Are we live?
Yes, real wonderful.
Okay. Thank you, everyone, for
coming to Freedom is Indivisible.
We will be
hearing from
Analise Sesay and
Molly Lipson
before having some
conversation
about the topic of
freedom on social movement,
and how we embody these things in
our everyday lives and our practises
and also
in bringing different movements
together and the indivisibility of
different social movements.
So thank you for being
here.
I'm just gonna go through a little
bit of housekeeping
at the top.
So we are
live now for everyone on Zoom.
We are live on YouTube.
We will be taking questions.
And if you can just post
your questions into the
chat, if you're on YouTube or if
you're on Zoom, there
should be a little bit
of information about how
to ask a question that's just going
to the charts as well.
So if you could just follow those
guidelines,
we will be taking
the questions around about
Seven, sort of seven-ten
so if you could going to have your
questions in the
chats by seven.
So we can then go through them
and pick a couple.
Great.
Daniela, is there anything that
you'd like to add?
Yes.
Well, hi, everyone.
I will, because in today's
event on Zoom, so
if you have any question
about today's events,
about the format, if you have any
technical issues, you can get
in touch with us privately on
the on the Zoom chart.
And I will be posting
some documents and link on
that Zoom chart.
So keep an eye.
And just want to say that by
participating to this conversation,
you agree to us. Safe Spaces
agreement
has been already shared by email
and barg going to be posting
once more here.
And this is in order to
keep it as this event
a safe space for everyone.
And so, yeah, if you don't have
a chance to have a look,
just read it through now
and you have
one more document that is quite
important. And I'll be sharing now
is our resource document.
This also can be found on the
on our website under the July's
Meetup page.
And you can find
info, links or resources
from our guest speakers of today.
And it is an open document.
So in general, we would like to
encourage you to do details,
links to your practise or really
any relevant materials that you
would like to share with us today.
Yeah. So keep
an eye on the Zoom chart and
show me any question.
Just pop through
that.
Thank you, Daniela.
And John, did you have anything
else to add to not give me tonight?
No, just if anyone does have any
problems technically that
they do need help with.
Just send me a message and I'll
I'll help as quick as I can.
Brilliant.
Thank you, John.
So just before
we get going.
I'm going to take us through a short
grounding exercise
just to bring everyone into
the room so
you can participate with this in
whatever way is comfortable to
you.
But it's just
really good sometimes to help set
the space
to kind of start with something like
this.
So it's up to you. If you close your
eyes, we'll leave your eyes open.
It might be best to close your eyes
if you happen to do the.
And just bring your attention to
your breath.
And as you said.
Just give a little bit of space
to acknowledge what
you're feeling at the moment.
You hungry, tired?
We've been uplifted by anything to
that has been anything that's things
weighing on your mind that feels
like weight.
Just give a little bit of space to
acknowledging those different
feelings.
And.
Then broaden out to
thinking.
Well, asking yourself what
those feelings are coming from.
Is it something you've seen?
Something that's happened recently.
You feeling frustrated because you
dropped something idea?
Does it feel like something?
Is is occupying
up quite a lot of space in your mind
at the moment.
Just give that some space.
And as we
move into this event.
where there a number of us
that come together.
To share and to share
this space together.
Just expand that one step
further to imagining all the
different things that everyone else
in this room at the moment in
this online room is
thinking about potentially
as they think through
what they're feeling,
what the day has brought them.
What kind of a space there are in?
And just.
Keep that in mind as we move through
the event.
We all of us have all of these
different things going on right now
as it is a difficult time in so
many different ways.
So it's good for us to just ground
ourselves and understanding that
everyone's going through something
right now so
we can hold space for each other in
that way.
And as soon as you're ready
to come back into the room.
Thank you again, everyone, being
here, it's a real pleasure to be
able to hold this space and be a
part of the social network
and part of the team
bringing this about together.
I'm huge thanks to the rest
of the chains, Marcleo and John
and Daniela
and all the other hosts
and
we're gonna.
Read a short poem.
That's one of my own.
And I will
I will say a couple of words about
what it what it's about.
Afterwards I think, but
the poem is called 'Words
and Walls'.
Wasn't Colebrooke the setting and
one of the Brontë's models?
Somewhere in the Cotswolds, in
Chilterns.
I want to know about the history of
these houses around me, streets
and names, historical
and migratory.
Porous and fluid,
permeable and unmoving
structural seep.
The moving on not
unmourned, the movings morin's
on taun, then
movings morin's on many constant
reproducing, growing
screaming and invented vaccines
visible but ignored shrinking.
And again and again, torn.
And again torn.
You.
Yes, you.
tearing your own flesh with your
blind eyes.
You actively kill with your emotion.
You paint your neighbour invisible.
Colebrook Brookhouse,
Tinsley's house,
Yarl's Wood.
If you Google London Heathrow
Detention Centre, the first thing
that comes up is an ad for
immigration boys, because
only those affected are googling
London Heathrow Detention Centre.
Removal centre
says revenue and Customs.
These rules do not detain but remove
from the here to the ground there.
The place called Where You Came From
and it's neighbouring villages,
sorry, countries.
Calls to act, all
eyes have disappeared.
Don't call the doctor.
Our safety was never here.
Don't call the police.
A lawyer will navigate you through
unjustice.
Cool tap.
That's words and rules, and that's a
poem I write.
When I was having a little look
in to the detention
centres that we had in the UK around
Gatwick, I'm 23.
And it really struck me as.
Telling.
Of how little
attention that is paid to those
issues, that
the first thing that came up was
an out for
immigration lawyers rather
than any
articles on those issues.
I like that.
So.
And in the
backdrop of the
everything that's happening with
Windrush right now, it felt like
something.
Yeah, but I kind of wanted to
express about that.
Thank you for giving me a moment
to share that with you.
And.
I think we will move
on now to our first
speaker.
A dear friend of mine, Analise,
Analise, is a healing artist,
an organiser, an educator
and the co-founder of
Common Healing.
There is a link to Analise's
website that
is on the Social
Network Web site,
on the front page for
this event.
So do check out Common Healing
and everything that they're doing
right now, there are some really
amazing
sessions and different
resources that you can find
for organising and for
healing.
So, yeah, I
will shut up now and let Alalise go
ahead.
Thank you, Hannah, for
the introduction and for organising
the space.
I'm super excited to be here.
And for Social Art Network
as well.
I'm going to start
with a quote.
"whoThe task of the artist is
determined always by the status
and process and agenda of the
community that it already serves.
If you're an artist who identifies
with, who springs from,
who is service by or draughted by
a bourgeoisie capitalist class, then
that's the kind of writing you do.
Then your job is to maintain the
status quo, to celebrate
exploitation or to guise it in some
lovely romantic way.
That's your job.
As a cultural worker who belongs to
an oppressed people.
My job is to make revolution
irresistible.
One of the ways I attempt to do that
is by celebrating those victories
within the black community.
And I think the mere fact that we're
still breathing is a cause for
celebration.
Also, my job is to critique the
reactionary behaviour within the
community and to keep certain kinds
of calls out there.
The children.
Our responsibility of children.
Our responsibility to maintain some
kind of continuity from the past.
But I think for any artist, your job
is determined by the community
you're identifying with.
But in this country, the United
States were not
encouraged and equipped at any
particular time to view things that
way.
And so the artwork or the art
practise that sells a capitalist
ideology is considered art.
And anything that deviates from that
is considered political
propagandist, polemical
or didactic.
Strange, weird, subversive or
ugly".
And that is from Toni Cade Bambara
in an interview from 1982.
I begin with this quote as an
invitation to begin
this work of radicalising our
practises by understanding fully
where you are currently situated.
That expanding be on that and
enquiring where you come from.
From this place, we can begin to
design a vision and chart the next
steps.
To examine where you're at.
To explore where you come from.
