Meet the Creative and Innovative Founders of Detangled

Detangled, founded by Damien D. Smith (4910 Rosalie Productions) and Nia Weeks (Citizen SHE United) is a strategic mobilization platform creation company that collaborates with communities across the world, aiming to support their ability to mobilize each other, allies, and influencers towards a communal goal for communal change through a multipronged digital platform.

Nia Weeks

(Citizen SHE United)
Nia Weeks is a native of New Orleans and has spent years fighting for the rights of women, children, and families. Graduating with a law degree from the Loyola School of Law, her post-law school career has been immersed in work that focuses on addressing a variety of systemic issues that marginalized community members have asked to be examined. She is currently the founder and director of Citizen SHE United, which mobilizes Black women around the state to actively participate in changing the system so that it begins to work for them and their children. Her work focuses on the intersectional issues of economically and socially disadvantaged Black women in Louisiana so that they may be fully informed about their options and be given a full breadth of understanding of the total of the life impact on any decision they make.

Nia brings over 20 years of grassroots activism that includes political strategy rooted in systemic change and drafting legislation focused on intersectional community issues. As founder of Citizen SHE United, Nia has the vision to be part of the answer to righting the wrongs of systemic oppression in Louisiana. SHE is an advocacy group in Louisiana that is building an aligned base of Black women who inform, advocate for, and enact a collective policy agenda to address the needs of Black women across the state. This decentralized base is well-coordinated and supported by an interactive social media presence. Building power for Black women in Louisiana through a comprehensive strategy that builds the skills, capacity, and profiles of Black women who can advance a proactive policy agenda and represent a vibrant and activated statewide base that informs, supports, and advances Black women’s vision for Louisiana.

Nia‘s focus primarily rests on creating a place where the intersection of our communal and familial commitments can coexist with the interpersonal issues that Black women face. From formerly incarcerated women to members of The Links, Nia’s work is focused on building a base of Black women that crosses class, color, and geography. Her desire is to have Black women be active in civic engagement at every level in their city and state and nationally. This will create pathways to power for people who not only know of issues Black women face but those who will relentlessly advocate to eliminate these issues. SHE’s work is focused on elevating the experiences and creating leadership opportunities for some of the most marginalized Black women in our community. By uplifting the voices of Black women and girls locally, regionally, and nationally, we are able to directly influence how policies impact our lives and our access to human rights.

Nia Weeks, of Citizen SHE, speaks to abortion rights supporters organized by the Center for Reproductive Rights as the U.S. Supreme Court hears oral arguments in June Medical Services v. Russo on Wednesday, March 4, 2020 in Washington. (Eric Kayne/Center for Reproductive Rights)

My focus primarily rests on creating a place where the intersection of our communal and familial commitments can coexist with the interpersonal issues that Black women face. From formerly incarcerated women to members of The Links, my work is focused on building a base of Black women that crosses class, color, and geography. Her desire is to have Black women be active in civic engagement at every level in their city and state and nationally. This will create pathways to power for people who not only know of issues Black women face but those who will relentlessly advocate to eliminate these issues. SHE’s work is focused on elevating the experiences and creating leadership opportunities for some of the most marginalized Black women in our community. By uplifting the voices of Black women and girls locally, regionally, and nationally, we are able to directly influence how policies impact our lives and our access to human rights.

Damien D. Smith

(4910 Rosalie Productions)
Filmmaker Damien D. Smith is an award-winning writer/director and the founder and creative director for 4910 Rosalie Productions. Smith’s solo ventures and social justice collaborations fuel his passion. He uses the camera to tell powerful stories by using art to inspire and provoke change. The most recent documentary, Target: St. Louis Volume 1, centers on the chemical testing that took place in Northern St. Louis, which left many African Americans victims of sickness and birth defects. The St. Louis native’s work is touted across the filmmaking world for his powerful work, lending his voice to important issues facing the Black community. Smith’s short film, Daddy’s Big Girl, won the 2018 Filmmaker of the Year at Gentleman Jack Reel to Real Short Film Competition. He also is the winner of the Arts with Impact Grand Prize Award for his short, “About That.”

