Podcasts about healing justice

Don’t miss a transformative conversation as acclaimed authors Dr. Joy DeGruy and attorney Enola Aird take over our classroom. Dr. DeGruy, renowned for her best-selling book "Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome," and attorney Aird, celebrated for her profound work in "Black Fathers in Contemporary American Society," will share powerful insights and discuss the compelling ‘Centering Healing’ documentary. Before their segment, hear from Chairman Fred Hampton as he reports on his latest legal challenges with the Chicago police department. Sister Euri will also preview this weekend's MAAFA commemoration in WDC. Starting us off, music historian Norman Richmond, will deepen our celebration of Black Music Month. This is your chance to engage with trailblazers shaping the conversation around issues that matter most to our community.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What happens when someone who teaches healing suddenly must fight for her own? Dr. Joi Lewis joins me for a powerful conversation about surviving a massive stroke, rebuilding life through radical self-care, and learning how community, meditation, faith, and curiosity can help people heal. Raised in East St. Louis, Joi shares how her upbringing shaped her deep belief in connection, public service, and emotional liberation. You'll hear how she moved from higher education leadership into healing justice work, why she believes isolation is dangerous, and how practices like mindfulness, conscious movement, and meditation became critical tools during her recovery. This conversation explores disability, resilience, trust, healing, and what it really means to live with an unstoppable mindset. Highlights: 00:59 How community shaped her mindset growing up in East St. Louis. 08:47 Surviving a massive stroke and adapting to disability. 15:14 Why radical self-care is essential for healing. 21:16 How faith and music support her recovery journey. 35:35 The four parts of the Orange Method for healing. 50:19 How an “energy bank” helps restore emotional health. About the Guest: "Dr. Joi” Lewis is CEO of Joi Unlimited (www.drjoilewis.com) and Founder of The Healing Justice Foundation (www.healingjusticefoundation.org). Joi Unlimited is a crisis, conflict, and change management firm specializing in transformation of systems and self for collective and individual liberation. The Healing Justice Foundation's mission is to reclaim the inherent dignity, brilliance, and humanity of all Black people. Dr. Joi (as many fondly call her) is known locally, nationally, and globally as a facilitator of liberation, radical self-care expert, and community healer. What that means is she helps individuals, institutions, and communities heal from oppression-induced historic and present day trauma, using Healing Justice (Radical Self-Care + Social Justice) as an on ramp to reclaim our own humanity and each others'. Dr. Joi is the author of Healing: The Act of Radical Self-Care, based on her transformative process the Orange Method (OM) of Healing Justice, and of the meditation journal and affirmation deck May the Revolution Be Healing. She is a social entrepreneur and a highly sought-after speaker and executive coach. Dr. Joi inspires us to hold heartbreak and “joy” because they run from the same faucet. Her work is deeply informed by growing up in East St. Louis, Illinois. Dr. Joi completed her doctoral work at the University of Pennsylvania, conducted research in South Africa, had a 20+ year career on college campuses as Dean, Faculty, Vice President and Chief Diversity Officer. She is an unapologetic joy instigator, a certified kemetic and hot vinyasa yoga teacher, a facilitator of meditation and mindfulness and a food prep pro, who lives in St. Paul, Minnesota. In July of 2024, Dr. Joi survived a massive stroke and has recommitted to the practices of the Orange Method as she prioritizes her own radical self care. Dr. Joi is on a mission to “put healing in the hands of anyone, anywhere.” Ways to connect with Joi: https://www.joiunlimited.com/ https://www.healingjusticefoundation.org/ Facebook: Dr Joi Lewis Instagram: @drjoi LinkedIn: Dr Joi Lewis About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog. Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards. https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/ accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/ Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below! Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset . Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts. Transcription Notes:

Please enjoy this interview with Dr. Liza Rankow for her new book “⁠Soul Medicine for a Fractured World: Healing, Justice, and the Path of Wholeness⁠“Learn more at lizarankow.org

