We Made This Mess

We are waking up to white privilege and destroying boundaries by generating difficult conversations with everyday people. In this season you can expect to hear us talking about what it means to "claim your heritage", identifying failures of past movements in order to prevent mirrored failures, the origin of white fragility, finding ways to relate to things we don't understand in order to engage more constructively, what does defund the police even mean, and how in the **** do we confront our racist families?! Click here to copy our notes and sign up for future discussions, follow our progress on Instagram, and zip us an eMail to prove us wrong, ask questions, or provide feedback. We look forward to learning and healing together!Thank you Diarra Leggett of Boomerang Bookshop for recommending Hillbilly Nationalists for this virtual discussion. For more info about Boomerang Bookshop and to show your support  CLICK HERE !! We can't stress enough the importance of buying books from independent/local bookshops like this one.

Getting to know each other! In our first episode, we break the ice on self-exposure and development by opening a conversation on race, racism, and reformative accountability.Click here to copy our notes and sign up for future discussions, follow our progress on Instagram, and zip us an eMail to prove us wrong, ask questions, or provide feedback. We look forward to learning and healing together!Thank you Diarra Leggett of Boomerang Bookshop for recommending Hillbilly Nationalists for this virtual discussion. For more info about Boomerang Bookshop and to show your support  CLICK HERE !! We can't stress enough the importance of buying books from independent/local bookshops like this one.

In this leg of the conversation, we talked about how The Young Patriots Organization actively developed a new brand of “southern pride” under the extended umbrella of the Panthers slogan “If you’re black - black pride, If you're white - white pride, etc.” This is also where “The South Will Rise Again” originated as a way to relate to and engage with the movement. Believing people make the meaning of the flag the Young Patriots adopted the confederate flag as a symbol of southern poor people's revolt against the owning class. They argued the north-south divide was created by capitalism and not the common people. The symbol opened important discussions about the history’s capitalist land grabs and divide and conquer tactics. Despite the constructive disturbance of middle-class politeness the Confederate flag was felt to be a poorly chosen symbol and created failures within the movement. Understanding what we do about “claiming our heritage” in order to engage with the movement how do you feel about this unpopular approach by the Young Patriots to reach an undeveloped audience? Let us know on Instagram or zend us an eMail to prove us wrong, ask questions, or provide feedback. Click here to copy our notes and sign up for future discussions! We look forward to learning and healing together!Thank you Diarra Leggett of Boomerang Bookshop for recommending Hillbilly Nationalists for this virtual discussion. For more info about Boomerang Bookshop and to show your support  CLICK HERE !! We can't stress enough the importance of buying books from independent/local bookshops like this one.

In this episode, we shattered our complacency and continued the conversation along with six participants from 3 different states!  The first chapter of Hillbilly Nationalists covered Peggy Terry a southern daughter who “claimed her heritage” as a way to engage with the movement which inspired dialogue about the word *heritage* and how it’s meaning has changed over time. We also learned more about how these important movements failed and we compared those failings to current events in order to make necessary connections for change. The most resounding takeaway about integration failure was learning how the integrity of the civil rights movement was compromised by too much white involvement. Ultimately, white fragility was discovered and it became clear that systematic racism was as much a psychological issue as it was a legal issue. White fragility belongs in white peer groups not in the movement. Don’t “unintentionally” cause history to repeat itself by ignoring this information: here’s your opportunity to work it out safely if you don’t already have an avenue to do so. At this point in the paragraph, you no longer have an excuse. #◼️Click here to copy our notes and sign up for future discussions, follow our progress on Instagram, and zip us an eMail to prove us wrong, ask questions, or provide feedback. We look forward to learning and healing together!Thank you Diarra Leggett of Boomerang Bookshop for recommending Hillbilly Nationalists for this virtual discussion. For more info about Boomerang Bookshop and to show your support  CLICK HERE !! We can't stress enough the importance of buying books from independent/local bookshops like this one.

When confronting white privilege radical families = radical change! How do we confront our racist parents? Were fear politics designed to keep us apart? Do we have to give things up in order to create change? If so, what does that look like? And on top of all that how in the **** do you get group dialogue flowing over zoom??Click here to copy our notes and sign up for future discussions, follow our progress on Instagram, and zip us an eMail to prove us wrong, ask questions, or provide feedback. We look forward to learning and healing together!Thank you Diarra Leggett of Boomerang Bookshop for recommending Hillbilly Nationalists for this virtual discussion. For more info about Boomerang Bookshop and to show your support  CLICK HERE !! We can't stress enough the importance of buying books from independent/local bookshops like this one.

