This is the final episode of season 1! We can only do a season 2 / iterate and improve this with your feedback: so please, let us know how you've found this season using our super-quick feedback form.

Episode 14 of the Resist + Renew podcast, where we interview Farzana from Healing Justice Ldn.

“And at some point, it stops being about recovering yourself, and it becomes about uncovering who you've always been, and it's the uncovering, and then expansion that is super, super delicious.”

- Farzana

Show notes, links

Healing Justice London website, Twitter and Instagram.

And a few things mentioned in the episode:

Loss and Grief: a litany for survival (a research project on loss and bereavement within marginalised communities)

Voices That Shake: Bringing together young people, artists & campaigners to develop creative responses to social injustice

INCITE: a network of radical feminists of color organizing to end state violence and violence in our homes and communities

Lumos Transforms

Molly Boeder Harris from Breathe Network (a network that connects survivors of sexual violence with healing arts practitioners for trauma-informed, holistic support)

Transcript

Ali: This is Resist + Renew.

Kat: A UK-based podcast about social movements.

Sami: What we're fighting for, why, and how it all happens.

Ali: The hosts of the show are:

Kat: Me, Kat,

Sami: Me, Sami,

Ali: and me, Ali,

Sami: I'm recording this now baby

Ali: Shit it's a podcast.

*Laughter*

Ali: Hey, everyone. Thanks for joining us again for this episode of the Resist+Renew podcast. And before we go ahead and pass to Katherine, who's gonna introduce this week's guest, just wanted to say a couple of things about this being our final episode of season one.

So as we mentioned last week, we have some thoughts and ideas around doing a season two at some point. But we'd love to get some feedback in the meantime about what's been working and what you'd like to see more of what you'd like to see less of. So if you are up for that we have a Google Form, which we're putting with the show notes, and also sharing on social media. So if anyone wants to let us know what, yeah, what your thoughts are, that would be really great, and really appreciated, and help us think about future episodes.

Ali: One other thing to say about this episode is that during the editing process, a couple of the segments asked to be changed by our guest. And we're really happy to do that. But it just means the audio quality is a bit different, as these were voice notes sent to us later on. So a little bit of a warning about audio quality, but stick with it because there are gems in there. Over to Katherine.

Kat: Right. Okay, so, welcome to the Resist + Renew podcast, and we're joined by Farzana Khan. Welcome. It's really great to have you. And because great and Farzana is the executive director and co founder of Healing Justice London. Her practice works on building community health repair and self transformation rooted in Disability Justice, survivor work and trauma informed practice working with communities of colour and other marginalised and underrepresented groups. We're so glad you're here. Thank you for joining us.

Katherine: So the first question, and that we'd love to ask you is to just invite you to share a little bit about the context that you're organising in

Farzana: the context. So I guess that's like, the political reality and the social reality. I think we are living in a world that is chronically unsustainable, and has been designed to be so it brutalises our bodies, all our bodies, but particularly those that are authorised on racialized class gendered ableist sexist lens. And so I guess that's the context in which I am organising is how do we, within the real limits and confines of these social constructs that we are forced to live in, but also live the cumulative impacts of everyday and reproduce? How do we restore agency? How do we access profound connection in these worlds that separate and thrive on our separation? And, and also live meaningful lives that feel fulfilled and generative and and as whole as possible? So I guess that's it. And the context of what is being revealed right now, of COVID, global political uprisings is very much the, the the revelations of that

Ali: I just wanted to hone in on you said that the world we're living in is clinically unsustainable, and that definitely feels true. And you said, it's designed to be that way, like what what, what is your analysis or understanding that means you you see it as as designed that way?

Farzana: I think when we look at some of the most dominant power structures, which aren’t isolated, even though I might be talking about it, so if we look at white supremacy, we look at capitalism, look at neoliberalism, we look at these dominant paradigms that we live in our products of what they thrive on is things that contribute to unsustainability of planet of people, relationships, they rely on breaking and disconnection. And to me a lot of my work explores, and has had to explore violence and the heart of violence is disconnection in the spectrum of ways that we become disconnected, emotionally, physically, spiritually, energetically,, communally, And and so when we see we think about what those paradigms rely on is this that that absolute unsustainability in in not just an external level, but also what we internalise. So we internalise behaviours and patterns that mean that things are not designed to thrive, to generate, but to operate in a very exploitative and extractive way. So things are only as valuable as they produce. And, and and that that modality, that brutalised modality, is one that and isn't sustainable in and of itself. But it's also something that when we really connect with it, and we are not the the few that are in the power powerful don't seek to sustain as well. So I think that's what I mean. And I think it becomes really localised. When you look at your own self and how you're trying to liberate yourself and work through different forms of oppression and or even navigating life, then I think it becomes clear how much the chronicness of unsustainability informs our our lives from the ways that we are routinely having to self abandon, you know, even in our organising even in our community work, because these are the the structures in which we're operating in. So I think that's, I definitely see it as chronic, because it's cumulative. And, and I also, and I want us to have an analysis that isn't just that it's been continuous, but that each moment then accumulates deeper layers of oppression and and harm and abuse.

Ali: I found that definition very clear. And I definitely appreciate it. They're like locating exploitation and unsustainability in our bodies. Like I feel like I don't know, like if you think of like, Marx, Marxist texts, it's like exploitation and accumulation of capital. It's all very abstract. It all seems like, yeah, there's a system, but I don't really get how it interacts with me, except when I go to work. And then it's under certain conditions or whatever. But yeah, like locating it in our bodies and locating in day to day interactions, choices, even our organising, I think that like grounds it in reality that I'm living, and I guess those moments are also choices where I can choose to not do that. And I guess that leads me to like the question of like, why is healing justice? And like, how does Healing Justice London See, doing things differently?

Farzana: So I can only speak more for myself in healing justice, because there are lots of people who make up healing justice, from a core team, to core practitioners to a whole bunch of practitioner networks, which is huge. and international. Healing justice is a framework that really connects the relationship between oppression and liberation and healing. And it's emerged out of survivors, disability, justice, communities of colour, and also connecting the relationship between our health, our personal sustainability, and also what are the ways that we do get to heal ourselves that are non-Eurocentric modalities that don't re rely on whiteness, to to save us. And also capitalism, as we see with the wellness industrial complex, so I think that within healing justice, a lot of our focus is trying to create a space to build analysis, information, share around what community health is, especially for those that are marginalised and what the types of health needs are, but also to disrupt public health because we do have it here in the UK context, in the ways that it participates in our oppression from, you know, eugenics, which are still present in our public health systems, to the deep gendering to the class classes and ableist ways in which not just the NHS but surrounding public health systems interactive, which or other parts of public infrastructure in interact. So, you know, we know that predominantly deaths in custody have been folks who experience emotional mental distress.And so really thinking about what what does wholeness and health look like without the normative model or framework being centred on a white male body, which is why you know, as much as there's so much value in Marxist analysis, it was still generated from a white male body that doesn't have to experience even itself because itself is the norm. And so when you made that connection between the body and not an act things marginalised bodies are forced to encounter oneself and what we know about and oppressors is that oppression oppression oppresses don't experience themselves. And part of that disassociation then enables abuse and harm and violence to take place, which is why the redress is so often connection and reconnecting.

Farzana: And so yeah, healing justice really does explore those kinds of those points of health healing, and, and oppression and liberation,