Podcasts about movement generation

In autumn of 2024, a diverse crowd of artists, activists, and community members gathered at the New Parkway Theater on occupied Ohlone land known as Huchiun for a private screening co-hosted by the Center for Cultural Power and Movement Generation. Excited to immerse themselves in stories of climate justice, the audience came for the debut of two short films: Remembering Our Way Forward by Lily Xie and hija de Florinda by Shenny de los Angeles & iiritu, the latest projects from CCP's Climate Woke campaign's "Create With Us" contest.On this episode, we share a recording of the event, including poetry by Aniya Butler, artist panel discussion, and audio from both films, complete with narrated visual descriptions.EVENT ORGANIZERSCenter for Cultural PowerMovement GenerationFILMMAKERS & PANELISTSRemembering Our Way by Lily Xiehija de Florinda by Shenny de Los Angeles & iirituBoth films are available for community screenings. Reach out to krystle@culturalpower.org to find out how to set up a screening in your community.MC: Dominique DrakefordPOET: Aniya Butler with Youth Vs. ApocalypseGIVE SHUUMI LAND TAX: Sogorea Te Land TrustThank you to We Rise technical advisor, Freewill Franklin for coming out to record the event & offering your expertise, always.

What is our relationship to the land, to its other-than-human inhabitants, and to the rest of humanity? These are fundamental questions for thinking through how we can transform ourselves in ways that allow a multiplicity of ecologies and human communities to thrive alongside one another. And these questions are not just fundamental to us as individuals—they are essential to how we view our cultures, traditions, institutions, and ways of knowing.Layel Camargo lives at the vibrant intersection of ecological justice, queer liberation, and indigenous culture—a cultural space that offers a distinctive vantage point on how our societies work, while holding enormous potential to both see and reorient our relationships to the land and to one another.Layel Camargo is an organizer and artist who advocates for the better health of the planet and its people by restoring land, healing communities, and promoting low-waste and low-impact lifestyles. Layel is a transgender and gender non-conforming person who is an indigenous descendant of the Yaqui and Mayo tribes of the Sonoran Desert.I met Layel at a climate storytelling retreat in New York City in 2019, where I became a huge fan of their work and of their way of being in the world.Layel is a founder of the Shelterwood Collective, a Black, Indigenous, and LGBTQ-led community forest and retreat center, healing people and ecosystems through active stewardship and community engagement.Our conversation explores the idea of culture as strategy in confronting the climate crisis, diving into Layel's work in video, podcasting, and poetry and the origins of their approach to this work of healing people and planet.You can listen on Substack, Apple Podcasts, and other podcast platforms.Please rate, review, and share to help us spread the word!Layel CamargoLayel Camargo is a cultural strategist, land steward, filmmaker, artist, and a descendant of the Yaqui tribe and Mayo tribes of the Sonoran Desert. Layel is also transgender and non-binary. They graduated from UC Santa Cruz with dual degrees in Feminist Studies and Legal Studies. Layel was the Impact Producer for “The North Pole Show” Season Two. They currently produce and host ‘Did We Go Too Far' in conjunction with Movement Generation. Alongside Favianna Rodriguez and at the Center for Cultural Power, they created ‘Climate Woke,' a national campaign to center BIPOC voices in climate justice. Wanting to shape a new world, they co-founded ‘Shelterwood Collective'. The collective is a land-based organization that teaches land stewardship, fosters inventive ideation, and encourages healing for long-term survival. Layel was a Transformative Justice practitioner for 6 years and still looks to achieve change to the carceral system in all of their work. Most recently, Layel was named on the Grist 2020 Fixers List, and named in the 2019 Yerba Buena Center of the Arts list of ‘People to Watch Out For.'Quotation Read by Layel Camargo“You wanna fly, you got to give up the s**t that weighs you down.” - Toni Morrison, Song of SolomonRecommended Readings & MediaTranscriptIntroJohn Fiege  What is our relationship to the land, to its other-than-human inhabitants, and to the rest of humanity? These are fundamental questions for thinking through how we can transform ourselves in ways that allow a multiplicity of ecologies and human communities to thrive alongside one another. And these questions are not just fundamental to us as individuals—they are essential to how we view our cultures, traditions, institutions, and ways of knowing.Layel Camargo lives at the vibrant intersection of ecological justice, queer liberation, and indigenous culture—a cultural space that offers a distinctive vantage point on how our societies work while holding enormous potential to both see and reorient our relationships to the land and to one another.And besides that, Layel is hilarious.Layel Camargo My passion for humor has come from has been maintained by a lot of data and information that I've gotten around just the importance of people being able to process things through laughter. And that the climate crisis is nothing to make mockery and or to laugh, there's this is very serious. The ways in which our species is kind of being at threat of extinction, and right before our eyes. But I think that as humans, we're so complex and layered, and we're so beautiful in the sense that we get to feel so intensely, and feeling is what motivates us to take action. And laughter helps you process so much data quicker, it helps you be able to take something in, embrace it, release, and then have it make an impression.John Fiege  I'm John Fiege, and this is Chrysalis.Layel Camargo is an organizer and artist who advocates for the better health of the planet and its people by restoring land, healing communities, and promoting low-waste, low-impact lifestyles. Layel is a transgender and gender non-conforming person who is an indigenous descendant of the Yaqui and Mayo tribes of the Sonoran Desert.I met Layel at a climate storytelling retreat in New York City in 2019, where I became a huge fan of their work and of their way of being in the world.Layel is a founder of the Shelterwood Collective, a Black, Indigenous, and LGBTQ-led community forest and retreat center, healing people and ecosystems through active stewardship and community engagement.Our conversation explores the idea of culture as strategy in confronting the climate crisis, diving into Layel's work in video, podcasting, and poetry and the origins of their approach to this work of healing people and planet.Here is Layel Camargo.ConversationJohn FiegeHow you doing?Layel Camargo I'm doing pretty good. How are you doing?John Fiege I'm doing well. I've got this thing in my throat. I, so I'm going to be drinking a lot of tea. And I might have to have a bathroom break. Know, I have forgotten to take my allergy medicine. And here we are. Great. Yeah. So can you start out by telling me where you grew up? And how you viewed your relationship to the rest of nature when you were a kid?Layel Camargo Yeah. Um, I can start off by Yeah. talking a little bit about where I grew up. Yeah, so I grew up on the Mexican border between Tijuana and San Diego. And my upbringing was in this very highly dense migrant community from Latinx to Philippines, because of the proximity to the military base. It was very military towns, pretty much the professions. They're like you're either work for Homeland Security, the military or police. And I didn't really notice what my upbringing was like till I left. But I grew up crossing the border back and forth. My grandmother migrated from the Sonoran Desert, to Tijuana. And that's basically where my mother was born. And she grew. She went to high school in San Diego, which is why I can say I'm an American citizen, but I'm a descendant of the Maya or the uremic tribes, my grandmother said, and then my grandfather said, The yucky tribes of the Sonoran Desert so I think for me, my connection ecologically was like the ocean Because I grew up in a beach city, and then it was also the desert, because of all the stories and my grandmother's connection to sanada. So high, I never felt like I was at home because as a queer person paid never really fit into the conservative nature of San Diego due to how militarized it is, and all this stuff. But it was through a drive, which I took from Northern California, down to Sonora, where my grandmother's family lives, when I drove through the saguaros and Arizona that I remember seeing the Saguaro forests and just like needing to pull over and just like, take them in. And I had this a visceral feeling that I don't think I've ever had before of just like being home. And I think this, this experience was like in 2016 2017. And that's when I realized that, in theory, I was a climate activist, I cared about the planet. But it wasn't until that moment that I was like, oh, what I'm actually doing is like actually fighting for us to return to be in better relationship with the planet. And this is where I belong, this is my source of my route, these trees and this desert. So because of that, and growing up in proximity to the beach, water conservation has always been an area of like passion for me and caring about the ocean, which pushed me to a practice of lowering my plastic consumption and being more mindful of oil consumption. And the desert has always been a source of like grounding in regards to like place and knowing that I come from the earth. So it's kind of like I was gonna say, it's kind of like, I'm from a lot of places, I moved to Northern California in 2006. So I love the forest. But nothing speaks to my heart, like the beach in the desert.John Fiege Well, they have sand in common. Is there? Is there a tension between the ocean pulling you in the desert pulling you or is it? Is it a beautiful harmony?Layel Camargo It's a bit of a tension. But I would say that in my body, it feels the same. They both dehydrate me and over, over like it's just a lot of heat, typically. So yeah, that it's different for Northern California beaches, because they're a little bit more Rocky and more cold. You have to wear more layers. Right? definitely like to where I grew up, it's it is warm, the sandy ness. That's a great connection, I definitely need to make that a little bit more concrete.TotallyJohn Fiege cool. Well, can you tell me more about the path you took from the neighborhood where you grew up in San Diego, to studying at UC Santa Cruz and what that experience was like for you?Layel Camargo Yeah, I, I went. So I grew up in a home where there was a lot of violence, which is very common in a lot of migrant-specific and indigenous communities. And I kind of came into my teenage years, like really realizing that I was different, but I didn't know how when it kind of got summarized in college around my queerness my sexuality and my gender, but just feeling this need of like needing to leave. It just didn't make sense for me to be there. And with that being said, I had a wonderful community. I still have quite a few friends in San Diego that I keep in touch with my sisters live there. And I was actually just started last weekend. So I, when I was in San Diego, I think a lot of my trauma responses of like, just ignore what doesn't make sense and just keep moving forward was how I kind of functioned. And that race. And I loved it, I succeeded at it. I've actually realized that I'm a performance artist because of that upbringing. Like I, you know, was captain of the water polo team. I was president of my senior class, I was featured in newspapers for my swimming. I was a competitive swimmer for 10 years. I I did, I did a you know, a good job. I had advanced placement classes and honors classes and I was well rounded but in the inside, I just didn't feel like I belonged. So I picked UC Santa Cruz to go to college because it was the farthest University and the University of California system that had accepted me. And they went and I didn't know what I was getting myself into. I visited the campus like two to three weeks before I had to actually be there to live on campus. Bass. And when my dad drove me, drove me up with my whole family drove me up and they left me they were like, are you sure you want to say I'm like, I got this, like, it was all redwoods. So it was definitely like, we went down to the local store. And it was like all these like hippie dreadlock, folks. And I was like, I don't even know what I got myself into. But I'm getting this degree, so we're good. And it was a big culture shock, I think for a lot of black and brown and indigenous youth when they have to leave their communities to attend. What is like better economic opportunities outside of them it is it's, it's more than just having to adjust, it's having to really like, Oh, I had to let go of everything I knew. And in order for me to take the most out of college, and I was fortunate enough that I had a container a university is like a container for young folks that I wasn't having to leave for work or opportunities. And so I fully immersed myself, and it allowed me to be able to identify myself sexually and through my gender, and a gave me solace, when you know, my family rejected me for coming out. And I think that I'm so fortunate that I had that experience. And then I also was able to gain double bachelor's when feminist studies and legal studies which allowed me to have some upward mobility that my family hadn't had, traditionally I was, I am the first person in my whole family to attend a four year university after high school. So I'm definitely very grateful that that path took me there. And at this point, I feel like it was not only good for me, but it was good for my whole family for me to have taken that journey.John Fiege And did you come out to them? In college or before college?Layel Camargo in college? Yeah, I was my second year, I had my first girlfriend. And I was a Resident Advisor, always I'm always trying to be the overachiever. So I was like Resident Advisor of my college, I was like, involved in every club, I was part of the dance team. And, you know, my mom called me, I just decided to actually move in with my girlfriend the following quarter. And she was like, What are you doing? I was like, Oh, my girlfriend's house. And she was like, why do you have to tell me those things. And I'm just like, because I'm not gonna lie to you. And she was like, I know, you're gay, but I just don't need you to rub it in my face. And I was like, then I guess we can't talk. And so we didn't talk for three months. And then she called me It's, it's, it's hard, you know, like, going to college is hard, especially when I went to very marginalized public schools before that. So I was struggling academically. And my solace was, like, being involved on campus, like to meet some social needs. And I was in, I was in a retention program for black and brown youth from urban communities. So that helped a lot. But I, I, my mom kind of rupturing that, really. I didn't realize what the impact was until probably a quarter the quarter into after that. And she called me three months later, and was like, so are you not gonna talk to me? And I was like, you're the one that doesn't talk to me. And she was like, well, let's just let's just try to make this work. And so we, you know, it took probably five to six years for my family to kind of fully integrate my, you know, my, my lifestyle as they, as they call it. The magic word of magic word. Yeah.John Fiege Yeah, wow. Well, you know, that's just what you need, right in the middle of college trying to adapt to, you know, crazy new culture and world is for your family to reject you.Layel Camargo Yeah, yeah. It's definitely one of those things that like a lot of queer LGBTQ folks. I, I feel like it's so normalized to us, right? And it's just like, well, when you come up, just expect to lose everything. And I think it is it now until I'm like, in my 30s, that I realized how painful that is, and how, like, it's just like, you know, one of the core things I think, as a human species is to know that you belong somewhere. And if you don't belong at home, then where do you belong? And I think for many of us, we've had to go through that unconsciously, without really thinking through that we're seeking to belong. And this theme of belonging has been something that's been coming up as I'm I navigate like, my professional career now is that like, I really do want people to feel like they belong somewhere. And the only thing I feel like makes sense as we all belong to the planet. We all belong to the same descendants and how we got here as a species and that I think that's being rejected from my family allowed me to be like weird do I belong? And so I fortunate that I had a best friend who was also queer. I had my queer community I had student governments and students social organizing. And then when I graduated, I was like, wait, like, Where else do I belong? So I went to my natural habitats like to the beach, and I picked up surfing again and scuba diving. And then it was like, Oh, I actually like I belong to the earth. Like, that's where I belong.John Fiege That's beautiful. Yeah. I love that. Oh, I am hearing some background noise.Layel Camargo Is it audio? Or is it just like,John Fiege people laughing?Layel Camargo It's my partner's on an Akai here, I'm going to shoot her a quick text. She like gets really loud because she gets so excited. Just going to share a quick text.John Fiege So before coming to climate justice work, you worked as an organizer with the Bay Area transformative justice collective. Can you tell me how your work in transformative justice informed your understanding of the climate crisis and how you approach ecological concerns?Layel Camargo Yeah, so I I organized with transformative justice for about six years. And then I you know, for folks who don't know, transformative justice is an alternative response model to violence, harm and hurt. And so similar to restorative justice, which works with the carceral system, so police, judicial systems, etc. to reform in order to help alleviate some of the biases that exists in the systems, transformative justice, as there's those systems actually don't serve certain communities like migrants, folks like that are trans, just the way that those systems just inherently violate certain people who are not included in our society fairly, was like, transparent justice exists to serve folks who cannot access or choose not to access or use the carceral system. So if you will, if you believe in defunding the police, and let's say you're sexually assaulted, you're probably not going to call the police for a rape kit, because there's probably ways that you've experienced those systems as harmful or violent. So when I started organizing were transferred to justice the spoke to me as somebody who had just come out as trans, somebody who grew up in a mixed status family, have relatives who have been deported. And I realized, like, Oh, it's actually worth investing in alternative models, besides the police. In order for us to get our needs met when crisises do happen, because they happen to all of us. And I was in it for six years, you know, we had built up, I had built a great capacity to work with people who had caused harm people who are caused domestic violence, sexual assaults and transforming their behavior and working towards reparation of relationships and or just like helping victims be able to move on after something like that happens. And it's it wasn't an easy task. And what we would come back to is we would spend like the first front of the months, trying to make sure that people's basic needs were met in order for them to slow down enough to process what had just happened. And basic needs included food included shelter, if they lived near, you know, a toxic site, what was infringing on their health, making sure that they had access to health coverage or health benefits. And that was about 60% of what we're doing was making sure that we could get the basics kind of stable so that they could jump into really honoring what it was a justice look like for them. And in doing this a handful of times, not too many, I will say I didn't think thankfully, we had a team. And so I did wasn't always having to handle everything. And we, the experiences that I did have, I was like, man, if people just had, like, a healthy environment where having to fight for housing wasn't a thing. Like we could just actually say, this is where I was born, this is where I belong, and I'm in relationship with the land. And that's how I feed myself, I clothe myself, like all these things that are kind of like indigenous traditional ways, then people could actually solve a lot of their crisis. He's in the moment without having it to be delayed years or having to rely on for it to get outsourced through the carceral system in order for them to feel like they get a minuscule amount of justice. And so I started to just be more cognizant of the way that we interact with the planet and how are everything from our legal structures to our economic structures are just completely devastating. Our environment that have led for us not to have good air quality for us not to have good clean water for us not to feel like we've belong to the earth that is right beneath us that we like, are in relationship with, with the rest of you know, most of our lives. And I, at the time I was living in West Oakland and I had just looked into the air quality report in the area I lived in, and I had the worst air quality in the whole Bay Area. And I started noticing my dog started developing like little spots on her skin, I started having like a lot of chronic coughing. And I was looking at how much money I was making. And so at the time, I was doing a lot of our pop ups, I was really passionate about zero waste, I cared about veganism, a lot of it was through the planet, and it just slowly started shifting away from Yes, I care about how we respond to violence and harm and all of that. And I want us to have alternatives that meet the needs of folks who fall through the waistline of certain systems. And at the same time, we don't even have clean water to come home to to drink when something violent happens, like we have to go buy it from, you know, a grocery store. Most of us don't even test our tap water anymore, because it's just consistently, we just grew up thinking that it doesn't, it's dirty, it's gross, it's non potable, so Right, right. I think at that moment, my heart just completely was like, I want to dive into this work 100% I want to fight for people to have clean air, like if you can't breathe, then you can't, you can't even do a lot, a lot of things. And so many black and brown people who grew up in rural communities have high rates of asthma have like low life expectancy because of air pollution, to you know, the logistics industry etc. And I just kind of fell in with all my heart in like, if I'm, if I'm against plastic put which at the time I was, like vegan for the planet and vegan for my health. And I was also really passionate about reducing plastic use. And I was like, if these are two things that I care about, I want to do it at a larger scale. So it meant that I had to really make those connections of if I want to end gender based violence, if I want to end large forms of violence, I have to start with the one common thing we have that we're constantly extracting and violating, which is the earth. And I think that that led me towards climate justice, because that is the most critical environmental crisis that we're in at this moment.John Fiege So what is the climate crisis? What what what causes is how do you how do you think about culture as a source of power and strategy for climate crisis?Layel Camargo Yeah, I mean, I this is this is really, you know, this, that this is what I do for my life is I spent the last 7 to 8 years really strategizing around what are the cultural shifts that are needed in order for us to be able to be in right relationship with the planet where things like the climate crisis are not happening, so that we can have an economic system and a political system that is serves the planet and the needs of our of us living and thriving, not surviving, which is I think, what we're stuck in as a global society now. And the, we have like quite a few things to kind of look at historically. And I think that there is a dominance of, which is we now know, it is like white supremacy, which is the idea that one group of human is like better than another group of human, and that because of that, everybody else needs to conform to the languages, the culture, the food, the clothes, the housing structures, that are pervasive, and that in, you know, the Euro centric way of living, and that has created a monoculture that is now spread at a global scale. And it's even because it's an economic sister in their economic system. Now we have global stock markets. Now we have the extraction at a global scale, for the sourcing of consumer goods that are all homogenous, and there. There's just one kind of how we do things. And I think the crisis that we're in is the ways that human have removed ourselves from our natural biodiversity relationships with our ecological systems. And then as removing ourselves we have are allowed for the rupture of a relationship that is very needed, which is if we're not integrated into the trees that are natural in our environment into trimming certain invasive species and supporting other biodiverse relationships around us, then we're crippling the ability of the soil to be healthy of the air to have the most amount of oxygen Have you Now we know that we need to be trapping carbon at such high rates. And I think that with a crisis that we're in is that we've allowed and have fallen victims to white supremacy, which was facilitated by colonization, that I, you know, that dominance of one group of people in the way of existing, and I think that's where we're at. I mean, if you look at the kelp forests, the kelp forest needs the otters, they need the, the sea urchins. But when you remove the otters and the sea urchins, you know, are not being preyed upon at a normal scale. And that's, you know, we're connecting it to white supremacy, let's assume that the sea urchins are like the dominant and because they're, they're the ones that ruled the kelp species are starting to be eradicated, and some of them are becoming a threat of extinction. And without a healthy kelp forests, you don't have healthy oxygen and maintenance of the acidification in the ocean, which, you know, couple that with global warming, and you basically have the rapid eradication of so many other natural ecosystems in the ocean that we need to survive. And so when you have one species dominating over another, it leads towards a crisis. So I think we're in a imbalance of relationships because of, of white supremacy. And that's what's causing the climate crisis we have. We have a monoculture. And so just as you look at mono cropping, as you look at anything that eradicates the health of the soil, because it doesn't have the reciprocal relationships that it needs from other crops, and are the resting in order for the soil to be healthy. This might not be speaking to everybody who's listening. But it makes sense that like, Yeah, definitely. The environment crisis is a symptom of Yes. Oh, the climate crisis is a symptom of a larger systemic problem.John Fiege Yeah. And in so many ways, white supremacy was created by colonialism, like, white supremacy is the cultural system that in some ways had to emerge to justify the political and economic brutality of colonialism. You know, it was a it was it was a way of organizing and understanding the world that justified these terrible things that were happening. And they're so it goes so much hand in hand.Layel Camargo Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I mean, I feel like I could talk about this for hours, because there's just so many ways in which we can break it down to the minute level. And then there's so many ways that we can think about solutions. And a lot of my my work and my passion is really bringing as much power as I can to black, indigenous and people of color. Because the retention of culture, language, and different ways of engaging with the world, everything from how we grow our food to how we dress and what we celebrate. And where we honor is what's going to help us be more resilient towards the impending and the realism of what the climate crisis means to a lot of our communities.John Fiege Yeah, totally. Yeah. And you're you're living and working at this really interesting intersection between ecological justice, queer liberation and indigenous culture. Can Can you talk a bit about the intersections of your identity and cultural background and their importance to you and how you orient yourself to this work?Layel Camargo Yeah, definitely. So as I mentioned, I'm a descendant of the Yaki and the Mio tribes in the Sonoran Desert. And I didn't really realize how much this matter to me, I think till about like five to six years ago, because I grew up because of the borders. Technically, I'm Mexican descent, and Mexican American salesperson in this country. But the Mexican government is similar to what we're talking about white supremacy was created by European settlers and, and a hybrid of mixture of stealing of indigenous cultures. And there are so many subgroups of different indigenous cultures. And my heritage is that both my grandfather and my grandmother's tribe as they were nomadic, and they used to migrate up and down the Sonoran Desert, before the border was there from seasonally for survival. And there's so many ways that like food that we eat, how we dress, how we talk that I didn't realize like, Oh, that makes me so much more than just Mexican American. It makes me more than just Latinx. And I think my background and being in such close proximity to immigration and the necessity of immigration or to survive because my grandmother came to Tijuana because it was industrialized and she needed work. And so when they migrated, they like left everything behind. And they never went back. Like, I think so many people leave their home, thinking that they're going to go back and they don't, their children are born in different places. And eventually, that led me to be born in a different country. And so because of that background, I am so keen to issues around native sovereignty and land back here in the United States is like the retention of keeping people in the place of their origin is a climate solution. It's a way of keeping that ancestral knowledge in the place that is needed. I mean, here in Northern California, we look at the wildfire crisis, and it's due to climate change. And it's also due to the lack of forest management, that our indigenous relatives that are native to that area have been robbed of the opportunity to maintain those forests at the scale, which is needed in order to adapt and prepare for wildfires. Yeah,John Fiege yeah, with with the prescribed burning, and all that maintenance that used to happen. That was invisible in so many ways to the European colonists, they didn't even understand that that was going on, or how it worked.Layel Camargo Yeah, and I feel like, you know, it goes back to the monoculture. And I think, because I have indigenous ancestry, because I understand the nature of needing to migrate. And the realities of migrant experience, I think I feel so passionate about keeping people in their place of origin as much as possible, and allowing for people to move freely when they have to. And I think as as the climate crisis gets worse, I started to realize just what a disservice we have made by instilling borders by having governments that have been so gatekeeping and operating off of scarcity, that we've kind of mandated a world where people can move freely people, and people have to leave their place of origin. And that these two paradox that we exist in, is creating the dehumanization of a group of people that if you cannot sustain yourself in your place of origin, because of global extraction, by the way, because of environmental degradation and the economic viability of your area, and how that creates wars and mass extraction, that that is why people migrate. But yet those same people who are creating those systems that make it difficult for you to stay in your place of origin have also created borders to not let you move freely. That paradox to me is also part of this climate crisis as because many of us are going to have to leave john, at some point, there's going to be floods, there's going to be hot water, we're experiencing a drought prices in California, I'm actually living between northern California and Southern California