Podcasts about audrey lorde

In this episode on the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liutalks with Tao Leigh Goffe about her new, magisterial Dark Laboratory: On Columbus, the Caribbean, and the Origins of the Climate Crisis. Spanning many fields and disciplines in the natural sciences, social sciences, the humanities, and the arts, Professor Goffe weaves together a historically rich and geographically complex picture of how capitalism and racism undergird the climate crisis in ways made invisible or benign via the work of the west's “dark laboratory.” Writing back through accounts of indigenous bird watching and Black provisional grounds, we talk about things as seemingly different as the massive guano industry built on Chinese and Indian labor in the 19th century to Malcolm X's boyhood vegetable garden in Michigan. We talk in particular about one of the key passages of Dark Laboratory, where Tao writes:“Still, we manage to create a poetics out of that which wishes to destroy us and the planet. How else will we be able to live in ‘the after'? We must reassess what a problem is. Living is not a problem, as Audrey Lorde reminds us. I would add that dying is not a problem either. Decomposing is essential to the natural order and cycle of life. Living at the expense of others is a problem.”Tao Leigh Goffe is a writer, theorist, and interdisciplinary artist who grew up between the UK and New York City. For the past fifteen years she has specialized in colonial histories of race, geology, climate, and media technologies. Dr. Goffe lives and works in Manhattan where she is an Associate Professor at CUNY in Black Studies. She teaches classes on literary theory and cultural history. Dr. Goffe's book on how the climate crisis is a racial crisis is called DARK LABORATORY (Doubleday and Hamish Hamilton (Penguin UK, 2025). Her second book BLACK CAPITAL, CHINESE DEBT, under contract with Duke University Press, presents a long history of racialization, modern finance, and indebtedness. It brings together subjects of the Atlantic and Pacific markets from 1806 to the present under European colonialism. Dr. Goffe is a fellow at the Harvard University Kennedy School in racial justice. Her research explores Black diasporic intellectual histories, political, and ecological life. She studied English literature at Princeton University before earning her PhD at Yale University. Dr. Goffe's research and curatorial work is rooted in literatures and theories of labor that center Black feminist engagements with Indigeneity and Asian diasporic racial formations. Committed to building intellectual communities beyond institutions, she is the founder of the Dark Laboratory, an engine for the study of race, technology, and ecology through digital storytelling. Dr. Goffe is also the Executive Director of the Afro-Asia Group, an organization that centers the intersections of African and Asian diasporas, futurity, and radical coalition towards sovereignty. www.palumbo-liu.comhttps://speakingoutofplace.comBluesky @palumboliu.bsky.socialInstagram @speaking_out_of_place

In this episode on the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liutalks with Tao Leigh Goffe about her new, magisterial Dark Laboratory: On Columbus, the Caribbean, and the Origins of the Climate Crisis. Spanning many fields and disciplines in the natural sciences, social sciences, the humanities, and the arts, Professor Goffe weaves together a historically rich and geographically complex picture of how capitalism and racism undergird the climate crisis in ways made invisible or benign via the work of the west's “dark laboratory.” Writing back through accounts of indigenous bird watching and Black provisional grounds, we talk about things as seemingly different as the massive guano industry built on Chinese and Indian labor in the 19th century to Malcolm X's boyhood vegetable garden in Michigan. We talk in particular about one of the key passages of Dark Laboratory, where Tao writes:“Still, we manage to create a poetics out of that which wishes to destroy us and the planet. How else will we be able to live in ‘the after'? We must reassess what a problem is. Living is not a problem, as Audrey Lorde reminds us. I would add that dying is not a problem either. Decomposing is essential to the natural order and cycle of life. Living at the expense of others is a problem.”Tao Leigh Goffe is a writer, theorist, and interdisciplinary artist who grew up between the UK and New York City. For the past fifteen years she has specialized in colonial histories of race, geology, climate, and media technologies. Dr. Goffe lives and works in Manhattan where she is an Associate Professor at CUNY in Black Studies. She teaches classes on literary theory and cultural history. Dr. Goffe's book on how the climate crisis is a racial crisis is called DARK LABORATORY (Doubleday and Hamish Hamilton (Penguin UK, 2025). Her second book BLACK CAPITAL, CHINESE DEBT, under contract with Duke University Press, presents a long history of racialization, modern finance, and indebtedness. It brings together subjects of the Atlantic and Pacific markets from 1806 to the present under European colonialism. Dr. Goffe is a fellow at the Harvard University Kennedy School in racial justice. Her research explores Black diasporic intellectual histories, political, and ecological life. She studied English literature at Princeton University before earning her PhD at Yale University. Dr. Goffe's research and curatorial work is rooted in literatures and theories of labor that center Black feminist engagements with Indigeneity and Asian diasporic racial formations. Committed to building intellectual communities beyond institutions, she is the founder of the Dark Laboratory, an engine for the study of race, technology, and ecology through digital storytelling. Dr. Goffe is also the Executive Director of the Afro-Asia Group, an organization that centers the intersections of African and Asian diasporas, futurity, and radical coalition towards sovereignty. www.palumbo-liu.comhttps://speakingoutofplace.comBluesky @palumboliu.bsky.socialInstagram @speaking_out_of_place

In this episode on the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liutalks with Tao Leigh Goffe about her new, magisterial Dark Laboratory: On Columbus, the Caribbean, and the Origins of the Climate Crisis. Spanning many fields and disciplines in the natural sciences, social sciences, the humanities, and the arts, Professor Goffe weaves together a historically rich and geographically complex picture of how capitalism and racism undergird the climate crisis in ways made invisible or benign via the work of the west's “dark laboratory.” Writing back through accounts of indigenous bird watching and Black provisional grounds, we talk about things as seemingly different as the massive guano industry built on Chinese and Indian labor in the 19th century to Malcolm X's boyhood vegetable garden in Michigan. We talk in particular about one of the key passages of Dark Laboratory, where Tao writes:“Still, we manage to create a poetics out of that which wishes to destroy us and the planet. How else will we be able to live in ‘the after'? We must reassess what a problem is. Living is not a problem, as Audrey Lorde reminds us. I would add that dying is not a problem either. Decomposing is essential to the natural order and cycle of life. Living at the expense of others is a problem.”Tao Leigh Goffe is a writer, theorist, and interdisciplinary artist who grew up between the UK and New York City. For the past fifteen years she has specialized in colonial histories of race, geology, climate, and media technologies. Dr. Goffe lives and works in Manhattan where she is an Associate Professor at CUNY in Black Studies. She teaches classes on literary theory and cultural history. Dr. Goffe's book on how the climate crisis is a racial crisis is called DARK LABORATORY (Doubleday and Hamish Hamilton (Penguin UK, 2025). Her second book BLACK CAPITAL, CHINESE DEBT, under contract with Duke University Press, presents a long history of racialization, modern finance, and indebtedness. It brings together subjects of the Atlantic and Pacific markets from 1806 to the present under European colonialism. Dr. Goffe is a fellow at the Harvard University Kennedy School in racial justice. Her research explores Black diasporic intellectual histories, political, and ecological life. She studied English literature at Princeton University before earning her PhD at Yale University. Dr. Goffe's research and curatorial work is rooted in literatures and theories of labor that center Black feminist engagements with Indigeneity and Asian diasporic racial formations. Committed to building intellectual communities beyond institutions, she is the founder of the Dark Laboratory, an engine for the study of race, technology, and ecology through digital storytelling. Dr. Goffe is also the Executive Director of the Afro-Asia Group, an organization that centers the intersections of African and Asian diasporas, futurity, and radical coalition towards sovereignty. www.palumbo-liu.comhttps://speakingoutofplace.comBluesky @palumboliu.bsky.socialInstagram @speaking_out_of_place

In this episode on the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liutalks with Tao Leigh Goffe about her new, magisterial Dark Laboratory: On Columbus, the Caribbean, and the Origins of the Climate Crisis. Spanning many fields and disciplines in the natural sciences, social sciences, the humanities, and the arts, Professor Goffe weaves together a historically rich and geographically complex picture of how capitalism and racism undergird the climate crisis in ways made invisible or benign via the work of the west's “dark laboratory.” Writing back through accounts of indigenous bird watching and Black provisional grounds, we talk about things as seemingly different as the massive guano industry built on Chinese and Indian labor in the 19th century to Malcolm X's boyhood vegetable garden in Michigan. We talk in particular about one of the key passages of Dark Laboratory, where Tao writes:“Still, we manage to create a poetics out of that which wishes to destroy us and the planet. How else will we be able to live in ‘the after'? We must reassess what a problem is. Living is not a problem, as Audrey Lorde reminds us. I would add that dying is not a problem either. Decomposing is essential to the natural order and cycle of life. Living at the expense of others is a problem.”Tao Leigh Goffe is a writer, theorist, and interdisciplinary artist who grew up between the UK and New York City. For the past fifteen years she has specialized in colonial histories of race, geology, climate, and media technologies. Dr. Goffe lives and works in Manhattan where she is an Associate Professor at CUNY in Black Studies. She teaches classes on literary theory and cultural history. Dr. Goffe's book on how the climate crisis is a racial crisis is called DARK LABORATORY (Doubleday and Hamish Hamilton (Penguin UK, 2025). Her second book BLACK CAPITAL, CHINESE DEBT, under contract with Duke University Press, presents a long history of racialization, modern finance, and indebtedness. It brings together subjects of the Atlantic and Pacific markets from 1806 to the present under European colonialism. Dr. Goffe is a fellow at the Harvard University Kennedy School in racial justice. Her research explores Black diasporic intellectual histories, political, and ecological life. She studied English literature at Princeton University before earning her PhD at Yale University. Dr. Goffe's research and curatorial work is rooted in literatures and theories of labor that center Black feminist engagements with Indigeneity and Asian diasporic racial formations. Committed to building intellectual communities beyond institutions, she is the founder of the Dark Laboratory, an engine for the study of race, technology, and ecology through digital storytelling. Dr. Goffe is also the Executive Director of the Afro-Asia Group, an organization that centers the intersections of African and Asian diasporas, futurity, and radical coalition towards sovereignty. www.palumbo-liu.comhttps://speakingoutofplace.comBluesky @palumboliu.bsky.socialInstagram @speaking_out_of_place

In this episode on the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liutalks with Tao Leigh Goffe about her new, magisterial Dark Laboratory: On Columbus, the Caribbean, and the Origins of the Climate Crisis. Spanning many fields and disciplines in the natural sciences, social sciences, the humanities, and the arts, Professor Goffe weaves together a historically rich and geographically complex picture of how capitalism and racism undergird the climate crisis in ways made invisible or benign via the work of the west's “dark laboratory.” Writing back through accounts of indigenous bird watching and Black provisional grounds, we talk about things as seemingly different as the massive guano industry built on Chinese and Indian labor in the 19th century to Malcolm X's boyhood vegetable garden in Michigan. We talk in particular about one of the key passages of Dark Laboratory, where Tao writes:“Still, we manage to create a poetics out of that which wishes to destroy us and the planet. How else will we be able to live in ‘the after'? We must reassess what a problem is. Living is not a problem, as Audrey Lorde reminds us. I would add that dying is not a problem either. Decomposing is essential to the natural order and cycle of life. Living at the expense of others is a problem.”Tao Leigh Goffe is a writer, theorist, and interdisciplinary artist who grew up between the UK and New York City. For the past fifteen years she has specialized in colonial histories of race, geology, climate, and media technologies. Dr. Goffe lives and works in Manhattan where she is an Associate Professor at CUNY in Black Studies. She teaches classes on literary theory and cultural history. Dr. Goffe's book on how the climate crisis is a racial crisis is called DARK LABORATORY (Doubleday and Hamish Hamilton (Penguin UK, 2025). Her second book BLACK CAPITAL, CHINESE DEBT, under contract with Duke University Press, presents a long history of racialization, modern finance, and indebtedness. It brings together subjects of the Atlantic and Pacific markets from 1806 to the present under European colonialism. Dr. Goffe is a fellow at the Harvard University Kennedy School in racial justice. Her research explores Black diasporic intellectual histories, political, and ecological life. She studied English literature at Princeton University before earning her PhD at Yale University. Dr. Goffe's research and curatorial work is rooted in literatures and theories of labor that center Black feminist engagements with Indigeneity and Asian diasporic racial formations. Committed to building intellectual communities beyond institutions, she is the founder of the Dark Laboratory, an engine for the study of race, technology, and ecology through digital storytelling. Dr. Goffe is also the Executive Director of the Afro-Asia Group, an organization that centers the intersections of African and Asian diasporas, futurity, and radical coalition towards sovereignty. www.palumbo-liu.comhttps://speakingoutofplace.comBluesky @palumboliu.bsky.socialInstagram @speaking_out_of_place

In this episode on the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liutalks with Tao Leigh Goffe about her new, magisterial Dark Laboratory: On Columbus, the Caribbean, and the Origins of the Climate Crisis. Spanning many fields and disciplines in the natural sciences, social sciences, the humanities, and the arts, Professor Goffe weaves together a historically rich and geographically complex picture of how capitalism and racism undergird the climate crisis in ways made invisible or benign via the work of the west's “dark laboratory.” Writing back through accounts of indigenous bird watching and Black provisional grounds, we talk about things as seemingly different as the massive guano industry built on Chinese and Indian labor in the 19th century to Malcolm X's boyhood vegetable garden in Michigan. We talk in particular about one of the key passages of Dark Laboratory, where Tao writes:“Still, we manage to create a poetics out of that which wishes to destroy us and the planet. How else will we be able to live in ‘the after'? We must reassess what a problem is. Living is not a problem, as Audrey Lorde reminds us. I would add that dying is not a problem either. Decomposing is essential to the natural order and cycle of life. Living at the expense of others is a problem.”Tao Leigh Goffe is a writer, theorist, and interdisciplinary artist who grew up between the UK and New York City. For the past fifteen years she has specialized in colonial histories of race, geology, climate, and media technologies. Dr. Goffe lives and works in Manhattan where she is an Associate Professor at CUNY in Black Studies. She teaches classes on literary theory and cultural history. Dr. Goffe's book on how the climate crisis is a racial crisis is called DARK LABORATORY (Doubleday and Hamish Hamilton (Penguin UK, 2025). Her second book BLACK CAPITAL, CHINESE DEBT, under contract with Duke University Press, presents a long history of racialization, modern finance, and indebtedness. It brings together subjects of the Atlantic and Pacific markets from 1806 to the present under European colonialism. Dr. Goffe is a fellow at the Harvard University Kennedy School in racial justice. Her research explores Black diasporic intellectual histories, political, and ecological life. She studied English literature at Princeton University before earning her PhD at Yale University. Dr. Goffe's research and curatorial work is rooted in literatures and theories of labor that center Black feminist engagements with Indigeneity and Asian diasporic racial formations. Committed to building intellectual communities beyond institutions, she is the founder of the Dark Laboratory, an engine for the study of race, technology, and ecology through digital storytelling. Dr. Goffe is also the Executive Director of the Afro-Asia Group, an organization that centers the intersections of African and Asian diasporas, futurity, and radical coalition towards sovereignty. www.palumbo-liu.comhttps://speakingoutofplace.comBluesky @palumboliu.bsky.socialInstagram @speaking_out_of_place

Today I talk with Tao Leigh Goffe about her new, magisterial Dark Laboratory: On Columbus, the Caribbean, and the Origins of the Climate Crisis.  Spanning many fields and disciplines in the natural sciences, social sciences, the humanities and the arts, Professor Goffe weaves together an historically rich and geographically complex picture of how capitalism and racism undergird the climate crisis in ways made invisible or benign via the work of the west's “dark laboratory.”  Writing back through accounts of indigenous bird watching and Black provisional grounds, we talk about things as seemingly different as the massive guano industry built on Chinese and Indian labor in the 19th century to Malcolm-X's boyhood vegetable garden in Michigan.  We talk in particular about one of the key passages of Dark Laboratory, where Tao writes:“Still, we manage to create a poetics out of that which wishes to destroy us and the planet.  How else will we be able to live in ‘the after'? We must reassess what a problem is.  Living is not a problem, as Audrey Lorde reminds us. I would add that dying is not a problem either. Decomposing is essential to the natural order and cycle of life. Living at the expense of others is a problem.”Tao Leigh Goffe is a writer, theorist, and interdisciplinary artist who grew up between the UK and New York City. For the past fifteen years she has specialized in colonial histories of race, geology, climate, and media technologies. Dr. Goffe lives and works in Manhattan where she is an Associate Professor at CUNY in Black Studies. She teaches classes on literary theory and cultural history. Dr. Goffe's book on how the climate crisis is a racial crisis is called DARK LABORATORY (Doubleday and Hamish Hamilton (Penguin UK, 2025)). Her second book BLACK CAPITAL, CHINESE DEBT, under contract with Duke University Press, presents a long history of racialization, modern finance, and indebtedness. It brings together subjects of the Atlantic and Pacific markets from 1806 to the present under European colonialism. Dr. Goffe is a fellow at the Harvard University Kennedy School in racial justice. Her research explores Black diasporic intellectual histories, political, and ecological life. She studied English literature at Princeton University before earning her PhD at Yale University. Dr. Goffe's research and curatorial work is rooted in literatures and theories of labor that center Black feminist engagements with Indigeneity and Asian diasporic racial formations. Committed to building intellectual communities beyond institutions, she is the founder of the Dark Laboratory, an engine for the study of race, technology, and ecology through digital storytelling. Dr. Goffe is also the Executive Director of the Afro-Asia Group, an organization that centers the intersections of African and Asian diasporas, futurity, and radical coalition towards sovereignty.   

"Ik wil de rest van mijn leven, hoe kort of lang, met zoveel aardigheid leven als mogelijk, houden van alle mensen van wie ik houd, en zoveel mogelijk van het werk doen dat ik nog moet doen. Ik ga met vuur schrijven tot het uit mijn oren komt, mijn ogen, mijn neusgaten, overal. Totdat het elke adem is die ik adem. Ik ga eruit als een fucking meteoor!" - Stine vraagt Dichter des Vaderlands Babs Gons meer te vertellen over dit citaat van de Amerikaanse dichteres Audrey Lorde. 