As healing work awareness,
we gain from bearing witness affirms
a way of navigation that has an
infinitely expanding perspective.
Healing is not easy by any means.
Healing is real.
We heal through the pursuit of
truth.
In that process, we kick up feelings
of shame and guilt, which are
difficult to hold.
But when we examine these failings,
we can find the pearl that sits
inside.
We find the way forward.
Yes. Belief structures will blow up.
And reality structures will
shattered.
But the antidote to the evils of
patriarchy, white supremacy,
capitalism is genuine care.
We first offer that care to
ourselves.
And from here, we can extend it
honestly to others in the form of
communal care.
So in breaking down the narratives
that we default to and live by,
without question the frameworks
that imprinted onto us from the
water we swim in, we can
establish new internal frameworks
which can manifest in the world's.
My personal healing practises
include transformative energy work,
tarot, farming and yoga,
and a yoga inspired movement
practise.
These practises allow me to support
my spirit and organise in a way
that is completely outside the
punitive, hierarchical and harmful
ways our society have been
structured.
But there's always a need for
checking in.
I ask the people I work with to hold
me accountable, recognising we all
have blind spots.
This is one way we can generate
collective power.
The struggle is never an event,
it's a process, a continuous
internal struggle, Commentary said.
You connect with truth and truth
knows no binaries such as good and
bad. Truth just is.
We have to integrate both the
spectrum from dark to light in
regards to our positioning in this
life and that of our ancestors
to create a new world that's honest
and authentic.
From soil fertilised by truth,
roots will grow happily.
To avoid diluting the movement, we
must understand our individual
roles.
Every person has their own unique
social contacts, experiences,
skills which culminates
in a unique position.
Capitalism wants us to believe there
are a finite set of path options in
order to keep us producing, leading
us to forget the infinite
possibilities available to us as
humans.
Your power is in your truth and your
authentic role.
And these roles are dynamic, ever
changing.
For me to be radical is to
trade in a commitment to being
right, for a commitment to a vision.
From here we can hold something as
true one day and the next day we
trade that idea for something even
more human.
Without our identities collapsing in
the face of being perceived as
wrong.
If we know our identities to be that
within which within us, which is
the most pure.
That which is source.
That which is Earth.
We lower the risk of ego flare ups
that block us from progress.
So that's just a little something
that I wrote
inspired by that quote.
And I just want to speak a bit more
freely about how
I came to finding
my role specifically.
I definitely spent a lot of time
kind of, trying to fit
my work into boxes
or fit my interests into boxes, and
I was pursuing identity in
work as opposed to
coming from a place of wholeness and
then letting my work flow from
that place.
So there was a lot of
healing that happened over the last
several years.
And.
That was held by my
community.
I couldn't have done it without
the love and care from the people
around me.
And the way I was
able to regenerate myself after
experiencing, like a lot of trauma
throughout my life, proved
to me that currently
that's a microcosm of what can
happen in the world.
So, like, if we can practise
collective care and if we
can move from a place of care
as opposed to a place of punishment,
then we can actually heal.
And I don't, if we're talking
prison abolition, because that's
something that I'm very
present with, is my process of
truly becoming an abolitionist
because,
I notice that I have my own
punitive structures in place, so
when we say things, so yesterday
I believe the US had the first
lethal injection, the first
person killed on death row and I
think 17 years,
as a prison abolitionist, I am
against the death penalty.
But this person was a white
supremacist who killed a black
family.
So, like, I was confronted
with that and I was like.
What is justice look like?
If I don't want anyone on death row,
if I don't want prisons to exist.
What does justice look like for
Briona Taylor?
If I don't want anybody being
arrested and these
are not questions I personally have
the answer to, other than,
joining with our communities and
beginning to
look at what what is long term
rehabilitation, how do if we have
the goal of reintegrating people
into society, if we have the goal of
ending violence?
How do we do that?
So.
Again, to be radical for me is just
to continue asking questions.
I don't think that,
there's ever gonna be a firm answer,
because this hasn't been done
before. So we're
experimenting.
And even in the case of public
accountability, so we're seeing a
lot of people right now being
held accountable for their actions.
There was a really prominent Healing
Justice podcast that
I white cis woman had founded,
was doing a lot of really important
work with the black
and brown queer community activist
spaces in this, mostly in the United
States.
And then people came forward and
said and had
experiences working with
her that were completely white
supremacist and very toxic.
So then the New Nconomy network
called for this woman to step
down from a podcast she created,
which left it to
someone who had been hired as a part
time co-director a month
prior.
And after sitting with it, that
person decided they didn't want
to carry it out. It was that wasn't
what they had agreed to.
So then we saw the end of this
podcast and
seeing having to kind of shift that
framework of like the podcast
function just changed.
So now it's, the purpose is
an example of public accountability.
And we can even look at it
from the perspective, too, of
we don't constantly need to be
producing at this point.
We actually need to like scale back
production and we need to be taking
things down.
So Healing Justice is still
as an entity, teaching us.
It's just teaching us through
care and public accountability.
So kind of back to my point about
are these like if we're witnessing
and constantly questioning
and feeling safe doing that in the
struct in community,
then we can see the world from a
more expansive place, and we can
take wisdom, we can take insights,
we can take knowledge from
the dismantling that's happening.
We're definitely, as a collective,
being called to let go
and to surrender, and a lot of
respects at the same time we're
being mobilised, and this is what I
mean about like truth is not
white or black or good or
bad. Truth is all
spectrum. And
we have to get comfortable
navigating that space
in between and navigating the
unknown so that we can
move forward.
And the way that I do
that is through intensely
prioritising my nervous system.
And tarot is another
way that I'm able to practise
truth being contradictory
and complex so I can put.
narratives, experiences, ideas,
questions on two different
archetypes of these cards.
And I use a trauma informed
approach to
tarot.
But I can witness,
as opposed to be in the forests
and be oscillating between
and holding opinions and
decisions because that's exhausting,
and it's really destabilising
constantly. But if I can just put
it in front of me and create space
between me and it, then
I can work with the different
possibilities and create space for
the truth to show itself to me.
And that can even happen in
collective. That can happen in
conversations that you're having
with your peers.
So I think it's really important to
be malleable in this time and
to see the beauty in that
and to know that we are all
impacted by white
supremacy, and we are conditioned by
it and the way that we
move through the world is informed
by it. So we have to constantly be
checking what we do.
And I think the intention, again,
needs to be on
this vision for the world that we
want to live in.
The intention can't be
to inject ourselves into a movement
or to be a part of something.
It has to be for a longer
vision so that everything that we
do is supportive of that vision
as opposed to supportive of an ego
need right now.
So that's kind of all I have for
right now, but I'm really excited
for questions
during that so I can expand upon
some of these ideas because I know
like energy work and tarot,
and so we get to like healing
frameworks I use are definitely,
yeah, maybe not talked about
commonly, but I would like
to relate it to questions
that people have or work that people
are doing and speak more
specifically about how
energy work has helped me
heal and is helping me work through
my own frameworks and
organise in a way that is
radical.
So thank you.
Awesome. Thank you so much, Analise.
That's kind of like one of the,
one of the things that has been
having me really excited about
holding this conversation
has been just
that, that the multiplicity
of different
frameworks that we can be using
it, that I think
Molly and Analise, both of
you,
are, we're all doing the same work
we're using like lots of different
frameworks to do that work, and I
think it's really beautiful to be
able to see what
how all of these different
frameworks come together in kind of
creating,
in finding ways to move through the
world, as
someone who is aligning with
the movement, with social movement.
So thank Analise.
And now we will hear from Molly.
Molly is
an abolition activist
and a writer
and another dear friend
of mine who I'm really excited
to have here.
Yeah, we've been, Molly and I have
been working on a
few collaborative projects
together.
Yeah.
I will hand over
to you now to
carry on
with your talk.
Thank you so much.
And thanks for this wonderful event
and an. That was super interesting.