already. And a lot of it is because of the wildfires and my family's down here. And my family's at threat of sea level rise by living in San Diego, which San Diego filed a lawsuit against Exxon and Chevron. And I think one or two other oil companies is we're all we're all existing now in this global climate crisis, that it's not quite in our face every day, but we feel it seasonally now, so we're gonna have to be able to move. Right? So yeah, and last to say is like similar to my cultures I have I lived with an end an endocrine illness. And so air pollution is something that could severely impede my ability to reproduce my ability to function. At this point, I spend about four to five days a month in bed, working from bed, and I'm fortunate enough that I get to work remotely. But for a lot of people, we're going to see more and more ways in which the mass destruction of the planet which has led to the climate crisis is how we become to adopt ways of having different abilities or not being able to live our day to day function. So yeah, the intersecting points are just, they're overwhelming. And I think a lot of us are starting to feel that more as things start to kind of get a little worse.John Fiege Right, right. Yeah, I was talking to, to my partner the other day, she was she was talking to a fellow activist about this idea of ableism. And how, you know, so much of the discourse around it is you know, what are your abilities and, and this, this person was talking about how it it's how unstable that is. Like you can be able bodied today and tomorrow, you can be not able bodied in the same way. Because of, you know, like you say the changing air quality or something happens, or you just you're getting old, or you get sick. And it's one of those things that we've so ignored as a culture of what, what ableism really means about our assumptions about the world.Layel Camargo And like the economic viability and how our economic system is just so dependent on us being fully productive 24 seven, which I made a video on this called The Big Sea, which talks about the intersecting points of labor and how the labor crisis is actually the root of our climate crisis. Because if we can have people have a bigger imagination around how they can use their bodies, to serve their own needs, instead of serving the needs of corporate interests, how that would actually alleviate a lot of pressure on the planet. And that that would potentially lead to our most successful outcomes in regards to the climate crisis.John Fiege Yeah, totally, totally. Well, can you tell me about decolonizing conservation in the environmental movement and what that looks like to you?Layel Camargo Yeah, so I, I started during the beginning of the pandemic, I started a nonprofit called shelterwood collective, which is black and brown and indigenous queer folks who are aiming to steward land at the time, I was aiming to sort of land a month ago, we acquired a 900 acre camp in cassada, California, and Northern California and our team is about conservation efforts, specifically with forest resiliency against wildfires. Taking Western Western practices of conservation, mixing them with indigenous practices that are similarly to conservation. And I feel like when we think about conservation efforts, a lot of them have been dictated by European ways of thinking through conserving natural environments, which a lot of it is like humans are bad, nature must be left uncared for. And this does such a disservice because our indigenous ancestors knew that in order for a forest to be thriving, we needed to be in relationship with it, we needed to monitor monitor it, if there was a fun guy or a virus that was spreading their disease, that we could actually help it, he'll help trees, he'll help it spread less, if there was fires that were coming that we could trim, and tend and do controlled burns, if there was, you know, sucks anything happening where a species was struggling, that we could help support its growth and its population by you know, hunting its predators. And so I think that, that is the challenge between indigenous conservation efforts are traditional ways of just being in relationship with the natural environment and conservation is the western conservation is that we have been so removed from what it means to protect water systems, what it means to protect forests, that now we have a crisis of mismanagement we have and that more and more countries are adopting European Western perspectives because of the dominance that white supremacy has instilled that there are certain group of people that know more than we do. And that's just that's created, at least for me feels very heavy on when it comes to wildfires. There is certain areas in Northern California where there have been residential communities that have been built on wildfire lines that we know now, indigenous people knew that like every 30 years, for every 50 years, there would be a wildfire that would run through that area. And now that we're not that it's getting hotter, the gap of that time is getting shortened. And also that we're realizing that the years, hundreds of years of mismanagement, and lack of tending has led to also these extreme wildfires, that's now causing casualties outside of wildlife. And I feel like conservation needs to evolve. I think that there needs to be more understanding around the harm that Western conservation has done to not only the ecosystems but to the people who have traditionally been keeping those ecosystems. And I do feel like it's like it's evolving. I just think that it's not evolving as fast as we need. And unfortunately, with the climate climate crisis, we're gonna have to really come to recognize what do we need to move really fast on on what can wait because it just feels like Everything's urgent, we need to save the oceans as much as we need to save the forest as much as we need to Save the Redwoods as much as we need to take the rain forests and it just feels like and and that is like the natural environment, then we have like the growing list of extinction, threats of extinction for certain animals. And I think that I don't know why just came to my head. And then you have people like Bill Gates who want to eradicate a whole mosquito species. So it just feels like we're gonna have to pick and choose our battles here. And I do feel like coming to reckoning around the harm that this pervasiveness in western conservation, which isn't the idea that sometimes we are harmful to, you know, our natural ecosystems isn't a bad one. Yeah, we are. But how we got here was by completely removing ourselves and not knowing how to take care of those ecosystems, had we been in a relationship with them for the last 100 years, maybe we wouldn't be so wasteful, maybe we would have caught air pollution sooner than then our body is telling us, hey, we don't like this, this is bad, we're gonna die sooner if you keep doing this. And I think that that is a disservice. So it's beautiful to see more forest schools popping up for young people. It's beautiful to see more conservation groups trying to bring in indigenous leaders into the conversations. But I do feel like that overall idea needs to shift. And I also think that the land back movement, which is returning national parks back to indigenous hands, is going to help alleviate some of those major tensions that do not honor that certain people have been doing this for hundreds of years. And if we don't return it in this generation, we just run the risk of losing more language, more culture and more practices that we need at a larger scale.John Fiege Yeah, in protecting ecosystems is just not a complete picture of everything that's needed. Like as you say, it's important on some level, but it's it's not it's not a whole, it's not a whole understanding of of the problem or how to address it. There reminds me I was I was just reading or rereading a bit of Robin wall kimmerer book braiding sweetgrass, and she talks, she talks about this very issue a bunch about, you know, sweet grass in particulars is something where there's this, this back and forth relationship between humans and nature. And she talks about teaching one of her University classes up here in New York, and asking them at the beginning of the semester, you know, whether people are bad for the environment, and almost everybody says yes. And we alsoLayel Camargo have this this perception of we are bad. Right?John Fiege Yeah. Yeah, this Western guilt is pervasive in that as well. Which is,Layel Camargo which is facilitated by religion? Yes, religion has a very good job of making us feel like we are horrible for everything that we have sent us that we need to repent for our whole existence as like, going from embryo to sperm is actually a sin itself. So we're born with so much already on our shoulders.John Fiege I was gonna say Catholic guilt, but I feel like at this point, it's so much broader than that. Yeah, it is. So you work with the Center for cultural power. And, and one of the main projects you've done with them is climate woke. And I'd like to start by saying how much i'd love the artwork of the logo. It says climate woke. And it's in, in the style of this fabulous flashback 1980s airbrushed t shirts, with, you know, rainbow colors and sparkles. And it feels like there's so much meaning embedded in the artwork. And I wondered if you could tell me about climate woke, how the project emerge, but also like how this logo artwork reflects what this project is.Layel Camargo Yeah, so we when we started thinking about what climate woke would be, we didn't know what's going to be called climate woke it was through several meetings with different community partners, different funders and other stakeholders, where we kind of discussed that we wanted a unifying symbol for all the communities that we had been meeting and we kind of landed that we wanted something to look good to represent black Dan Brown young people between the ages of 16 to 25, something that was appealing that somebody would wear with pride. And, you know, at the time, there was a lot of like, different stuff coming up around the importance of wokeness. The it wasn't used as how we use it now, which is like political correctness. It's, it's, it's not where it is now. And so we decided to kind of ride on the, the term itself climate woke, which talks about uses black vernacular very intentionally that this is a racialized issue. And we spoke with several leaders in the black community, and at the time, it felt like it made sense. And, and so we kind of quickly were like, this makes sense kind of work. We want people to wake up to a climate crisis, but also be like down and enjoy it. And that it's different than this doom and gloom narrative that we constantly see when it comes to the environment. As it is kind of depressing when you think about it. But so we wanted it to feel like inviting. And at the time, which I think was like 2017 2018. All these like 90s was like coming back. So we sat with like two or three potential designers, and we didn't really like what we saw. And then it was heavy and agile that he Guess who is kind of a co creator of this. Also, like a globally recognized artist who was like, hold on, I got this and just like hopped on her computer through some colors, did some and we were like, We love it. Like we just love it. We wanted it to be bright. We wanted it to be inviting. And I feel like we've been successful just two weeks ago actually got a text from my executive producer who works on the planet. Well, content, it was like to send a photo of like, I believe it was a young male of color about 21 or 22 years old wearing a climate woke t shirt. And she was like, do you know where that's from? And he was like, No, I have no idea. And I was like, that's how, you know, we succeeded. Because we popularize something, we made it look so good. People don't necessarily need to make the connections, but they'll be promoting our work. And I'm sure and I get so many compliments when I wear t shirts and sweaters. And so she she told him to look up the videos. And you know, she sent me the photo. And she's like, we've I think we've succeeded. And I was like, I think we succeeded, I think we have you know. But at this moment, we are considering evolving the terminology because it doesn't feel as honoring. And we definitely are very sensitive to the fact that we use black vernacular intentionally. And it's time to kind of give it back and think through like what other ways can we popularize other terms to kind of help. It's about it's about to help kind of build the community because it was about building a group of people kind of drawing in a certain community that wouldn't necessarily be about it. And I feel like that to me was like a, we did it. We did it.John Fiege Yeah, it's it's it's definitely one of those terms that the the right has co opted and really done a number on they. Yeah, they're they're good at stealing those terms and turning them on their head. And usually, honestly, as a as a weapon back the other direction. Can you turn down your volume just to hear again, just noticing when you get excited? I get excited so much. Alright, how's that? Right? Great. Yes. So in a couple of your videos, you talk about what being climate milk means to you. And you say it means one, standing up for communities of color and communities most impacted by climate change, to complicating the conversations on climate in the environment. And three, doing something about it. Can you take me through each of these and break them down a bit?Layel Camargo Yeah, so the first one is, can you repeat it again, that's the firstJohn Fiege standing up for communities of color and communities most impacted by climate change,Layel Camargo right? That's right. Yeah, I've said it so much. And we actually haven't even recorded anything because of the pandemic. So I'm like, I haven't said it in a while. Yeah, standing up for communities of color. I think that that one to me specifically spoke to that. We need black, brown and indigenous people to feel protected and seen when it comes to the climate and environmental crisis. And that's everything from activating people in positions of power to empowering the people who come from those communities to know that this is an intersectional issue. I think that the climate crisis traditionally was like a lot of visuals of melting ice caps, a lot of visuals of the polar bears and you It's interesting because as we're getting more people narrative, I feel like the, we need to get a little bit more people narrative. And we need to return those images a little bit back, because the IPCC report has just been highlighting the rapid rates in which we were losing ice. And I think that when I initially thought of this at the time, there wasn't highlights of how indigenous people were protecting the large scale biodiversity that we have on the planet. There wasn't stories of, you know, urban, black or brown youth trying to make a difference around solutions towards climate change. And so I kind of made it my purpose that climate woke represent those demographics that we that I was important for me that black, brown and indigenous people of color were at the center of the solutions. And the complicated conversations and do something about it was that I actually feel like we have a crisis of binary versus complexity in our society. And I think that how we've gotten into this climate crisis is because everything's been painted. So black and white for us, that if you want a job, you have to be harming the planet, if you want to be unemployed, then. And then like all these hippies that are fighting to save the trees, they're taking away your job, you know. So I feel like there's so many ways in which our trauma responses just look for the patterns have been used against us. And it just felt really important for me, that people feel comfortable to complicate as much as possible, where we're gonna need different angles and different ways of looking at solutions that we need to embrace experimentation, where we need to embrace failures, and we need to really let go of these ideas that technology is going to come in and save us technology is a big reason why we got into this mess. And so I think that complicating the conversation to me was about this is like, if you are black, brown, indigenous, and you want to be a part of the climate crisis, but you have no way of integrating yourself besides talking about gender oppression, go for it, look at look at the leaders in this movement, and look at how many women are fighting and protecting, you know, at a larger global scale that don't get the visibility that they deserve. So I feel like that was my aim is to really invite that complexity. And then let's do something about it is that I don't want things to get stuck on the dialog. One of the biggest failures of the United Nations when addressing these crisises is that they don't have global jurisdiction. So they cannot actually mandate and or enforce a lot of these, it's usually done through economic influence, or like if one if we can get a first world to sign on to a certain agreement, then hopefully, they'll all do it. But then who ends up in implementing it, usually it's not the United States and Europe is not the first one to do it. And yet, we are the biggest global polluters on almost every sector you can think of. And I think that the do something about it is, for me a call to action, that we can talk about this, we can try to understand carbon emissions, methane emissions, global greenhouse, carbon markets, carbon, sequestering drawdown methods, we can talk about it. But if we're not doing it, putting it to practice while integrating these other two points, which is centering communities of color, and embracing the complexity of that, then it's nothing, it's pointless. We're just we're just allowing corporations to keep exploiting the planet and governments can keep, you know, sitting back and saying that they're doing something because they're convening people without actually regulating and putting down their foot for us. So, yeah, I think it was trying to summarize just my general feelings of this movement and the ways that there's been just lack of opportunities by not centering certain other people or allowing there to be more complexity.John Fiege Yeah, there's, I find, watching how those un meetings go down. So frustrating. Yes, just, you know, Time after time. It's just maddening. I'd have a hard time working in that space.Layel Camargo Yeah, I think I was fortunate enough to take I voluntarily took like a law class at pace, Pace University, pace law University, and one of the classes was United Nations policy, and so I got to witness the sub All meetings before that big meeting where Leonardo DiCaprio came out and said that we had a climate crisis, which everybody googled what the climate crisis was, I think it was called climate change. It was like the most time climate change was googled in the history of mankind. And I was sitting in those meetings and just seeing how it really is just a lot of countries just try not to step on each other's toes, because relationships translate into the economic sector, that I'm like, wow, y'all, like legit, don't care about the people you're representing?John Fiege Yeah. Yep. Yeah, it's crazy. Well, I wanted to talk a bit about what environmental justice means to you. And I thought we could start with your video called a power to rely on. And in your crudest, you include a statistic in the video that says in the US 75% of all houses without electricity, are on Navajo land. And, and then one of the people you interview in the video with Leah, John's with a group called native renewables, says, whoever controls your water and your power controls your destiny. And that's really powerful statement. Can Can you talk a bit about your experience working on this video, and how it impacted your thinking about environmental justice?Layel Camargo Yeah, so I, I realized that I'm really passionate about renewable energy and alternatives to energy capturing, probably through working on this video. And when we were first thinking about what themes we were going to cover, that's usually how I approached most of the climate world videos as I tried to talk to a few community partners. But mostly, I just do a lot of like, cultural observation, just like what are some of the themes that feel that are kind of resonating for people outside of the sector. So what's resonating for folks outside of the environmental justice world, and, you know, land back native sovereignty is something that's been popularized, especially after the Standing Rock camp, the no dapple camp, and I was noticing that it was kind of dwindling down. But a lot of data was coming up around the fact that a lot of indigenous communities are either sitting around and or holding and protecting 80% of the global biodiversity. And so something that how I approached this video was I wanted to show the native sovereignty piece with the land back as well as my passion for alternatives to our current energy use. And what Haley Johns is somebody who was recommended to me by Jade bug guy who's also featured in the videos, a dear close, like cultural strategist, filmmaker, co conspire in the sector. And she would I had initially approached her and said, I want ndn collective, which is what she works to kind of help us think through the script. And she said, Yeah, we're down and like, we trust you, like, we know you're gonna get the story, right, but we're down. And so it was, it was very easy for us to start with that. And then when I was like, Who do I talk to? They're like, you need to talk to a hayleigh. And I was like, Alright, let's talk to a healer. And so I flew out to Arizona, just to have a scout meeting with her, which I felt like I was chasing her down, because we didn't know she was going to be in Flagstaff, or if she was going to be near Phoenix, like we didn't know. So we were flying in. And we were like, Where are you today? She's like, I'm at my mom's house. I'm with my mom at this hotel. And we're like, Alright, we're coming through. So it felt very, like family off the bat, which now she has been nominated for I forget the position, but it's the internal affairs of Indian energy, energy efforts and some sort. So she's she's doing it at a federal level now. And when I was when I was working on this video, and I had talked to her and I interviewed her as she was giving me a lot of these numbers, and I just realized that, you know, the irony of this country is just beyond what we could imagine. You have a lot of these coal mines that help fuel some of the larger energy consuming cities and in the United States, like Vegas, like la that just consume energy at such high rates that are being powered by coal mines in Navajo or near Navajo Denae reservations. And yet, I was hearing about what halos program and her efforts were just trying to get funding and or subsidies from the government in order to put solar panels on folks his house because the infrastructure doesn't exist. And she was running she's letting me know about that. cost, she's like at $75,000 per house. And then we in order to like run the lines, and that's not even including the solar panel infrastructure. And then if they can't, we can't run the lines, and we're talking about batteries. And she was breaking this all down, I'm like, that is a lot of money. We need to get you that money. And then she started just educating us more through that. So I think I went into this video just knowing that I was going to try to make those connections. But what I realized was that I was actually going in to learn myself, just how much I need to humble myself with the realities that communities who have had less to nothing in certain things, everything from food, to energy to water, have made alternatives that they are, they've already created the solutions like we found one of the elders who had put up one of the first solar panels and Hopi reservation, which I highlighted in my video, she got it 30 years ago, like I, I was flabbergasted that she had the foresight, and the way that she articulated was everything from comfort to entertainment. But at the end of the was she knew she needed power. And she runs a business, the local business won a very few on the reservation that she was passionate enough to keep alive. And so this video just showed me that like, wherever you go, where there has been disenfranchisement, that's where you will find solutions. Because a lot of people have just making do for a long time, it just hasn't been seen, it hasn't been highlighted. Those are the people that like the UN should be talking to the you know, our federal government should be listening to.John Fiege Yeah, and I actually wanted to talk to you about Janice de who's the Hopi elder that you mentioned. And, you know, in particular, how it relates to how depth and skillful you are communicating with people from a wide range of backgrounds. in you, you you use humor a lot. And in this power to rely on video, you're sitting down with Janice day. And talking about how she's one of the first people to get solar power 30 years ago. And you asked her whether the first thing she charged with solar power would be a vibrator. And that was that was that was really funny. And all of a sudden, I'm watching with anticipation, asking myself, how is this woman going to react to that question? And you seem to have such a good read on the people you're speaking with. And I was hoping you could talk a bit more about how you communicate so many, so well and so many in so many different spaces and how you consciously or unconsciously lubricate the relationships with humor.Layel Camargo Yeah, I've been I I think a lot of it is my passion for humor has come from has been maintained by a lot of data and information that I've gotten around just the importance of people being able to process things through laughter. And that the climate crisis is nothing to make mockery and or to laugh, there's this is very serious. The ways in which our species is kind of being at threat of extinction, and right before our eyes. But I think that as humans, we're so complex and layered, and we're so beautiful in the sense that we get to feel so intensely and feeling is what motivates us to take action. And laughter helps you process so much data quicker, it helps you be able to take something in, embrace it, release, and then have it make an impression that is the one line that everybody brings up with that video. So I made the impression. And I hope that people watched it and then wanted to show it to other people. And so I think that, that that knowledge has retained my passion for humor. And then like I said, You know, I grew up in an abusive home where we had to process things fairly quickly in order to be able to function in the world to go to school to go to work. And growing up in a home where there was a lot of violence. I learned how to read people very keenly everything from anticipating when something was going to happen tonight, and I speak about that pretty like nonchalantly because I think a lot of us have a lot of strategies and skills that we've developed because of our traumas and our negative experiences that we've had in the world. And I think they don't often get seen as that we'll just say like, Well, I was just really I'm just really good at reading people and we'll leave it at that and it's like, but what is your learn that from like, there have been many chronic situations where you had to be really good at reading people in order for you to like practice it so clearly in it skillfully. And so I think I honor my experience in that in order for me to do that. And then I think cultural relativity and cultural content petencies is another thing like, Janice de actually reminds me a lot of my grandmother and my grandmother was somebody who was very religious. And at the same time, I always loved pushing her buttons. I would just like try to say things to get her activated. And I knew at the end of the day, she loved me. And that was about it. I didn't have to question whether she loved me because she was upset that I asked her something and appropriately. So I think it's a combination of that. And I'm grateful that I can embody that and be able to offer it to people who are curious about climate change and and feel more invited through laughter than they would about doom and gloom or heavy statistic videos and our ways of gathering information.John Fiege Awesome. Well, another kind of video you made is called consumerism, cancelled prime. And the first shot is you waiting while the camera crew sets up the shot and you're putting items in your Amazon cart on your phone. And then the quote unquote real video begins. And and you say 80% of California's cargo goes through the Inland Empire. And then you yell along expletive that's beeped out. And you ask emphatically his climate, wrote, his climate woke about to ruin amazon prime for me. And and I love how rather than just saying Amazon, or Amazon customers are bad. You're starting by implicating yourself in this system that leads to serious environmental justice issues. And again, it's really funny. Can you talk more about the situation with Amazon and other real retailers? And and how you went about positioning yourself in this story, and using humor again, and self criticism to connect to the audience?Layel Camargo Yeah, I mean, when we first started working on this video, we explore different avenues of that opening scene, when we wanted to highlight community members, I kind of at this point, have a pretty good like tempo of what it is that I want. I want a community member I want somebody who's like academic or scientifically based, and then somebody else who kind of comes in allows her to be more of a creative flow. So we have a pretty good structure at this point of the voices that we seek, we just didn't know how we wanted to hook the audience. And we went back and forth quite a bit on this, the thing that kept coming up was amazon prime memberships are very common. Most people have them most people buy on e commerce and this is pre COVID. And I was keenly aware of that I also knew that Amazon was growing as a franchise to now own Whole Foods that were just like expanding in regards to what it is that they offer people online. And as I mentioned, I, through my passion for reduction of plastic usage and plastic consumption, and plastic waste, I understand the ways that ecommerce has really hurt the planet. So I myself am not an Amazon Prime member, I I don't actually buy online and I allow myself when needed one Amazon thing a purchase a year. And it's like kind of more of a values align thing. So in order for me to reach connecting with somebody who's kind of a little bit more normal in regards to needing to rely on buying online, is I just had to exaggerate what I think happens when you're shopping, which is you look at a lot of stuff, you add them to cart, you get really excited, and then you kind of mindlessly click Buy without knowing what's going to happen. But you're excited when it arrives, surprisingly, because maybe you bought it in the middle of the night while drinking some wine and watching some Hulu. So that's like what I was trying to embody. And then what I was really trying to highlight in this video was I wanted to invite audiences to not feel shame about what they do, like we are we've all been indoctrinated by the system through what our education has taught us. Like we have values of individualism and patriotism and all these things, because that's what we were taught in schools. And that's been used and co opted by corporations in order for us to continue exploiting other humans and the planet. And that's by no fault of our own. That's a design that's an economic model that was designed since the Great Depression. It's just the way that it's been exaggerated and has scaled so quickly is beyond our control where our governments don't even regulate it anymore at the ways in which they should be. And I think that I wanted this to feel like it's not just on you as an individual, but it's specifically if you live in Europe or in the United States. You need to know that we are The biggest consumers on the planet, we have the most economic resources. We actually, if even a fraction of the United States decided to stop shopping at Amazon, we could significantly bring that Empire down. I say Empire pretty intentionally. And we could I mean, I feel like you. And that's and how I understand economics is that all you need to do is impact 10 to 20%. of supply and demand chain in order for a whole corporation to collapse. The problem is, is that our governments always come in to aid these large corporations that are hurting us on the planet by saying that they want to maintain jobs and maintain a GDP are going stock market, which they're reliant on. So this video was meant for audiences. And for people to feel like this is not just on you. But if you live

