Molly Wiesman

The life and work of Leroy Moore is quite illustrious. He has started a worldwide movement involving hip hop. He’s been a Paralympian. He won an Emmy for music he contributed to a documentary.

Leroy Moore was born with cerebral palsy (CP) and grew up in Connecticut and New York. “Growing up black and disabled back then, this was before the ADA and even before the Rehabilitation Act,” he explains. During his school years, Moore’s mother advocated for him by going to the school board and getting him out of the special education classroom he was placed in in school, because, as he explains, “disabled children were segregated…” He adds that when he was in the special education class he “… wasn’t doing anything but sitting in class.”

The 1980s were an extremely eventful time for Moore. After attending a United Cerebral Palsy camp, he worked there as a counselor for a year. It was during this time that he was taken under the wings of Beverly Jackson, the director of the United Cerebral Palsy camp who herself had CP. She taught him about non-profits. He was also involved with sports teams, and qualified for the Paralympics in Seoul Korea in 1989.

Moore moved to California in 1991. After he graduated from college in 1995, he worked at a center for independent living, which he eventually left. He then went on to start his own organization called Disability Advocates of Minorities. Then he help co-found Sins Invalid with Patti Berne, a fellow disability activist. The group was created because of the lack of an art platform for people with disabilities in the Berkeley area Sins Invalid’s work was done with the purpose of being a disability justice performance project that centered people of color, queers, non-binary and trans people with disabilities. Sins Invalid became widely influential in the disability community. Moore’s next big accomplishment would flourish out of his work with Sins Invalid. “In that process, I started with Krip Hop Nation,” Moore explains.

Krip Hip Nation started almost 15 years ago as part of a radio show at a radio station in Berkeley called “Pushing Limits,” after Moore produced a three-part series for the station on hip hop artists with disabilities. By communicating with people on myspace about the project, he ended up connecting with fellow activist Keith Jones, with whom he would go on to found Krip Hop Nation. Moore describes Krip Hop Nation as “…a network of musicians with disabilities around the world.” The group was started with the purpose of being an activist space for hip hop artists with disabilities.

Music had an impact on Moore’s life from the time he was young due to his father’s vast record collection, which Moore found contained the work of many black disabled blues singers. He was also influenced by hip hop later as an adult by musicians he would see on sidewalk corners when he was living in New York. Moore wasn’t accepted into mainstream hip hop circles in New York due to his disability, and was designated by the non-disabled participants in hip hop circles as the person to “watch out for the cops.” It was due to this sort of ableism Moore experienced in mainstream hip hop circles that he was inspired to start Krip Hop Nation.

Experiences with cops as a black man with a disability have inevitably colored Moore’s views on the police. In the 1980s, Moore took an interest in cases where people with disabilities were killed by the police. (According to The Center for American Progress, 50% of people killed by law enforcement have disabilities.) Moore has a long history of activism regarding police brutality that dates back to the 1980s. He even produced a documentary entitled “Where is Hope,” about two victims of police killings in California who had mental disabilities. The film was released in 2015 at the beginning of the Black Lives Matter movement. Even when working with Sins Invalid, Moore’s attempts to educate members of the Black Likes Matter Movement on disability justice didn’t create the understanding of disability issues he hoped they would attain. There was, unfortunately, an attempt to start a dialogue between members of disability justice movements he was involved with and members of the Black Lives Matter movement that was unsuccessful, even when he tried to advocate for the many black victims of police violence who also have disabilities. Moore is frustrated by what he sees as a lack of media attention for those with disabilities who are victims of police shootings.

Like his advocacy surrounding police violence, Moore’s work with Krip Hop Nation continues and has seemed to come full circle given his paralympic history. Krip Hop Nation contributed music for “Rising Phoenix,” a documentary about a group of Paralympians preparing for the 2016 games in Rio de Janeiro. which garnered the group an Emmy award along with his fellow Krip Hip Nation co-contributors Keith Jones, Toni A Hickman and George “ TrAgic” Doman. Currently, Moore is attending the University of California Los Angeles and working toward his goal of a Phd in linguistic anthropology. Additionally, he is also currently working towards the goal of being able to purchase a building that would house what he calls a “Krip Hop Institute,” that would serve as a physical space for the group’s work. His hopes for the space includes that it will have an art gallery, music studio, library and performance space for musicians with disabilities, and to be a gathering space for disabled people in general. Moore’s hope is that the space will be ready in time for the 2024 Olympics which will be held in Los Angeles. The space would be a fitting way to commemorate the work of Krip Hop Nation.

In reflecting on Krip Hop’s legacy, Moore is quick to point out that despite his central role in the organization, the work of Krip Hop Nation goes well beyond just him. “Krip Hop is more than just myself,” he explains, adding “We’ve got chapters all over the world.” But he points out that ensuring Krip Hop continues is very much an independent effort, with the group not receiving outside assistance. He also observes that it is because of the long history and effort that has been put into building the group that Krip Hop Nation is receiving the opportunities that it is today. “What’s so amazing is that we’ve been doing this for 15 years, no grants, no money….we built this all just doing it ourselves. So now, today, things are coming to us…because we’ve built it for 15 years on our own dime,” he explains, and shares the story of a hip hop artist in Kenya who Krip Hop has helped provide funds for so that he can buy equipment to make his music, and how members of Krip Hop Nation in Uganda not only make music, but are politically active in protesting objectionable conditions that are permitted by the country’s government.

It’s ironic that Moore is now giving musicians with disabilities around the world the ability to make music after he was not given that opportunity in his youth by the “mainstream” hip hop musicians in New York. Moore’s legacy is one of speaking out on important issues such as police brutality and providing those with disabilities an opportunity to have an outlet for creative expression through music.