Born in St. Louis and raised by his grandparents, Smith developed an early appreciation for helping others. His grandmother imparted a deep-rooted passion for community, faith, and social activism. Her gift for taking care of those that were mentally, physically, or emotionally challenged planted an irreversible seed of empathy in Smith and a desire to shed light on various injustices and all of the“isms” that keep people from truly connecting. Having a desire to change narratives, Smith began creating his own films that centered around themes like fatherhood, mental health, and social advocacy. For the past 15 years, Smith has partnered with social justice organizations across the country to assist in collaborations that infuse storytelling, grassroots organizing, and issue-based campaign work with the goals of raising awareness and provoking action.

“I want to use film to teach my people how to fish. To show my people there are other opportunities in the entertainment industry besides being on-camera, to show my people what we can do and help promote the arts, and use the film to be able to show everybody ‘you can do this. Wherever I am, whatever project I am on, I will always have locals working alongside me on every aspect of the film – from crew and staff to the musical score and soundtrack. With every story, I want to show the world the community's potential. I want to show each story authentically in every aspect. Part of why I utilize film is to show other people who only have limited perceptions – and misconceptions – about people and to show off what a beautiful people we are collectively.”

Strategic Mobilization Platform Creation Company

We create multipronged strategies that assist communities, agencies, and campaigns to:

DISCOVER their role in the ecosystem
DEVELOP an integrated community engagement agenda
MOBILIZE a targeted audience toward a communal goal

DETANGLED founded by Nia Weeks and Damien D. Smith was born out of the collective work of three organizations and companies; Citizen SHE, Citizen SHE United and 4910 Rosalie Productions.

Citizen SHE (fiscally sponsored 501(c)3 and Citizen SHE United 501(c)4 are sister organizations that envision a Louisiana that respects and responds to the multidimensional needs of Black women from every walk of life. SHE’s work reorganizes Louisiana’s power structures to recognize Black women as activists, leaders, and influencers who represent a crucial base of power.

4910 Rosalie Productions is a multi-platform production company that focuses on Film, Television, & Social Activism. 4910 Rosalie's mission is to tell stories that represent the complexities of the world around us and give a voice to the voiceless.

For three years, these organizations partnered to develop a dynamic new ideology pertaining to civic engagement and participation. Utilizing an online strategy that implements a multi-pronged storytelling engagement framework, we have developed an interwoven campaign that crosses class, color, and geography. Our work is cultivated through deep listening with respect for personal experiences and an eye for weaving together collective shared experiences.

In 2020, the collaborative crafted a plan to galvanize statewide support around the C.R.O.W.N. (Create a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair) Act through an extensive Civic Engagement Campaign. During the 2020 campaign cycle, with a goal of growing our voter turnout from 157,000 Black Women voters to 300,000, we created a campaign called “Road to 300K: Detangling the Vote.” This was a multifaceted effort that included informative social media lives, docuseries, panels, posts, debate watch parties, debates, weekly facebook live shows, law review articles and a documentary of our final week of voter engagementwhere we traveled to historic places across the South meeting with Black Women about the incredible civic engagement history that Southern Black Women have had.

We engaged a diverse collection of Black Women from across the state that varied in geography, age, orientation and analysis, while working together towards a common goal. Our success was massive and we had over 270,000 Black Women show up across the state. Moreover, because of the reach and visibility of our work and centering the collective narrative around our hair, immediately following the election we had a C.R.O.W.N. Act passed in New Orleans. Most recently the Collaborative was successful is leading the organizing effort around the passing of the CROWN Act in Louisiana, the first in the Deep South.

Strategic Mobilization Platform Creation Company

We create multipronged strategies that assist communities, agencies, and campaigns to:

DISCOVER their role in the ecosystem
DEVELOP an integrated community engagement agenda
MOBILIZE a targeted audience toward a communal goal

DETANGLED founded by Nia Weeks and Damien D. Smith was born out of the collective work of three organizations and companies; Citizen SHE, Citizen SHE United and 4910 Rosalie Productions.