Solidarity Economy Shorts Episode #5A collaboration with New Economy CoalitionSolidarity Economy Shorts are conversations with frontline organizations & individuals that are putting solidarity economy principles into practice. They are using different strategies to build an economic system where communities are meeting their own needs outside of capitalism. Creative Wildfire supports artists and grassroots organizations to create art that fuels our movements and imagines the world we need to thrive. This cultural organizing project is an embodiment of the strength of coalitions to resource the wider web. Three powerhouse organizations in the movement for a Just Transition and the Solidarity Economy pooled their budgets to redistribute to artists - Movement Generation, Climate Justice Alliance, and New Economy Coalition. In 2023-2024, Creative Wildfire convened a 10 month cohort that prioritized deeper relationship building, co-creation with a partner organization, and political education. 7 incredible artists and 7 organizations were selected to explore what's possible when we shift from transaction to collaborative liberation. In this episode Ebony speaks with Lizzie Suarez and Lily Xie, two of the most recent Creative Wildfire grantees. We talk about their roles as artist and cultural organizers, challenges that arise when collaborating with organizations, what can symbiosis look like when artists and orgs co-create, the value artists bring beyond being producers, and the cultural shifts needed to have a just transition in the arts.Show NotesNew Economy CoalitionCreative WildfireLily Xie WebsiteLizzie Suarez WebsiteLook Loud: visual strategy accomplices, supporting communities taking control of their own media narrativesBuilding Irresistible Movements: Best collaboration practices for organizations and visual artistsPedagogy of the Oppressed book by Paulo FreireCreative Study ‘Creatives Rebuild Guaranteed Income': A free course about the three year guaranteed income initiative for artists in NYCCartoonist CooperativeEpisode Music by MADlines

