Speaker 1: Welcome to how to citizen with baritone day, I'm bar
Speaker 1: tune day. What's up? If you've been a listener? Is
Speaker 1: good to have you back? If you knew, Welcome to
Speaker 1: the journey. This is season four, Who Who Now? In
Speaker 1: season three, we focus on technology and how our relationship
Speaker 1: with it could help us citizen. In season two, we
Speaker 1: took a similar topical approach, but with the economy. In
Speaker 1: our first season, we sampled a buffet of awesome people
Speaker 1: who embody the idea of citizen as a verb and
Speaker 1: just a quick refresher. We've identified four key pillars upholding
Speaker 1: what it means to citizen. One to citizen is to
Speaker 1: participate assume we have a role to play beyond outsourcing
Speaker 1: that participation via voting. Number two to citizen is to
Speaker 1: invest in relationships with ourselves, with our communities, and with
Speaker 1: our planet. We are interconnected and there was no way
Speaker 1: to citizen alone. Number three two citizen is to understand
Speaker 1: power and the many ways we have to generate and
Speaker 1: express it, from spending money and gathering in groups to
Speaker 1: spreading ideas and giving our attention to something. And finally,
Speaker 1: number four, to citizen is to value our collective self interest,
Speaker 1: not just our individual self interests as we practice all
Speaker 1: the above. In this season, we're exploring how we create
Speaker 1: a culture of democracy, and we'll be highlighting ideas that
Speaker 1: inspire us to think differently and more deeply about this word.
Speaker 1: This word we toss around so easily and frequently but
Speaker 1: rarely defined. Democracy at its root is literally people power.
Speaker 1: It's people wielding our power to govern ourselves, to manage
Speaker 1: our resources, and to benefit our communities. And as you've
Speaker 1: probably heard by now, we are in a crisis of democracy.
Speaker 1: Democracy faced its most serious crisis and debt. Democracy in
Speaker 1: democracy is facing a crisis of confidence. So he's American
Speaker 1: democracy in crisis. I think a lot of what we
Speaker 1: end up arguing over and fretting about with this democracy
Speaker 1: crisis is the mechanics. How does the constitution determine who
Speaker 1: the president is? What's the makeup of the court system?
Speaker 1: Where are the boarders drawn between voting districts? Hey? Do
Speaker 1: we even count votes anymore? And don't get me wrong,
Speaker 1: the mechanics and the structures are important, but we need
Speaker 1: to go deeper. We need to dig into the soil
Speaker 1: out of which we grow the democracy we experience. I
Speaker 1: think of that soil as culture, the collective norms, behaviors,
Speaker 1: and attitudes that establish the conditions for the ways we
Speaker 1: practice democracy. To me, a culture of democracy is one
Speaker 1: that encourages, incentivizes, and prepares us to practice democracy and
Speaker 1: to engage in people power in a healthy way. A
Speaker 1: healthy culture of democracy helps us citizen, and to help
Speaker 1: us launch this season's journey, we have writer, activist, and
Speaker 1: movement facilitator Adrian Marie Brown. I first came across Adrian's
Speaker 1: work nearly twenty years ago, back in two thousand four,
Speaker 1: through this group she co founded called the League of
Speaker 1: Piste Off Voters. We were both part of a wave
Speaker 1: of activists trying to prevent George W. Bush from winning
Speaker 1: a second term as president. And I just love their swagger.
Speaker 1: I mean their logo was the statue of Liberty with
Speaker 1: a baseball bat. I'm like, yes, that's how you get free.
Speaker 1: Years later, I started hearing Adrian Marie Brown's name all
Speaker 1: over the place when her book, Emerging Strategy came out.
Speaker 1: In that book and her work since, Adrian focuses on
Speaker 1: that second pillar too, citizen is to invest in relationships
Speaker 1: with ourselves, our community, and our planet. She sees that
Speaker 1: relational work as essential to any political work. In this conversation,
Speaker 1: Adrian helps us see democracy as a personal practice, and
Speaker 1: she and I get personal in ways I didn't see coming.
Speaker 1: After the break, Adrian Marie Brown talks practicing democracy at home. Writer, facilitator, activists,
Speaker 1: science fiction super nerd Adrian Marie Brown has been organizing
Speaker 1: with various movements for justice since two thousand and one.
Speaker 1: We're talking the League of Young a k A. Piste
Speaker 1: Off Voters, the Ruckis Society. Writer of seven books that
Speaker 1: I Know of fiction and non fiction, including of Course,
Speaker 1: Emergent Strategy, Pleasure Activism, and her latest Fables and Spells. Currently,
Speaker 1: Adrian is a writer in residence at the Emergent Strategy
Speaker 1: Ideation Institute, which she established. Also, she co hosts two podcasts,
Speaker 1: Octavia's Parables and How to Survive the End of the World.