Are we asking the police to handle too much? Have the police even considered they are overwhelmed and undertrained? What does defund the police even mean? Is the change shortage an illusion of this revolution? Are we uneducated dumb@$$es? We covered all this and more in EPISODE 5!Click here to copy our notes and sign up for future discussions, follow our progress on Instagram, and zip us an eMail to prove us wrong, ask questions, or provide feedback. We look forward to learning and healing together!Thank you Diarra Leggett of Boomerang Bookshop for recommending Hillbilly Nationalists for this virtual discussion. For more info about Boomerang Bookshop and to show your support  CLICK HERE !! We can't stress enough the importance of buying books from independent/local bookshops like this one.

Our takeaway from the last of six discussions on racism is that self-awareness isn't a skill you are born with because self-awareness isn't something that you need in order to survive. It is a characteristic you develop when/if you learn empathy. To be self-aware means you understand that your actions have consequences and you begin making choices off your developing awareness of that fact. In your own life have you ever understood something and then acted in opposition to that understanding? Most likely not, because when we know better we do better. To be white and to participate in justice for or in opposition to black lives with a herded mentality you’re contributing to nothing more than your egos fear of losing things that you value. Your opinions may be present but is your self-awareness? Do you understand what you're fighting for? To be continued…Click here to copy our notes and sign up for future discussions, follow our progress on Instagram, and zip us an eMail to prove us wrong, ask questions, or provide feedback. We look forward to learning and healing together!Thank you Diarra Leggett of Boomerang Bookshop for recommending Hillbilly Nationalists for this virtual discussion. For more info about Boomerang Bookshop and to show your support  CLICK HERE !! We can't stress enough the importance of buying books from independent/local bookshops like this one.

We are fed up with sweeping sex crimes and abuse under the rug! Join us for a four-part open discussion on addressing sex crimes and abuse in ourselves and our communities.

In part one we focused on expressing our strengths/weaknesses/ and fears, what we want to learn, what we want for ourselves and our communities, and so much more! Going into this talk created a lot of anxiety for many people but we came out of it feeling more confident. This is not a discussion based on gossip or detailing personal abuse - this is a space for identifying problems in our environments and talking through solutions, together.Click here to copy our notes and sign up for future discussions, follow our progress on Instagram, and zip us an eMail to prove us wrong, ask questions, or provide feedback. We look forward to learning and healing together!Thank you Emma "Kraugh" Weichmann for recommending What About The Rapists for this virtual discussion.

In part two we talked about the implications of cancel/call-out culture language, the importance of forming a request, an alternative accountability process, redistributing roles in our communities so policing is a last resort not a first response, and more + This leg of the discussion was riddled with tangents, side notes, free expression, and an overwhelming amount of information. It is clear there’s a lot that needs to be heard so we plan to do these four-week breakaway discussions about addressing sex crimes and abuse a few times a year - no pressure!Click here to copy our notes and sign up for future discussions, follow our progress on Instagram, and zip us an eMail to prove us wrong, ask questions, or provide feedback. We look forward to learning and healing together!Thank you Emma "Kraugh" Weichmann for recommending What About The Rapists for this virtual discussion.

In part three we focused on openly expressing our strengths and honestly it was far more difficult compared to listing weaknesses. The zine, What About The Rapists, guided the discussion towards the importance of remaining self-critical and admitting failures, how safe spaces aren’t realistic, that more effort needs to be put into prevention of sex and social abuse crimes, collective healing, how overgeneralization is a root of evil, and what’s within our means to change fem/fem crime. There’s a link in our meeting notes to the zine if you want to read it on your own time!Click here to copy our notes and sign up for future discussions, follow our progress on Instagram, and zip us an eMail to prove us wrong, ask questions, or provide feedback. We look forward to learning and healing together!Thank you Emma "Kraugh" Weichmann for recommending What About The Rapists for this virtual discussion.

Do child molesters and rapists deserve to die? Buckle up, because part-four of this group chat *went there*. We also talked about retributive vs. transformative justice, what to expect when confronting an abuser, what to do when you witness an underage assault, and the unspoken social flaw of having to offer something before receiving empathy.Click here to copy our notes and sign up for future discussions, follow our progress on Instagram, and zip us an eMail to prove us wrong, ask questions, or provide feedback. We look forward to learning and healing together!Thank you Emma "Kraugh" Weichmann for recommending What About The Rapists for this virtual discussion.