Fortification

We're back and we are so excited to be bringing you part two of this juicy conversation to launch our third season between Caitlin Breedlove and Susan Raffo. See our first part of the conversation in the May 1 episode.

More about Susan: I am a queer woman on the other side of menopause who was raised white and uses she/her pronouns. My ancestral lineages represent the colonizer and the colonized. I am descended from southern and western european people and from people native to this land. I have experienced early and deep grief and loss and I have experienced different kinds of violence directed towards my body as well as the people around me. I am also loved really, really well. These are some of the things that inform how I do my work. I have almost always lived in midwestern spaces. I come from a mixed class background. I am currently able-bodied but have been in family with and continue to be in family with people living with disabilities. As a bodyworker, I feel pretty fiercely (and oh how many mistakes I make) about constantly uprooting ableism in this work. I am a mother, oh how I love being a mother. And I love the butch Brazilian woman I've lived with for a quarter of a century. I believe that identity is not an individual thing but a collective thing, meaning, my identities are as much about the people I share them with as it is about the things I name here. I work as a bodyworker, a cultural worker and a writer. You can find my blog and other things here: www.susanraffo.com.

referenced in this episode

Heteropatriarchy & the Three Pillars of White Supremacy by Andrea Smith

The Peoples Movement Center

Beloved Child: A Dakota Way of Life by Diane Wilson

Emergent Strategy by adrienne maree brown

Southerners on New Ground

Revolutionary Mothering and the work of Alexis Pauline Gumbs

tell us your thoughts about fortification in this short survey. thank you!

intro music by Abhimanyu Janamanchi. production by Nora Rasman.

We're back and we are so excited to be bringing you this juicy conversation to launch our third season between Caitlin Breedlove and Susan Raffo.

More about Susan: I am a queer woman on the other side of menopause who was raised white and uses she/her pronouns. My ancestral lineages represent the colonizer and the colonized. I am descended from southern and western european people and from people native to this land. I have experienced early and deep grief and loss and I have experienced different kinds of violence directed towards my body as well as the people around me. I am also loved really, really well. These are some of the things that inform how I do my work. I have almost always lived in midwestern spaces. I come from a mixed class background. I am currently able-bodied but have been in family with and continue to be in family with people living with disabilities. As a bodyworker, I feel pretty fiercely (and oh how many mistakes I make) about constantly uprooting ableism in this work. I am a mother, oh how I love being a mother. And I love the butch Brazilian woman I've lived with for a quarter of a century. I believe that identity is not an individual thing but a collective thing, meaning, my identities are as much about the people I share them with as it is about the things I name here. I work as a bodyworker, a cultural worker and a writer. You can find my blog and other things here: www.susanraffo.com.

referenced in this episode

Heteropatriarchy & the Three Pillars of White Supremacy by Andrea Smith

The Peoples Movement Center

Beloved Child: A Dakota Way of Life by Diane Wilson

Emergent Strategy by adrienne maree brown

Southerners on New Ground

Revolutionary Mothering and the work of Alexis Pauline Gumbs

tell us your thoughts about fortification in this short survey. thank you!

intro music by Abhimanyu Janamanchi. production by Nora Rasman.

An update from Caitlin Breedlove about our upcoming return with Season 3. We're so excited to be bringing back Fortification: Spiritual Sustenance for Movement Leadership in coming weeks.

With 10 new interviews recorded this Winter and Spring, we'll be sharing interviews with movement organizers and scholars, healers, spiritual and religious leaders and more.

We also want to get to know about and learn a little more from our listeners! Click here to fill out a quick survey for us. Thank you and we'll be back soon.

In this week's episode of Fortification: Spiritual Sustenance for Movement Leadership, Caitlin Breedlove, Vice President of Movement Leadership at Auburn Seminary is joined by Paulina Helm-Hernández.

Paulina Helm-Hernández is a queer femme cha-cha girl, artist, trainer, political organizer, strategist & troublemaker-at-large from Veracrúz, Mexico. She grew up in rural North Carolina, and is currently growing roots in Atlanta, GA. She is the past Co-Director of Southerners on New Ground (SONG), having joined the staff after coordinating the Southern regional youth activism program at the Highlander Research & Education Center for over 4 years. Paulina has a background in farm worker and immigrant / refugee rights organizing, cultural work, youth organizing, anti-violence work, and liberation work that centers people most affected by violence, poverty, war and racism.

Paulina is also a founding member of the national First Nations / Two Spirit Collective, a queer & trans indigenous movement-building cadre, and has served on the boards of YouthAction, Student Action with Farmworkers and The Third Wave Foundation. Paulina currently sits on the Vision and Strategies Council of Kindred Southern Healing Justice Collective, and is always exploring ways to deepen political unity with people willing to fight and organize for collective liberation.

In this week's episode of Fortification: Spiritual Sustenance for Movement Leadership, Caitlin Breedlove, Vice President of Movement Leadership at Auburn Seminary is joined by Rev. Allyn Maxfield-Steele.