I have questions, so I'm excited
to hear more about that later.
Yeah, I'm going to be talking a bit
about
how important it is to
consider the, I suppose, the words
that is used a lot as a sort of
intersectionality of issues.
But from the perspective
of issues that
I don't think are always connected
in the way that I think they need to
be. So
this talk as a sort of entitled
'This is the Crisis'.
The term "climate justice" is used
to describe how the climate crisis
is social, economic and political
rather than just a physical process.
Discussions of climate justice are
considerably better at addressing
racism within a climate context
and climate within a racist context
than discussions that focus solely,
solely on just the physical.
When these ideas are adapted by the
climate movement here in the global
north, the part of the world we
have indelicately referred to in the
past as developed countries,
much of this centres on how the
crisis is playing out,
particularly on how it
disproportionately impacts on poor
people of colour, black, indigenous,
LGBTQ+, disabled
people and those at the
intersections of oppressed and
marginalised identities.
Activists experiencing this
firsthand have been telling us for
decades that those least responsible
for causing the climate crisis
are those who are being affected,
first and worst.
It's a bit late, but it has been
good to see the wider movement here
embracing these conversations.
My concern, however, is
that it's not engaging with the
issue of racism in full
when climate groups start talking
about the cause of the crisis,
they point to unrelenting capitalism
as the problem, which, of course, it
is, but capitalism
does not exist without racism.
This is the conversation we
still fail to have.
Early on in this talk, I want to
acknowledge that everything I have
learnt comes from those who have and
are directly experiencing systemic
racism and who are on the front
lines of the crisis.
I also acknowledge my privilege in
being able to learn these things
rather than experiencing them myself
and my general privilege
by virtue of my whiteness, my
nationality and my class.
When I came to the climate movement
last year, it was after a decade
of learning and being involved in
activism around America's Prison
Industrial Complex known as
the P.I.C.
This refers to the industrial scale
and functioning of the prison system
where the interests of the
government and corporations are
indistinguishable from each other.
The P.I.C. also sees the police,
surveillance and imprisonment as
the best ways to respond to problems
that are inherently economic, social
and political, like mental health,
homelessness on gender violence.
Learning about just how extensive
the system and way of functioning is
and how it manifests according to
systemic racism has informed,
shaped and inspired my activism
and my actions every day.
I was drawn to the new groups
emerging in the climate space that
I thought were demanding the system
change, I too, so desperately wanted
for the world.
I find it helpful to think about the
system in this way.
Our economies, institutional and
political practises, personal
beliefs and behaviours, policy
and culture all interact with
each other to maintain a social,
political and economic hierarchy
where class, race,
gender, sexuality and other
identities define one's position
and experience.
Members of the dominant group or
groups enjoy privileges.
The oppressed and marginalised
groups do not.
And the same oppressed groups also
experience specific disadvantages
that the dominant group does not.
The reason there are dominant and
oppressed groups is not accidental.
Dominant groups need oppressed
groups to stay oppressed so they can
stay dominant.
The Prison Industrial Complex in
America is a living,
breathing example of this and
can also help us understand how this
is replicated throughout society
more widely.
Slavery was abolished in 1865
and ratified into the American
constitution as the 13th
Amendment.
About a decade later, the country
was deep in an economic crisis,
having lost its main unfree
workforce. Having
possibly foreseen this, the white
men in power had written a loophole
into the 13th Amendment which
stated that slavery was abolished
except for criminals who
are considered legal slaves.
They capitalised on this by creating
new laws to target black people, for
example, being unemployed.
The obvious reality from many
previous slaves became illegal.
This meant they were arrested,
reinstated as slaves and set to
work.
This amendment is set in the
Constitution today.
Incarcerated people in the US
are still legal slaves
and companies are still using this
loophole to provide free or almost
free labour in their production
lines.
The P.I.C. more generally is a for
profit business.
While only eight percent of prisons
in the US are privately owned,
100 percent of prisons use private
companies to provide all their
supplies food, clothing,
handcuffs, even the gym equipment.
Prisons need people in them
in order to keep that profit going
and growing.
And whilst this is the case,
those in power will continue to
exploit black people and poor
people of colour, along with the
poorest white people in the country
to enable the prison economy.
At the very heart of it all,
sit racism and a drive for profit,
and they work in tandem.
In fact, what we see is that racism
produces profit.
So whilst there is money to be made,
there will always be racism.
Actually, racism came first,
and so when we moved into
capitalism, racism
was seen as the key to its success.
America's Prison Industrial Complex
is just one example of this in
action.
But every system and institution
works like this in every country at
every level.
Going into each of these would
become a whole separate talk of its
own, so I'll leave it there for now,
but perhaps we can come back to the
questions.
I'm convinced that the pandemic
alone has revealed, for many who
have yet to truly see them, the
fractures, vulnerabilities and
deeply entrenched injustices
of a system designed this way.
Now, with the current Black Lives
Matter uprisings happening in all
50 states in America and across the
globe, it's clear that even
more people have come to realise
this than we could ever have
imagined.
It seems, though, that there are
still some people who have not quite
engaged with thi,. When the pandemic
hit, I saw many calls from climate
activists for governments and the
general public not to forget
that there is also a climate crisis
to contend with.
I'm now hearing this again with BLM
and the idea that these issues are
distinct and seperate.
I find this quite bewildering.
This is the crisis.
When I talk about the climate
situation as a climate, as a crisis
or an emergency.
I'm usually referring to three
things.
One, the physical devastation
caused by the increase in number
and strength of extreme weather
events like flooding and earthquakes
alongside alongside drought leading
to failed crops and polluted water
supplies. Two, The
economic and socio economic
consequences of these events,
and the bit that is so often left
out. Three, both
the physical and the socio
economic processes that
are causing these things in the
first place.
Well, all of these elements have in
common is systemic racism
and a dry for profit.
Oil is a great example.
Oil is highly profitable.
So when CEOs of oil companies
want to make the most profit
possible, they'll choose the
cheapest way to drill for it.
This means they will build pipelines
through land that the system
considers worthless.
Moreover, where those who live on it
are considered disposable.
This is usually on indigenous land
or in poor communities of colour.
In other words, already oppressed
peoples.
When this oil is then released into
the atmosphere as a fossil fuel, it
contributes to the increase in
global warming.
We know that this exponential
increase in global temperatures is
disrupting the careful balance of
our natural world, leading to more
and worse extreme weather events,
which again hit the land and people
with the least responsibility for
causing the problem, with the least
resources to respond to these
events, and which are least
protected in the first place.
Then there's the aftermath of the
disaster, where homes,
businesses, possessions and
infrastructure are destroyed, the
economic consequences, consequences
are often insurmountable.
The poorest, most marginalised
people in the world are the ones who
suffer and struggle the most.
The way the coronavirus pandemic is
playing out is varesly similar.
It's a physical health problem that
is directly affecting millions of
people around the world.
And of those people that we know
that the most oppressed of being
disproportionately affected.
In the U.K., people from non-white
communities are twice as likely to
die from Covid-19.
In the USA, black people are up to
seven times more likely to die
than white people.
In both countries the reasons are
the same, long term
systemic racism means that people
from these communities, more likely
to be working in front line jobs
like bus drivers and health workers,
they're also experiencing a virus on
top of centuries of housing
and health care inequality, which
has led to them being more
physically susceptible to the kinds
of underlying health conditions that
lead to higher rates of death with
coronavirus.
They're also more likely to live in
more confined conditions that make
social distancing difficult or
impossible.
Essentially, everything is stacked
against oppressed communities.
The socio economic impacts of a
lockdown also hit those least
equipped to deal with it.
Those already living in vulnerable
circumstances and those without the
resources to survive.
This pandemic has not created
something new, it simply made
systemic racism, inequality
and injustice starker
and more obvious than they already
were.