APEX Express is 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. On this episode, host Miata Tan speaks with three guests from Tsuru for Solidarity, a nationwide organization working to end immigration detention in the United States. They discuss the current state of the system, the conditions facing immigrant and asylum-seeking families, and how Tsuru's Japanese American roots shape their approach to this work. Get Involved with Tsuru for Solidarity Join a campaign Mailing list Instagram | Facebook | YouTube Website   Transcript ​[00:00:00]  Miata Tan: Hello and welcome. I'm your host Miata Tan, and you are tuning into APEX Express, a weekly radio show that uplifts the voices and stories of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. The United States runs the largest immigration detention system in the world. Earlier this year, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, also known as ICE, [00:01:00] held a record. 73,000 people in immigration detention the highest number in the agency's 23 year history. Since January 20, 25, over 6,200 kids have passed through ICE detention. Tonight we hear from a community who are shining a light on this issue and working to end the ongoing detention of immigrant and asylum seeking families.  Rob Buscher: The Japanese American story and Asian American story are just one chapter in this much larger chronicle of state violence, and we. See our role as, as also helping to connect the dots and be the connective tissue. Miata Tan: That was the voice of Rob Buscher, the Director of Operations at Tsuru for Solidarity, a nationwide organization with a mission to educate, advocate, and protest to close all US detention site. And bring an end to inhumane immigration policies. Tsuru for Solidarity is led by [00:02:00] the survivors and descendants of Japanese Americans who are incarcerated in concentration camps by the US government in World War ii. Our three guests tonight are shaping the future of this work at Tsuru for Solidarity. They share with us how the legacy of Japanese American wartime incarceration is deeply intertwined with the present day realities that many immigrant communities are facing. First up is Mike Ishii, the Executive Director of Tsuru for Solidarity. Here's Mike taking us back to the inception of this organization and national movement. Mike Ishii: In 2016 the Obama administration decided to really lean into. A deterrence policy of immigration. When they had first entered office, we thought they may actually provide some relief for immigrants. But in fact, what they ended up doing was weaponizing the immigration policy at the southern border against immigrants. And they built [00:03:00] Karnes and Dilley, which were the first family detention centers. Carl Takei, one of the founding members of Tsuru for Solidarity. In fact, I think he was just honored by, the Asian Bar Association for his longtime advocacy work in community spaces. Well, in 2016 when the Obama administration really opened Karnes and Dilley, Carl was working at the A CLU in immigration and the Obama administration had the audacity to want to invite advocates from all over the country to show off their new detention centers. And so when Carl entered into those sites, what he encountered was a room that was. Full of giant cabinets floor to ceiling. And when they opened the doors, what he saw inside were thousands of shoes for infants. And it took his breath away and he realized, oh my God, these are concentration camps for children. And you know, this really. Resonated with his [00:04:00] own family's history of mass incarceration during World War ii. So what he did was he immediately called Dr. Satsuki Ina, Dr. Ina is very famous. For a number of things. One is that she is really the preeminent community trauma specialist in the Japanese American community. She was born inside of the Tula Lake Segregation Center, a concentration camp. She would grow up to become a very, well-known psychotherapist in the Japanese American community. Dr. Ina. Is really like Carl's auntie, and so he said, this is happening at the southern border. I want you to come have a look. She went inside and she was actually able to meet with families and their children, and she of course can do a psychological assessment  She began to advocate. Against these camps because what she realized was that the conditions, the experiences, the trauma that these children were experiencing was very similar to what our own survivors had experienced as children during World War ii in the US concentration caps. [00:05:00] So there's one of the genesis prongs of Tsuru for solidarity. If you fast forward. To 2018, you have the zero tolerance policy under Trump, administration, 1.0. And if you remember, at that time, as an extension. of deterrence, they were separating children from their families at the southern border. These are families who were seeking refugee status, who were seeking asylum, who were presenting for asylum. That's a constitutional and human right, protected by the Geneva Conventions. They would take those families, they would literally strip the children away from their parents. They deported the parents. Purposefully they did not record where they were sending them often deported not to countries of origin. So in many cases, we still have not reunited those families. We don't know where the parents are and the children are still here, nine, 10 years later, With unaccompanied status because they purposefully destroyed the connections and the ability to [00:06:00] trace and reunite those families. That's Trump 1.0. And when they were doing that they were also expanding these large congregate concentration caps for children. They were calling them influx centers and saying, oh, they'll only be processed through these, and then we'll release children into. Custody of family members, et cetera. That was not true. They were actually prisons for children and they were literal concentration camps. It's violating the due process laws of the United States. there's no accountability. There's no oversight. And so Tsuru for Solidarity emerged in 2018 as an organization of Japanese Americans, really led by survivors who were children in camps and their descendants.  My own mother was incarcerated in a concentration camp in Idaho with her family. During World War ii, she was 10 years old at that time. She had two younger sisters and her youngest sister was born inside of the Minidoka concentration camp and experienced birth trauma because they had no doctors. She was, um, birthed by a veterinarian [00:07:00] and ex experienced, um, lack of oxygen And so she lived a life of tremendous suffering and, and disability. Um, that was often unrecognized as trauma from a concentration camp. She attempted to commit suicide multiple times. Eventually would die an early death from mental health. Complications. That's the legacy of the camps of World War ii, and understanding that multi-generational impact is partly why suited for solidarity emerged in 2018 when we recognized that they were repeating our history, and that's why we're here today. Miata Tan: That was Mike Ishii, Executive Director at Tsuru for Solidarity. Mike described how Tsuru's work grew in response to the ongoing detention of immigrant children in the United States. As he mentioned, many Japanese Americans have deep roots in this country. Now let's hear from Rob Buscher Tsuru's, Director of [00:08:00] Operations. He's a mixed race yonsei or fourth generation Japanese American. You may hear him use terms like yonsei to describe different generations. Now, here's Rob Unpacking the legacy of Japanese American incarceration, including the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which issued a formal apology and reparations and what that history means for other communities today. Rob Buscher: In 2018 and 2019, our community was not the one that was at risk of being detained. We were not the ones who were being targeted by the state violence of immigrant detention and enforcement. and yet we had this ability to kind of think about and talk about. Multi-generational impacts of the trauma from World War ii. Um, it's not just the survivors of camp and the children of camp. It's the children and grandchildren of this experience who continue to suffer multi-generational effects of trauma, whether it be higher, uh, incidents of anxiety and stress leading to a [00:09:00] variety of health issues, uh, substance abuse issues the forced assimilation that resulted in the aftermath of our resettlement into the broader American society has also resulted in a great deal of assimilation trauma. So for a number of sansei and yonsei and gosei now trying to understand, uh, what is our history and heritage? How can we relate to something that was forcibly removed from us and really navigating this idea that at sometimes feels like a racial imposter syndrome, uh, when we don't know our own histories because it was forcibly taken from us. In a variety of ways, uh, I think that the Japanese American community's role, and specifically through Tsuru, has been rooted in this idea of solidarity and collective liberation because we understand that the effects. Our trauma, we're part of this much longer continuum of anti-black racism, of anti indigenous genocide, of white supremacy in the United States. The [00:10:00] Japanese American story and Asian American story are just one chapter in this much larger chronicle of state violence, and we. See our role as, as also helping to connect the dots and be the connective tissue. In some cases, when communities who have experienced these kinds of traumas across many decades aren't always in communication with each other, aren't always in conversation, but the complexity and nuance of the American story actually lends itself to a number of parallels to have conversations around things like. Black reparations. And you know, this is another part of the work that Tsuru does in solidarity with black reparations and African American communities, descendants of chattel slavery and others who have suffered Jim Crow and other forms of state violence against black and brown communities. understanding that the, the redress story and the story of Japanese Americans receiving our own reparations. Uh, is part of this longer narrative around, uh, what does it mean to have reparative [00:11:00] justice? And, um, as some of the few people who have received reparations from the United States government, uh, many of us also see it as our obligation and duty to stand in solidarity with black reparations.  Mike Ishii: if I could just add on to that, you know. There's an intersectional history in the United States of forced removals, you know, on the enslavement blocks enforcing people on forced death marches from their home lands to reservations. In the prison system of the us The largest prison system in the world. It's forced removal, it's separation of families, it's mass incarceration it's surveillance and it's murder. And the Japanese American chapter of that history is actually a very similar story that just as, as Rob said, just keeps being repeated over and over again, but it's created in new iterations. So, just to give you a small example related to the Japanese American story. Dylan Meyer, who ran the war relocation authority, he was responsible [00:12:00] for the 10 largest, the most well known of the Japanese American concentration camps. There were actually over 75, sites of detention for Japanese Americans during World War ii. Most people don't realize that. what we were put into that system during World War II was based on the reservation model, um, of how they remove indigenous people from their homelands and then force them onto reservation lands. That model was exported. By the Nazis to build their concentration camps. So like people think, oh, Nazi Germany invented that. No, it was, that model was invented in the United States. It was then exported to Nazi Germany. It was then tailored further on Japanese American communities. And then with the forced assimilation, we were, our people were not allowed to go back to their homes initially. Dylan Meyer wrote about it in his biography. He considered the force assimilation one of his greatest accomplishments. So what he was doing was he was dispersing us and destroying us in one generation of force removal. We lost our homes, we lost our farms. We lost the nijo Mai, the Japan towns. We [00:13:00] lost our language. We lost our culture, and perhaps most importantly. We lost each other because they pitted our community against each other with a series of very divisive questionnaires that really turned people on each other, More than 84 years since the opening of the camp. We're still trying to repair the fractures of that. They're not healed yet. And so that's what Rob, when Rob refers to multi-generational trauma, we're a fractured community. Still trying to repair the implosion that was. Really dropped on us by the United States government, this is what they do repeatedly to community after community. So with the force assimilation after World War ii, they saw how that worked. Then they, they took that back and they weaponized it against, um, indigenous communities and saying, we're gonna move people off the reservations. We're gonna resettle them in cities Further isolating people away from their home communities, taking away their languages, taking them and breaking their connections to family and community. Right? Setting people up for failure in a city away from their [00:14:00] people. in poverty., And what we're witnessing right now is a culmination of hundreds of years in this of white supremacy, weaponized against our communities. More openly, more brazenly than ever before, with the full power of the United States government behind it. Miata Tan: That was Mike Ishii, Executive Director at Tsuru for Solidarity. As Mike described mass surveillance programs, the World War II, incarceration of Japanese Americans and post-war pressures to assimilate left lasting impacts on this community. In the present, Tsuru for Solidarity connects the Japanese American history to ongoing immigration detention in the United States. Here's Mike describing some of Tsuru's past and ongoing campaigns focused on closing specific detention sites, what they call site fights.  Mike Ishii: Dilley and Karnes, which are the original two sites and the largest sites in Texas, which are now in the news again, [00:15:00] because they're being reused again by the Trump administration very openly. But under Biden, we had forced 'em to close those basically functionally for families. They were using them in other ways. Which is not good. but we had forced them to stop detaining families officially. we had stopped the expansion of these large congregate sites for unaccompanied migrant children. Uh, we stopped them from opening a large one in Greensboro, North Carolina. They wanted to open what they called the Piedmont Academy. Site of the former National Jewish School that school closed. And so they had leased the property and they were gonna. Open their largest detention site for unaccompanied migrant children and call it an academy. we slowed it down and forced them to reconsider it long enough to where it became an unworkable, policy for them. And they abandoned it. We stopped them from expanding Fort Bliss. In El Paso, which is a military base that was also used as a Japanese American incarceration site [00:16:00] during World War ii. it's currently being used again. It's being called Camp East Montana, by the Trump 2.0 administration. And when they were incarcerating children there during the first Trump administration, children were literally forgotten. Their cases were forgotten, and there were children languIshiing in there for like. Up to a year at a time, and nobody knew they were there because no one cared. There were allegations of sexual abuse, uh, rotten food, children who never were allowed outside. Children covered in lice, children taking care of younger children because nobody took care of them, lack of medical care. And so if that's shocking for what was happening under the first Trump administration, it's. Also happening now. And, and there is even less oversight or accountability now than there was, during the first Trump administration because as broken as that system was, then it had more accountability because there were [00:17:00] advocates and legal representatives for children, which is almost non-existent now. They've done away with the funding for that. We have three year olds representing themselves in immigration courts now because they did away with the congressional funding to support that. That's sort of the, the constellation of. Of the work that we emerged into when we came into formation, um, under the first Trump administration. And, it, it has just continued to evolve. We've been involved in, I think it's eight site fights now. And as difficult as this moment is right now, I always wanna tell people, and frame it this way, when you fight back, you win. We closed the Berks Family Detention Center permanently. We stopped the Piedmont Academy from opening in Greensboro. Tsuru's first major action was to go to Fort Sill in Oklahoma in 2019. Um, we led two protests there. The first one went [00:18:00] sort of viral on democracy now in cause they accompanied us. They embedded themselves with us. This is the first thing we ever did in a large scale and had no idea what we were doing at that point. We just were just angry and we, and full of, passion and said we have to go there and stop them from opening. A new concentration camp for 1600 children. And so we did that. Um, as a result, United we dream joined us along with AIM Indian Territory, with Black Lives Matter, Oklahoma City. Um, with Dream Action now Oklahoma with Veterans for Peace and with many of the local tribes. We came back a month later and staged a massive, massive demonstration shut down the highway into the fort. We brought 25 Buddhist priests and nuns with us. Who chanted the heart suture at the gate, um, while DACA young people took the highway and shut it down. After that action, the governor and the two senators from Oklahoma made an announcement the next day and they said, we've decided not to open this site here because we [00:19:00] said if you move ahead with. This is just the beginning. You think this is bad. We are gonna bring thousands of people here and we will make sure this site never opens. we proved through solidarity and community organizing in that moment that when you organize in solidarity against state violence, you win. You know, it's a bad moment. Right now they're proposing what, 23, 25 new warehouse detention sites, but actually. At least three or four of them have been curtailed already because community came together and said, not in my neighborhood, not in my town, not in my city. We will oppose you. And we're getting very smart about how we work together. I think Chicago and Minneapolis, LA have really lifted up the idea that change and transformation comes from the ground up. when we wait for our. Governments to change policy for the better of people and humanity. It doesn't happen. It's [00:20:00] when it's when the grassroots decide. We band together. We protect ourselves, we care for ourselves. We organize, we stand in solidarity against state violence. Then we can move things and we can stop things. Miata Tan: That was Mike Ishii, Executive Director at Tsuru for Solidarity. As Mike described, Tsuru organizes creative nonviolent actions to challenge immigration detention and bring people into collective resistance. Stay tuned to learn more about this movement and they're opposing inhumane practices against immigrant communities. Miata Tan: [00:21:00] [00:22:00] That was Forevermore by Yuna. You are tuned into APEX Express on 94.1 KPFA, a weekly radio show uplifting the voices and stories of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. I'm your host, Miata Tan. Tonight we're centering the work of Tsuru for Solidarity, a nationwide organization with a mission to close all US detention sites and bring an end to inhumane immigration policies. Sophie Sarkar is the Bay Area organizer with Tsuru for Solidarity. Here's Sophie speaking about their approach using non-cooperation as a guiding strategy. Sophie Sarkar: Non-cooperation is the idea that. I guess there's this larger model for [00:23:00] authoritarianism. And that an authoritarian regime is actually a lot more fragile than we think because it is upheld by many different pillars of society. So for example. The authoritarian regime cannot function unless it has a military force that is supporting it, unless it has a media that's supporting it unless it has elected officials corporations, police forces. And so when we think about strategy, we're really thinking about these specific pillars. Um, instead of just like, how can we take down this, uh, authoritarian regime? We think about like, okay let's choose a pillar and let's unpack all the different layers within that pillar. So, for example, if we choose the pillar of corporations, you know, there are many different corporations that we know are supporting, working in concert and supporting ICE and the Department of Homeland Security, like enterprise, like [00:24:00] Hilton, target, home Depot. And within each of those. , Well, there are the consumers, and then there are the workers, the managers, and then the CEOs. So we try to create strategies that kind of work from at a grassroots level. So starting with the outer layer of like the consumers through boycotts to workers, labor strikes and so forth. When we're talking about non-cooperation, we're really talking about strategies that help us support people to, to dissent and to stop actually working with the regime. we learned a lot from Minneapolis where folks were calling up enterprise, um, and booking booking cars so that ICE couldn't. rent them and then just canceling last minute. Miata Tan: That was Sophie Sarkar Bay Area organizer at Tsuru for Solidarity. As Sophie described, Tsuru uses a framework of [00:25:00] non-cooperation to guide its organizing work. Their campaigns include a range of non-violent actions, letter writing, public demonstrations, and continued pressure efforts. Now returning to my conversation with Rob Buscher, Tsuru's, Director of Operations. I wanted to know how Tsuru is organizing together, how they are thinking about this strategy nationwide.  Rob Buscher: We are all remote workers, so Mike and Becca, our Director of organizing, is based in New York City. Uh, and they frequently travel, uh, every other week traveling across the country to the campaign hubs that are mainly located in the West Coast, where we have a larger Japanese American community. Seattle, Portland, San Francisco Bay Area. Those are kind of our big hubs, and that's where the bulk of Tsuru's volunteer members are located. So much of this work is campaign driven, it's really work that is ideated together [00:26:00] as, as a committee consensus based decision making that takes place both from campaign level, but also regional leaders within each one of those hubs. looking at child and family detention, looking at police prisons and detention as our two detention campaigns. Healing Justice as Mike was talking about, including Resiliency and arts as well as the core healing circles Practice that has been a, a part of our practice since the beginning. And also the solidarity with black reparations campaign. So between each of those four campaigns, we have co-chairs that lead that work. Um, they form our leadership council, which is essentially the, the board of sudu. And together with our six staff, we work very closely with the leadership council to create a plan for the organization at a larger national level. But the day-to-day operations is largely being done by our volunteer members in each one of those locations. We have busy seasons, of course. the Day of Remembrance on February 19th is a, a major focal point for a lot of [00:27:00] our historic remembrance around the anniversary of Franklin Roosevelt signing Executive order 9 0 6 6, which laid the legislative groundwork for the forced removal of our communities from the west coast and that. Has become, not just within Tsuru, but within the Japanese American community. A launch point for revisiting this history from the lens of today and trying to understand what is the role of the survivors and descendants of the Japanese American community as we see parallels to what occurred, happening to families. And individuals around the country in real time. A member of my own family was arrested under the Alien Enemies Act in 1942, and we're seeing the same kind of legislation being used against Venezuelans and other folks from Latin America. you know, when we kind of think about the role that we play today. As staff, we hold a lot of the this work from like a planning standpoint, but the actual boots on the grounds are the volunteer members of the organization. Miata Tan: That was Rob Buscher, the Director of operations at Tsuru for [00:28:00] Solidarity. Now let's return to Sophie Sarkar, the Bay Area organizer for this nationwide movement. Here Sophie reflects on Tsuru's volunteer network and the anti deportation campaigns they help to coordinate across the Bay Area. Sophie Sarkar: So our volunteers are largely Japanese American, world War ii, prison camp survivors and descendants as well as allies. And It's an amazing volunteer base to work with because it is so intergenerational. So for example, we had a strategy retreat for our leaders and our youngest participant was 21 and our oldest participant was 95. And. All the ages in between as well. that's one of the reasons I love working with this group so much because I think it's pretty rare to be in such intergenerational spaces organizing together. Yeah. And, uh, we have volunteers all across the Bay [00:29:00] Area. We have folks that. Our artists that have law degrees that, have an organizing background that have never organized before in their lives. Um, we really try to make ourselves accessible to anyone who's interested in participating. So even if um, someone is just really starting to understand the realities of the systemic violence, against immigrants in this country we, we make space for that and we really try to, offer a lot of political education to folks so. Yeah, at any level they can engage. Yeah, and we have faith leaders. We have folks who have experience with labor unions. So it is a pretty wide variety. But yeah, most of us come together with this shared historical experience of, some people themselves or their families being incarcerated during World War II i, myself am a descendant of, [00:30:00] folks who are incarcerated at Manzanar and Tulle Lake. My family were also so folks who were coerced into renunciation and quote self deportation unquote after the war. I feel so many different various connections to my own family's experiences and what's happening today. And so it just feels like a really deep yeah, just a, a deep opportunity to get to, I. Ground in my, my ancestral historical experience as, as an organizer for Tsuru. I think for many of us by really being able to show up in solidarity with groups that are facing State violence it looks different today in some ways. But it's kind of the same playbook as we might say of how the government treated our family members. And it's really an opportunity for us to. really address the [00:31:00] impacts of what happened to our families on us, across generations to address our trauma, to face it to heal from it. Miata Tan: Definitely. Could you share a little bit about what your day-to-day looks like as a organizer?  Sophie Sarkar: My role is really to work with our volunteer leaders and to support them in, , building out campaigns here in the Bay Area. So in the Bay Area we have, we are part of the ICE out of Dublin coalition and we have our own Tsuru campaign around preventing the reopening of FCI Dublin as an ice detention facility. there is currently no ice detention facility in Northern California, so that would have a huge impact on the entire Bay Area and Northern California in general. So we spend a lot of time on that, working on that campaign. we also have part in Refugees campaign where we have supported individuals at risk of [00:32:00] deportation, um, with kind of mutual aid and wraparound care. And we also have a Palestine working group that is Supporting the J eight community in the Bay Area to organize folks around the genocide and Palestine, and now the war in Lebanon and Iran. And so we will be participating, for example, in a interfaith march, and pilgrimage in May as part of that we have a child and family detention campaign that's more national. we organize monthly general meetings so that folks have a place to land with us. And at those general meetings we, give campaign updates, but we also, really try to do something engaging and like take an action together. So, at the last couple, um, general meetings, we folded paper dolls as part of a Paper Dolls campaign to raise awareness about child and family detention and the [00:33:00] 6,000 families that are currently detained by ICE. Miata Tan: That was Sophie Sarkar the Bay Area organizer at Tsuru for Solidarity. As you heard, children and families detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement are central to their campaign work. One example is the Paper Dolls to Free families Campaign that Sophie mentioned. Tsuru for Solidarity is leading this effort alongside partners in the National Coalition to End Family and Child Detention. The campaign invites people across the country to create paper dolls with little messages of solidarity, which the coalition will deliver to members of Congress. He is Tsuru's Executive Director Mike Ishii, reflecting on the thinking behind this work. Mike Ishii: We have to recognize that great violence has taken place between people and between our groups. But the only way we're going to reconcile this and actually transform it is if we try to repair it in a [00:34:00] transformative way. You know, part of the work that we're doing right now, in the National Coalition to End Family and Child Detention is a campaign that we call free families. And here's what it does, it recognizes that we are trying to free the families who are inside detention. Uh, you know, Liam Ramos, right? The five-year-old with the bunny backpack who was put in Dilley. He's the face of 3,800 children detained in the last year by the Trump administration. It's probably much higher than that because they don't actually report truthfully, the statistics  That really moved people when they saw Liam's face. But what we're trying to do is have it, his story, be connected to a greater story about families and children, because what we know in our own research. And when we look at the voting patterns and why people voted for the Trump administration in the last election, what we see is really angry. People who feel left behind um, well, the system has left behind people. [00:35:00] Healthcare. Food stamps prenatal care, Medicare education, you name it. Housing, all of the things that affect working people who are struggling more and more as prices go up in this country. As the future starts to narrow and people don't see an open feature for themselves but this 1% is getting more and more enriched by the policies. And the violence that they're enacting on communities. And so the Free Families Campaign is really a campaign not just for immigrant to free immigrant families and children. It's really to recenter the the importance and the sAACREdness of families and to organize families across the country for their common purpose, their common good. I was a part of a study and, advisory council that did research about how do we change the narrative on child and family detention nationally. What we found is that the majority of the country holds a value of the sAACREd. Importance of protecting children and the [00:36:00] sanctity of the family. And when we organize and get people into conversation about that, about their own families and about their own children and what it's like to try to survive in this time, what we realize is that there's this great common denominator of parents actually who are struggling in a system that's leaving people behind everywhere, We think that's where the future of movement and solidarity work needs to go. It's about kitchen table issues. It's about opening a future for the next generation. if you look at the, research and sort of the feedback that you hear from younger generations about their future, it's really bleak. What they say, what they're sharing is that they feel betrayed by the adults. Who are leaving them a world full of climate crisis and war and lack of opportunity, lack of rights. And so the organizing work that we're involved in right now, you say, oh, it's immigrant rights work, it's anti detention work. It's actually about revising the [00:37:00] future for really our whole society. As things fall and burn, it's the old order. It's so based in your rationality that it's collapsing and on some level you can't stop it from falling. And so our work in this moment is to get people out of the way. And save as many people as this system collapses. And then to vision the new system that actually is the beloved community that does provide equity, for all people that has been denied to so many of our communities. And what's important in that work, along with the organizing and the intervention work against state violence, is the work around repair and healing. We're part of, a national cohort that's been, um, sort of think tanking and doing work and sharing, across our organizations, our methods and trying to help develop new templates, new forms of how to take healing and repair, especially around multi-generational trauma. And to share it broadly so that people are resourced and have more [00:38:00] access to the skillset and the tools for healing multi-generational trauma as part of regular everyday organizing in communities across the country. Miata Tan: That was Mike Ishii, Executive Director at Tsuru for Solidarity. Miata Tan: The namesake of Tsuru for Solidarity is deeply symbolic, Tsuru meaning crane in Japanese is described as a creature of transformation. A symbol of healing and repair, not only for the Japanese American community, but all communities. You are tuned into APEX Express, a weekly radio show, uplifting the voices and stories of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. You'll hear more from the Tsuru for Solidarity team after this, stay with us. Miata Tan: [00:39:00] [00:40:00] [00:41:00] That [00:42:00] was Nobody by the one and only Mitski You are tuned into APEX Express on 94.1 KPFA, a weekly radio show uplifting the voices and stories of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. I'm your host, Miata Tan. Tonight we are talking about deportation and the communities fighting back. Tsuru for Solidarity, they're a nationwide organization working to close all US detention sites and end inhumane immigration policies We're diving into the Japanese American legacy behind Soda's work and what's driving their fight against deportation. Here's their Executive Director, Mike Ishii. Mike Ishii: We actually have what. Probably more than 12 or 13,000 people at this point who are connected to us in our network. But then on the ground, boots in action, we have hundreds of people who are active and when we call on people like, we need you to come to this major action, we can get [00:43:00] thousands of people to turn out. So this has been a really beautiful evolution of community organizing. We often say. We want to be the allies that our people needed during World War II when they were removed and disappeared from the community. And so that's really our intention that guides us here. in doing so, our work is rooted in relationship building. That's really what that means. Like my mom didn't know that anyone cared about her as a 10-year-old. No one came to the fences of Minidoka. Um, nobody marched in the streets and protested. There were very few people who were fighting for her freedom. And so she didn't know, she didn't have a relationship. So our work is in building relationships within our own community. To Decolonize from white assimilationist forced assimilation policies that are multi-generational, that have positioned us to be inculcated and manipulated as part of a model minority dynamic. We are the group that was used as the poster [00:44:00] child by Ronald Reagan when you rolled out that term. Unwinding that dynamic that has a stranglehold on our community. Because this is a community that was terrified for its survival, and it was grasping for straws of survival and being wildly manipulated by the society in the aftermath of the war. We get to do that work. it's exciting for, for us to get to do that work. And actually, Rob, that's part of his job is to lean into that organizing that we're going to be launching in a fuller manner now that we're here at AACRE. We also get to really build more on what it means to be in solidarity practice. And that's the work I often to get to do with our external partners, what I call our cousins and our siblings in the movement space. And to me, it's some of the most fulfilling work I've ever gotten to do in my life because it breaks your internal isolation that comes from your historical trauma. if you. Have ever woken feeling, how do we go forward? How do we stop this? How do I ever not feel like we're fighting alone? Do this [00:45:00] work because you get daily evidence actually that you're not alone. That we can win when we fight back, and that there are people who care deeply and I get to do that work. I'm very fortunate. As part of the organization our, you know, Becca, who is our Director of organizing, is an incredible strategist and gets to think tactically with our many incredible, incredible volunteers on the ground across the country. I'm fortunate that I know some of them because I was very involved in that work early on. And all I can say is that as a result of having had a chance to be at the frontline in that kind of, deep work with our folks is that I love my people. Oh my God, I love my people. Like I'm just, so moved by the stories of people and their families and survival, and then also their courage to understand that we're a group that achieved a certain amount of privilege in the years since forced assimilation and. The [00:46:00] willingness to understand that's not really something you hold onto, that you actually want to let go of that for your own benefit, and also because it's the right thing to do in the movement toward equity. And so to get to be a part of that movement with my people. Is really a central part of our healing and to get to be a part of that in this organization at this moment, in this moment when we need to step up in, in ways that are so deeply important for the future of really the globe. Whether or not we'll go into an abyss of darkness or we're gonna transform this incredible escalated violence right now, I think we're born for this moment. I really don't think it's an accident. And if we. Each have that choice and opportunity to step into this moment and play a role there. How lucky are we to get to be born right now? So that's a little bit about how I see our role as an organization as we come into [00:47:00] AACRE and as we continue to evolve in this space.  Miata Tan : That's really beautiful. And, and thank you for tying us back into AACRE, which is the Asian Americans for Civil Rights and Equality, a network of progressive Asian American organizations uh, soon be joining. Rob, could you share what you are excited for now that Tsuru will be joining Aker and, the future work that is coming up.  Rob Buscher: Thanks for that question. You know, I think there's so many incredible organizations that are already under AACREs fiscal sponsorship, so just even in some of the preliminary meetings that we've had with other AACRE group leadership and being in conversation with people that. Oftentimes we've already known for, for many years. You know, I, Eddie Zang, um, and, and others who are, are involved peripherally, as funders are people that I've known since the film festival days. I recently learned. Kaen, who's part of the HR staff at AACRE, a filmmaker that I worked with well over a decade [00:48:00] ago on a Muslim Youth Voices Project here in Philadelphia is also part of the team. You know, just having these little connection points has been pointing us towards the direction that we're meant to be here. This feels like the right moment for Tsuru to be joining Aker. Uh, It feels like there's a lot of, , capacity and bandwidth that we haven't had under our current circumstances. But, um, really with the energy and enthusiasm of all of these groups coming together, I, I feel like we can really make an even bigger impact than we are in these programs. Um, as far as, you know, future. Ideas and, and programs that we have coming up on the horizon. we're very excited about the Kintsugi Healing Conference. Uh, as Mike has spoken about the role of healing within our work. Obviously there's a need for repairing the divides that exist within our own Japanese American community and before we can truly be in, in solidarity and, and do collective liberation work. Being able to heal those divides within our own community needs to take [00:49:00] precedent. So Kintsugi is a way of acknowledging that through this healing, resilience based conference allowing us to turn inwards and really think about the long-term effects of intergenerational trauma, how it's shaped all of our families and individual pathways, and how we can ultimately come together to heal those divides. Um, while also learning more about and training up some of our people around these ideas of collective liberation. it's gonna be taking place in San Francisco's Japan town and we're very excited about that. We'll announce the dates very shortly for October, 2026. Some of the other things that we're working on, as I mentioned earlier, we have our black reparations campaign. Tsuru has been doing this sort of work really in many ways since the beginning, but formalized during the, the summer of 2020 in the aftermath of the George Floyd Uprisings, the Black Reparations Campaign as one of the major work areas, with a number of other Japanese American organizations like New UK Progressives and the Japanese American Citizens League, San Jose Resistors. as part of [00:50:00] this national coalition to, uh, achieve redress and reparations for in solidarity with the descendants of chattel slavery. Our campaign actually had the opportunity to travel to Washington DC last May to participate in National Reparation Networks national Reparations Rally that was attended by over a hundred different, organizations that are working on this issue.  Currently. We're in the process of launching a new project called the 4 0 7 Conversations, or a 4 0 7 project. It's acknowledging that 2026 is 407 years since the beginning of chattel slavery in North America in 1619, and the goal is to have at least 407 conversations about reparations in this calendar year. So it's a way to sort of normalize the topic of reparations within not just Japanese American. community spaces, but sort of in the broader conversation about what does it mean to do reparative justice work. As we look towards the future, we're gonna be doing more [00:51:00] narrative campaign work too. We had the opportunity during the day of Remembrance to launch a, nationwide campaign that reimagined the instructions to all persons of Japanese ancestry poster that was placed in our Japan towns. That signaled the beginning of the so-called evacuation, the forced removal of our communities in our new instructions to persons of Japanese ancestry. It was an opportunity to call people in and to, uh, mobilize and activate our community in defense of the frontline communities that are facing the brunt of state violence today. So as we continue to strengthen and build We're hoping to do even more of these large scale national mobilizations. And I'm just excited that we're gonna be able to do this work together, uh, under AACREs banner. Miata Tan: That was Rob Buscher, Director of Operations at Tsuru for Solidarity. As Rob shared from aiding the movement toward black reparations to anti-ice mobilizations. The team at [00:52:00] Tsuru is gearing up for some important campaigns this year To close out, let's return to Sophie aka their Bay Area organizer. I ask Sophie what work she's most looking forward to in 2026. Sophie Sarkar: I am very excited about our, well, yeah, I'm very excited about a lot of things. I think I'm just excited about the ways in which am able to see as an organizer for Tsuru, just like Japanese American community really coming out and mobilizing and working together in coalition. I think, in this time, as we are all trying to figure out ways to dismantle this authoritarian regime and to resist it's really important for us That like we are moving beyond the kind of hierarchical structure that the regime uses and figuring out how to work in coalition and to really find our lane, find what our role is [00:53:00] as an organization, as individuals. And for me it's really exciting to see that the Japanese American community Is doing that is like really trying to work more and more in coalition and I'm excited to continue to support that. for example, we will be leading a non-cooperation training. With other JA organizations in a few months. to, yeah, really support us as a community to understand what non-cooperation looks like and how we can practice that in our various campaigns. And yeah, I see like the japantown organizations we're part of a, Nihon Machi Coalition there. Getting really serious about preparing for and when ICE comes and doing the workup. Upfront now to really train in knowing your rights and non-cooperation and security, just to get prepared as a collective. This year we're also, Tsuru is also organizing our healing justice [00:54:00] conference in the Bay Area called Kintsugi, that will take place in the fall. As part of that we hope to have a day of direct action. So I'm really excited to have the opportunity to kind of bring together our healing justice work, our healing arts work, and our direct action just integrating the three of those. And hopefully planning a really beautiful and healing and powerful action for us all to take together. Miata Tan: That's really lovely. you've mentioned Healing Justice a few times in your own personal background and experience with Tsuru, but also these fantastic campaigns that we are looking forward to. Could you speak a little bit about how the Japanese American community and the wider Tsuru for Solidarity Network is taking care of each other during this moment? Sophie Sarkar: Yeah, such a good question. I feel like that's something that I just notice our community is so good at [00:55:00] doing. Like, I think, you know, we really try to approach organizing from a relational perspective. So. Folks in little ways, like checking in on each other, making each other lunch. I know I had like afternoon at one of our volunteers houses the other day, just like eating lunch together and venting. But you know, it's just the little ways or like folding origami, yeah, I think on that kind of level, relational level of just checking in and remembering that we are human and really need that kind of connection with each other in these times, especially when it can feel really scary and isolating. Zoomed out a little bit more, you know, like our general meetings and our trainings and those kinds of larger gathering opportunities are just a really nice way. Also, we always have a potluck dinner and feed each other. Like, it's just a really nice way to Offer that kind of care and nourishment to one [00:56:00] another and connect as well. Miata Tan: Love that. It's Always great to gather over food.  Sophie Sarkar: always. Miata Tan: That was Sophie Sarkar the Bay Area organizer at Tsuru for Solidarity, reflecting on her communities and how they're taking care of each other during this time. This is APEX Express on 94.1 KPFA, A weekly radio show uplifting the voices and stories of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. APEX Express is every Thursday evening at 7:00 PM and with that, we're at the end of our time here. We really appreciate you tuning in tonight and a special thanks for Tsuru for Solidarity for sharing their time and work with us. For a transcript of today's episode, please visit our website. That's kpfa.org/program/APEX Express. [00:57:00] We've also added links to Tsuru for Solidarity's website, their social media channels, and where you can go to learn more about their ongoing campaigns. Be sure to check that out. APEX Express is produced by Ayame Keane-Lee, Anuj Vaidya, Cheryl Truong, Isabel Li, Jalena Keane-Lee, Miko Lee, Miata Tan, Preeti Mangala Shekar and Swati Rayasam. Tonight's show was produced by me, Miata Tan. Get some rest, y'all.   The post APEX Express – 4.16.26 – Rethinking Immigration Detention appeared first on KPFA.