Our love for the world around us and our passion for protecting that world can come from many different places. It can come from a connection to the land, or a magical experience we had with other people in a particular place, or our sense of awe from the beauty of the living creatures that inhabit these ecosystems. But that love and passion can also come from seeing or experiencing the destruction of the same ecological web, from pollution in the air that rains down onto a playground, or the clearing of a wildlife habitat to make way for a fossil fuel pipeline.Dave Cortez has been organizing for environmental justice in Texas for the better part of two decades. He lives in Austin now, but the love and passion that guides him came from the Rio Grande, the Sierra Madre Mountains and the high desert of West Texas. And from fighting a copper smelter and other threats to the land, air and water in and around his native El Paso. Dave has a fierce love for his El Paso Community. But cutting his teeth as an environmental justice organizer in his hometown wasn't easy. Dave is now Director of the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club, where he's bringing his El Paso roots and years of experience on the streets and in the communities around Texas to the Sierra Club's statewide campaigns.I've known Dave for many years and used to regularly attend environmental justice meetings in Austin that he helped organize. I've seen him rise from an on-the-ground organizer to the leader of the Texas chapter of one of the oldest and largest environmental organizations in the world.Our conversation tracks his education as an environmental justice organizer. From the playgrounds of El Paso to the gentrifying neighborhoods of Austin, his story reflects the changing nature of the American environmental movement and the exciting possibilities of more robust connections between community-based frontline environmental justice struggles and the large and powerful environmental organizations with nationwide influence.You can listen on Substack, Apple Podcasts, and other podcast platforms.Please rate, review, and share to help us spread the word!Dave CortezDave Cortez is a 3rd generation El Pasoan now based out of Austin where he lives with his partner and six year old daughter. He grew up and learned organizing on the frontera, where industrial pollution, poverty, gentrification, racism and the border wall are seen as intersecting issues. Dave serves as the Director of the Sierra Club Lone Star Chapter, and has been organizing in the Texas environmental movement for 18 years. Dave is supporting staff and volunteers across Texas who are organizing for power by centering racial justice and equity alongside frontline communities directly impacted by polluting industries.Quotation Read by Dave Cortez"There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives. Malcolm knew this. Martin Luther King, Jr. knew this. Our struggles are particular, but we are not alone. We are not perfect, but we are stronger and wiser than the sum of our errors. Black people have been here before us and survived. We can read their lives like signposts on the road and find, as Bernice Reagon says so poignantly, that each one of us is here because somebody before us did something to make it possible. To learn from their mistakes is not to lessen our debt to them, nor to the hard work of becoming ourselves, and effective. We lose our history so easily, what is not predigested for us by the New York Times, or the Amsterdam News, or Time magazine. Maybe because we do not listen to our poets or to our fools, maybe because we do not listen to our mamas in ourselves. When I hear the deepest truths I speak coming out of my mouth sounding like my mother's, even remembering how I fought against her, I have to reassess both our relationship as well as the sources of my knowing. Which is not to say that I have to romanticize my mother in order to appreciate what she gave me – Woman, Black. We do not have to romanticize our past in order to be aware of how it seeds our present. We do not have to suffer the waste of an amnesia that robs us of the lessons of the past rather than permit us to read them with pride as well as deep understanding. We know what it is to be lied to, and we know how important it is not to lie to ourselves. We are powerful because we have survived, and that is what it is all about – survival and growth. Within each one of us there is some piece of humanness that knows we are not being served by the machine which orchestrates crisis after crisis and is grinding all our futures into dust. If we are to keep the enormity of the forces aligned against us from establishing a false hierarchy of oppression, we must school ourselves to recognize that any attack against Blacks, any attack against women, is an attack against all of us who recognize that our interests are not being served by the systems we support. Each one of us here is a link in the connection between anti-poor legislation, gay shootings, the burning of synagogues, street harassment, attacks against women, and resurgent violence against Black people. I ask myself as well as each one of you, exactly what alteration in the particular fabric of my everyday life does this connection call for? Survival is not a theory. In what way do I contribute to the subjugation of any part of those who I define as my people? Insight must illuminate the particulars of our lives." - Audre LordeRecommended Readings & MediaTranscriptIntroJohn Fiege  Our love for the world around us and our passion for protecting that world can come from many different places. It can come from a connection to the land, or a magical experience we had with other people in a particular place, or our sense of awe from the beauty of the living creatures that inhabit these ecosystems. But that love and passion can also come from seeing or experiencing the destruction of this same ecological web: from pollution in the air that rains down onto a playground or the clearing of wildlife habitat to make way for a fossil fuel pipeline.Dave Cortez has been organizing for environmental justice in Texas for the better part of two decades. He lives in Austin now, but the love and passion that guides him came from the Rio Grande, the Sierra Madre mountains, and the high desert of West Texas—and it came from fighting a copper smelter and other threats to the land, air, and water in and around his native El Paso. Dave has a fierce love for his El Paso community but cutting his teeth as an environmental justice organizer in his home town wasn't easy.Dave Cortez  Two of my close family members worked at the plant. My dad's brother worked at the plant and then worked at Chevron on the other side of town. And then his brother in law, worked at the plant and retired. And here I was, this younger punk, you know, sort of just not super close to the family, showing up at events and they asked what I'm doing and, oh, they think I'm a paid protester, you know, forget my education, forget what's at what I'm actually saying. You know, it's, deep cultural assimilation. It's deep colonization, sort of this Stockholm syndrome that develops out of poverty and repression. It's horrific, and it's sad to watch. People fiercely defend the only thing that has helped them in their eyes and not be able to acknowledge the harm that's been done. It's not different from, you know, addiction in that way, or depression.John Fiege  Or domestic abuse. Dave Cortez  Exactly. It's heartbreaking. It still hurts me to talk about. John Fiege  I'm John Fiege, and this is Chrysalis.Dave Cortez is now Director of the Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club, where he's bringing his El Paso roots and years of experience on the streets and in the communities around Texas to the Sierra Club's statewide campaigns.I've known Dave for many years and used to regularly attend environmental justice meetings in Austin that he helped organize. I've seen him rise from an on-the-ground organizer to the leader of the Texas chapter of one of the oldest and largest environmental organizations in the world.Our conversation tracks his education as an environmental justice organizer. From the playgrounds of El Paso to the gentrifying neighborhoods of Austin, his story reflects the changing nature of the American environmental movement and the exciting possibilities of more robust connections between community-based frontline environmental justice struggles and the large and powerful environmental organizations with nationwide influence.Here is Dave Cortez.ConversationJohn FiegeWell, you grew up in El Paso in Far West Texas, and it's right on the border of Mexico and New Mexico. Can you tell me a bit about growing up there, and your family and how you saw yourself in relationship to the rest of nature.Dave Cortez  I've got a little picture I'm looking at my my very first demonstration. It's a bunch of kids, kids meaning college kids, my my age at the time, about maybe 22, 23, and a big peace flag and we're hanging around what was called Plaza de Los Lagartos, Plaza of the Alligators. And we're there I think we're protesting, must have been continuing invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, but you know, I keep it up. And I keep pictures of the mountains of West Texas, the edge of the Rockies is what cuts into the central central part of El Paso, the Franklin Mountains. And then you have the Rio Grande, the heart and soul of that land. And on the other side of the river, those mountains continue into the Sierra Madres all the way down to the coast. It's majestic. It's, you know, that land is as colonized as is its people. You know, it's been, the river has been dammed up upstream in New Mexico, and two reservoirs to provide water for agriculture and farming and things like that, recreation. It was the only area of water that we we had access to when I was a kid. We would drive up to Truth or Consequences and load up on nightcrawlers and whatever other tackle and bait, and then take my dad's car and drive along somewhere, find a good spot. And fish from the shore for a couple of days at a time, camp, and, you know, that was a desert lake. It was wild for me, because we didn't have water, you know.John Fiege  So tell me about what you did. Dave Cortez  Well, we would just go up there. That was, that was our place to go get get access to water, you know, away from the desert, you know, growing up in El Paso, you just, it's It's dry, it's desert, we get, we used to average nine inches of rain a year, it's down now, you know, but the Rio was, it's always been sacred and it was special, it was a place you could go and see water. Not all year round, but most of the year and see it flowing and you look in any direction, away from the mountains, and you can see what feels endless, but it's actually you know, two or more hundred miles to the horizon, you see Thunder heads 30, 40, sometimes 45 or 50,000 feet high way far away, you think maybe you hope maybe those might come your way, maybe we'll get lucky and get a little bit of rain. Most times they don't. But with that sometimes you're blessed with the outflow that carries the smell of creosote, a native plant in the region that everybody's come to call the smell of rain. And, you know, even if you don't actually get the rain yourself, you might get some of those breezes and some of that wonderful smell. And it's, it's life giving, it's restorative. As a kid, you know, I was fortunate that my family made an effort to take us out into the desert quite a bit, we would go chase storms, we would watch lightning, my father would turn the AM radio to a blank station so we could hear the the lightning on the radio, the static pop. And we got a real kick out of that and we'd go off roading and find spots and park and you know, just hang out. And that was a pretty common thing for a lot of folks around town is just to get out into the desert. You know, my my heart and soul and my spirit is connected to that land, it is part of that land, I draw strength from those mountains, from that river. I worry about moving further away, what that might do to me, how how that might be a strain. Even just being here in Austin 600 miles away, it feels very far. You know, my family was middle class, I call it 80s middle class. And, you know, both my parents worked. I have two older siblings. And you know, we were all in public school and doing our thing. You know, everything seemed, you know, like The Wonder Years kind of situation. And you know, you don't when you're young, if you're fortunate, you don't see a lot of the issues around you. It wasn't until my teens, my parents split. And I was living with my mom and started to see a lot more other sides of life, some of the struggles, and just kind of notice more about the town, about the culture. But it was really when I moved back to El Paso after college, here in Austin at St. Edward's, where I studied political science and philosophy and environmental policy. When I moved back, it all started to come together how much I missed, how much I was removed from about my community and my culture in my youth. You know, so the language is the biggest example. We did not speak Spanish in my family. It was something my parents spoke to each other when they needed to talk about something that we didn't need to know about as kids. John Fiege  Right, right. Dave Cortez  You know, we didn't know about our indigeneity we weren't raised around that, we didn't know about the cultural connection to the land. I think in some way the spirit in my family drew us towards it. We would go spend time around those things, but we didn't really have conversations about it. And the biggest thing I didn't know about was how heavily polluted and contaminated the air was growing up. I tell a story about going into middle school. This time I was in in private school and Catholic school. Just being out on the playground it's a you know, concrete schoolyard kind of situation. And you run your hand on the on the railing and there's yellow chalk-like stuff and you don't think twice about it because it's like chalk. Or it's dust. Well, you know, in that part of town, downtown El Paso, it's because of the copper smelter. We had a 110 year old lead and copper smelting operation called Asarco that was less than two miles away from where I was going to school. And you know, you move on, maybe, you're a kid, maybe you wash your hands, maybe you don't. And it just, you know, when I moved back, I thought of that--I thought of all the times, I used to play in the dirt, like every other kid in El Paso does, you know, you don't got Barton Springs to go to or Greenbelt Creek, you play in the dirt, dig tunnels, and that stuff gets in you. And that's loaded with heavy metals, arsenic, cadmium, lead, you name it. It was it was a huge shock for me to learn that the land that I was around as a child, and the air that I was around as a child was just heavily contaminated. And I knew nothing about it. John Fiege  But what was the experience like when you were actually in college and getting more heavily into activism? Like what was motivating you? And how did you see yourself in relationship to other folks?Dave Cortez  Right on. Well, I can't leave out that the reason I came to Austin was because of my older brother and my older sister. I had never seen green, like this town, when I came to visit my sister in the summer. So I just was blown away, everything was green, there was water, it rained, I just felt like an oasis and I wanted to come here. So I went to St. Ed's, which ended up being, you know, expensive as hell, but really cool in the sense of, you know, an opportunity to learn, to be away from home. You know, and so, I didn't really know what to make of this town when I was here. I didn't know what to make of the people, the students, but by the grace of the Creator, in serendipity, I was thrown into a class on social movements. And that's a study in the 1960s. And so, you know, I developed a really foundational experience learning about the broader politic of American civil society, in that case, which blossomed into deeper learning around political theory and rhetoric, dating all the way back to some of the Greek philosophers, and modern day political thinkers, but I really got a ton of wild information into my head. In 2006, it wasn't here in Austin. It was on North Padre Island. The Austin Sierra Club was organizing a trip, there was a woman I liked at the time. And we were were fancying each other and were like, "Hey, let's go camping. I don't know what a crawfish is. But they're doing a crawfish boil. And they say they're going to clean up the beach." So we grabbed my SUV when we went and set up, and it was awesome to be out there around all these people we didn't know, you know, offering us free food and beer and just, you know, associating on this beach. And that, I really loved. Folks might not know this, it's like 60 plus miles of primitive Beach, outside of Corpus Christi. But I didn't quite understand what we're really doing until the next morning, right at dawn, when I was awoken by these huge sounds of tractor trailers hauling right by the water right in front of us. Just a caravan of them driving down to the other end of the beach to do gas drilling. You know, we get out of the tent, and we're watching this and I mean, you just want to, you know, throw something at those trucks, you know, and go put your body in front or something like "What the hell's going on?" And you're just watching the rubber, the plastic, you name it just fall off these trucks. And in their wake is just a mass of debris, and trash. And this is all in endangered Kemp's ridley sea turtle habitat, its nest a nesting area for the Kemp's ridley sea turtle. And that's why we were there. And so, you know, right after that we all commiserated and got to work and picked up more trash than I think, you know, I've ever picked up. And I'm still shocked that that was allowed. But that's really where I started to take a turn and understand more about how the state facilitates this destruction, the destruction of the land and for the profits of few. And shortly after that I graduated, and that was it for my time in Austin.John Fiege  So after you graduated from college, you went back to El Paso, and you became an environmental justice organizer for El Paso, ACORN. And it was shortly after your time there in 2009, that right wing activists did a big hit job on ACORN and brought down the organization in the US for the most part. An ACORN was was a powerful community organizing group at its height, and it had this unique community based organizing model. Could you talk a bit about the ACORN organizing model and how it, possibly, I assume, became part of your organizing DNA?Dave Cortez  Just like learning about the 1960s is a pillar of my practice. The  work with Acorn is right there with it. You know, it shaped me, maybe it's just because it's one of the first things I learned about, but it'll be with me, as long as I do this work and have breath in my lungs. You know, some people were quick to point to that it's built out of the school of the Industrial Areas Foundation and Saul Alinsky model of community organizing, and yeah, that's true. But, you know, I didn't know any of that. I didn't, you know, I was, I was just taken in by these folks. There was a guy, recovering addict, just trying to make his money doing his canvassing while I was hanging out at a coffee shop, kind of where I was living in El Paso, the university. And there's my day off and I'm out there hanging out. There's this dude, his name was Ken. Ken let me know how they were planning to reopen the ASARCO copper smelter, the big 120 820 foot tall smokestack that I grew up around, and I was shocked. And, and that's, you know, like I studied all these things. And I was like, wow, I cannot believe that that's right there, my mom lives over here, you know, she works there, I live over here. And, you know, I told them, whatever I can do to help: get more letters, spread a petition around, whatever I can do. And they invited me in to meet the team, which was a small team. And the first task they gave me was actually nothing to do with that it was just to go distribute information about free tax prep, helping people in a really poor community, not far from where I went to middle school in which is not far from the smelter, get access to tax prep, in English and Spanish. And at the time, I had a, I had a mohawk. I covered that thing up real fast. I wore a straw cowboy hat and went door to door knocking on people's doors, let them know about this. And Jose Manuel, the the lead organizer at the time, the director saw me and, you know, was into it. And, you know, they offered me a job after a few days of that. And the job was doing the same thing, plus inviting people to come to a community meeting about the reopening of ASARCO. So here's a way that we can help you. With some, you know, with your money, basically, your your bottom line, and also, there's a situation happening, that can affect and will affect your your health and well being, and the safety of your family. At the time, I didn't realize that there was a very intentional strategy there. But that strategy is essential to the work that we do as environmentalists and in climate justice activists around the country, and here in Texas, people are struggling, and you got to find ways to help them directly with what they're struggling with day to day, which is often their pocketbooks. And so if you can do that, you're going to build some trust, you can build some relationships, and then you might be lucky to talk to them about another bigger, more complicated issue.John Fiege  That seems to be, like, a really beautiful definition of the difference between environmental justice organizing, and traditional environmental organizing, where environmental justice organizing, you have to start with the community, and make sure everybody you know, you have to deal with everything, you can't just isolate an environmental issue. Would you agree with that?Dave Cortez  Absolutely. Absolutely. I don't know where that came from. I again, I'm not a I've read all the books about these things, but that, the model that was picked up by so many organizations and NGOs is is you know, it's it's almost like counter revolutionary, it's almost counterproductive. Like you're intentionally trying to marginalize your base in silos, you know, so, so whatever we do, you know, I try to espouse that in folks, some of the work we've done around Austin and other parts of Texas, that's the route we go, talk about bills, talk about bills every time and then, you know, start to figure out what else is going on, you know. With ACORN, a major flaw in the national model was that they would want to sign people up to be bank draft members, like you, you'd push a card onto them, "Hey, send this card in with your bank info or something. And we'll sign you up, you know, so you get access to our help." And obviously, I didn't do that. And as the work evolved, and we got more people canvassing and doing the work, we didn't do that either. It went against our values. Now, if there were middle class people, people with more means, yeah, we'd asked them to do that, too.John Fiege  To contribute a certain amount each month.Dave Cortez  Yeah. But we also did things differently, in the sense of, we organized, we found, you know, folks who are highly motivated by the issues, students, artists, residents in the nearby communities who wanted to contribute, and contribute their time, That theory in the ACORN model of, you got to get people financially bought in to be committed, I think can be challenged and there's lots of ways to get people plugged in. And so, one other key here was, you know, I wasn't brand new, this work wasn't brand new. There had been people fighting ASARCO before I was involved, obviously, and it had ebbed and flowed in terms of how much community opposition from just, like, working class people was centered. There was a lot of wealthier folks, politico types, you know, people who worked for legislators or senators or city people, you know, academics, things like that. And there was a handful of working class people in a smattering of workers from plant workers. So our job was really to find more just like students and people in the impacted communities, but it had been going on for so long that people were really drained. You know, parents who, whose children had MS as a result of this or had other health problems, they eventually backed off because it was just too exhausting to go up against the machine of the Texas State Government and go testify, and struggle, and they just couldn't do it anymore. You know, so we had to find new people and inject new life. You know, we made it a point to work with some of the younger folks to start a--not really an acorn chapter--but just a group on the campus called students for reform. And those kids are amazing, a couple dozen students, Chicanos, for the most part, all going off to do awesome things in their lives. But for three, three years, four years, they they led the fight, they're on campus challenging the administration to disclose more information and trying to represent student opposition to the reopening of the smelter.John Fiege  I was looking up some articles about ASARCO. I found this this one 2010 article from John Burnett, who's a NPR correspondent based in Austin. So he talks about in 2009, the US Justice Department announced the settlement of one of the largest environmental bankruptcies in US history, in which ASARCO would pay a record $1.79 billion to settle claims for hazardous waste pollution in you know, at 80 sites, as many as 20 states, including the copper smelting operation in in El Paso. And he quotes some interesting community members like an 82 year old former maintenance worker named Miguel Beltran, who says, "you can't get a job here in El Paso compared to ASARCO, ASARCO is the best place to work. We were just like a family." And John Burnett, also quotes an anti-smelter activist named Debbie Kelly, who says, "They marketed very well. And the people of El Paso were brainwashed believed that this was the most wonderful thing El Paso could possibly have, this tall polluting contaminating smokestack." And this is this classic tension and environmental justice organizing. The big polluter in town is often the biggest and best paying employer as well, especially for folks with limited education. And these working folks often side with the company in some ways, and then at some times, kind of accepting the environmental problems for the economic opportunities. And the smokestack itself is this shining symbol of progress and prosperity that goes way back to the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution. What was your experience with this tension between economic opportunity and environmental health in the organizing, and how that was represented in the media?Dave Cortez  Well, let's take a few cracks at it, because it's a big question. You know, I'll start with my family, two of my close family members worked at the plant, my dad's brother worked at the plant and then worked at Chevron on the other side of town. And then his brother in law, worked at the plant and retired. And here I was, this younger punk, you know, sort of just not super close to the family, showing up at events, and that's what I'm doing and "oh," they think, "I'm a paid protester," you know, forget my education, forget what I'm actually saying. You know, it's, it's deep cultural assimilation. It's deep colonization, sort of this Stockholm syndrome that develops out of poverty and repression. It's horrific. And it's sad to watch, you know, people fiercely defend the only thing that has helped them, in their eyes, and not be able to acknowledge the harm that's been done. It's not different from, you know, addiction in that way.  Or, or depression in that way. John Fiege  Right.  Or domestic abuse. Don't talk about it. Dave Cortez  Domestic abuse. Exactly. You know, it's heartbreaking. It still hurts me to talk about. But, you know, that was the case. And you know, in that situation, just try and make peace with your family just, you know, get through the gathering. And you go on in, you know, some of my family was very supportive, you know, like, "yeah, that stuff's bad, and we should do better." You don't get investments in the well being of a community that like say, in Austin and all this money flooding here and STEM education being invested in and, you know, pre K access and, you know, nature based education and Montessori education, things like that. All of this is part of that, that conflict that pushes you to try and find the best thing you can for your family. And any of the workers that I organized alongside say the same thing. They were so proud and happy--Daniel Adriano another sort of lead visible face against the reopening of smelter, he's a former steel worker, you know, he tells a story about like, his dad worked there, his uncle, his cousins, you know, it was just like a family thing, like everybody, if you could get a job at ASARCO, you knew you'd be okay. You could raise a family, maybe even your wife or your spouse, your partner wouldn't have to work. But, you know, behind that, that Golden Gate, there was a lot of things that people weren't being told. You know, things like, maybe you shouldn't be taking your work clothes home and washing them. Right. They sent people home to wash, and that's very common in heavy industry in the 80s 70s 80s and 90s, you know, these these companies do that. In Danny's case, his kids got sick, you know, and they developed health problems. And he points to that as part of the reason washing his clothes in the same machine with, as his kids clothes. His wife feels guilt about that. Heavy guilt. John Fiege  Yeah. That's hard. Dave Cortez  You know, it's violating. You know, they had them--that settlement came because they, well, in part because ASARCO was caught for illegally incinerating hazardous chemical weapons waste materials from Colorado, in the smelter in these men weren't told about it. And they shoveled this stuff in there and were exposed to, you know, not recycled waste, just direct waste from the Rocky Mountain Arsenal Wow facility, a weapons manufacturing facility, Dow Chemical weapons manufacturing facility. That stuff was burned and they were exposed. You know, it's infuriating. And once they learned that, and they were falling ill and they had some evidence, they tried to organize other workers, let them know former workers let them know what was going on. And, and they encountered the same thing that I encountered with my family: just like this, this wall of acceptance, this willful ignorance. You know, I don't know about that, you know, just like denial, denial. And that was really hard on them. They got ostracized, they lost a lot of friends. You know, and so they found allyship in other people whose families had been sick, residents on the other side of the river in the Colonias, whose children had been severely sick, who were bleeding every night because of bloody noses and heavy metal contamination. You know, they found allyship with Debbie Kelly in the current place, which is sort of a wealthier neighborhood, you know, the educated, more white affluent folks who didn't want the smelter around. And this, that's how the "Get the lead out" coalition really came together it was--you just had these different interests aligned around this lack of justice, but the worker piece was always--and the economic piece was always always, you know, the straw that would break our back. And when ASARCO hired a PR firm, Teresa Montoya, to build their campaign, their marketing campaign to reopen the smelter, that was their big thing. I want to work for ASARCO I want to work for ASARCO and they march out all these Chicanos and throw them in front of a plant in their hard hats and talk about the good jobs and the pay. You know, it's tough to compete with. I know the people in Port Arthur, in Corpus Christi, even down in Brownsville, you know, and you name it. John Fiege  It's the same story everywhere. It's the same story.Dave Cortez  In Appalachia, as well, with the coal miners. Absolutely. The amount of energy it takes to fight Goliath. You know, you never have enough you never have enough resources. You got a PR firm In, you know, this facility was owned and run ASARCO, Grupo Mexico owned by Carlos Slim, at the time the wealthiest man in the world, you know, like, you're never going to have enough just to stop the bad thing. How are you going to strategize and organize in a way where you're talking about building the good, and replacing it with something better and taking care of these people? It's doable, it absolutely is. But at the time, when you're in the sock like that, it's very hard to pivot. And it's very hard to motivate people who have resources to give you those resources to bring on people to pay them to do that work. It's a boxing match, take your hits, and wait for the time to throw a punch. You know, and I think one thing that really hurt people hurt ASARCO a lot, was when it came out that at their operations in Arizona, El Paso and elsewhere, in the 70s and 80s, they had been using health standards, health assessment screenings that were based on a false standard that black men and brown men had a 15% higher lung capacity than white men, therefore, they could be--they could work 15% longer, they could be exposed 15% more than white men. And that came out. And you know, we had some incredible, dedicated educated volunteers who were digging this information up, who were, you know, putting it to the to the news outlets. And without the news outlets putting that information out there, like the New York Times that put it out about the hazardous chemical weapons waste, you know, we wouldn't have been able to really punch back. But that stuff came out and then we could organize with it. We made materials out of it. I made sure everyone knew that, you know, this is the kind of crap that this place was built on, no matter what they say now you can't trust them. John Fiege  Right. Yeah. And this--another thing that John Burnett brought up in this NPR story is, he quotes some longtime community members who said that when the winds were blowing to the south toward Juarez in Mexico, the smelter would crank up production and send pollution directly into Mexico where they could, they could do nothing to regulate it or stop it even worse than in the US. And that's a pretty insidious and cynical route around US environmental regulations. American companies have this long history of sending their polluting factories and jobs overseas. But in El Paso, they could just send the pollution directly to Mexico while keeping the plant and the jobs in the US. Were you able to do any cross border organizing in El Paso to combat this kind of flagrant disregard for air pollution in Mexico?Dave Cortez  I wasn't able to myself, or it wasn't a choice I made to do myself on the broader scale. Marianna Chu, who worked at the time for the Sierra Club, and as an independent activist and organizer did a whole hell of a lot and deserves a ton of credit. Marianna, and others were also were able to build relationships in the Colonias and get to talk to people that were, you know, the definition of directly impacted, right on the other side of the river. You know, you drive through, you pass on I-10, and you look to the left where you're passing through downtown, and it's just colonias and that's Colonia Felipe and some students who we'd found and became acquainted with at UTEP and were filmmakers and they were able to get over into the colonias and document the lived experience of some of these folks, and it's horrific, and they made a short film, I'm happy to share called The Story of Cristo and it's a little boy, you know, who's like that, he's bleeding, bleeding every night, because he's got heavy metal contamination, two years old. You know, and that story spread. You know, it was similar to other families all throughout the Colonia. Dirt roads, just full of metal, not a lot that could be done unless there was funds provided for it. And part of that settlement in relation to the chemical weapons waste was that ASARCO would give money to an outfit in Mexico to pave those roads. You know, that's it. Accept no wrongdoing. No, no responsibility. We don't admit nothing but, here, take this and leave us alone.John Fiege  Literally, sweeping it under the rug. They're just laying asphalt over the dust.Dave Cortez  Absolutely. I mean, that's that's absolutely right. And, you know, one interesting intersection here with with the colonias there was, as we marched towards the end of 2007 and 2008. You know, we're still fighting the plant, it started to become more and more dangerous and people were less responsive, and less receptive to being interviewed on camera with our comrades, and the gangs, were starting to move in to the Colonia and control things more. And that was that it wasn't safe anymore you can, the last thing you should be doing is driving over there with a camera. And so those stories sort of drifted away, those folks. And we weren't able to really work with them a whole lot more, because the narco war was starting to take root.John Fiege  Because it's, it's how it's the same thing they do to fight you, they give your neighbor a job, and then and they get your neighbor working against you. Dave Cortez  Absolutely, I mean, you know, you're not going to go toe to toe with the same weapons, you got to find a way to find their weak spot and cut them at that weak spot. And, you know, I learned that, I learned that in this fight, you know, we weren't scared of these people. We weren't scared of their minions. We weren't scared of the, you know, the former workers who wanted the plant to open. We weren't scared of them. They tried. Everybody tried to intimidate you, you know, but I'll start with, with that part, first, as a critical strategy. My, you know, 23 year old high energy, Mohawk wearin' self, right, like, I thought I knew it all and was ready to go, just like against that jerk down on Red River Street in Austin. And, you know, the first public meeting, debate, whatever, that we helped organize, some of those, those workers were there outside and they were, you know, they pick a smaller person, a woman to argue with, and she ain't scared of them. But you know, soon enough, there's, there's four or five of them around her and oh, man, you know, machismo is something all of us from the border suffered from and that kicked in hard. You just get into it with these guys. But, you know, that is not the way, that is not the way. You know, arguing and fighting, especially with the people, even though they're trying to get you to do it. The people who want a job in these facilities, the community members who just want a better way for their life, you cannot let the people at the top pit us against each other. That's why it's so important to be anchored in community talking about the nuance, you know, how to step and where, what to look out for, and really trying to build together, it has to be at the forefront.John Fiege  Isn't that the history of American industrial capitalism, that for it to work, the, the industrialists need to pit various groups of people against one another, whether it's along lines of race, or income, or religion, or geography, or immigration status, or, or whatever. Like, that's, that's how it works. You need to divide people by those things, so they don't get together and they don't, they don't form a allegiances.Dave Cortez  That's right. That's right. I mean, it's, but it's not something that's created by the oligarchs and the industrial capitalists and the power holders. It's something that they exploit, right? It's a, it's a wound that's already there. And, you know, it's something that concerns me greatly about broader civil society, and our failures to build community, in relationship in brotherhood and sisterhood. You know, in a true spirit of mutual solidarity, the more that we neglect doing that work, the easier it is for something to divide us or someone to exploit it, we see it, there's an endless amount of examples we can point to. But if you start your work in trying to build something better, and build through a positive relationship, it's going to feed in the long run, it'll help you endure all of the struggles that are going to come the conflicts, you know, the the infighting, the personality disagreements, whatever, you got to have some foundation and I learned that from that, that night outside the UTEP Library arguing with these guys that, "No, we got to we got to find a way to work with these workers. We got to really center the fact that people need work in jobs." And and that's where, you know, I really started to become close with, not the guys I argued with, other workers who were already disaffected, Charlie Rodriguez, and Danielle Riano and Efrain Martinez and others. You know, they became, in some ways they already were but from my work, they became the center of what we're trying to do and focus on, that this is actually not what we want these, these jobs are not the kind that we need, because look what they did to me. And so that's one piece. We've got to find a way to get people more meaningfully involved with the policies we're trying to change, so there's just a far greater number of people pushing for positive investment in something that is, you know, not just like NGO staff, you know, like, the less NGO staff and those boardrooms, the better. You know, get every day, people in their meeting, pressing for these decisions, and calling for it, and that makes it much harder for the special interests to push push their own agenda.John Fiege  Well, that's a good transition to Occupy Wall Street. So in 2011, Occupy Wall Street began in New York City in Zuccotti Park. And then the movement quickly spread around the world, including to Austin. And I know you were heavily involved in Occupy Austin, and its campaign to get the city to divest from commercial banks. I participated in a couple of those occupy Austin Bank actions. And I don't think I'd met you yet. But, you know, as many people might remember, one of the big discussions and debates around Occupy was whether and how to organize and whether to make formal demands, which always makes me think of Frederick Douglass who famously said, "power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did. And it never will." But those words from Frederick Douglass, were not the guiding light of many occupy organizers and participants, I'd love to hear you talk a bit about your experience with Occupy Austin, and the internal debates and conflicts about what it was and how it should operate. And what you brought away from that whole experience that you put into your organizing work after that. Dave Cortez  Yeah, it was one of the most exciting times of my life so far, you know, to be able to three, four, sometimes five nights a week, meet up with 50 to 60 people not at a general assembly, but a working group meeting, and everybody's there ready to, you know, talk and break out and figure out the next step for getting people to close bank accounts. And, you know, organizing the rally and building the art and all those things. It was organic. I'm so happy that, I'm fortunate to have that experience in this city, and in this country. It was real, you see the romanticized version of uprisings in film, in writing, and on the news, different ways around the world. But, you know, this was that, at least the closest I've been to it, and it wasn't just the, you know, the sign holding, and, you know, petition gathering, we did all that. But it was, I mean, like people were, people were in, you know, the sacrifice time away from whatever they had going on around them to contribute to something better, and I have never seen an appetite, so large for participating and contributing to something that can change the world. I've seen it tried to be engineered a whole lot by NGOs. And it's laughable. It's insulting, you know, but for me at the time, it was it was like a dream come true. I remember a week before occupy launch, there was a meeting happening at Ruta Maya, and the room was full of people, and, you know, a bunch of white dudes, hippie yoga types on stage, you know, talking about some stuff, but I'm up there front row, just, you know, like, eager. And just like listening, I'm like, "This is great," you know, so they open the mic for everybody to come up and have something to say. And it was awesome. I'd just never seen it. You know, I was like, "wow, this is the Austin I always wanted to see," you know. Sure enough there was a meeting after that the next day, and the next day after that. And that kind of continued on for a few days. And then and then there was the day of the launch and lots of people packing City Hall. I mean, you couldn't move there were so many people out there and there were people talking for hours. Everybody was just willing to stay. And you know, I can't, I just can't believe how patient people were for weeks. And just like hanging out. You know, I think they just wanted something different. And they wanted to be part of something, like I said, Now, me, day one. I'm like, "yo, if we're gonna be out here, we need some data." And I got my clipboard. And my dear friend and former partner Betsy had been working for a group that was doing foreclosure organizing and getting people to move their bank accounts or close their bank accounts. And so, you know, I got some, some materials from her and took up like six clipboards, to the to the rally. And that was my whole shtick was just like, "Hey, y'all, we should close our corporate bank accounts," and people loved it. You know, it was like, "hey, here goes, put your name down, if you want to help out," and I mean, I filled up pages and pages of this thing, people who wanted to help out or close their bank accounts. And from that, you know, like, you'd find more people that were like, "Hey, I used, you know, I can help with that. And I used to work at a bank," or, you know, "I've got some time on my hands," you know. And so we, it was rad, because while all the noise was happening, the day to day that people were more familiar with Occupy Wall Street. You know, the the General Assemblies, the infighting, the conflicts with the unhoused folks and things like that, we had this parallel track of our bank action crew, which was doing, building switch kits, and, you know, trying to reach out to people to, you know, help walk them through how to close their bank accounts and stuff like that, or organize marches on the bank, so people could go in and come out and cut their credit cards, so we could all celebrate, you know, like, that was, that was great. That's classic organizing. I, you know, if you weren't down in City Hall, every day for that first month, you're missing out on something, you know, I don't think people appreciate enough how much work people invested into trying to maintain a space, like, maintaining a physical encampment is, you know, the people with the most knowledge on how to operate a small, little civil society is the people have been doing it before, which is our unhoused folks, you know. And there was a huge class conflict, that really emerged quickly, that the police and the city manager and others began to exploit, you know, by trying to bring more unhoused folks down to City Hall, allowing some to sell and distribute drugs, not enforcing any oversight, you know, we had women attacked, you know, and attempted assaults and things like that, that they were just looking the other way on. Because they wanted this to go away. And it was up to us to figure out how to manage that. And that really became the core of the non-bank action, kind of conversations. You know, everybody wanted to do solidarity with everything else. But it was really about, like, how do we keep this thing going? And how do we maintain our presence here? You know, do you negotiate with the city? Who negotiates? Who's responsible? Do we just say, you know, F-U, we're not going to talk to you all, you know, but like, through all that, like, some amazing friendships were developed, and I mean, like bonds, true, real friendships, and people may not be super close anymore, but all it would take is a phone call or text to bring people back together. You know, it's something I'll just value for the rest of my life.John Fiege  Yeah, totally. And in 2015, The Austin Chronicle named you the best environmental activist in Austin for your work as, "The heart and soul of Sierra Club's 'Beyond Coal' campaign in Central Texas." And I know you've done all kinds of work with the Sierra Club. But I wondered if you could talk about what the fight has been like to transition from dirty energy to clean energy in Texas, which, of course is the oil capital of the country. And looking over the years you've been doing this work, what stands out? What have you learned from this massive campaign?Dave Cortez  Like you said, it's Texas, we're the number one carbon emitter in the country, and a huge one in the world and the United States cannot meet the modest two week goals in the Paris Accords unless Texas gets its act together, you know, and we got some real problems here, not just from fossil fuel pollution, but from industrial and toxic pollution and just from our livelihoods, you know, there's another story out yesterday, you know, are we going to have power next week, because we're going to hit hit the peak of the summer. You know, it's hard to think about the fight for clean energy in Texas without thinking about the power of the fossil fuel and industrial industries. There's there's been a battle since 2000 and 2005 to stop new power plants and advocate for clean energy. The fuel type changes and you know, back then it was coal and then it is gas and and now, it's like, oh my god, we just don't have enough power. Now, how do we get it? But it's still the, you know, trade associations, the Association of Electric Companies in Texas, you know, Oncor, which is an electric distributor company, NRG, you go down the line, Energy Transfer Partners, all of these fossil fuel corporations, making billions and billions of dollars, still call the shots, they still influence, and basically direct, decision makers on what is going to be acceptable in terms of, even, discussion. You can't even get a hearing in the state legislature on flaring reduction, which is a very modest thing. Because they have enough influence to make sure that that conversation is not even going to happen. And their members, like Energy Transfer Partners, and others are some of the biggest donors to politicians in the state. So, you know, why shouldn't we listen to those people? Kelsy Warren, Dakota Access Pipeline CEO, behind Energy Transfer Partners, gave a million dollars, his largest donation ever to Governor Abbott, right immediately after the legislative session. And this is after his company made well over a billion dollars, I think it's closer to $2 billion, coming out of the winter storm, Energy Transfer Partners. While people died, these people decided it would make better financial sense and profit sense to go ahead and withhold supplies of gas to power plants and gas utilities, and let the price go up before they would deliver that gas and therefore make a ton of money. Forget that more than you know, some say 200, some say 700 people died, many of them freezing to death, many of them carbon monoxide poisoning during the storm, forget that. It's all about the money. And that's the biggest takeaway here, just like we would be fighting Carlos Slim, and ASARCO and other folks, you got to look at what the interest is, you know, why are people supporting this? Why are they facilitating this? I know, it's easy to just say, well, we just got to vote these people out. Well, you know, we've got to come up with strategies that will allow us to do that. We've got to come up with strategies that will make it so, in this state that's so heavily corrupt and captured by corporate interests, fossil fuel interests, industrial interests, that we're going to find a way to cut into their enabling electorate. Their enabling base. And it's more than just a voter registration strategy. It's more than just a mobilization strategy, or getting people to sign a petition, it gets back to what we started talking about with ACORN. What is their base? Where are they? What are their interests? And where does it make sense to try and make some inroads, and cut away? And unfortunately, we just don't have enough of that happening in Texas. There's an effort to try to build coalitions with, you know, some social justice and some youth focused organizations. But we're all part of that same progressive "groupthink" or Democratic base, that we're not actually doing much to expand, other than registering some new voters. And there's a lot of unpacking that needs to happen. You know, can we go talk to some steel workers or some people on the Texas-Mexico border, who started to vote more for Republicans and Trump, because they were worried about the Green New Deal? They're worried about losing their oil jobs. Why, I mean, like, to this day, we haven't made that pivot collectively as a movement, and it's hella frustrating.John Fiege  Yeah, it gets back to what we were talking about earlier with, you know, kind of the DNA of environmental justice orientation to this work, the work has to be intersectional if you want to transition Texas, the oil capital of the world, to to non-fossil fuel based energy, you know, you need to deal with, with voting rights, you need to deal with the bad education system, you need to deal with healthcare issues, you need to deal with police brutality, and you know, it's like it's all connected. To think that we can remove this issue of decarbonizing our energy source from all of that other, you know, what some people see as messy stuff is delusional, it just doesn't doesn't work, doesn't make sense. Especially, and it's so obvious in places like Texas, where, you know, what are they doing? They're just trying to, they're trying to suppress the vote, like, they know what the deal is, you know, they're they're losing numbers. They need to disenfranchise more voters in order to maintain this system. Dave Cortez  You know, there's an important caveat and distinction for environmentalists, environmental justice folks, or whatever. You know, if you talk to John Beard with Port Arthur Community Action Network, you know, he's a former steel worker. His whole pitch in Port Arthur is about youth engagement jobs, investing in the community. He's willing to talk to the companies, things like that. It's not environmental-first type of thinking. But the enviros, and you'll see this any legislative session, if you pay attention, we are on the far losing side of the losers. Okay, the Democrats being the losers, you know, Democrats in Texas carry House Bill 40, which is the ban on fracking bans. You know, Mrs. T, Senator Senfronia Thompson out of Houston, she authored that bill, Black Democrat, you know, revered for her work on voting rights and reproductive justice. You know, enviros, we are way, way out of the mix. And so even if we got those organizations doing the work you're talking about, to speak about climate change, speak about the grid, you know, pollution, things like that, we'd still be part of that losing side. And I'm not saying we need to need to be building out into red country, or rural country. It's a critique of the broader progressive movement that we aren't doing enough to find people, the greater majority of people that don't participate in our process, in politics, in voting, except in presidential elections. We are not doing enough to reach people who are just going about their lives and do not give a s**t about the things that we post online about our petitions or positions, or our op-eds, or whatever. That is where the fight is, we've got to draw more people in while the right wing tries to keep more people out. That's our only pathway. And so--John Fiege  What does a just transition mean to you?Dave Cortez  It's what we've been talking about, it's a whole shift in, you know, the operating system of a of a community, whether it's a town of 50,000 people or a state of, you know, 25 million. Just transition means that we're taking into full consideration, our triple bottom line, you know, our health, and shelter, and food, you know, our economics, our jobs, and ability to put, you know, bring income and get the things that we need. And, you know, just the land and our ecology. Just transition has to anchor that we are--that those things are connected, and that they're not--they can't be separated, that in order for our families, and our children and our neighbors and all that, to have a future and have a livelihood, we need to be concerned about our air quality, concerned about our water quality, but also about the quality of their education, the access to healthy food and grocery stores. If you were to talk to people and ask them to envision what, you know, their dream society looks like, which is a hard thing for people to do nowadays. You know, you'll hear some of these things and just transition is the process that we take to get there. It's not about you know, getting a worker from a fossil fuel job into a clean energy job.John Fiege  Well, and speaking of that, you know, in addition to your beyond coal and just transition work, you've done a lot of work with low income communities of color in Austin around a whole assortment of things: illegal dumping, access to green space, community solar and solar equity, green gentrification among among a bunch of other stuff. Can you talk about gentrification and how Austin has changed in the time you've been there and the tension that's emerged about Austin becoming one of the greenest but also increasingly one of the least affordable cities in the country? Dave Cortez  Yeah it's tough. People in Austin are largely still here to just party, have fun, make money. You know, they're really eager to do what they moved here for, you know, go do the cool thing and the restaurant, and the corporate soccer game and whatnot, you know, fine, whatever, I'm not trying to harp on people who want to have a good time, the problem is that there's no thread of the greater good of civil society, of trying to care for those in town that struggle and have the least. That doesn't exist here. It's just, it has lessened every year, it might be new people moving here might be more money here, and people being displaced. But you know, for the most part, with gentrification, the white wealthy middle class here is strong, you know, median family income is close to $90,000, you know, qualifying for affordable housing, you can make a ton of money and still qualify for affordable housing. And the people that move in, my brother calls them the new pilgrims. They're not super interested in learning what was there before, they're interested in what's around them now, and what might come in the future. And we do have a responsibility to make sure that we not just offer up but press on people at the doors, at community events, you know, cool, fun, s**t, barbecues and things like that, to learn what was there before they came, you know, sort of an onboarding into the neighborhood. And we did some of this in Montoplis, my old neighborhood that I lived in before I moved to South Austin, you know, people who I was like, "man, they're never going to help us," they're just, you know, part of that new white, middle class "new pilgrim." When I learned the history of the community, and the issues that were going on, I said, "Hell, yeah, whatever I can do," from, you know, cooking funding, speaking, writing letters, coming to meetings, you name it, you know, but we had to keep on 'em. And we had to give them a meaningful task. There is a lot of power, gentrification sucks. But I've really tried to work with myself on not being--automatically hating folks for just trying to move in into a home. But you do have to challenge folks on how they behave after they've moved in, you know, in Austin with our urban farming and desire for new urbanism and density and things like that, the culture of I know what's best is so thick, and it's really hard to stay patient. But I try to, even when I get mad and angry and frustrated, I try to remind people of what's called the Jemez Principles for Democratic Organizing, and the People's Institute for Survival and Beyond's Principles of Anti-Racism, encourage them to read them, and to do everything they can to just shut the F up, and go listen to the people that they're talking about in affected communities. And get a sense of where you might be able to build some common ground.John Fiege  I actually wanted to spend a minute on that because, you know, you started, or you were one of the organizers, who started environmental justice group in Austin years ago, and I went to a bunch of the meetings. And I feel like that's where, you know, we got to start hanging out a bunch for the first time. But you would always start the meetings with the Jemez Principles for Democratic Organizing. And, you know, those came out of this meeting hosted by the Southwest Network for Environmental and Economic Justice and Jemez, New Mexico back in the 90s. Can you talk more specifically about the principles and why they're important to the work you're doing?Dave Cortez  So when you're thinking about undoing racism, or being an antiracist or antiracism work, you know, you're acknowledging that you're confronting a built system, something that's built under a false construct, race, you know, and when you're going to combat that, there's, you know, there's a lot of issues to it or whatever, but the Jemez principles will help you see, how do you approach people and talk about it? You know, for example, listen, let people speak is one of the principles, you know, listen to the people on the ground. Don't barge in there don't don't come in with your your petition and your fancy stuff and, or be online and be a dick. You know, go try to introduce yourself and get to know people. You know, ask questions. That's okay. You know, people were very generous for the most part, whether they're Black or Brown or or Native or Asian, or you name it, you know? If you're able to ask questions and listen about an issue, people will likely talk, you know. Trying to work in solidarity and mutuality is another big one for me, you know, it's not just about like, "I'm here to help you," versus, "I'm here because our struggles are connected and intertwined. And for me and my family to be successful and get what we need, it depends on your family, and your people being successful and getting what you need. How can we work together to make sure that we everything we do reinforces that and that we lift each other up?" A lot of things that we see is very transactional in the advocacy and activism world, you know, sign this, and then we'll go do that for you, or will tell the person to do the thing and change? It's not so much how can what can we do to help you directly, like we talked about bills and taxes and things like that. But also, we have to know that, what is it we're gonna get out of it, it's not just this potential policy outcome. There's tremendous value in human relationships. And in culture and community building, you're going to learn about the people in your community, you're going to learn about the history, you're going to learn, you know, and make new friends and maybe some recipes, maybe, you know, some new music or something. It's limitless. You know, humans have tremendous potential in beauty. But we we rob ourselves of that by, you know, retreating into our silos in our, in our four walls. You know, Jemez can give something--these are short, short, little principles that can give people something to read and reflect on, they can be kind of abstract and theory based, but when you're advocating for change, and then you look at these and you ask yourself, "sm I doing this?" There's tremendous potential for learning, and changing how we do our work.John Fiege  And the Sierra Club is one of the oldest large-scale environmental groups in the world. And it's traditionally been a white organization. Its founder John Muir made racist remarks about Black and Indigenous people, and in 2020, the Sierra Club officially apologized for those remarks and the white supremacist roots of the organization. In Texas, with your work and your presence, I feel like you've really helped the Sierra Club evolve there, where you are, and you th

