Unbroken Chain Podcast

Jarmel Reitz is a Philly-based artist, font of sunshine and rainbows, and convicted felon. Here she tells the intimate story of her arrest over 16 pounds of cannabis and her subsequent experiences in jail, where she received a radicalizing education in systemic dehumanization and white privilege. This conversation was originally recorded and briefly released in 2018 before we took it offline. Today, on what would have been her release date from prison if not for a plea bargain extended because of her whiteness, Jarmel decided it was time to make this conversation public. It is more prescient than ever as we collectively grapple with deep inequity and systemic violence against people of color and those without resources. From her teen years experimenting with drugs in Jersey through incarceration in Chicago, Jarmel radiates a fundamental devotion to radical acceptance and self expression that is infectious and liberating. Find Jarmel at www.jarmelbyjarmel.com and IG @jarmelbyjarmel. More podcasts where podcasts are found, at MauraJames.com and IG @maurajames.

["Hold Onto Your Dreams" - Jah Wobble, The Edge, Holger Czukay]

Jasmyn Elise Story is an international Restorative Justice Facilitator and founder of The People's Coalition, an organization that aims to provide information, access, and resources to lower the impact of structural violence experienced by historically marginalized groups. Jasmyn recently bought a 15 acre farm in the heart of Alabama, which will be home to Freedom Farm Azul, a retreat space in the tradition of Fannie Lou Hamer and Frida Kahlo. In this powerful offering, Jasmyn walks us through transformative justice process as an alternative to traditional law enforcement and punitive justice, exploring communal listening, accountability, forgiveness, relational culture, plant medicine healing, and much more along the way. This is a potent vision for a world in the throes of deep structural change. Find Jasmyn online at jasmynstory.com and IG @storyismyname. More podcasts where podcasts are found, at MauraJames.com and IG @maurajames.

["That's A Sign Of The Times" - Floyd Family Singers]

Emma Zeck is a writer, mystic, complex trauma survivor, and recovery coach for womxn. She writes and teaches about self-love, social change, and coming into wholeness by embracing and becoming lovers with the shadow as much as the light. In this conversation, she shares some of the wisdom she has gleaned on her journey to break the generational wounds that deeply formed her early life. We talk about gaslighting, covert narcissism, dealing with feeling unsafe in your body, spiritual bypassing, and the intersection of privilege and healing. You can find her online at EmmaZeck.com and IG @emmazeck_. More podcasts where podcasts are found, MauraJames.com and IG @maurajames.

["Wild Time" - Weyes Blood]

Emily Vino is an artist, Human Design reader, and ex-evangelical Christian now helping women from all walks of life reconnect to their intuition and sensuality. Born out of her personal experiences dealing with sexual repression and shame in the church, Emily is currently developing a project about purity culture. She has started conducting informal phone interviews with others who have experienced its harm and together explore new ways to ground back into the intelligence of the body. In this vulnerable conversation, Emily shares her journey out of the church and into embodiment, undoing harmful programming around "virginity," pre-marital sex, and patriarchy and reclaiming prayer, dance, pleasure, and the divine Mother along the way. You can find Emily's healing offerings and illustrations at EmilyVino.com and HumanDesignPDX.com and on IG @emilyvino. She recommends following @themotherspirit for teaching on the Maiden to Mother myth. More podcasts and art at MauraJames.com and on IG @maurajames.

["Follow My Voice" - Julie Byrne]

Johanna Warren is a musician, artist, and healer. Her newest album, Chaotic Good, came out on May 1. In this sweet and vulnerable conversation, we dive into the shadows and gifts of the creative life, touching on the karmic drives that inform self-expression, and how her understanding of her most challenging experiences has shifted as she has healed her body and spirit, releasing damaging beliefs and stepping into stories of magic and wisdom. From discipline to self-annihilation, musical ancestors to herbal wizards, this is a tender exploration of personal catharsis and the call to service as an artist. You can find her at JohannaWarren.com, her music at JohannaWarren.bandcamp.com and on IG @johahanna. More podcasts where podcasts are found, MauraJames.com and IG @maurajames.

["Rose Potion" - Johanna Warren]

Michael Stuart Ani is a farmer, writer, and advocate for the protection of the environment. He has lived and worked intimately with some of the most remote indigenous communities of Central and South America and has been carrying the ritual steps of the Ghost Dance for decades. In the 1960s and 70s, he was the only outsider allowed into Mexico's Sierra Mazateca cloud forest where he developed a lifelong relationship with an entheogenic mushroom called Deshetō. He later spent 12 years with the Yanomami tribe of Venezuela, fighting epidemics. He is featured in the 1992 documentary, "Yanomami: Keepers of the Flame" and wrote the book "The Ghost Dance: The Untold Story of the Americas." In this fascinating and wide ranging conversation we talk about the sacred connection between plants and humans, cultivation of botanical medicines, the lineage of ritual, the fallacies of the modern approach to healing, ancestors, gods, and reclaiming our place in the weave of nature. You can find Michael at MichaelStuartAni.com and on IG @theghostdance. More podcasts where podcasts are found, MauraJames.com and on IG @maurajames.

