecutor. On July 13, 2024, Jada, a Black woman, U.S. veteran, and mother was violently attacked by three uniformed officers at Eskenazi Hospital, charged with serious felonies, and forced to spend over a day in jail, where she nearly died from neglect. Since she came to the Center for help afterwards in 2024 and the end of 2025, we stood by their side, holding protests and other actions as Marion County Prosecutor Ryan Mears dragged out trial proceedings. Then, on October 1, Jada won a significant and rare victory against the police and prosecutors in a jury trial. We will continue to stand with her and her family until the last bogus charge is dropped.

Second, after IMPD cop Grant Snyder shot Adam Sykes as he was trying to prevent a woman from being harassed on February 25. Adam’s mother, Nikki Schumpert, reached out to us. Under her leadership, we conducted our own investigation. In response, we held our own press conference highlighting what the police left out: a senior officer yelling, “f***ing shoot him.” Of course, the only true victory would be if we could speak with Adam and his daughter today. However, this was one of the first times the people were prepared to counter—and disprove—the IMPD’s narrative of events. Moreover, it is likely this played a role in restraining the IMPD’s use of deadly force for the remainder of the Year. Nikki lost Adam but saved the lives of countless others.

New groups join Center, help ground the movement

Constantly moving from action to action or from issue to issue is a major cause of burnout. Not only is it tiring, but there is no political thread or organization tying those issues and actions together. As we continue to grow the movement of the exploited and oppressed in Indianapolis, we can’t neglect our routines, those things that keep us united.

All member-organizations of the Center have their own patterns of internal meetings and public events. Every month, Indy Hope Packagesassembles and/or distributes while uniting with our homeless neighbors on the fourth Saturday, PSL Indianapolis hosts Liberation Forums on the last Wednesday, and the Fonseca-Du Bois Art Gallery, powered by Arte Mexicano en Indiana, unveils a new exhibit by marginalized artists on first Friday of every month.

Circle City Sangha has gathered for weekly mindfulness meetups in Indianapolis since 2021. They held their first meetup at the Center on February 1, 2025. The group practices the Plum Village Tradition of Buddhism and is committed to the liberation of all beings. On Saturdays between 9:30 – 11:00 am, everyone is welcome to join their meetings irrespective of prior experience or faith.

Later in the year, Emancipatory Motions made a home at the Center. Every Sunday between 6:00 – 8:00 pm, they engage in a yoga practice that repairs this alienation’s damage by reconnecting us with ourselves as beings in complex motion–together.

While the systems we live under isolate us from each other and ourselves, both Circle City Sangha and Emancipatory Motions serve as practical reminders that we, too, are complex beings always in motion. That motion, when collective, is key to building a movement. They amplify the cross-collaborations the Center facilitates.

Keeping the movement moving

These are just some of the major highlights of this past year; a small sample of the remarkable things the physical space of the Liberation Center enables everyday working-class and oppressed people to do. As we outgrew our old Center at 18th and Meridian, we once again looked not for what we could afford but for what the community needed. We found it.

On December 5, we officially opened the new Center—our very first storefront located at 1619 Prospect St. We were honored to have Nikki as a featured speaker, alongside Gloria La Riva and others, thankful for Hot Lamb Indy for the incredible food, and excited to see what the new Indy Liberation Store brings to the Center, the struggle, and the community.

Establishing a street-level, accessible storefront was essential when finding a home for the Indianapolis Liberation Center. Being a visible community hub in the Fountain Square neighborhood further entrenches us in the heart of Indy’s political and cultural center, especially with the close access and newfound partnerships formed with our neighbors in the community. The turnout of the grand opening of the new space proved our mission and vision of meeting the marginalized and oppressed people in our city, regardless of generational, racial, or gender divides.

This represents a major milestone for us and yet another major milestone for the struggle, a new hub for activists, organizers, artists, collectives, organizations, and others to cohere, collaborate, and work collectively to advance our mission and vision. For our project to keep going and growing, so does our support—including financial support.

We’re asking those who donate to become sustainers, those who sustain to increase their amount, and we’re asking you to speak with their friends, family, co-workers, neighbors, classmates, and everyone you know about what the Center does for our people. If each of our sustainers can attract one more, we will have the financial stability needed to grow into our new space and start working toward our next dream: a second Liberation Center in the city, one owned by the people.

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We will win!

Featured photo: A shot of our December 5 grand opening from outside. Credit: Indianapolis Liberation Center.

Let’s keep building together!