Perhaps no community has undergone more versions of imperialism than the tiny island nation of Nauru, which has morphed from being "Pleasant Island" to the mined-out home of offshore banks, discarded refugees, and deep sea mining interests. Jason, Rob, and Asher take a bad trip to wrap their heads around Nauru, the topic of "psychedelic imperialism," and imperialism's new frontier - the clean energy transition.Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.Sources/Links/Notes:"A Dark History of the World's Smallest Island Nation" tells the tale of Nauru.S.J. Gale, "Lies and misdemeanours: Nauru, phosphate and global geopolitics," The Extractive Industries and Society, vol 6, July 2019.FAQs of the Metals CompanyEric Lipton's New York Times article about imperialistic mining of the Pacific Ocean floor.Mining Watch Canada questions the claims of the Metals Company.Elham Shabahat's article in Hakai Magazine, "Why Nauru Is Pushing the World Toward Deep-Sea Mining" Definition of imperialism from the Cornell Law SchoolJ.A. Hobson's book Imperialism: A StudyJason Hickel et al., "Imperialist appropriation in the world economy: Drain from the global South through unequal exchange, 1990-2015," Global Environmental Change, vol 73, March 2022.Critique of lithium extraction in the Atacama DesertIndigenous people's response to lithium mining in NevadaHow the Sami people are protesting Sweden's "green transformation"Episode 3 of the Holding the Fire podcast, featuring Sami leader Aslak HolmbergCobus van Staden on "Green Energy's Dirty Secret: Its Hunger for African Resources"Jim Robbins in Yale Environment 360 on "How Returning Lands to Native Tribes Is Helping Protect Nature""Indigenous Land Return Announcement by Sogorea Te' Land Trust and Movement Generation!" -- article by Ines Ixierda"New Zealands's Maori fought for reparations -- and wonSupport the Show.

>>In today's episode, Swim discusses a rather alarming text message he received from a friend of his high up on the AmeriCorps ladder. Hint...it involves tracking volunteers' and employees' GPS location.In today's news segment, we take a look at a story out of the Oakland area involving a local land trust nonprofit acquiring more than 40 acres of land from another nonprofit in the area. Plus, for today's Rapid Fire Books, we review the book "Credible: Why We Doubt Accusers and Protect Abusers" by Deborah Tuerkheimer.Listen on Apple Podcast here: https://bit.ly/TheNonprofitInsiderListen Listen on Spotify Podcast here: https://bit.ly/TheNonprofitInsiderPodcastSpotifySource: 'It's transformative': Bay Area nonprofit returns 43 acres to female-led Indigenous land trust"--https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/ohlone-land-trust-oakland-18199800.phpThe Sogorea Te' Land Trust--https://sogoreate-landtrust.org/ Movement Generation--https://movementgeneration.org/Deborah Tuerkheimer--https://www.deborahtuerkheimer.com/Have a Nonprofit Horror Story you want Swim to read on the show? Email me at TheNonprofitInsiderPodcast@gmail.com for a Nonprofit Horror Story Guideline sheet today!If you're anything like me you like a nice evening tea in the evening after a long day. Visit Art of Tea for 10% off your next purchase of tea and tea accessories today, right here: https://artoftea.go2cloud.org/SHC

From Queer & Well's Earth Day event: A Conversation with Layel Camargo of Shelterwood Collective & Inés Ixierda of Sogorea Te Land TrustAs queer Black and brown folks, what does it look like to be reconnected to land our ancestors stewarded before colonialism & white supremacy? What are the ways we can come back to this land and rebuild not only the land itself, but our relationships to it. How are organizations like Sogorea Te Land Trust & Shelterwood Collective creating spaces and avenues for us to take part in these practices? Join us for a discussion on the importance of our relationship to land and how to strengthen those bonds during a time of climate crisis and change.Layel Camargo (them/them) is Co-Creator & Cultural Strategy Lead of Shelterwood Collective. Layel is Yaqui and Mayo of the Sonoran Desert. As a transgender and gender non-conforming person, they've dedicated the last decade advancing climate justice through storytelling by creating campaigns like ‘Climate Woke' with The Center For Cultural Power and supporting media projects like ‘The North Pole Show' with Executive Producers Rosario Dawson and Movement Generation, Justice and Ecology Project. They are the producer and host of Did We Go Too Far, a climate justice podcast. Most recently, Layel was named on the Grist 2020 Fixers List. They graduated from UC Santa Cruz with degrees in Feminist Studies and Legal Studies.Inés Ixierda is an interdisciplinary Mestizx artist and media maker with a background in youth work, decolonial nonprofit administration, and community organizing. She leads Sogorea Te Land Trust's art and media, coordinates projects, organizes events, and works on the land with plant medicines.Sogorea Te' Land Trust is an urban Indigenous women-led land trust based in the San Francisco Bay Area that facilitates the return of Indigenous land to Indigenous people. Sogorea Te' Land Trust cultivates rematriation and calls on us all to heal and transform the legacies of colonization, genocide, and patriarchy and to do the work our ancestors and future generations are calling us to do.LINKSEpisode transcriptRadicallyFitOakland.comGemini Moon BotanicalsAudio recording support from Popperz!

Water is LifeThis conversation aired live at Mozilla Festival March 20th 07:00 ET // 12:00 CETyou can view the immersive web VR experience here on Mozilla Hubs:https://mozfest.myhubs.net/5AhCpr6/parables-experienceWitness an exchange about themes of Climate Justice and Water within Octavia E. Butler's Parables series and connections to the work of brilliant cultural strategists, artists, scientists, and technologists. Tré Vasquez of Movement Generation facilitates a conversation with Talk To Me About Water Collective members Nour Batyne, Martha Bearskin, Devin Ronneberg, Eamon O'Connor, and Amelia Winger-Bearskin. A group of artists, science storytellers, water scientists, artificial intelligence researchers, data scientists, and more, Talk To Me About Water's website states:“It is said that “The future is here, it's just not evenly distributed.” It's the same way with the water crisis— it will be a crisis for all of us one day, but currently, those shouldering the most of this burden are the global indigenous, the water protectors seeking to stop the extraction and pollution of their ecosystems. It feels far away now, but their water is our water or will be soon. If we don't listen to them it's like we're ignoring a message from the future. Part of ‘Talk to me About Water' is also bridging that gap for those who are experiencing the water crisis more acutely to hear from them, unfiltered.”Season 2 of the award-winning podcast Wampum.Codes bring you audio from live streams, on-location recordings, and some of the same formats you know from Season 1. Indigenous guests explore themes of creative exploration, storytelling, and emerging technologies. Your host Amelia Winger-Bearskin (Seneca-Cayuga) invites you to sit back and have a vibe shift for your day.

Are we stuck in an archaic view of an ecosystem that keeps people and Nature separate?  How do we foster ecosystem repair AND community healing?  This month's featured webinar guest, Layel Camargo, has deeply explored these topics and will share their experience as a person dedicated to restoring our diverse relationship with Nature.Over the last few years, Layel has been involved in stewarding an organization called Shelterwood, a 900-acre forest and former church camp right above what's called the Russian River in Sonoma County, California, on Unceded Kashaya and Southern Pomo territory.  Shelterwood is a Black, Indigenous, and LGBTQ-led community forest and retreat center, healing people and ecosystems through active stewardship and community engagement. As a collective of land and community protectors, they model how ecosystem health can only be achieved by communities who are in deep relationship with the Earth and with one another. They are dedicated to enriching the waterways, filling the food baskets, quickening the forests, rematriating laughter, painting the future, rewilding hearts, and healing people.Layel Camargo (they/them)  is an indigenous descendant of the Yaqui and Mayo tribes of the Sonoran Desert and is an advocate for the better health of the planet and its people. Layel is a transgender and gender non-conforming person. They graduated from UC Santa Cruz with dual degrees in Feminist Studies and Legal Studies. Layel is an organizer with the Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective and is also the founder of ‘Woke n Wasteless‘ an online platform on waste reduction and people of color issues. Layel is a builder & a novice carpenter by way of taking classes in the Carpentry department at Laney Community College and has worked on building tiny homes for homeless people in the bay area, CA. Layel is also a big advocate of spreading the Just Transition Framework in the arts and an advocate of both low waste/low impact lifestyles. Most recently, Layel was named on the Grist 2020 Fixers List. Layel is also a staff member at Movement Generation's Justice and Ecology ProjectSupport the show

Coco Peila - Remember from the 2022 Whose World? (The New Normal) EP on Miss Behave Records/La Vida Diosa Publishing. With her latest EP, Whose World? (The New Normal), Bay Area-based MC, singer-songwriter, and producer Coco Peila continues to use music as a platform to speak on causes she feels passionately about. (Her last KEXP Song of the Day spoke out against outdated beauty norms.) This new release is described as a "Hip Hop and Climate Justice audio-visual initiative," presented by BlackGold Movement and developed as a part of Creative Wildfire, "a collaborative call to action from frontline communities, represented by Climate Justice Alliance, New Economy Coalition, and Movement Generation." Read the full post on KEXP.org Support the show: https://www.kexp.org/donate See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This episode begins with a panel discussion with Mateo Nube from Movement Generation, Rosalinda Guillen from C2C, and TraeAnna Holiday from King County Equity Now that took place as part of Front and Centered's Just Transition Summit in December 2021. It's a good reminder of what we are talking about when we talk about a Just Transition, especially as that term is used more and more in political spaces that are not aligned with the actual meaning of the words.Following that conversation, Rosalinda checks in with Aurora Martin and Rebecca Rosado from Front and Centered, who recently visited us in Bellingham.Watch the Front and Centered Summit intro here.Songs in this Episode:Stand Up for Something by Andra Day feat. CommonIt's a Good Day (to Fight the System) by ShungudzoWake Up Everybody by Harold Melvin and the Blue NotesSupport the show (https://foodjustice.ourpowerbase.net/civicrm/contribute/transact?reset=1&id=2)

On this month's episode of Half Past Capitalism The Breach publisher Dru Oja Jay welcomes organizer, teacher, co-founder of Movement Generation and co-organizer of Seed Commons and Peoples' Solar Energy Fund, Gopal Dayenini for a conversation on how the Left can govern. Gopal is a key facilitator, convener and thinker in the climate justice movement and has been involved in Climate Justice Alliance, ETC Group, Ruckus Society, Cooperation Richmond, and the Center for Economic Democracy. He teaches Ecological Systems Thinking at Antioch University, and in Race and Resistance Studies at San Francisco State University. Find Movement Generation at https://movementgeneration.org/ and Seed Commons at https://seedcommons.org/ Watch the conversation and subscribe to the show on Youtube at https://www.youtube.com/c/HalfPastCapitalism Support Dru's work at https://www.patreon.com/halfpastcapitalism Follow Dru on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/druojajay and at read the show's blog at http://halfpast.dru.ca/

On this month's episode of Half Past Capitalism The Breach publisher Dru Oja Jay welcomes organizer, teacher, co-founder of Movement Generation and co-organizer of Seed Commons and Peoples' Solar Energy Fund, Gopal Dayenini for a conversation on how the Left can govern. Gopal is a key facilitator, convener and thinker in the climate justice movement and has been involved in Climate Justice Alliance, ETC Group, Ruckus Society, Cooperation Richmond, and the Center for Economic Democracy. He teaches Ecological Systems Thinking at Antioch University, and in Race and Resistance Studies at San Francisco State University. Find Movement Generation at https://movementgeneration.org/ and Seed Commons at https://seedcommons.org/ Watch the conversation and subscribe to the show on Youtube at https://www.youtube.com/c/HalfPastCapitalismSupport Dru's work at https://www.patreon.com/halfpastcapitalismFollow Dru on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/druojajay and at read the show's blog at http://halfpast.dru.ca/

