P.S. I knew I was forgetting one, and rather than wait until next week, I’m including it here now — 14.Creative Superheroes Podcast #14: Live Awake with Sarah Blondin. I shared one of the Live Awake podcasts a few weeks ago, have been listening to more and really liking them, so it was really fun to hear Andrea and Sarah talk more about how it came to be.
1. Notes from the Lower Level an essay from Camille Dungy. Her new book of essays is out now, Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys Into Race, Motherhood, and History, and is so good. I wrote a short article about it for work, and will write more about it here later because there’s more to say.
10. 5 things you may have not realized are cultural appropriation. I posted this to Facebook this week, with the additional, “6. Using ‘tribe;’ to refer to your group,” and this clearly is an issue people have strong feelings about. For me, there’s still a lot of confusion about what is and what isn’t, but as I said on Facebook, for me it is a compassion practice. I listen carefully and deeply to native people and people of color, and if they say they feel harmed or oppressed, if they are suffering and I can do something to ease that, I will. Especially if it’s as simple, for example, as saying my community, my friends, or my people instead of “tribe.”
14. Jelanii Kabita’s message to families with LGBTQI kids, (Video). “Dancer Jelanii Kabita’s mother rejected his trans identity. After years of devastation, struggle, and growth, he has a powerful message for the families with LGBTQI kids.”
“You can’t honestly address ‘wellness’ – the things people need to be well – without addressing poverty and systemic racism, disability access and affordable healthcare, paid family leave and food insecurity, contraception and abortion, sex work and the war against drugs and mass incarceration. Unless, of course, you are only talking about the wellness of people whose lives are untouched by all of those forces. That is, the wellness of people who are disproportionately well already.”
17. Deported from Trump’s America, (Video). “This family has been split apart as deportations of immigrants without criminal records more than double under Trump.”
20. Burg’s Place still isn’t fully funded. When Amy made this page and the video, Burg was doing just fine and there was no reason to think that wouldn’t continue. Now that he’s gone, after everything happened so quickly, it seems even more important than ever to fully fund this request.
Open Space Practice, (AKA: A Thousand Shades of Gray) 