This September 11, 2023, I had the honor of holding space for an intimate conversation with civil rights leader, lawyer, award-winning filmmaker, educator, and best-selling author of the book SEE NO STRANGER, Valarie Kaur. The fact that we were recording on September 11th was meaningful, because the tragic event that had taken place 22 years ago shaped Valarie in profound ways and set her on a path that she never expected. Valarie became an activist after a man of the same Sikh faith, a father and family friend she called uncle, Balbir Singh Sodhi, was the first person murdered in hate violence in the aftermath of 9/11. For two decades in his memory, Valarie led visionary campaigns to tell untold stories and change policy on issues ranging from hate crimes to solitary confinement to digital freedom. Along the way, she earned degrees at Stanford University, Harvard Divinity School, and Yale Law School. Today, Valarie is the mother of two children and as you'll hear her share, the experience of becoming a mother inspired her to birth the Revolutionary Love Project, which supports communities with practical tools to transform the nation from inside out. Revolutionary love, Valarie says, “is the choice to labor for others, for opponents, and for ourselves. Love is sweet labor — fierce, bloody, imperfect, life-giving, a choice we make. And it begins with wonder. You can look at anyone and say: You are a part of me I don't yet know. From there, we begin to transform the world around us, and inside us.” There is a lightness and hopefulness in the tone of our conversation that we wouldn't have in the same way if we recorded the conversation today. I'm grateful for it. Valarie thanked me at the end for giving her the deepest breath she had in a long time. During a time in our country and world, where so many seem to be disconnected from a sense of our common humanity and divisions between us are widening, I hope this conversation is a deep breath for you. Because as Valarie says as she evokes the metaphor of a midwife in her famous Watch Night speech, linked in the show notes, we must first breathe and then we push. The mother asks "what if this darkness we face is not the darkness of the tomb, but the darkness of the womb?" Today we breathe and tomorrow we will labor in revolutionary love.    About Valarie Kaur: VALARIE KAUR is a renowned civil rights leader, lawyer, award-winning filmmaker, educator, innovator, author of the #1 LA Times Bestseller SEE NO STRANGER, and founder of the Revolutionary Love Project. Valarie burst into global consciousness when her 2016 Watch Night Service address went viral with 40 million views worldwide. Her question “Is this the darkness of the tomb – or the darkness of the womb?” reframes the historical moment and is now a mantra for people fighting for change. Valarie became an activist when a Sikh father and family friend Balbir Singh Sodhi was the first person murdered in hate violence in the aftermath of 9/11. For two decades, in his memory, Valarie led visionary campaigns to tell untold stories and change policy on issues ranging from hate crimes to digital freedom. Her work ignited a national movement to reclaim love as a force for justice. In 2021, she led the People's Inauguration, inspiring millions of Americans to renew their role in building a healthy, multiracial democracy. Today, the Revolutionary Love Project is seeding networked communities of practice across the country, equipping people with the practical tools to build beloved community and transform the nation from inside out. In the last two decades, Valarie has won policy change on multiple fronts – hate crimes, racial profiling, immigration detention, solitary confinement, Internet freedom, and more. She founded Groundswell Movement, Faithful Internet, and the Yale Visual Law Project to equip advocates at the intersection of spirituality, storytelling, and justice. Valarie has been a regular TV commentator on MSNBC and contributor to CNN, NPR, PBS, the Hill, Huffington Post, and the Washington Post. She is a celebrated prophetic voice and has spoken widely, including at President Biden's Inaugural Prayer Service. Valarie earned degrees at Stanford University, Harvard Divinity School, and Yale Law School, and holds several honorary doctorates. In Fall 2022, President Biden honored Valarie at the White House in the first-ever Uniters Ceremony, naming her as one of 16 leaders whose work is healing America. A daughter of Punjabi farmers, Valarie grew up on the farmlands of California, where her family has lived for more than a century. Her grandfather gave her Sikh wisdom through stories and songs that showed the way of the sant-sipahi, sage-warrior. The sage loves; the warrior fights — it is a path of revolutionary love.   Connect with Valarie: Website | valariekaur.com Facebook | www.facebook.com/valarie.kaur.page Instagram | @valariekaur Resources from Valarie: Revolutionary Love Project Website  See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love Valarie's TED Talk: 3 Lessons of Revolutionary Love in a Time of Rage Valarie's Famous Watch Night Speech: Breathe and Push  The Revolutionary Love Training Course  9/11 20th Anniversary Learning Hub Wise Woman Guided Inquiry    Topics Discussed in this Episode: Valarie's story about the birth of her son, with her mother by her side, and the lessons she learned about motherhood from that experience. Mothering as a verb and how mothering often feels like walking through a ring of fire.  The experiences that set Valarie on a path of activism after 9/11 and the surprising spark moment she learned from her grieving aunt.  How becoming a mother changed Valarie's orientation from activism fighting against hate to activism fighting for revolutionary love. Valarie's experience moving to the Rainforest to reflect on all she learned and write her book See No Stranger.   Revolutionary love as the call of our times. Valarie's epic snapshot moment nursing her daughter while she was at the White House being honored. The quote from Audrey Lorde that reminds Valarie to care for and invest in herself - “We can learn to mother ourselves.”  The Wise Woman ritual Valarie experienced with two of her Sikh friends and the meditation she offers to help you tap into your inner Wise Woman.  The lullaby Valarie wrote and sang for her daughter that will become a children's book, “World of Wonder.”    This Episode's Challenge:  Valarie says that the root of love is wonder and sings us a lullaby she wrote for her daughter about wonder. She encourages us to wonder about our partners, our children, our friendships, and beyond. Wondering about each other is a revolutionary process in a society that wants to shut down our ability to look at one another's faces and say “You are a part of me I don't yet now.” It's so simple but it can change everything and help us birth a better world.    Other Episodes Mentioned in this Conversation:  Good Life Project Podcast Interview of Valarie Kaur  Planting Seeds for Mother's Quest Episode 00     About This Episode's Dedication By Shelly Tygielski: This is the 100th episode of the Mother's Quest Podcast. It feels fitting to mark this occasion with a powerful conversation about Revolutionary Love with renowned civil rights leader Valarie Kaur. Valarie talks about Revolutionary Love as sweet labor and this podcast, since I launched it 7 years ago in 2016, has always been a labor of love. So too has been my form of mission-aligned sponsorship, where rather than seeking corporate sponsors, I invite one mother to dedicate each episode and to make a contribution to support Mother's Quest. In honor of this milestone, I invited Shelly Tygielski, founder of Pandemic of Love, and an Advisory Board Member of Global Empowerment Mission to dedicate. Instead of contributing to Mother's Quest, I made a contribution to the Global Empowerment Mission. I hope you'll join me in celebrating this 100th episode milestone by sharing this important conversation you're about to hear and by making a donation to the Global Empowerment Mission.   Shelly's Dedication: I would like to dedicate this episode of the Mother's Quest podcast to all the mothers of young, innocent children who are caught in the crossfire of war. May these children grow up in a world that is free from hate and injustice. May they be free from suffering. May they have access to opportunities and never be devoid of hopes and dreams. As the founder of Pandemic of Love and an advisory board member of Global Empowerment Mission, we are currently providing aid to Israelis and to Palestinians. When people ask us to choose a side, we say we have. We are on the side of love. Or as Valerie Kaur says it is the best, revolutionary love. So to learn more about how you can support our efforts, please visit globalempowermentmission.org.    Donate here:  https://www.globalempowermentmission.org/mission/israel-hamas-war/ Connect with Shelly Tygielski: Website | shellytygielski.com ; pandemicoflove.com ; partnersinkindproductions.com Instagram | @mindfulskatergirl Mother's Quest is a podcast for moms who are ready to live a truly E.P.I.C. life. Join in for intimate conversations with a diverse group of inspiring mothers as they share how they are living an E.P.I.C. life, Engaging mindfully with their children (E), Passionately and Purposefully making a difference beyond their family (P), Investing in themselves (I), and Connecting to a strong support network (C). As Mother's Quest approaches 100 episodes, we invite you to help us spread the word by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts. Help us reach 100 reviews to honor 100 episodes this Season Eight of the Mother's Quest Podcast! You can also support the podcast by making a contribution or joining one of our memberships at our Patron Page on Ko-Fi.com.    Join our community of mothers to light the way and sustain you on your quest at www.facebook.com/groups/mothersquest

In this final episode of the series, Dr. James Ryan, PhD author of a new book titled Recovery Writing, leads listeners through a series of writing exercises that include an extended version of “The Conduct Inventory,” a second exercise titled “The Resilient Heart,” and finally a set of questions known as “The Audre Lorde Questionnaire to Oneself.”  We hope this series inspires you to pick up your pen and join Dr. Ryan in journeying deeper into the fullness and richness of recovery. Show Notes: ∙       Recovery Writing: Discovery and Healing in the Twelve Steps by James Ryan. ∙       www.StepStudy.org  ∙       Audrey Lorde's Four Questions: https://divyavictor.com/the-audre-lorde-questionnaire-to-oneself/ --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/fatherbillw/support

A Magician, a 2nd basemen (for the New York Yankees of course), a Meteorologist… all career options that author Kevin Powell considered, but what finally stuck was the act and art of writing. The library is where he fell in love… with books, art, music, cultural diversity, and anything he could get his hands on. Kevin believes that the stories we tell are the history of this country, and his passion for writing and passing along those stories is a form of activism that will keep voices from being silenced and forgotten. Kevin shares with Jeanne how his hunger for learning will never be satiated, how the illustrative life of Ernest Hemingway gave him his lightbulb career moment, how absorbing the work of writers such as Toni Morrison, bell hooks, Audrey Lorde, and Maya Angelou (to name a few) changed his perspective on defining manhood, the joy and nostalgia he still finds in gospel music, how speaking publicly can be liberating, and why it's important for you to discover your own definition of success rather than chase someone else's. About Kevin:As a poet, journalist, essayist/blogger, public speaker, civil and human rights activist, filmmaker, and the author of 16 book, Kevin Powell is one of the most acclaimed political, cultural, and literary voices in America. Kevin is a native of Jersey City, New Jersey currently residing in Brooklyn, New York. As an activist, he is the president and co-founder of BK Nation, a new national, progressive, multicultural organization focused on such issues as education, civic engagement, leadership training, health and wellness, social media, arts and culture, and job and small business creation. Kevin was also a Democratic candidate for Congress in Brooklyn, New York, his adopted hometown, in 2008 and 2010. He was a senior writer of VIBE magazine from 1992-1996. As a pop culture curator, Kevin produced the first exhibit on the history of hip-hop in America at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio, which toured America and overseas. As a humanitarian, Kevin's work includes local, national and international initiatives to end violence against women and girls (including a very well-regarded appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show highlighting domestic violence); and he has done extensive philanthropic and relief work, ranging from Hurricane Katrina to earthquakes in Haiti and Japan, to Superstorm Sandy in New York, to his annual holiday party and clothing drive for the homeless every December since 9/11. His newest books Grocery Shopping with My Mother and The Kevin Powell Reader: Essential Writings and Conversations are both available now.IG: @kevinpowellbrooklynTwitter: @kevin_powell

The primal scene of domination and slavery inevitably produces struggle. It must. Because domination is the idolatrous effort of one to exert control over the will of the other, and we are compelled as free beings to realize and always live that freedom. So the struggle produces dignity, and that dignity, declared and acted and performed and practiced and sung and chanted and screamed and whispered—when enacted by all human beings against various and sundry forms of domination, it leads to joy and love.Vincent Lloyd (Villanova University) joins Evan Rosa to discuss his book Black Dignity: The Struggle Against Domination. We start with what struggle against domination is, especially how it's expressed in Black life. We entertain the feeling of struggle psychologically and culturally; the ugly and vicious temptation to idolatry that seeking domination and mastery over others entails; how the humanity of both the master and the slave are lost or found; how struggle produces dignity; and an understanding of the debate between seeing dignity as purely intrinsic as opposed to performative. We close by thinking about how the Black struggle for dignity can inform all of us about what it means to actualize our humanity, embrace the power our freedom entails, culminating in joy and love.This episode was made possible in part by the generous support of the Tyndale House Foundation. For more information, visit tyndale.foundation.About Vincent LloydVincent Lloyd is Associate Professor of Theology and Religious Studies and Director of the Center for Political Theology at Villanova University. He is the author of Black Dignity: The Struggle Against Domination (Yale University Press, 2022), Break Every Yoke: Religion, Justice, and the Abolition of Prisons, with Joshua Dubler (Oxford University Press, 2019), In Defense of Charisma (Columbia University Press, 2018), Religion of the Field Negro: On Black Secularism and Black Theology (Fordham University Press, 2017), Black Natural Law (Oxford University Press, 2016), The Problem with Grace: Reconfiguring Political Theology (Stanford University Press, 2011), and Law and Transcendence: On the Unfinished Project of Gillian Rose (Palgrave, 2009). Visit his personal website here.Show NotesWhat is struggle?Augustine's approach to struggle in Confessions: with oneself, with others, with the world, with the powers that bePhenomenology of human struggle: What are the features of struggle that land on the human consciousness?Struggling against not flesh and blood but powers and principalities.Righteous indignation against idolatryRejecting humanity by presenting oneself in a position of masteryMaking distinctions between individual persons, the vice of the will to dominate, and the system those vices createThe struggle of a communityOntological struggle: Aimed at defeating domination“Is struggle dependent on the existence of some prior will to dominate?”Understanding oneself as “master” and setting oneself up as a god.Mastery is a particularly vicious form of idolatry.The primal scene of master and slave is always behind the amorphous systems we struggle against.What is the psychology of the will to dominate?Is domination a special vice? Or is it a more ubiquitous vice?Black theology, Black philosophy, and the experience of the Middle PassageEnslavement continues to fuel anti-BlacknessThe humanity of master and slave are both lostBlack rage and Audrey Lorde's 1981 “The Uses of Anger”Emotion as a symphony, not a cacophonyAiring rage next to each other and clarifying our vision of the worldRethinking Human DignityRetelling the story of democratizing and Christianizing the aristocratic beginnings of “dignity”“When we perform dignity, we're struggling.”Distinguishing dignity from respectability (and turning away from respectability)“That's where dignity is truly democratized, right? What we all have in common as human is our capacity to turn away from domination, and turn toward the divine. That's where dignity has a universal quality.”Understanding the debate between seeing dignity as intrinsic vs dignity as performative or extrinsic.“We're all dominated.”How exactly does struggle produce dignity?Emmanuel Levinas and responding to the Jewish Holocaust, giving morality new content by tethering it to encounter—seeing the infinite shine through in the face of the other, allowing new concepts to flow through like love and justice.How do we finally move from domination, to struggle, to dignity, to joy and love?Production NotesThis podcast featured Vincent LloydEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaA Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/aboutSupport For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give

