While DIY music culture has typically been credited as being pioneered by the white- and male-dominated punk and later hardcore scenes of the 1970s and 1980s, independent (or DIY) labels have been historic markers in the fight for creative and financial independence for artists of all genres—particularly Black artists—since as early as the 1920s.
Aja Arnold
Aja Arnold is an independent journalist based in Atlanta, Ga., and is co-founder of the Atlanta-based abolitionist media outlet Mainline. Aja began her writing career in 2017 in the music section at Creative Loafing before launching Mainline in 2019. There, she eventually dove head first into covering policing, mass incarceration, and liberation movements beginning in 2020. In 2021, Mainline broke the latest iteration of the “Cop City” story, and Aja penned the first national news report on the issue via The Intercept that same year. She has also been published in The Appeal and Vice. Today, she serves as Publisher at Mainline, plays guitar in a band, leads Mainline’s ongoing movement media training series… and other things.