And honestly, they were already
pretty obvious..Though
we may now be feeling quite
accustomed to the changes that this
pandemic has struck down upon us,
just take a moment to think back to
that first month, the shock
and the suddenness of everything,
how overwhelming and terrifying
things felt.
So those of us who call for
dismantling the system are
criticised for being dramatic
and idealistic.
This pandemic has proven us to be
quite the opposite.
As we watch our economies dip
into the deepest recession in a
century and think about how
that will impact on so many people
around the world.
I don't think it's merely
ideological to call for the end
of neo liberal capitalism.
However, we must also recognise
and start to integrate into
everything we do, particularly in
the climate space,
is to recognise that we are not
living in a system of just
capitalism, but a system of
racial capitalism.
This pandemic has shown us how close
we are to collapse and the alarming
realities of this world we have
created.
But it's also shown us that when we
have to, even countries
under the most extreme version of
racial capitalism, will take
immediate action to stop everything
overnight.
Particularly when it's possible that
it will affect those in positions of
power.
We must not forget that the
impossible happened.
We must refuse to accept that it
can't happen again.
Rebecca Solnit wrote a piece of the
of lockdown that articulated the was
I was struggling to find myself,
to paraphrase she quotes
something Patrissa Cullors from
Black Lives Matter wrote, which
states that the movement exists to
provide hope and inspiration for
collective action, to build
collective power, to achieve
collective transformation
rooted in grief and rage,
but pointed towards vision and
dreams.
Rebecca Solnit says that this is
beautiful not only because it is
hopeful, but because it acknowledges
that hope can coexist with
difficulty and suffering.
Hope is not optimism that everything
will be fine regardless.
Hope offers us clarity that, amid
the uncertainty ahead, there will be
conflicts worth joining and the
possibility of winning some of them.
And one of the things most dangerous
to this hope is a lapse into
believing that everything was fine
before disaster struck and that
all we need to do is return to
things as they were.
Ordinary life before the pandemic
was already a catastrophe
of desperation and exclusion
for too many human beings
and environmental and climate
catastrophe, an obscenity
of inequality.
It is too soon to know what will
emerge from this emergency,
but it's not too soon to start
looking for chances to help decide
it.
I don't know exactly what the future
looks like, but I have an
idea of what it will take to get
there. It will take more activism
than we've ever seen before.
It will take people who wouldn't
even consider themselves activists
to join in.
It will take us to stop calling
ourselves activists because there
cannot be a separation.
The world is standing at the
precipice of total system overhaul.
If we mobilise right, we actually
might be able to achieve it.
The only way to do this is to
recognise that it's not possible to
address systemic racism and climate
separately.
They all the same thing.
We have a responsibility to learn
what this really means and call for
the system that created and
perpetuates it to be dismantled.
Many of us have a greater
responsibility because of our
privilege, particularly our skin
colour.
If, like me, you are white, you
we have a lot of work to do.
Remember that there is great power
and those who benefit the most from
the system, resisting it,
rejecting it and calling for its
abolition.
This is the moment to be learning
and acting.
This is the revolution.
Thank you.
Many thanks, Molly.
That was really great to hear.
Give up, took for
the and for the next
sort of fifteen minutes,
I thought we could have
some discussion between
the three of us.
So feel free to yourselves.
One of these and mine.
Whilst we
sort of have this bridge discussion,
folks feel free to keep
checking questions and to
be into the chats.
If you're on Zumar.
If you're on YouTube, right.
Yeah. So I'll just sort of start
with this more of a comment,
Randi, and then
sort of hand over to the of you
to kind of
add your thoughts or wherever your
thoughts have been going.
But as both of you were speaking,
I was thinking a lot.
So back to what our inductee,
Roy, said
earlier on in the pandemic,
which was that the pandemic is a
portal.
And
she said at that point in time,
I know I myself was still kind
of very much feeling
kind of blasted around
by the the kind
of unprecedented
nature of everything that was
happening around us.
And the
the oversight necessary to
be able to see the pandemic as
being a sports movement.
That it is, I think, is a really,
really useful framework.
And I think.
I've been hearing a lot of people
kind of circling the questions
now of like how
do I align my practise
with, like, you and saying I know
these kind of scaling now towards
community rather than
towards sort of maximisation
in a world that is still
framing everything around
maximisation.
I think that the key is that
it's an assumption that the world
is a maximisation
framed world because
we don't know what world we're in
anymore. It's certainly not the
world. You know, even the World
Health Organisation said
phones yesterday or the day before
that.
That that's not for the foreseeable
future. There is gonna be no normal.
The thing that we used to know as as
being the world, that we're not
going to jump straight back into
that again.
That was it doesn't
exist anymore.
So, you know, that
is kind of what we're imagining
the world to be.
But the world is, is whatever
we imagine it to be.
And now we have this this portal
that's kind of shown us.
What's what's really kind of
I think the the
veil has been lifted from a lot of
people's eyes because
of the pandemic and then because of
uprising, because of everything
that the pandemic has caused.
And all of the trauma
that has been made visible
by the pandemic.
We're no longer in the
world that we thought
we were in.
That was so fixed.
So we're in something that's much
more shifting now.
That is a portal.
And we have to decide what's a
portal into.
Yeah.
The you on that aren't anything
a la.
I really like the term portal,
and I also want to speak to the fact
that
we wouldn't have seen
the uprising in the United States
start the way we are, the way that
we did.
Like for my ends, like wouldn't have
been a part of that had we not had
two months of rest.
And rest is radical.
Rest is revolutionary in a
capitalist world where you are
supposed to work to earn your right
to eat and have a roof over your
head and be clothed and be fed like
you said, eat. But getting mad
to have to grind
to survive.
And then if we even go back to
slavery, where, like
people were working 20 hours in
a field, rest
was not a thing that you could do.
And rest is regenerative.
Rust is is critical.
Rest is important.
And I'm gonna throw some shade at
Elon Musk.
He doesn't sleep.
And then he does really crazy things
on the Internet and in life,
like we need to sleep and
we need to have time for our bodies
to integrate experiences.
We need to have time for
food to digest.
We just need to have time to rest.
And the fact that we were rested.
Made us ready.
So then we saw mobilisation happen.
I believe this is in the resource
document. But there's a talk with
commentary from.
I forget what year it is.
It's about converting the
unconscious to conscious.
And he talks a lot about the
difference between mobilising and
organising and being a mobiliser
and being an organiser.
So what I think happened is we right
now, as we got mobilised in this
portal, mobilised us.
But now we have to organise.
So we have to take this momentum
and we have to funnel it correctly.
And like the revolution will not
be a hashtag.
The revolution will not.
Social media is a tool for us to
communicate is a way for us to
disseminate information.
But the work will be on the ground.
The work will be off-line.
We have to.
Right now, look to
our ancestors.
We have to look to the
revolutionaries
who laid bricks already and we have
some still living with us.
Angela Davis is here.
Like speaking every week, it seems
there's an interview with Angela
Davis.
And we have there's a plethora
on YouTube of interviews and
recordings from Malcolm X,
from commentary from like
the Panthers. I'm looking a lot at
the Panthers right now because I
think they were ahead of their time.
And they're they reflect on the
things that went wrong that they did
that didn't go right.
And they leave there's a point
at when they were assassinated or
when they were taken down with the
FBI that we can carry
on from.
And I think that
after the civil rights movement and
after the Black Panthers fell
in 72, I believe it was
that early 70s.
I think we saw a plateau of
progress.
And I think if you look at.
Up until that point, from the end of
slavery to that point, we saw
dramatic progress for black people
in America.
Then you look after that
and we've we've become
docile almost.
We've become pacified by neoliberal
democratic politics.
So in suburbia, yeah,
it looks great. And in suburbia,
like I have the opportunity to go to
rallies in the town
I grew up in, the small,
predominantly white, middle
to upper middle class town.