A weekly magazine-style radio show featuring the voices and stories of Asians and Pacific Islanders from all corners of our community. The show is produced by a collective of media makers, deejays, and activists. Host Miko Lee speaks with two women professors Dr. Celine Parreñas Shimizu and Dr. Robyn Magalit Rodriguez about their approach to education, activism, motherhood and moving forward.   Show Transcript A Tale of Two Professors Story [00:00:00] Swati: Tonight on APEX Express, we have a piece highlighting the work of two professors with a lot in common, both Filipino scholar, activists, and grieving mothers who are approaching their work in similar and different ways. Listen in on Miko's interview, exploring both of their amazing backstories, their current work and where they see their futures. Also editorial side note Miko and Robyn's audio got a little funky at times. So it might be a little bumpy. [00:00:59] Miko Lee: Welcome Dr. Celine Parreñas Shimizu and Dr. Robyn Magalit Rodriguez to APEX express. Dr. Robyn is the first Filipino American to serve as chair of the UC Davis Asian American Studies Department, the first one in 50 years. She also became the founding director of the Bulosan Center for Filipino studies and has authored so many books. Dr. Celine scholar filmmaker, and the new Dean of the Division of Arts at UC Santa Cruz. You worked at my Alma mater San Francisco State University in the School of Cinema. You were a professor of Asian-American feminist film and media studies at UC Santa Barbara. I mean, you've, you've been like through the whole California system. We are so happy to have you on APEX express. I believe you were the first Asian-American Dean in this position. And how does this feel for you to be at UC Santa Cruz during this work? [00:01:51] Dr. Celine Parreñas Shimizu: As the first woman of color Dean at UC Santa Cruz, as well as the first Asian American woman. Of course, it feels weighty, to hear that the lived experience of it is very much about prioritizing subjugated knowledges, making sure that we have an abundance of voices and abundance of traditions and knowledges that we are teaching so that students can really have access to you know what they want to study as well as be situated, and a long tradition of inquiry and method. It's really wonderful to be at the helm of a division that really takes seriously, people who want to practice art, people who want to study art historically, critically theoretically and we all have defined. Our role, and helping to make this world A place where everyone has a role, [00:02:48] Miko Lee: and art is just being part of who you are that it's just part of being human. Um, Robyn, I want to go way back and talk with you about when you first became politically active. [00:02:59] Dr. Robyn Magalit Rodriguez: I would say that the beginnings of my political activism started when I was in either my freshman or sophomore year of high school. And it started with a letter. I was concerned about what we now call racial profiling of young Filipino American men in my neighborhood. I grew up in Union City, California in the east bay. And there was a supposed kind of gang problem in Union City and I recall young boys really in our neighborhood at school, who I thought were being unfairly targeted, not only by police, but also mistreatment really from other authority figures at school, I felt really concerned about that and wrote a letter. I was encouraged by my mom to express my opinions or my kind of concern about how my peers are being treated by writing a letter. And so I wrote the letter and I addressed it to the mayor of Union City, the chief of police, and the superintendent of the school district. And in the letter, I expressed how I felt that my peers were being unfair ly treated and proposed that they introduce what I was calling, multicultural education. The idea I thought was that if our teachers and authority figures really understood us better, and at the same time, if we encountered a stories and histories of our community that somehow this so-called gang problem could be somewhat addressed. So that was my first, I think, kind of a political act or act of activism. And I would then go from there really getting involved in electoral politics. And then after that when I'm in college is really when I started to get more involved in other kinds of organizing work community organizing work. [00:05:10] Miko Lee: I love that. What do you think, was it your parents' upbringing or your peers? What do you think rose up your feisty nature to be able to write back to the school board at such a young age? [00:05:22] Dr. Robyn Magalit Rodriguez: I think it was a couple of things. I think one was actually my mother modeling a modeling sort of letter writing in particular as a mode of calling out issues of inequity or injustice and what had happened and I remember this very clearly. I think it probably was my earliest observation or experience of racism and it was at church. I just remember I grew up Catholic and somehow I just remember sitting in the pew and fidgeting and sort of halfway listening to the priest's sermon and I recall the priest saying something about how Filipinos were not contributing sufficiently enough to the parish. And I remember that very clearly. And I remember feeling that tension rise because there's so many people in mass who are Filipino and I could feel, my mother bristling at that. My father, I just, the tension was just so palpable. My mother was feeling after mass talking about how insensitive the priest had been. Didn't quite say racist, that it was just really wrong and a mis-characterization of the Filipino community. And she was going to write a letter and address it. And I remember observing that and that had a real impact on me. I think the influence again, via my mother is the fact that my middle name, which actually translates into ‘to be angry' comes from an ancestor on a maternal ancestor. It was a made up name by one of my ancestors who decided to change his name to Magalit it as an expression of defiance against the Spanish colonial rule in the Philippines and actually ended up joining the anti-colonial revolutionary cause himself. And so that was that's an important story that is passed on through my mom's, through my mom's family. We're very proud of that revolutionary history. I was always very proud of it always insist on using my middle name everywhere and anywhere. And so I think there's also that, that, that feeling, or I think I was encouraged to, we were encouraged to really be those people who would be critical of any circumstances where people are oppressed, exploited, marginalized. Even my father. Growing up he would tell me, you're so fortunate that I left the day before martial law was declared in the Philippines, because otherwise I would have been, I would have stayed and I would have been part of the movement to topple the dictatorship. And I wouldn't be able to be here and be your dad. And I recall to, with my father he drew really a hard and fast lines between himself and people in the community, even friendships would think, he walked away from friendships if he felt a friend was sympathetic to the dictatorship. So there's just all of these ways that might. Both, exhibited as anti-authoritarian kind of, the sort of critique of structures of power that I grew up with and I observed and was inspired by. So I think that's what explains why I would end up doing what I did as a freshman in high school. [00:08:39] Miko Lee: Wow. The power of being angry, built into your DNA and your name and your love it. We love to hear that. Dr. Celine What do you think Drove you into ethnic studies [00:08:54] Dr. Celine Parreñas Shimizu: I came to the United States with my family, in the early to mid eighties and I moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts. I was one of three Filipino Americans in my high school of 3000 people. And the others were my siblings, and education for me was really sanctuary, like being at school because there was food because we were so poor and, we were the center of our worlds, my multicultural set of friends and I loved, learning about my new country, and when I moved to Berkeley as an undergrad, there were many questions that I had, like, why is it that, my parents, even though they were hyper educated in a way, had to work low wage jobs, as immigrants and they had to work two jobs and they were never around then why was I, and my sister, we were 14, 13 years old. We were already working, in order to help put food on the table for our large immigrant family. So I had so many questions. What was this about, why are we here? And. I loved ethnic studies at UC Berkeley, it was a way to really understand subjugated knowledges, and it was really understanding why we no longer ate together as a family because my parents had to work. At UC Berkeley, ethnic studies was such a wonderful place because it was an interdisciplinary approach to history, to cinema, to literature. It was the time where so many amazing people were there. Not only was it Trinh Min-ha, June Jordan, Cherrié Moraga. I learned in their classrooms and also created my own classrooms by becoming an activist, because there was so much in our experiences that I needed to see on paper. Like what it means to walk around with a large Asian American family, what it means to, grow up with a white mom, but be seen as a woman of color, like your closest intimate as this white woman who may or may not see you. So these were stories that my classmates were telling me. We did a lot of organizing, you know, a woman of color magazine named, ‘Smell This', a woman of color film festival, a woman of color retreat. We were really trying to figure out how can we be effective advocates in a world, using our education, using the power and weapons of our education in order to, make significant, impactful cultural contributions that will change the world. And I realized I wanted to really capture the historical moment of how there were so many women of color writing professors there, Maxine Hong Kingston, June Jordan, Cherrié Moraga. Were all there and we were all doing spoken word and poetry slams, and the tradition of women of color literature, with ‘This Bridge Called My Back' Audrey Lorde, Chrystos, Pat Parker and more, this was a vibrant, legacy growing all of us, all of these books were seeds, and I came up with the name, ‘Smell This' in the hallways of the co-op in which I lived in at the time. I think I didn't even really think about it sexually, even though, I'm a sexuality scholar and I'm a porn study scholar, I really didn't. I really thought of it as a multisensorial experience that you enter when you are exposed to writing. That's so truthful, that's so brutal and it's confrontation with, what it means to be a multiply subjugated person, just walking down the street, for me at the time you're growing up as a young adult and you're blossoming, your interests are blossoming, your sexuality is blossoming, and so it was for me, just this multi-dimensional kind of growth, and I wanted this name to assert that multisensorial experience of what it means to grow up in a world. And at the time, give yourself the permission to say my voice is important, my perspective is important, and that's why I called it that. I think somewhat innocently. And I remember just being on Sproul Plaza, blasting, hip hop music, and just roping in as many women of color as we could, to contribute to the magazine. And we had these gigantic parties and we had the band Yeasty Girls perform. And so we had these legendary epic parties that were all about validating the cultural production of a women of color. [00:13:13] Dr. Robyn Magalit Rodriguez: I suppose you know, that early act of defiance or that act of resistance writing that letter was the beginnings of my journey towards ethnic studies .I think intuitively I knew that there was something problematic about the fact that I grew up in a predominantly community of color and that there was and most of the students, most of my peers were people of color. And yet most of the figures of authority, teachers, administrators were not people of color. And that the books that we were reading typically had scant mention of our community. So there's some, I think intuitively I knew that that could not be right. When I. First took an ethnic studies course after I transferred to Santa Barbara, my third year after a stint at community college. We're actually, I first encountered sort of women of color writers. But it was a class where I was introduced to This Bridge Called My Back, very important anthology by a co-edited by Cherrié Moraga. So that, was sort of my initial foray into kind of women's studies and ethics studies and then by my junior year at UC Santa Barbara, I had this opportunity to take all these classes to class and Chicano studies, a class in Black studies, but the class that really set me on this path toward academia was a class by Dr. Diane Fujino, it was her very first quarter teaching at UC Santa Barbara and Asian-American studies as an assistant professor. It was really the first time I had encountered a Asian American woman professor who also was unapologetically an activist. And that class seeing her just really changed my life. I was so inspired by Diane by what she was doing in the classroom, which she was inviting us to do students, I felt really challenged and really important in good ways by her and I thought, I think that's the way that I want to that, that's what I want to do. I knew I wanted to choose a career of service, I wasn't quite sure what that was going to be. I thought being a lawyer might be it then I changed my mind, then I thought, oh, maybe I should work as a lobbyist for some of these progressive causes. And then I changed my mind thought I even wanted to be an elected. Maybe then changed my mind. And then professor seemed like something that I could get into. I love learning, I love reading, I love research, I also got introduced to other options that could have been a possibility of me being a labor organizer, so yeah, professor felt like a potential way to actually be at the university lectern, but also to be able to write books that students might be able to encounter in other university classrooms and, Diane embodied this very real possibility for me and I chose to follow that path. She represented and continues to represent to me an approach to Asian-American studies that I want to see more of, I think that As much as Asian-American studies was born out of these movements for liberation, the Ethic Studies movement, the Third World Liberation Front, the Asian-American movement, Black Power movement. I think there is a way that I feel as if Asian American studies and Ethics Studies more broadly has become so institutionalized. And I understand that, some of the reasons for this hyper, this institutionalization of Asian-American studies or Ethnic Studies had everything to do with just the backlash against it and just survival. I think that to survive different kinds of decisions were made such that Asian-American studies are at the end, even ethics studies as a field, had to look and feel more the other disciplinary and interdisciplinary formations in the university and less this insurgent site for knowledge production and dissemination that it it had started off as, and Diane for me, always felt like, still feels like one of the few scholars who continues to see Asian-American studies and Ethnic Studies as the site for insurgent knowledge production and dissemination, as the site where we as scholars use our platforms use our training use the kinds of resources we have access to, to amplify the issues of our communities and to also work in partnership with the community in trying to reimagine everything as Grace Lee Boggs invites us to do, to do the critical work of the thinking and the dreaming and strategizing to achieve a better world for all of us. We created a scholar activist affinity group or section is what we call it. And then we'd, frequently organized panels where we would invite activists to come and engage our colleagues because, we recognize that activists and organizers are also thinkers and theoreticians who have really important frameworks and analysis of the world. And that we as scholars could benefit just as much as we as scholars are, doing full-time work and kind of thinking and teaching that we can also extend different kinds of insights to our organizer colleagues. [00:18:42] Miko Lee: For folks that want to hear more about this. There's actually an entire APEX express episode that covers a reading done by both Robin and Diane at Eastwind Books. Last year you both received a mentorship award. Can you share about how important it is to be a mentor and how you combine being both a mentor, an activist. And a scholar. How do you combine those elements? [00:19:12] Dr. Robyn Magalit Rodriguez: you know, Mentorship is so important to me, I think on one hand, I benefited from mentorship clearly, I wouldn't have even been able to pursue this path, this career path if I hadn't had a mentor like Diane, Dr. Fujino to not just exist, but actually to see who cultivated a relationship with me who was willing to take the time to help me understand the world of academia which was a world that was completely foreign to me. Dr. Fujino, along with other mentors that I had as an undergraduate really helped guide me. On one hand I got research experience. So they both, they all helped me gain a real understanding of what an academic life actually feels like. I knew I wanted to be a professor, but I didn't quite know what getting a PhD would require and getting a PhD requires research and I needed the research experience and they guided me through that process by giving it to me helping me to cultivate my own research questions and carry out my own research project. And all of that not only exposed me to this world to confirm for me that yeah, absolutely that is a path I want to pursue. And they were very frank and honest about what kinds of challenges I might face. I don't know that I fully understood some of their kind of cautionary kind of tales about academia. It took having to actually get into a program and go through it for me to fully understand what I think they were trying to advise me about, and namely that is just, the elitism of academia the ways in which, you know, academia can be limited especially if you're a kind of an activist or committed to social justice and that there are ways that, academia isn't always necessarily the place for that sort of work. Mentorship was so valuable for me individually, and then as I finished my doctorate the mentors I had, helped me just provide that emotional support. Even sometimes it's not even about the nuts and bolts of how do you do research and how do you finish a dissertation? It's simply just supporting you and making you feel like you belong in a space that makes you feel like you don't more often than not. And so just having that community of support was important from mentors. But, there are still too few people of color as more senior professors, a lot of my mentors were my peers who were just a couple of years ahead of me, and I vowed that, as soon as I was in a position that I would be that person who would throw the gate open and keep it open and and support people. But I also approach mentorship in in my own sort of way. I think, I have always tried to be just very transparent with my students about what, the challenges of academia can feel like for a woman of color, for a person of color. I also, I had a child when I was in grad school. So that also created other challenges that other people didn't necessarily have to have. And I, I wanted to be able to, again, to support women who might make choices in graduate school, around, having families or, all of that so mentorship is so vital I think to ensuring that academia continues to be open to alternative voices and particularly folks of color like academia sometimes it's like a long hazing process. I feel like this isn't any different than being in a fraternity or sorority, I feel like, it's all just this huge hazing process. It's not fully transparent about what goes on and nobody really wants to let on. And , that prevents us from moving forward. You get stuck in grad school, you end up not finishing your doctorate and, dropping out or you get a job, but then you can't get tenure. And there's just so much that I feel like is so shrouded in secrecy sometimes about academia and I wanted to be able to be that person if I got through that, I would keep the gate wide open and give folks, as much information as possible and support in, moving forward and through through academia and all of the hoops that, you have to jump to get to a place where I am now. [00:23:24] Dr. Celine Parreñas Shimizu: Mentorship and activism to me are all so interrelated. When I went to UC Berkeley as an undergrad, and I think you can say this about the UC system as a whole, it's usually an experience of disorientation when you get different kinds of pressures around you saying that your history is unimportant. Your voice is unimportant. Your perspective is unimportant, and this is why ethnic studies exists. And this is why programs like the minority summer research program and various other programs are designed. So as to lift up people who otherwise feel like they don't belong and they don't deserve to study, and they don't deserve the time that is the gift of mentorship. And so I was given the gift of mentorship by so many faculty members who really looked me in the eye and said, what did you make of this material that you read? And to say that, my perspective based on, the knowledge I was learning, the methods I was learning mattered really meant that we could have important places in the world as cultural thinkers, as people who can make an intervention in how we interpret things that we experience. That's what criticism is about. I think a lot about how 88% of critics are white. It means that even the material that we looked at are dissected from such a limited demographic, what a rip off. What would it mean if cultural critics were more diverse, what a robust enriching debate that would be more, and so when a student walks into my office, for the past 20 plus years of teaching, I wanted to share that gift of mentorship to let them know that the university needs their perspective in order for it to do its job. Because if we hear from too few people, then we don't know as much as we should. If it's true that over 90% of the most popular films are made by white men. And it is true, according to the Annenberg Studies at USC and UCLA, then what we know about love, marriage, sexuality, immigration, families more, comes from such a limited place. And it takes away from our understanding of each other. It becomes such a limited imprisoning understanding of each other. If we don't hear from more people, and people who are really critical people who say that, what we shouldn't know, we should know, and the university is a place to dig up those stories. And so for me as a Dean, it's not only about the mentorship I give, but the structures of mentorship that we implement. I think we all need mentors, even for me as a Dean, I have mentors who are Presidents, mentors who are Provosts, so that I have a better understanding of the institution. And I think about this a lot for my, for the faculty in my division. I hope that everyone has a network where you run your ideas by, because you only become stronger for it. You, you have a larger perspective of how institutions work and what your strengths are and then you realize, oh my goodness, all those people who gave me that time. What a big deal that was, that they recognized that you were worth the time that you were worth, the space and the knowledge, and I recognized how good it felt, to be the recipient of that. And then once you start doing it, you realize that. Oh, it's so amazing to be able to give it back, because you're really shaping the next generation. I learned so much from them. That's really the goal for me, not only am I a Dean, but I'm also a grieving mother. And I think a lot about that, about how. All of us are going to confront inevitably, the death of a loved one and so I think about. What our students are doing is really, preparing to have a role in the world that a significant, that really takes advantage of their passion, their strength, their commitment, so that they can, find a purpose that will enable them to get through, this inevitable pain. [00:27:24] Miko Lee: Thank you for sharing that. That really makes me think about your latest film, the Celine Archive, which is such a beautiful personal documentary that, combined so much of your pain and also just uncovering this history of Filipina American. I wonder if you can talk more about what inspired your film. [00:27:45] Dr. Celine Parreñas Shimizu: So in the mid nineties, 1994, through 1996, I believe around that time the community historian Alex Fabros was teaching a Filipino American history class, Filipino American experience class. There were about 200 students who were going through that curriculum and they found the story that he had grown up with about a Filipino American immigrant woman who was buried alive by her community in the 1930s Stockton Jersey island area. I myself was discovering the story at the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley. And I made this film, in the era of the Me Too and Time's Up movements and really wanted to dig deeply into our capacity to suppress the violent experiences that women undergo in our communities. There's so little known and studied about Filipino American history in our curriculum K through 12. And when we do hear about it, we primarily hear men's stories, the late great historian, Dawn Mabalon and talks quite a lot about this and like her and like many other historians and community organizers, cultural workers and the Filipino American community. I wanted to amplify her story. So as to invite us to think about our female past and how Asian American women continue to endure violent silencing we see this, especially, today, not only in the Atlanta shootings, but in the murder of Christina Yuna Lee in New York. [00:29:32] Miko Lee: Can you share a little bit more about how you decided to weave both. Adding this Filipino woman's story into our broader awareness but also weaving in your personal story, sharing a name with the woman who was murdered and your personal story of your tragedy in your family. How did you decide to weave those stories together? [00:29:54] Dr. Celine Parreñas Shimizu: You know, when people undergo. An unexpected, very sudden death of a loved one, in my case, it was the death of my eight year old son from a common virus that attacked his heart, and in the case of Celine Navarro in the 1930s, she was abducted tortured and punished by her community, supposedly for committing an act of infidelity. Even though she was undergoing violence for quite some time within the community. The death happened, very suddenly her family did not know what had happened or where she was. So when you undergo a sudden and unexpected death, the meaning of your own life, really comes to the, fore. You become, I think, intensely alive because your loved one cannot have their life. So the question then emerges, what do you do with your life? And I had to turn to making the film as an act of creativity in the face of devastation, you know, my own demise because the death of a child. Could really have meant my own death, even though I was still alive. And in the act of filmmaking, you're really bringing together a community, in my case, it's bringing together not only community historians and Filipino-American scholars in the academy, but also my students, I think I opened up a way of speaking with my students that acknowledged, the pain that they also undergo, and it became for us a collective effort of looking into history and I'm making it come alive by becoming close to Celine Navarro's family. So when the articles first came out about her, it became such an affirmation of this unbelievable thing really did happen and we carry it with us. This is something that flows, within multiple generations of her family. And it's a question for me I think that I really think about a lot, like my son was eight, but he had a community, he had a huge impact in our own family about the way, he lived this life. So the question for me was how do you remember someone you love, who died but continues to live almost like in a very physical way, I feel his presence. And so I. Take the love that I continue to feel for my son and use that to make something in this world. I'm so happy to be alive, to be able to make this film. For example, that I can make this gift through the film for Celine Navarro's family, but then also to invite Filipino American women to say, you can be the center of your own story, and that your story is multilayered and it's worth investigation, because of course, what I found out in digging up Celine Navarro's story was that she herself was a very courageous woman who spoke up against domestic violence, that led her to testify against men who were protecting another violent man. I can't even imagine what that was like, and so to be able to pull up that story and to ask the question that began the film where are Filipino women in American history? I wanted to start the movie in that way because I want everyone to care about Filipino women so I wanted that to also be a courageous act that honored the subject of my film. [00:33:21] Miko Lee: Thank you so much. I'm one, just so sorry for the loss of your son. And so appreciative of the fact that you utilize your grief to funnel it into a beautiful work of art. Thank you so much for that [00:33:34] Dr. Celine Parreñas Shimizu: You're welcome and I also wanted to say, that my new film 80 years later, is about my family on my husband's side. It explores the racial inheritance of Japanese American family incarceration during World War II. As you may know, this year is the 80th anniversary of executive order 9066 that imprisoned 120,000 Japanese Americans, and my film shows. Conversations between survivors and their descendants as they continue to grapple with their legacy and I asked the question, how do we care for our stories? What stories do we feel responsible for carrying or admonishing or living? What is that ongoing legacy and how do we live it? [00:34:23] Miko Lee: Well, I'm looking forward to seeing it. That's very exciting. So much of what you're saying around adding women's stories are hidden stories. How we care for our stories. It reminds me of a Dr. Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio talks about this idea of Koana, which is a Hawaiian word for many perspectives that we have all these layers. For so many white Americans, we see all those different layers, but for our people, for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, we don't get the multitude of stories. I'm wondering if you cover some of this in your upcoming book, The Movies of Racial Childhoods: Screaming, Self Sovereignty in Asian America. [00:35:05] Dr. Celine Parreñas Shimizu: Yes. So my new book that's forthcoming from Duke University Press “The Movies of Racial Childhoods” it's motivated by two very powerful forces that I can't deny. The first is it's a book that really explores who my son would be now, if he were alive, I think about, the independence of one who was in middle childhood, one who is in adolescence, when my son died, I was so stunned by the world that he owned apart from me. When you think about a child, you think, oh, I control what they're exposed to, who they talk to, but when they're in school, they meet so many people and they create their own world. So I found out things that I didn't know, that how he was the judge of handball in the recess, world, so if something happened, he would adjudicate what was fair or unfair. I had no idea that he was doing this, and he had been doing it for years. And when I look at the films that I'm studying, I'm always stunned by, how the subjectivity of people of color are eclipsed. So that's the second motivation of the book is when I think about childhoods, you always think about an innocent kind of white childhood. Oh, they don't work because they're children. But we think about people of color from the beginning they, they work, they enslaved children had to work and they had no right to play for example, when you're looking at the scholarship of, African-American childhoods, so what does it mean to talk about an Asian or Asian American childhood? Like people say, oh, there's going to represent our family. So you're forever a baby, in that vision. But there's also this premature, adultification that co-exists with this intense infantilization and you also see the college admissions process. It's oh, you can't play around because you have to get into an amazing school. Therefore you have to disavow play and you have to become, the future lawyer of America while you're 12, and you can also see this in the, sexualization of youth as well. So I'm trying to figure out, know those two questions. I've just finished the book and hopefully it'll be out next year. [00:37:16] Swati: You are tuned in to APEX Express at 94.1 KPFA and 89.3 KPFB in Berkeley. And online@kpfa.org. [00:37:28] Miko Lee: Dr. Robyn is the academic elitism that you talk about why you founded the Women of Color, Non-binary People of Color Scholars Inclusion Project? [00:37:36] Dr. Robyn Magalit Rodriguez: Oh, yeah, absolutely. , I could tell you stories about my experiences of just racism in academia. So WACSIP or the Women of Color Scholars Inclusion Project, it's really a space primarily for those who identify as women of color or non-binary of color, both graduate and faculty. And it's really meant as a safe space for us to be able to convene and support one another. It started off as simply a support group where we could all gather from across campus and all the various places where we are. If you're a woman of color, a non binary, a person of color, the likelihood is that there's just always one or two of you in a particular department or program, and so part of what we wanted to simply do is just get everybody together from across campus, in a space that felt safe where we could literally break bread with one another and be very honest with one another and transparent about what we were struggling with. There is a way that sometimes you feel like you're being gaslighted or you're not really certain that what you've experienced is actually some form of racism or sexism. And sometimes all you need is just, a space where people who have experienced what you've experienced can just affirm that yes, your experience is a real thing and it's not okay and we're here to simply be there as support. We also would organize more formal programs, of course organizing people to come and provide tips and tricks, I guess, to approach teaching and how to, negotiate the challenges of teaching, but especially sometimes the challenges of teaching as women of color. Teaching about race and gender and sexuality as women of color and, contending with sometimes the undermining of our authority as professors in the classroom or by our peers. We'd also organize more formal workshops like that. Writing workshops even, to provide folks with support on publishing because that adage, publish or perish is a very real thing when you're at a major research university, if you do not publish, you cannot secure tenure, you cannot move up in the academic kind of pecking order. So yeah, that was what the intention of the space was, is to create this space of support and it was also to engage as we could in institutional change, trying to document our collective experiences and offer up recommendations to higher ups around shifts that needed to happen to transform institutional culture. That is the piece that was always the struggle. And perhaps what's fed into my frustration with academia, among many other things, but we were successful in providing a space of support for one another. To what extent these groups that I've founded, helped to really shift institutional culture less clear. [00:40:20] Miko Lee: I'm wondering, because WACSIP was has been focused on networking around Critical Race and Ethnic Studies has the anti- CRT fervor that sort of going on by right wing propaganda. Has that impacted your work? [00:40:34] Dr. Robyn Magalit Rodriguez: Yeah, I think anti-CRT fervor it's interesting. I don't know, to what extent that actually has impacted my work at the university in the sense that I feel as if academia has been effectively anti-CRT and anti-Ethnic Studies for a very long time. And it doesn't have to be articulated in the ways that the current movement that's engaged primarily at banning CRT in the K through 12 levels, it's never taken that kind of vitriolic kind of tone at the university, but we know it by the failures of investments, in our departments, in faculty of color who do work on race. So we've been dealing with, I feel like I, along with my colleagues who do this sort of work, we've been subject to “anti- CRT” campaigns at the university level for quite some time now. But again, how they've manifested has been in the form of, a failure of investments whether it's we can't get new hires, we can't get funding support for our research, whether we're not being recruited to take leadership positions, how many times have I been in conversation with people administrators who I know barely encounter women who look like me, on the faculty and can never get my name right. Or know who I am at all. This is just what we're contending with. So in some ways, what's happening outside the university doesn't affect us because we've already been under attack certainly it doesn't help us either. [00:42:09] Miko Lee: Dr. Celine You have so many things in the works right now at the same time. How are you balancing all this? [00:42:15] Dr. Celine Parreñas Shimizu: As Dean, I have to take care of so many people not to take care of the institution, and I think a lot about how there's very few Asian-American women in this role and I think a lot about how, we live such a intensely sexualized, life. There is that force of sexualization that I've felt growing up, throughout my childhood, throughout my early adulthood and as a full grown woman, this intense sexualization, and I don't think that's compatible with our understanding of who is a leader. There's an amazing book by Margaret Chin called “Stuck”, which identifies how very few Asian Americans there are in C-suites, but also in executive leadership roles, but just stunning considering how many Asian-Americans are in these, leading higher ed institutions, but so few of us are leaders of higher ed institutions, right? So it's important, every day to think about how I'm refashioning, what is a popular understanding of what leadership looks like. It is one that is a compassionate and empathetic. And also, how I have to take care of myself through it because you're so in service of others. And I actually go to my own work in order to always remember what is the purpose of my life? What is it that I am protecting in the enterprise of the university, which is, the freedom to inquire. With courage about the most challenging issues of our day, so yeah, it's working out for me, going to my own work, even in the most demanding moments of leadership. It's a reminder, you know what I want to make sure our faculty and students and staff have access to, which is, the excellence of inquiry and debate that is truly available in the university unlike other places, in our world right now you have so many reactionary uneducated, superficial perspectives, but what we do in the university is so special. The seminar is so special where you come into a room and you would have read, material deeply, closely together. You figure out the questions that you have that have been asked by generations before you, you stand on the shoulders of people who have done the work in order to produce your own. There's no greater pleasure. So I'm so happy to be the guardian of that, I'm so happy to lead the arts division that UC Santa Cruz, because that is our enterprise and what's amazing about it is that it produces beautiful work, impactful work, needed work in our world today. I think about empowering every single voice, in our university and to be open, to be surprised by it. And I think the abundance of voice, doesn't just mean the background, that you carry the cultural inheritances that you're trying to grapple with, but it's really also working with people who are different from you, across class, across nation, across region, to see what you can come up with together. And so the students really feel like, oh my God these films are really going to make an impact, and so I think a lot about what we can do on university campuses that really train the next generation of students to be ready for a truly, multiracial world, in 2045, we're going to be a majority people of color country, and so our students need to be educated as, as widely and broadly as possible not only in terms of what they know, but also how they take care of themselves. And we're doing so much here. That's so exciting we're saying these are the people who are coming to this campus and trying to figure out their voices, trying to learn their craft. And what we're going to do is to give them a space in order to get. share their experiences, whether it's with policing or prison abolition, the university is a place where we can do all of that. [00:46:11] Miko Lee: Robyn, I've heard you talk about being a people's professor. Can you share what that means? [00:46:17] Dr. Robyn Magalit Rodriguez: Sure for me, people's professor it means that the university pays me, but I work for my community. And what that means is that I have always seen my work, whether it's my research and scholarship, you know what I decide to research who I'm writing for when I do, when I write what I teach, how I teach it what I do, but recognizing kind of the stature that comes with being a university, professor, all of my research, my teaching, how I move in the world is driven by and rooted in my community organizing and activist commitments. It comes out of my personal interest, true, but I've been very attuned, always to the issues that emerge in the organizing spaces that I am part of. I've always been a member of a community organization wherever I've been. So I have commitments, it's not simply that I have my ear on the ground and I see issues that pop up in the media. I have commitments, I'm part of the community, I joined organizations, I know what our communities are grappling with and all of that is always shaped my research agenda and found its way in my teaching. That's what I mean by people's professor that, my allegiance is not to the university, my allegiance is not even to my career and advancing my career. It's really to, using my skills, using my training, using my platform to advance the work of social justice. I think that's the role I feel like I want to play. That's why I entered academia to begin with. [00:48:00] Miko Lee: So your next iteration of the people's professor after you leave UC Davis next year, will be the School for Liberating Education. [00:48:09] Dr. Robyn Magalit Rodriguez: The School for Liberating Education is quite simply a platform that allows anybody in the community to be able to access Ethic Studies knowledge, I think it's just so vital and healing and transformative to take Ethnic Studies courses. And yet, as you mentioned earlier, we are under attack. We've had many important Ethnic Studies victories, but there've been sufficiently forces who've managed to water down the kind of curriculum that many of us who fought for Ethnic Studies and continue to fight for Ethics Studies really want. And so among the things that the pandemic offered us is new kinds of technologies to connect virtually and, I myself, was taking virtual courses as part of my own healing process in the wake of the loss of my son in August of 2020. And it occurred to me that, these courses were amazing for my own healing journey and that I could possibly use these same platforms that were helping me to be able to offer Ethnic Studies to a broader audience of folks, especially in a context where Ethnic Studies or CRT was being viciously attacked. So yeah, that's really what it started off as, and in its first phase it's been a series of online courses first in, Asian American studies, which is really in my wheelhouse, and in Filipinx Studies specifically, I'd like to expand even more of the offerings that dive deep into the Chicanx experience and Latinx experience the Black experience, Native studies, Native and Indigenous studies and interracial kind of examinations as well, just in terms of the online courses. I guess the 2.0 version of this School for Liberating Education is the courses that I'm hoping to offer here on site at the new farm that we've just purchased. We want to be able to host intensive learning retreats and kind of educational workshops that center land-based and Indigenous knowledges. So in other words, either doing in-person short courses that are somewhat based on the current offering of courses online or extensions of them or just kind of new courses. There's a lot of new work in advancing healing justice that I also want to help to organize and curate here at the farm. Definitely want to center these land based and Indigenous knowledges and I'm super excited about the possibilities of what I can do as a people's professor outside of the space of academia outside of also the space of, the politics of it all and here. We're just at the beginnings of setting up the farm proper we're beginning to break ground because we have some seeds in the ground. I have my Hmong father and mother-in-law are helping us and already passing on generations of wisdom about the land and how to till the land and how to, just be in community with the land, just, in the work that they've been doing and helping us to cultivate it, but yeah, this is the next phase and I'm just really excited about the possibilities for learning that I can extend, but also for myself, I don't see myself as only being the professor actually in this space. I see myself more as an organizer and a curator who has some knowledge to impart, but also as somebody who can gathered together other people with other forms of expertise. [00:51:27] Miko Lee: It's a combination of a lot of your wheelhouse, a lot of your strengths as an educator and doing cross solidarity work and bringing in this sense of connecting to the land and healing and wellness. It's very beautiful. I'm looking forward to learning more and we will post a link to School for Liberating Education in the show notes for APEX Express. You spoke about healing and wellness. And I know 2020 was a really hard year and I am so sorry for the loss of your son. I really appreciate how you are turning that just tragic loss into a powerful foundation. Can you speak about the foundation and what that's all about? [00:52:08] Dr. Robyn Magalit Rodriguez: Yeah. Absolutely. I'm still struggling. The healing process is ongoing for me. And people often talk about how there are different kinds of losses one can experience, and I've experienced a lot of those kinds of losses. I've lost a dear grandparent, my grandmother who helped raise me, I've lost a parent. I lost my father in 2014. And all of those losses, hurt in deep ways, of course, but there is something acute about the loss of a child. And though, he was a young man so full of promise though, just at the young age of 22 to have lost his life. And the foundation is an opportunity for me to ensure that his legacy and everything that he was so passionate about and that he lived and fought and died for lives on. And, so the Amado Khaya Foundation is meant to be a space that will support the causes that , was so passionate about. Clearly indigenous people's struggles, that's where he spent the last few months of his life, he was serving the Magguangan and Maduro in the wake of terrible typhoons that had hit the island. He was also very passionate about Ethnic Studies, that was an issue he was very involved in before leaving for the Philippines. He was passionate about housing justice. He really came of his own as a community organizer and activist. And I want to just ensure that, the work that he started can continue, but I also want to center mental health and wellness in the work that Amado Khaya does because he really acutely understood the ways that community organizers and activists hold the collective trauma of our people. His father who I am no longer with, was an anti-apartheid activist in South Africa. Had really experienced the violence of the apartheid regime was witness to the violent clashes between activists and the police and the state, and that had a major impact on Amado's father. And deep mental health impacts that Amado recognized, so that's something I really want to also center in the Amado Khaya Foundation is not just continuing to support the organizations or the issues he fought for, but to support the mental health and wellness of organizers themselves, who are doing all this great work and kind of providing them the support and care that they also really require to continue the work of social justice and among the things that we've we've done through Amado Khaya, we're still finishing up our 501c3 process. But we have a home that we purchased in honor of Amado called Amado's Kaia, which translates into Amado is home. Kaia actually also means home in Zulu. But we have a home that we offer as a gift to organizers as a sanctuary refuge for rest. We've been able to get some grants and in the process of setting up a digital media lab, Amado was a aspiring filmmaker. So we want to be able to also use media film in particular, which was what he was passionate about, and video as a way of also supporting activists causes. Part of what I'm also hoping that Amado Khaya does , and this is what the connection comes back to the school, I'm very inspired by Grace Lee Boggs, so Re-Imagination Lab is the social enterprise that holds all of my kind of entrepreneurial initiatives and the idea is that we want to get to a place where we generate a surplus revenue that we would reinvest into Amado Khaya, other non-profits. Somebody who's worked in alongside nonprofits we know how much our, a nonprofit organizations struggle to hustle for funding. And they're often beholden to foundations, that, oftentimes relate to non-profits in what amounts to a very colonized and very white supremacist, relationship and which constrain the kind of work that nonprofit organizations can do in service of the community. And so I want to be able to get to a place where Amado Khaya will either draw sufficient donations from individuals or revenues from Re-Imagination Lab so that we can help fund movements without constraints so they can do the work that they need to do without any limitation. I think that there are a lot of us who are trying to figure out how do we redistribute resources in our community and not have to be beholden to foundations that may very well be responsible for creating the very problems that nonprofits are forced to have to address. [00:56:56] Miko Lee: Dr Robyn, the people's professor. Thank you so much. Dr. Celine thank you both for turning your grief into positive action and thank you for just continuing to share your work with by and for the broader community. I really appreciate what you're doing. [00:57:12] Miko Lee: Please check out our website, kpfa.org backslash program, backslash apex express to find out more about the show tonight and to find out how you can take direct action. We thank all of you listeners out there. Keep resisting, keep organizing, keep creating and sharing your visions with the world. Your voices are important. Apex express is produced by Miko Lee Jalena Keane-Lee and Paige Chung and special editing by Swati Rayasam. Thank you so much to the KPFA staff for their support have a great night. The post APEX Express – 11.3.22 – A Tale of 2 Professors appeared first on KPFA.

This series of podcast episodes will focus on Decolonising Research, and feature talks from the Decolonising Research Festival held at the University of Exeter in June and July 2022. The eleventh epsiode of the series will feature Dr Salmah Eva-Lina Lawrence from the International Women's Development Agency with her talk 'What does it mean to do decolonial research?'   Music credit: Happy Boy Theme Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/   Transcription   00:09 Hello, and welcome to rd in the in betweens. I'm your host Kelly Preece. And every fortnight I talk to a different guest about researchers development, and everything in between.   00:32 Hello, and welcome to the final recording of talks in our decolonizing research series. For this final episode, I'm delighted to bring to you Dr. Salmah Eva-lina. Lawrence, with her talk, what does it mean to do decolonial research.   00:48 But first of all, I'd like to acknowledge that I am on the lands traditional lands of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation of New South Wales in Australia. This is where I normally live and work tonight I'm in Melbourne, I'm actually on the lands of the orangery, people of the Kulin nation. I pay my respects to the elders past, present and emerging of the First Nations peoples of Australia. And I recognize that Australia was founded on the genocide and dispossession of First Nations peoples, and that the land was never ceded. It always was and always will be Aboriginal land. So I'm going to do a short introduction to myself and then head off into my presentation. I am currently the acting co CEO of the International Women's Development Agency in Melbourne, Australia, where I lead our decolonial work interrogating our practices and our approach to international development with the objective of decolonizing how we work when I'm not acting CEO, I'm the director of systemic change and partnerships, and I still have charged in the decolonial work that we do. I'm also an adjunct Fellow at Macquarie University. In my scholarly life, I research decolonial theory, ethics and epistemology. And I draw deeply on my own culture, which is a matrilineal culture in Papua New Guinea, the millbay province of Papa New Guinea, and I use my own culture to frame my decolonial practice. In fact, it's my matrilineal culture, a culture that's at the opposite end of the spectrum of the masculinizing patriarchy of coloniality. That shapes my decolonial practice and shaped my decolonial practice long before I became a scholar of the decolonial. So it's really exciting to see Exeter, uni and other academic institutions start to take the decolonization of research seriously. I started my PhD in 2013 and submitted in 2017. So really not that long ago. But my thesis was grounded in decolonial theory theory I was influenced into radio by any bulky handle, Walter Manolo Ramon, Grossberg well, and reproduce cell, or your NK or women in the mighty Nile cough. I hope these names are familiar to you, if you are decolonial researchers, and Linda Jr. By Smith, who is a Maori from the Pacific region. On the one hand, at the level of the institution where I did my PhD, it was a struggle to talk the decolonial and hold a decolonial space, because it was just so alien at that time. It was marginally easier within my discipline of gender and Cultural Studies, because both feminist and anthropological critical studies were an influence in this domain. And I was able to use this as a bridge into post colonial theories and then into decolonial theory. So where you sit discipline wise, I think will have a large influence on how you're able to negotiate using decolonial theory and being a decolonial researcher.   03:49 In the second year of my PhD, I attended a summer school in Barcelona on decolonizing knowledge and power, I met some of the scholars that I've just named, and where I connected with a community of like minded scholars and activists. It was really enlightening, and energizing. And I highly recommend if you are a PhD scholar candidate, or if you're a master student, I recommend participating in this summer school non slip show a slide at the end with the website name and other resources. I'm going to share my understanding of decolonial research which does touch on the points made by dt and Saskia. I want to explain some concepts that I use that I will be using. I'll then talk about some principles for doing decolonial research or for the way that I do my decolonial research. And I'll talk about some of the practices that I use to support those principles. I'm going to talk for about 25 minutes, I can see that it's 10 parts the hour now and I will try to keep to time, but there will be time for q&a at the end. If there's time and if anybody is interested, I'll be able to share with you my own PhD research and what was decolonial about it So the first concept that I want to talk about briefly is the concept of whiteness. Now, I deliberately use the terms of whiteness West Global North Eurocentric developed world interchangeably. These terms often broadly refer to the same demographic, but within specific academic disciplines, they have nuanced meanings. Whiteness, for instance is used by Critical Race theorists to mean a system or culture that discriminates based on race, specifically, this perceived superiority of white people and their customers. For a detailed look at whiteness from the perspective of a white person, I recommend reading Shannon Sullivan's revealing whiteness, the unconscious habits of racial privilege. So like patriarchy, whiteness describes a particular set of characteristics and practices which have become institutionalized in many parts of the world, including an international development the sector in which I work. And of course, in academia, there would be no Exeter University decolonizing Research Festival, where this is not the case. The other concept that I want to share with you is that you will hear me mention majority world and minority world. I use minority world instead of the west or the global north, and I use majority world instead of developing or the global south. For me this, this terminology more meaningfully and accurately describes the global demographic majority who are located in the Global South. It's also terminology that doesn't infantilized by using the word developing or developed or use majority well, because not only is the global south a demographic majority on this planet, we are also a sociological majority. Our cultures share many things in common in contrast to minority world cultures. Across the Pacific Africa, the Americas and Asia, we are united by an ethics of relational autonomy that underpins our diverse social, economic and epistemic systems, and which contrasts starkly with the competitive individualist ethics, growth based economies and binary knowledge systems of the developed world or the minority world. So it's a political choice for me to use this terminology, political choice to use the term majority world to bring into stark relief, the situation that we all find ourselves living with in at the moment, which is a global power system that is based on minority world ideas. Another concept, I want to talk so I've shared with you the concepts that I'm going to use whiteness majority with minority world owners with a little bit about coloniality and epistemic decolonization before I move on to principles and practices.   08:03 So coloniality, as you would know, is a theory developed by a group of primarily Latin American thinkers which coalesced around 1998 into the modernity coloniality matrix. A theory is a way of explaining the world and as we all know, it can be based on the evidence or not. The basic theory is that European modernity has a dark side, which is rarely if ever acknowledged by those working within modernity. And that Dark Side Includes colonization, enslavement, genocide, expropriation, so it is disingenuous to highlight the advances associated with modernity without acknowledging that these advances have been made possible through colonial reality, a matrix of intertwining systems and technologies of power, such as race hierarchies, gender hierarchies, and the exploitation of and dominance over the natural world. The theories of modernity coloniality have gained traction across the majority world across the global south. Because one, the historical and contemporary evidence for it is overwhelming and to the theory describes more accurately what majority well peoples have experienced and continue to experience than just theories produced by global North theorists. The theory of coloniality is a theory that resonates across the majority one because it actually explicates the historical and contemporary experiences of majority well, people who have experienced colonization, enslavement, genocide, racism. So coloniality scholars and the bulky Hondo and Walter Manolo and others generated the modernity collegiality matrix by stepping outside modernity, to view modernity from an alternative perspective, the perspective of coloniality now this group of scholars to coined the term decolonial ality to describe centering understanding of and interpretation of the social, economic and political world from a perspective outside the Eurocentric frame. meaning of modernity. They also refer that they being the scholars also referred to the coloniality as epistemic decolonization. So what does this tell us about decolonial research or about doing decolonial research? And what relevance to the concepts of whiteness and majority and minority worlds have to doing decolonial research? Since deeper learn reality, you don't have to take a sip of water Excuse me. Since decolonial reality is about epistemic decolonization, it means articulating knowledge from a subject position that is not the colonizer. In the spaces that I work in the colonizer is synonymous with whiteness or Anglo and Eurocentrism. In other words, the minority world assuming that one takes a subject position that is not that a whiteness what does that mean to knowledge creation? Let's take the concept of gender. Only in very recent times has the minority world started to recognize that gender and sexual diversity exists along a spectrum. Yet non binary genders have always been recognized in parts of the majority world, such as in some all weather talk term FAR, FAR female refers to a non binary gender, or Urumqi or your woman in her book, The invention of women, demonstrates how Western gender roles do not map neatly to pre Christian roles in parts of Nigeria, providing one example in which the role of a husband the role of a provider and a projector can actually be fulfilled by a woman. The point is that social concepts generated from within one worldview view will not necessarily translate across other worldviews. A subject position that is not whiteness opens up knowledge is they have been unexplored, ignored or deliberately marginalized. So doing decolonial research means first of all, recognizing that the knowledge produced by the colonizer and through the knowledge production systems of whiteness is not universal. And secondly, it means recognizing that the knowledge produced in this system, the colonizer system is only partial knowledge. Why is it only partial knowledge or primarily because if you look at it from the perspective of logic, logically, in order to present knowledge as universal truths, it makes sense only if the entirety of the population to which that truth is said to apply, has been tested against that truth, and found to comply with it. With 7 billion humans on this planet, this is a feat that's never been accomplished. Researchers use sample populations to test their theories and make inferences based on these minut subsets of humanity. And we know that these sample populations are rarely truly representative of the diversity of the entire human population on this planet.   13:05 So the situation that the majority world lives in is that European customs culture, ways of being and knowing have been projected by Europeans as universal norms. But we've just seen that the gender norms of the minority world which are projected to be universal or not, and a cursory look at the literature on gender written by majority world scholars, such as or Iraqi or women immediately challenges that assumption. So what I'm channeling your attention to here is that the social world looks different, according to your worldview, and your subject position. knowledge that is produced by white men is only partial knowledge because it does not incorporate other subject positions. Knowledge produced by white women and white men is still only partial knowledge. We need knowledge generated from multiple different subject positions to create a picture that is holistic, that is more complete and representative of the reality of life on this planet. So the key learning here is that decolonial research and researchers treat minority world knowledge claims as merely one data point and never the only data point. The second point, and one which disrupts the colonizers view of objective knowledge creation. The second learning is that we all carry our cultural baggage, and our conscious and subconscious biases into all of our engagements, including research. No human is free of this, since no human exists outside of the social system. We see according to our own subject positions, when shown a different perspective, we might then see a different perspective. But we also might not see a different perspective, even when we are told about it, and even when we're shown it. So does the fact that we cannot see a different perspective mean that it doesn't exist or does the fact But others can see it mean that it does exist. And we simply don't have the faculties necessary to see that perspective. So for me, that's a very important part of decolonial research allowing for the fact that other perspectives do exist. So to summarize the points that I just made, there is no truly objective researcher. And secondly, since there's never been adequate evidence provided for claims that particular types of social knowledge are universal, the decolonial researcher will be skeptical when those claims are presented to him. So what are some of the principles and practices that researchers can employ to produce work that is decolonial now from my reading across different decolonial decolonial scholars, I've distilled a set of principles which I think a common decolonial works and I detail these in my forthcoming book decolonizing international development majority worldviews, there are three principles which are particularly pertinent to doing decolonial research. The principles highlight that decolonization and decolonial ality is not just about explicitly challenging external and institutional structures of race based power, such as how whiteness informs academia and pervades the interactions between nation states and individual citizens. The decolonial is as much about understanding one's internal world as it is about navigating the external world.   16:33 So what do I mean by this, we talked about how subject position matters. The first principle that I'm going to talk about relates to acknowledging that there is no truly objective researcher. Therefore, perspective matters and diversity matters. That is the principal perspective matters and diversity matters. We inhabit a planet with an incredible diversity of humans and other life forms, where we are situated geographically geopolitically, culturally our gender, a myriad of other intersecting ways. These all shaped the way that we interact with the world. respecting diversity necessarily means that we respect historical and cultural difference. On a planet as diverse as ours, one cannot generate sustainable solutions, or undertake ethical research without multiple diverse voices framing the issues that matter and how they should be addressed. So decolonial researchers employ radical honesty and transparency about their subject position. Now it's common for scholars from the Pacific region. I told you earlier that I am hoping again, you're not from the Pacific region, it's common for scholars in the Pacific region to emplace themselves. I introduced myself as coming from a matrilineal matrilineal culture in Papua New Guinea. My scholarly colleagues variously introduced themselves as Maori Fijian Samoan. In doing this, we are each acknowledging that our views of the world are partial, and they're shaped by our geopolitical location. Very few white scholars, particularly in place themselves, and by not doing so they are complicit in the myth of objective knowledge production, and in upholding white because there's a norm that needs no explanation. Some white scholars in Australia do in place themselves and I'm going to share with you how a white scholar working in Australia in the decolonial space positions herself. I quote along the Lenten who says, I wish to acknowledge the dark people, their elders past and present, and to remind us all that this lecture is taking place on stolen derelict land. I also want to begin my lecture by positioning myself as a European West Asian Jewish woman living on stolen Gadigal land and quote, Alana Lenten acknowledges that she is a settler colonizer on land that has been stolen from the original inhabitants and that she benefits from this situation. The effect of a white person doing the reflective work to understand her subject position. And then voicing that subject position is that it begins to destabilize whiteness as the norm, culture, ethnicity historical wrongs that continue as contemporary social marginally marginalization become visible, as influences on the knowledge that is being presented and the claims that are being made. The second principle that I wanted to talk about is that we live in a blue reverse, not a universe and the blue reverse is a term that we that the cohort of decolonial scholars that I talked about earlier on, Walter Manolo, Arturo Escobar, this was coined by them. decolonial approach rejects the idea of a universe or uni versal approaches which imply a single way of being knowing And doing that is the uni. A decolonial approach embraces the idea of a pure reverse meaning that we understand that there are multiple different and equal ways of being knowing and doing. And the third principle is that every related principle to the previous humility matters. In a pure verse have multiple ways of being, knowing, doing, relating and perceiving. No one individual or group has all the answers to human well being, or cultivating the flourishing of life more generally. In our pure reverse knowledge is generated in a myriad of ways, not just in universities. There are as many experts outside of universities, as there are within them. Who are these people, these other experts, they have people with lived experience of the research question or the policy problem.   21:01 They include, for example, women in communities across the Pacific who navigate who negotiate the effects of climate change in their daily lives, but whose voices are absent from the policymaking that directly affects them. Policy which can produce unintended, unintended harmful consequences for these women because it doesn't address their daily concerns. And I recommend reading Linda to EY Smith decolonizing methodologies as part of your PhD candidature exploration into other ways of knowing and knowledge creation. I'm going to talk now I realized that I'm over the half hour, but I'm going to talk a little bit about some of the practices that serve these decolonial principles. And then we can go into a q&a section. So the first practice that I highlight is a practice of radical self reflexivity, for the principle that perspective matters. radical honesty and transparency about your subject positionality requires deep self reflexivity. At IW da the International Women's Development Agency where I work, we are in the process of finalizing our inaugural decolonial framework to guide our work. And I'm going to quote a passage from this framework because I find it particularly pertinent. Starting the quote, since racist and colonial systems and institutions are created and held in place by many individual people, we each have a duty to do the personal inner work to analyze our relationship with whiteness, and coloniality. We must work to understand our own assumption, beliefs, behaviors, and positions in relation to colonialism and racial hierarchies. We must ask ourselves, how our nationality or religion, our language, our sexuality, or gender, our racialized identity, our indigeneity, our can our conceptual frameworks, our practices, etc, have been and continue to organization and flow in reality, and how this informs our individual sees hard work, particularly for those who benefit from the systems of oppression that coloniality and whiteness represent. However, doing this work as individuals is necessary in order to reframe our understanding of how to relate to other peoples other countries and other cultures, and to begin to decolonize ourselves and quote, this work I put to you is necessary for all decolonial researchers. Well, how can you seek to decolonize if you have no understanding of how you yourself are affected by and or complicit in colonial ality the second practice that I highlight speaks to the fact of living in a pure reverse. And that is all knowledge claims have to be triangulated. If you are researching the Pacific, for example, you triangulate the scholarly texts from scholars who are indigenous to the Pacific region and scholars who've written about the Pacific from other parts of the world or other subject positions. And you search out other sources as well. You acknowledge that people with lived experience of the matters that you are researching, have an expertise that is valuable, and you extend to them the mantle of expert, not just research subject, or object. So the principles and practices that I've outlined here are by no means exhaustive there, but they are I feel necessary tools for the decolonial researcher and practitioner to critique and disrupt and dismantle existing power structures and to contribute to offering and shaping a radical and transformative alter alternative world But to paraphrase Audrey Lorde does not use the Masters tools.   25:06 And that's it for this episode. Don't forget to like, rate and subscribe. And join me next time where I'll be talking to somebody else about researchers development and everything in between.