Wrongful Convictions, Survivor Shaming and Moving from Retribution to HealingDiscussion with Jennifer Thompson, founder of Healing Justice, on the profound trauma caused by wrongful convictions and the transformative potential of restorative justice. We discuss systemic failures in the criminal justice system—including structural racism and sexism—that deny victims, survivors and defendants, and their families, justice. We discuss Jennifer's personal journey to becoming a restorative justice practitioner and criminal justice reform advocate. We discuss wrongful convictions, best practices for collection of eyewitness identification and the need for corroborative evidence. We also discuss victim blaming and the secondary trauma caused to sexual assault survivors by the criminal justice system. Finally, we discuss the need for circles and creating space to sit with uncomfortable narratives and listen to each other, prioritizing empathy and belonging, to rebuild our national community.For More Info: https://thegravity.fm/#/episode/70

A special Good Friday service is underway at Grace Bible Church in Soweto, where congregants are gathering in large numbers. The church has placed strong emphasis on prayers for national unity, healing, and spiritual renewal. During election periods, these gatherings also focus on peace and divine guidance for leaders. Today's service further addresses pressing challenges including crime, poverty, and unemployment affecting many South Africans. Bongiwe Zwane spoke to Grace bibles' church minister Dudu Mthimunye

In this episode of the Voice2Change podcast by Jane Doe No More, host Jocelyn Maminta sits down with Kristen Mullarkey, an incredible survivor and one of the first members of the Jane Doe No More Survivors Speak team. Kristen courageously shares her story of abduction and sexual assault as a college freshman and the challenges she faced in being believed by law enforcement. This episode highlights the importance of being heard and believed, and the transformative power of sharing one's story to help others. Kristen offers hope, resilience, and vital insights into what survivors need most from society, loved ones, and support systems. Kristen bravely worked with law enforcement to help identify and bring her perpetrator to justice. Through speaking engagements and outreach with Jane Doe No More, she encourages others to break their silence and seek support, showing true resilience and strength in her ongoing healing journey.Topics Discussed:Kristen's personal storyChallenges with law enforcementThe trial processThe importance of being heardJane Do No More's survivor speak programWhat it means to be a survivor: resilience, strength, and reclaiming lifeYour voice matters — please ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠take our short survey⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ so we can keep creating content that speaks to you.Connect with Jane Doe No More:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow on IG⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Janedoenomore.org⁠

On today's Labor Radio Podcast Daily: America Works examines Black hospitals, health disparities, and why equity requires understanding lived experience. In labor history, FLOC reaches a landmark agreement with Campbell Soup. Quote of the day: Baldemar Velasquez. @librarycongress @wpfwdc @AFLCIO #1u #UnionStrong #LaborRadioPod Proud founding member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network. Produced by Chris Garlock, Patrick Dixon and Harold Phillips.

Health care outcomes in the U.S. differ substantially depending on race. How much are health care discrepancies based on structural and historical racism? What needs to change to promote health justice in the U.S. and what kinds of policies are needed to promote this change? How important is diversity of health care providers in building a more just healthcare system? [ dur: 58mins. ] Keisha Ray teaches Bioethics and Humanities as a tenured associate professor in Texas. She is the author of Black Health: The Social, Political, and Cultural Determinants of Black People’s Health. Ruqaiijah Yearby is the Judge Clifford Scott Green Chair in Law at Temple University Beasley School of Law. She is also Co-Founder of the Institute for Healing Justice & Equity and one of the Co-Founders of the Collaborative for Anti-Racism & Equity. She is the book chapter author of “Gender Bias, Mental Health Inequities, and Health Justice” in the book Mental Health Equity. Dylan H. Roby is the Chair and Professor of Health, Society, and Behavior at UC Irvine. He is the co-author of Ending Structural Racism in the US Health Care System to Eliminate Health Care Inequities. This program is produced by Doug Becker, Ankine Aghassian, Maria Armoudian, Anna Lapin and Sudd Dongre. Health, Politics and Activism,  Medicine , Racism

Claire de Mézerville López welcomes Eric S. Lee to the Restorative Works! Podcast.  Eric S. Lee, Executive Director of Full Circle Restorative Justice, joins us to explore a visionary model for transforming how communities guide young people toward healthier, more connected futures. He shares the three-pronged framework that drives Full Circle Restorative Justice: a youth diversion program that offers accountability without lifelong consequences, a restorative schools initiative designed to disrupt the school-to-prison pipeline, and a community services program that builds restorative literacy across organizations, families, and neighborhoods. He explains how each program plays a vital role—but how the real transformation emerges when they work in harmony, creating a system that replaces punishment with connection and isolation with belonging.  Eric S. Lee leads Full Circle Restorative Justice in Colorado. After building a successful career as a chef and restaurant owner of five restaurants in Boulder County, he felt called to something deeper: helping people heal. He pivoted into youth mentorship, holistic life coaching, and restorative justice work, blending compassion, accountability, and spiritual growth. Today, Eric leads one of Colorado's most innovative restorative justice initiatives, transforming school cultures, supporting at-risk youth, and teaching communities how to replace punishment with connection. He also serves as the host of The Spiritual Justice Podcast. He's also the author of 29 Degrees: How to Live a Life of Inner Peace, Joy, and Purpose Regardless of Circumstances, as well as two other books, all rooted in the belief that peace isn't found in comfort, but in purpose, passion, love, and service.  Tune in to hear more from Eric and consider this: when we orient young people toward their highest selves and give them tools to navigate conflict, they can lead us toward a more compassionate society. 

Dr. Aninda Sidhana is an Indian psychiatrist and psychosexual medicine specialist whose work bridges clinical care, survivor-led advocacy, and systems change for women's mental and sexual health. With 10+ years' experience across hospital and neuropsychiatry care, she is widely recognised for trauma-informed work that integrates psychiatric expertise with the realities of lived experience—particularly the psychological impacts of gender-based violence (GBV), coercive control, grief, and shame. Today, Dr. Sidhana serves in leadership and advisory capacities, including as Hon. Assistant Secretary General (Indian Psychiatric Society, Northern Zone) and Medical Advisor to HealCycle, supporting evidence-informed women's mental health initiatives with a focus on hormonal and life-stage mental wellbeing. ⸻Early Training and FoundationsPublic professional listings indicate Dr. Sidhana completed MBBS followed by MD (Psychiatry), with additional training through a Fellowship in Psychosexual Medicine. Some public directories also outline an early-career pathway including residency and neuropsychiatry-centred work (including association with IHBAS, a major neuropsychiatry institution), reflecting the clinical base that later supported her specialist focus on the overlap of mind, body, intimacy, and trauma. ⸻Clinical Focus and Specialist LensDr. Sidhana's practice and public education emphasise how sexual trauma, relationship harm, and social stigma can present as anxiety, depression, PTSD-spectrum symptoms, dissociation, somatic distress, and sexual dysfunction—often misread or minimised in routine care. She is especially known for centring:​ Women's mental health and sexual wellness​ Trauma-integrated psychiatric care​ Psychosexual medicine (including intimacy, desire, shame, and consent-related injury)​ Relationship therapy and marital counselling​ Stress, addiction, and common mental disorders ⸻“Healing Justice”: Survivor Wisdom + Clinical ScienceA defining thread of Dr. Sidhana's work is her emphasis on survivor-led, dignity-centred healing—often described in her writing through a “healing justice” orientation: care that respects lived experience, restores agency, and makes room for both medical treatment (when needed) and human witnessing (“listening ears,” empathy, and safety as clinical necessities). Her writing on The Dignity Dialogues frames survivor wisdom not as an add-on, but as part of the architecture of public mental health systems. ⸻Advocacy and Public ProfileDr. Sidhana is also recognised for breaking silence around domestic abuse and GBV—particularly the reality that highly educated and professionally successful women can still be trapped by coercive control, shame, and systemic barriers. Major public features describe her journey of surviving two abusive marriages and multiple miscarriages, and how she transformed that experience into advocacy, education, and community-building. A pivotal metaphor in her public storytelling is her solo trip to Iceland's Northern Lights, which she uses to describe the mind's complexity—unpredictable, powerful, and capable of beauty after darkness—often linked to healing, identity reclamation, and neurodiversity-affirming compassion. ⸻Founder: The Dignity DialoguesDr. Sidhana founded The Dignity Dialogues, a survivor-led initiative designed to build real-world healing systems through listening circles, storytelling, and advocacy, positioning dignity as both a personal right and a public health strategy. ⸻Leadership and Current Roles​ Hon. Assistant Secretary General — Indian Psychiatric Society (Northern Zone) (as referenced in multiple public posts and interviews) ​ Medical Advisor — HealCycle (women's hormonal mental health initiative; listed on HealCycle and reflected in her public posts) (

In this episode, Byron D. Brooks (MoSoul), 1L in Section 3 at Howard University School of Law, and Pauline Wanjiru Irungu, LL.M. candidate at American University Washington College of Law, sit down with Adrienne Packard, Director of Student Affairs at Howard Law. Together, they explore the real mental health landscape of legal education, define the meaning of Healing Justice, and offer tools for survival, sustainability, and collective well-being within our legal communities.Please note, the positions and opinions expressed by the speakers are strictly their own, and do not necessarily represent the views of their employers, nor those of the D.C. Bar, its Board of Governors or co-sponsoring Communities and organizations.Want to get ahead of the pack? Joining the D.C. Bar Law Student Community (LSC) can get you there. Your LSC membership will provide resume and skills boosting opportunities and one-on-one access to local practicing attorneys. To learn more, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠click here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

Send us your feedback — we're listening2 Chronicles 7:14 — Global Nations Prayer for Peace, Healing, Justice and Restoration Across Crisis-Affected Lands From London to Kyiv, from Khartoum to Ramallah, from Kinshasa to São Paulo — recorded live here in London, England — a global 6 P.M. prayer within the DailyPrayer.uk 24-Hour Devotional Cycle. Scripture (NIV) 2 Chronicles 7:14 — “If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face … I will heal their land.” Psalm 46:10 — “Be still, and know that I am God.” Global searches for peace and national healing rise every evening as headlines intensify. 2 Chronicles 7:14 remains one of the world's most accessed scriptures for interceding for nations in crisis, conflict, hunger and displacement. Prayer  Father, tonight we lift Sudan, Ukraine, Gaza/Palestine and the Democratic Republic of Congo before You. Pour out peace where violence rages, hope where despair spreads and unity where division runs deep. Heal lands scarred by conflict, famine, displacement and fear. Protect families caught in danger, strengthen humanitarian workers and guide leaders toward justice, compassion and wisdom. Break cycles of violence, silence hatred and lift nations out of turmoil. Bring healing to wounded communities, safety to refugees and restoration to broken infrastructures. Let Your presence move across borders, bringing calm, reconciliation and new beginnings. Tonight, we stand in faith, believing that You can heal nations and restore peace where peace feels impossible. Prayer Points prayer for peace, prayer for national healing, prayer for unity, prayer for justice, prayer for reconciliation, prayer for protection, prayer for hope Life Application  Pray 2 Chronicles 7:14 over these nations tonight, asking God to heal their land and bring peace to regions in deep crisis. Declaration I declare that peace, healing and restoration are rising over the nations tonight.Call to Action Share this prayer and visit DailyPrayer.uk for global devotional resources.24-Hour Arc ConnectorPrevious: 12 P.M. — Healing and Hope for Crisis NationsThis Episode: 6 P.M. — Global Nations IntercessionNext: 8 P.M. — Renewal and Spiritual Growth2 chronicles 7:14 prayer, nations prayer, global prayer, christian prayer for peace, reverend ben cooper, dailyprayer.uk, global prayer podcast, daily prayer podcast, prayer for unitySupport the showFor more inspiring content, visit RBChristianRadio.net — your home for daily devotionals, global prayer, and biblical encouragement for every season of life. We invite you to connect with our dedicated prayer hub at DailyPrayer.uk — a place where believers from every nation unite in prayer around the clock. If you need prayer, or would like to leave a request, this is the place to come. Our mission is simple: to pray with you, to stand with you, and to keep the power of prayer at the centre of everyday life. Your support through DailyPrayer.uk helps us continue sharing the gospel and covering the nations in prayer. You can also discover our ministry services and life celebrations at LifeCelebrant.net — serving families with faith, dignity, and hope. If this devotional blesses you, please consider supporting our listener-funded mission by buying us a coffee through RBChristianRadio.net. Every prayer, every gift, and every share helps us keep broadcasting God's Word to the world.

This conversation explores the principles of healing justice and its connections to disability justice, highlighting the importance of collective care and the need to challenge individualistic and curative models of care that perpetuate harm and oppression. The speakers discuss how care practices observed by communities of color have been criminalized, and they provide examples of how funders can intervene to support collective trauma transformation. They also address the challenges of adopting an anti-capitalist practice within the philanthropic sector and the deep connections between anti-blackness, the medical industrial complex, and the prison industrial complex. The speakers dream of a future where healing can find interdependence, focus on freedom, transform oppression, and free our hearts and minds.Our podcast theme music is by Andre Louis and Precious Perez. Thank you to Recording Artists And Music Professionals With Disabilities (RAMPD) for connecting these talented disabled musicians with the Disability & Philanthropy Forum.

You're injured, overwhelmed, and doing everything right—until the system turns against you. In this explosive episode of Radio Medium's Know Your Worth series, host Laura Lee interviews legal expert Todd Bresney of Bresney Law to expose a shocking but legal loophole: how some medical providers sidestep your health insurance to pursue personal injury payouts, leaving fully insured people drowning in unexpected medical debt. Learn how hospitals bypass insurance, pursue full payment directly from you, and why monitoring your insurance claims and understanding lien laws is crucial to protecting your finances. Stay informed, avoid surprise bills, and get essential legal insights to navigate medical debt after a personal injury—a must-listen for anyone dealing with healthcare hurdles. Knowledge is power—and protection.

As we continue featuring powerful messages from CMDA's 2025 National Convention, today's episode brings a moving plenary address from Dr. Eric McLaughlin, a family medicine missionary with Serge, professor at Hope Africa University in Burundi, and author of Promises in the Dark. With deep honesty and insight, Dr. McLaughlin explores what it means to bring healing in a broken world. He speaks to the tensions many Christian healthcare professionals feel – between justice and joy, suffering and hope, burnout and purpose. If you've ever felt weary or wondered if your calling still matters, this message is for you.

It's rare for 60 MINUTES to follow a story for 16 years, but correspondent Lesley Stahl reports on Jennifer Thompson, a rape victim who learned years after her attack that an innocent man had been sent to prison, a story Stahl covered in 2009. In this era of DNA exonerations, Thompson has come to believe that crime victims are forgotten, and even blamed, when the justice system gets it wrong. She has created Healing Justice, an organization that brings together the wrongfully convicted, crime victims and family members for multi-day intensive retreats. She invites 60 MINUTES to come along as they share their stories and move together on a path of healing. Correspondent Bill Whitaker cruises through Espanola, N.M., a town that's a hub of lowrider culture: vintage American automobiles with vibrant paint jobs and street-scraping suspensions. He meets a community of “cruisers” who are turning their hobby's bad-boy reputation on its head, paving a new route as activists and community servants, and claiming a place as custodians of Hispanic culture and champions of fine art. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Claire de Mézerville López is joined by co-host, Executive Director of IIRP Canada, Pat Lewis, for a special IIRP Canada series, highlighting the use of restorative practices and restorative justice across Canada. In this episode, they welcome dedicated community leader, Nicole Chouinard, to the Restorative Works! Podcast. Nicole joins us to share how she and her team collaborate with schools across seven communities and over 30 schools to embed restorative practices early on—training teachers, engaging parents, and creating safe, supportive spaces for students. In a region deeply shaped by transient workforces and past emergencies, these efforts are helping young people build lasting relationships, cultural pride, and emotional safety. Sharing her journey into restorative justice and the stories of youth who were positively affected by their involvement in restorative justice processes, she highlights the emotional depth of her work—navigating the unpredictability of human experience while advocating for victims' voices and supporting accused youth on their healing journeys. Nicole and her husband have called the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo (RMWB) home since 2009, where they live, work, and play.  In 2012, Nicole transitioned into her role as a leader within the RCMP Support Services Branch, where she became involved with Victim Services and Restorative Justice. The exposure to these programs opened a passion to advocate for change in how justice is viewed, amplification of victims' voices, better understanding of why a client causes harm, and improvement of community connections and supports. In 2020, Nicole started the process to grow Restorative Justice within the RMWB and has been instrumental in its success, including continued collaboration with stakeholders and the community. Since completing her Legal Assistant Diploma through SAIT in 2007, Nicole has been embedded in careers with legal backgrounds through work with quasi-judicial boards including the National Energy Board, Alberta Energy Regulator, Assessment Review Board, and the Subdivision and Development Appeal Board.  Tune in to understand how restorative practices can prevent violence, promote healing, and empower youth.