And then being in Boston, it's a
picnic in the small town.
People don't understand police
brutality because police
overpoliced areas and create
violence. So then in Boston, you had
the Boston PD laying bricks for
the protests, like to instigate
things of protesters and they were
showing up with jail buses and
tanks.
So it's like just to see
that so clearly that
suburban America has become
the face of America and
freedom.
So then underneath that, what's
happening with the prison industrial
complex, the school to prison
pipeline?
We can. It can be overlooked.
And people can think that we've
made all this change that we
haven't. But then I think the
pandemic as this portal
of the veil has been, like you said,
the bill's been lifted.
There is no hiding anymore.
We can't.
And the administrations are being
shown for what they truly are.
And we can't hide that like Betsy,
divorce, literally sacrificing
fifteen thousand children to send
them back to school.
And we can look at the links of
Betsy divorce. Her brother is
affiliated with Blackwater, which
was the private military force
that even Bush, the Bush
administration, was like.
Absolutely not, because they're so
heinous in other countries.
Prison industrial complex is also
the American military.
What the police do in America.
The military does on foreign soil.
So I think that,
yes, the pandemic is it's
just showing us all this thing that
people on the far left
have been aware of but now
know we can't hide it anymore.
It's just there and it's in front of
us. We've been mobilised and we're
at right now is
a call to get organised.
And this is like this space is
really important because it's like,
how do we bring together the
different movements?
It's not.
I consolidate them.
It's unite them and it's like unite
them in their individual power
so that we can support people.
Commentary in this talk, I mean, a
wrap up soon, because I'm ranting
now in the tug
commentary talks about how Malcolm X
was assassinated when he was in
between organisations.
So after he left the Nation of
Islam, when Rame and Snik
were kind of fighting over him.
That was when he got assassinated
because he didn't have the
organisational backing.
But then when Martin Luther King was
assassinated, there was a mobilised
response after because he had
organisational affiliation.
So it's it's organising
change. It's organising our steps
forward. It's keeping ourselves
safe. It's protecting ourselves.
Because when you have, like the FBI
in America takes
down people trying to restructure
the systems, we can't
do that in like in silos
and stay safe with uniting us in
safety. And it's critical.
It's super important.
That's.
Yeah, I was gonna.
I think like a lot of the time
for folks,
we've been talking a lot about about
this recently.
But for folks in the U.K., the
fields, those of
us who are feeling the
need for uprising now
and two are yet needing
to respond to that.
Does does.
There's so much focus
on what's happening in America.
And I think there is
some struggle in
that I've been noticing in like
people here trying to figure out a
case of like, how do I play that hit
with everything that's going on
around me and like with with what
we're doing here.
And there's like I right
before the Tlacoyo, I'll
just read out that for
me. Kind of.
Summarises what?
Well,
where the power actually is.
So the battleground for social
movement is social situations
as much as it is out on
the streets.
You know, the ballot boxes,
yes, we can vote in March to make
our voices known to the powers of
governance and to unite our voices.
But this move towards abolition,
which we're seeing worldwide, is
interesting to those of us who have
been abolitionists for some time
because it speaks of a moment
of massive reckoning with the
fact that the systems which oppress
will not be the ones to save
the oppressed.
That realisation itself is a move
towards liberation because it means
the realisation of our power,
the power to build community,
the power of nurtured, supported
and bonded community.
This movement is people
en masse starting to emerge
and boldly and build
its community.
That is why the power is in when we
start refocusing.
And that's that's why, you know, as
authors, so many of us within this
chart, within this this
this zeer meeting are authors.
And we work with community.
We work with people on the ground
that that's where the power is.
And that's that's where the work
needs to be happening.
So, yeah, I
just wanted to add in that.
But yeah.
Molly, did you have anything to add?
Yeah.
So everything Emily's
you just said him on, like, nodding,
nodding away.
The thing about reste is
so huge octopus.
And I think people
would call themselves octopus will
consider themselves that way.
Often you'll find that will say
quite driven.
And, you know, litterers in the word
active.
They want to be out and doing things
and keeping busy and
burn out is a huge problem.
And it is a capitalist
problem. But it's particularly, I
think, also an activism.
We forget that it happens even
if you start rejecting elements of
capitalism, you've still got to burn
out. Snowcaps of this world is still
living in this system.
But another point that I thought was
that you bring up
about sort of
this moment of reckoning is really
interesting. I've heard some people,
people I know recently sort of talk
about going out
and gold, believing not
maybe pretty.
But I think what we're living in
2020 and not you know, at least, you
know, I'm I'm I'm a gay man
and I don't have to hide my
identity. I'm I'm you know,
I'm a black person.
And I actually managed to get a job,
you know, and people say these
things and I'm you know,
I don't I don't want to take that
away from anyone.
But what I guess what it brings for
me is this idea of like settling
that we sort of settle for simple
reforms
that are actually
essentially given to us by the
systems the system like will commit
sort of from here to here.
And then when it gets to this point,
which is basically where I think we
are now, this is where it starts to
get scared, where its power is being
threatened, it's
its ability to maintain control
is is potentially undermined.
And from here onwards is
the real work.
And I think that some people
may well feel very
relieved that you don't have to hide
from from your you know, your
sexuality.
And in many ways, of course, that's
that's pretty in on it's it's a
different world we're living in than
the 20s, 30s,
40s, 50s, 60s.
But at some point, we have to say
this is not enough.
Liberation is so
much more than this.
And we have to
take this moment for that.
I think I don't
know that I've ever felt
like a moment like this has come
about before in
the last couple of decades.
I feel like it could possibly happen
again. I think what we are now just
going to be spiring through moments
like this. But why?
Why wait?
So I think the idea of this being a
porzel to
imagining they got
better in terms
of really liberating ourselves
and liberating others, I think is
is huge right now.
Can I respond to that?
I have.
So that question about.
So it makes me think of truth.
The truth kind of discourse
I was having where like.
How do we hold both?
So in my personal healing
journey,
celebration and joy are also
radical and really important.
And it's like not to
pacify and like in to
fall into far,
I would say one word, like still
steeped in ELAC mentality.
We're still steeped in scarcity,
which capitalism requires, like even
billionaires or
even maybe more deeply scared
to have more deep scarcity mentality
than middle class or lower class
working class people because they're
hoarding like that's not that's
not a behaviour you
exhibit if you know abundance.
And if you trust that your needs
will be met.
So if we look at that as like an
extreme scarcity
and even I would say it's scarcity
to be like, well, at least I
have this.
So then that comes to self-worth.
And again, it's back to valuing.
It's like I
it's not OK, cool.
I have a job.
That's it. That's all I deserve.
In this life. It's dreaming up.
Futures for the collective starts
of dreaming up our own futures is
like what?
How do I want to live.
What do I want my days to look like?
Like personally, I'll know I'm
successful when I can, like, eat
fruit and take naps in the sun as
much as I want to, because, like, my
needs are met and like that's
some thing that I want us
to normalise as like we deserve to
feel good.
Like that's something that we can
strive for.
Like we don't have to strive
for the confines of capitalism.
And like, I think
it's but it's all I'm learning and
it's like ongoing, which is why I
say, like, I think healing is the
root of the revolution, because it's
like the more you heal and where you
connect with your truth, the more
you automatically know you deserve
because you can't.
Once you know,
there's I don't know if people are
familiar with, like the five percent
nation which broke off from the
Nation of Islam and they
have a school in Harlem, but
they basically teach black people
that they are earth
and that they are God.
Humans are earth and humans are God.
We are we are. We come of this earth
and like, that's magnificent.
And to, like, look to the earth for
support, to look to the earth
for healing, to understand we will
heal, reciprocate reciprocally with
the earth, I feel is like another
way to manage that
breakdown between climate justice
and racial justice.
Like you're saying, climate justice
groups being like.
But what about the climate?