Speaker 1: We've got a live virtual audience here with us, so
Speaker 1: without further Ado, welcome to our podcast. Adrian Marie Brown,
Speaker 1: how do you do? I'm so good, It's so exciting
Speaker 1: to be here. UM, I feel like you hunted me down.
Speaker 1: I've never had so many people like I don't know
Speaker 1: how you did this, but you reached out and I
Speaker 1: had so many people like Barrow Tune Day wants to
Speaker 1: talk to you. And I was like, well, if there's
Speaker 1: a Virgo man out there trying to talk to me,
Speaker 1: then I need to answer that call and figure it out.
Speaker 1: So what's up? How are you? What's up? Virgos? This?
Speaker 1: I'm great and our birthdays are very close together. Yes,
Speaker 1: you're a September I am a September baby. We're the best.
Speaker 1: Thank you. I've been telling my wife, I've been telling
Speaker 1: anybody who can't tell them all, especially the significant others.
Speaker 1: They need to understand, they need to recognize our grid. Um.
Speaker 1: It is just really really an honor and a beauty
Speaker 1: to exchange this time with you. So thank you. I
Speaker 1: feel the same. Thank you. All Right. You often use
Speaker 1: this term right relationship in your work. Can you provide
Speaker 1: an overview of that? Well, how do you define right
Speaker 1: relationship as distinct from something else? Yeah? I heard that
Speaker 1: term when I was working with indigenous communities for the
Speaker 1: first time, like really embedding myself and trying to understand
Speaker 1: really in the biggest picture way, what went wrong here
Speaker 1: on this land, Like what has happened and how do
Speaker 1: we get ourselves back into a relationship that is not transactional,
Speaker 1: not abusive, not oppressive, not even you know, now, I
Speaker 1: think distracted, Like I think a lot of our relationships
Speaker 1: are ones where we're barely there. We're always passing in
Speaker 1: the night, passing in the night, passing in the night.
Speaker 1: Everyone's so busy with living lives that they're not even
Speaker 1: satisfied by So this idea was taught to me that
Speaker 1: it was like, there's actually an order of things. There's
Speaker 1: a right relationship between humans and the earth that we
Speaker 1: live in, and humans amongst ourselves and humans with all
Speaker 1: the other creatures that are here, and my sci fi
Speaker 1: throws and probably humans and other life forms. But there
Speaker 1: is a way that we can be in relationship that
Speaker 1: is not you know, just peace and blessings all the time.
Speaker 1: But there's a way that they can have equanimity, that
Speaker 1: it can have justice in it. And I got really intrigued,
Speaker 1: like it instantly, it resonated throughout my system that I
Speaker 1: was like, Yes, at that time, in movement work, everything
Speaker 1: was very siloed. So you were either working on environment,
Speaker 1: or you're working on racial justice, or you were working
Speaker 1: on electoral or aizing, or you know, everything was very
Speaker 1: separated out, and so it's very easy to be like
Speaker 1: to see all the problems as these distinct, separate things.
Speaker 1: And right relationship is this idea that there's a wholeness
Speaker 1: to it all and there's a way that we can
Speaker 1: drop into a whole world perspective and see ourselves as
Speaker 1: a part of that world. And Yeah, that sent me
Speaker 1: down a whole other life path. I want to rewind
Speaker 1: into that path, and I think part memory, yes, oh,
Speaker 1: we're gonna have some tunes. I don't know if we
Speaker 1: can license these things, but we can not. Capello. It
Speaker 1: so exactly your journey into getting into right relationship with democracy.
Speaker 1: I'm old enough Adrian to remember the League of piste
Speaker 1: off voters. I had y'all stickers. I'm pretty sure it
Speaker 1: was a statue of liberty with a baseball bath. There
Speaker 1: were some there was some emotions through that attempt to
Speaker 1: stop George W. Bush from gatting a second turn. And
Speaker 1: so can you take us back to this effort that
Speaker 1: you co led to get President George W. Bush out
Speaker 1: of office? What motivated you to do that work back then?
Speaker 1: And where you just trying to get Bush out or
Speaker 1: were you trying to accomplish something more or different than that.
Speaker 1: You know, I thought of myself as a very young,
Speaker 1: feisty revolutionary, Like I was like this, we've got to
Speaker 1: figure this out. And I had been doing harm reduction
Speaker 1: work with active drug users and sex workers through the
Speaker 1: Harm Reduction Coalition, and George W. Bush had cut the
Speaker 1: funding for all that work because he was only funding
Speaker 1: absence related work. Right, you had to be cold Turkey,
Speaker 1: no sex, no drugs, or you weren't going to get
Speaker 1: any support. So I was upset. And then the build
Speaker 1: up was happening. You know, you know it's nine eleven, right,
Speaker 1: So nine eleven happened, and then we're having this reaction
Speaker 1: from the US that was like we've got to go
Speaker 1: to warm, We're going to bomb Iraq, We're gonna bomb Afghanistan.
