Fortification

The conversation began with these questions: Where is this present moment taking us? What can we radically imagine for our future survival knowing what we know now? In times of crisis, seemingly impossible ideas become imaginable. What does or might the economy of healthcare, the collective practice of care, look like on the other side of this? What is your best and worst case scenario? What is the spiritual mandate of this new time? What is our charge moving forward?

Learn more about the guests. Find a transcript of the conversation.

This episode is part of a series in collaboration with Cara Page, Susan Raffo and Anjali Taneja. Learn more about their work at Healing Histories;Disrupting the Medical Industrial Complex. Editing by Wazi Maret www.wazimaret.com, transcription support by Kolenge Fonge and music by Abhimanyu Janamanchi.

In our final conversation for Season 3, Caitlin spoke with Prentis Hemphill. The conversation touches on complicating innocence and guilt, transformative justice practices, movement culture and patterns and much more. Check it out.

Prentis Hemphill is movement facilitator, Somatics teacher and practitioner, and writer living and working at the convergence of healing, individual and collective transformation, and political organizing. Prentis spent many years working with powerful movements and organizations, most recently as the Healing Justice Director at Black Lives Matter Global Network.

referenced in this episode

BOLD (Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity)

generative somatics

Healing work & collaboration with Francisca Porchas Coronado & Mark-Anthony Johnson

read more about Prentis on their website

In this conversation Caitlin speaks with John Fife about the opportunities and challenges faith institutions face in confronting empire, lessons from organizing in Southern Arizona and much more.

The Rev. John Fife is a retired Presbyterian minister, human rights advocate and a founding patriarch of the Sanctuary Movement. Between 1982-92, some 15,000 Central Americans came through his church, Southside Presbyterian Church in Tucson, Ariz., seeking safe harbor or assistance after fleeing civil war and death squads in their home countries. Read more about his history of work here.

referenced in the episode

Southside Presbyterian Church

No More Deaths // No Más Muertes

latest from No More Deaths

In this conversation, Caitlin chats with Jen Harvey about possibilities for repairing harm caused by historic and current white supremacy, resource redistribution, parenting and more.

Rev. Dr. Jennifer Harvey is a writer, educator and activist whose passion for just social change means she constantly returns to questions racial justice and white anti-racism. She teaches at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa where she is the Faculty Director for the Crew Scholars Program. Dr. Harvey's books include Raising White Kids: Bringing Up Children in Racially Unjust America and Dear White Christians: For Those Still Longing for Racial Reconciliation, she has published in a variety of public venues (including CNN.com and the New York Times), is active her local chapter of SURJ (Showing Up for Racial Justice), and is a widely sought after public speaker who is ordained in the American Baptist Churches (USA). You can follow her on twitter @drjenharvey.

referenced in this episode

Iowa City Showing up for Racial Justice

Drake University Crew Scholars

We were able to speak with Krystal Two Bulls and Matt Howard in Spring 2019 about their work, leadership and movement with About Face: Veterans Against the War.

Krystal is an Oglala Lakota and Northern Cheyenne woman who reminds us that what matters is what we fight for, not what we fight against. Krystal is a new member to About Face: Veterans Against the War, having joined in August 2018. She served in the US Army Reserves for 8 years and was deployed to Kuwait in 2009. Krystal is new to the anti-militarism conversation, but has significant knowledge and experience in environmental justice, Indigenous Sovereignty and social justice campaigns. She works to decolonize the approaches and methods that we utilize within movement spaces.

Matt has worked with About Face: Veterans Against the War in various capacities since 2011 including as Chapter president in the Bay area, local organizer in Texas with the Operation Recovery campaign, as Communications Director and currently as Co-Director. He served in the Marine Corps as a helicopter mechanic from 2001 to 2006 and deployed twice to Iraq where he became deeply opposed to the occupations and discovered a commitment to social change work.

In this conversation between Amita Swadhin and Caitlin Breedlove, we dive into choosing relationships and interdependence, building community and healing networks and the frequent failure of organizations to deal with and support folks who have experienced trauma and violence nor commit to building systemic solutions. This important conversation includes details about childhood sexual assault.

Amita Swadhin is a queer, non-binary, femme South Asian American. They are an alchemist, storyteller, educator, organizer and strategist who channels their experience of surviving childhood rape and family violence into efforts to end rape culture and other forms of oppression. In 2016, they founded the National Mirror Memoirs project, centering LGBTQI+ people of color who survived child sexual abuse. There are 60 storytellers across 15 states in the initial audio archive.