In this engaging episode, Vanessa Codorniu holds a heartfelt discussion with Hattie B. McCarter, exploring her remarkable journey in the field of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Hattie recounts her transformative move from Alabama to Pennsylvania, a shift that not only marked a personal evolution but also shaped her professional trajectory towards becoming a stalwart in DEI initiatives. Listeners gain insights into the personal experiences that awoke her passion for fostering inclusive environments, highlighting the pivotal role of storytelling and empathy in bridging cultural divides and mending hearts. Through enlightening anecdotes, Hattie illustrates her unique approach as a "cultural strategist" in cultivating authentic connections and inspiring change within organizations. The conversation delves into the challenges and rewards of integrating a humanity-centered ethos into leadership and organizational culture. This episode is a testament to the power of vulnerability and understanding, inviting audiences to appreciate the social and cultural dynamics that shape individual and collective identities. Vanessa and Hattie emphasize the ongoing journey toward breaking barriers and creating equitable spaces for all. Some Key ideas along the way... Purpose-Driven Work: Hattie's work in DEI stems from a deep-seated belief in connecting with others' hearts to evoke meaningful change. Storytelling as a Tool: The power of storytelling is emphasized as a means of fostering empathy, understanding, and breaking down barriers. **Personal and Professional Growth**: Hattie's transition from Alabama to Pennsylvania was a turning point that underscored her commitment to addressing racism and inclusion. Emotional Intelligence in Leadership: The importance of emotional awareness and leading with vulnerability is highlighted as crucial for effective leadership. Recognition of Internalized Racism: Hattie discusses the journey of embracing her identity as a Black woman and how it paved the way for her current DEI initiatives. BIO: Hattie B. McCarter is a seasoned cultural strategist and thought leader specializing in diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility, and belonging. With over 17 years of experience in DEI and 25 years of public speaking expertise, Hattie has profoundly impacted the human resources and recruitment sectors. Originally from Enterprise, Alabama, she holds a master's degree in rehabilitation counseling from Alabama State University. Her exemplary work has earned her accolades such as the DEI Trailblazer Award in 2023 from the National Coalition of 100 Black Women, Inc. and recognition from Penn Live as a trendsetter and trailblazer. Hattie B. McCarter is dedicated to creating inclusive spaces where individuals can thrive authentically. MEND Solutions, LLC: https://mendsolutionsllc.org/#home Instagram:   / teawithhattieb   V   anessa Codorniu website: https://thebizbruja.com   Improv for Business: https://improv-unleashed.com   BIO: Vanessa Codorniu is a Latina improviser, educator, facilitator and trailblazer in the bilingual wellness space. Born in Peru to Argentinean parents and raised in NYC, she has a background in film, theatre and communications. As a holistic business mentor with over 14,000 sessions and a thriving online business since 2013, she has made a profound impact in developing the next generation of Latinx and BIPOC wellness leaders. Recognizing the lack of diversity in the improv community, she recently created, coaches, and performs with the first Latino improv team in Central PA, LoS CoMpLiCaDos. Vanessa has led Improv for Healing Justice workshops at The People's Convention and teaches Improv for Resilience at Hershey Medical Hospital, along with introductory improv classes at the Harrisburg Improv Theatre. She has two podcasts; the Biz Bruja in English and Nachos Magicas in ESPAÑOL. #podcast #entrepreneurship #strategy #love #mendinghearts #BIPOC Van

After a brutal assault in the 1980s, a young woman identifies the wrong man as her attacker, but once DNA evidence proves his innocence, they form an unlikely bond, determined to right their paths of justice.This episode is the fifth and final in our five part series, “A World Beyond Revenge” featuring five powerful stories of people on both sides of tragic incidents of unimaginable harm who found healing through the groundbreaking process of Restorative Justice. Today's episode featured Jennifer Thompson. You can email Jennifer at info@healingjusticeproject.org. Healing Justice works to prevent and alleviate the harms caused to all by wrongful convictions through advocacy, education, and direct support.Instagram: @healing_justice Facebook: @HealingJustice Bluesky: @jet4love.bsky.social [Jennifer Thompson]LinkedIn: company/Healing-Justice-ProjectYou can find Jennifer's book, ""Picking Cotton:Our Memoir of Injustice and Redemption” by Jennifer Thompson and Ronald Cotton with Erin Torneo on Amazon or wherever you buy your books. Jennifer's Full BIOInspirational Crime Survivor, Founder of Healing Justice, and New York Times Best-Selling Author of Picking Cotton. Jennifer Thompson is a crime survivor who, in 1984, survived a brutal attack in her home while attending college in North Carolina. The man who was convicted and imprisoned for the crime at the time was proven innocent a decade later, revealing that the actual attacker had gone free. Thompson emerged as a pioneer of restorative justice, and a symbol of courage and resilience, when, in the wake of these devastating events, she befriended the man who hadbeen wrongly convicted. She then went on to co-author with him the New York Timesbest-seller, Picking Cotton, which recounts their joint story of failed justice. Thompson has since become a beacon of strength and recovery by speaking out to the world about her traumatic and painful experiences. She has also become a leading advocate for other crime survivors and victims, and her lived experience has inspired countless policy makers, law enforcement, and justice leaders worldwide to effect key reforms to improve the accuracy and fairness of our justice system.In 2015, Thompson founded the national nonprofit organization, Healing Justice, which serves crime survivors, victims, and others through restorative justice and justice reform. Thompson is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Special Courage Award from the US Department of Justice's Office for Victims of Crime. She has testified on behalf of crime survivors and victims on criminal justice reforms before the United States Congress and state legislatures. She has appeared as a guest on numerous television and radio programs, including Good Morning America, the Today Show, Oprah, Dr. Phil, Rikki Lake, The View, 60 Minutes, 20/20, NBC News, Nightline, CNN Anderson Cooper, NPR, Diane Rehm, and PBS Frontline. Thompson's courageous and inspiring story has also been featured in many print outlets, such as People, RedBook, Newsweek, and The New York Times.Engaged through Keppler Speakers since 2010, Thompson has presented to hundreds of audiences around the world on issues of fairness, equity, empathy, trauma, recovery, healing, altruism, and leadership. An unwavering example of turning tremendous harm into abundant healing, Thompson inspires audiences to not just persevere but to flourish in the wake of unexpected - and even unimaginable - adversity. With endless bravery, grace, and humor, Thompson captivates all audiences with her profoundly important and timely message of optimism, generosity, and hope.Producers: Whit Missildine, Andrew Waits, Aviva Lipkowitz Content/Trigger Warnings: disordered eating, familial conflict, poverty, sexual assault including rape by a stranger, breaking & entering, victim shaming, wrongful conviction and incarceration, explicit languageThank you to our series collaborators, Why Me? & Yoana Tchoukleva: Why Me? are a national charity in the UK, promoting access to Restorative Justice for people affected by crime or conflict. They also support people who have been through the Restorative Justice process to share their stories. If you want to find out more about Restorative Justice, visit their website www.why-me.org. If you want help accessing Restorative Justice in the UK, you can contact them via info@why-me.org. LinkedIn: Why me? UKInstagram: @whymeukFacebook: @WhymeUKThreads: @whymeukBluesky: @whymeuk.bsky.socialYoana Tchoukleva is an attorney, RJ practitioner, & lecturer at Berkeley Law. She is also a Senior Program Manager at Impact Justice. You can email her at ioanaq@gmail.com. You can reach out to her on Instagram @yoana.tch and on Facebook @""Yoana Tchoukleva"", and on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/ioanatchoukleva/. Please consider donating to Atunse Justice League. LINK TO OUR LISTENER SURVEY! We've come up with a short audience survey, which you can find linked in our show notes and in the bio of our Instagram page @actuallyhappening. We'd love to hear your opinions and feedback, and we'd really appreciate your point of view. Link below:https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfxV-6qeNAOuIAbBnuSJpoyqE3tlvusxb069dZCUC1RWeLfEg/viewform Social Media:Instagram: @actuallyhappeningTwitter: @TIAHPodcast Website: thisisactuallyhappening.com Website for Andrew Waits: andrdewwaits.comWebsite for Aviva Lipkowitz: avivalipkowitz.com Support the Show: Support The Show on Patreon: patreon.com/happening Wondery Plus: All episodes of the show prior to episode #130 are now part of the Wondery Plus premium service. To access the full catalog of episodes, and get all episodes ad free, sign up for Wondery Plus at wondery.com/plus Shop at the Store: The This Is Actually Happening online store is now officially open. Follow this link: thisisactuallyhappening.com/shop to access branded t-shirts, posters, stickers and more from the shop. Transcripts: Full transcripts of each episode are now available on the website, thisisactuallyhappening.com Intro Music: ""Illabye"" – TipperMusic Bed: Ambient Themes ServicesIf you or someone you know is struggling with the effects of trauma or mental illness, please refer to the following resources: National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline: Text or Call 988 National Alliance on Mental Illness: 1-800-950-6264National Sexual Assault Hotline (RAINN): 1-800-656-HOPE (4673)Be the first to know about Wondery's newest podcasts, curated recommendations, and more! Sign up now at https://wondery.fm/wonderynewsletterListen to exclusive episodes of This is Actually Happening ad-free by joining Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Start your free trial by visiting wondery.com/links/this-is-actually-happening/ now.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This grounding mediation invites you into a more honest, collective vision of hope--one that doesn't lie to you or ask you to ignroee your pain. Rooted in truth, breath, and somatic awareness, this epiesode offers a calm space to rest, feel, and begin again.    What does it mean to have hope without gaslighting yourself?  In this Mediation, Desi Hall--founder of 3rd Ave. Wellness--guides you through a practice that names what's real while he;ping you return to your body and breath. This is not hope rooted in false positivity or toxic resilience. It's hope rooted in clarity, grief, and resistance. Whether you're feeling overwhemled by the news, struggling to keep going, or just in need of a pause that doesn't ask you to shrink your pain-- this episode is for you. This mediation is especially for: Black women navigating burnout and mounting pressure at work Disabled folks who deserve access to collective care Queer and trans people seeking spiritual grounding Anyone who is tired of being told "it's not that bad." Collective care starts here. Let this be your reset. https://3rdavewellness.com  

In this enlightening episode, you''ll learn how a growing group of funders is thinking about wellbeing – for grantees and themselves. Laura Bacon, strategy lead and facilitator of the Funders and Wellbeing Group, discusses how this new global group of a dozen foundations is working to transform philanthropic culture with regard to wellbeing. Through regular virtual meetings and annual in-person gatherings, the group explores ways to support both individual and organizational wellbeing in the social sector. Their recent retreat in Malaysia highlighted how many nonprofit staff challenges related to wellbeing are universal, from shrinking civic spaces to staff burnout and retention issues.The conversation emphasizes the critical importance of maintaining focus on wellbeing initiatives during challenging times, particularly in the current political climate where social justice work and the nonprofit sector face significant pressures. Laura advocates for funders to be more flexible and generous in their support, while ensuring that wellbeing remains a priority rather than an optional add-on in grantmaking practices.Laura shares her journey from musician to social change advocate, and her extensive experience in philanthropy and wellbeing initiatives. As the former founding director of the Partner Support Program at Luminate (an Omidyar foundation), she established wellbeing stipends for grantee organizations, allowing them to address their staff's needs with maximum flexibility. The program distributed about 71 grants totaling $350,000, which organizations used for various purposes from team retreats to mental health support.Biography:For more than two decades, Laura Bacon has designed programs and led projects and teams to achieve social impact around the world. She's currently an independent consultant, partnering with clients on a host of cool initiatives. One of her roles includes Strategy Lead and Facilitator of the Funders + Wellbeing Group at The Wellbeing Project, where she facilitates peer-learning and convenings among a dozen funders to enhance wellbeing for individuals, organizations, sectors, and communities.Previously, Laura was founding director of the Partner Support program at Luminate, a global philanthropic organization that is part of the Omidyar Group, where she supported over 300 grantee partners to achieve their goals of being more resilient, healthy & inclusive, and well-networked.Before working at Luminate / Omidyar Network, Laura was a White House Fellow focused on clean energy.Resources: laura.m.bacon@gmail.com LinkedIn Funders & Wellbeing Group Website Wellbeing Project website The Wellbeing Project - Global Hearth Summit in Slovenia College course: Personal Choice and Global Transformation Global Values 101, a book based on the above course, edited by Brian Palmer, Kate Holbrook, Ann S. Kim, Anna Portnoy   Rights and Dignity Working Group (piloted Wellness stipends - a cross-Omidyar Group initiative) Astraea Lesbian Foundation For Justice (inspiration for wellness stipends) https://astraeafoundation.org  - Healing Justice stipend General Service Foundation (inspiration for wellness stipends): https://generalservice.org/whatwefund/healingjustice/  - Fund the People podcast interview with Desiree Flores Priya Parker book “The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters” Deepa Iyer's Social Change Ecosystem Role Map Prospera, the International Network of Women's Funders, doing great work on wellbeing Laura's Blog posts on Partner Support, Coaching Stipend, Wellbeing Stipends: Luminate & Omidyar Group (philanthropy I worked with for 10+ years) * Here's more info about thePartner Support program of which I was the founding director Blogs (first andsecond) about Luminate's wellbeing stipend Luminate's coaching stipend Grantee Perception Reports (2020 and2023) Funders & Wellbeing Group "FundWell" newsletter about our funders' retreat in Malaysia

Popular representations of the Black Panthers often focus on their armed self-defense activities, but medical services and health justice were a tremendous part of the party's work. This legacy continues today as Black activists work to transform the medical industrial complex and its relationship to the prison system. Erica Woodland (he/him), co-author of Healing Justice Lineages, joins Rattling the Bars to discuss this history, his current activism, and the role of The Real News's own beloved Eddie Conway in influencing his path.Studio/Post-Production: Cameron GranadinoHelp us continue producing Rattling the Bars by following us and becoming a monthly sustainer.Sign up for our newsletterLike us on FacebookFollow us on TwitterDonate to support this podcast

“We really have a big opportunity right now to decide, within traumatic conditions and circumstances, how we are going to show up, again and again, for ourselves and each other,” says Tanuja Jageranauth. In this episode of “Movement Memos,” host Kelly Hayes talks with radical therapist Dorian Ortega and Healing Justice practitioners Tanuja Jagernauth and Chiara Galimberti about trauma, and some of the tools and practices that can help us heal. Music: Son Monarcas, David Celeste & Peter Sandberg You can find a transcript and show notes (including links to resources) here: truthout.org/series/movement-memos/ If you would like to support the show, you can donate here: bit.ly/TODonate If you would like to receive Truthout's newsletter, please sign up: bit.ly/TOnewsletter

We talk to Ashley Winters and Darian Wigfall about their work on the Racial Healing + Justice Fund as members of Forward Through Ferguson's Community Governance Board. We discuss their efforts to “heal the core” – that is, to create space for communities to express narratives of oppression and grief; to create spaces for community members to find sources of support to build networks of resilience; and to find and exercise their individual and/or collective power.This is the first episode in an ongoing series titled Racial Community Healing, where we explore how the St. Louis region and other cities have developed community-driven solutions to racial injustices.Links:Episode webpageEpisode transcriptRacial Healing + Justice Fund webpage

In this episode, Joe interviews Diana Quinn, ND: naturopathic doctor, healing justice practitioner, and director of clinical education at the Naropa Center for Psychedelic Studies, where she directs their Psilocybin Facilitator Training certificate program. She discusses her path from anthropology to naturopathy, and eventually to psychedelics and activism, finding a framework for psychedelic education grounded in healing justice, which recognizes the impact of collective trauma on all of us, seeks to reclaim lost or stolen models of healing, focuses on equity and accessibility, and brings an anti-oppression lens to training programs to give students a greater capacity for culturally responsive care. She encourages seeing things from an anti-capitalist viewpoint, and recognizes the huge clash between using such powerful and mystical medicines inside structures so embedded with problematic human qualities. How can you build inside of these Western systems without being affected by that capitalist energy? She discusses: The importance of respecting plants from other cultures – that no healing or consciousness expansion is justifiable when it threatens an entire species The challenge of integrating the weirdest parts of non-ordinary states into education: How does a Western framework come to terms with the ineffable? How colonialism and the culture born from it has hurt us all The importance of finding your own lineage and what is sacred to you The work of Rick Tarnas and the amazing patterns we can find in astrology and more!  For links, head to the show notes page. 

Today, Hunter is joined by two people who's work attempts to bring people together to heal after a wrongful conviction. Jennifer Thompson, Founder of Healing Justice, and Professor Jamie Lau from Duke University join the show to discuss how they help the wrongfully convicted, the victims in a wrongful conviction, the families of both, and the communities they are from come together to talk and hopefully heal from the bomb that is a wrongful conviction   Guests: Jennifer Thompson, Founder, Healing Justice Jamie Lau, Clinical Professor of Law, Duke University School of Law     Resources: Healing Justice Website https://healingjusticeproject.org/ Contact Jamie https://law.duke.edu/fac/lau https://x.com/laudurham Innocence Network https://innocencenetwork.org/     Contact Hunter Parnell:                                 Publicdefenseless@gmail.com  Instagram @PublicDefenselessPodcast Twitter                                                                 @PDefenselessPod www.publicdefenseless.com  Subscribe to the Patron www.patreon.com/PublicDefenselessPodcast  Donate on PayPal https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=5KW7WMJWEXTAJ Donate on Stripe https://donate.stripe.com/7sI01tb2v3dwaM8cMN Trying to find a specific part of an episode? Use this link to search transcripts of every episode of the show! https://app.reduct.video/o/eca54fbf9f/p/d543070e6a/share/c34e85194394723d4131/home  

It's rare we follow a story for 15 years. Lesley Stahl reports on Jennifer Thompson, a rape victim who learned years after her attack that an innocent man was sent to prison. Thompson is now bringing together exonerees and crime victims. Norah O'Donnell sits down with Dave Isay, founder of the "One Small Step" program. He hopes to bridge the political divide.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this episode we're exploring why the right is so scared of gender through an intergenerational conversation between elder and younger organizers across the South: Miss Major, Suzanne Pharr, Nathalie Nia Faulk, and Lorie Bryant.  We have seen a rampant increase in organized attacks on trans people across the U.S. over the past two years. At the time of this recording, in March 2024,  over 500 anti-trans bills had already been introduced in legislatures across the country.  We know that these attacks against our people, and narratives about our communities, are not new. They are cyclical. The right is using many of the same old stories and strategies to target us. This episode digs into historical and contemporary strategies of the Right, as well as our ongoing joyful strategies of resistance.  This episode is hosted by Frances Reid, (she/her) based in Oakland CA. Frances is member of the National Council of Elders and a veteran of 40 years of activist documentary film making.  Joining Frances in this conversation are: Miss Major, (she/her) is a Black, transgender activist based in Little Rock, AR who has fought for over 50 years for her trans/gender nonconforming community. Major is a veteran of the infamous Stonewall Riots, a former sex worker, and a survivor of Dannemora Prison and Bellevue Hospital's "queen tank." She continues her work to uplift transgender women of color, particularly those who have survived incarceration and police brutality. Suzanne Pharr, (she/her), is a southern queer feminist and anti-racist organizer, also based in Little Rock, AR. She founded the  Women's Project in Arkansas in 1981, was a co-founder of Southerners on New Ground in 1993, and was director of the Highlander Center from 1999 to 2004. Pharr is an organizer and political strategist who has spent her adult life working to build a broad-based, multi-racial, multi-issued movement for social and economic justice in the U.S. Nathalie Nia Faulk, (she/they) born in Lafayette, LA and currently living in New Orleans is a self described Ebony Southern Belle! Her work blends Performance, History, Healing Justice, Cultural Organizing, and leadership development in service of all people, but particularly for Trans and Queer communities. Currently, they serve as a human rights commissioner for the City of New Orleans, co-director of Southern Organizer Academy, co-director of of Last Call Oral History Project, and as the Cultural Organizing Programs Manager for Alternate ROOTS.  Lorie Bryant, (she/her) hails from Charleston, SC and is now based in Memphis, TN. Lorie is a creative arts enthusiast, natural storyteller, conversationalist, avid outdoor explorer, and indoor gardener. Lorie has worked extensively with Southerners on New Ground on campaigns and strategic projects geared towards dismantling oppressive structures and rallying for Queer liberation across lines of race, class, culture, abilities, age, gender, and sexuality.  Lorie is especially committed to pouring back into Black communities—to ensure that they have adequate resources that will allow them to create and thrive within the communities of their dreams.      

In this episode, Sophy Banks shares her rich wealth of knowledge, teachings, and experiences about what it means to truly support ourselves and others through both collective and personal traumas. Cultures of individualism often lead us to navigate trauma on our own— without rituals of shared and collective space holding. For some, particularly those who have been victims of oppression, colonialism, and dispossession, the rivers and oceans of grief held within are often too vast and too deep to be carried alone.Join us in this episode as Sophy offers medicine for our souls, asking vital questions about collective grief tending. How do we notice trauma? How do we disrupt ways of managing grief that possibly reinforce systems and cultures of destruction? And what does it mean to truly care for and hold one another through times of darkness and despair?Tune in and subscribe to Green Dreamer via any podcast app, and join us on Patreon for the extended version of this episode.