Audrey Geraldine Lorde foi uma escritora feminista, mulherista e ativista dos direitos civis e homossexuais. Norte-americana de descendência caribenha, Lorde teve entre seus esforços mais notáveis, o trabalho militante com as mulheres afro-alemãs na década de 1980. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/josemar-barboza-da-costa/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/josemar-barboza-da-costa/support

In the first segment, Jenn and Daren share their current favorite things, including PJ Morton and JoJo's new song “My Peace” and the Peacock show “Bel-Air.” In the second segment, they talk through how Kim and Kanye's divorce shows that stalking and harassment are never OK, why everybody needs to stay up to date on the war in Ukraine, and how people's issues with Rihanna's pregnancy are another example of how Black women are treated like products instead of people. In the third segment, Jenn and Daren give a preview of what they'll be discussing for Women's History Month in their next episode, including phenomenal Black women like Audrey Lorde, bell hooks, and author Zakiya Dalila Harris. Reference Material: * Episode 26: Why We Aren't Rooting For Everybody Black https://soundcloud.com/thatblackcouple/thatblackcouple-ep-26-why-we-arent-rooting-for-everybody-black * Episode 7: #MentalHealthMatters https://soundcloud.com/thatblackcouple/thatblackcouple-ep-7-mentalhealthmatters *iamlegallyhype on TikTok https://vm.tiktok.com/TTPdAePGpN/ * Episode 4: “Pretty Pregnancy” and Unrealistic Expectations for Black Pregnant People https://soundcloud.com/thatblackcouple/thatblackcouple-ep-4-pretty-pregnancy-and-unrealistic-expectations-for-black-pregnant-people * Peacock's "Bel-Air" https://www.peacocktv.com/stream-tv/bel-air * PJ Morton & JoJo (feat. Mr. Talkbox) - My Peace https://soundcloud.com/pjmorton/my-peace-feat-mr-talkbox * Samm Henshaw - Joy https://soundcloud.com/sammhenshaw/joy www.ThatBlackCouple.com FB: www.facebook.com/ThatBlackCouple Twitter: www.twitter.com/ThatBlkCouple Instagram: www.instagram.com/thatblkcouple iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/that-black-couple-podcast/id1284072220?mt=2 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2M7GIQlWxG05gGq0bpBwma?si=xSkjzK0BRJW51rjyl3DWvw Stitcher: www.stitcher.com/podcast/that-black-couple SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/thatblackcouple Google Podcasts: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cDovL2ZlZWRzLnNvdW5kY2xvdWQuY29tL3VzZXJzL3NvdW5kY2xvdWQ6dXNlcnM6Mjc2MDExMzcwL3NvdW5kcy5yc3M Email: ThatBLKCouple@gmail.com Podcast Summary: This is an accidentally funny podcast about the realities of Blackness and adult life. We do “adult” differently. We are That Black Couple. Our goal is to create a space for Black millennials to discuss and embody adult life on their own terms. We aren't beholden to “traditional” gender or parenting roles, queerness is fluid and present in the ways we show up in our relationships and in the world, and we want to build community with other 30-something Black folx who are trying to figure this ish out.

Happy Holidays! In this episode, we talk about: - sourcing ingredients for our favorite holiday meals- our favorite holiday recipes - Christmas traditions at home and abroad We also talk with Whit in Stuttgart about: - life as an academic in Germany- alienation and identification- the Afro- Deutsch Movement, Audrey Lorde, and May Ayim

Ashni shares her relationship with offerings and why she makes them. You'll also hear about: On reframing our tools as toys for exploration Connecting to the sacredness of your pee On creating simple everyday practices of connection EFT as a resource to ride the waves of emotions  ♥♥♥ Join The Earth Speak Collective Membership! Join like-hearted folks in a sacred container and community where you'll: Connect deeply to yourself, others, nature & spirit Learn to trust your intuition Activate your Earth magic Expand your healing & divination skills Put your intuition into practice in everyday life Stop feeling lonely on your spiritual path Embody & express your creative power & truths Experience safe space without agenda or judgment When you join the Collective, you get access to all of our past workshops, any live workshops happening while you're a member, live weekly energetic reset calls, monthly community rituals, all the secret episodes, member-run meetups to explore magical topics, and a lively members only forum (that's not on FB!). ▶▶▶ Learn more and sign up for the Collective membership here: https://www.earthspeak.love/collective ***** Ashni, daughter of Cynthia and Allan, born and raised in Brooklyn, NY with rich roots in the island of St.Vincent & The Grenadines. She facilitates 1 on 1 and group sessions, ceremonies, meditations and experiences permeated with love that cultivate radical awareness, appreciation of self and overall ecstatic wellness within participants and their community with the intention of re-cultivating a deep connection with our Earth mother.      In this episode, we talk about: How slave Elizabeth Freeman / MumBet advocated for her freedom and won On reconnecting with elemental beings and nature Listening to the language of the land and giving thanks On coming from a matriarchal lineage that centers life and source The Earth as our oldest ancestor On tapping into the ancient wisdom of fungi On connecting to that which is beyond words How Ashni's younger brother came to her in her dreams  Ashni shares how she communicates with the Spirit world On creating an invitation of connection and listening with a sense of curious delight The patriarchy and rugged individualism How everything exists as a result of the relationship of the elements and the elemental beings How capitalism separates us from Indigenous ways of being On the illusion of disconnection On creating simple everyday practices of connection On connecting to the Spirit of water Acknowledging the carriers of ancient protocols Connecting to the sacredness of your pee Seed intelligence On the Spirit and the nourishment of Amaranth EFT as a resource to ride the waves of emotions On having awareness and compassion for ourselves and our conditioning On reframing our tools as toys for exploration The healing energy of play Ashni shares about her upcoming workshop with the Earth Speak Collective And so much more!   Bonus Secret Episode! Get the secret episode with Ashni on how flowers are beings from another planet that can help us to evolve, at https://www.earthspeak.love/secret.   Links: Join the Earth Speak Collective Membership at https://www.earthspeak.love/collective Learn more about Ashni's offerings at www.sunderashni.com Connect with Ashni on Instagram @ashnilivingthedream // https://www.instagram.com/ashnilivingthedream/ Connect with Ashni at Mumbets Freedom Farm www.mumbetsfreedomfarm.com Get the secret episodes at https://www.earthspeak.love/secret  References: Elizabeth Freeman / MumBet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Freeman The Village https://www.earthspeak.love/village Zuckerberg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg Ashni on Dream Freedom Beauty https://bit.ly/2UydQQj Summer solstice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summer_solstice Matriarchal society https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matriarchy Juneteenth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juneteenth Mumbets Freedom Farm https://www.mumbetsfreedomfarm.com/ John Ashley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonel_John_Ashley_House US Declaration of Independence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Declaration_of_Independence Shays Rebellion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shays%27_Rebellion W. E. B. Du Boise https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._E._B._Du_Bois Schumacher Center https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schumacher_Center_for_a_New_Economics Stockbridge Munsee Community https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockbridge%E2%80%93Munsee_Community Sheffield Historical Society https://sheffieldhistory.weebly.com/ School of Elemental Beings by Karsten Massei https://amzn.to/3ACoaHk Alessandra Belloni https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alessandra_Belloni Thirteen Grandmothers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Council_of_Thirteen_Indigenous_Grandmothers Rites of Passage Project https://www.ritesofpassageproject.org/ Masaru Emoto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masaru_Emoto Ifá tradition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If%C3%A1 Amaranth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amaranth Race Brook Lodge https://rblodge.com/ EFT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_Freedom_Techniques Somatic Experiencing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somatic_experiencing My Grandmothers Hands by Resmaa Menakem https://amzn.to/3yFIHZW The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House by Audrey Lorde https://amzn.to/2VoE7Rr Tarot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarot   ► Leave us a written review on iTunes, and get shouted out on the show! Theme music is “It's Easier” by Scarlet Crow http://www.scarletcrow.org/ and “Meeting Again” by Emily Sprague  https://mlesprg.info/ ► Join the Earth Speak Collective Membership at https://www.earthspeak.love/collective Follow Earth Speak on Instagram and tag us when you share @earthspeak https://www.instagram.com/earthspeak

Ashni shares her relationship with offerings and why she makes them. You'll also hear about: On reframing our tools as toys for exploration Connecting to the sacredness of your pee On creating simple everyday practices of connection EFT as a resource to ride the waves of emotions  ♥♥♥ Join The Earth Speak Collective Membership! Join like-hearted folks in a sacred container and community where you'll: Connect deeply to yourself, others, nature & spirit Learn to trust your intuition Activate your Earth magic Expand your healing & divination skills Put your intuition into practice in everyday life Stop feeling lonely on your spiritual path Embody & express your creative power & truths Experience safe space without agenda or judgment When you join the Collective, you get access to all of our past workshops, any live workshops happening while you're a member, live weekly energetic reset calls, monthly community rituals, all the secret episodes, member-run meetups to explore magical topics, and a lively members only forum (that's not on FB!). ▶▶▶ Learn more and sign up for the Collective membership here: https://www.earthspeak.love/collective ***** Ashni, daughter of Cynthia and Allan, born and raised in Brooklyn, NY with rich roots in the island of St.Vincent & The Grenadines. She facilitates 1 on 1 and group sessions, ceremonies, meditations and experiences permeated with love that cultivate radical awareness, appreciation of self and overall ecstatic wellness within participants and their community with the intention of re-cultivating a deep connection with our Earth mother.      In this episode, we talk about: How slave Elizabeth Freeman / MumBet advocated for her freedom and won On reconnecting with elemental beings and nature Listening to the language of the land and giving thanks On coming from a matriarchal lineage that centers life and source The Earth as our oldest ancestor On tapping into the ancient wisdom of fungi On connecting to that which is beyond words How Ashni's younger brother came to her in her dreams  Ashni shares how she communicates with the Spirit world On creating an invitation of connection and listening with a sense of curious delight The patriarchy and rugged individualism How everything exists as a result of the relationship of the elements and the elemental beings How capitalism separates us from Indigenous ways of being On the illusion of disconnection On creating simple everyday practices of connection On connecting to the Spirit of water Acknowledging the carriers of ancient protocols Connecting to the sacredness of your pee Seed intelligence On the Spirit and the nourishment of Amaranth EFT as a resource to ride the waves of emotions On having awareness and compassion for ourselves and our conditioning On reframing our tools as toys for exploration The healing energy of play Ashni shares about her upcoming workshop with the Earth Speak Collective And so much more!   Bonus Secret Episode! Get the secret episode with Ashni on how flowers are beings from another planet that can help us to evolve, at https://www.earthspeak.love/secret.   Links: Join the Earth Speak Collective Membership at https://www.earthspeak.love/collective Learn more about Ashni's offerings at www.sunderashni.com Connect with Ashni on Instagram @ashnilivingthedream // https://www.instagram.com/ashnilivingthedream/ Connect with Ashni at Mumbets Freedom Farm www.mumbetsfreedomfarm.com Get the secret episodes at https://www.earthspeak.love/secret  References: Elizabeth Freeman / MumBet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Freeman The Village https://www.earthspeak.love/village Zuckerberg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg Ashni on Dream Freedom Beauty https://bit.ly/2UydQQj Summer solstice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summer_solstice Matriarchal society https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matriarchy Juneteenth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juneteenth Mumbets Freedom Farm https://www.mumbetsfreedomfarm.com/ John Ashley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonel_John_Ashley_House US Declaration of Independence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Declaration_of_Independence Shays Rebellion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shays%27_Rebellion W. E. B. Du Boise https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._E._B._Du_Bois Schumacher Center https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schumacher_Center_for_a_New_Economics Stockbridge Munsee Community https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockbridge%E2%80%93Munsee_Community Sheffield Historical Society https://sheffieldhistory.weebly.com/ School of Elemental Beings by Karsten Massei https://amzn.to/3ACoaHk Alessandra Belloni https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alessandra_Belloni Thirteen Grandmothers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Council_of_Thirteen_Indigenous_Grandmothers Rites of Passage Project https://www.ritesofpassageproject.org/ Masaru Emoto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masaru_Emoto Ifá tradition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If%C3%A1 Amaranth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amaranth Race Brook Lodge https://rblodge.com/ EFT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_Freedom_Techniques Somatic Experiencing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somatic_experiencing My Grandmothers Hands by Resmaa Menakem https://amzn.to/3yFIHZW The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House by Audrey Lorde https://amzn.to/2VoE7Rr Tarot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarot   ► Leave us a written review on iTunes, and get shouted out on the show! Theme music is “It's Easier” by Scarlet Crow http://www.scarletcrow.org/ and “Meeting Again” by Emily Sprague  https://mlesprg.info/ ► Join the Earth Speak Collective Membership at https://www.earthspeak.love/collective Follow Earth Speak on Instagram and tag us when you share @earthspeak https://www.instagram.com/earthspeak

In this episode Dr. Kakali Bhattacharya (University of Florida) interviews Dr. Jeong-eun Rhee (Long Island University) about her scholarship in the field of qualitative research and her notion of 'transnational intergenerational decolonial feminist knowledge' and her recent book, Decolonial Feminist Research: Haunting Rememory and Mothers. The following presents a transcription of the conversation. Dr. Bhattacharya 0:24 Welcome everyone listening in it is my honor to be your guest podcast host today. My name is Dr. Kakali Bhattacharya. I'm a qualitative research professor at the University of Florida. With me is Dr. Jeong-eun Rhee, professor of education at Long Island University. This podcast, Qualitative Conversations, is produced by the qualitative research SIG at AERA. Professor Jeongeun Rhee recently authored a text the Decolonial Feminist Research: Haunting Rememory and Mothers, which is part of my Futures of Data Analysis and Qualitative Research series hosted with Routledge. The book has already created a lot of buzz, and challenged people's understanding of home memories relationality transnational existence, and multiple forces of oppression that cross borders without being categorized as a specific kind of qualitative research. It is my distinct pleasure to welcome Dr. Jeong-eun Rhee, welcome. Dr. Rhee 1:27 Thank you for that wonderful introduction. Kakali, I feel so honored to be here. Dr. Bhattacharya 1:34 So to begin our conversation, give us an overview of your academic journey and how you came to write the book. Dr. Rhee 1:43 There are so many different ways which I think I can answer that question. But at the same time, I'm not sure if I can clearly they up out of past I have, walked. that let me write this book. At least what I can share, though, is that my academic journey has been never separable from my personal, cultural, geopolitical and even spiritual journey. And I think this recognition is in fact how I was able to write this book. But, of course, it was not simply my journey, either. Right? So my journey has intersected or integrated with my family's journey in the context of larger historical relations. As well, as having said that, I also think if we assume that we can now and explain how we've come to where we are, in certainty, I think it can be our arrogant assumption. And I think that's also point I make I made in my book. I mean, the question that I pursued in the book was, what do we do with What do we can never explain? Right? So I think there are certain aspects that I do not know how to explain in terms of how, you know, my last four years of academic life, including my graduate school experiences, etc, has led me to write this book. But, But I know is that I could write this book, because I have learned or remembered how to connect with my mother's not just singular but plural, right, my mother's and ancestors of this land, and then their lands who have prepared a space for me to do my work. And this book is in fact a testimony or or even a question about my journey, both academic and spiritual, that reveals these connections. Dr. Bhattacharya 4:48 Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. It is really interesting. Like, it's not like something that you can like, fully map, but it could be another book and in and of itself, if you just write it. The the journey to writing this book like it's a prequel to the book, perhaps you know, I know that I introduced your book as something that doesn't really fit a certain category or certain type of qualitative research very distinctively, it would be really lovely to hear how you see this book in the larger context of the terrain of qualitative research. Dr. Rhee 5:25 So let me first express my gratitude to you Kakali as a series editor on feature of data analysis and qualitative research, who really encouraged me to think of your series as an outlet of my book. And as I actually talked about, in my book, I had worked on this book almost five years. And during those years, I actually didn't plan out to slate, my work as a qualitative research role, per se. I mean, in fact, I didn't know how to characterize the book until I completed the manuscript. I mean, what I knew was that this work was an inquiry, my inquiry, but but I was unsure if the qualitative research field itself was big enough to include my work as a qualitative research. And so I'm Kakali your gesture of welcoming however, you know, slight that move was like in the context and the large context of the whole field, still made a such a big impact on how I saw potentials of both my work and the field of qualitative research. So I just want to thank you for your vision for your field. And also, you're using our editorial position to open up and expand the boundary of the field. Dr. Rhee 7:12 From my perspective, as a qualitative researcher, what I hope that my will contribute to is to offer more possibilities. So producing, sharing, and then remembering killing knowledge. I think it's interesting that, you know, technically, as I also shared in the book, I didn't have a proposal, research proposal for this book, I didn't have a human subject, nor methodology. You know, my field work included both physical and metaphysical interactions. In my theoretical perspectives came from Toni Morrison's fiction, beloved, and ... experimental autobiographical poetry ... In my research question was like, What do you do when you're haunted by your mother's rememory? But in this writing, as the inquiry process would, I was able to notice and learn was that, in fact, there have been so much work done that I could build on to pursue my question. Also, my question was not simply my question. There have been so many other women, particularly of color, who have asked similar questions. This was how I realized that my work was a part of a larger knowledge project, which I named, eventually, in the book, transnational intergenerational decolonial feminist knowledge process. I hope that my work shows how our deeply personal question is, in fact, a way to connect with a larger collective question that many interconnected diverse communities have pursued. And when we build those connections between our personal and collective we can produce different knowledge different. I think here what mattered was not about following particular techniques or mythology is in terms of technicality, utility, productivity, and also rules and regulations, but about being able to ask and work with and live with our questions. Yeah, so Dr. Bhattacharya 10:00 You know, your question? I mean, your response to my question makes me think about how qualitative research broadly is moving away from being like this technocratic social science, to a more humanistic oriented inquiry, versus, you know, certain steps and procedures we do. To think in very technocratic social science way we do these steps, we collect this data, we analyze it, we doing four or five different strategies or steps or approaches, then we triangulate everything to make everything check and confirm with everything else and have verifiability. And then we know we got something, whereas you are doing this work. And you're saying that the unknown is this, this fertile ground of inquiry, and it can still remain unknown as a result of the inquiry to, or it can create many types of knowings, without any certainty or any members check or any triangulation, or any peer debriefing, it can still remain a very open ended inquiry as a result of an inquiry. Dr. Rhee 11:10 Right. So at the level of, you know, I think methodology like, absolutely, I think that's kind of what I tried to, I guess, a share, not purposefully, but because that's what happened, but then at the level of epistemology, and then even episteme, I think what I tried to show is that actually, by really paying attention to this intergenerational transnational, decolonial feminist knowledge that have existed across the globe, right, that I was able to actually connect with it in the name of science, and how that opened up a new way, or different way, or, you know, relational kind of way of actually noticing the part of reality that I actually forgot. Dr. Bhattacharya 12:18 Yeah, yeah. And that's, that's a Western training and colonizing training that teaches us to forget our own knowledge is and that's so that's always a question that I keep asking myself, what knowledge am I forgetting? What knowledge am I forgetting? There are two anchoring ideas in your book that are re-memory and haunting, which is appropriate for forgetting knowledge or haunted by the met the notion of losing our connectivity? Could you talk a bit about how you came across this ideas, and why they become such critical anchoring for you. Dr. Rhee 12:57 So, read memory and hunting are affective concepts, meaning that to now what they are, you have to feel them. That's how you learn what rememory and haunting are no amount of reading will allow you to know what they are, how they work, and how they change you. And so I want to kind of put this out first, and, you know, conceptually, remember, it was first coined and introduced by Toni Morrison in our book beloved. And according to Morrison rememory is worth remembering and forgetting at the same time, that stays both in person and place that can be encountered by others. This notion, or even existence of remembering completely ruptures how empirical modern science functions. And then think about it. What does this mean that we memories, both remembering and forgetting, at the same time? How is it possible for one's rememory stay both in and outside a person's mind? If remember his base in place, as well, who's remembering? I mean, I can go on with all these questions, right that come from our scientific intelligibility. And to me, rememory of place has become like the source of a haunting as it is someone else's rumery that changes us. And so hunting becomes a demand from those who refuse to be forgotten. And I highlighted effective aspects of remembering and hunting, because I have read beloved so many times. But I really didn't get it. I mean, I cognitively understood what they were when the after my mother's death, and after my mother left to her remote memory for for me to encounter, I became able to see what rememory and hunting were. And so I think like this is the the point that I wanted to put out in terms of like, what I meant by affective concepts. And I think, you know, the famous instruction of Audrey Lorde, who said that masters tool cannot dismantle the masters house, it is very relevant here. I don't think I could figure out how to ask my questions with my academic training only. But with this absolutely non scientific concepts of remembering and haunting, which doesn't mean that they're not true, right. But with those, I started my super personal inquiry through my mother's death, and her remote remember is haunting. And and, in fact of her life was deeply implicated in US Imperial War in Korea. And through my work, now I'm carrying her memor, in this territory of the United States, where my mother's rememory interact with other mothers of colors from memories. And without this kind of embodied the spiritual relationships that have been that have become the source of knowledge. I don't think I could have made this and so my experience and wrote this work. QR SIG Add 17:26 The qualitative research special interest group was established in 1987. To create a space within the American Educational Research Association. For the discussion of ethical, philosophical and methodological issues in qualitative research. We invite you to consider joining the qualitative research SIG today, for members of a era the annual fee for joining qualitative research special interest group for regular non graduate student members is $10. And the annual fee for graduate students is $5. As members of the QR SIG, you will gain access to a network of fellow qualitative scholars, as well as are many activities ranging from mentoring opportunities to our podcast series to update to news related to recent qualitative publications and jobs, please visit the American educational research associations website at www dot era dotnet to join the qualitative research sake today. Dr. Bhattacharya 18:20 You know, this is such a good reminder of the value of other ways of knowing and being then just using the the way that is, and that disconnects you from your body and from your emotionality is, this is like deeply embodied very, very emotion based but not just that, but there is a, there is a sort of like a beautiful spiritual understanding as well, you know, and those sorts of culturally grounded Ways of Knowing that can't all be translated and, you know, like, repurposed in research language and put it out for the world to consume, either you sort of know how to be in those ways of knowing and being and in those connections, or you don't, and that's okay, either way, but those are the connections that spoke to you, which is interesting, because as I was reading your work, I found myself crying, cheering, laughing, cussing, and just going on this journey with you, which was ultimately very healing, you know, from bearing witness, and also from my own embodied experience as well. So could you talk about the role of healing in your work and how it might have shaped your thinking? Dr. Rhee 19:42 So I think I want to reiterate that it took me five years to complete this book. The whole process of writing this book was a process of intentional process of bringing in justice to my mother's life. I mean, as I mentioned briefly already, I want to emphasize that, you know, this wasn't only about my biological mother, but also other mothers of color, who had prepared place for me to come and encounter, there were memories in this territory. So while that was my intention, the process has also become also the process of healing and re storytelling for me. And in fact, those five years became the time I needed to be healed. Through my loss, while I was fighting for justice, to my mother's of color, through my writing as inquiry. I think before I actually talk other things, I must acknowledge that, you know, this time luxury, my taking five years, partly came from my positional privilege is a full professor where I didn't have to worry about, you know, creating, getting tenured or, or getting promoted, etc. But at the same time, I want out other quality researchers to consider or have some time, we need this long staying in a certain kind of work, especially if the work is healing us. In fact, through this work, I have reaffirmed how important it is for us to produce work that heals us as researchers in the process of working on it, working through it, because the work that heals us, as researchers will help others as well, whether they are our participants, readers or communities we work for. So perhaps now we can even ask what is a mean that we as researchers work toward the healing knowledge? What different methodologies reveal bearable for us to do such? Dr. Bhattacharya 22:40 That's, that's a lot, you know, I think, like I have always taught about the work of justice, you know, is it has to be complemented with the work of healing, you know, so the work of justice, or the work of equity, or the work of creating space and visibility from previous unjust things, you know, requires a healing, it doesn't require it's almost foolish to require the dominant group to be responsible for creating anything because the privilege are not incentivized to do anything for those that they oppress. Right. So then how do we do this work without always being in relationship with the colonizer, the privilege, the masterclass all of that. And so I always felt that the work of any kind of equity based work, you know, where you're, you know, demonstrating the oppression demonstrating the wounds require a complimentary healing piece attached to it, you know, justice work and healing work should go hand in hand. So, I know that we don't have a lot of time to discuss all the great things about your work, because there is so much to discuss. So to the listeners, please go and buy her book, decolonial feminist research: haunting rememory and mothers. And I want to sort of wrap up this conversation with advice that you might have for someone whose approach to qualitative research is non traditional, and maybe culturally situated, but doesn't have a concrete path for doing that work and might be feeling unsure. And, you know, what might they think about? Or how might they think about doing this work? there? There are no steps, but what might be some guiding points of consideration Dr. Rhee 24:38 I must say that a colonial Western modern episteme really screwed us. I think our value on universality is a colonial desire. Meaning that, you know, cultural outsiders like me are trained to think that our particular Somehow too particular, meaning that, you know, not valuable not useful. But uh, but our particular existence constitute our interdependent ecology. So I think we have to remember that particularly particularity, and universality are not opposite concepts, but rather they constitute each other. So the challenge is how we can research and remember those interdependence and connectivity, our particularity has with other particularities, and also a larger historical and cultural context. And so actually, you know, as a way to do that, I encourage researchers to be real, like authentic in their questions. I think sometimes it's scary to put out our real, authentic question. I mean, I must admit that I felt that when I wrote this book, but to me, authenticity is our response ability to our particularity. And we doubt our particularity, there is no way for us to respond to what's around us. And then we must remember, there's always a rich tradition and history of knowledge productions, in any community or culture. And so I think we need to remember that we're not alone or interdependent. And what we need is the work of remembering our connectivity from our location. Dr. Bhattacharya 26:59 Yeah, I appreciate that so much, I you know, I get the authentic bit, I feel scared to use the word now. Because every time I use authentic, I hear like all these critiques in my head, how people would say this, and what is co opted and nod and essentially a nod. And then sometimes I like, some things are just what it is, you know, you can say authentic or change it to genuine if you want, change it to sincere if you want, but there are certain ways in which we show up that is unguarded, that is a free flowing version of ourselves in that moment, you know, in which we are allowing things to rise to the surface, including these questions, and and allowing us the freedom to choose to be curious about those questions have a beginner's mind with these questions? So I think that is a really strong advice that people should pursue that and know that knowledge exists beyond what has been presented to them. It exists pretty much in the world in various forms, relationships, things that are within academia, but things that are even outside of academia, outside of our fields, and all of that, Dr. Rhee 28:08 If I add one more, what do we represent, as a knowledge always betrays an actual reality we try to share made. So here I'm not simply talking about how our not least a partial and limited, but when we try to represent there's always violence involved, right. And so when we take this betrayal of representation seriously, I think we as researchers can approach ethics of doing research at another level, especially when we do our work in the name of decolonial, justice and equity. Dr. Bhattacharya 28:53 Yeah, thank you so much for your time and your generosity and opening yourself up to share your thoughts and how you came about writing the book and your thoughts about qualitative inquiry. There is much to unpack here. Unfortunately, we don't have the time to unpack all of it, but I want to thank you and I want to thank the qualitative research SIG for allowing me the honor to interview you. Dr. Rhee 29:19 Thank you so much.