Rev. Allyn Maxfield-Steele

Rev. Maxfield-Steele is the co-director of the Highlander Center in Tennessee. Raised in Texas, Germany and North Carolina, Rev. Allyn Maxfield-Steele's movement work has included solidarity struggles with Thai people's movements, work as an educator and organizer in Spartanburg, South Carolina, and a range of support for front-line struggles in Nashville, Tennessee, and throughout the South and Appalachia. As a member of the Educational Network for Global and Grassroots Exchange (ENGAGE), Allyn was a member of Highlander's 2010 Threads cohort and served as an adult ally for the 2010 Seeds of Fire youth program. He joined Highlander's Board of Directors in 2011, where most recently he has served as chair of the board. An ordained minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Allyn has served congregations in Juneau, Alaska, Nashville, and Springfield, TN. Allyn's focus and interests lie at the intersection of radical pastoral care, institutional transformation, dismantling toxic white masculinities, and liberation-driven ministry and movement building, especially in rural and small town communities. Allyn holds a B.A. in History from Wofford College (SC) and a Masters of Divinity from Vanderbilt Divinity School. He comes to Highlander from the Scarritt Bennett Center in Nashville, where he has served as a member of the education team.

In this week's episode of Fortification: Spiritual Sustenance for Movement Leadership, Caitlin Breedlove, Vice President of Movement Leadership at Auburn Seminary is joined by Miss Major Griffin-Gracy.

Miss Major Griffin-Gracy

Miss Major Griffin-Gracy is one of the original pioneers of transgender activism and a champion for Transgender Women of Color, Miss Major leads the cause for transgender rights in the prison industrial complex. She took part in the Stonewall riots. Miss Major is also the Executive Director Emeritus for the Transgender GenderVariant Intersex Justice Project (TGI Justice Project) and founder of the Haus of GiGi.

In this week's episode of Fortification: Spiritual Sustenance for Movement Leadership, Caitlin Breedlove, Vice President of Movement Leadership at Auburn Seminary is joined by Pancho Argüelles.

Francisco (Pancho) Argüelles

Pancho is a co-founder of Colectivo Flatlander for Popular Education, based in Houston Texas and current Executive Director of Living Hope Wheelchair Association. He has been instrumental in the establishment of the BRIDGE Project at the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (NNIRR), the Institute for Development of Leadership (INDELI) at the Highlander Research and Education Center, and the Immigrant Rights working group at the National Organizers Alliance. Before moving to the United States Pancho worked as a popular educator in Chiapas, Nicaragua, and other places. He is principal of Paz y Puente, LLC and father to Maria and Antonio.

In this week's episode of Fortification: Spiritual Sustenance for Movement Leadership, Caitlin Breedlove, Vice President of Movement Leadership at Auburn Seminary is joined by adrienne maree brown.

adrienne maree brown, the Co-Editor of Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction from Social Justice Movements, is a social justice facilitator, healer, doula and pleasure activist living in Detroit. She is a student of emergence, somatics, transformation and science fiction. She is part of the training body of generative somatics, and coordinating the Just Films Narrative Shift Program for Allied Media Projects. She is the 2015-2016 Ursula le Guin Fellowship, the Knight Arts Challenge for 2013 and 2015, a Kresge Literary Arts Fellow for 2013, in the inaugural Speculative Fiction Workshop at Voices of Our Nation 2014, and a graduate of the Clarion Sci-Fi and Fantasy Workshop in 2015.

In this week's episode of Fortification: Spiritual Sustenance for Movement Leadership, Caitlin Breedlove, Vice President of Movement Leadership at Auburn Seminary is joined by Francisca Porchas.

Francisca Porchas Coronado is the organizing director of Puente Human Rights Movement and a leading voice in efforts to end mandatory immigrant detention and address the trauma experienced by frontline communities currently facing criminalization and deportation. Francisca will build a network of healers across the country that employ contemplative practices, such as meditation, expression through art, ancestral spiritual practices, therapy and bodywork to address the needs of the immigrant community. These teams will address community trauma, and provide guidance to frontline organizations on how to integrate healing practices into their work with immigrant communities targeted for deportation.

In this week's episode of Fortification: Spiritual Sustenance for Movement Leadership, Caitlin Breedlove, Vice President of Movement Leadership at Auburn Seminary is joined by Melvin Bray.

Melvin Bray (http://better.melvinbray.com/) is an Emmy® award-winning storyteller, social entrepreneur, and author who lives with his wife, three kids and two dogs in southwest Atlanta, GA. He is an active participant in vanguard networks seeking more beautiful, more just, more virtue-filled ways of showing up in the world. He is author of the soon to be bestselling BETTER: Waking Up to Who We Could Be, co-editor of Faith Forward, Vol 1 and Vol 2 (Copper House, 2013, 2015), which explore ways children's and youth ministry can make the dream of beloved community possible, and he is coordinating author of The Stories in which We Find Ourselves, online reimaginings of the biblical narrative that make faith something children and youth have reason to care about. As a social entrepreneur, Melvin works to help communities of goodwill find better stories and scripts–better ways of thinking and doing–that move them toward equity, diversity and inclusion (collabyrinthconsulting.com).