In this episode, Sophy Banks shares her rich wealth of knowledge, teachings, and experiences about what it means to truly support ourselves and others through both collective and personal traumas. Cultures of individualism often lead us to navigate trauma on our own— without rituals of shared and collective space holding. For some, particularly those who have been victims of oppression, colonialism, and dispossession, the rivers and oceans of grief held within are often too vast and too deep to be carried alone.Join us in this episode as Sophy offers medicine for our souls, asking vital questions about collective grief tending. How do we notice trauma? How do we disrupt ways of managing grief that possibly reinforce systems and cultures of destruction? And what does it mean to truly care for and hold one another through times of darkness and despair?Tune in and subscribe to Green Dreamer via any podcast app, and join us on Patreon for the extended version of this episode.

In our Built By Faith series, we're sitting down with faith leaders from across the state to talk about the intersections of Faith, Justice, and Advocacy.In this episode, you'll meet Lela Ali, an immigrant from Egypt and Duke University alum with a Master's in International Development Policy and Middle East Studies. As Co-founder of Muslim Women For, Lela spearheads efforts to uplift Black, Brown, immigrant, and indigenous Muslim women in North Carolina through political advocacy, grassroots organizing, and coalition building. With a passion for voting rights, immigrant justice, and reproductive justice, she's a vibrant leader driving positive change in her community.Support the Show.Follow Us on Social MediaFacebook: @DemocracyNorthCarolinaInstagram: @democracyncTikTok: @democracyncX: @democracync

Who: When: Saturday, April 27, 2024Part 1 - 10 a.m. - 11:30 a.m. and Part 2 - 12 p.m. - 1:30 p.m.Where: Mitchell Hamline School of Law Auditorium – 875 Summit Ave. To register for the events: https://forms.gle/7zycgBXQQLvPK52q9. Registration is encouragedbut not required. 

In this episode, we delved into Dr. Bernadette Lim's journey from medical school to creating a revolutionary community-based healing healthcare system in Oakland, California. Dr. Bernie's decision to pivot from traditional medical practice to community healing was driven by her deep-rooted desire to create a more inclusive and holistic approach to healthcare. Guest Spotlight: Dr. Bernadette Lim is a passionate advocate for integrating ancestral healing with Western medicine to achieve Whole-Person Healing. At just 29 years old, Dr. Bernie has already made significant contributions to the field. She founded and leads the Freedom Community Clinic in Oakland, CA, and serves as a faculty member at the San Francisco State Institute for Holistic Health Studies. Additionally, she co-founded the Institute for Healing & Justice in Medicine. Dr. Bernie is a graduate of UCSF School of Medicine and UC Berkeley School of Public Health through the Joint Medical Program as a PRIME-US Scholar. She also graduated with honors from Harvard University in 2016 and served as a Fulbright-Nehru Scholar in India. How to connect with Dr. Bernie: Follow her on Instagram Follow the Freedom Community Clinic on Instagram Learn more about Healing and Justice in Medicine  -MORE: Connect: www.bewellsis.com Follows us on Instagram! Be Well, Sis Partners: Athletic Greens (AG1)– Redeem your offer for 1 year of high-quality Vitamin D + 5 free travel packs  

Community-based public safety is essential to providing our communities and people with the resources they need to live and thrive. Listen as Aaron and Damien discuss the Healing and Justice Center's 2023 Annual Report, which outlines the organization's efforts to enact true community-based public safety initiatives in Miami, and what we learn from the Healing and Justice Center's work in our continued learning and fight for social justice and collective liberation. Follow us on social media and visit our website! ⁠⁠Patreon⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠Website⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Threads⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Twitter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Leave us a voice message⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Merch store⁠⁠

Vladimir Putin has killed nearly all internal opposition to his unprovoked war in Ukraine. Tonight, Scott Pelley travels to a foreign city that's become a haven for courageous Russians defying Putin and speaking out.It's something no one else has tried and perhaps only she could pull off. Jennifer Thompson, a rape victim, is bringing together crime survivors and people who were wrongfully convicted. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this deep and enlightening conversation, Vanessa Codorniu engages Yaqui Rodriguez in a discussion about spirituality, healing, and ancestral wisdom. The episode illuminates the non-linear journey of self-discovery and the embodiment of spiritual practices into everyday life. Yaqui Rodriguez shares her upbringing drawing from folk Catholicism where spiritual practices were normalized in day-to-day life. Continuing the narrative, Yaqui elaborates on her spiritual awakening around her mid-20s, leading her to explore various belief systems and subsequently face life's challenges. Finding Kundalini yoga and integrating personal healing experiences into her path, Yaqui emphasizes the importance of aligning with one's self. The conversation also touches on breaking ancestral patterns, embracing ancestral gifts, and the concept of healing justice, as defined by Kara Page, highlighting the holistic response to generational trauma and oppression. Takeaways: The journey to spiritual awakening and healing is non-linear, individualized, and can involve various explorations and struggles.   Ancestral patterns, such as martyrdom and people-pleasing, can be recognized and broken to embrace a life of self-worth and alignment with personal values.   Mediumship and other ancestral spiritual gifts can be reclaimed and integrated into one's life after overcoming fear and societal stigma.   Healing justice addresses the impact of oppression on bodies, hearts, and minds, connecting individuals to their ancestral lineage and holistic healing practices.   Investing in oneself is an essential step towards spiritual development and realizing one's full potential. BIO: Yaqui is the descendant of farmers and folk healers from the central mountain region in the Dominican Republic. Through the exploration of her own emotional and spiritual growth she found her sacred path. Dedicating the past 13 years to study, she has completed more than 40 trainings with diverse teachers of different modalities in the healing arts. Her work is rooted in remembrance, healing intergenerational trauma, reconnecting to ancestral practices, the wisdom of the self and the earth.  Currently, she co-leads National Healing Justice programs with non profit organizations and is pursuing certification in Integrative Psychedelic Therapy integrating Transpersonal Psychotherapy, Indigenous Wisdom and findings from modern consciousness research. Links: www.yaquirodriguez.com www.yaquirodriguez.com/recuerdoretreat     Timestamp Summary 0:00:02 Introduction to Yaqui Rodriguez and her background     0:01:38 Discussion on Yaqui 's upbringing and spiritual experiences 0:04:11  Yaqui 's first spiritual emergence and exploration of different belief systems 0:06:05 Discovering Kundalini yoga and pursuing leadership trainings 0:08:07  Yaqui 's hesitation to invest in herself and considering Reiki 0:10:01 Making a promise to herself to pursue spiritual work 0:11:03 Non-linear journey and importance of individual paths 0:12:14  Yaqui 's involvement in a national healing justice program 0:12:39 How Yaqui s work led her to start her own business 0:13:27  Yaqui Rodriguez shares her journey in the fitness industry and healing her relationship with her body and weight 0:14:43  Yaqui integrates spirituality into her work and transitions into her own spiritual business 0:16:07  Yaqui  starts working part-time in a nonprofit organization and begins bringing healing work into the nonprofit space 0:17:06  Yaqui  gets her first opportunity to work with a national organization and co-lead healing justice work 0:19:19  Yaqui  discusses breaking ancestral patterns, including martyrdom and early motherhood 0:22:58  Yaqui  leans into her ancestral gifts of answering the call and embracing her mediumship abilities 0:25:16  Yaqui  encourages listeners to trust themselves and follow their hearts 0:26:30  Yaqui  shares her contact information and website for further connection  

“I think if people don't change by shame or blame or forcing them into things, I think they change because they have a vision of the world they want.”In this episode, I get to talk with Dara Silverman, a white queer Jewish consultant, somatic coach, and trainer with over 20 years with organizations and movements for social, racial, economic, and gender justice. Dara was the founding director of Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ), an organization bringing together white folks working for racial and economic justice. She shares insights into supporting clients around the ongoing genocide in Gaza. We discuss how politicized coaches can hold the principle of “not having an agenda for clients” while still bringing in their political views. Dara also shares how white coaches and facilitators committed to systemic change can integrate anti-racism into our work for change.Check out the episode page for the transcript and the full list of the resources mentioned in this episode: https://widerroots.com/3 Key moments02:28 - Dara's background08:22 - Coaching clients around Gaza12:13 - Holding "not having an agenda" while being politicized21:03 - Relaxed, Dignified, and Accountable: Supporting white folks to show up for racial justice26:30 - The role of coaching in movement spaces33:28 - Dara's coaching growth area35:21 - Dara's sources of nourishmentResources & LinksShowing Up for Racial Justice (organization)Strozzi Institute (coach training training program)generative somatics (somatics training)Leadership That Works, Coaching for Transformation (coaching program, now only in India)Black Leadership for Organizing and Dignity (organization)The Embodiment Institute (organization)Coaching for Healing Justice and Liberation (coach training program)Nervous by Jen Soriano (book)Fargo (TV series)Handsome (podcast)Connect with Dara SilvermanWebsite: DaraSilverman.com for upcoming courses and resources.Opening to Freedom: Embodied Facilitation for White Folks - the year-long program that Dara discussed in the episode. Register by March 25, 2024.Weekly online somatic practice groupInstagram: Follow @darasilverLinkedIn:

“Are we doing the things that we need to do to co-regulate and to self- regulate so that we can be as strategic as possible and so that we can also not take each other out in the process of getting free?” Erica Woodland (he/him) is a facilitator, consultant, psychotherapist and healing justice practitioner with more than 20 years of experience working at the intersections of movements for racial, gender, economic, trans & queer justice. Erica is a co-editor of the anthology ‘Healing Justice Lineages: Dreaming at the Crossroads of Liberation, Collective Care and Safety' (North Atlantic Books, 2023) & Founder/Executive Director of the National Queer and Trans Therapists of Color Network (NQTTCN.com). In this special episode, Anjali and Erica discuss: Erica's journey and path into the work, a calling from the ancestors Collective memory regarding the legacy of resistance, roots and lessons for building movements and healing. Foundational premises of healing justice and the abolitionist approach to justice The meaning of healing Learning from the mistakes of our movement ancestors Misconceptions that people have about healing justice work The integrality of dissent How we can prevent the values of dominant culture, for example, capitalism or hyper individualism from seeping into movement work Practices of care Connect with Erica on his website or on Instagram @ebmore1 @nqttcn @hjlineages You can order the Healing Justice Lineages Book HERE! Free Resources for Teachers We are grateful for the support of our podcast partner OfferingTree — an all-in-one, easy to use business platform for classes, courses, memberships and more. Check it out at www.offeringtree.com/accessibleyoga.

During 2023, the Black Girl's Guide to Surviving Menopause continued to bushwack a maroon path for those menopause stories left at the margins by launching a diasporic tour that took our team to the UK, Harlem, Toronto, and Puerto Rico. Our intergenerational team has learned to hold the “both/and” dynamic tension of curating storytelling spaces more deeply. We are infinitely grateful for the lessons we have learned from our travels together, community conversations, and partnerships that include: What it means to make offerings in communities where we do not reside What it means to partner with people who have different definitions and understandings of community, culture, justice, gender, healing, and liberation What it means to collaborate with BIPOC and queer creatives and artists who are infinitely talented and habitually underresourced What it means to hold intergenerational space in ways that don't reinforce ageist tropes about who can offer wisdom, respect, power, and perspective What it means to create, in real-time, a culture of belonging and care for and with your team What it means to travel internationally as a team in ways that keep us safe from harm What it means to be patient, humble, and accountable What it means to try and fail What it means to try and soar In this last episode of this very special season of the podcast, you will hear stories from our time in Toronto and team reflections from Puerto Rico. As you soak up this offering, we will leave you with these questions as 2023 comes to a close: What is the important liberatory work you want to do for your community and the spaces you occupy? What stories live inside you that are ready to be shared? See you in 2024! Episode Notes Voices heard in this episode: Alexandra Jane, BGG2SM Social Media Manager Farhath Siddiqui, BGG2SM Hits the Road Videographer, Siddiqui Media Assata Goff, BGG2SM in-house artist Omisade Burney-Scott, Creator & CCO at the Black Girl's Guide to Surviving Menopause Feature Orisii interviewees: Amma Gyamfowa, Founder of Womanist Healing Georgina G., mother of Amma Season 5 Host and Producer: Mariah M., Creative Director at the Black Girl's Guide to Surviving Menopause Score credits (all music free to use under Creative Commons Licensing): Moving Fast by Holden Excess Beauty all Around Us by Steven Beddall (AudioLibrary) AfroLove by The LadyProducer (AudioLibrary) BGG Season 4/5 Theme - Taj Scott This season and the diasporic tour were made possible by our partners and sponsors at The Honey Pot Company, Kindra, Elektra Health and the Groundswell Fund. For the past four years, the Black Girls' Guide to Surviving Menopause has been a multi-media platform with Reproductive Justice, Black Feminism, and Healing Justice as our north star. At its core, this means we fundamentally believe that none of us are free until all of us are free, and when the most vulnerable of us are taken care of, all of society stands to benefit. BGG2SM unapologetically stands in solidarity with all marginalized people and their struggle for freedom, and their demand of their innate human rights.