Audrey Geraldine Lorde was a self-described "Black, lesbian, mother, warrior and poet."  Lorde was born in New York City on February 18, 1934. She attended Hunter College, and graduated in the class of 1959. In 1961, she furthered her education at Columbia University, earning a master's degree in library science. In 1980, together with Barbara Smith and Cherríe Moraga, she co-founded Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, the first U.S. publisher for women of color.  From 1991 until her death, she was the New York State Poet Laureate. BlackFacts.com is the Internet's longest running Black History Encyclopedia. Our podcast summarizes the vast stories of Black history in daily episodes known as Black Facts Of The Day™.Since 1997, BlackFacts.com has been serving up Black History Facts on a daily basis to millions of users and followers on the web and via social media.Learn Black History. Teach Black History.For more Black Facts, join Black Facts Nation at BlackFacts.com/join.Because Black History is 365 Days a Year, and Black Facts Matter!

Sam Anderson is back, 10 months later, discussing his 2020 pandemic writing life. We cover his Weird Al essay, his NBA bubble excursion, how closely observing something makes for a wonderful writing exercise, and! we reveal our extremely obvious One Wild Trick to getting everything done in life. Show notes: Sam Anderson on Twitter Boom Town, Sam Anderson Descript, visual podcast editing “The Weirdly Enduring Appeal of Weird Al Yankovic”, Sam Anderson “What I Learned Inside the N.B.A. Bubble”, Sam Anderson The Last Two Northern White Rhinos On Earth, Sam Anderson “Watch This Snowball Fight From 1897 for a Jolt of Pure Joy”, Sam Anderson “I Recommend Eating Chips”, Sam Anderson Ursula K. Le Guin (Author) A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin Ursula K. Le Guin illustrated by t-shirt Audrey Lorde, “Anger is loaded with information and energy." As always, a full transcript is available at: https://craigmod.com/onmargins/s02e02/

Saturday Service January 2021_3 by Rabbi Brian https://rbpodcasts.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/SaturdayService/01162021SaturdayService.mp3 Podcast: The Saturday Service January 16, 2021 Podcast Notes 00:00 - 04:24 - Welcome and acknowledgements for helpers. Remember we have Live Transcripts!! 04:25 - 09:13 - fish quote (Hafiz) from a few weeks ago. Continuing with the fish quote and expanding on it. Quoting a lab experiment where scientists bred a fish to not school. Why would they do that? So, the takeaway is…Be the fish that doesn’t school -- DO YOUR OWN THANG! (For this week) 09:14 - 11:04 - tissue analogy. Yuk. “Not today, thank you” Anytime some tries to give you something you don’t want, you have the POWER to say “No, thank you”. Goes back to the talk last week about the default setting to take abuse. But we DO have the ability to say “No, thank you” 11:05 - 13:19 - MLK Jr quotes (acknowledging MLK Jr Day) “I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.” MLK Jr. Another quote “ Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction ... The chain reaction of evil - hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars - must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation. (1963)” “A fifth point concerning nonviolent resistance is that it avoids not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. The nonviolent resister not only refuses to shoot his opponent but he also refuses to hate him. (1958)” 13:20 - 28:44 - Change matrix. “Justice is what love looks like in public. Intimacy is what love looks like in private.” Change and live your life with love. 28:45 - 29:35 - Betsy played part of a song called “Give yourself to Love” 29:36 - 30:49 - Back to the change matrix. Give yourself to love. This world is not feeling very loving right now. When we talk about us vs them, we’re increasing the problem. 30:50 - 31:09 - Announcement: Chat with Larry Podcasts #1 here! https://rotb.org/chats/ 31:10 - 46:50 - R.A.U.R.! - To love someone is to start by Recognizing them. Acceptance. Understanding. Response. HOMEWORK: Go out and be more loving. Breakout: what would be the top 2 strangest things to explain to your ancestors in the past? - posted in the chat. Comes back to the MLK Jr quote: Hate is too great a burden to bear…can we give up the hate? If the basis of love is to recognize people, how can we go out this stressful week and not hate? Audrey Lorde quote: “For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us to temporarily beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.” John Lennon quote: “When it gets down to having to use violence, then you are playing the system’s game. The establishment will irritate you: pull your beard, flick your face to make you fight. Because once they’ve got you violent, then they know how to handle you. The only thing they don’t know how to handle is non-violence and humour.” Martha Beck quote: “The repercussions of one person living in stubborn gladness are incalculable.” - DON’T TAKE THE BAIT. Go back to Stubborn gladness. 46:51 - 50:00 - Announcements: ETSY SHOP Reflections on Exodus https://www.etsy.com/listing/79094713... SUPPORT https://rotb.org/empowersupport/ ANNOUNCEMENTS Tuesday group — same link, in three hours Virtual Donut Holes after the service Newcomers welcome MEDITATION: Every weekday 2pm PST https://www.facebook.com/rabbibrian YOUTUBE ARCHIVE OF THE SATURDAY SERVICE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9v22m... 50:01 - 57:00 - Acknowledgments and sharing. Homework: OPEN YOURSELF TO LOVE

It is such an honour to close the first season of Empowered Embodiment and tie off 2020 with this conversation with Kalah Hill, Freedom Doulah, Pleasure Activist and Receptivity Alchemist. A few weeks ago, in a private conversation I had with Kalah, she said to me "Black Feminism will save the world," and at that moment I knew I needed to have Kalah on the podcast. We talk about the necessary role pleasure plays in liberation, the interconnectedness of our liberation and how our individual pleasures/liberation will look/mean/feel different for everyone. Listen closely as Kalah rhymes off a number of her inspirations ranging from Audrey Lorde, Toni Morrison, Adrienne Maree Brown, Sonya Renee Taylor and Kalah's BFF, mutual friend and former guest on this podcast, Dana Regan. We hope you enjoy this listen and find 1-3 simple ways to ritualize pleasure in your life. As this year comes to a close, Kalah wishes you the ability to find gratitude for 2020's gift of 2020 vision and dreams of a 2021 where we all dedicate ourselves to the work of becoming more receptive. inpleasurewetrust.com

In this conversation, Philip spends time with adrienne maree brown discussing her books Emergent Strategy and Pleasure Activism. They dive into the radical nature of love and pleasure and the power of speculative futures. The Drop – The segment of the show where Philip and his guest share tasty morsels of intellectual goodness and creative musings. Philip's Drop: Octavia Butler, notes she wrote to herself (https://electricliterature.com/read-octavia-e-butlers-inspiring-message-to-herself) Ursula K. Le Guin's speech at the National Book Awards (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/nov/20/ursula-k-le-guin-national-book-awards-speech#:~:text=5%20years%20old-,Ursula%20K%20Le%20Guin's%20speech%20at%20National%20Book%20Awards,Books%20aren't%20just%20commodities'&text=To%20the%20givers%20of%20this,theirs%20as%20much%20as%20mine) adrienne's Drop: African Immortal Series by Tananarive Due (https://www.goodreads.com/series/66453-african-immortals) Erotic: Erotic as Power by Audrey Lorde (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFHwg6aNKy0&ab_channel=growbean) Special Guest: adrienne maree brown.

In this episode, we speak about self-care. We expand on an early reference to self care from the incomparable Audrey Lorde. We affirm simple and hashtagable acts of self-care yet challenge you think beyond those. Like What does interpersonal and intrapersonal self-care look like for you? How do you practice self-care in your everyday environments? Lastly, we share some of current self-care practices. Thank you for tuning in and as always...Find ya light, Be a light and Shine ya light!

In 1982, in a speech to Harvard University, Audrey Lorde famously said, “. . .If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive.” Quotes are inspiring. And, seeing them put into action is empowering. That is why this week’s guests, Alex and Ash Sullivan, are two of my favorite people. Despite the pressure of a white supramcist capitalist patriarchy, They define themselves for themselves every single day. As they will share in the episode - that doesn’t mean it is easy. I mean - how does one go about living their bold self without being eaten alive? Let this interview be a roadmap that can guide you to your own internal answer to that question. Oh - and did I mention that this episode is being released on their birthday? *Cue the confetti* For real though - Ash and Alex are the best. Alex Sullivan is the Co-Founder of Artists Call to Action. They are also a dope poet, facilitator, activist, educator and freelance diversity consultant in academia. As a mixed agender human being, Alex’s work is often reflective of how the self is presented in the digital world and how current socio-political events can distort that presentation. Their creative and academic work is focused on the black queer experience and every aspect of it, frequently tying in themes of womanism, examination of power structures in the United States, and the experience of the Afro-Caribbean diaspora as the communities have spread out all over the world. Ashley Sullivan is a counselor-in-training and poet who is currently being considered for licensure, actively publishing, and putting energy into other creative endeavors such as starting their own business. Ash is balancing pursuing a career in poetry while also pursuing work in mental health and public health. Currently, they have been published in five or more running publications as well as fulfilling activism work centered around gender, creativity, and community. They are a current candidate for their Master’s of Science in Clinical Mental Health Counseling from Long Island University. On this week’s episode we go all in on: creativity, activism, learning to trust yourself, finding your own voice, the unique relationship Ash and Alex have with each other, getting comfortable with your own silence, getting to know yourself better, and, Well...you’re gonna need to push play to find that out! We could all invite a little more grace, community, and courage into our lives. And Ash and Alex deliver all of that and more in abundance on this week’s episode. Let’s do this. Hit play. And join us. Check out their past interviews here http://www.tomearl.com/blog/alex And here http://www.tomearl.com/blog/ash Check out Ash’s LinkedIn here https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashley-sullivan-631573135/ Check out Ash’s Instagram here https://www.instagram.com/three.of.four/ Find out more about the Artist’s Call to Action here https://actartist.com/ Check out ACTA on Facebook and Instagram at https://www.facebook.com/artistscalltoaction/ and https://www.instagram.com/artists.call.to.action/

Guest Bio: Dr. Marquese McFerguson is an assistant professor within Florida Atlanta University's School of Communication and Multimedia Studies. Dr. McFerguson is a Little Rock, Arkansas native. He holds a bachelor's degree in Studio Art from Ouachita Baptist University, a master's degree in Interpersonal and Organizational Communication from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, and a Ph.D. in Communication Studies from the University of South Florida. His scholarship examines art-based research methods, hip hop culture, and contemporary Black popular culture. In particular, his research about Black popular culture explores the relationship between media scripting and everyday life. Furthermore, his scholarship analyzes how racialized gender and class representations are produced by media makers and interpreted by media audiences to make sense of Blackness. Dr. McFerguson is also an award-winning slam poet and teaching artist who has performed at academic institutions and performance venues throughout the United States and the United Kingdom. About This Episode: Dr. Marquese McFerguson is an assistant professor, award-winning slam poet and a teaching artist from Little Rock, AR. On Episode 15's walk, Dr. McFerguson talks about ensuring every student has a mentor, following the advice you give, research & connections and the importance of making learning fun. He ends with the sharing of a snippet from Audrey Lorde about bringing your whole self to the table — especially if you are a black face in white spaces. For More Information: Visit www.stillstacey.com for information about the host, podcast or for scheduling inquiries. To learn more about the guest, reach out to Marquese McFerguson on Facebook. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/stacey-mcadoo/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/stacey-mcadoo/support

Join us for a conversation with Annalisa Enrile who offers poetry as a healing mechanism, a way to work out trauma, express yourself, and find your voice. Audrey Lorde stated, “Poetry is not a luxury” and this episode will explore why that statement is true and how the power of words can bring us closer to our truths. Visit the Our Stories Matter homepage to learn more about the podcast. Follow @OurStoriesMatterPodcast on Instagram and subscribe to our newsletter for the latest updates.

#selfcare is so hot right now, but what does it actually mean? Is it all Ginseng face-masks, chocolate cake, and massages? Or is it much, much, more than that?Audrey Lorde famously said ‘Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.' And yet 30 years later wellness has become the new luxury and Covid 19 has shown us that most of the time ‘wellness' really just means ‘well off'. So does self-care, mean to treat yourself or to free yourself? Is it an individual or collective practice? Can anyone do it? And how can we actually care for ourselves in real ways as we navigate the stresses and pressures of the imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy?In these revolutionary times there is so much work to be done, and we need care for ourselves so we can keep up the momentum and get it done. Self-careself-care is part of our spiritual work, especially during the journey of both individual and collective awakening.Join Kirileigh and Lynette as they examine the self care quandary and help you to discover how to better care for yourself and others. They also discuss how to navigate self-care fatigue and how to choose the right people to support you on your way.Take a deep breath, lie back,  turn it up and let the healing happen. Look at you - you're doing it! Extra show notes:The Wish Game - https://www.thewish8.com/Dissect Podcast - https://open.spotify.com/show/2b025hq3gJ17tQdxS3aV43?si=nYCwi0pdRV6An3lJkoFy6gRachel Cargle Website - https://www.rachelcargle.com/Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/rachel.cargle/?hl=enArticle - https://www.harpersbazaar.com/author/220412/rachel-cargle/I need to talk to spiritual white women about white supremacy (Part One) Layla Saad - http://laylafsaad.com/poetry-prose/white-women-white-supremacy-1

In Vino Fabulum! In Wine, Story!Find the #InVinoFab podcast on Stitcher, Google Play, Spotify, & Apple PodcastsTo subscribe and listen to the next episode of #InVinoFab on: https://invinofab.transistor.fm/subscribe https://twitter.com/invinofab with hashtag: #InVinoFabhttps://www.instagram.com/invinofab/ Email us to be a guest or share a topic suggestion? invinofabulum@gmail.com Connect with your co-hosts on Twitter:https://twitter.com/laurapasquini (she/her)https://twitter.com/profpatrice (she/her)----There's been a bit of radio silence from us on the #InVinoFab for a while, and that's been intentional. We wanted to spend the last month listening, learning, and unlearning -- so you didn't need to hear from us. Both Patrice & Laura want to make space and amplify other voices. We can learn so much from others and we want to be candid in how we show up and look at “feminism” more broadly in our personal and professional lives. A few reflection questions we are thinking of these days:  What memories do you have about what your family taught you about diversity? What childhood experiences did you have with people of different cultures? What does it mean to think of feminism when it is paired with gender identity, sexual orientation, class, race, economics, culture, and more?  How are you thinking about equity and inclusion lately?  What are you doing to impact or change any privilege you might possess?  “A revolution is not a one time event.” Audrey Lorde, Sister Outsider#InVinoFab recommendations to watch, read, or listen to:Showing Up for Racial Justice - join, get connected to a chapter or donate! White Feminism White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo (Read this Essay) How to Survive [Navigate] Intersectional Feminist Spaces 101 Sister Outsider by Audrey Lorde Me and White Supremacy by Layla F. Saad 13th by Ava Duvernay (documentary) Podcasts or episodes to listen to: Women at Work: S.2, Ep. 10: Sisterhood Is Power Women at Work: S.5, Ep. 9: Sisterhood Is Critical to Racial Justice  1619 Podcast from New York Times Code Switch via NPR TED Talks: Understanding Racism in AmericaHow to talk about politics and race in the workplace http://pca.st/sv2k4j8p #ShutDownAcademia #ShutDownSTEM Resources https://www.shutdownstem.com/resources Do you want to join us for a future episode to discuss any of the above? Let us know -- we want to hear from you!

Johana Castillo Rodríguez - Mamá Tortuga, colombiana radicada en La Florida, activista en educación, interculturalidad y derechos de los inmigrantes, nos comparte en esta entrevista su percepción sobre el movimiento por la reivindicación de los derechos de las comunidades negras y contra el abuso policial en Estados Unidos. Compartimos algunos recursos aportados por Johana, para profundizar en el tema: *Dream Defenders *Black Lives Matter.com creadoras: Alicia Garza, Opal Tometi and Patrisse Cullors. After the death of Mike Brown en Fergusson Hashtag activism #Blacklivesmatter Organizaciones legales: https://www.naacp.org/ https://www.splcenter.org/ https://www.aclu.org/ Black writers: Angela Davis, Octavia Butler, Audrey Lorde, Malcom X. Activistas en Linea: Rachel Cargle, Adrienne Maree Brown. Libro de persona queer de Chile : Pedro Lemebel Les invitamos a conocer el trabajo de Mamá Tortuga en: https://www.mamatortuga.org/ y a contactarla: mamatortuga@outlook.com

Hold onto your seats boys and girls, Rob is turning up the heat with a sexy poetry series and Morgan can't keep a hold of him. Features: 'Recreation' by Audrey Lorde. 'Mistakes' by Lake Street Dive. 'If you like it rough' by Micheal Faudet. 'Freaky Feedback Blues' by Benji Hughes.

As an affiliate of BlackPR.com, Eartha Watts-Hicks has written countless press releases for products, services, and events. Many, requested by not for profits, small business owners, independent musicians and filmmakers, authors, and publishers, have effectively gained national and international exposure. Eartha offers a full range of publicity services and specializes in digital media kits. She is a contributing writer for Harlem World's Magazine's blog site and several other online publications. She is a former board member of Cultivating Our Sisterhood International Association a 501(c)(3), having served two terms as director of publications. A fiction fellow of the North Country Institute and the Hurston-Wright Foundation, Eartha has studied under a host of award-winning authors. She is also a member of the acclaimed Harlem Writers Guild, writing network that has helped develop the talents of Lorraine Hansberry, Sarah Elizabeth Wright, Audrey Lorde, Terry McMillan, Grace F. Edwards, Walter Dean Myers, Ruby Dee, Paul Robeson, and Maya Angelou. Eartha Watts-Hicks is a winner of the 2013 Just R.E.A.D. Award in the fiction category from NYCHA/NAACP. In 2015, she was classified as a 'socialprenuer,' winning the Columbia SBA Business Pitch Competition. In 2017, Eartha Watts Hicks became a New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) artist/entrepreneur. This mother of two now serves as New York City literacy ambassador for the NAACP. 

From this year’s Wysing Polyphonic festival, artists Annie Goh and Natalie Hyacinth (Sonic Cyberfeminisms), Emma Smith, Zuir and Roy Claire Potter and NSDOS explore the idea of silence in relation to Audrey Lorde’s seminal text ‘Your Silence Will Not Protect You.’  Somerset House Studios were invited to guest curate the 2019 edition of Wysing Polyphonic. Considering the legacy of Wysing Arts Centre as a place where artists meet and experiment, the programme explored connection beyond the physical: connection as a channel of communication; an incantation, returning, or heralding; the calling on an ‘other’ or unknown to understand different worlds and possibilities.  Produced by Femi Oriogun-Williams for Reduced Listening. Commissioned by Somerset House Studios

People of mixed heritage lead complex lives, often navigating between two racial and/or cultural identities. Our producer Jocelyn Robinson, who lives this experience, explores identity formation in the US and in Germany.

Chris and Rifa's week in arts, culture, tech and diversity. This week we played indie video game cult hit Untitled Goose Game. We also went to see DIY alt-rock veterans Sebadoh play live. Rifa is reading Audrey Lorde's iconic essays The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle The Master's House, while Chris is enjoying rock writer Oliver Gray's music travel memoir Banjo On My Knee. Visit us on Twitter @refigurepod, Instagram @refigureUK and join us on Facebook. Thank you very much for listening. We hugely appreciate your support.

Original article found at https://theswaddle.com/bdsm-women-positive-effects-confidenceRecorded: 8/7/2019 / Published: 8/7/2019PatreonCan call in at 865-268-4005 to leave your question or visit the Krypt at https://kuldrinskrypt.com. On this episode of The Krypt, I am going to share an article that Patreon Executive Producer BabyLove2269 she found on theswaddle.com and written by Pallavi Prasad titled BDSM Culture Can Make Women More Assertive In Work, Relationships. After I read it, I’m going to give you my first impression of what was said. Yep, this is going to be totally different than anything I’ve done before in that its pretty much a raw and unedited episode. Stick around afterward for a special announcement. Rules to Love by:1: Safe, sane, consensual, and informed2: KNKI: Knowledge, No Intolerance, Kindness, Integrity3: “Submission is not about authority and it’s not about obedience; it is all about relationships of love and respect.” -Wm. Paul Young“BDSM Culture Can Make Women More Assertive In Work, Relationships” By Pallavi Prasad found at https://theswaddle.com/bdsm-women-positive-effects-confidence Published June 28, 2019“I don’t know how to explain it … but I have more clarity the morning after. It’s come to a point where my partner and I ensure we engage in a play scene before any big meetings I have. It really gives me the boost I need.”R.P. is a 32-year-old consultant living in Mumbai. When she joined a high-powered consulting firm seven years ago, she found herself struggling to keep up with the pace and make herself heard.“Around the same time, I got into a relationship with a man who was into BDSM [bondage and discipline; dominance and submission; sadism and masochism] and kink play. He introduced me to it and I instantly took a liking to it,” R.P. says. “Surprisingly, I found myself gravitating towards the role of the Dominant. Within the confines of a loving and safe space with a partner I trusted, I was able to assert myself in ways I couldn’t outside my bedroom. Slowly, I began to notice that especially on days after we had engaged in a play scene, I would feel more focussed, composed and clear-headed. It was almost as if the satisfied feeling I felt in bed, in that position of power, flowed over the next day. I feel like I know more about myself — my mind and my body.”According to recent research by Dr. Brad Sagarin, a professor of psychology at Northern Illinois University, kinks such as BDSM alter the blood flow pattern in the brain, creating altered states of consciousness. For those who assume the dominant position in BDSM, these mental states are called “flow” — the term popularized by positive psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi. Flow is defined as an “optimal state of consciousness where we feel our best and perform our best.” It’s a state of hyperawareness, laser focus, and euphoria, which resonates with R.P.’s experience. “I just feel more brave, if that makes sense,” she says. Sagarin’s research confirms just that. The study found that people who regularly experience flow as an effect of dominant BDSM roles report improved concentration, clarity about goals, decision-making skills, and listening and intuitive skills. They also demonstrate lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol, less self-consciousness and less aversion to risk.The study also found those taking on submissive roles in BDSM play experience “transient hypofrontality,” a peaceful, dreamlike state, often compared to a runner’s high or described as being “in the zone.” Creativity and productivity peak in this state of decreased self-awareness.R.P. explains how her female friends from the BDSM community have discussed this before: “Sometimes when we share — and we’re all doms — our experiences with each other, we all agree that we are in a great mood throughout the next day and feel more energized and creative. It’s like a strange high, knowing what we did the previous night.”People who experience either of these altered mental states report higher levels of happiness, creativity, and productivity for up to three days after, according to research by Harvard University professor Teresa Amabile. They also report transferring the focus, confidence, concentration, and decision-making skills of BDSM into everyday life. It is no wonder, then, that people who engage in BDSM are less neurotic, more extraverted, more open to new experiences, more conscientious, less sensitive to rejection, and have higher subjective well-being outside the bedroom, according to a 2016 study on the psychological characteristics of BDSM practitioners.Additionally, partners who engage in sadomasochism are more connected and more intimate than those who do not engage in it, according to a 2009 study published in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior. The honest expression of one’s fantasies and desires, and consensually, respectfully and safely executing that as a BDSM scene, requires a high level of communication and trust between partners — a feature regularly absent from non-kinky or “vanilla” sex, as the BDSM community calls it.“My boyfriend and I have definitely become much closer since we started exploring this space together. We don’t lie to each other in our relationship — white lies not included, and even those we mostly confess — because the trust between us is the same, inside and outside the bedroom,” says R.P. “There’s very little drama and if we ever fight, we usually resolve it by talking to each other. But it almost never reaches that point because every day, in a way, we tell each other about what it is that we want from the other person and what we don’t. It’s like learning how to negotiate with another person.”Women have traditionally been discouraged from developing such open and clear communication skills. In 2018, former dominatrix, Kasia Urbaniak started The Academy, a school to teach women the “foundations of power and influence” via month-long female empowerment sessions in New York. Speaking to The Guardian, she says: “It’s about the communications that women carry that either make them go speechless, or afraid of coming across as too bossy or too needy.” Urbaniak explains that by being in the dominant role of BDSM, women learn to project their strength and attention outward. It’s a skill they can then use to flip the power dynamic in the outside world, where women are forced to turn their attention inward, with self-doubt and over-analysis.A barrage of recent research hints at the effects of empowerment via BDSM: people with sexual kinks or fetishes, such as BDSM, group sex, or role-play, have better mental health, less psychological stress, higher self-worth, and more satisfying relationships.Not everyone is convinced of BDSM’s benefits, however. The feminist sex wars over BDSM’s potential for women’s empowerment rage on, with one side seeing BDSM as a way to explore and enable female sexuality, and the other side seeing it as yet another manifestation of the hyper-masculine, patriarchal order’s violent idea of sex. But, as black lesbian poet and feminist writer Audrey Lorde puts it in a personal essay, embracing the erotic fosters a deep and irreplaceable “self-connection and fearless underlining of [one’s] capacity for joy.” Released of social context, when examined in individual’s lives and homes, BDSM seems to allow, well, release. And that kind of release writes Lorde, “flows through and colors my life with a kind of energy that heightens and sensitizes and strengthens all my experience.”Show notes can be found at https://kuldrinskrypt.com/227  Thank you: Show Producers:Pro Producer($100/month): LilyxChaosx. Executive Producers ($25/month): Jeremiah, ArcaneD.G.R. & violetaurelia,  Feline_Rouge, babylove2269, and FaisilSr. Producers ($10/month): Matt, Roxiebear, xEmeraldxWolfx, JayKay, SortOutTheKinks, Delilah, SirMutualRespect, Master Gabriel, and Theod123Producers ($5/month): Kainsin, ThatPlace: Oklahoma City, olive_eyes, Seine (Zine), and AlexandriaJr. Producers ($1/month): K-2SO, BuffaloDom84, LxSoumis, Hayley, Morgan, knot_the_daddy, and RaefeIf you would like to become one of our show producers go to our website, https://kuldrinskrypt.com/support to get that information.BDSM Contracts for the donation of their beautiful 25 page soft and hardbound M/s and D/s contracts.. http://bdsmcontracts.org coupon code: kuldrin20 for a 20% discount on all purchases.https://www.daycollars.com is a place for personalized handmade collars, leashes, cuffs and belts.http://whippingstripes.com my personal maker of leather and paracord impact toys. https://tporridtimber.comNext Time on the Krypt:??? In the meantime go to https://kuldrinskrypt.com for show notes, how to subscribe information, and the link to Fetlife group so you can take part in the conversation and be eligible for giveaways. While you’re there click on support us to become a Patreon supporter.Contact info:Email: Sir@kuldrinskrypt.comFetlife Group: https://fetlife.com/groups/159275Fb: Kuldrin Fire https://www.facebook.com/kuldrin.fireTwitter: @MasterKuldrin https://twitter.com/MasterKuldrinInstagram: masterkuldrin https://www.instagram.com/masterkuldrin/Patreon: kuldrinskrypt https://www.patreon.com/KuldrinsKryptPaypal: MasterKuldrin http://paypal.me/masterkuldrinhttp://kuldrinskrypt.com/contactresourceLimits and Interest Survey: https://kuldrinskrypt.com/survey 

Original article found at https://theswaddle.com/bdsm-women-positive-effects-confidenceRecorded: 8/7/2019 / Published: 8/7/2019PatreonCan call in at 865-268-4005 to leave your question or visit the Krypt at https://kuldrinskrypt.com. On this episode of The Krypt, I am going to share an article that Patreon Executive Producer BabyLove2269 she found on theswaddle.com and written by Pallavi Prasad titled BDSM Culture Can Make Women More Assertive In Work, Relationships. After I read it, I’m going to give you my first impression of what was said. Yep, this is going to be totally different than anything I’ve done before in that its pretty much a raw and unedited episode. Stick around afterward for a special announcement. Rules to Love by:1: Safe, sane, consensual, and informed2: KNKI: Knowledge, No Intolerance, Kindness, Integrity3: “Submission is not about authority and it’s not about obedience; it is all about relationships of love and respect.” -Wm. Paul Young“BDSM Culture Can Make Women More Assertive In Work, Relationships” By Pallavi Prasad found at https://theswaddle.com/bdsm-women-positive-effects-confidence Published June 28, 2019“I don’t know how to explain it … but I have more clarity the morning after. It’s come to a point where my partner and I ensure we engage in a play scene before any big meetings I have. It really gives me the boost I need.”R.P. is a 32-year-old consultant living in Mumbai. When she joined a high-powered consulting firm seven years ago, she found herself struggling to keep up with the pace and make herself heard.“Around the same time, I got into a relationship with a man who was into BDSM [bondage and discipline; dominance and submission; sadism and masochism] and kink play. He introduced me to it and I instantly took a liking to it,” R.P. says. “Surprisingly, I found myself gravitating towards the role of the Dominant. Within the confines of a loving and safe space with a partner I trusted, I was able to assert myself in ways I couldn’t outside my bedroom. Slowly, I began to notice that especially on days after we had engaged in a play scene, I would feel more focussed, composed and clear-headed. It was almost as if the satisfied feeling I felt in bed, in that position of power, flowed over the next day. I feel like I know more about myself — my mind and my body.”According to recent research by Dr. Brad Sagarin, a professor of psychology at Northern Illinois University, kinks such as BDSM alter the blood flow pattern in the brain, creating altered states of consciousness. For those who assume the dominant position in BDSM, these mental states are called “flow” — the term popularized by positive psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi. Flow is defined as an “optimal state of consciousness where we feel our best and perform our best.” It’s a state of hyperawareness, laser focus, and euphoria, which resonates with R.P.’s experience. “I just feel more brave, if that makes sense,” she says. Sagarin’s research confirms just that. The study found that people who regularly experience flow as an effect of dominant BDSM roles report improved concentration, clarity about goals, decision-making skills, and listening and intuitive skills. They also demonstrate lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol, less self-consciousness and less aversion to risk.The study also found those taking on submissive roles in BDSM play experience “transient hypofrontality,” a peaceful, dreamlike state, often compared to a runner’s high or described as being “in the zone.” Creativity and productivity peak in this state of decreased self-awareness.R.P. explains how her female friends from the BDSM community have discussed this before: “Sometimes when we share — and we’re all doms — our experiences with each other, we all agree that we are in a great mood throughout the next day and feel more energized and creative. It’s like a strange high, knowing what we did the previous night.”People who experience either of these altered mental states report higher levels of happiness, creativity, and productivity for up to three days after, according to research by Harvard University professor Teresa Amabile. They also report transferring the focus, confidence, concentration, and decision-making skills of BDSM into everyday life. It is no wonder, then, that people who engage in BDSM are less neurotic, more extraverted, more open to new experiences, more conscientious, less sensitive to rejection, and have higher subjective well-being outside the bedroom, according to a 2016 study on the psychological characteristics of BDSM practitioners.Additionally, partners who engage in sadomasochism are more connected and more intimate than those who do not engage in it, according to a 2009 study published in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior. The honest expression of one’s fantasies and desires, and consensually, respectfully and safely executing that as a BDSM scene, requires a high level of communication and trust between partners — a feature regularly absent from non-kinky or “vanilla” sex, as the BDSM community calls it.“My boyfriend and I have definitely become much closer since we started exploring this space together. We don’t lie to each other in our relationship — white lies not included, and even those we mostly confess — because the trust between us is the same, inside and outside the bedroom,” says R.P. “There’s very little drama and if we ever fight, we usually resolve it by talking to each other. But it almost never reaches that point because every day, in a way, we tell each other about what it is that we want from the other person and what we don’t. It’s like learning how to negotiate with another person.”Women have traditionally been discouraged from developing such open and clear communication skills. In 2018, former dominatrix, Kasia Urbaniak started The Academy, a school to teach women the “foundations of power and influence” via month-long female empowerment sessions in New York. Speaking to The Guardian, she says: “It’s about the communications that women carry that either make them go speechless, or afraid of coming across as too bossy or too needy.” Urbaniak explains that by being in the dominant role of BDSM, women learn to project their strength and attention outward. It’s a skill they can then use to flip the power dynamic in the outside world, where women are forced to turn their attention inward, with self-doubt and over-analysis.A barrage of recent research hints at the effects of empowerment via BDSM: people with sexual kinks or fetishes, such as BDSM, group sex, or role-play, have better mental health, less psychological stress, higher self-worth, and more satisfying relationships.Not everyone is convinced of BDSM’s benefits, however. The feminist sex wars over BDSM’s potential for women’s empowerment rage on, with one side seeing BDSM as a way to explore and enable female sexuality, and the other side seeing it as yet another manifestation of the hyper-masculine, patriarchal order’s violent idea of sex. But, as black lesbian poet and feminist writer Audrey Lorde puts it in a personal essay, embracing the erotic fosters a deep and irreplaceable “self-connection and fearless underlining of [one’s] capacity for joy.” Released of social context, when examined in individual’s lives and homes, BDSM seems to allow, well, release. And that kind of release writes Lorde, “flows through and colors my life with a kind of energy that heightens and sensitizes and strengthens all my experience.”Show notes can be found at https://kuldrinskrypt.com/227  Thank you: Show Producers:Pro Producer($100/month): LilyxChaosx. Executive Producers ($25/month): Jeremiah, ArcaneD.G.R. & violetaurelia,  Feline_Rouge, babylove2269, and FaisilSr. Producers ($10/month): Matt, Roxiebear, xEmeraldxWolfx, JayKay, SortOutTheKinks, Delilah, SirMutualRespect, Master Gabriel, and Theod123Producers ($5/month): Kainsin, ThatPlace: Oklahoma City, olive_eyes, Seine (Zine), and AlexandriaJr. Producers ($1/month): K-2SO, BuffaloDom84, LxSoumis, Hayley, Morgan, knot_the_daddy, and RaefeIf you would like to become one of our show producers go to our website, https://kuldrinskrypt.com/support to get that information.BDSM Contracts for the donation of their beautiful 25 page soft and hardbound M/s and D/s contracts.. http://bdsmcontracts.org coupon code: kuldrin20 for a 20% discount on all purchases.https://www.daycollars.com is a place for personalized handmade collars, leashes, cuffs and belts.http://whippingstripes.com my personal maker of leather and paracord impact toys. https://tporridtimber.comNext Time on the Krypt:??? In the meantime go to https://kuldrinskrypt.com for show notes, how to subscribe information, and the link to Fetlife group so you can take part in the conversation and be eligible for giveaways. While you’re there click on support us to become a Patreon supporter.Contact info:Email: Sir@kuldrinskrypt.comFetlife Group: https://fetlife.com/groups/159275Fb: Kuldrin Fire https://www.facebook.com/kuldrin.fireTwitter: @MasterKuldrin https://twitter.com/MasterKuldrinInstagram: masterkuldrin https://www.instagram.com/masterkuldrin/Patreon: kuldrinskrypt https://www.patreon.com/KuldrinsKryptPaypal: MasterKuldrin http://paypal.me/masterkuldrinhttp://kuldrinskrypt.com/contactresourceLimits and Interest Survey: https://kuldrinskrypt.com/survey 