["Ghost Dance" - Patti Smith Group]

Beth Shelburne is a journalist who specializes in investigative long-form reporting on criminal justice and mass incarceration. Formerly a reporter with WBRC in Birmingham, AL, Beth left television news to focus full-time on amplifying the voices of those who are stuck inside the system and often silenced. Her recent essay on conditions inside the largest maximum security prison in the nation, "Angola's Angst," can be read in the Bitter Southerner. In this conversation, Beth shares wisdom from her friends and collaborators inside the system and honors the incredible odds they have overcome to develop emotionally and spiritually while imprisoned in a system not designed for rehabilitation. She taps her extensive knowledge of the systemic problems within the carceral state, and we discuss the pervasion of contraband, extortion and corruption, "tough on crime" culture, and three strikes laws (called the Habitual Felony Offender Act in Alabama) that can send people who commit non-violent offenses to prison for life.

You can find Beth's writing and documentary films at BethShelburne.com and IG @bshelburnebham. More podcasts where podcasts are found, on MauraJames.com and IG @maurajames.

["The World (Is Going Up In Flames)" - Charles Bradley]

Cindy Milstein is an anarchist organizer and writer long engaged in contemporary social movements and collective spaces. She is the author of "Anarchism and It's Aspirations", coauthor of "Paths toward Utopia: Graphic Explorations of Everyday Anarchism," and editor of the new anthology "Deciding for Ourselves: The Promise of Direct Democracy." For the past couple years, Cindy has focused on doing support work for the J20 defendants and others facing state repression, touring extensively with her latest edited anthology, "Rebellious Mourning: The Collective Work of Grief," and co-organizing the Montreal Anarchist Bookfair. Currently, Cindy co-organizes the Institute for Advanced Troublemaking and its Anarchist Summer School, and is honored, when called on, to do death doula and grief care. We talk about ways to step into the promise of anarchy in the crisis of our current times, the need for deep grieving in our culture of unnecessary losses, and the history of Mutual Aid projects past and present including the Zapatistas, Black Panthers, and Underground Railroad, among so much more.

You can find Cindy's writing online at cbmilstein.wordpress.com and on facebook and IG @cindymilstein. Her crowd-sourced directory of Mutual Aid Pandemic Disaster Relief lives at mutualaiddisasterrelief.org/collective-care/. More podcasts where podcasts are found and at MauraJames.com and IG @maurajames.

["Eclipse of All Love" - Linda Perhacs]

Astrologer and author Juliana McCarthy returns to the podcast (find her on Episode 2)! We talk from our offices in bed, quarantined 2,000 miles apart. I called Juliana to get some context and grounding for our current situation: to understand more about 2020, an unprecedented year of transformation, and the new age of individual liberation. And she gives us a massive download on Saturn, lord of karma, Chiron, the Wounded Healer, and the new Age of Aquarius. We talk about loneliness and aloneness, retreat mentality, looking our demons in the eyes, making our healers our heroes, and building peaceful Queendom. This is a time of potent and desperately needed change, and there are new paradigms afoot.

You can find Juliana's offerings online at EtherealCulture.com and patreon.com/astrologer and on IG @etherealculture. Her book, The Stars Within You, is available everywhere. More podcasts at MauraJames.com and on IG @maurajames.

["There's A Rugged Road" - Judee Sill]

Dave Barnhart is a writer and Methodist pastor who leads a network of house churches as well as a monthly psychedelic integration meet up in Birmingham, AL. In addition to maintaining a beautifully thought-provoking blog, he is the author of two books, What's in the Bible About Church? (2008) and God Shows No Partiality (2012). This conversation, recorded the week before COVID-19 and global recession, is as relevant now as ever. Dave shares his experiences participating in a psilocybin study at Johns Hopkins University and his journey to find transparency and vulnerability as a spiritual leader. We talk about guilt culture, the longing and loneliness of life, civic religion and nationalism, disruptive religion ("the kind that Jesus actually preached"), and finding God at the margins. This is good medicine for those striving to navigate these challenging times with integrity, grace, and some kind of sanity. You can find Dave online at SaintJunia.org and DaveBarnhart.net. More podcasts where podcasts are found and at MauraJames.com and IG: @maurajames.

["The Ark" - Gerry Rafferty]