Organizer, teacher, co-founder of Movement Generation and co-organizer of Seed Commons and Peoples' Solar Energy Fund, Gopal is a key facilitator, convener and thinker in the climate justice movement. He has been involved in Climate Justice Alliance, ETC Group, Ruckus Society, Cooperation Richmond, and the Center for Economic Democracy, and he teaches Ecological Systems Thinking at Antioch University, and in Race and Resistance Studies at San Francisco State University. You can find Movement Generation at https://movementgeneration.org/ and Seed Commons at https://seedcommons.org/ * * * Podcast links: https://anchor.fm/halfpastcapitalism Subscribe on Youtube; https://www.youtube.com/c/HalfPastCapitalism Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/halfpastcapitalism Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/druojajayHalf Past Blog: http://halfpast.dru.ca/

Episode 5: Fabio Berger, software engineer and crypto enthusiast, dives into his upcoming new project ‘Movement Generation', the first ever generative music/choreography video NFT. Fabio shares with Isotta what NFT's can unlock for performance artists and how they can help emerging artists build art equity. Part 1 closes with a discussion on the value of the squad team structure and with Fabio sharing his expertise on building cross-disciplinary creative teams. DonateMusic by Blue Dot SessionsCover art by Eleonora TucciSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/art-is/donations

“Forthright but also full of grace”: that could be a mantra for how we should all live our lives. It's also how Jacqui Patterson has described her ideal as she fights for environmental justice in a world that can feel like it's submerged completely in environmental injustice.From the South Side of Chicago, to Jamaica, to South Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina, Jacqui has continually asked what deep, transformative change looks like. She grounds her theory of change in community-led advocacy. She envisions a world of eco-communities and works with real communities across the country who have already created elements of these utopian visions.But never does she lose sight of climate change and environmental exploitation as multipliers of injustice.Jacqui Patterson directed the Environmental and Climate Justice Program at NAACP from 2009 to 2021. Most recently, she is Founder and Executive Director of The Chisholm Legacy Project: A Resource Hub for Black Frontline Climate Justice Leadership.I've had the great privilege of knowing Jacqui for the last few years, and she's an advisor on my current documentary film in post production, called Raising Aniya.In our conversation, Jacqui discusses the origins of the environmental justice movement and the importance of community-led activism, and she charts her path to a life devoted to the struggle for environmental justice.This is the first episode of the Chrysalis podcast! You can listen on Substack, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and other podcast platforms.Please rate, review, and share to help us spread the word!Jacqui PattersonJacqui Patterson is the Founder and Executive Director at The Chisholm Legacy Project: A Resource Hub for Black Frontline Climate Justice Leadership. Since 2007, Jacqui has served as coordinator & co-founder of Women of Color United. She directed of the Environmental and Climate Justice Program at NAACP from 2009 to 2021. Jacqui has worked as a researcher, program manager, coordinator, advocate and activist working on women‘s rights, violence against women, HIV&AIDS, racial justice, economic justice, and environmental and climate justice. Jacqui served as a Senior Women's Rights Policy Analyst for ActionAid where she integrated a women's rights lens for the issues of food rights, macroeconomics, and climate change as well as the intersection of violence against women and HIV&AIDS. Previously, she served as Assistant Vice-President of HIV/AIDS Programs for IMA World Health providing management and technical assistance to medical facilities and programs in 23 countries in Africa and the Caribbean. Jacqui served as the Outreach Project Associate for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and Research Coordinator for Johns Hopkins University. She also served as a U.S. Peace Corps Volunteer in Jamaica, West Indies.  Jacqui holds a master's degree in social work from the University of Maryland and a master's degree in public health from Johns Hopkins University. She currently serves on the Steering Committee for Interfaith Moral Action on Climate, Advisory Board for Center for Earth Ethics as well as on the Boards of Directors for the Institute of the Black World, The Hive: Gender and Climate Justice Fund, the American Society of Adaptation Professionals, Greenprint Partners, Bill Anderson Fund and the National Black Workers Center.Quotations Read by Jacqui Patterson“If you come to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because, you know, and feel that your liberation is bound to mine, let's walk together.” - Lilla Watson“you have to understand, that no one puts their children in a boat unless the water is safer than the land” - From "Home" by Warsan Shire“If one of us is oppressed, none of us are free.” - Unknown“the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love.” - Che GuevaraRecommended Readings & MediaTranscriptionIntroJohn Fiege “Forthright but also full of grace”: that could be a mantra for how we should all live our lives. It's also how Jacqui Patterson has described her ideal as she fights for environmental justice in a world that can feel like it's submerged completely in environmental injustice.From the South Side of Chicago, to Jamaica, to South Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina, Jacqui has continually asked what deep, transformative change looks like. She grounds her theory of change in community-led advocacy. She envisions a world of eco-communities and works with real communities across the country who have already created elements of these utopian visions.But never does she lose sight of climate change and environmental exploitation as multipliers of injustice.Jacqui PattersonFor example, if a child is having a hard time paying attention in school, because lead and manganese are some of the toxins that come out of these, these smokestacks, or if a child is having a heart is not able to go to school on poor air quality days, or if the school that 71% of African Americans live in counties in violation of air pollution standards, and an African American family making $50,000 a year is more likely to live next to a toxic facility than the white American family making $15,000 a year. And we know that. But yeah, then on average, if you're living next to a toxic facility, your property values are significantly lower, and property values go directly into funding our school system. So if you have all of these challenges with being in school in the first place, learning in school, and then the school itself doesn't have the level of quality of other schools, then studies show that if you're not on grade level, by the third grade, you're more likely to enter into the school to prison pipeline.John FiegeI'm John Fiege, and this is Chrysalis.Jacqui Patterson directed the Environmental and Climate Justice Program at NAACP from 2009 to 2021. Most recently, she is founder and executive director of The Chisholm Legacy Project: A Resource Hub for Black Frontline Climate Justice Leadership. I've had the great privilege of knowing Jacqui for the last few years, and she's an advisor on my current documentary film in post production, called Raising Aniya.In our conversation, Jacqui discusses the origins of the environmental justice movement and the importance of community-led activism, and she charts her path to a life devoted to the struggle for environmental justice.Here is Jacqui Patterson.---ConversationJohn Fiege  You grew up on the South Side of Chicago. Could you start by talking a bit about the neighborhood where you grew up how that shaped you and you know, being an urban environment, how you viewed your relationship to the rest of nature?Jacqui Patterson  Yeah, growing up on the South Side of Chicago, been an area where it was, there was lots of, of trees, there was lots of I was just talking with someone yesterday about how how we would get excited when we would see a Blue Jay or a Robin in our trees, there were squirrels, there was an occasional rabbit, which was very exciting. And, and there was a lot like summers were all about being outside. Winters were moderately about being outside John Fiege  If there was snowJacqui Patterson  Exactly. Only if there's snow. And otherwise it was being huddled inside and and at the same time, there was the other side's being to being born and raised on the South Side of Chicago, which is that it was a gang land area with the Black P Stone Nation and the El Rukns. As the main gangs and the pressure on boys to to affiliate and the guns, as you hear the challenges you would have. So being outside was also challenged by that as well. I mean, it didn't, I don't remember it being kind of a constant thing, but I don't remember it necessarily meaning that we didn't go outside but I do remember a couple of times where, where, where there were times when they were kind of fights or so forth, it would be inside. So to put my dad was from Jamaica, so we took a trip, we went to the park often and my dad was definitely big on the outdoors. And so we would go to the park frequently, both our local park as well as sometimes going to a national park to hike.John Fiege  Oh, awesome. And, you know, that must impact your view of what the environment is to when you, you know, you see the birds in the trees and those beautiful, tree lined streets of South Side of Chicago. And at the same time, there's this, like, this potentially dangerous environment you're dealing with sometimes as well.Jacqui Patterson  Yes, it definitely, definitely makes it a mixed situation. It reminds me of when I was at a  conference of the Power Shift Network, I was moderating a panel with youth. And, and this person who was on the panel, I mean, it was a real striking and moving moment because the person was on the panel stood up and she said, You know, I would like for me being you know, I would love to be able to have the luxury to go to the park and so forth. But for me just surviving was the objective and and if I can get beyond just focusing on survival to be able to go to the park, you know, that would be a good day. And she actually started crying while she was saying that because I think it was such an emotional moment to be attacked about the very thing that you know, about the very thing that that kind of puts in stark relief, the difference in realities and what's what's kind of normal to other people would be a luxury to her.John Fiege  And survival survival is a prerequisite for enjoying the world  Jacqui Patterson  exactly, exactly.John Fiege  Well, not not only is your father from Jamaica, but you spent time in the Peace Corps in Jamaica. Yeah, which I find really, I find so interesting, because not many Peace Corps volunteers work in a country so close to their roots. Can you can you tell me about the path? This this young girl from the South Side of Chicago took to Jamaica and and how that experience influenced you?Jacqui Patterson  Yeah, sure. Um, I grew up I grew up very active in the church, we'd be in the church like five days out of the week, during the summer. And, and during the winter, this at least a couple of times weekly. When during the summer, so I was always a Sunday school teacher and during the summer, I was a vacation Bible school teacher and and as I decided on my career path, I decided I wanted to be a teacher. And so and then I was watching TV one day and saw this commercial about the shortage of special education teachers. Oh, I could do that. And I decided to do that as well. And so after I, long story short, I was in Boston going to school for undergrad at Boston University. And it was. And that was when I first started to really get involved around social justice. I was working in a shelter for homeless people who were unhoused in Boston, and then also at the same time getting involved in the Housing Now movement there. Anyway, then I fast forward to deciding after I graduated to go to Peace Corps, what was interesting there in terms of the time between me going to Peace Corps and a place that I know is that to make us known was the recruiter was telling me that Jamaica was I had actually wanted to go to a place that where I could learn Spanish or French, or some other language, you know. And so she was she really put a hard pressure on me to go to Jamaica, because it has a high rate of attrition of people dropping out. And, and so she also needed like someone who was kind of specialized in special education, and it's a little bit at the back then it was almost rare to be able to do something that's so aligned with your actual career that I'd like there was someone there in my group who was a drama major in school, and she ended up being a bananas extension officer with the Agriculture Department. So it's kind of funny. So anyway, she says, Yeah, so all of that is what led to me being in in Jamaica.John Fiege  What did you see there and experience that you can connect with what you did later, you know, what you're doing now and what you did later with your work?Jacqui Patterson  Yeah, so a couple things. One is, as a special education teacher in the parish of St. Thomas one situation arose where there was a whole group of three year olds who had hearing impairments because, you know, a little bit over three years ago, almost four years ago, they had an outbreak of rubella. And I guess when a mom has rubella, then it's more likely for her child to be born with a hearing impairment. And so, so I ended up being because I had taken one sign language class in undergrad, I ended up being a sign language teacher to these, these, these parents and their children, it was like a parent child group, and so helping them to be able to communicate. And so both that in and other kind of situations of people with special needs, there are who are differently abled was just struck me in terms of being a systemic issue, kind of people not having either choices and not having resources to live a thriving life, in those circumstances of being differently abled made me really think about the prevention aspect, you know, and so I, I started to decide I was coming, come back and go into, into public health, and also do a double degree one in public health, on the technical side of things, as well as one in social work, but macro level social work, to learn about community organizing, because at that point, point, it was just clear that important to community voice, community power community leadership, parallel, or, you know, at the same time, I was also kind of in Jamaica, just observing the circumstances in terms of, you know, what led there to be not the resources to have to have the rubella vaccine in a place that is so beautiful, so, so much possibility for people to be able to, to a to have the, the whether it's that natural resources to eat or the natural resources to, to provide energy for the country and all of these different things. And then also the the natural beauty that attracts, you know, millions of tourists there with all of the billions of dollars that are coming with with that. And yet we have communities where the you know, people are living in abject poverty. And so, so, so seeing that, watching films like Life and Debt that talked about structural adjustment programs, and then and then reading books, like How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, I started to really understand some of these systemic issues as well. So that was an important kind of politicization. And then the last thing I'll say is also I was there I was in a community where the water supply was contaminated by Shell Oil and the community had to push for, for justice and that situation, but in that situation, it was definitely a David and Goliath, where the community ended up getting as part of their settlement a series of ventilated improve pit latrines for the community, as well as some money given to the school for three Rs program. So that was the settlementJohn Fiege  in exchange for a billions of dollars worth of oil,Jacqui Patterson  and in exchange for having their water supply contaminated, drinking poison for several, yeah, I mean, whatever long term illnesses that was that was caused. And so these were the so these are the things these are the lessons I learned in my short time in Peace Corps, they really kind of all all contributed to the trajectory of my life since thenJohn Fiege  I find that so interesting, when there's something there's some short period of time when in when you're young, and you can find in that period of time, so many seeds that germinated later in your life. And when you're talking about Jamaican, like, I'm hearing like all of the elements of your later work. It's so interesting. Jacqui Patterson  Yeah, it is fascinating. John Fiege  So I've heard you say that climate change is a multiplier of injustice, which is, which is really beautifully succinct. Can you explain what that means?Jacqui Patterson  Absolutely. So both on the on the the whole climate continuum, we think about in terms of the drivers of climate change, and the impacts of climate change. on the driver side, you have all of the polluting practices that contribute to the greenhouse gas emissions that drive climate change. And so the fact that these facilities are disproportionately located in BIPOC communities, whether it's coal plants, or or oil and gas refineries, or other or fracking, or it's even near roadway, air pollution, and air in the ways that that impacts all of those are disproportionately located in, in in BIPOC communities and also in trash incineration, and landfills and so forth. And I could make more, agricultural, like confined animal feeding operations, etc. So with all of those being disproportionately located communities of color, it's not only that they're emitting greenhouse gases, but they're all also emitting pollutants that that also harm that compound harm to the public health and well being of those communities. And so whether it's the sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, which is tied to asthma rates, and African American children are three to five times more likely to go to the hospital for asthma attack two to three times more likely to die of an asthma attack, or it is the mercury which is known to be an endocrine disruptor. And we know that low birth weights, infant mortality, etc, are much higher, for example, in African American communities and beyond. So there's just so many examples of these negative health impacts. But then on top of it all, we talk about multiplier as well, it's a multiplier of a multiplicity of issues. And so, for example, if a child is having a hard time paying attention in school because lead and manganese are some of the toxins that come out of these, these smokestacks, or if a child is having is not able to go to school on poor air quality days, or if the school, 71% of African Americans live in counties in violation of air pollution standards, and an African American family making $50,000 a year is more likely to live next to a toxic facility than the white American family making $15,000 a year and we know that then on average, if you're living next to a toxic facility, your property values are significantly lower and property values go directly into funding our school system. So if you have all of these challenges with being in school in the first place, learning in school, and then the school itself doesn't have the level of quality of other schools, then studies show that if you're not on grade level by the third grade, you're more likely to enter into the school to prison pipeline. So we see all of these interconnected, you know, multiplier issues, and then a multiplicity of issues that they get exacerbated. And so these are, and that's just one scenario. That is an example when we talk about the gender, gender and justice that already exist, and then on the pipelines, along the lines of the pipeline, there's a high rate of sexual assault of Indigenous women in particular, along those pipelines. Also, around the man camps that are propped up around these oil and gas rigs, there is a high rate of missing and murdered Indigenous women, there's a drug trade that's come up, there's trafficking that that happens in those areas. And, just a known level that you know that you can when googled one can see all the different statistics and stories around this. And so that's just on the driver side of the continuum. And then we go on the other side in terms of the impact. We know that climate change that, for example, when we talk about the increase in frequency and severity of extreme weather events, that women are more likely to experience violence against women after disasters. Whether it's, yeah, so we saw that with the earthquake in Gujarat, the tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, for sure. And even the BP oil drilling disaster where I was down there and that the, the police blotters showed a four fold increase in domestic violence in one particular area, I was sitting in Alabama, and we look at place after place, it was the same thing. And they even though the BP oil drilling disaster wasn't caused by climate change, it also was on the other driver's side of the continuum as well. So anyway, so then, then, when we talk about the the shifts in agricultural yield, we know that already, for example, 26% of African American families are food insecure. And when we have shift in agricultural yields that mean that healthy nutritious foods are going to be even more inaccessible and less affordable, than that just exacerbates what's already a bad situation for for African American families who too often live in communities where it's easier to get a Dorito or a Cheeto or Frito than kiwi or quinoa or anything. So when we, when we see that then we also see how these various chronic health conditions that are that are causing premature deaths and shorten our very life expectancy as a people. And then that has made us even more vulnerable to the impacts of of COVID-19 and has contributed to our high rates of mortality. Then when we talk about sea level rise, also communities that are less likely to be homeowners, we know that 44% of African Americans are homeowners versus 75% of white Americans, for example. And so when when you know when you have when you need to move or even impacted by disasters, all of that, being in a homeowner, you know, when you have equity you have in not only do you have equity in your home, conceivably, but you're also also some of the aid from FEMA and so forth is directly tied to being a homeowner and the work of relocation is still emerging and how that's going to be financed and what the mechanisms are going to be. ButJohn Fiege  I wonder who I wonder who wrote those, those rules?Jacqui Patterson  Yeah, as I say, we can pretty much rest assured thatJohn Fiege  they were homeowners at least,Jacqui Patterson  yeah, that's really something. So all of these things. Oh, and then finally, I'll just say to as it relates to sea level rise, combined with, combined with the frequency and severity of extreme weather events is the fact that even after we think we find out that the levee fortification is, like so many other things was tied to property values after Hurricane Katrina, where they decided to to fortify all these levees in Louisiana. they used a formula to decide which levees they were going to be fortifying first. And it was based on what the economic impact would be if the levy was overtaken, which literally legislates or institutionalizes the the disregard for the people who are the most vulnerable, just literally by definition, by design.John Fiege  Early on in the COVID pandemic, you wrote an article for Color Lines, that that connects the pandemic to climate justice, among other things.  So you write:  "Centuries of racist policy and practice have shaped the neighborhoods we live in, the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat, our access to education and justice, and the health care we receive (or don't). Layers of harm, generation after generation, alter our bodies at the molecular level and even the genes we pass on to our children. Those harms, past and present, render us more vulnerable to the coronavirus—and also to the longer-term crises caused by climate change."  Wow, it's really amazing how you can connect dots and wrap so much into this single paragraph. Can you talk about the importance of seeing whole systems, rather than separating out these interconnected issues in order to envision what you call deep transformative change?Jacqui Patterson  Yes, absolutely. So when we have a system that, as I said before, is doing exactly what it was designed to do by those who, as you said, designed it. And, and when we continue to try to tweak a system, which at its core has a different intention, then then what we should be seeking, which is literally liberty and justice for all, then then we have to think transformation rather than than reform. But we have a system that means that, that certain people are only more likely to live in certain communities when you have a system that says that those communities are, by definition, are the communities that are the asthma clusters, the cancer clusters, the communities where the life expectancy is shorter, too often by decades, sometimes by almost a lifetime, when we talk about infant mortality, and and, and so forth. So when we talk when we have a system where before African Americans were emancipated from slavery, there were policies that enabled white people to be able to access these grants for land for those for schools, or for farming or otherwise. So and when African Americans were emancipated, not only had they put in this in slave labor, that that to build a country that was completely uncompensated, but also didn't even have the legal rights to be able to write legal wills to pass down their property. And so not only do we have white Americans who, for whom, African Americans were part of the, their actual generational wealth, but then on top of it all, they were given all these additional aids by by the government system. And so it's clear why at this point, we have white wealth at $171,000 on average, per household, African American wealth at $17,000 per household. And then yeah, there will be a layer gender on top of it all, we have African American female headed households with the average wealth of $5. And so if we just continue to try to tweak a system that's doing exactly what it was designed to do in the first place, you know, now 400 years after the transatlantic slave trade, this is where we are. So what's going to be the increments of change? And what what, what century will there be equality if we don't actually do something transformational now?John Fiege  Yeah, I, I talk a lot about the problem with how we've set up environmental issues where, you know, if somebody wants to learn about why we have environmental problems, they're often told to go study science or to go study economics. But the best place to start really is American history. You can't separate how the systems were built from the problems they've caused, and to pretend that we can address them without acknowledging and confronting those those things is so delusional.Jacqui Patterson  Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Thank you.John Fiege  So to talk about the NAACP and the roots of the environmental justice movement. Many people consider the birthplace of the environmental justice movement to be in Warren County, North Carolina, in 1982, when 500 people were arrested, protesting the siting of a toxic waste dump for PCB laden soil and a county that was predominantly African American, and one of the poorest counties in the state. Among the coalition of community members of the Civil Rights Organizations, was the NAACP and Reverend Benjamin Chavez, who later became the executive director of NAACP. Can you talk about the importance of this moment, both for the movement and the NAACP?Jacqui Patterson  Yeah, thank you. Um, yes. So one thing that is important about that, that the rise The movement in its inception is the power of the people and the importance of frontline community leadership, it was never going to be some organization or some entity that's outside of the community looking at and seeing this is wrong. And then, you know, organizing a plan and in and so forth, it was the power of the people that that really unsurface the situation that that the push for the type of change that they need to have and, and that we all need to have. And really gave rise to this movement. And so it needs to kind of go as it started in terms of the movement. And this is why we're always pushing for frontline community leadership. And so for us, that situation was critical around the the roots of the problem and the depth of the problem. And it was critical around the, in terms of just like the extreme level of contamination and so forth in the health impacts and so forth. And it was also critical in terms of the method and the ethos behind the solution of the problem and addressing it. And so for us, it just means that we, but it also was critical in terms of how long it took. And we often now when I'm doing presentations often show this kind of four image slide of three, of four toxic situations, the Flint water crisis, the Chicago Indiana arsenic and lead crisis and Eight Mile Alabama Mercaptan oil spill and then I show the Porter Ranch gas spill that happened and talk about how you know for each of the other situation it was they were decades, you know, decades and still seeking justice. Before the Porter Ranch gas spill, it was literally within a matter of months there was kept within a matter of less than a year that they were they were given $4 million in damages to this white wealthier white community versus decades and hundreds of 1000s of dollars at best for these other communities. John Fiege  Yeah, well, the coalition is the coalition around that event was, was incredible. And, you know, this kind of genealogy of civil rights within environmental justice, it seems to really be you know, NAACP is a is a huge national organization, just like the big environmental organizations. But do you see that it's kind of history and valuing and ability to work with local groups on the ground changes the way this giant national organization interacts with communities?Jacqui Patterson  I do. So for one thing, one of the things that has that drew me to the work and has kept me at the NAACP is the fact that we are accountable first and foremost to our frontline community leadership and so that that being the marching orders for for us as a program and for the association really does set it apart from from other organizations in that sense, like we do things because our state and local branches think that they are important. And so that's quite different than if you are setting an agenda and then you're deploying all of these, these these chapters to do like some other large national organizations. And so but but when we're when we're working in the environmental climate justice program, for example, we're we're out there in the branches and we're saying, like, let's, let's do a visioning session, what do you want for your community, and then now, well, we can help with political education, we can help developing a strategy. We can walk alongside you once you have your action plan of what you want to do and help connect you to resources and so forth. So that model of like, it's about what you want for your community. And then we kind of see the patterns of what people are interested in and what they're facing. And then we roll that up into a national agenda that we get res ources for on behalf of the units and that we then advocate for at the federal policy level as well. So if a community might be working on, you know, a lead crisis in their backyard, we might be helping them with how to deal with that. Then at the at the federal level, we're working on the lead and copper rule under the Clean Air Act and so forth. So that's always kind of a corresponding national agenda, but it corresponds with the leadership of our state and local units.John Fiege  Oh, that's, that's interesting. And it's such so important. Always going back to that. Yeah, accountability to the communities. So key. So can you talk a bit about your theory of change and the work you're doing, and maybe first describe what a theory of change is? And then how your theory of change has shifted over time as you've engaged ever more deeply in this work?Jacqui Patterson  Yeah, thank you. So, first, the theory of change is exactly what the words imply, is the theory of how change happens in our world. So for us, and it's interesting to even when we were kind of like, formally crafting our theory of change, there was kind of