When looking to change things in your world, how do you let pleasure be the force that guides you? How do you fulfill desire while you fight for change? How do you take care of yourself while you transform? And how do you allow organic, sustainable change to emerge in your life - without feeling like you have to force things? Today we’re speaking with author, activist, and healer adrienne maree brown. Her most recent book, the New York Times bestseller “Pleasure Activism”, leans into black feminist traditions to challenge you to rethink the groundrules of how to facilitate change in your own life, and in the world around you. In this episode, you’ll hear more about how adrienne came to this work, and her thoughts on how to be imperfect, yet honest, in relationship. You’ll learn how to bring true integrity into your relationships - and ways to ensure that your health and wellbeing aren’t compromised while you grow and transform.  As always, I’m looking forward to your thoughts on this episode and what revelations and questions it creates for you. Please join us in the Relationship Alive Community on Facebook to chat about it! Sponsors: Beautiful jewelry, exquisite craftsmanship, sustainable sources, and affordable prices. Get $75 OFF your purchase at hellonoemie.com when you use the coupon code "ALIVE". With free overnight shipping and free returns, you can see something online today, and try it on tomorrow risk free. Find a quality therapist, online, to support you and work on the places where you’re stuck. For 10% off your first month, visit Betterhelp.com/ALIVE to fill out the quick questionnaire and get paired with a therapist who’s right for you. Resources: Visit adrienne maree brown’s website to learn more about her books and her other projects. Pick up a copy of Pleasure Activism by adrienne maree brown on Amazon. Listen to Episode 12 on the Healing Justice podcast for a Somatic Centering practice. FREE Relationship Communication Secrets Guide - perfect help for handling conflict and shifting the codependent patterns in your relationship Guide to Understanding Your Needs (and Your Partner's Needs) in Your Relationship (ALSO FREE) Visit www.neilsattin.com/amb to download the transcript, or text “PASSION” to 33444 and follow the instructions to download the transcript to this episode with adrienne maree brown. Amazing intro/outro music graciously provided courtesy of: The Railsplitters - Check them Out Transcript: Neil Sattin: Hello and welcome to another episode of Relationship Alive. This is your host Neil Sattin. I want to start by saying that I believe in the power of synchronicity. I believe that when synchronicities happen it means something. And so to me it meant a lot when I was walking into a bookstore with a new friend of mine in New York City and she grabbed this book off the shelf and she said, "Given what we've just been talking about how you want to make this huge impact with your work and with the Relationship Alive podcast you need to read this book." And she handed me a book called "Emergent Strategy" by adrienne maree brown.  adrienne maree brown: Oh wow.  Neil Sattin: Yeah. And after reading that book and being so moved by what I read there both in terms of the promise that it holds for how our lives can unfold in a way that's really organic and natural and suited to who we are as people and also how that can impact the communities that we form whether it be our micro communities our family, our friends, or our larger communities, the movements that we become a part of and how we create change in this world. It was just super inspiring to me and I was delighted to see that adrienne was coming out with a new book called "Pleasure Activism," which just hit the New York Times Bestseller List and I thought you know what, like, I have to talk to this person and hopefully they'll talk to me. So. So I reached out and fortunately here we are today to talk to adrienne maree brown, who is a social justice facilitator, focused on black liberation, a doula, healer and a pleasure activist and a coach. And the list goes on and on. And honestly I can relate and I love that about...  adrienne maree brown: Yeah.  Neil Sattin: About her work. And so we're gonna be here to talk about emergence and pleasure and how this all unfolds in the world of relationship. The relationship you have to yourself, the relationship you have to your beloved or beloveds, and the relationship you have with the world. As usual we will have a detailed transcript of today's episode which you can get if you visit Neil Sattin-dot-com-slash-A-M-B as in adrienne maree brown or you can always text the word "passion" to the number 3 3 4 4 4 and follow the instructions. And that will get you the transcript and the show notes and all that good stuff.  adrienne maree brown: Oh cool.  Neil Sattin: I think that's it. So adrienne, thank you so much for being here with us today on Relationship Alive.  adrienne maree brown: Thanks for having me now. I'm excited that a podcast it's about relationships in this way, exists. So I'm like yay! Let's talk about it.  Neil Sattin: Awesome. Yeah I've been thinking about a good way to dive in without asking you like a ridiculously broad question, but I might have to start with a ridiculously broad question.:.  adrienne maree brown: You're like, I tried! I can't. It's ok. What's the  ridiculously broad question.  Neil Sattin: Well. Yeah. So let's start with this idea about pleasure and activism and what does it mean to have pleasure be the center of how one operates in the world? adrienne maree brown: For me, you know, I got this terminology, was taught to me and I learned the words from an organizer named Keith Cyler, who was the founder of something called "Housing Works," that's based in New York that raises resources and all kinds of resources like financial resources, but also does trainings and other things like that for people who are dealing with house-lessness, dealing with HIV, AIDS. And I was really moved by his genius and his work. But, one time we were just sitting around having a good time and he talked to me about this terminology "pleasure activism," and it stuck with me over the years so I kept being like "Oh. Like what could that mean? What could that mean? What could that mean?" And especially as I I grew, you know, I've always been very aware that there's a lot in the world that is broken that is hurting that is traumatized, and inside of that reaching for how are we meant to connect with each other? And somewhere in there this idea of pleasure activism kept returning to me as I was doing voter organizing, returning to me as I was learning about harm reduction, returning to me as I was supporting people to do direct action, nonviolent civil disobedience. It just kept coming back. And when I was working on my last book emergent strategy, I had to include it as a concept and I wasn't sure at that point like am I going to flesh this all the way out? Like there's a lot here. But then at some point I was like, "Let me just.... Like what would it look like." You know, what would it look like to actually flesh this out? And I had been reading Audrey Lorde's text "the uses of the erotic:: as power," which I got permission to reprint in this book. And I really loved her use of the erotic. And yet I just kept coming back to this idea of pleasure. Like that pleasure includes the erotic, but also includes a lot of things that may or may not be erotic, and so I was like, what is pleasure. And I looked up and its just like happy, joy and satisfaction. And I was like, "Gosh it seems so simple and yet there's so much resistance to it. There's so much fear of it there's so much control of it. And. And for those of us who are like actively trying to change the world in some way there's a denial of it, right? Like it's like, "We are not allowed to have that. We need to be fighting for this you know future that's off in the future somewhere.".  Neil Sattin: Right.  adrienne maree brown: And I just remember landing and like. Wouldn't it be so radical to listen to Audrey Lourde had taught us about engaging the erotic now, engaging our full aliveness, in this moment. And for black women who, you know, that's who is at the front of my mind when I wrote this text, you know, I was like there's a lot that has intentionally cut us off from our relationship with joy and happiness and pleasure and contentment and satisfaction. It's been trained into us that we're not allowed to have those things so I got very... Then I got very light lit up with this idea, that I was like, "Oh what if we could have these things? Like what if it's a measure of our freedom to reclaim pleasure?" And so that kind of sent me off down this path that has been really exciting. And you know it's interesting because activism in general is not where I land right? Like I, I've often been like I'm an organizer! And for me the distinction you know, I think activists or folks who are really like advocating for something like using their public sphere to advocate for something, going and talking to friends. Organizers to me or folks who are like, "I'm actually trying to move a strategy amongst the people." Right? Like I'm going to go find those who are not going to just easily be reached and I'm going to knock on their doors and I'm going to find out what they need and and build an analysis and a vision together. And so you know it's like, "OK is activism OK for this? And it felt like actually for this, it is it is important that as many people in the world as possible begin to come out and advocate for all of our rights to have pleasure to have pleasure be an organizing principle of how we structure our relationships in our society. And then it starts with reclaiming our own, and moves out from that place. So I'm excited that it exists. I'm excited that it came together and then I've been really blown away by the responses. So I'm like, OK this... I really for a while was like, "This is not the time to be putting out right now. We need something about justice or we need something about like you know I kept having this strategic idea around if this current administration is starting fires all over the place. I kept thinking like, how do we conjure up water? How do we vaporize ourselves in some way to come up and over and rain down on them? And I was like, I got to go write that strategy book or whatever. And then I realized I was like, "Oh this is actually it," in a way?  Neil Sattin: This is that book.  adrienne maree brown: This is actually that book and that's been clicking to me that I'm like: This is it. This is the way that we become more powerful through pleasure, through what we can release rather than what we can contain. So. Yeah.  Neil Sattin: I love it. It's to me... What was I mean there are so many threads that came together for me as I was reading the book, and even just in hearing you speak right now. Primarily, that way that people are so.... Many people, I should say are so exhausted right now, with with just the state of affairs and....  adrienne maree brown: That's right.  Neil Sattin: ...that's political, it's environmental it's economic. There is a lot that's taxing us and that's something that regenerates us when we can find the sources of pleasure within us and in how we connect with the world that I think allows us to bring more of ourselves to the world and and also highlights the places where we are denying ourselves or denying others that inalienable right for...  adrienne maree brown: That's right.  Neil Sattin: ...the experience of joy.  adrienne maree brown: That's right.:I mean it blows my mind to really think about, like, what people what people have survived, like often when I stand in a room of people and I'm giving a speech or a talk or a training or something. There's a lot of me that's present with that moment but then there's also a part of me that's kind of thinking about all the lineages of all these human beings and how some of them in this moment have landed in a place of power, or privilege, and some of them haven't ended up in a place that's not that. But that those lineages all include some survival, some fighting to exist some taking a risk, some you know, moving out into the world with an unknown response you know, like we don't know what's going to happen here. We don't know if we're heading the right way. We don't know if we're going to survive and that there have been so many things that have have you know, like so much of our human history has just been about surviving, right? Just like can we make it? And so there's something interesting to me now to be like, I think I think we have shown that like oh we could make it like we could figure this out. We could be on this planet technically. But what is the life worth making it for? Like, what is worth surviving for?: Neil Sattin: Yeah.  adrienne maree brown: And now I think we're actively in that question. That is like, all of us deserve this relationship to pleasure. And when you look at like who thinks they deserve it or who is encouraged to have it, it's actually a very narrow small grouping of human beings. And I think that's because of capitalism. You know, I really think that as an economic system, capitalism thrives when we believe that we are not good enough and that we need to buy something outside of ourselves in order to experience pleasure. And I love the trick of it which is like, if you actually just drop down into your own body, which is the only thing in your entire life that you ever truly have, from the beginning to the end, if you just drop down into it, it's wired for pleasure. And those wires may have been crossed, you know, there may be some like dysfunctional parts of it because of trauma, because of pain, because of... which I now, also when I meet everyone, I'm like, 'I know you have some trauma," right? Like, I know you have some.  Neil Sattin: Yeah no one escapes that.  adrienne maree brown: Yeah. I don't know what it is. I don't know how severe or central it is to your life, or your life story it is to your life, or your life story. I don't know if you had the resources to recover or not, but I know it's there. And so I think like, "oh." What we're dealing with is like, what is the relationship between that trauma that's everywhere. And this system that's telling us that we can't heal ourselves we shouldn't even feel ourselves. We should just kind of outsource that to something we can purchase. And, and, then how in that do we find a way to be in RIGHT relationship with each other on this planet. Right? So that's the stuff I keep, I keep floating around with us like I want to, I want to leave a world behind me that people like I like I feel very compelled. I want to be here. It feels good, right? And that doesn't mean that I think we will solve the climate crisis in my lifetime because I do think... You know...  I really believe in Gopal Dayaneni, 1who works over at Movement Generation and talks about, like, there's things that we have already set in motion that we are gonna have to face the consequences of as a species. And I don't deny that that's what's coming to us but inside of that I think we also have to be actively fomenting pleasure and actively fomenting like reconnecting ourselves to land and to each other because as the changes happen we're still going to need to be able to feel, feel pleasure, feel satisfaction feel like being here. Otherwise we'll just depress and numb and you know kind of slip away. And I think that would be an unworthy end to our species.  Neil Sattin: Totally agree with you and a word that popped into my mind that I would like to add to that, is resilience.  adrienne maree brown: Yeah.  Neil Sattin: The more that we're embracing our capacity for resilience in terms of how we heal our lineage of trauma. Or present moment traumas in terms of how we make things right when they've gone wrong, and do that in the context where what we're shooting for what we're envisioning is something joyful blissful like that actually has ease and pleasure connected to it.  adrienne maree brown: Yeah. Yes.  Neil Sattin: Then that that makes it worth it and gives us kind of a... I hate to use the word technology, but like a technology of continually adjusting to get there.  adrienne maree brown: Yeah.  Neil Sattin: You talk in "Emerging Strategy," about adapability... Yeah.  adrienne maree brown: Exactly. Yeah exactly. Yeah. Well, I was just going to say, I was like, yeah. You know, like, to me emergent strategy and pleasure activism really go together like they're holding hands, dancing across the field of ideas and I really think that this this idea of resilience. You know I have a teacher Alta Starr who's always pushing me to be like you know, resilience is beyond even harm, right? It's sort of like this natural capacity we have to learn to adapt, to like grow, to learn from whatever changes come. And it's hard for me because I'm still like "Well. But also when someone hurts us, you know we had to be resilient." And you know it's hard in a city like Detroit because you know resilience can be weaponized. Like if people like you bounce back from anything, like, we'll just keep doing anything to you. Like you know we'll add an incinerator to your neighborhood or whatever you'll be fine. And so I think there's something about, Oh to me, like how do we have a transformative resilience right. How do we have resilience that is not just like we can recover back to conditions that we weren't very happy with in the first place. And being like oh you know when I look at like what am I recovering? I'm recovering something that's beyond my own origin, you know like I need to recover something that goes back past the many hours that my grandmother overworked, and I need to recover something that goes back past my enslaved ancestors, and recover something that goes back past my kidnapped answers, and you know, ancestors, like I feel this long, long, long arc of the work that I'm in right now where I'm like. Almost everyone that came before me was trying to work towards some joy some freedom some sense of safety for their children themselves. And now I am awakened so like I am aware of all of that and I have an option in front of me to be resilient across time and space right. And that feels very exciting. You know, I think as hard as it is to live in this age of hyper connectedness because I think it is really hard. My friend angel Kyoto Williams talks about this, that like, we we are given access to so much more information than we've ever had access to before but we're not given the tools to handle it all, right? Like we're not taught here's how to meditate. Here's how to pass what's overwhelming back to the earth or back to God or back to whomever you trust with it. We're not given those those technologies, right? So we kind of flailing a lot of the time of like, I'm receiving all this, I'm trying to care about all of it and we find ourselves stretched so far but I also think the really beautiful thing about that is like we can see how many people believe what we believe, how many people are trying to practice what we're trying to practice so we can find each other. You know you and I would have never found each other if it wasn't for this modern state of connection. And to be able to say like, "Oh you're out here in Maine fomenting these ideas and I'm out here in Detroit fomenting these ideas and we have very different lineages. And yet we both have arrived in this place where it's like this is a path. This is a way to move forward it's important. Paying attention to relationship is important." And so that you know, that gives me hope inside of the the struggle of this overwhelming moment where there is so much that is hard. It's also there's so much that is overwhelmingly beautiful and overwhelmingly good and there's so many ways that you know also we live on such a resilient planet. So, I often think about this that I'm like, you know, and I feel like I'm trying to remember whoever first said this idea, because I was a Oh snap! That's a game changer! It's like, the Earth is gonna be OK.  Neil Sattin: Yeah.  adrienne maree brown: Right? Like the earth is gonna be OK. Like, it might be, she might go through an Ice Age or something, but like if we're not here she'll still be OK. And like if we're not here she'll recover from whatever we've done. Like how we've remixed her nature into other kinds of things. And, I don't know if you saw this story came out last week about the white-throated rail, did you see that?  Neil Sattin: I hadn't but I saw you wrote about it on your on your blog. Yeah. adrienne maree brown: I was so moved by this. So this like little bird...:The debate is basically this bird re-evolved, right. Like it went extinct at 136,000 years ago, roughly. Because like,  these things are hard to track but like... Now this bird has has re-evolved has come back into existence. The same little -- it's a flightless bird. There's something about that that just I, I read it and I really was like moved in a way I was like, I didn't know I needed to know that that was possible. But, I was like, I need to know that that level of resilience is possible, like somewhere down in the programming of this planet. There's there's some code that's just like white throated rail.: And just because we can no longer see the creature, it doesn't mean that it's, it's disappeared like there's some aspect of it that DNA that's in there. And yeah, it made me feel like OK. Like there's mysteries on mysteries on mysteries when it comes to this planet. And there's so much that we can't understand. And so inside of that I'm like, you know, I love thinking really big grandiose thoughts. But then I try to bring them back down into very small tangible practices. Small ways of being with each other because I'm like, I can't imagine how we'll get through the climate catastrophe that we're in right now. But I can imagine being in right relationship with the planet around me and making better choices about this local place that I'm in and being place based and loving. Even though I travel a lot but I'm like rooting myself into the soil in Detroit in all the ways that I can. Like this is where I bury my compost. This is where I play with children. This is where I go find like where's the Detroit grown foods every summer and I am really cautious now. I've made a major shift in my life around how I produce waste. Like what kind of waste I will put out so that I tried to really shrink down my garbage waste to the, like the very very you know, it's like if I can rinse it and I can clean it off and it can be recycled. It's gonna be recycled if it's food if it can go into compost it goes into compost like I used to have a massive garbage bin that I was putting out. And I'm like I live alone. You know all of that with stuff that like other things can be done with. And now it's like you know a huge portion of what comes out of my home is gonna be recycled and reused again. And, I'm aiming at zero waste. I'm constantly trying to figure out where is and where other places where I can... I just bought this new set of like ziplocks reusable kind of Ziploc thingies, that so you know because I'm a, I'm a fan of Ziploc bags like I'm like you've put anything in a Ziploc bag. You can go anywhere you have it I carry like in my suitcase there's always like five Ziploc bags just like folded just in case because you just never know what you're gonna need a Ziploc bag for. And so I'm like, oh that's a next frontier that I need to like, you know, figure out a way to advance through and I'm like, oh I can do this, right. So anyway all of that to say to me I'm trying in my personal life to get in right relationship with nature and my body is a huge part of that. Like if I'm not in right relationship and respecting the miraculous, like, Stardust nature of my body then how can I even begin to be in my relationship with the rest of the living world.  Neil Sattin: Yeah.  adrienne maree brown: Yeah.  Neil Sattin: So, OK. So first, I'm so moved when I hear you talk about not really being able to read the code but seeing the expressions of the code like..  adrienne maree brown: Yeah.  Neil Sattin: ...the bird coming back into existence from extinction and even when you were describing how you and I could be doing different work in different places and yet here we find ourselves together having this conversation.  adrienne maree brown: Yeah.  Neil Sattin: To me that is an expression of the power of something that's ineffiable, that like we can't understand but if we're willing to to follow that path and and follow the ways that it's growing and things are emerging then, then at least that inspires hope in me that there's like an antidote to disconnection, to destruction.  adrienne maree brown: Yes.  Neil Sattin: To...  adrienne maree brown: Yeah.  Neil Sattin: ...all the forces that were that were working against and in terms of relationship the ways that people are, you know, experience this desire for closeness and connection. You know part of our, our wiring as you were mentioning earlier is to be connected to each other.  adrienne maree brown: That's right.  Neil Sattin: And yet, it becomes such a source of pain partly because we either intentionally or unintentionally traumatize each other and then also because of the social structures and their impact on us. When you talk about pleasure and relearning pleasure, getting in touch with your body and and I like that stand that you take for for the personal being political that fractal nature of...  adrienne maree brown: Yes. Yeah.  Neil Sattin: ...transformation. I think about how many of us are just kind of following the script of romance and love and sex and pleasure and needing...  adrienne maree brown: When did you become aware that there was a script?  Neil Sattin: Oohh. Well that's it's been an unfolding for me, for sure. And I think probably I became most aware of it when I inadvertently hurt someone. And like had no idea that that was happening for them and found out later and then you know, thankfully we've had our moments of amends and talking and all of that. But, in restoring ourselves. That was probably the inception of it. And then all through college.  adrienne maree brown: Yeah.  Neil Sattin: And then in my current relationship, I'm so blessed to be with someone who's taken a strong stand for her own boundaries around her own healing, her own trauma. And it forced me to even go even deeper into like, "Well, what am I looking for in relationships?".  adrienne maree brown: Right.  Neil Sattin: What am I looking for in sex? Would it like what is this rejection, quote-unquote, that I'm experiencing in this moment and what is that really about? And and so that has forced me to ask deeper questions, and to get progressively more and more honest with myself and with her, to a point where fairly recently I feel like I've hit ground zero. But it's it's a process it's definitely been an unfolding and watching those layers fall away. And then once they do being like, All right well how do I replace this? If I'm going to do sex the way that I thought I should? Or you know I think it was an essay that you wrote where you mentioned a babysitter who was watching Porky's when you were...  adrienne maree brown: Yes.  Neil Sattin: Yeah. And the way those things inform our sense of, of what's what's erotic, what turns us on, all of that. Once I peel those things away and come back to, this moment and what's real. Well...  adrienne maree brown: That's right.  Neil Sattin: Yeah. That's what my journey has been like and I've, I've certainly tried to surface that a bunch here on the podcast and and I'm really excited to hear your thoughts about that unfolding for yourself and, and you mentioned meditation earlier. Yeah. What are the the pathways into, kind, of breaking down the, the unhealthy learnings? And coming back into right relationship with with ourselves as relational, sexual, erotic, pleasure oriented being?  adrienne maree brown: Beings, right? I feel like... a couple of things. I mean I think one is, there was a period of time where I was, I was really convinced that sex didn't have anything to do with me or what I was feeling. Like, I was really like what is the other person feeling and like that's that's what's important right now. And like my job is to make sure that that experience is a whole good one. Right? And, and I feel like, I remember like, there's just moments in most of its relational right. Like most of it is like just other people reflecting something back. And it's like "Girl, it doesn't had to be like that." You know? People talking to me, reading stuff. I remember reading the work of Andrea Dworkin. Have you read her? Like she she talks pretty scathingly about marriage and pornography and like, a lot of things that I was just I took for granted, were like those are good things that you try to get to in life. And, I don't agree with everything, you know, I feel like there's a lot of brilliant thinking in what she said and I feel like there's also not a lot offered of like here are other true pleasures, you know, like here's the ways to get them.  Neil Sattin: Yeah.  adrienne maree brown: But there was something that blew open for me where I was just like, I want to be able to consider this. I want to be able to consider that everything I was told about where pleasure in my life would come from and, or,  was, was and wasn't allowed. That maybe all that is wrong. Right? And then Audrey Lorde's writing, Octavia Butler's writing. There were just all these different people who were giving me. It was never just about sex. It was never just about the body. It was alway, have a revolution about how you think about how things work in the world. Start to ask questions and get curious about who benefits from these systems. Right? So, I remember, I remember having a quest-, you know, a conversation with a friend about marriage and just being like, who benefits? Who benefits in marriage, right? And, uh, and being pretty like oh my gosh. No one should ever get married. I was like, "No woman should ever get married!" Like I felt very strongly like, Nope it's not, it's just not a good idea. Like you will work forever in a labor that will never ever get acknowledged. You will not be able to pursue passion, work, things that you actually care about. You'll not be respected in the process. And then you know, and then he'll cheat on you. Like this is the arc of  it, right? Because you know he'll need something younger and prettier and he's worked you out, right? And I remember having that conversation as like, NO! You know? Like, and then be like well no that's just one way that's a model that is... The system that benefits from that is patriarchy. And if I can understand that then I can be like let me target patriarchy. Let me... And like I, I'm very lucky that I came across the work of Grace Lee Boggs where she really is like: Transform yourself to transform the world. And this is something I say probably every day of my life. There's some place or some way in which I say this to someone else or to myself. So I was like oh Where is patriarchy in my own practice? Where is patriarchy is showing up in how I'm approaching a relationship? And some of the interesting places were how quickly I would be dishonest for the sake of connection. And I say connection in quotation marks there, right? That I was like Well I don't want to be alone and, like, being alone is a sign of someone who's not a good person or whatever. Right? You have to be like with someone to be like a part of the human experiment or whatever. First you know, that that is...  I no longer believe that, but like you know. But at the time I just like, ok, I don't want to be alone. So I would go out on a date or someone, you know, I feel like I was I feel like I came up like right at the end of dating, also. So it's like right at the end of like when you would actually say, "Let's go on a date to a place and get to know each other." For maybe three or four times we would do that before we are actually alone in either of our places. And you know something else would happen right. I'm like I come from what feels like almost a chaste time before the apps kind of popped off into, just your place or mine. Like what's good? You know? And I talk about apps as if I know what I'm talking about I've never really used that apps to, that's just not how I meet people. But, but, I know that the majority of people in my life that's now how people connect. But so you go out and you're having these initial conversations and my practice was to just kind of listen for what I thought the other person really wanted to hear and then delivered that somehow. And you know, I grew up as a military brat. I moved like roughly every two years, so you get really good at figuring out like what is the, what are the rules here, and how do I adapt to be safe within them? And it can be hard when you get good at that to also be like. And then what is what is fundamental to me like what is the me that I'm also carrying to each place that needs to adapt? And the same thing in dating like what is the me that's showing up? And like might adapt in some relationship but like why am I rushing to not just adapt, but like completely contort into something? Why am I so desperate for being in relationship that I won't even be there? Like I wanted it to be me that shows that. Yeah. So I feel like I had rounds and rounds of that and it never worked. I kept having this heartbreak, that was really almost never about the other person. But it was about facing how much I had contorted to get in the door, and then how little I actually wanted to be inside that house, right?  Neil Sattin: Yeah, yeah.  adrienne maree brown: Whatever house it was. And so, I feel like I took...  Neil Sattin: Which by the way is a super common problem that people have.  adrienne maree brown: It's every, it's everywhere. You know when, I do a bunch of you know like you said coaching and mediation and stuff like that, and I find like that is the number one thing. That's the number one thing is that people are like you're just not who you've said were.  Neil Sattin: Right.  adrienne maree brown: And how could you not be who you said you were? And how could you not uphold the promises that you made? And it's just like I was lying. I was, I wasn't even there. Like I don't even know I'm sorry. You know.  Neil Sattin: Right. And then there's that additional layer of oh wait a minute. Now we also have to deal with your shame around who you... around your truth. yeah.  adrienne maree brown: Exactly. And it's the shame and the still absence of yourself. Right? So, so often. Now I've been doing a lot of support for people who are in their mid 30s to 50s and a lot of the folks I'm supporting are going through major breakups of fundamental relationships. And it's interesting because they're like who am I? Like, who am I? You know like so much was defined in relationship to this other person? And that's how so many people get trained to become themselves. It's like now, now I'm ugly, I'm half of something, and now that's who I am. And so much of the work is being like; "You're a whole something. You're a whole something." And I think the thing I'm always watching out for is not to send people all the way to the other side of the pendulum, right.:To me the personal is political only as it relates to being part of a collective effort to be political about what is personal, right? So I feel like this is you know someone was asking me I did an interview yesterday, and they're like what about the GOOP, like what about the like white women taking bathes, or whatever. And I was just like "Yeah. Like you know that so much of self care is about that. It's like white people with privilege go off to the spa and that's when you know, often, I mention to people they're like, I'm not about all that, you know? And I'm just like, "Yeah I I don't think that that's political, necessarily, either right?" I think it becomes political in relationship to your identity. I think it becomes political in relationship to the community you're a part of and how you're making sure that everyone has access to the beautiful good parts of life, right? And so you know I'm part of a community. I'm part of many communities. And there's a particular community I call the goddesses. And it's a bunch of women, we all went to school together. Right now everyone's like slaying dragons in all these different fields of life, and we have started to really, like, have each other's backs and hold each other down in a way that like we didn't know how to necessarily do back then. Right. But we've rediscovered each other and been like we need to like all you know like how about half of us, half of the people are moms. And so it's like we need to go places where like everyone here gets to relax and be taken care of. That we get to be part of something that's close knit and intimate, but that we get to have massages or we get to be in a hot tub or we get to you know just cook for each other or take each other out to the best places we can find to eat. And like, there's so many small pleasures that feel really important, like it wouldn't be great for me if I was just like I'm over here living my best life and all my sisters were out here struggling. Like, I don't think that that's a way towards freedom, right? For me it's very important that as I have access, I increase access for everyone else and I particularly increase access for those who have less access than me. Like that to me as part of the political commitment I'm in for my lifetime.: Neil Sattin: Yeah.  adrienne maree brown: Yeah.  Neil Sattin: Yeah. There's... I'm just thinking here about the, uh, the commodification of self care and I think that's part of what you're talking about, right? Is that like...  adrienne maree brown: Yes. Capitalism! Neil Sattin: You actually have to... Yeah. There it is again. There it is again. adrienne maree brown: it's always there. Yeah.  Neil Sattin: One thing that popped up for me when you were talking about structures and like, I would never get married! And you know and then and then that sense of like well OK. It's just the system and who does it benefit and maybe there's a time and a place. What popped up for me was this question around the dance between safety and I think it was because you mentioned, you know, when going out on a date, like part of what's happening there is deciding, Am I safe with this person?  adrienne maree brown: Exactly. Yeah.  Neil Sattin: And. And then that because safety is right up there with connection in terms of something that we, that we require in order to function as humans. That's right. So and that's interesting as you start pulling apart the structures because one thing that marriage can be really good at...  adrienne maree brown: Is safety.  Neil Sattin: ...is supporting safety. Exactly. And so how do you start to loosen those tethers in a way that still supports people being held. Because if you're not feeling safe, you're not growing in a way that's probably generative for you you're just like scrambling back to safety for the most part.  adrienne maree brown: That's right. You know I think I love this question, Neil. I think this is like, this is an essential one. To me it's like, OK how do we balance these things. And a couple of thoughts leap to mind. One is that I think people feel like they have to choose between safety and like, being their whole selves or being their, being in their dignity, like all of it. And that first part, that feels like it's not true. Right, I'm like that's part of the lie that we've been told is that you have to choose. So you can either be safe in a marriage where you don't get to be fully realized as yourself or you can be fully realized as yourself. But like, you know, without that stability and I've seen it, I've seen the case more often than not be that you find that deep safety within yourself. It's a feeling not a story that you're telling about your life, right. Or a projection you're giving for someone else but it's actually like some, a felt sense, like I feel it in my life. Most of my life now, I feel safe right? And I can feel when that changes. Like sometimes I'll be in a space where there's just too many people, too much energy, something's off, you know? And I can feel it and it heightens my senses, it heightens my awareness, it makes me pay attention to what's happening around me. But then I think something like marriage, it's that kind of commitment, what I see so often happening is that people get into it and then they're like, "This isn't the safety that I thought it was going to be," right? Maybe it is for the first month or the first year or even until the first child or whatever, you know. But then there's some moment where that falls away because what you, what you thought you had, was like, I know you and you know me. And what's really happening is you're changing and I'm also changing and so I've officiated a few weddings and one of things that's been exciting is that the people asked me to officiate are like we want to commit to changing together, right. That to me is the kind of commitment that I can get behind where people are like I know this person again and I'm not going to change but I'm so curious about who they are and who they will become and I want to be there for that ride. And so it's not about marriage as entrapment and like catching you into one single identity, or any relationship, because now I'm like, you know I had to get married to be trying to trap someone in your web and I really like the model which I'm sure you've heard of of relationship anarchy. I don't think anything is perfect perfect thing that I really like it because so much of it is like, you know safety. You know, I think you were talking about with safety to me so much of that is rooted in trust.  Neil Sattin: Mm hmm.  adrienne maree brown: Right. It's like, Oh I trust that you're gonna do what you say you do. You say you're gonna do. And I trust that I can tell you my truth or whatever it is. And in relationship anarchy, which I think is like someone in Sweden, Andie Nordgren or something like that.  Neil Sattin: Yeah I forget.  adrienne maree brown: Yeah I have to go look at her name but there's you can look a bit like a "relationship anarchy manifesto." Right. And I love it because it's like trust is something that we build together over time, and like we start out with a default of trust like rather than starting out with the default of like, you've got it, you know like your trust is at zero and you have to like somehow bring it up to a hundred and never let your stuff like, never fuck up like never ever break my trust in anyway, or I'm gonna hold that against you for the rest of time. And I'm like instead you start from a place of like I have an abundant sense of trust for like my place in the world, for what I'm up to in the world, for like the work that I'm here to do, my purpose and then I meet you. And I'm just gonna offer you trust as a human being and what I am counting on is that if you break my trust, then we'll figure out how to recover together. Right? And sometimes that breaking of trust might be, we're not supposed to recover together. You know, like we're sometimes, the breaking of trust will expose something like, you're more committed to... uh... Like I see this happen sometimes where people are like in an open relationship, but still do cheating type behaviors. And I'm like, Oh, OK like great. That's good information, right? Like you're still very committed to a certain kind of secrecy. Maybe that's what turns you on is the forbidden. Something along those lines. And that's not compatible, right, with the kind of relationship that I'm trying to build or whatever kind of relationship this person is trying to build. And so I get really excited about stuff like that, because I like then you in a, you know, then it's like we just got clear about it and like we can trust each other to take the step back and transition into some other form of relationship. Versus, I think what happens now which is like, I offered you a false trust that you could never live up to that I was waiting for you to somehow live up to, you broke it and now I don't, I never want to see your face again. Right? Like you let me down so thoroughly, that I just I don't even want you to exist and I'm like I don't think we have enough people for that way of being with each other. Right? That we can just keep being like if you're not perfect, perfectly trustworthy then I kick you out of my community forever. And I say that you know the same thing you said is that you learn some of this from causing harm. And I'm like I learned from breaking people's trust. Right?  Neil Sattin: Yeah.  adrienne maree brown: There are people who I love and care about and I, I broke their trust and I have, I've had to do like a lot of work, a lot of work around like, Am I a trustworthy person? If the answer is No. How would I become a trustworthy person? Right. And again so much of that initial line of inquiry was just like about other people. Like how can I let them know how can I show how can I prove that I'm trustworthy? And of course the answer is I have to be trustworthy. Like I have to be able to feel in myself. And I'll tell you I'll tell you a little example of this.  Neil Sattin: Sure.  adrienne maree brown: I was in the airport like last week and I was running through and a lot had been happening and I went and sat down on a bench and there was this coat next to me and I asked around like, "Hey anybody is this your coat." And everybody was like no, you know whoever this coat is they just left this coat here. There's no bag there's nothing else around it. So I let it sit there for a little while and then I'm like Oh the nice coat. It's a nice coat. And so I picked it up to look at it and it's like a designer coat and it happens to be my size, right? So I'm like, This is a very nice gorgeous designer coat that someone just left here on this bench and like who knows if they're ever going to make it back, right?  Neil Sattin: For you!  adrienne maree brown: But, that, yeah part of my brain was like a gift from the universe! And I was like. And I picked it up and I looked at it and was like that would not be a trustworthy behavior to just take this coat and move on with life. Right. Like there's a chance that that person is still in this airport and that they're like running back here to get their very expensive, nice coat. Right? Or and, right. They'll call Delta. Like do you know where my coat is? Or whatever it is. So I took it over to the, um, you know where they check you in for the plane. I took it over to one of the guys there and I was like this was left over there. They're like, oh my goodness. You know like that's so sweet, you know. And it was just like, I felt the burden lift off my system that I'm like oh I was about to really just take someone's coat. But I didn't. And it is a small thing, like it's a really small thing that like no one would have known if I had done the wrong thing...  Neil Sattin: Except you.  adrienne maree brown: But I would have known. And like trying to get to that place in my life where like I don't make the mistake because it would hurt my integrity and my wholeness and my dignity outside of anyone else's. And even if I know it, that creates a shadow. Like how do I turned to my lover and tell this story? How do I walk into a room where I'm offering people, like let's be trustworthy people, and I'm standing there in a coat that I stole from some poor stranger, right? So to me it's that. It's like is my relationship with myself intact? And then from that place can I be in contact with another person and say, now this is intact? And if it gets harmed I commit to helping us get to intactness and sometimes that looks like a boundary. I keep repeating these words my friend, Prentis Hemphill, made this, made this, had this thought last week and then spread it all over the world basically, but its boundaries are the distance at which I can love you and me, simultaneously.  Neil Sattin: Mm hmm. I love that.  adrienne maree brown: And I keep thinking about that that I'm like sometimes... Right? Isn't it beautiful. And sometimes it's like that. It's like sometimes in tactness is at a great distance. It's like we're good as long as you're two thousand miles away from me. We're fine. It's good. Like don't cross that boundary and it's all good.  Neil Sattin: Right.  adrienne maree brown: And so I think about that I'm like, you know that's one of the things I talk about in "Pleasure Activism" is like our "No,"  makes a way for our "Yes." Like the good boundaries are actually so crucial for the good relationships.  Neil Sattin: Yeah. What seems contained too, and what you're offering, is the necessity for healing, like, to recognize like, OK if we're not in right relationship we're all each on a healing journey to getting there.  adrienne maree brown: Yes.  Neil Sattin: It's probably rare, the person who's learned, who's reached their 30s or 40s or more, you know, and hasn't experience some sort of disruption of their integrity.  adrienne maree brown: That's right.  Neil Sattin: So there's the healing component. There's also the compassion component. Like if I, if I expect you to be perfect and you fail me, and then that becomes this huge breach, then that's a much different problem than I'm trusting you. And I'm also wanting you. Like I'm, I'm willing to be okay with where you and I aren't perfect as long as we can be in full disclosure about that together.  adrienne maree brown: Yeah. That's right.  Neil Sattin: That's the honesty piece.  adrienne maree brown: I like that. I like that. I feel like that', you know, because I also think about this. Like for people who are like, "Oh no you know I'm sure they're someone's not me I'm good. You know like I know what you're talking about. I don't lie to myself or whatever." Or like, so often the people who seem to be, who have it all together, who have it altogether. Are are in some ways damaging themselves the most like I feel like now I have stopped doing to myself the harm of trying to pretend I am perfect, right?  Neil Sattin: Yeah.  adrienne maree brown: And I see it. I mean I feel like that you know when people watch Beyonce's Homecoming, right? Like what was intriguing to me is that she was like I was pushing for perfection and it meant having to like learn all the stuff that I would never do this again. It wasn't perfect it was actually too much that I harmed myself. And but, I pulled this off, but I harmed myself and didn't... Like, there's even stuff like that. Right? I'm like, "Yeah, what are you denying of yourself. That's where you're creating a prison, right, for yourself. You're containing that part of you that wants to be alive and free and moving around. And I'll say I'm part of the generative somatics teaching body. And for me, Somatics has been the healing pathway that has opened so much. And there's a really beautiful episode of The Healing Justice podcast, that has a woman named Sumitra on it, as it was that, they basically the Healing Justice podcast, they do an offer and then they do a practice to follow up on that. And so it's a 30 minute practice something less than that but it's basically this, the core practice of Somatics which is just centering learning how to actually drop into your body and feel and center in real time. And the idea is that you don't center to feel calm or better you center to feel more. that if you can feel more...  Neil Sattin: Yeah. To feel what is.  : That if you can feel more, feel what is and feel more of it then you start to have actual agency in real time over the choices you make, over the connections you move towards, over the connections you can start to set real boundaries around, like I can feel when someone is not a good energy to have around me, right. That doesn't mean they don't deserve to have people around them. But it's not going to happen here, right.  Neil Sattin: Right.  adrienne maree brown: I'm gonna move towards those people who are like the right energy for me for, for me growing them. And for them growing me. Yeah. Yeah. So I want to offer that because when it comes to healing, I think it helps to be fairly tangible. Like, there's, there's some you know, I feel like that for me. Like I went to talk therapy for a decade or whateve, right? And I've been able to move so much more through being able to feel, because I feel like talk therapy I was still able to stay in my head and tell my stories and tell my lies. And like you know you know, you can do it if your therapist has to be on to you just move on to the next one like, here's my, here's my story, right, or whatever it is. And I just think there's something so beautiful about dropping in and being like I'm feeling, I'm in a community of people who hold me accountable to being able to feel myself. And even now like I've been touring this book I land in a new city, and I run into someone who's also a Somatic practitioner and they hold me and they're like Are you good? Are you centering? Are you good? How are you feeling? You know and I know that they really care and they want to know. And in that moment I can feel the connection and my aliveness just expand.  Neil Sattin: So important.  adrienne maree brown: Yeah.  Neil Sattin: adrienne maree brown thank you so much for your words today for joining us. I know we could talk for easy another hour. You don't have the time, at least not today. Hopefully we can chat again at some point. That would be special.  adrienne maree brown: Yay. Thank you so much for having me on. I really appreciate being a guest on the show and I hope it's of use to people.  Neil Sattin: It is my pleasure and I just want to encourage everyone who's listening to check out all your work but especially your latest book: Pleasure Activism, Emergent Strategy. They're both written with such care and and I really felt them speaking to me and my unfolding and I know it would be a gift to any reader who's here with us. And it feels like a fun footnote that the friend that I met who introduced me to you and your work.  adrienne maree brown: Yeah.  Neil Sattin: We were actually both attending a somatic experiencing workshop with Peter Levine.  adrienne maree brown: Yay. That's awesome! Neil Sattin: So I love how it came back into Somatics here at the end.  adrienne maree brown: Full circle.  Neil Sattin: So far so important to find that truth of who you are and your experience in your body in this moment, and so much aliveness comes from there.  Neil Sattin: Thank you Neil.  adrienne maree brown: adrienne, if people want to find out more about your work, what can they do?  adrienne maree brown: They can go to the website: allied-media-dot-org-slash-ESII. That's where you can get trainings, workshop, stuff like that. And then I'm on Instagram  @adriennemareebrown, and I, that's where I mostly post things into the world.  Neil Sattin: Great. Well we will make sure there are links in all our stuff. And thank you so much for being with us today. And with me.  adrienne maree brown: Thank you. Have a good one.  Neil Sattin: Take care, adrienne.  adrienne maree brown: All right. Peace.  Neil Sattin: Same to you.  Neil Sattin: And just as a reminder if you want a detailed transcript of today's episode, you can get that by visiting Neil-Sattin-dot-com-slash-AMB, adrienne maree brown, or you can text the word passion to the number of 3 3 4 4 4 and follow the instructions. And we will have links to everything that we mentioned here in today's episode as well as to The Healing Justice I think is what adrienne said the The Healing Justice podcast episode that she mentioned, as a gift for you.  Neil Sattin: All right, take care.   