When people are talking about racial
justice, it's like not separate,
literally not separate, but it's
capitalism also teaches separateness
and it teaches individualism.
So, like healing is like coming
home to yourself.
Healing is coming home to the
planet. Healing is coming home to
the humanity and the collective.
And it's becoming one.
So I think it's it's a it's a
self worth question.
To be like, do you deserve to have
a job? Do you deserve
for your identity to be accepted
or tolerated? Like we tell about
talk about like tolerance,
politics with Martin Luther King.
Like, I don't care if you
will tolerate me like I
like. That's the same with like
you'll never hear me say Black Lives
Matter. I don't have to convince you
of my humanity.
That's not something that I will do
because like, I am human.
And I think that that's something we
need to like teach ourselves and
like teach the youth and like teach
kids. Like, you deserve
to feel good.
You deserve to be healthy.
You deserve to be cared for.
You deserve to be loved.
And like, that's what we search like
undue living in a really
violent, traumatic, sick
society that breaks us and
makes us feel like we just deserve
the bare minimum.
And I think like, oh, not on that
point of how
I think.
I think now
I'm certainly noticing a lot
of
open eyes towards
spiritual frameworks.
Which one is which
which wasn't so open.
A couple of years ago.
I think it
is the beginning
of a certain kind of
deep colonial movement that we
need, which moves
away from
this idea that the only framework
which is good and
pure untrue is the
framework that was created
within a colonial structure that is
science.
There are these other frameworks
that work real well.
And that in itself is kind of like
putting one framework on a pedestal.
And anything that is not that
framework is,
you know, whatever
spirituality
is like, wishy washy is something
else.
That in itself is is so
clearly racism.
And we need to have a reckoning with
that in order to be able to
reap the benefits of
healing.
Because if we're not able to connect
with ourselves and to understand
the wholeness of ourselves with
I'm someone who is oppressed
or framing
in a certain situation and someone
who is oppressed or as an
oppressive, that is healing.
Needs to happen on both of those
on both of those sides, because
no person, if they are
carrying out the role of the
oppressor.
No person should feel that their
personal that there are
any hole.
If someone else is below them,
that's not homeless.
So on either on either end,
like everyone needs to
deepen reaching
wholeness and find tools and be able
to share tools with one another to
actually build community to help
one another.
Reach wholeness
to understand what there needs to be
done.
Yeah.
Molly, did you have anything else to
add in the discussion?
No.
That's a.
OK, great.
We're running on time so far,
which is amazing.
I will, Daniella.
Do you have a question
from the Zinta?
Yeah, there are quite a few popping
up now.
So there's there's
some quite a few
asking Abbo.
So let's talk about
intersectionality, which is
quite interesting.
The first one, I don't know how much
time we have.
The first time was from Ruth at
the noise. Ruth would like to
shed the question line
here.
Ruth, you can just a mute yourself.
We have about 20 minutes for the for
the questions.
Hi. Thank you.
Hello, IRA.
Yes, and my question was, I mean,
primarily family, but also anyone
else who wants to jump in.
But it was really based on
sort of speaking to your point about
intersectionality in the climate
justice movement.
And obviously, one of the key issues
in particularly, I guess in this
country, but maybe across across
the sort of world is how white
the movement is.
And I've been thinking about
it because at the moment I'm
following the culture, declares
emergency movement as it's
trying to develop its vision and
strategy. And I've been thinking a
lot about how
the movement really needs to make
intersectionality absolutely central
to their mission.
And right now, it's primarily a sort
of white middle class people who are
determining the direction of the
movement. And that concerns me.
Now, I've got sort of my own views
about how this could be changed.
But I'd love to hear what you
think. Sort of what might
be ways in which the UK climate
can essentially be less
quiet to give away some of its
power.
Otherwise, I'm really concerned and
quite sceptical of how it can engage
and fulfil its mission.
Yes. Thank you so much.
Yes. I obviously share your
concerns.
It's a big it's a really big
questions.
I'm just trying to think of how this
will break it down. So I'll I'll try
and go through a few different
points. I'm trying to be not
super long.
So the first thing I'll say is that
I think that's certainly
an issue around
movements being white, middle class.
I think that sometimes when not is
throwing around does a bit of nuance
that's missed.
So
I well, I suppose I mean to say I
guess I was part of extinction
rebellion for a while
and I left the movement because
of its unwillingness
on inability to engage with systemic
racism.
Essentially, everything that I spoke
about, extinction, rebellion,
can't seem to quite do.
But when I was in extinction
rebellion with a group of people who
were predominantly not whites,
we created a group
to try and
get people to do what Instagram
is is doing at the moment, which is
telling people to go and lied about
systemic racism.
And it's been amazing to see people
engaging with it now, particularly
white people, particularly people
that I had not expected in my
own circles to
start posting and sharing and
reading and asking questions.
So what I find sometimes with
the with the sort of
blanket statement that the
environmental movement is
predominately white, middle class is
that it is an element of AirAsia.
So I work
with people of colour, black people
within the movement.
So when those segments were made, I
was like, well, what about
my friends? What what?
Who are they? You know, do they just
not count says there's actually
something that can
perpetuate some of that problem a
little bit.
But on the whole, yes, the truth
is there are lots of white middle
class people.
Again, for me, the nuance
there is that that
is inherently
problematic because that
they're sort of taking on,
I should say, we are taking
on opinions
on experience that are not our own.
So what we're essentially doing is
regurgitating it, but we don't
always acknowledge that's what we're
doing.
That's why I tried to do that
myself, because I acknowledged
nothing that I've learnt
is my own, my blunt it from
other people that are experiencing
it firsthand.
And I see my role
specifically is speaking to other
white people because
I'm not here to tell non-white
people about their own experiences.
But I'm here to try and share the
information that I've gathered
from people that are experiencing
things firsthand to people that are
not.
And again, I think that some
of the climate movement fails
to do that.
How how do we change that?
Well, the first the other thing to
acknowledge is that actually the
climate movement, whenever we
use up to mean, is predominantly
led by frontline communities,
peoples, particularly indigenous
communities, particularly
people from low income communities,
black people, people of colour,
predominately women.
The global south.
And actually what we're doing here
is we are just replicating that.
So I think that acknowledging
that festival would be a really
helpful step.
That doesn't seem to happen most
of the time.
I think there's a lot that needs to
happen in terms of stepping
back.
I realise that I'm speaking quite a
lot, but I tried to do
that a bit less.
Particularly in climate space.
I think that it's about, you know,
if you have a platform, it's it's
giving it over.
Yeah, there was actually I mean,
we were going to the whole celebrity
culture thing.
But what I found quite interesting
with the pandemic was there was a
bit of a push with some celebrities
giving over their social media
accounts entirely to doctors
who don't meet any non-white
doctors. Actually, I thought was a
really interesting is quite a
simplified version of what we mean
by giving up your platform.
It's not you.
You have, you know, millions of
followers and you're making a video
with you and it's walking about an
issue. It's you have millions of
followers and you're putting someone
else not platform, very simple
fighters of social media.
But I think that can be replicated
in the movement more widely.
But I do think that
this acknowledgement as well, again,
when I spoke about of race
as a problem on both the back
and the front end of the climate
crisis is.
The only thing that I think can
shift the way the climate movement
works in this part
of the world to this country anyway,
which is I don't know so much about
the kind of movement worldwide, but
particularly here.
I think that until.
The wider environmental movement
starts to acknowledge
that racism
is the climate crisis
and that these are not separate
issues.
I hope it can still be successful,
but I very highly doubt
it's at all.
I'll I'll stop.
And if anyone else wants to jump in.
Yeah. I would just add to
what Molly was saying.
So. So I was a part of that group
that what he was referencing with
within X sanctioned by and also
lambrix engine volume for the very
same reasons.
And
so I think broadly speaking, within
sort of what we're talking about
when when we're talking about the
combat movement
as it is coming from.