the difference between the change that's needed, and how do we get there. And then there's also kind of models and theories of change that were more granular, but our broader theory of change is rooted in the just transition framework that we work with the Climate Justice Alliance, and others facilitated Movement Generation, when we, when we talk about the just transition framework, we are moving from a society that is rooted in exploitation, domination, extraction, and enclosure of wealth and power militarism, as a vehicle to do it. And so moving from that, to what we consider is a living economy, versus an extractive economy, a living economy that's rooted in principles of caring, caring for the sacred cooperation. And really, kind of honoring the earth and honoring each other, as well as really rooting it all in deep democracy. And so, for us, that means that the work that we do, in terms of how we get there is around visioning, starting with a visioning, visioning of our communities and then helping with political education so that if a community has a certain vision, then thinking about how they get there is rooted in understanding how it fits in with this broader context. And then three is then working with the community to develop a strategy to advance change. And then four is then working with communities on developing an action plan based on that strategy and their understanding of the political education, but rooted in their vision, and then we accompany folks through achieving that action plan helping along the way with connecting them to formational, technical, financial resources and so forth. And and so our overarching work as a national program is, is is around, you know, all starts and ends with with that with our community vision. And then we also work on the types of policy changes that need to shift the system. And we also work on narrative shifts, because too often narrative dictates what's happening from the very beginning, in terms of this false narrative of scarcity that has pushed so much of this notion that there's an inverse relationship between my well being and your well being I can only be well if you're not well because there's only so much to go around and so that has pervaded so much of this decision making and actions that we see and even down to, you know, our kind of extremely divided political system it is so based on that people feeling threatened people feeling fear people feeling whether it's the immigration, or it's this notion of Black Lives Matter, kind of meaning that other lives don't. So...so all of this so, so yes, a narrative shift is a critical piece as well as the policy change. And again, all rooted in the vision of our communities.John Fiege  Yeah, awesome. Yeah. And you know, as you can imagine, you know, I'm super interested in narrative and environmental storytelling and how we're telling the stories that matter. And so that really caught my eye when you talked about controlling the narrative. Can you give maybe an example of like, what does controlling the narrative mean? What does that look like?Jacqui Patterson  Yeah, I'll give an example on the, the problem up to till now in terms of some of the ways of the narrative has been controlled a wedge resulted in and then on the other side, so we have everything from, you know, at that end, again with African American folks, the ways that the narratives that have been advanced, whether it's the rise of the term super predator, or the ways that the black men have been considered to be an enemy or something to be feared, or someone to be feared, and though, and how that has led to in black folks in general, but definitely black men, and how that that led has led to profiling. And then that led to, to kind of this criminalization as well as police brutality and what has resulted in state sponsored violence. I talk about how, in the context of Hurricane Katrina, how there is this image that I show where it's two white couple, and they're in these floodwaters, and then there's African American, male in floodwaters and it's the same day. Associated Press is the outlet telling the story in both cases, but the caption with the two white people is, you know, "Two residents wade through chesty floodwaters after 'finding' bread and soda in the grocery store." With African American young man it says "A young man waves through testy floodwaters after looting a grocery store." And so that kind of characterization and a difference of it is exactly what leads to this racial profiling. And then leads to that criminalization and then to, for group of families on the Danziger bridge, where they were crossing in again, trying to find food, trying to find relatives, they were going back into New Orleans, and someone called the police on them and said that they wer e, you know, probably looking to loot and so they were unarmed and the police encountered them on the Danziger bridge and killed some of them as a result so that racial profiling that image of those two folks that you know, seemingly just an image in a newspaper but what it contributes to a narrative that certain people are up to no good and so we've seen how these days they're talking about living while black all the ways, I just myself I'm staying at an Airbnb in Florida and I went outside to, anyway there's some construction going on and so they left a package in the front that they're supposed to bring around to the back anyway, so I had to go under the construction tape to get the package and as I'm walking out I hear this voice go, May I help you? And it was this lady across the street who thought that I was stealing the package I mean, so and the irony was that I had met her like a couple days ago and had a conversation with her and she just didn't remember it. So but unfortunately but so the other day there was a whole another situation with another package and I walked around the neighborhood and I saw the packages, it had been delivered to another neighbor but I didn't want to kind of walk up and look at them for sure and didn't even want to knock on the door because, and so I called the person who owns the Airbnb and I'm like, do you know the lady who lives a couple doors down you know, and then there was a whole long two hour long process where she was trying to get Jonathan the real estate age all these different things you know, just so that I could get my my packages there on this door a couple of days back. So this is the kind of difference in life, you know that and reality but that's just you know, but that could have fatal effects or someone saw me skulking around it was they would have characterized it, and, you know, considered themselves to be defending their property, and people have the right to do that. And these, you know, again, with our system, this is what results and so, so all of this go on on the negative side of narrative, but and the importance of why, you know, and then when we talk about environment, this notion of 'job killing regulations' and, and again, that's based on scarcity assuming that like the only way that people will be able to work is that if they work at least jobs that also are fatal for other like people killing pollution, you know, the post job killing regulations and so we as communities are reframing to say it is possible for us to have all the jobs that we want, it is possible for us to have it in the context of clean air, clean water. And what we, what we do often is to do that by saying that it's already happening, here's where it's happening. And it's possible for us to take this to scale. John Fiege  Well, how much of that taking back the narrative is, I mean, there's, you know, your example of Hurricane Katrina and, and the AP captions on the photos, you know, that kind of ties into this, the myth of objective journalism, and kind of these outside folks who are building a narrative that you're trying to counter, but in some ways, I'm wondering how much you have to reformulate the narrative from within your own ranks. You know, I'm thinking about early on environmental justice movement. You know, there were some communities that were pushing back against some environmental regulations, because they were concerned that the jobs in these communities were going to be reduced or or go away. And, you know, even today, we're seeing, you know, pushback from unions around the shift to to electric vehicles, because it's there gonna be fewer jobs involved. So what is that? How do you navigate that of like, people who are on your side, are also buying into some of these narratives?Jacqui Patterson  Yeah, I mean, it's kind of what I just said, is really helping people to see how how all of it is possible. So that's true for whoever's on whatever side is the importance of that. And so we have, for example, put together the Black Labor Initiative on Just Transition. And, and for that initiative, we work with folks who stand to be impacted by these job shifts, that will happen and we say, okay, we need to make sure that we're supporting you who is impacted, and that you're in the driver's seat. So it's not, that's not something that's happening to you, but you're saying, here's what's happening, you know, in terms of the the needs of the earth, in our communities, and here's how I'm going to be impacted. If I don't say, Alright, this is what I want, that's going to allow us to have clean air clean water, and allow me to have a livelihood at the standard that I need to support my family. And so then both kind of making sure that people are in the driver's seat, and we're not just trying to tell them that this is better, they're actually determining that for themselves, and we're supporting that, but then also, so they, they will also be the ones who are able to educate and inform their, their peers as well. So, that's definitely what's most important, working with working with people to be able to self actualize whatever enlightenment might come, and what the path is.John Fiege  So that that's what I hear you saying is that's, that's the key element of taking back the narrative and controlling the narrative is, is telling that story within your community and having that spread. Is that accurate?Jacqui Patterson  Yeah, making sure that the community themselves kind of generate the story, like really being in dialogue with the community and have having that conversation, which are always always right, always kind of results in, in the truth versus, versus people kind of parroting what's been told to them. And so for us, it's all about an organic process. John Fiege  Ok. That's awesome. Great. So, in in 2013, you released a report, a report called "And the People Shall Lead" which which is a great title. And it has, it has a subtitle, "Centralizing Frontline Community Leadership, and the Movement Towards a Sustainable Planet." So the report addresses working with big national environmental groups or big greens as you call them here.  And you open the report this way: "How often do we hear frontline communities say, “We refuse to work with Big Green A until we hear an apology for past wrongs and a commitment to a fundamental change in how they operate” Or, “Why would I want to work with Big Green B? They will take the credit for the work I do!” Or, “I'll never work with Big Green C again. They have no respect for my culture.” At the same time, we often hear mainstream enviros speak with angst, “We want to work more with grassroots groups but we don't know how to engage them.” Or, “We reached out, and they didn't respond.” Or, “This plant is bad for this community but they just don't get it! We are trying to help them.” So that really cuts to the chase and shines a light on on the history of the kind of rocky relationship between white led and Black and brown led organizations when it comes to environmental justice. What has changed and what hasn't changed since 2013?Jacqui Patterson  Yeah, thank you. Oh, that brings back memories. I haven't. Yeah, so what has changed is that those questions are less happening behind closed doors, particularly on the grassroots side. And also, what has also changed is that there have been formations that have been put together to deal directly with this issue, like the Building Equity and Alignment, no, Building Equity and Alignment for Impact one way, or like the B...Yep, that's exactly the B--Building Equity and Alignment for Impact, which is a combination of kind of these large green organizations, frontline grassroots groups, and philanthropy coming together to talk about to talk about these challenges, and how do we build more alignment recognizing that, yeah, that we know, we need it sorely. And so trying to work through some of those challenges that have been surfaced. But recognizing that, that, that the the power is in the collaboration and saying that we have to do this, we have to, we have to do this. And so that has changed, recognizing that and, and the formations to deal with it. And also certainly, what's also changed is the fact that philanthropy is supporting the need for that shift, and supporting the spaces to help to bridge those challenges. And that philanthropy is also recognizing that continuing to put, you know, millions upon millions of dollars and resources in the hands of only in the hands of big green organizations is actually exacerbating some of those dynamics and challenges. And there's a lot more of an effort to support frontline grassroots groups. So all of those things have changed, as well as the urgency of the climate clock, that it hasn't changed, but it's become much more well known. And, and therefore, as Martin Luther King says, "People are feeling the fierce urgency of now" in terms of the the nature of a critical this of kind of getting it together. So not to say that in some ways, all those things have shifted. And, and, and some and and the very same things are still being said at the same time. You know what I mean? John Fiege  RightJacqui Patterson  Yeah, so the problems persist, but at least there's an acknowledgement of them, which is the first step and some, some steps in the right direction. John Fiege  Right. It's a process. Always a process. Jacqui Patterson  Exactly Yes. John Fiege  So what does antiracism look like in the environmental movement? Jacqui Patterson  Yeah, in the environmental movement, it means that across the board and all the work that we do around the environment, we have to acknowledge and intersectionally address the impacts of racism. I famously talked about when I was doing a talk for a funder, a funder ask me to do a talk to a group of solar, like solar industry, folks. And when I gave my slides, the funder was like, "Yeah, we just want you to focus on solar, you know, and on energy. And so, so I, I said, so after kind of going back and forth with them, I was like, Alright, I'm not gonna use slides, and I'm renaming my talk. Black Lives Matter, Energy Democracy in the NAACP Civil Rights Agenda, and after I gave the talk like people, like it was kind of a well, it was an exponentially better received talk than if I had just I don't know what they what even just talking about this would mean in the context of, you know, the reality of life. But but but, but the folks in the industry really saw a new purpose and what they were seeing doing and political purpose and what they were doing, and they felt brought meaning to the work that they do. And so, so, so in some, it's first of all, kind of understanding that a) how how racism impacts how it impacts environment, environmental work and environment in the environment and b) understanding that, and that the very same systemic underpinnings that are driving climate change, are rooted in racism and so forth, and that we and if we don't kind of address these issues at their roots, we we won't be able to address climate change. And so that that's another piece that people need to understand. John Fiege  Can you talk about your work across the international borders and how it fits into what you're doing here in the US?Jacqui Patterson  Sure. Yeah. When we first went to actually one of the first things that I did, when I joined the NAACP, actually, I was already I was already going to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of Parties in Copenhagen, before I joined the staff and so so I ended up going in kind of this hybrid role of kind of starting to join the end up starting to be a staff member of the NAACP and already planning to go as part of this project I'd started through Women of Color United looking at the intersection of gender and climate. And at that UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of Parties will call it COP that I first encountered the Panafrican Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA), and and I had been my work my work leading to working with NAACP had been International, that's the work that I do so I always had that international orientation and seeing how things are connected and so forth. But and in the context of connecting with the PACJA, done other international groups, we now have a memorandum of agreement with PACJA,. And being a part of the US Climate Action Network, which is part of the Global Climate Action Network, we we see the connections between US policies, domestic and quote unquote, foreign policy, and and everything from at those UN climate talks. Historically, no matter what administration the US has played an obstructive role always wanting to kind of commit as little as possible from an national standpoint, but then that also impacts the level of commitment across the board, if you have one group bringing it down, it kind of waters down  the the teeth and the aspirations and the ambition in the in the agreements. And so recognizing that we need to be there as us voters to hold  the delegation that's there to you and climate talks accountable for, for not weighing down because we can't like if we even if we all in the US stopped all of our emissions tomorrow, we're still in a globe. And if we're kind of weighing down the rest of the processes, then other people's a missions like yeah, we are 25% of the global emissions. So it would definitely have a significant impact. But we need to we need everybody to stop emitting in order for us to as a as a world to advance. And so the US has to be there making commitments on its own part, and it has to push for ambition with all the industrialized nations who are driving climate change for us all to be able to survive and thrive. So that's one thing. We in our connection with the Panfrican Climate Justice Alliance, we in our storytelling that we've done since then,we go there for those UN climate talks. We were in Nairobi for those conversations they've come here, and what's emerged as the story of our connections are like the same ways that countries in the Global South and BIPOC communities in the global north are least responsible for climate change. We all share... We all share the fact that we're at least responsible and we all share the fact that we're most impacted. And we all share the fact that we're the least politically powerful in terms of the decision making thats had, so we have our organizing as a bloc to say, you know, we, as global Afro descendant, leaders on environmental and climate justice, want to have a common agenda so that we are, we're pushing in concert and building power of as a global majority, in terms of BIPOC folks. And so with that, that means that we like even as I push for something here, or if our if our communities and movement here push for like stopping the burning of coal, then at the same time, we're pushing to stop global exports of coal. And at the same time, countries in Sub Saharan Africa are pushing to stop the global imports of coal. So we really we deal at all sides of that, that continuum. So those are just some...and then I'll just end with another example of kind of those connections as well. So as we talk about immigration policy, again, US being 4% of the population, but 25% of the emissions that drive climate change. But yet we have these punitive immigration policies so that when people are driven out of their nations because of disaster, or because their breadbasket has dried up as a result of our actions, on climate me on on emissions, but also our kind of imperialist actions, and the ways that the structural adjustment programs that others have made, have made those nations in, you know, uninhabitable, in some cases in some of the communities, then instead of kind of offering refuge in sanctuary, we're putting people in cages. And so while we work on better immigration policies to really so that not just, you know, so we're taking responsibility and being accountable for the actions that are driven people from their nations, but at the very least, but ideally, just because people need need they their need, and we and we have abundance, again, pushing back on that false narrative of scarcity. But then at the same time, we're also pushing for the types of policies that allow countries to be self sufficient, and able to address the impacts of climate change or avoid climate change in the first place. So through the US commitments to the UNFCCC and so forth, and that we're helping the to work with our kind of partners in the Global South, to be able to have nations where we where people don't have to kind of flee in order to survive. And I'll just end with a quote from, Warsan Shire, which is... Somali...a Kenyan, a Somali born Kenyan poet. Anyway, she says, "You have to understand that no one puts their children in a boat. Unless the water is safer than the land."John Fiege  Wow. That's a good punctuation mark. Yeah, it makes me think back to what you were saying earlier about whole systems and the absolutely importance and importance of thinking in terms of whole systems. So how is your work change since the killing of George Floyd and the blossoming of the movement for Black Lives?Jacqui Patterson  Yeah, for one is gotten more, we've been just crushed by by demands that so that's one thing. And not only, the full the fulfilling the demands is kind of the least of it in terms of capacity, because we, for the most part, don't even get there. But uh, but just fielding all of their demands, as is so many and trying to filter out which ones are from people who are pushing or  are performative, because you know, they look good, which ones are people who are trying to do something because a funder is saying that they need to do this,John Fiege  What are folks asking of you?Jacqui Patterson  It's everything from just wanting to quote unquote, pick our brains. Like, "Here's what's going on in my company," like sometimes it's corporations sometimes is organizations. "Here's what's going on in my organization. Here's what I'm planning to do. Can you give them feedback on it?" That kind of thing. A lot of times is wanting people wanting us to come and speak, you know, just kind of help to educate folks. So that's another thing. Sometimes it's wanting us to recommend consultants, which is another thing. Giving feedback on on documents. And sometimes it seems like it's just so people want to be able to say that they talk to us, so it's just kind of wanting to have a conversation. Um, and then a lot of people wanting us to join, whether it's advisory groups or boards or steering committees or all these other things, because so various, various things.John Fiege  A lot of things that are asking for a lot of time. Jacqui Patterson  Yes, definitely. So there's that. On the other side, though. Some, some, some groups have come and they've said, Oh, now what you said, we see what you were saying all these years ago, and are kind of pulling, you know, dusting off some memo that I may have written way back way back when say, and actually taking it seriously now. So that's been interesting. And so that, so so on a positive side, there are there are organizations, companies and so forth that are making concrete commitments as a result of what has come. Yes. And so some folks are going beyond the statements and shifted their funding priorities shifting the way that they do the work integrating, at least a more anti racist frame into the work that they do. So that kind of enlightenment and action has definitely moved the ball in an important way. For sure.John Fiege  So social movements often focus on what's wrong and what needs to change. But sometimes, they don't spend enough time imagining what could be, and getting people excited about those dreams of alternative possibilities. I've heard you talk about creating eco communities and locally controlled sustainable food and energy systems, with the potential for communities to become the owners and beneficiaries of local distributed generation and micro grid energy systems. I personally really love this kind of thinking, can you talk about some of these specific regenerative, self reliant eco-community ideas? And in how you think about what might be called utopian visions?Jacqui Patterson  Yeah, definitely. So first, as I was talking about before, in terms of the type of societal shifts that we need, we know that the way each and every one of the systems around the commons are designed have been problematic, and not delivering universally what's needed. And, at best, and then at worst, actually causing harm in the generation and the delivery of, of whatever the good is. So we talk about our energy systems, we're saying we need to shift to, to more energy efficiency, to clean energy. And we need to have a distributed system of doing so we know that not only you know, whether we've we've already talked about extensively in terms of the pollution and so forth, but the energy sector, but the other thing that's important to note is the is the the energy companies in the millions...the billions of dollars in profits that they've made and how they've, they've invested that in, and not only anti-regulatory lobbying, and anti clean energy lobbying, but also invested in groups like ALEC, that push on voter suppression, water privatization, school privatization, prison privatization, etc. And so for us, when we talk about the alternative, it is about making sure that there's affordable and accessible energy for all and it's about making sure that that becomes the focus of the energy sector, versus the focus now which is on, again enclosure of wealth and power to the tune of billions of dollars. And so that's why we feel like the whole sector needs to shift. And so that's just a little bit of background there. And so we we've been able to lift up the stories where people are developing, whether it's micro grids, or even larger grids in for example, on Navajo Nation. They're replacing the Navajo Generating Station, which was one of the largest, most polluting coal fired power plants in the country, and now they have a Navajo Nation owned a solar farm. That is creating energy in a way that don't pollute, and it is owned and operated by the Navajo Nation. John Fiege  That's awesome. Jacqui Patterson  Yeah, that's awesome. John Fiege  One thing that's exciting to me about the green new deal and similar ideas that came before it is, is the possibility for labor and sustainability to be on the same side for issues rather than constantly to be pitted against one another. What are your thoughts about how labor and justice and environment can can build solidarity as as we move into this new era?Jacqui Patterson  Yeah, so we put together this Black Labor Initiative on Just Transition for that very reason. So that we are all talking together at the same table with a common agenda, we were speaking at the coalition of Black Trade Union this meeting a couple of years ago. And when someone asked us about the Cold Blooded Report, and we spoke on that, then someone raised their hand in the audience, and they were like, "Well, we're from the United Mine Workers of America. And we kind of take exception to this Cold Blooded framing." And so we really had a chat about that. And understood where they were coming from, and really kind of talk about how we had reached out to them, we put together the Black Labor Initiative on Just Transition a couple of years before. And we would love if they consider coming back to the table there. And so they they did, and we really had a great conversation that resulted in...I was going literally from that meeting, to a meeting of the 100% Building Blocks, which is being put together by this 100% Renewable Network. And so as one of the authors of the Building Blocks, I really pushed hard for us to have a building block that's dedicated  to labor. And it was out of that conversation that I said, we need to have, like, right alongside the renewable portfolio standards and the energy efficiency standards we need to have in just right in tandem demands for high road jobs, for pensions, and for health care for transitioning workers. Like that can be like an afterthought, and "Oh, we need to do this too." It's not like, it's like, these are the things we need to do not like we need to do this too, because that automatically is like, but no, like we like these are the things we need to do. No caveat, no qualifier. Just like these are the things; renewable portfolio, standard energy, local higher provision, disadvantaged business, enterprise division, health, you know, health care, pensions and high road jobs for transitioning workers are inextricably tied prerequisites for this transition.John Fiege  Yeah, and that goes back to what you talked about before of rooting, the work in the dialogue with with multiple groups, multiple people, multiple stakeholders, and finding truth through that negotiation discussion, rather than imposing it in some theoretical way on top of other people.  So when the internet started to roll out in the 1990s, and 2000s, there was this, what was called the digital divide. Well, you know, wealthier, whiter, more urban communities got access to computers and the Internet, poorer communities, more rural communities, communities of color, were often not at the negotiating table and left out of the digital revolution. Some people are concerned that the rapid shift to green energy could cause a similar divide. Maybe you know, you could maybe call it a "green divide." What's your view on, on how this concern is playing out? And what do you see as the key elements to understanding what's going on and what to do about it?Jacqui Patterson  Yeah. So before what I was talking about one of the groups wiping off the dust off of a memo I had written some years ago, it was on that very thing, basically saying that, you know, how we need to have leadership of frontline groups in the new energy economy. And again, similar to what I was just saying about Black labor and labor in general, that it can't be an afterthought, like you can't continue to focus as a sole industry on quote-unquote, the low hanging fruit or this false notion that "a rising tide lifts all boats." And so that's all to say that, uh, that we need to make sure that we're working with with, with the, with the policies to make sure that we have clean energy in terms of universal access, we have to make sure that we're working with communities to make sure that they understand what the routes are to be able to access, we have to work with these regulatory agencies, whether it's for FERC, or, or the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or the PCs and the PSCs, to make sure that they are, that they're holding these utilities accountable for practices that are pushing us to where we need to go as a society towards clean and efficient energy. So all of that needs to happen in concert to make sure that we don't have those kinds of separations, in terms of who acts who's accessing it, who's paying the price. John Fiege  That your narrative doesn't get co opted by people with a furious intention for using that narrative. That's exactly ridiculous. Yeah. Well, going back to young Jackie, growing up in the south side of Chicago, how has your thinking changed since then, about who you are, and about your relationship to the rest of life on the planet?Jacqui Patterson  Hmm. One is, I see that...for one thing I now understand in a way that I now understand the relationship between whether I turn the light switch on, you know, this, this relationship to this larger world, like this, literally the implications of turning my life switch on and were, like, tracing that back to its roots, and then tracing it out to its impacts. Similarly to, if I "throw something away"  knowing know where that will go and what its impacts will be like. So now just from being that innocent child who, who didn't, who didn't have a sense of that larger world, now I see all of that. And see like my, my, the importance of my individual actions, but then the importance of my actions as a part of a collective, and the and the possibilities of a change as a change agent, and shifting from a person who kind of life happened to me, to someone who is actually able to influence what's happening in in the world in a different way. So that's a major shift. Also, just like the innocence of childhood, I was were aware of racism fairly early on, because it was a constant refrain with my mom, and so forth. My brother, a