Kumar is the Chief Sustainability and Resilience Officer for the City of Evanston, IL and serves in multiple leadership capacities within the Urban Sustainability Directors Network (USDN) including as a co-chair for the People of Color Support Initiative and on the USDN Planning and Advisory Committee. Kumar’s work centers around stakeholder collaboration including: community advocacy groups, strategic partners, other units of government, elected officials, and various city departments, all to make Evanston a climate-ready and carbon neutral community. In 2018, Kumar was named to the 2018 GreenBiz “30 Under 30” global list of 30 young leaders in sustainable business who demonstrate “the world-changing promise of sustainability in their everyday work.”  Kumar Joins Sustainable Nation to Discuss: Engaging people of all ages on local climate issues The importance of spaces for people of color and how they relate to progress on racial equity within sustainability Urban Sustainability Directors Network (USDN) People of Color Support Initiative Evanston's Climate Action and Resilience Plan Advice and recommendations for sustainability leaders Interview Highlights: Sustainability and resilience were both built into your climate action and resilience plan. Talk to us a little bit about the development of this plan, what that process looks like and the challenges of now prioritizing your actions around this plan. Now is the right time for us to be talking about that. We're certainly at the point at which the plan has been approved and we're moving quickly into implementation. If we backtrack a little bit, back in 2017, when the federal administration indicated their intent to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord, we already had numerous commitments around climate action and resilience at the local level. That process of pulling out of the Paris agreement actually kicked us into gear. The mayor called on the community to develop a 17-member working group of residents to work alongside city staff to develop a plan. The climate action group had their first meeting in November of 2017 and had their last meeting in November of 2018, so they took 12 months, meeting and breaking out into task forces, to develop the entirety of the plan. So, this plan was written by community members in consultation with city staff. We didn't hire consultants to develop the plan and it wasn't a plan that city staff developed and then asked community members for feedback. It was written by and then edited and advised on by city staff and other community partners. As we now look at implementation a lot of the responsibility has been turned back on the city and some of our major partners. So, the process that we're going through right now has two pieces to it. One piece is looking at our administrative responsibilities or things that city staff and municipality can focus on. So, thinking about where we purchase our energy from for a municipal standpoint, what we're doing with our fleet, how we're evaluating a critical infrastructure for vulnerability etc. But then also within we had dozens of policy changes that were recommended and advised upon. So, the other part of this process is figuring out how we move forward many of those policy changes, understanding that some of them are pretty complex. For example, thinking about the way in which we transition our buildings to be net zero emissions or net zero energy. In Evanston, 80% of our community wide greenhouse gas emissions come from transportation. So, although we are a suburb, we have very strong public transportation options in the city. That leads to, thankfully, a smaller proportion of our emissions being transportation related. But as a very built out community, we have to look at our building sector very intentionally about how we're not only going to transition to low and no carbon fuels, but also reducing that energy consumption. Evanston is a member of the Urban Sustainability Directors Network (USDN) and it looks like you serve in a few different ways within that organization. One of them is serving as the co-chair for the People of Color Support Initiative. Tell us a little bit about that initiative and the importance of integrating social issues and racial equity issues within your city's sustainability program. I'm glad you brought up USDN. Evanston has been a USDN member for quite a few years now. I've had the privilege of being a member and the representative for the city for the past two years since I've been in this role. That organization has been crucial to my professional development, but also to ensuring that Evanston as a community has access to resources, technical expertise, funding opportunities and really innovative practices from around the nation. I'm indebted and grateful for the members in that network and the staff. The initiative that you mentioned is a really important one within professional spaces, particularly within professional environmental spaces. Oftentimes and historically, those spaces have been predominantly and overwhelmingly white. As the climate justice movements and the environmental justice movements become a bit more mainstream, I think it is really crucial that not only are we thinking about the way in which those communities are impacted, but also the people that are working in those spaces and what their experience is. Often times, those staff people, whether they be working for a city or for a corporation or for community organization, are still working in predominantly white spaces. I think that one of the benefits of a network like USDN is that when members decide that there is a need for additional training or additional support, whether it be small cities joining together and saying, "Hey, you know what, we need an affinity group to work on issues that are specific to small cities in small departments because we don't have million dollar budgets and dozens of staff." USDN is really able to respond to that and help facilitate and create those spaces. In particular, the Members of Color Peer Support Initiative is incredibly important for a number of reasons. One is just to provide a space so that people of color within that network are able to connect and support each other in their lived experience of the person of color within the field. But additionally, it provides a value to USDN because it's also creating a space in which USDN has a group of people to be able to ask for feedback and support on how the network as a whole is serving their memberships and their members of color. So, I think those things are incredibly important. What is one piece of advice you would give other sustainability professionals that might help them in their careers? The advice that I've gotten that has felt the most useful isn't sustainability related at all. It's just to take care of yourself. To heal, to give yourself time to rest and just to recognize that your needs are valid and important. This work can feel exhausting as a lot of socially minded work can. It seems like we continue to get waves of terrible news and projections that are going in directions that we don't want to see. So, it's not just about avoiding burnout, but it's about being able to be the person that you want to be and not allowing your position or your work at that one particular time to define you. It's really important that we continue to be able to contribute and feel like that contribution is helpful and healthy for us. I'm gonna cheat a little bit and use an Audrey Lorde quote, which I'm sure many of the listeners are familiar with. She says,"Caring for myself is not self indulgence, it is self preservation and that is an act of political warfare." Oftentimes when we think about things as big and challenging is climate change, it's easy to forget how important it is to take care of ourselves. What are you most excited about right now in the world of sustainability? There's a bunch of things but I will be brief. I'd say the youth climate strikes are really inspiring and exciting. I'm really looking forward to seeing how the conversations around the Green New Deal go at the federal level. I think it's exciting to have federal policy being talked about in that way. It's also really exciting that there are over 200 communities around the country that have made formal commitments to 100% clean energy by 2035, if not sooner. Those are all things that give me hope and are exciting. What is one book you would recommend sustainability leaders read? One that I am working my way through right now that I find really insightful is called The Environment and the People in American Cities from the 1600's to the 1900's by Dr. Dorceta Taylor. What are some of your favorite resources or tools that really help you in your work? I'd say the Urban Sustainability Directors Network, first and foremost. There's a Chicago based network called Environmentalists of Color or EOC, which I had been involved in and found as a really valuable and supportive space. There's a blog called Fake Equity, which always has really relevant topics around thinking and being reflective around the type of work you're doing. It's not just sustainability related, but it's really insightful. I'm not a huge Instagram person, but I have started following a few folks. One of them is Go Green Save Green, which provides really helpful and appealing and informative infographics for consumer tips and products on things like reusables and avoiding plastics. The green 2.0 report by Dr. Dorceta Taylor. There's another podcast out about social entrepreneurship, which I've been listening to recently and it's by a dear friend, Judy Lee. It's called Money Mission and Me, and it's intended to be a resource for anyone interested in how startups can be a force for good. Where can people go to learn more about you and your work at the city of Evanston? Our Twitter handle is @GreenEvanson. My personal Twitter handle is at @MrKumarj. You can also find some information on Linkedin. About Sustridge Sustridge is a sustainability consulting firm providing consulting in sustainability strategy development, GHG emissions calculating and management, zero waste planning and guidance in TRUE Zero Waste, B Corp, LEED and Carbon Neutral certification.  

Let's get to the nitty gritty of what self-care is and what it needs to look like for black women! Audrey Lorde said it best "Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare." Examine our self-care must go deeper the the bubble bath, manicure, or cup of tea.  Visit: MindOverMelanin.com instagram: @mindovermelaninpod Resources: P.L.E.A.S.E. The P.LE.A.S.E. skill is another skill that acknowledges the link between body and brain. You will likely find it much easier to manage your emotions if you also manage your health and your body. Remember to: PL – Treat Physical Illness.   E – Eat Healthy ( A – Avoid Mood-Altering Drugs (alcohol is a depressant) S – Sleep Well  E – Exercise   STOPP stands for: S – Stop! T – Take a Breath O – Observe P – Pull Back – Put in Some Perspective P – Practice What Works – Proceed Politics of Self-Care https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-politics-of-selfcare The Audrey Lorde Project-Wellness Plan https://alp.org/breaking-isolation-self-care-and-community-care-tools-our-people Strong Stressed Black Woman https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/25/opinion/strong-stressed-black-woman.html

Debbie Chachra is our guest this episode! Boston in tha house! “The Falsely Accused” is our challenge this episode! Thanks to F. Douglas Brown for the challenge! Taylor creates Castle Gradenstein (an FPG?) and we talk about the weirdness that is grading. Debbie investigates the cost of false positives, atypicality and the emotional weight of not knowing what to do next. Rob takes a thing apart as a meditation on women's liberation, invention and the master's tools. We also talk about making beer, useful design feedback, David Milgaard's innocence, witches, wooden fire ladders, and poutine... annnnnnd Stan Lee. You can check out our projects at http://projects.opposablepodcast.com Props to Blondihacks, Nik Kantar, Walter Kitundu, Federico Tobon, Kelly Martin, Luke Noonan, Mike Tully, Adam Mayer, David Bellhorn, Tim Sway and Charlene McBride! They're our top Patreon supporters! Join 'em at: https://www.patreon.com/opposablethumbs Special Guest: Debbie Chachra.

Michael Donker on his debut novel and Jackie Kay on how poet Audrey Lorde inspired her.

Today we explore that all too familiar crushing experience of feeling unworthy. We touch a bit on mental trauma, Audrey Lorde, and Thor. Enjoy!

In this episode, DJ Rekha reads "A Litany for Survival" by Audre Lorde and discusses dancing as an antidote to fear. DJ Rekha is a producer, curator, and educator based in New York City. Her classic debut album, DJ Rekha presents Basement Bhangra, was released in 2007. Her monthly party, Basement Bhangra, ran from 1997 to the summer of 2017 - making it one of the most influential and longest continuously running parties in NYC history. "A Litany for Survival" by Audrey Lorde appears in The Black Unicorn, published by W.W. Norton & Company. Keep up with DJ Rekha on Twitter, Facebook, and at djrekha.com. We feature one listener haiku at the end of every episode. To submit, call the Haiku Hotline at 612-440-0643 and read your poem after the beep. For the occasional prompt, follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Subscribe on RadioPublic, iTunes, Spotify, or Stitcher. https://radiopublic.com/interesting-people-reading-poetry-60aNDL/ep/s1!51059#t=1

Hello and welcome to this special episode of the Mother’s Quest Podcast which I’m releasing just days before the March for our Lives. On March 24, 2018 the kids and families of March For Our Lives will take to the streets of Washington DC, and around the country, to demand that their lives and safety become a priority and that we end gun violence and mass shootings in our schools today. To help light the way, I reached out to Gloria Pan, who currently serves as the National Campaign Director for Gun Safety for the grassroots advocacy organization MomsRising. A public interest advocate and Internet communications strategist, Gloria also leads the organization’s member engagement, rapid response and mobile actions initiatives, as well as the #KeepMarching project.  In our conversation, Gloria shares about her upbringing in an Asian-American immigrant family, the impact of her mother’s experience working in the UN during the Women’s Movement, and whether the idea of living an E.P.I.C. life is relevant for MomsRising mothers, many of whom are struggling to meet basic needs. We delve into the E.P.I.C. guideposts from the lens of gun safety advocacy, explore the ways in which we can broaden our lens to make that advocacy intersectional, and Gloria gives us specific actionable challenges to get involved and make a difference.  One of the most impactful moments of the interview for me happened when we talked about the young people of Parkland, and Gloria shared her unwavering belief that those young people would use their privilege to shine a light on their peers who’ve been organizing for the Black Lives Matter Movement, for gun safety in their communities of color, disproportionately and daily impacted by gun violence. The moment brought me to tears, because I really believed her…and sure enough in the days since that interview, those young people have been joining with students of color in Chicago and other urban areas, making their advocacy platform intersectional and building bridges where adults have failed to do so. In a recent article, Cameron Kasky, one of the Parkland student leaders said “We have to represent those who unfortunately were ignored.This is not just about us. … When we’re together marching, this is not going to be different races, different generations ― this is going to be a unified people standing together against those who are trying to ignore us.” I’ll be standing for all of that on Saturday at the March for our Lives and as I move through the advocacy challenges thoughtfully shared by Gloria and MomsRising in the days afterward. I hope you’ll join me. This episode dedicated by: Sage B. Hobbs, Author of Naked Communication and Host of the Naked Conversations Podcast. You can find out more about her work at: www.sagebhobbs.com Naked Conversations Podcast  Facebook  Instagram Topics Discussed in this Episode: The importance of modeling activism for our children  How the MomsRising members frequently attend rallies, hearings and meetings with law-makers and bring their children along An honest exploration of whether living an E.P.I.C. is culturally relevant for families working to meet their basic needs The power of using social media platforms as a tool for exploring issues with people of differing political opinions.  Our responsibility to step into activism to support communities under siege under this administration  Audrey Lorde’s famous quote that “there is no such thing as a single issue struggle” and how MomsRising pursues an intersectional multi-issue advocacy agenda How the Parkland students, so “clear-eyed” as Gloria says, are galvanizing support for gun safety and using their privilege to shine a lot on the impact of gun violence in communities of color  The policy prescription for gun violence prevention in an intersectional way Gloria’s E.P.I.C. snapshot moment where MomsRising galvanized mothers, through a storybook campaign, to successfully fight against an Open Carry Law in Florida that would have allowed people to carry guns at Disney World.  Gloria’s challenge to our community to help MomsRising fight gun violence on three fronts This Week’s Challenge: Become a MomsRising member and fight with them on three fronts: Get FedEx to cut ties with the NRA – sign the petition here Ban military-style assault weapons and high capacity magazines – sign the petition here Urge lawmakers to pledge to not take money from the NRA and reject their influence. You can also reach out to friends in other areas to ask them to ask out to their lawmakers And participate in upcoming student-led events: March for our Lives on March 24th and document and share about your experience on social media to inspire others April 20th Anniversary of Columbine Student and Educator-Led Day of Action Resources Mentioned in this Episode: Follow #parkland on Twitter for the latest updates in the Parkland school shooting Read more about the Parkland students MomsRising Follow MomsRising on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram #KeepMarching MomsRising Reject NRA Money Pledge for your representatives in Congress to sign Tell FedEx: Stop Supporting the NRA Pantsuit Nation Read more about the Indivisible political group EP33: Beyond the Trauma: Legacy, Compassion and Change with Mothers Against Police Brutality Co-Founder Sara Mokuria, one of three Mother’s Quest episodes recorded for the Women Podcasters in Solidarity Initiative Article about the Parkland students speaking out in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter Movement The young voices we aren’t hearing in the gun-control debate article Announcements: Virtual Mother’s Quest Circle Pilot I’m excited to announce that the first founding Mother’s Quest Virtual Circle has been filled. If you’re interested in a future circle, and want to receive notice when the applications open again, please add your name to this wait list. julie@mothersquest.com Mother’s Quest E.P.I.C. Life Check-In Would love to have you in our weekly E.P.I.C. Life Check-In on Tuesday, from 12N-1PM pm via Video on Zoom We’ll create connections within the Mother’s Quest community, reflect on how we feel along the E.P.I.C. Guideposts this week, and set an intention for the week. Time for personal introspection, group accountability and community-building all packed into one hour. Are you In? Join the Mother’s Quest Community to RSVP and find the zoom link to join. www.mothersquest.com/community Help us Grow the Mother’s Quest Community If you’re finding value from the Mother’s Quest Podcast and would like to get more involved, please join us in the Mother’s Quest Facebook Group, help us find more like-minded mothers on a quest by spreading the word and sharing your favorite episodes, and make a donation or apply to dedicate an episode. You can also share your story on the Mother’s Quest Blog. Acknowledgements: A big THANK YOU to our “patrons” for helping to bring these conversations to myself and other mothers through financial and/or in-kind support: Sage B. Hobbs Samantha Nolan-Smith Jody Smith Emily Cretella of MotherHustle Collette Flanagan, founder of Mothers Against Police Brutality Titilayo Tinubu Ali of Own Your Expertise Carly Magnus Hurt Lizzy Russinko of This (Un)Scripted Life Suzanne Brown, author of Mompowerment Mara Berns Langer Mallory Schlabach of Marketing Magic for Entrepreneurs Katharine Earhart of Alesco Advisors Jessica Kupferman of She Podcasts Resistance Artist Jen Jenkins Dohner Genese Harris Tonya Rineer, founder of The Profit Party Liane Louie-Badua Cristin Downs of the Notable Woman Podcast Erin Kendall of Fit Mom Go Niko Osoteo of Bear Beat Productions Erik Newton of The Together Show Claire Fry Divya Silbermann Rachel Winter Caren and Debbie Lieberman Cameron Miranda Fran and David Lieberman Debbie and Alan Goore Jenise and Marianne of the Sustainable Living Podcast Support the Podcast If you’d like to make a contribution to Mother’s Quest to support Season Three of the Podcast and/or help provide coaching scholarships for mothers, follow this link to make a contribution. If you would like to “dedicate” an upcoming episode to a special mother in your life, email me at julie@mothersquest.com — Mother’s Quest is a podcast for moms who are ready to live a truly E.P.I.C. life. Join in for intimate conversations with a diverse group of inspiring mothers as they share how they are living an E.P.I.C. life, Engaging mindfully with their children (E), Passionately and Purposefully making a difference beyond their family (P), Investing in themselves (I), and Connecting to a strong support network (C). Join our community of mothers to light the way and sustain you on your quest at https://www.facebook.com/groups/mothersquest/

What is Self-Care? What are the barriers to self-care and why do they hold us back? What does teaching and self-care have to do with International Women's Day? In this episode, Ellen discusses the five facets of self-care, why guilt is the number one self-care sabotage how self-care can help you #BeBoldForChange this IWD. "Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation and that is an act of political warfare." ~ Audrey Lorde

What is Self-Care? What are the barriers to self-care and why do they hold us back? What does teaching and self-care have to do with International Women's Day? In this episode, Ellen discusses the five facets of self-care, why guilt is the number one self-care sabotage how self-care can help you #BeBoldForChange this IWD. "Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation and that is an act of political warfare." ~ Audrey Lorde