About Us

To honor our late friend, Blake Peek, who had a vehement passion for music, as well as to commemorate all the other victims of the April 27th tornadoes, we, a group of UA students, banned together to plan “Taking Back Tuscaloosa,” a benefit concert for the tornado relief. The violent storm not only took lives, it blew away the town where we all met and shared late nights, laughter and life lessons. Like Tuscaloosa, our hearts are broken, the pieces scattered amongst the mangled rubble of metal and wood we used to call home.

It will take years to rebuild a community that was destroyed in a matter of mere seconds. Hundreds of millions of dollars in damage were caused by the storm statewide, and many families are completely homeless. Not only is there a dire need for food and water, but basic every day living essentials such as toilet paper, diapers, soap, etc. Thus, as a team of highly driven UA students, we have set a considerably ambitious goal of raising $1 million for the tornado relief.

As survivors of the storm ourselves, we were all fortunate enough to barely miss the wrath of the beastly tornado. Though our houses were left unscathed, the storm scarred us both mentally and emotionally. As such, we understand the potential impact this event has on the people who survived the damages caused by the tornado. Our next ambitious goal is to get enough sponsorship to overwrite the expenses for a few tornado victims to attend the Taking Back Tuscaloosa
concert as a way to provide some emotional relief and support.
We want this concert to take the nation by storm… and with a force ten times greater than an EF-5 tornado! As Alabama is still in need of substantial assistance, we are working to bring in celebrities with high media exposure to encourage continual participation in the relief efforts.

We have already received an overwhelming amount of support on this project. Within a few hours of posting our Facebook event page, we received over 3,500 event confirmations. At one point that evening, we were receiving 2-4 confirms per minute, before we could even invite our own friends! In less than 12 hours, we totaled over 3,600 event confirmations. However, because of the tremendous response, Facebook temporarily disabled our event page, believing it was spam ‘via technical measures.’ Currently, we are working diligently with them to reacquire the Taking Back Tuscaloosa event page, and we expect it to be back soon.

We hope to keep the momentum rolling for the Taking Back Tuscaloosa movement, as this is a cause that is close to our heart. We have already begun our fundraising efforts by selling Taking Back Tuscaloosa T-shirts, available online at www.takingbacktuscaloosa.org. Thousands of people still need our help, and it is our firm conviction that together we can make a difference. Together we are TAKING BACK TUSCALOOSA!