Episode Summary This week on Live Like the World is Dying, Margaret and Leah talk about disability, preparedness, and covid. Guest Info Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha (They/She) is a writer and structural engineer of disability and transformative justice work. Leah can be found at brownstargirl.org, on Instagram @leahlakshmiwrites, or on Bluesky @thellpsx.bsky.social Their book The Future is Disabled: Prophecies, Love Notes, and Mourning Songs can be found: https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-future-is-disabled-prophecies-love-notes-and-mourning-songs-leah-lakshmi-piepzna-samarasinha/18247280 Their book Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice can be found: https://bookshop.org/p/books/care-work-dreaming-disability-justice-leah-lakshmi-piepzna-samarasinha/16603798 Host Info Margaret (she/they) can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy. Publisher Info This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at www.tangledwilderness.org, or on Twitter @TangledWild and Instagram @Tangled_Wilderness. You can support the show on Patreon at www.patreon.com/strangersinatangledwilderness. Transcript Leah on Disability and Preparedness Resources Mentioned: StaceyTaughtUs Syllabus, by Alice Wong and Leah: https://disabilityvisibilityproject.com/2020/05/23/staceytaughtus-syllabus-work-by-stacey-milbern-park/ NoBody Is Disposable Coalition: https://nobodyisdisposable.org/ Power To Live Coalition: https://www.powertolivecoalition.org/ Disability Visibility Project article about Power to Live : https://disabilityvisibilityproject.com/2019/10/26/call-for-stories-powertolive/ Power to Live survival skillshare doc: http://tinyurl.com/dissurvival Long winter crip survival guide for pandemic year 4/forever by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha and Tina “constant tt” Zavitsanos https://www.tinyurl.com/longwintersurvival Pod Mapping for Mutual Aid by Rebel Sydney Rose Fayola Black: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-QfMn1DE6ymhKZMpXN1LQvD6Sy_HSnnCK6gTO7ZLFrE/mobilebasic?fbclid=IwAR0ehOJdo-vYmJUrXsKCpQlCODEdQelzL9AE5UDXQ1bMgnHh2oAnqFs2B3k Half Assed Disabled Prepper Tips for Preparing for a Coronavirus Quarantine. (By Leah) https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rIdpKgXeBHbmM3KpB5NfjEBue8YN1MbXhQ7zTOLmSyo/edit Sins Invalid Disability Justice is Climate Justice: https://www.sinsinvalid.org/news-1/2022/7/7/disability-justice-is-climate-justice Skin Tooth and Bone: The Basis of Movement is Our People (A disability justice primer): https://www.sinsinvalid.org/disability-justice-primer DJ Curriculum by Sins: https://www.sinsinvalid.org/curriculum Partnership for Inclusive Disaster Strategies: https://disasterstrategies.org/ Live Like the World is Dying: Leah on Disability & Preparedness **Margaret ** 00:15 Hello, and welcome to Live Like the World is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host, Margaret killjoy. And I always tell you that I'm excited about episodes, but I'm really excited about this episode. It put me in a better mood than when I started the day that I get to record this episode. Because today, we're going to be talking about disability and preparedness. We're gonna be talking about Covid abandonment. And we're gonna be talking about a lot of the questions that... a lot of the questions that people write us to talk about that they have about preparedness and I think that we can cover a lot of those. Not me, but our guest. But first before the guest, a jingle from another show on the network. Oh, the network is called Channel Zero Network. It is a network of anarchists podcasts and here's a jingle. [sings a simple melody] **Margaret ** 01:08 Okay, and we're back. So, if you could introduce yourself with your name, your pronouns, and then I guess just a little bit about how you got involved in thinking about and dealing with disability and preparedness. **Leah ** 02:00 Sure. Hi, my name is Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha. She and They pronouns. Right now I live in Pocomtuc and Nipmuc territories in Western Massachusetts. And that is a great question. I will also just plug myself briefly and be like I'm a disability justice and transformative justice old sea-hag, aging punk of color who has written or co-edited ten books and done a lot of shit. Okay, so when I was sitting on the toilet thinking about "What do I want to tell Margaret when we get on the show?", I was actually thinking that my disability and my preparedness routes are kind of one in the same because... So I'm 48 [years old] now and I got sick when I was 21-22. So like back in 96-97. And, it was the initial episode that I got sick with chronic fatigue, ME, and fibromyalgia. And I was just super fucking ill and on the floor and was living in Toronto as somebody who was not from Canada. And, you know, I was just sick as hell, like crawling to the bathroom, like sleeping 18 hours a day. The whole nine. And I'd been really really deeply involved in anarchist of color and prison abolitionist and antifascist organizing and lots of stuff. I had a community, but it was 1997, so most of my community was just like, "What you're sick? Why didn't you make it to the meeting? We have to write all the prisoners with the [untranslatable]." And I was just like, "I just.... Okay, great." Like it was a really different time. There was no GoFundMe, mutual aid, Meal Train, someone brought me some soup. Like, know you, we weren't really doing that. And people really did not have a consciousness around, "You can be a 22 year old brown, nonbinary femme and be really, really sick and be disabled." So something I think a lot, and I've said before, is that disabled people are really used to the concept that no one is going to save us and we are really not surprised when state systems abandoned us because we live in that all the time. And so I was just like this little 22 year old sicko weirdo who'd read my Octavia Butler--and, in fact, that was part of the reason why I was like, "Toronto, great, there's gonna be more water and less heat." Okay, wasn't totally right about that. But, you know, I mean, I really had to save myself and I kind of was like, "Alright, I don't have..." Like, I'm working off the...I'm working under the table. I have hardly any money. I'm gonna make my own herbal medicine. I'm gonna grow a lot of what I eat from my backyard. I'm going to store water. I'm going to run a credit card scam and get a lot of dried goods and live off of those for like a year. [Margaret Hell Yeahs] Yeah, stuff like that. I feel like from there, over the last, you know, 26 years like it's....like, that's the route. The route was, you know, similar to a lot of people, I think of my generation, we were like on the cusp of looking at the current crises of like hot fascist war, hot eugenics war, hot climate crisis, and being like, "It's coming," and I started being like, "Yeah, like don't...don't think that it's all going to work out okay and that somebody else is going to fix it for you." So, I would say that's where my initial route--and then do you want to jump in? Or can I jump ahead like 20 years or something? **Margaret ** 05:10 Honestly, you could jump ahead 20 years later. I'm gonna come back and make you talk more about Octavia Butler. But we'll do that later. **Leah ** 05:16 Let's talk more about Octavia Butler because I have a lot of stuff about Octavia Butler and how she thought of--and I think sometimes misused--like nowadays [this is probably not the word but it's untranslatable] and also about disability. [Margaret "Oooohs" curiously] I know. We can get to that. Okay, so that's one route. And then, you know, I mean, I was always kind of like a little weirdo, where it's like, yeah, I grow most of my own food--or as much as I can--and it's not a fun green hobby. It's like, I'm broke as fuck and I need to grow a lot vegetables that fucking, you know, I can mulch and that can stay growing into December, you know? I stashed stuff. Something I also think a lot, is that as disabled people--and we talked about this a little bit when we're emailing--I think we're always prepping whether we call it that or not. Like most disabled folks I know just do shit. Like if you get a prescription and you have extra, you store it, you know? Like, if you can get a double dose, you put that aside. And then maybe you have it for yourself. Or, there's so many disabled mutual aid networks I've been a part of where someone's--I mean, before Facebook clamped down, this is really common on a lot of Facebook disabled groups--someone would be like, "Yo, does anyone have an extra five pills of such and such?" and I've seen total strangers for 15 years of disability justice be like, "Yep, what's your address? I do. I'm gonna mail it to you. I have my old pain meds. I've got this. I've got that." But, um, yeah, like doing the jumping forward that I promised you, so for people who don't know, disability justice as a movement was founded around 2005 by a group, a small group of disabled Black, Asian, and poor and working class, white disabled folks, who were all pretty, you know, gay, trans, and radical. And they were like, "We want to bring a revolutionary intersectional out of our own lives and experiences and issues. We want to create a disability movement that's for us and by us that's not just white, single issue, often cis, often male, often straight." Like, we want to talk about the fact that 50% of bipoc folks who were killed by the cops are also disabled, deaf, neurodivergent, etc... just to give one example. So, you know, that was '05 in Oakland, you know, Patti Burn, LeRoy Moore, Stacy Milbern, Ely Claire, Sebastian Margaret, Stacey Milbern Park, you know, the six. And I was living in Toronto and I moved to Oakland in '07 and I was kind of around for some of the beginnings of it. There's two stories I want to bring in. One actually predates my move. It was right when I was getting ready to leave Toronto, I got invited to go to this reading by a bunch of queer--I think all white--disabled radical folks. And I was just like, "Oh?" And I did the whole, like, "Am I really disabled enough?" and then it was like, "Oh, it's gonna be really depressing." And then it was really awesome. And I was like, "Whoa, disability community. Life saving." But it was kind of one of my moments of being brought into the disability community because there was this writer who was there who, their reading series was actually a choose your own adventure where there's four disabled, queer, and trans folks who are having a sex party and the zombie apocalypse happens. And then they have to figure out how to survive it without abandoning each other. And it was all like, "Okay, you all get to the van, but then there's no ramp. What do you do? Oh! You get this accessible ramp, but it smells like perfume and somebody has NCS. What do you do? And I was just sitting there with my mouth open--and it was also interwoven with like, 'Yeah, and then somebody's fucking somebody else with like, you know, a dildo strapped to their prosthetic,'" and I was like, wow, I fucking love disability. Like, sign me up. But I gotta say briefly, that was one of my first examples of like, you know, there's a really important phrase in Disability Justice, which is, "No one left behind, " right? Like, that's one of the core organizing principles. And that was kind of.... Before I even heard that phrase, I was like, "Fuck like this is..."--because I'd been around antiauthoritarian, quasi prepper, like "shit's gonna happen, we have to get ready." But I was always kind of quiet in the corner closeting my disability being like, "Well, shit, like, what if I don't have my meds? Or what if I'm too.... What if I can't run away from, you know, the Nazis or the zombies because I have a limp and I walk with a cane? Like, what if?" And that was my first example of this cross disability fantasy space of like, "We're going to escape together and we're not going to let anyone get eaten and it's going to mean really being creative about access stuff." Okay so jump ahead to, right, then I moved to Oakland and then I ran into actual Disability Justice community through Sins Invalid, which is an incredibly important foundational Disability Justice group, and through a lot of friendships I started making with other QTBIPOC disabled folks and my really, really good friend Stacy Park Milbern, who, people should totally know her work. She's incredible. She was one of the best movement organizers that the movement has ever seen. And we met online. And she was living in Fort Bragg, North Carolina with her family on the base because her family's military. And she was a queer southern, working-class, Korean and white, you know, physically disabled organizer from when she was really young. And then she was like, "Okay, I love my family, but I'm literally hiding my gay books in the wall because my mom's Pentecostal." So, yeah, and she's like--I literally realized she tells the story a lot--she's like, "Yeah, like, I realized I hadn't really left the house for a couple months and like, this is gonna be it," and she's like, "I was literally watching Oprah. And Oprah said, 'No one's coming to save you.'" And she was like, okay. She's 21 years old. And then through online, disabled, queer of color community there was this--or she organized--this initiative called To the Other Side of Dreaming where she moved crosscountry with Mia Mingus, who's another queer Korean organizer who was a friend of hers, ad moved to the Bay Area. And so that was around 2010-2011. And then in 2011, what happens but the Fukushima nuclear accident, right, disaster? And we're all on the West Coast--and it's completely ridiculous bullshit, looking back on it now--but all of these Bay Area folks were like, "Oh my God! Radiation!" And some people pointed out, "Look, you know, we're not.... There's...it's a big ocean. The people who really have to worry are in Japan and areas around it, so whatever?" But it was one of those times where we were like, fuck, this is a really big nuclear accident and we are sort of close and it's making us think about disaster. And I remember just going to fucking Berkeley Bowl, which is this big, fancy, organic supermarket and people had bought out all of the burdock all the fucking seaweed. And I was like, "Oh, my God, these people." But out of that, Stacy started having conver--and I and other people who were in our organizing network of disabled, majority BIPOC--were like, "What are we going to as disabled BIPOC if there is an earthquake, fascism, like another big disaster? And Stacy said, really bluntly, she's like, "You know," and she was a power wheelchair user. She used a ventilator. You know, she's like, "Yeah, I am supported by electricity and battery dependent access equipment." And she's like, "Well, I'm going to be really honest, my plan has always been, if something happens, I'm just going to lay down in my bed and die, because I don't think that any emergency services are going to come save me and the power is going to run out in 48 hours. And then we were like, "Okay, that's super real. What if, through our amazing collective access stuff we're doing, we could figure out something else?" And we had this meeting at Arismendy bakery, which for folks who know, is like a worker owned co-op chain, Our friend Remedios worked there. It's wheelchair accessible. We met there after hours. And it was just like, 12-15 of us who started just sitting there and being like, "What are the resources we have? What are the needs we have? And we made this map, which I still have, which I think I shared with you, which is just like, "Apocalypse, South Berkeley/Oakland Map 2011," where we were like, "Okay, you know, when the power goes down, the communication goes down. We're gonna meet at this one traffic circle because people who are wheelchair users can roll up. And we're gonna bury note paper in a mason jar with pens and we're gonna leave notes for each other. But we're also going to agree to meet there the day after at noon." And I was like, okay, my collective house, the first floor is wheelchair accessible. We have solar, we have a landline. And we have a lot of space. So like, let's meet there. And then someone was like, "We've got the one accessible van. And we know, it's only supposed to fit 4 people, but we can fit like 12 in there." And we started.... Like, I just think about that a lot because it's, I think it was a really important moment where it was important...the stuff that we did like that--you know, the actual strategies and the resources we started talking about--but it was also that it was the first time in my life that I was like, "Okay, we're not--not only are we not going to just die alone in our beds, I'm also not going to be the one person who survives. Like, I can actually survive with, and because of, other people. And we're all disabled BIPOC with a couple of disabled white folks. And we can actually collectively strategize around that. And this will be my last leap forward, because I see that you're like, "I want to ask you stuff." So, you know, eight years go by, and in that time we all do an incredible amount of Disability Justice organizing and strategizing. And, you know, in 2019.... And a lot of it started to be around climate disaster on the West Coast. Like, I moved to Seattle in 2015. The wildfires started being really bad a year or two later. A lot of us were involved in mask distributions, just spreading information about smoke safety and survival. And then 2019 was the infamous year where the wildfires came back and Pacific Gas and Electric, in all of its fucking glory, which is the main--for people who don't know--it's the main utility electrical company in Northern California. They announced two days before wildfires were going to really impact the Bay, they were like, "Oh, so we've decided that our strategy is going to be that we're just going to shut down all the power in Northern California. **Margaret ** 14:52 No one uses that. [Sardonically] **Leah ** 14:53 No one uses that. And they're like, "Oh, if you have a medical need, call this number, and we'll make sure to leave it on at your house." and Stacey was, "Okay." She had just bought her house, the Disability Justice Culture Club in East Oakland, you know, which was her house but also a community center, de facto community center, that housed a lot of disabled folks of color. And she was like, "I was on the fucking phone for eight hours. Like, I never got through." And she and some comrades started this campaign called Power to Live where they were like.... It started out as, "Okay, we can't save everybody, but we're not going to just lay down and die. What do we do?" So it started out as like, okay, let's identify who has housing that still has power. There's some people in Richmond, there's some people in this neighborhood, but then it also developed into this thing where it was just this amazing crowdsource survivalist resource where it was everything from, she's like, "Here's a number. Here's an email. If you need something, text us, call us, email us. We have a team of eight people. We'll figure it out. If you have something to offer, do it too." And then some of it was that people were sharing everything from generator information, to generator shares, to people in different areas-- like I was in Seattle and we were like, "Okay, we will mail you generators and air purifiers, because it's obviously all sold out in the Bay, but we can get it here and get it to you." The thing that always stands out to me is people being like, "Oh, yeah, here's how you can use dry ice and clay pots to keep your insulin cold if refrigeration goes down." And there's a lot more I could say about that action and how amazing it was. But for me, when I think about the through line, I'm like, that moment in 2011, when we all got together, and were like, "What do we do?" we were prepping for what we couldn't fully predict, you know, the exact manifestation of eight years later. We're there and we're like, "Okay, there's wildfires, there's smoke, there's no fucking power, and we've not only built our organizing base, we built our relationships with each other so that we can actually trust each other and more or less know how to work together when this shit actually is hitting the fan to create something that's really life giving. Okay, I'll shut up. That was a lot. **Margaret ** 16:52 Now I have so many questions about all of it. **Leah ** 16:53 Yeah, ask me all the questions. **Margaret ** 16:55 Because there's a couple...there's a couple of questions and/or feedback that we get with Live Like, the World is Dying a lot. And some of them are very specifically disability related, and you covered most of them, but I want to highlight some of them. Like a lot of people write and are like, "Well, I rely on the following thing that is provided by civilization. So my plan is to lay down and die." Right? This is a--and I know you've kind of answered it--but I.... I want to ask more. Okay, I'll go through all the things. Okay. So to talk more about what "No One Left Behind," means? And then the other thing that really stands out to me is that, you know, when we were talking, when we were talking about what we were going to talk about on this on this episode, I was saying, okay, we can talk about, you know, making sure that preparedness is inclusive and open and includes disabled folks, or whatever, and you pointed out, really usefully, the, the necessity to reframe it. And I think that the story you just gave is a really beautiful example of this, where it's less about, like, "Hey, make sure to pay attention to the people who need canes," you know, or whatever, right? Like, you know, "make sure you keep track of folks based on disability." And more than like the thing you just described, is the thing that we're always trying to push, which is that you need to make a list of all the resources and needs within your community and then figure out how to meet those needs and instead of assuming that we can't meet those needs, figuring out how to actually do it. And so I love that it's actually like.... It's actually disability justice movements that we should be learning from, I mean, or participating in, depending on our level of ability, or whatever, but I just find that I find both of those things really interesting. And so I wonder if you have more that you want to say about alternatives to laying down and dying, and specifically, to tie into the other thing that I get asked the most or that I get the common feedback is--because we talk a lot about the importance of community for preparedness on this show--a lot of people don't feel like they have community and a lot of people write to be like, "I don't have any friends," or "I don't know any other people like me," or, you know. And so, I guess that's my main question is how do.... [Trails off] Yeah, how do? **Leah ** 19:22 So how do you make community when you don't have community? Alternatives to lying down and dying? And was there a third one in there? **Margaret ** 19:28 I was just highlighting how cool it is that y'all sat there and made a list of resources and needs, which is exactly what.... Instead of deciding things are impossible, just being like, "Well, let's just start doing them." You know? **Leah ** 19:40 And I think.... Okay, so I'll start there. Like I think that like.... You know, Corbit O'Toole, who's like a, you know, Disability Rights Movement veteran and like older Irish, disabled dyke, you know, in Crip Camp, the movie, she's like, "Disabled people live all the time with the knowledge that the society wants thinks we're better off dead," right? Like one...back in the day, you know, there's a--I think they're still active--one of the big Disability Rights direct action organizations was called Not Dead Yet, right? [Margaret Hell Yeahs] I think this is the thing is like I think that sometimes abled people or neurotypical people are not used to sitting down and making the list. And I think that even if disabled people aren't preppers, we're used to being like, "Okay, what do I need? Fuck, I need somebody to help me do my dishes. Oh, I can't bend over. I need to figure out what is the access tool that will allow me to pick up something from the floor when my that goes out? Like, if my attendant doesn't show up, can I have a..." You know, like, my friends always like, "Yeah, I've got a yogurt container by the bed in case my attendant doesn't show up so I can not piss the bed. I can lean over and piss in the yogurt container." Like there's a--and I think that.... God, I mean, there's been so many times over the years where I've done or been a part of doing like Disability Justice 101 and me and Stacy would always talk about crip wisdom and crip innovation and people will just look blank like "What are you talking about? You guys are just a bunch of sad orphans at the telethon." It's not just about making the list, it's also about how disabled disability forces you to be innovative. Like, Stacy would always share this story where she's like, "Yeah," like, she's like "Crip innovation is everything from," she's like, "I save a lot of time sometimes by pretending I can't talk when people come over and want to pray over me. You know, I just act like a mute and they fucking leave and they go on with their life," and she's like, "You know, I realized one day, if I took my sneakers off, I could ramp a step if it's just two steps. I could just put them there and I could roll up." Or I mean, there's a million examples.... Or like, because I think it's about prepping and about making the lists and it's also about whatever you prep for, there's always going to be the X Factor of "Oh, we didn't fucking expect that." And I think that's where a lot of prep falls apart is people have their "Dream Bunker." They're like, "Oh, okay, I know exactly what the threats are going to be." And then of course, it doesn't fucking happen that way. I really hope I can swear on your show. **Margaret ** 21:46 You can. Don't worry. **Leah ** 21:47 Great. So, I mean, one example I could give is I'm remembering at, you know, a Sins show when we were in rehearsal, where everyone drove over from Oakland in Patty's wheelchair accessible van, and then the ramp broken wouldn't unfold. So we just were like, alright, who do we know who has welding equipment? Who do we know has lumber? Like, I think we ended up going to a bike repair shop and then they had tools. And then we're like, okay, we'll just bring the rehearsal into the van and do it that way. Like, you have to be innovative. And that's a muscle that I think society doesn't teach you to flex and that often, I think that even people who.... I think there can be a lot of eugenics in prep, you know, whether people are overtly fascist or not, there's a real belief of like, "Oh, only the strong and smart," --which looks a certain way-- "survive," and that "We should use rational thinking to make it all work out." And I think a lot of crip intelligence or wisdom is actually knowing that shit can go sideways 48 different ways and you have to adapt. And you have to just kind of be like, "Well, let's try this." So I think that's one thing. And I think, you know, one thing I'll say is, yeah, just speaking to kind of the reframing we were talking about, I think it's less like, "Oh, remember the people with canes," but, I mean, that's good, but also knowing that we're already doing it and that abled people actually have a shit ton to learn from us. But also, I mean, something.... I mean, the title of my last book is "The Future is Disabled," and it comes from something--it's not unique thinking to me--it's something that a lot of disabled people have been thinking and saying throughout the pandemic is that we were already at like a 30% disabled world minimum and we're pretty close--we're probably at majority disabled right now. Because what, 2% of the world didn't get Covid? Like, how many people have Long Covid? How many people have complex PTSD? We're all sick, crazy, and, you know, needing access equipment. Disability is not out there. It's in here. Like there's no such thing as doing prep that's like, "Oh, only the three Uber Mensch are gonna survive." Like fuck that. And that actually--I mean, sorry, this might be a side note, but a lot of people have probably seen The Last of Us. And I'm just gonna SPOILER ALERT it. You know that famous episode three of those two gay bear preppers in love? Yeah, I loved a lot about it. I was so pissed at the ending, which I'm just going to spoil. So you know, the more artsy, non-prep guy....