India Walton shocked the political world and upset the establishment by running against and defeating a four-term incumbent Democratic Mayor of Buffalo this past June in the Democratic primary. She's a nurse, a union organizer, a single mother, and she will become the first socialist mayor of a major American city since 1960 if she wins the general election in November. The political establishment in Buffalo is not taking this lightly. So, while she should be coasting to a victory in November because Buffalo is overwhelmingly Democratic, she has a very difficult opponent, backed by Trump people – Byron Brown, the guy she just defeated in the primary. This is such an important race -- all the issues we are facing all over the country -- Covid-19, the police state, the prison industrial complex, economic inequality, climate, and sexual violence -- they all play a role in this race. And India Walton's a thoughtful and forceful candidate and leader we should get behind to take care of these issues that plague us all. Read India's recent piece in The Buffalo News about her five-point plan for a safe and healthy Buffalo: https://buffalonews.com/opinion/india-walton-my-five-point-plan-will-build-a-healthier-city-for-all/article_fe41ab3c-1c9b-11ec-b394-d79687261b09.html India was once executive director of the Fruit Belt Land Trust, a public project to fight gentrification and keep housing in the hands of the people. You can read more about the Fruit Belt Land Trust in Open Society: https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/voices/how-do-we-get-more-power/episode/fruit-belt Watch India's winning speech after the Democratic primary in June: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8Y-FgPsjb8 Join India's friends at Movement Generation in Oakland, California here: https://movementgeneration.org/ Most importantly, donate to and volunteer with India Walton's campaign here: https://www.indiawalton.com/ Episode Music: "Buffalo Soldier" - Bob Marley https://youtu.be/uMUQMSXLlHM Underwriter: Go to Expressvpn.com/rumble to get three extra months free of internet privacy ****** Become a paid member of Mike's Substack to join him for our first live Q&A on Tuesday, October 12th at 8pm ET! https://www.michaelmoore.com/subscribe Sign-up for Michael Moore's FREE email list at: MichaelMoore.com A full transcript of this episode will be available here: https://rumble.media/category/podcast/transcripts/ --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/rumble-with-michael-moore/message