Learn more about, support and share Mirror Memoirs fundraising page to support this crucial work.

referenced in this episode

Mirror Memoirs Oral History Project

How you can support Mirror Memoirs

Care Work by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

Queering Sexual Violence: An anthology edited by Jennifer Patterson and with a foreword by Reina Gossett

We had the opportunity to connect with Kiyomi Fujikawa in Winter 2019 and it was such a treat. Check out this conversation with Caitlin Breedlove.

Kiyomi Fujikawa is a Seattle-based, mixed-race queer trans femme who has been involved with movements to end gender- and state-based violence since 2001. Her political home is with queer and trans communities of color and organizing to prevent and respond to intimate partner violence. Kiyomi is currently on the board of Groundswell Fund and is a Grantmakers United for Trans Communities (GUTC) Leadership Development Fellow. She was most recently a Senior Program Associate at the Fund for Trans Generations at Borealis Philanthropy, and the Queer Network Program Coordinator at API Chaya. She is also an avid lover of speculative fiction, noodles, astrology (Saj Sun, Cancer-rising, Libra Moon), feelings, and do-it-yourself scavenger hunts.

referenced in this episode:

Third Wave Fund

Wild Seed by Octavia Butler

Kiyomi's book recommendations:

Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars by Kai Cheng Thom

An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon

The Broken Earth Trilogy by NK Jemisin (5th Season, Obelisk Gate, Stone Sky)

Salt Fish Girl by Larissa Lai

Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor

intro music by Abhimanyu Janamanchi. production by Nora Rasman.

Our hearty conversation between Rev. Dr. Susan Frederick-Gray and Caitlin Breedlove dives into humility, leadership, risk and institutional opportunity and threats. Check it out!

Rev. Dr. Susan Frederick-Gray was elected President of the Unitarian Universalist Association on June 24, 2017. Prior to her election, she served as Lead Minister of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Phoenix, Arizona. Susan played a critical role in the long-term campaign to end the constitutional violations of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

Susan received a Masters of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School and a Bachelor of Science in Molecular Biology from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She is a lifelong UU who grew up at in the St. Louis area. She lives now in Cambridge, MA with her husband, Brian and their son.

Referenced in this conversation:

Puente Arizona

The Great Turning by Joanna Macy

intro music by Abhimanyu Janamanchi. production by Nora Rasman.

We are thrilled to be bringing you this necessary reflection and invitation from Jessica Byrd in conversation with Caitlin Breedlove for our next episode.

Jessica Byrd is the Founder and Chief Doer of the Three Point squad. She founded Three Point Strategies in 2015 to provide a home for electoral strategy that centers racial justice and is transformational rather than transactional.

Jessica has worked on campaigns in 43 states and you can find her at the side of the most exciting races to elect Black women in the country, training hundreds of leaders, and building tools to serve the Movement.

referenced in this episode:

The Movement for Black Lives Electoral Justice Project

Action St. Louis and the work & leadership of Kayla Reed

Stacey Abrams

intro music by Abhimanyu Janamanchi. production by Nora Rasman.

In this episode Caitlin connects and speaks with organizer, researcher and lawyer Andrea Ritchie.

Andrea Ritchie is a Black lesbian immigrant and police misconduct attorney and organizer who has engaged in extensive research, writing, and advocacy around criminalization of women and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people of color over the past two decades. She recently published Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color now available from Beacon Press.

Ritchie is a nationally recognized expert and sought after commentator on policing issues. She is currently Researcher-in-Residence on Race, Gender, Sexuality and Criminalization at the Social Justice Institute of the Barnard Center for Research on Women. In 2014 she was awarded a Senior Soros Justice Fellowship to engage in documentation and advocacy around profiling and policing of women of color – trans and not trans, queer and not queer.

Referenced in this episode:

Andrea's Books: Invisible No More & Queer Injustice

Say Her Name: Resisting Police Brutality against Black Women by Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw and Andrea J. Ritchie

adrienne maree brown

Mariame Kaba

The Mandate by Mary Hooks

Octavia's Brood by Walidah Imarisha and adrienne maree brown

Alexis Pauline Gumbs

intro music by Abhimanyu Janamanchi. production by Nora Rasman.