[interrupted] **Margaret ** 21:47 Yeah, they don't survive. **Leah ** 22:47 Well, no, but like, not only did they not survive but one of them gets chronically ill. And I was just like, grinding my teeth because it's like, "Oh, he's in a wheelchair. Oh, his hand tremors." And then they end up deciding to both kill themselves rather than do anything else. And I was so furious at it because I was like, these are two people who are so innovative. They have figured out all kinds of problem solving. They have an entire small city for themselves. And it's all like, "Oh, no, he can't get up the stairs." And I'm like, really? There was no accessible ranch house you couldn't of fucking moved to? **Margaret ** 24:38 Or like build a bedroom on the fucking ground floor. **Leah ** 24:40 Or youcouldn't get meds? You couldn't? I mean, when his hand was shaking, it was like, "Oh, it's so sad. He's being fed." I'm like, there's tons.... First of all, it doesn't suck to be fed. A lot of things that seem like a fate worse than death are not when you're in them. And also, there's like all kinds of adaptive utensils that they could have fucking raided from medical supply if he wants to feed himself. Or I'm sorry, there's no cans of Ensure? They absolutely have power. They couldn't have made smoothies? Like, what the fuck is this? But beyond that--and I think that a lot of people who have talked about that episode did, I think, have some good analysis of it where, you know, the whole way they set up their prep was they were like, "Oh, it's just the two of us," and the one super prepper guy was like, "I don't even want friends to come over." And the other guy was like, "Hey, actually, we need to make alliances because there's things they have that we don't. And we also need more than just the two of us because I love you, but I'm gonna kill you." And I think that's something to think about is really moving away from the idea that just your little you know, the utopic queer rural community that so many fucking city queers fantasize about or, you know, lover are going to be enough, because it's not. So that actually leads me to, "I don't have community. Where the fuck do I get it?" And I'm like, yeah, that's super real. Right? And I think it's something I actually wrote about in "The Future is Disabled" is that I have people be like--when I write about different crip communities, just even when I talk about stuff on Facebook.... Like my friend, Graham Bach, it's going to be his second year death anniversary in like two weeks, and he was like, you know, white, psychiatric survivor, super poor, amazing sweetheart of a human being, he died.... I mean, he died in his, you know, rent to your income apartment because he was really afraid to go to the hospital and he had cardiac stuff going on. And he was an anarchist, he was amazing, kind, complicated human being. And, I was writing about, like.... I'm going to tell the story and there's a couple things I want to pull out of it. So I was writing about meeting Graham when I was in my early 20s through radical Mad people community, and somebody was reading it and was like "That sounds so great." And I was like, "Yeah, it wasn't utopic. Like, I had to yell back at Graham because he would scream at me and I'd be like, "Shut the fuck up!" Like, there was so many fights. There was so much racism. There were so many older white cis dudes who had electroshock who were jerky or gross, you know? And I guess that was the thing is, I was like, they're like, "Well, how did you find each other?" And I was like, it wasn't perfect. Also, it was very analog working class. Like my friend Lilith Finkler, who is an amazing Moroccan, Jewish, working-class queer femme psych survivor, she would just go to the donut shop where everybody poor hung out and would talk to everybody who wass there who wass crazy who no one wanted to talk to and be like, "Hey, do you want to come hang out at this meeting at the fucking legal clinic? We have a room. We have a snack plate. I'll give you tokens. Let's organize." So I think that's the first thing is that it's not--and I don't mean this in a finger-wagging way--it's not automatic. And also, one of the really big ways that community is often ableist, and that a lot of us get cut out from it, is that a lot of us who need it the most are not particularly easy to love in ableist neurotypical worldview. It's like we're cranky, we're wounded, we're in a bad mood, we're weird. So a lot of the time, I think it's thinking about, first of all, what's one step, one move you can take towards it. Like, can you make one fucking acquaintance and build it. And really think about what it would mean to build some kind of relationship. I think the other thing that I really want to highlight is that a lot of the communities that I see that keep each other alive, that I'm lucky to have been a part of making and being supported by in disabled community, they're not static and they're not perfect. Like, I have networks with people who piss me the fuck off and who, you know, I've sent 20 bucks to people who I'm just like, "I really don't like you, but I can see that you really don't have food," you know, and we're not going to be friends and we're not going to like each other, but I don't want you to die. And that's not...I mean, it's bigger.... There's also people who I'm like, "Okay, you're my ex-abuser. I'm not gonna give you $5. Someone else can give you $5. **Margaret ** 28:42 There's this person who puts a lot of their effort into talking shit on me on the internet and I...they're also broke and have a lot of chronic health issues and I send them money every month. And every now and then I'm like, could this like...could you stop talking shit now? **Leah ** 29:03 I think this is the thing sometimes is like, hey, how about this is the deal, like maybe just say "Thank you," or maybe just talk shit even like 20% less? Because you know, I'm really doing we keep us safe here. I just really want a "thank you." **Margaret ** 29:16 I don't want you to die. Like, I don't want you to starve to death, but I really wish you would be a little bit more open minded to people having different opinions on yours. **Leah ** 29:26 Oh yeah, nuance, right? Yeah, it'd be fucking nice. **Margaret ** 29:29 God forbid. Anyway. **Leah ** 29:31 No, it's good. I guess my TLDR would be to start where you are and start with "what's one thing you can do? What's one person you can reach out to?" And I think, you know, I don't know if this is true for everyone who reaches out to you and it's like, "Well, I don't have anybody," but I think that social media and online connectivity is a real double-edged sword because for some of us who are isolated, it can create both online communities that can sometimes become in-real-life community and, either way, can be sources of some community or support. But I think.... I mean, you know, I'm a Generation X'er and I've just seen social media get more and more chokehold and just turn into fucking the panopticon meets a mall, you know? [Margaret laughs] And I think it's hard because 12 years ago I was part of really early online disabled spaces, which were great because so many people were like, "Well, I'm so isolated in my small town or in my city," or "I can't leave bed, but this is great. I'm meeting with other people and we're building these connections and it's actually more accessible for me to be real about my stuff from like my bed with a heating pad." And now I just think it's so chokeholded that it's hard for us to find each other. So it's much more common for people to be like, "Wow, I'm seeing all these people who have millions of followers and a shiny brand and I just feel like even more of an isolated loser." And then at the same time, I think people are like, "Well, how did people meet each other before this?" And I was like, "Yeah, like, you go to the coffee shop or the donut shop. You put up a flier. You go to the library. You like, I don't know. I mean, I just remember people I met on the food stamps line, you know, when we got there at six in the morning. And not everything's gonna stick, but maybe something sticks. And I also think about like, I'm going back to 13 years ago in early Disability Justice community spaces where--I mean, I think back to [untranslatable] when I went back to Toronto--which, yeah, big city--but I remember I had so many people come to me and be like, "You're..."--because I was starting to be more out about disability, cuz I was like, "I'm in the Bay and there's these wild people who talk about it and they're not all white people." and so I have so many, especially Black and brown disabled femmes be like, "Hi, you don't really know me, but I have fibromyalgia too," or "I have Lupus too. And like, no one I know talks about that. How do you do it?" And I'm specifically thinking about this time that this person I'm no longer in touch with--but we used to be friends--who's like, you know, queer, brown nonbinary person was like, "Let's just have a meet up of other chronically ill femmes of color," which is how we were identifying a time, and it was four of us, four heating pads, a bottle of Advil, and just very tentatively starting to share things about our lives. And I was like, "Yeah, that was four people." But a lot of that hang out then rippled outward. And it was like, I think it's also important to be like, it's scary to build community. Some tools I want to shut out like, so Mia Mingus, who I mentioned before, she has a lot of really great writing on her blog Leaving Evidence and she created this tool a long time ago now--that some people might be familiar with but for folks who aren't--it's, you know, it's her tool that she calls Pod Mapping. And she actually created it as part of a collective she founded called the Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective that was working on doing transformative justice interventions into intimate violence, specifically childhood sexual abuse a lot of the time, and she had this framework that I find really helpful. She's like, "A lot of..." she was talking about in community accountability, transformative justice spaces and she made a really good point where she's like, "Sometimes we talk about like, 'Yeah, bring in the community. Like, everyone has a community.'" And she's like, "Most people don't have a fucking community, let alone one that can interview in childhood sexual abuse." So she created this tool where she's like, "Let's broaden the idea of what community is." Like, maybe it's that one cousin, that you only talk to once a year, but you could call them in a jam, or it's this hotline, or it is like, yeah, they're a weird church, but you really like their food banks. She's like, "You have to really bring in.... Like, start where you are and do the resource mapping we were talking about" I really liked that tool a lot as a place for people who are like, "What's my community?" because I think it's a big word and really being like, "What does that even mean to me?" and like, "What's one place that can start building it?" And I also want to shout out, Rebel Sydney Black, who's a friend of mine who passed this June, at the beginning of the pandemic, he created this tool called Pod Mapping for Mutual Aid that was specifically aimed at disabled folks who were trying to pod map during Covid--and we can provide the link and stuff like that--but I would say that those are two places to start and then I want to get to alternatives to lying down and dying. And then I'll stop. **Margaret ** 34:04 Okay, wait, wait, before we get to that I want to talk more about the building community thing. **Leah ** 34:08 Yeah, please. **Margaret ** 34:09 I think you brought up a lot of really interesting points. And one of the things that I really like about it, you know, talking about having like...you're broadening the idea of what counts as community, which I think is really useful. And one of the things I realized is that a lot of times when I was younger, I was like, "Y'all say 'community' and you just mean the people that you like," right? And that didn't make any sense to me. Community seems like the people where you have a shared interest, whether the shared interest is you live on the same block, or whether the shared interest is an identity, or whether the shared interest is an interest that you're trying to see change, or whatever. It doesn't mean people you like. It's a different thing. Friends are the people I like, right? Well, mostly. I'm just kidding. I love all of you. I mean, there's a lot of people I love that I don't always like. Anyway, so I don't know, and so I think that one of the things that stuck out with me about what you're gonna say and I want to highlight is the idea that--or maybe I'm misreading it--but like "pick issue to work" around seems like a good useful way. Especially if you struggle to just have friends, right? That's not like the thing that you're good at. But maybe there's a thing that you want to work on? Or having that meetup where it's like, oh, all the following people who have the following things in common, let's meet up and talk about it. Or honestly, activism is a really good way to meet people and work closely with people about things. And it doesn't necessarily have to mean these are now your friends. But they can be people where you rely on each other. And that doesn't have to be the same. I think about it a lot because I live in a fairly isolated and rural environment where there's not a lot of people around me who are culturally.... Whatever, there's not a lot of out, queer people where I live. There's not a lot of punks. And I'm like, that's okay. I talk to my actual neighbors instead. I mean, some of them, not all of them, but most of them, you know, they're who I would rely on in a crisis, because they're right there. It doesn't mean that we have the same ideas about a lot of stuff, you know? But we have similar ideas, like, "Let's not die," right? And so that's enough sometimes. Anyway, I just wanted to.... **Leah ** 36:12 No, I really appreciate it. And I mean that makes me kind of think about, when you were talking, I was like, yeah, you know, there's friends, there's communities, and then there's survival networks, which can include contacts, right? Because I just think about what would I do right now, if some should happened? And I was like, I've got long distance kin and long term friendships and relationships ofvarious kinds and I also have--because I moved to where I live, which is like semi-rural, but definitely more rural than where I've lived before--and I'm just like, yeah, I have a small number of friends. But there's like people who I know who I can...who are neighbors who like, maybe we don't know a shit ton about each other but I could be like, "Hey, this thing?" or "Hey, do you have water?" or, "Hey, let's do this." I think it's a lot about thinking about what are your goals? Is your goal intimacy? Is your goal survival? Is your goal friendship? Because you need different levels of trust and commonality depending on those things, right? I also think, and this is the thing too, I think something.... I think a lot of times because I've had people be like, "Well, I don't have community," also, I've heard that. And I think that a lot of times the context, I hear it in is people being like, "Well, I have care needs, but I don't have any community." So then there's also the really big thorny question of "need" and like being cared for is actually very complicated. It's very risky. It's very vulnerable. It's not safe a lot of the time. It may feel a lot easier to just be like, "I don't have any fucking needs." And so there's a lot, I will just say that there's a lot of unpacking that needs to do around like, "What would I need to be cared for? What are my lower risk needs that I need help with? What are my higher risk needs?" right? Like, there's people who I can.... There's some needs I have where I'm like, I don't need to trust you super, super deep politically or on an intimate level to let you do that. There are certain needs where I'm like, that's only going to be people where we've really built a lot of fucking trust because if this goes sideways you could really stuck with me. Right? And I think that when you're starting from nowhere, I think often where people get stuck is like, "Where I am feels like I have nobody and nothing. And I want to get to like the thing I've read about in your topic science fiction, where you know, it's Star Hawk and everybody loves each other. And how the fuck do I get from A to B." And I think the solution is like, yeah, you're not gonna get to fucking "Fifth Sacred Thing" right away--and that book is complicated. **Margaret ** 38:29 Yeah, It was very influential on my early.... **Leah ** 38:31 Oh yeah, when I was 18, I just wanted to fucking move there. And now I'm like, "Oh God, this is embarrassing. There's some shit in here." I'm like, "Wow, everybody's mixed race, but everyone's Black parents are dead." Wow. Cool. Nobody really thinks about race. I'm like, I'm gonna throw up. And like, you know, BDSM is just violent....Okay, sorry. We're not going to get into that. **Margaret ** 38:47 Oh my God, I don't remember that part. **Leah ** 38:49 Oh, yeah. No, where it's so violent. Like, "We're just loving." And I wrote a really no passion paper for school, because we actually had to read it in a college class I was in, and I was like, "Why are they not into leather sexuality?" And my professor was like, "Okay, 18 year old..." but yeah. **Margaret ** 39:04 I mean, legit. You 18 year old self had a legitimate critique. **Margaret ** 39:08 Yeah. **Leah ** 39:08 Yeah, no, there's a lot there. But, um, but jumping back, I guess it's just like, you know.... And I think this feels like disabled wisdom too, it's like, what can you do with the spoons or the capacity you have? Like, what's one move you can make that small? And then can you build on that? Yeah, but can I talk about alternatives to lying down and dying? **Leah ** 39:28 Yeah. Well, I think...I mean, this is the thing, is like, I'm a survivalist, but I'm not like anti-civilization in the ways that some people are. Like, I want meds, you know? And I think that's something that other crips I know talk about a lot, which is like, you know, we're really against this way that some people, including some people who would like align themselves with like Healing Justice who are like "We're like, oh, yeah, we just have to go back before colonialism and capitalism, and just everyone lived on herbs and it was great." and I was like, "Nah, bitch, I need surgery and meds." Like I want it all. Like, I love non-Western pre-colonial traditional healing. Absolutely. And I've had friends who died because they didn't get their surgeries on time. Like my friend LL died because nobody would give him a fucking kidney because they said he was too fat. And I'm just like, my good future involves.... I mean, and he's one of millions right? So like, my good future involves that we have surgical suites. And I'm just like, you know, honestly, also, a lot of times that worldview just seems so white to me, because I'm just like, listen, a lot of like, global south places figure out how to have field hospitals, right, in really dire and low-resource situations. So I'm sorry.... **Margaret ** 40:40 I mean, only Europoe's ever figured out surgery. No one else has done surgery until Europe showed up. [Said sarcastically implying the opposite] **Leah ** 40:45 Yeah, not fucking ever. [Also said sarcastically] **Margaret ** 40:46 Said the people who are like, "bite down stick and I'll saw your arm off." **Leah ** 40:49 Yeah, so I mean, I guess one thing I would just say is like, I would say that and I would say like, you know, really...I want to like lift up and encourage people to look at--and they can be hard to find--but look at cultures, look at organizing initiatives where people were like, "We can have our own ambulance, we can have our own like..." And when that's not there, to think about what it would mean to have medical care after the apocalypse, right? What would it mean to make hormones, make drugs, synthesize chemicals, and it's not impossible. I think that we're still in the in between of like, okay, we gotta figure out how to do that. But, um, you know, I'm thinking about, Ejeris Dixon, who's my friend and comrade, and, you know, we co-edited "Beyond Survival" together, which is a book we wrote that came out right at the beginning of the pandemic about stories and strategies from how people are actually trying to create safety without the cops. Ejeris always talks about how they were like, "Yeah, like, in Louisiana, you know, in the South, you know, like in the 50s, and 60s, and before I believe, there were all kinds of Black run ambulance and 911 services," because regular 911 wouldn't come to Black communities. Right? And they, I mean, something that I've heard them say a lot over the years is like, "We don't have the people's ambulance yet. But we could." And then it makes me also jump to some friends of mine who were in Seattle who were really active as street medic crew during the rebellions after George George Floyd was murdered by the police in, you know, 2020 in the summer, and specifically in, as some people remember, Seattle managed to have 16 square blocks break off from the city for a while, CHOP, Capitol Hill Organized Front. And so what people don't know is that the cops were like, "Okay, fuck you. We're not going to...If there's any 911 ambulance calls, we're not going to fucking let anyone go in there." So the street medic crew had to deal with a lot of really intense situations. And then after that, like a lot of us folks, like some folks were already nurses or EMTs and a lot of folks who were involved went to nursing school or EMT school and we're like--and I don't know where it's at now--but they were like, "We want to create,"--because right now in Seattle, there's, if somebody is having a crisis on the street, like a medical or a mental health crisis or an altered state crisis, there's no non-911 crisis response that you can call. There's either you go down the stairs to talk to somebody or there's the cops, right. And they were like, "We can get a van. We can get medical equipment from eBay." And you know, I don't know where they're at with that, but they were really organizing around like, "Yeah, we could get a defibrillator. We could get oxygen. We could get blood pressure cuffs. We could get fucking..." you know? And I think that that shit gets complicated in terms of insurance and regulation and the State and the medical industrial complex, but I want us to keep thinking about that. I also, and then I'll wrap up because we have other questions to get to, but it also makes me think about, I mean, I don't know if folks are familiar with Gretchen Felker Martin's amazing science fiction book "Manhunt," right, which is about.... **Margaret ** 43:50 I haven't read it yet. **Leah ** 43:52 It's so fucking good. Okay, so I won't give it away. But just for people who don't know, I'd say it's the one kind of gender sci-fi book where "Oh, a virus, you know, affects people with certain chromosomes or certain that dih-dah-dug that's not TERFy because it's a book that, you know, she's trans, and it's a book that centers trans women and nonbinary communities and there's like one or two trans masculine characters. But the two main trans femme, like trans women characters in the book, they're like, they have to, they're like, "Yeah, like, we're going on raids to get, you know, hormones, and, you know, different, like chemical drugs we need. And we're also figuring out how to synthesize them from herbs and different substances." And it's not easy. It's a struggle. But there are organized communities of trans women and allies that are fighting to do it. And I'm just like, yeah, and I mean, it's an amazingly well written book, and she's incredible, and I fucking loved it. And it's just beautifully written and really just--sorry, I won't gush too much but go read it, it's incredible--I just really also appreciated it because she was like, "Yeah, of course we're gonna get our hormones after the end of the world. Like of course it's possible." And I will also.... I have some criticisms of the ableism in it, but M.E. O'Brien and--fuck I'm forgetting the second author's name, but every you know, "Everything For Everyone," that book. I appreciated how in the good future society, they're like, "Our priority is making sure that insulin and chemical drugs and hormones are accessible and free to everybody." And I was like, I guess I would just push people towards there are ways of imagining the future where we can defeat capitalism but still have medical care of all kinds. We can have Reiki and acupuncture and we can also hormone surgery and transplants. And we might be doing it better because it's not controlled by fucking corporations and assholes. Sorry, that's my soapbox. Um, okay. I will say in terms of people being like, "That's really nice. But what about me?" I would be like, you know, I mean, right now in the war on trans America, there are so many people already who are like, "Yeah, I'm stockpiling meds. I like doing meds trading." I would say it goes back to what we started about, which is like, "Okay, what are your needs? What are the things that you're worried will not be there if the world ends?" Right? And we also need to recognize that the world's already ending and it's ended for some of us a bunch of times already. But I would be like, make that list and then really be like, "Alright, how do I get it?" You know, and if I can't specifically get it, are there like backups that I can get? And it may be stuff that you can research on your own. It also might be stuff where it's like, "Okay, are there trans [untranslatable], disability justice organizations, nationally, globally, locally, that you can hit up and be like, "What are folks thoughts about this? Are there ways that we can resource share?" Because I think it's about pills. I think it's also about durable medical equipment. So in terms of stuff that requires power to live, I think about generators and I think about generator shares. And I think about things like...there's a story when Hurricane Sandy hit New York 10 years ago, there were a whole bunch of us where...there's a guy Nick who's in community who, physically disabled guy, 13th floor, accessible apartment, you know, the lights went out, you know, really dependent on electricity to change out the batteries on his ventilator. There's a whole crew of disabled folks, like people walked up and down those fucking stairs every eight hours to take the spent batteries, figured out, "Hey, you know, what still has power, the fucking fire department." People were walking down recharging the batteries every eight hours. And it was allies, it was ambulatory, it was disabled people who could walk. It was fucking hard. But people were like, we're not.... Nick and his friends were like, "We're not just going to die. We're needed." So I wanna shoutout that and just for possibility modeling, I really want to, one other place I want to shout out, is an org that used to be known as Portlight but was now known as the Center for Inclusive Disaster Strategies, which is a disabled-led organization that is about like, yeah, when there's a climate or other disaster, they figure out ways of getting like accessible fucking evacuation methods to places because they know...we know, there's millions of examples of people who are just left to die in nursing homes or like, "Oops, the bus doesn't have a ramp," or, you know, I really want to name that during Katrina, some people might know about, you know, the situation with the nursing home that was there were a lot of folks who were wheelchair users or had high care needs were fucking killed by medical staff because the medical staff were like, "We're gonna actually euthanize these folks without their knowledge or consent." [Margaret exclaims] Yeah, no, there was actually a movie on HBO about it I think semi recently. Because "that's easier than figuring out how to fucking get people in the medivac ," right? Yeah, and so the Partnership for Inclusive Disaster Strategies, I'm still getting to know them, but I have friends who are involved and they're like, "Yeah, we're aware this is an issue." So yeah, let's work with the fucking Cajun fucking Navy to like make sure that you can get folks with different bodies onto evac boats. Like let's figure out what disabled survival looks like. And I will just say, and this is the last thing I swear, for me, I mean, we all know water is important. Like, I can't lift 54 pounds. Guess what? So can't--which is, you know, a seven gallon right, like a five or seven gallon whatever--I'm just like, yeah, so I can actually have smaller jugs of water that I can lift. So yeah, I have a bug out plan, but I also have a real Shelter in Place plan because I'm just like, yeah, my apartment's accessible for me. So yeah, I got a shit ton of water right here and I'll be good for a while. And I also have a plan B for.... Okay, there's...I've got my filtration equipment, so when that runs out, I'm close to some water sources where I can go and I can filter that shit. And that's me thinking about what works for my body. Think about what works for yours and then plan out from that. Okay, I'll really stop talking now. **Margaret ** 49:44 No, no, but there's so much there. Even just like to go to the weight of water, right? The thing that I ran across that I'm like--I'm reasonably able-bodied and such like that, right--but I live alone and so obviously there's this specific thing where like.... Well, one, I mean, abledness is always a temporary position.... **Leah ** 50:04 Yeah, you're going to get disabled, you're gonna get sick and disabled. **Margaret ** 50:07 Like it literally happens to--unless you, I don't know, die very quickly, very suddenly, probably violently, you're gonna go through a period of disability in your life, you know? And so my argument is that machismo is anti-prepping. And one of the ways that I would say is that like, there's now, I think.... Okay, so cement bags, they come in 50 pound bags traditionally, right? But now there's more and more, I think, there seems to be more and more 30 pound bags, right? And I used to be like, "Oh, whatever, I can lift a 50 pound bag. So I should carry the 50 pound bag." And then I'm like, well, it was not a helpful way to look at it. It is far better for me to just have 30 pound bags of cement because they're easier to carry and I'll get tired less. And I, you know, at the time that I was pouring these bags, I lived up a hill about probably the equivalent of a seven storey walk up to this cabin that I was building, right. And so I had to carry each and every one. It was way nicer that I carry 30 pound bags. And if your preparedness doesn't include the fact that your level of ability will change in different situations, then it's not very good preparedness. And and so like, I don't know, I mean, like most of my water jugs are four or five gallon jugs. I use jerry cans. I think most of them are five gallon. And I hate the six gallon ones and the seven gallon ones. They're just heavy and annoying. And it's like I can give lift them but there's no reason why I should. Unless I'm specifically working on lifting weights. And then the other thing that you talked about that I really think about a lot, you know, is this idea, of does your version of disaster mean that every doctor dies? Or like, does your version of disaster mean everyone who's ever made insulin dies? Like, it's possible. Sure, you could have 90...if almost everyone on Earth dies, then everything is a little different. But most disasters don't actually..... Most disasters destroy ways of living and large numbers of people, but not the majority of people write. Most people survive most disasters. And, people are like, "Well, our organizational systems are what produce insulin," and like, no, people produce insulin and they use organizational systems with which to do it. But different organizational systems can also produce insulin. Like different organizational systems can use the same infrastructure sometimes and make the things that we rely on. And it came up with this like whole thing where people on the internet were like, "Ah, if you're an anarchist, you hate disabled people because in anarchy, you can't have insulin," **Leah ** 50:28 That's gross. **Margaret ** 52:40 It is a complete misunderstanding of anarchism. It is not a lack of organization, it is a different type of organization. **Leah ** 52:46 Anarchy is responsibility. **Margaret ** 52:48 Yes, totally. **Leah ** 52:50 Sorry, sorry. **Margaret ** 52:52 That's why people don't like it. People are afraid of it because they actually have to.... It's the accepting no one is coming to save us except us. You know? No, I love that way of framing and it also annoys anarchists when you tell them this too. **Leah ** 53:07 Okay, well, I mean, you know, so I worked at Modern Times books, which was, you know, is no longer around, but was a long time anarchists and anti authoritarian radical bookstore in the Bay. And we had the only public toilet in all of the Mission because everybody else was like, "No, you gotta buy something." and in my interview, they're like, "How will you make the store better?" And I was like, "I will make the bathroom not smell horrible." Because, you know, it was just like a bust, everyone was pissing in there. And so I taped up a sign that said "Anarchy is responsibility. If you spray the fucking toilet with urine, please wipe it up. Together we can have a toilet." And somebody called me out and was like, "That's capitalist." And I was like, "No, just wipe your piss up or we're not gonna make the revolution. Like, come on." But yeah, they got pissed at me about that. [Both laugh] But yeah, I mean, I think that's a really good point. And it's like, you know, I mean, I think that it does point to, you know, I think a structural problem in a lot of our movements, which is like, yeah, we don't we need more people who know some basics of chemistry and can synthesize stuff. Like, that's, you know, we need more people who've gone to some kind of science or engineering school who can figure out how sewage works and how you synthesize insulin and how you synthesize hormones and like, basic surgery. And I think there's a lot of hopefulness because I--maybe it's just the folks I hang out with--but I have a fair number of friends who are like, "Yeah, I'm gonna be a nurse practitioner. I can give you an abortion. I can sew up your wound. I can help you figure out this thing." And I'd love for there to be more of us who can go to PA school or