How are Ecological Justice, Black Liberation and Land Reparations symbiotic and interdependent? In this episode you'll hear about the history, the complexities, and the powerful work happening now to liberate land, labor, and livelihoods towards Black liberation with a special hosts takeover from Movement Generation collective members Crosby & Quinton. Listen to hosts and guests, Leah Penniman & Akua Smith as they sit with thought, laughter and possibility.Episode transcript: http://bit.ly/DWGTF-S1-Ep3

This is Part 1 of the We Rise Series- a series dedicated to showcasing soulful decolonizing strategies. This episode is for all of those who are wanting to move from theory to action. TO SIGN UP FOR THE GATHERINGS: Consciousness Rooting in the Heart of Autumn Inspired by the legacy of Consciousness Raising circles from 1960s & 70s freedom movements, Consciousness Rooting is about: grounding & deepening ~ reflecting on our origins, our ancestors’ lineages & histories ~ storytelling & remembering as a form of resistance, to begin to heal and to help us navigate these tumultuous & transformational times… This work aims to inspire deep reflections, help us center through ongoing distractions & stresses, and support us as we face daily struggles & many frontlines. racialized as white circle Tuesdays 6PM-7:30PM PST pilipinx circle Wednesdays 6:30PM-8PM PST open circle Thursdays 6PM-7:30PM PST ~~~ by donation / no one turned way for lack of funds to register email: weriseproducers@gmail.com by October 13th* *Please email us if the date has passed and you are still interested in registering! ABOUT OUR GUESTS: We Rise Production is a collective of cultural producers who engage creative collaborations to support the freedom movements of our time. Through multimedia, digital and live productions, We Rise challenges audiences to think critically about the systems that oppress us all, and uses community-driven art to inspire active solidarity. Our collaborators include Movement Generation, Palestinian Youth Movement, KPFA/First Voice Media, DiaspoRADiCAL, Mycelium Youth Network, Liberation Spring, Birth Bruja, Cal Shakes, TheatreFIRST, the Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective, and decolonial, feminist artists, educators, and organizers. We vision with ancestors and future generations in mind. IG: @weriseproduction TW: @weriseproducers weriseproduction.com FB: @weriseproduction Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/werise

Originally published 18 Jan 2018. We go through how to use compression to generate movement in your mix. https://beabetterartist.com/ (https://beabetterartist.com/) Support this podcast

What if our work made our hearts sing every day? What if everyone were paid what they were actually worth? What if the profits went into the community, to build the better world our hearts know is possible? How would that actually work? Let’s find out! More at https://accidentalgods.life

Beloved listeners, A medicinal meditation for your revolutionary spirit. We are in the midst of the uprising! My family is fully committed to our practice of unlearning white supremacy and dismantling the structures that perpetuate the oppression of Black people. Black LIFE Matters. To that end, we're demonstrating, protesting, writing, calling, learning, donating and loving on our neighbors. Most of you know, I already donate 15% of my income to causes that align with my stated values-- check it out here-- and this month, we supported the Minnesota Freedom Fund and Movement Generation. Thanks for supporting my work so that I can make those donations happen. SUPPORT THE WORK! You can support me by subscribing, reviewing, sharing this podcast far & wide. You can support by becoming a PATRON or just sending some financial support to me via PAYPAL. You can support by joining our online practice community The Wildcat Yoga Club. You can support by attending my class at North Portland Yoga (via ZOOM from anywhere!) or by registering for a workshop, immersion or training. THANK YOU. SO MUCH. LOVE YOU!

This month: We are excited to welcome Michelle Mascarenhas-Swan and Mateo Nube of Movement Generation Justice & Ecology Project. Movement Generation inspires and engages in transformative action towards the liberation and restoration of land, labor, and culture. Michelle and Mateo joined host Max Rameau to discuss viral superhighways, land & capitalism, and environmental justice.Michelle Mascarenhas-Swan has worked for the last 25 years building movement vehicles for frontline communities to move a shared vision and strategy. Prior to Movement Generation, Michelle co-led the Center for Food and Justice, National Farm to School Initiative, Rooted in Community, and School of Unity and Liberation (SOUL). Michelle is also currently on the board of the New Economy Coalition.Mateo Nube is one of the co-founders of the Movement Generation Justice & Ecology Project. He was born and grew up in La Paz, Bolivia. Since moving to the San Francisco Bay Area, he has worked in the labor, environmental justice and international solidarity movements, and is also a member of the Latin rock band Los Nadies. Check out Movement Generation's new course: Course Correction: Just Transition in the Age of COVID-19.See more of the work of host Max Rameau at pacapower.org. Stay subscribed to The Next World for more news from the frontlines of movements for justice and liberation. Thank you to Jesse Strauss for Audio Mixing and Editing.You can read more about the issues we explore on our podcast and much more at dignityandrights.org, the website of Partners for Dignity & Rights.Please subscribe, spread the word, and support the show.Support the show (https://dignityandrights.org/donate/)

On this week’s edition of Sustainability Now!, your host, Justin Mog, gets you ready for Fossil Fuel Divestment Day on Thursday, February 13th with three young activists from the Kentucky Student Environmental Coalition (KSEC). You’ll hear from Beau Revlett, an Organizing Fellow with KSEC; Grace Engelman, a UofL sophomore organizing for divestment; and Laura McAllister, a University of Kentucky senior organizing for divestment. KSEC has been coordinating around fossil fuel divestment and statewide actions around Fossil Fuel Divestment Day (February 13) and in the week around Earth Day. - More information on KSEC: http://kystudentenvironmentalcoalition.org - Divest UK Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/DivestUK/ - DivestUofL petition: http://tinyurl.com/uofldivestment - A media advisory about Fossil Fuel Divestment Day in Kentucky https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rZiBrUNmxOjc-ZF-AgFcOEBrXkRoU3cvkdJXp--fEuQ/ - Divest UK's event for Fossil Fuel Divestment Day https://www.facebook.com/events/2643554679033173/ - Divest WKU's launch event on Fossil Fuel Divestment Day https://www.facebook.com/events/114666089954210/ - National information of Fossil Fuel Divestment Day https://divested.betterfutureproject.org/f2d2 - The "just transition manifesto" Grace and Beau discussed: "From Banks and Tanks to Cooperation and Caring: A Framework for Just Transition" by Movement Generation https://ccednet-rcdec.ca/en/toolbox/co-operation-caring-strategic-framework-just-transition - An article on the student campaign for divestment from South African apartheid at the University of Louisville https://ir.library.louisville.edu/honors/112/ - On Desmond Tutu giving UK's commencement address in 1985 https://www.nytimes.com/1985/06/17/nyregion/commencement-themes-hew-to-news.html - On Happy Chandler's comments after divestment from South African apartheid (content warning: racial slur) https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1988-04-07-sp-1386-story.html As always, our feature is followed by your community action calendar for the week, so get your calendars out and get ready to take action for sustainability NOW! Sustainability Now! airs on FORward Radio, 106.5fm, WFMP-LP Louisville, every Monday at 6pm and repeats Tuesdays at 12am and 10am. Find us at http://forwardradio.org The music in this podcast is used by permission from the fantastic Louisville band, Appalatin. Explore their inspiring music at http://www.appalatin.com

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

The sisters have wanted to interview Movement Generation since they conceived of this podcast. Recently, adrienne got to hear Michelle Mascarenhas-Swan give a talk on how we got to this moment of climate apocalypse. generative somatics gave us permission to share the talk, so adrienne sat down with Michelle for a quick corner-of-a-busy-room interview to frame the talk up. The worldview here will be a reference for all future podcasts. Listen up! music by Mother Cyborg and Tunde Olaniran - www.patreon.com/Endoftheworldshow www.endoftheworldshow.org/ www.instagram.com/endoftheworldpc/ @endoftheworldPC @adriennemaree @meansagittarius --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/how-to-survive-the-end-of-the-world/message

GENERATION NEXT..YOUNG GIFTED & BLACK PART II.. Join us as we continue to speak with young game changers & groundbreakers in the development of our people in varies communities.. BREAKDOWN.. ** QUEEN I AM with Yonna Sakim ** THE FIRESQUAD with Ebonyfire ** TEACHING ARTIST INSTITUE with Avandre Sayles ** BLACK VOTES MATTER TODAY with Nate Simpson ** Community Updates with Community Activist Mikkie Smith ** Black & Proud Moments teamdlw@sbcglobal.net

Tonight we learn about the East 12th Street parcel sale in Oakland and why its creating such a stir. We also talk with Brenda Wong Aoki, Mark Izu, and their son KK about Suite J-Town, the Art of Resilience. And we hear from three Asian American organizers (Harrison Seuga with Asian Prisoner Support Committee; Sabiha Basrai with ASATA and Design Action Collective; and Ellen Choy with Movement Generation, Asians 4 Black Lives, and APEX) about how they work across multi-racial lines in their organizing. This panel was part of a retreat for Asian Americans for Civil Rights and Equality. Sabiha, Ellen, and Harrison sharing the work they do at AACRE retreat. Photo by Mioi Hanaoka. Shout out to Christine Cherdboonmuang, East Lake Communities for Justice; Monica Garcia, East Lake Communities for Justice; Sydney Fang, East Lake Communities for Justice, APEN, and Asians for Black Lives; Xan West, Black Seed; and Lucy Saephan, Long time East Oakland resident. Sound for the E. 12 Street Parcel story was taken from the public video of the City of Oakland Planning Commission Hearing. Also thanks to Michelle Lin for editing the AACRE panel. The post APEX Express – April 16, 2015 appeared first on KPFA.

Preeti Shekar talks to  Sandra Sandoval from San Francisco Women Against Rape about their annual ” Walk Against Rape” event, a walk to empower survivors,  and their friends and family to break the silence and declare San Francisco as a  sexual violence free zone.   Lisa Dettmer talks to Issac Lev Szmonko from the Catalyst Project and Patty Berne from Sins Invalid about their  talk on April 19th on Visionary politics to imagine and create a world organized and operated by values of cooperation, equity, interdependence, and liberation featuring three amazing women activists, PATTY BERNE, of Sins Invalid, CARLA MARIA PÉREZ, from Movement Generation and INGRID CHAPMAN,  from Alabama Coalition for Immigrant Justice.   And we talk to Ashara Ekundayo from the Impact Hub about their “Women in Impact” series event on April 17th featuring geographer Nikky Finney and poet Carolyn Finney The post Womens Magazine – April 13, 2015 appeared first on KPFA.

 On this week's show, the last week of fund drive, call 510-848-5732 or 1-800-439-5732, or donate online at kpfa.org during the 7 to 8PM hour:   Photo credit: Apollo Victoria Contributor R.J. Lozada provides a report back on a sliver, but a significant sliver of the numerous activities surrounding 2012 NATO Summit in Chicago this past weekend. Lozada brings us a perspective, and an audio portrait of the Bayan USA 4th Congress, as well as the formation of the US Chapter of the International League of Peoples Struggles (ILPS). Photo courtesy of Subconscious Collective Contributor Ellen Choy sits with Gopal Dayaneni, Movement Generation and core organizer with Occupy the Farm. He gave background on the the Gill Tract and the land reclamation last week (5/17), told us what's going on currently, and speaks on his personal story – of how he comes from a family history of farmers in India and how he brought 3 generations of his family to work and take action on the Farm. Bhagwan, for Word Sound Power – Blood Earth. Photo by Kush Badhwar Contributor Tara Dorabji brings us an interview with Delhi Sultanate, reggae artist, bringing music and film with a social justice edge to India's prisons and towns. Sultanate, part of the Word Sound Power, is the very dynamic response to intrastate terror on human rights and environmental activists calling awareness to land grabs and injustices driven by greed. Hosted by RJ. The post APEX Express – May 24, 2012 appeared first on KPFA.

Preeti Mangala Shekar sits down in discussion with noted feminist activist and human rights advocate Sunila Abeyasekara on the ongoing political situation in Sri Lanka. Sunila also shares her insights on the history of the Sri Lankan women's movement. Ellen Choy looks at 3 young APIA women community organizers in the Bay Area – Angela Angel, Jidan Koon and Amanda Wake – discuss their recent experience in Movement Generation's Permaculture for the People 2-week training.  We will discuss in-depth the popularizing concept of permaculture and urban gardening, in the context of API cultures, and how it has inspired them as activists fighting for economic and environmental justice in low-income communities in the Bay Area.  We will also highlight ongoing local projects led by API leader who are already turning principles into practice.   The post APEX Express – June 3, 2010 appeared first on KPFA.