From the UK, from America,
we're seeing a lot of
this narrative that's like,
why should people care about
the climate?
Well, because
in a couple of generations time,
your children are going to be
potentially affected
and dying in situations
that are unliveable because of this.
That is racist
because already people are in
situations and other places around
the world where
their children are dying, when they
are dying, whether it encroach out
their homes off the lands.
All of these things were already
happening.
And the response that I often get
from climate activists to
that reframing of
that narrative is that,
yes, but this is the narrative
that works and this is the narrative
that mobilises white people.
We're not going to get.
Climate justice,
unless we
dismantle capitalism, we're not
going to dismantle capitalism
unless we dismantle racism.
So if you if
you want to use that narrative,
that's just because you
want to use a racist narrative.
That's all it boils down to.
So we need to change that narrative.
We need to be using a narrative that
is the real narrative,
that it's more of an emergency
because people are already dying
or already in those situations.
And if we can pull it from that,
if we if we're if we're actually
not just doesn't as a matter of, you
know, what's our campaign?
You know, what's the best
thing that we can say on social
media to make us look really great?
If we can actually be
moving from that
point of necessity, then
naturally all of the other things
will fall into place.
Like different people and different
voices will be centred and uplifted.
People will move out of the way
so that their platforms can be used
for other people.
So I think it's
about ready, ready, interrogating,
not how can we change
who's involved in this
same structure, but
like it's driving towards the wrong
thing and needs to actually
realise that the struggle
against racism and liberation
on not front is the climate
struggle.
But did anyone else how many things
are on that specific question?
Otherwise, when we go on to the next
question.
Courts.
Claire.
And you have a question from YouTube
forums.
Yes, I have several really, really
interesting questions.
So I'm just going to.
Throw back up.
So there was a question from
Bill Gates, Thackray, who
uses he him and they
then pronouns.
You had a question for Molly?
Several questions, actually.
So I'm just going to try and roll
them into one big question,
if that's OK.
So questions for Molly
is why choose to study
the USA is prison industrial
complex as a white English
person?
Have you considered it its power
in reproducing the tyranny
and primacy of a
white English opinion on how the
world works?
And so related to this in the same
vein.
Have you considered studying the UK
prison industrial complex?
If not, why not consider something
closer to home to address
and opine on?
Okay.
Yeah. Big question.
And when I do get quite often
I'm going to use that really cringe
phrase, which is I didn't choose to
study American prisons
as it chose me.
Not really. But it's just
sort of it just happened.
I didn't sort of go out of my way
to to investigate
it, but.
So essentially, I
learnt about the extent
of it when I was about 16.
So it was a very different
brain.
I hadn't looked into these things or
studied these things.
And obviously, as time's gone on,
I have been thinking more more about
the UK system.
I have actually been involved in
some work here.
So so I was actually mentoring
someone as they were leaving prison
for a short while, which was an
extremely challenging
situation, given that there is no
support in this country.
And so I learnt a lot in actually
quite a short space of time.
But I suppose the very simple answer
for me, and this is just
a personal one, is not a great
answer.
The American system to me just is
more a sort of an extreme
version of everything.
And it it I see as a sort
of a microcosm
and a lens through which to
understand the world.
And that's really I talk about
prison so much.
And it's because it is how I.
It's like the system that
I see replicated everywhere.
That's not to say I shouldn't do
more work on the system here.
I am starting to do that as long as
I mentioned to that sort of looking
at how things are the US and how
things are here.
The abolition movement in the U.K.
is is nothing
like the movement in the U.S., but
it's something that we are actually
quite actively take.
Taking steps to try and move into a
bit more so.
Hopefully I can do a bit better work
on that side of things.
But thanks. Thank you for the
question.
Thank you, really.
That's a well done, that is to say
a tricky question to answer.
You did a really good job.
Yeah. Thank you.
Both question Oscars.
We've had six months.
We have more time to questions
tonality. You have another question
for us.
That was.
Let me see if she's still here.
Is Leah.
Leah had a question for Ali's.
No, she.
Yes.
Hi. Hi.
I'm Shari yourself.
Thank you so much.
Thank you for a great conversation.
Yeah, and Elise, I was just
interested to know if you could talk
a bit more about your use
of terror was a healing
method and whether it is
something that you use really
to kind of tap into your own
thoughts and feelings or if it's
something that you also kind
of do with other people
and whether you have anything to say
about how these methods might
help to kind of change or reframe
relationships.
Yes, so terrible
for me started out as.
Like literally a tool to
get through a really difficult time.
I came across a trauma informed
approach and some trauma informed
teachers, and I was using
it to heal myself.
Truthfully, hopefully I did nothing
else for like two months.
I was like straight up 40 hours a
week like on terror because
it was the only relief I found.
So it started like that.
But then the way
I regenerated myself super, super
quickly and, like, got myself out
of, like, a really difficult place.
Through it made me really want to
share with other people.
So I did start reading for other
people. And then now I do
a monthly subscription on Patron.
So I like and I have some
people that I work with one to one,
which I'm open to.
But I really like working people on
an ongoing basis.
And I call it spirit support.
And I also bring in energetics
just so that
I can hold space.
And then that this is to say
that.
These for me.
Healing is co created.
I don't think healing happens in a
vacuum and I don't think he'll like
how it can happen individually, as I
mentioned. My community was
vital. Like so many points where
my community has propped me up
and kept me from falling through the
cracks
in that it's
it's like the Socratic method and
teaching. Right. So like the teacher
and the student both
learn and benefit from the
interaction if done correctly.
And that's how I feel about holding
space for people.
So I, I refer to myself as like a
healing artist because I don't fully
feel comfortable with the term
healer, because I think we're all
self healers, our bodies literally.
We cut ourself, our body heals
itself. We break a bone.
Our body heals itself.
So we all have that capacity
for healing.
I consider myself as someone who
holds space for that.
And then through that perspective,
I'm able to gain
so much from my one to one readings
of people from reading with my
friends. Actually, one of my friends
who was with me for the beginning,
my terror journey, and was alongside
me learning tarots in this call.
Eve.
Yeah. So I learn a great deal from
working with other readers.
But yeah. So in terms it's the
question you brought up about, like
my own thoughts and feelings is
interesting because I think it
relates to
Hannah's point about.
Decolonising, healing.
So it's
how do we explain mysticism?
How do we explain intuition?
How do we. That doesn't fit into
the frameworks of society that we're
in.
But a lot of it is space for me to
tap into the wisdom that I have in
me is the best way that I can
explain that.
And then when I dialogue about
it, with my friends or with people,
I'm reading. So the way I read also,
I don't I'm not an oracle.
I don't predict your future.
It's very, very rooted in the
present moment.
And it's a dialogue.
So if I read for someone, I am
asking them questions.
We're talking about things like
we're building out the story
together.
So that all of that
plays into
the power of tarot.
And then what I'm able to take away
from it.
And I think there is a question
about.
The trauma of PEOC that
I would really like to address,
and I think it kind of relates to
this, so I don't know if that's cool
to just kind of dive into that same
trap. So, Claire,
if this is your question or if
you're just media did it,
but tyack time.
How can we account for the trauma of
PEOC having to enact change
within historically institutionally
racist institutions they
work with within like museums?
And your opinion is that
rehabilitation even possible, given
its roots in racism and colonial
violence?
So this.
No, I do not think
based on the museum industrial
complex in the United States.
I can't speak.
I lived in the UK for a while, but I
can't speak to the funding
of the museums.
But I know the museums are filled
with stolen artefacts.
So they already.
Probably not.
But in the states, like I had
brought up Blackwater, I brought up
Betsy Davos Lake Energy
Transfer Partners who approved
the Dakota Access Pipeline.
That's all money that goes into the
museums in New York City.
And we called the museum industrial
complex because it
is blood money that actually funds
these museums and its artefacts that
are stolen from all over the world.