In our utmost solidarity, The Red Nation has remained diligent in responding and taking action in the movements toward Palestinian liberation. The Red Nation was joined by: Anthony from MN Anti-War Committee, Rachel Dionne-Thunder with Indigenous Protector Movement, Nicole Mason with Camp Nenookassi, Sana Wazwaz with American Muslims for Palestine, Jae Yates with Twin Cities Coalition for Justice 4 Jamar Clark, and David Gilbert Pederson with MN Workers United & Freedom Road Socialist Organization. Hosted at the New City Center for Healing Justice in Minneapolis. Watch the video edition on The Red Nation Podcast YouTube channel Date of recording: Sunday, December 3rd. Are you Indigenous? Do you support Palestine? Learn more about joining the Indigenous solidarity with Palestine movement and sign the letter here: https://indigenousforpalestine.org/ Support www.patreon.com/redmediapr

How might reparations be envisioned through healing justice? Envision a healing path for Black Americans, one that encompasses emotional, mental, and physical well-being support. The concept of community care in this context visualizes reparative justice through the provision of mind-body health services to empower and heal Black communities.

Allison Vincent is a performer, director, writer, and teacher known for devised work, physical theatre, and gender-bending performances. She has been honored to collaborate with companies and theaters across the Twin Cities, including The History Theater, Jon Ferguson Theater, WLDRNSS, Theater Forever, The Four Humors, Mainly Me, The Illusion, The Guthrie, Frank Theatre, Sod House, Strike Theatre, Transatlantic Love Affair, the University of Minnesota, and Walking Shadow. Allison has received two Ivey Awards for her work creating performance in ensembles and three Golden Lanyard Awards from the MN Fringe as a director.  In addition to performing, Allison is a co-artistic director and founding member of Transatlantic Love Affair, a teaching artist at the Guthrie Theater and Loft Literary Center, and has collaborated as a writer on over twenty produced scripts. In 2022 Allison wrote and performed a solo storytelling show about caretaking for her father succumbing to dementia as a Pillsbury House + Theatre's Naked Stages Fellow. Recently she's had her scripts published in The Empty Room, Rejection Letters, Dirty Girls Come Clean, and Roi Fainéant Press. She teaches at the University of Minnesota in the Writing Studies Department's First Year Writing Program. LinkedIn   Taja Will (they/them) is a non-binary, chronically ill, queer, Latinx (Chilean) adoptee. They are a performer, choreographer, somatic therapist, consultant and Healing Justice practitioner based in Mni Sota Makoce, on the ancestral lands of the Dakota and Anishinaabe. Taja's approach integrates improvisation, somatic modalities, text and vocals in contemporary performance. Their aesthetic is one of spontaneity, bold choice making, sonic and kinetic partnership and the ability to move in relationship to risk and intimacy. Will's artistic work explores visceral connections to current socio-cultural realities through a blend of ritual, dense multi-layered worldbuilding and everyday magic. Taja initiates solo projects and teaching ventures and is a recent recipient of the Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship, in the dance field, awarded in 2021. Their work has been presented throughout the Twin Cities and across the United States. Including local performances at the Walker Art Center Choreographer's Evening, the Red Eye Theater's New Works 4 Weeks, the Radical Recess series, Right Here Showcase and the Candy Box Dance Festival. They were the recipient of a 2018-'19 McKnight Choreography Fellowship, administered by the Cowles Center and funded by The McKnight Foundation. Will has recently received support from the National Association of Latinx Arts & Culture, the Minnesota State Arts Board, and Metropolitan Regional Arts Council. Website Link

Black Queer Feminists Cara Page and Erica Woodland's work focuses on political and spiritual liberation grounded in Black, Indigenous, People of Color, and Queer and Trans healing justice lineages. Their work guides individuals through the history, legacies, and liberatory practices of healing justice—a political strategy of collective care and safety that intervenes in the generational trauma caused by systemic violence and oppression. In this episode, Cara and Erica discuss their recent collaboration as editors of the anthology Healing Justice Lineages, a profound and urgent call to embrace community and survivor-led care strategies as models that push beyond commodified self-care, the policing of the medical industrial complex, and the surveillance of the public health system. This episode was recorded during a live online event on February 2, 2023. A transcript is available at ciispod.com. You can also watch it on the CIIS Public Programs YouTube channel. To find out more about CIIS and public programs like this one, visit our website ciis.edu and connect with us on social media @ciispubprograms. We hope that each episode of our podcast provides opportunities for growth, and that our listeners will use them as a starting point for further introspection. Many of the topics discussed on our podcast have the potential to bring up feelings and emotional responses. If you or someone you know is in need of mental health care and support, here are some resources to find immediate help and future healing: -Visit 988lifeline.org or text, call, or chat with The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline by dialing 988 from anywhere in the U.S. to be connected immediately with a trained counselor. Please note that 988 staff are required to take all action necessary to secure the safety of a caller and initiate emergency response with or without the caller's consent if they are unwilling or unable to take action on their own behalf. -Visit thrivelifeline.org or text “THRIVE” to begin a conversation with a THRIVE Lifeline crisis responder 24/7/365, from anywhere: +1.313.662.8209. This confidential text line is available for individuals 18+ and is staffed by people in STEMM with marginalized identities. -Visit translifeline.org or call (877) 565-8860 in the U.S. or (877) 330-6366 in Canada to learn more and contact Trans Lifeline, who provides trans peer support divested from police. -Visit ciis.edu/counseling-and-acupuncture-clinics to learn more and schedule counseling sessions at one of our centers. -Find information about additional global helplines at www.befrienders.org.

Today, we're getting into the world of professional sports. Ja Morant is a basketball player for the Memphis Grizzlies who has been in the news this year for multiple incidents of misconduct and erratic behavior and was suspended from multiple NBA games, including his most recent bout of cryptic messages on social media that led to a welfare check by Tennessee police. But what we want to talk about is how we can reframe these events and their aftermath in a more liberatory, anti-oppressive way. Content note: this episode will contain discussion of guns and gun culture Listen to the full episode to hear: A brief history of Morant's misconduct and why the morality clause in his contract matters more than whether he broke any laws How public perception and brand management shape the consequences of actions like Morant's How systemic oppression and limited opportunities lead to athletes being upheld as role models when they shouldn't necessarily be Why it matters that Morant is only 23 The NBA's evolving response to gun culture in the last decade A youth development approach to handling these kinds of cases that actually supports the person in making change Support the show on Patreon: patreon.com/nothowthatworks Learn more about Trudi Lebron: Website: www.trudilebron.com/ Instagram: www.instagram.com/trudilebron/ Learn more about Louiza “Weeze” Doran: Website: www.accordingtoweeze.com/ Instagram: www.instagram.com/accordingtoweeze/

On this episode of Wellspringwords: The Podcast, Nkem speaks with Jahan Mantin, Co-founder of Project Inkblot, on the power of being in your personal process. Through the discussion, the two share notes about the importance of remaining connected to the heart when in any creation process, keeping life curious and exploratory, and walking a liberatory path - no matter the circumstance. We hope this conversation helps to expand your vision and support you on your journey of wholeness. Enjoy! Let us know what this conversation brought to mind or heart for you in a podcast review, on Instagram, or via email at bewell@wellspringwords.love. Be well!View this episode's complete shownotes on our website here: www.wellspringwords.love/podcast------------Find Jahan + Project Inkblot here:www.projectinkblot.com/www.instagram.com/projectinkblot/------------Find Nkem here:www.bynkem.co/@naturallyfree123------------Find Wellspringwords here:www.wellspringwords.love/@wellspringwordsDon't forget to rate, review, share and subscribe!Want to show more love? Leave us a tip to support this growing platform. :)Find Wellspringwords here: www.wellspringwords.love/ @wellspringwords ------------Find Nkem here: www.bynkem.co/ @naturallyfree123 ------------Don't forget to rate, review, share and subscribe! Want to show more love? Leave us a tip to support this growing platform. :)

This epsiode of Finding Refuge is pure fire! I had the honor and privilege of interviewing Cara Page and Erica Woodland, co-editors of Healing Justice Lineages: Dreaming at the Crossroads of Liberation. Read more below about the themes we weaved together during the interview and about Cara and Erica. Cara Page is a Black Queer Feminist cultural memory worker & organizer. For the past 30+ years, she has organized with LGBTQI+/Black, Indigenous & People of Color liberation movements in the US & Global South at the intersections of racial, gender & economic justice, healing justice and transformative justice. She is founder of Changing Frequencies, an abolitionist organizing project that designs cultural memory work to disrupt harms and violence from the Medical Industrial Complex (MIC). She is also co-founder of the Healing Histories Project; a network of abolitionist healers/health practitioners, community organizers, researchers/historians & cultural workers building solidarity to interrupt the medical industrial complex and harmful systems of care. We generate change through research, action and building collaborative strategies & stories with BIPOC-led communities, institutions and movements organizing for dignified collective care.As one of the architects of the healing justice political strategy, envisioned by many in the South and deeply rooted in Black Feminist traditions and Southern Black Radical Traditions, she is co-founder and core leadership team member of the Kindred Southern Healing Justice Collective. She was the Executive Director of the Audre Lorde Project in New York City and is a former recipient of the OSF Soros Equality Fellowship (2019-2020) and ‘Activist in Residence' at the Barnard Center for Research on Women. She was also chosen as Yerba Buena Cultural Center's ‘YBCA100'in 2020. Cara has organized and co-created with many political and cultural institutions & organizations nationally & internationally including Center for Documentary Studies, Third World Newsreel, Sins Invalid, Southerners on New Ground (SONG), Project South, INCITE! Women & Trans People of Color Against Violence, Bettys Daughter Arts Collaborative, and most recently the EqualHealth Campaign Against Racism, the National Queer & Trans Therapist of Color Network, Disability Project of Transgender Law Center, Astraea Lesbians for Justice Foundation and the Anti-Eugenics Project; toward building & resourcing racial, gender & healing justice strategies for our liberation, collective care & safety. Her forthcoming book, co-edited by Erica Woodland, entitled “Healing Justice Lineages: Dreaming at the Crossroads of Liberation, Collective Care & Safety” (North Atlantic Books) will be out in February 2023.Erica Woodland, LCSW is a Black queer, trans masculine/genderqueer facilitator, consultant, psychotherapist and healing justice practitioner who was born, raised, and is currently based in Baltimore, MD. He has worked at the intersections of movements for racial, gender, economic, trans and queer justice and liberation for more than 20 years. He has extensive experience working with young people, Black, Indigenous and People of Color, LGBTQ people, and people with disabilities across the country, from Baltimore to the San Francisco Bay Area. Erica is the Founding Director of the National Queer and Trans Therapists of Color Network (NQTTCN), a healing justice organization that actively works to transform mental health for Queer and Trans Black, Indigenous and People of Color. Under his leadership, NQTTCN has trained and mobilized hundreds of mental health practitioners committed to intervening on the legacy of harm and violence of the medical industrial complex while building liberatory models of care rooted in abolition. Erica came into liberation and healing work in the early 2000s by way of harm reduction and abolitionist organizing with survivors of state, community and interpersonal violence. Working at the nexus of collective care and political liberation has been central to his practice as a clinician, facilitator, and healer. Erica has done extensive work in carceral environments including prisons, jails, and psychiatric detention centers as well as in grassroots community based organizations, giving him a wide range of experience to draw from in his liberation work. From 2012-2016, Erica served as the Field Building Director for the Brown Boi Project, a national gender justice organization, where he lead movement building work to transform masculinity and confront sexism, misogyny, and queer/transphobia.Erica is co-editor of Healing Justice Lineages: Dreaming at the Crossroads of Liberation, Collective Care and Safety, with Cara Page (North Atlantic Books, 2023). In 2017, he was awarded the Ford Public Voices Fellowship and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Culture of Health Leaders Fellowship. Erica's op-eds have been featured in Role Reboot, Yoga International and Truthout and his healing justice work has also been highlighted in Time magazine, CNN, Healthline, Complex, and the New York Times. He is also a principal author of Freeing Ourselves: A Guide to Health and Self Love for Brown Bois (Brown Boi Project, 2011).In this episode, we discuss:The Need for Healing Back, Now and Into the FutureThe Ecosystem of Healing Justice Work and PracticeAccountabilityWhat we Need to Listen to NowAncestorsHonoring Our LineagesRelationship to PlaceDestinyHarriet TubmanCollective CareMovement Work The Disorienting Nature of This TimeThe Process of Being Led to Write a BookCollective LiberationDreamingA Collective Dream for Our Future And More!You can connect with Cara on her website and Erica on his website.Purchase their book, Healing Justice Lineages, here.Podcast music by Charles Kurtz+ Read transcript

Kim & Kara start off a little-slap happy discussing their current struggles. They share coping mechanisms, titanium teeth, Kara hitting half a million followers on the clock app, and Kim's love of all things Kim Possible.  They welcome Amanda Knox to the conversation to tackle subjects like "unpopular" trauma-responses, secondary survivors, and why she agreed to partake in the documentary project about the miscarriage of justice in her case.  Amanda Knox is an exoneree, journalist, public speaker, and author of the New York Times best-selling memoir Waiting to Be Heard. Between 2007 and 2015, she spent nearly four years in an Italian prison and eight years on trial for a murder she didn't commit. Amanda and her husband Christopher produce and host Labyrinths, a podcast about the winding, unexpected paths in people's lives. She is an Editor at Large at New Thinking Magazine, and sits on the board of the Frederick Douglass Project for Justice, whose mission is to humanize the incarcerated. She is also an Innocence Network ambassador. Learn more from Amanda: Website: KnoxRobinson.com Podcast: Labyrinths hosted by Amanda Knox and Christopher Robinson Instagram: @Amamaknox Twitter: @Amandaknox Amanda's CTA: Learn about Healing Justice, founded by Jennifer Thompson, Lenora Claire Consulting, and help support your local Innocence Project. Like what we're doing here? Be sure to subscribe, rate, review, and show all the love. The more people this show can reach, the more it can help.  https://www.survivorsguidetotruecrime.com/ Submit your questions using our handy dandy form or by emailing hello@survivorsguidetotruecrime.com for future Q&A episodes. Don't forget to follow us on social media: Instagram @SurvivorsGuideToTrueCrime  TikTok @SGTCpod Facebook @Survivor'sGuideToTrueCrime YouTube @Survivor'sGuideToTrueCrime Twitter @SGTCpod The theme music used in Survivor's Guide to True Crime is Uplifting Motivational Stomp by MarcusWay

In this sweet dive into the new anthology Healing Justice Lineages, adrienne and Autumn get the incredible honor of interviewing Cara Page and Erica Woodland on the sacred journey of generating and gathering this text as they launch their book tour. GET THE BOOK HERE! --- HEALING JUSTICE LINEAGES PLAYLIST --- SUPPORT OUR SHOW! --- Music by Tunde Olaniran and Mother Cyborg --- HTS ESSENTIALS SUPPORT Our Show on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/Endoftheworldshow PEEP us on IG https://www.instagram.com/endoftheworldpc/ TWEET @ us https://twitter.com/endoftheworldPC --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/how-to-survive-the-end-of-the-world/message