To me, the reparative
healing that comes from that
is not inside those institutions,
because I'm going to say something
controversial representation doesn't
matter. Like representation
is something that I think me,
Molly, both touched on this.
They put a brown man in the
presidency and then black people are
satisfied where where
were that's supposed to be enough.
And it's saying that the presidency
is this something to strive for?
It's something that has to exist.
It's something that is
the epitome of success.
So by putting black figure heads
in these positions of hierarchy
within the already standing system
is just keeping us quiet.
And it's just keeping us.
I think Molly is like a scale kind
of being like you're allowed to have
this much liberation.
But as soon as you get here, like
we're going to stop you.
And I think it's a big
misrepresentation can be this really
big distraction
because it's backed out of saying
it's not the truth.
It's not the root of the problem.
And I think with it's not
that's the trauma.
Healing that has to happen is not
going to happen in those spaces like
healing in those spaces
is and it will probably
trigger us. And colonial
healing is something I've been
looking a lot into to hold space
for with common healing.
So I want to hold a deko until white
healing space because I do not
believe that truly
healing spaces.
I don't think you can have like
black people and white people in a
healing space right now at this
point. And I think that that
is maybe a controversial opinion.
I tend to have a bit of a separatist
stance for some of the early action
or if it's done, the space has to be
held so well and
so skilfully because
white people healing their trauma is
could likely trigger black people
healing their trauma. And we see it
every day, black people healing
their trauma triggers by people a
lot. We see a lot of white
tears, white guilt like.
And then that then puts a burden and
further traumatises black people.
So it's not to say like we
can't coexist.
That's not what it's to say.
It's to recognise nuance
and to see that it's a different
journey.
So healing.
And so if your ancestors colonised
if your ancestors owned slaves,
that's a different healing journey
than if you your ancestors
were enslaved.
So it's it's just a different
it's just different.
And I've been trying to navigate
that as a space holder
with what is my role,
what feels like a burden to me, and
educating people on how to be an
ally. Feels like a burden.
That's something that doesn't feel
good for me.
But talking to white allies
and having prison abolition
conversations when they're already
on a certain level of thought is
nourishing. To me.
The most nourishing thing to me
is celebrating joy and success
with black, queer like
artists, femme artists.
That's for me, because that's my
experience.
So I,
I think a lot about the transition
period.
The goal is
we've completely thrown out race and
gender. Like, we don't have to live
within those confines anymore and
we're free from that.
We can't just throw it out, though,
without recognising the harm,
without healing the harm of those
boxes and social constructs being
put onto us.
And we have to do that and really
intentional safe spaces.
And maybe there could be
this like like
even half white and half black.
So I'm like thinking a lot about
how do I integrate my white lineage
into the black healing I've been
doing and like, how do I hold
both of that within my body?
So I think it's
again, it's just understanding our
truth. It's knowing that there's
possibilities for us to create
places to display our art that
are not using money that's
killing people.
There's places for there's
ideas of there's like visions of
success for us that exist
outside of capitalism.
Like maybe it's it's something that
we haven't seen before.
But healing spaces also to me
can be dream spaces.
It's spaces to create future
visions.
So in short,
no, I don't think those institutions
can be healed.
I think it's us about us and healing
ourselves as individuals, healing
our communities, healing
collectives, and then building
a new from the ground up.
Thank you. Needs to speak
just really briefly to the situation
in the UK.
It is exactly the same
in terms of
the guilt
and the fact that the process is
going to be as it is a long process
and that if you if it's going to be
done right, it's not about
representation, representation
in a situation.
Why are we talking about museums
and heritage and icons
which are structurally
racist and which are displaying
objects which are stolen?
Just representation plastered
onto that is responsible.
And it's also sacrificial like those
people that have been in those
positions.
So there's loads.
So we actually have
to like.
Do the really difficult work
first before you got to the point
of going, oh, everyone's okay now,
so.
So we can just, you know,
you need to do the work of
addressing the reason why not
already block people in those
positions, not just putting people
in those positions and then also
do the work of
everything that the museum industry
wants to avoid, which is actually
giving back stolen
stolen goods,
which is what they know to do so.
So, yeah, I absolutely
agree with otherways when it comes
to The Simpsons
as well, that I love
that too late for them to give back
the artefacts.
That exchange is healing
and that would be
the work that needs to happen.
And like we saw the pot.
Thanks so much on the podcast, too.
Like this podcast being taken
down, these museums D
platforming, giving everything back
and closing their doors like that is
rehabilitative and healing because
they've now created a space for
other people to
grow, grow from where
they've oppressed them.
And I think Molly was talking about
or had I can remember talking about
like that D platforming and that
being a mechanism
of white healing where like
receiving is a mechanism of like
black indigenous people of colour
healing and stepping into power.
So it's like Lyrid, the direct.
It's the direct opposite, which is
kind of to further my point about
nuanced healing spaces.
I completely agree.
Yes. Thank you.
I think we're going to have to wrap
up on the questions that just
because of time.
But thank you, everyone who answered
questions and we can,
you know, continue conversations
over other platforms.
And if anyone
is interested
specifically in an abolition,
definitely get in touch.
You can probably do that
via if
you had to be this
about page on the social networks
that are our each of
our websites linked and then on our
Web sites, our contact details.
So if you'd like to get
in touch with any of the three of
us, please have better
a.D.A.
But thank you, everyone, for being a
part of this event.
And thank you for
engaging.
Thank you for speaking.
Mullion unreleased.
It's been really great to
have to be here with you in this
space and to to
have you share with us.
Thank you to the whole social
network team.
Thank you, Daniela.
Thank you, John.
Thank you. Thank you, Marcello.
And
I'll just hand over to Claire real
quick for
next month's
social network.
Oh, social.
Ah, social.
London meet.
If you could give a little intro to
what that would be.
Yeah, of course.
Thank you so much. This amazing,
amazing makeup and
through my questions and just
general, just really incredible
company that's ready.
Be ready.
The end really is just gone by so
fast.
So next makeup
I'm hosting is called
Queering Spaces, Digital Pride.
And we're gonna be
making the meet turning makeup into
the kind of virtual queer bar
chat where we can
come and engage with the idea
of when
when we're so used to reclaiming
public space, like physical public
space and the life of lockdown
with lots of public spaces
and being shut down with pride
being cancelled.
What does queering digital space
look like?
How do we build and
maintain a digital
community, a time where we're at
this risk of alienation
from each other?
And so we'll be
engaging with different forms
of research and social
art practise
around end and maybe addressing
the constraint that lockdown
has enacted on this, for
example, in terms of performance
and art activism
by direct action, which I think
is an inherent part of queer
culture.
So join us then.
We'll be fine, I think.
Thank you.
The date for me to
help you out.
Yeah, it's a pretty crucial one,
isn't it?
It's gonna happen Wednesday,
19th, the 6th
p.m.
Eve.
Got the link
to the link and the zoom chat.
And it's on Social Network
dot org. And when you click
on the makeups for
London.
So if you sign up,
sign up there, you then have access
to the same day link.
So looking forward to seeing that.
Thank you very much.
I'm definitely ready to go into
that one next month.
Yeah. I will.
Just before
we close the YouTube,
love.
I'll just close with a quote
from Paul Robeson.
Paul Robeson
was born April
9th.
Eighteen ninety eight
was a concert
artist
based Barrentine,
an activist,
sort of a global activist,
amongst many other things.
And Paul Robeson had this
to say. He said every artist,
every scientist must decide now
where he stands.
He has no alternative.
There is no standing above the
conflicts on Olympian heights
since the artist must take sides.
They must elect to fight for freedom
or slavery.
I have made my choice.
I had no alternative.
I just felt like Houghton's.
Those are nice.
Really defining hope
to to end on.
Yeah. Thank you again.
And hope to see many of
you very soon.
John.
If you're riding in.