Speaker 1: I got moved into direct action through that because I
Speaker 1: was like, we've got to stop this, like we're misunderstanding
Speaker 1: what this moment is or misunderstanding our role as a nation,
Speaker 1: and he's foolishly leading us into a vengeful, fatal situation.
Speaker 1: We've got to stop him. And so it was about him,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't just about any one issue. It was
Speaker 1: like I can see how he's impacting my work. I
Speaker 1: can see how he's impacting all of us. And his worldview,
Speaker 1: which was this, you know, white male, conservative worldview, I
Speaker 1: was like, this is dangerous for all of us. So
Speaker 1: I didn't really know anything about electoral politics. I always
Speaker 1: say this, like, coming into that, I was just like,
Speaker 1: I know about organizing. I'm learning about how we move people.
Speaker 1: And at the time it felt very innovative right to
Speaker 1: be like, we need to bring everything we know about
Speaker 1: organizing into how we do electoral work. And I still
Speaker 1: think that I don't think we've mastered that bridge, you know.
Speaker 1: I do think that I came to understand the placement
Speaker 1: of these different strategies as part of all larger way
Speaker 1: of doing the work. But at that time, it was
Speaker 1: actually really invigorating to go. You know. I ended up
Speaker 1: book touring that book because we had like something like
Speaker 1: twelve or thirteen authors and hijinks and sued a lot
Speaker 1: of people. I didn't plan to book tour. I thought
Speaker 1: I was just gonna be editing, But then something happened
Speaker 1: when I got up in front of people, like a
Speaker 1: spark would come through me. And that's where I learned
Speaker 1: that I could get up in front of people and
Speaker 1: that I could channel something of the moment into a
Speaker 1: room of people. But yeah, we were lit up about
Speaker 1: this idea that electoral organizing should be part of a
Speaker 1: larger strategy for how we build community and how we
Speaker 1: change policy. And we just had this moment of like
Speaker 1: none of us even know how to, Like we're trying
Speaker 1: to we're trying to change the world, but none of
Speaker 1: us understand how policy gets developed. None of us understand
Speaker 1: how our electoral system even works. None of us understand
Speaker 1: where the loopholes are, and so we're getting you know, redline,
Speaker 1: we're getting misdirected, we're getting disenfranchised from a system that
Speaker 1: has actually lot of power over our daily lives. So
Speaker 1: I felt really hopeful. I thought we were going to win.
Speaker 1: We didn't, as everyone knows, but yeah, I felt like
Speaker 1: I learned a ton about organizing there, because you know,
Speaker 1: the way election organizing works is cyclical, and so it's
Speaker 1: the cycles where you're like, we're gonna go do our
Speaker 1: thing and oh now, community, hey, hey, community, we didn't
Speaker 1: forget about you on the back. We still need to
Speaker 1: support and then forget about it, and so it's like,
Speaker 1: how do we make this a sustainable process, like something
Speaker 1: where the people who are elected see themselves as every
Speaker 1: day a part of a larger movement of change. It's
Speaker 1: holistic politics in some way, holistic power contention. You, um,
Speaker 1: just thank you for Emergence Strategy book. We have it
Speaker 1: in our house. My wife quotes you like all the time,
Speaker 1: and the word emergent is just like a part of
Speaker 1: our relationship. I'm glad. Yeah, it's very cool. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I want to you know, on your journey to publishing
Speaker 1: that book, you were publicly chronicling what I would describe
Speaker 1: as like the evolution of your your thoughts and practices
Speaker 1: around this right relationship concept, around emergence itself, and in
Speaker 1: you wrote the following on your blog. The invitation of
Speaker 1: Emergent Strategy is to come together in community, build authentic relationships,
Speaker 1: and see what emerges from the conversations, connections, visions, and needs.
Speaker 1: I don't see this as creating something from scratch, but
Speaker 1: rather innovating from need. So I want to share a
Speaker 1: brief thing and then ask you a thing. You know,
Speaker 1: our podcast is how to Citizen and developing it, we
Speaker 1: developed core principles. One of them is that to citizens
Speaker 1: to invest in relationships with yourself, with others and the
Speaker 1: planet around you. And so I just I feel very
Speaker 1: SYMPATICO right now we're swimming in similar waters and honestly
Speaker 1: probably influenced by you. But this overlapping key that relationships
Speaker 1: come first. They're like an input into a development, not
Speaker 1: an afterthought or just a money raising content. How did
Speaker 1: you arrive at this inside of prioritizing these authentic connections
Speaker 1: And is there a line from your stop bush work
Speaker 1: into a deeper respect and prioritization of community and relationship
Speaker 1: as the first step. Yeah, for sure. You know, I
Speaker 1: think that loss taught me a lot because we were
Speaker 1: surrounded by people who were supposedly the most strategic people.
Speaker 1: We were getting trainings and we're getting you know, we
Speaker 1: were going through so much work to try to understand
Speaker 1: how this all work. And and I was like, something's
Speaker 1: not working, and there's a what at the time I
Speaker 1: was really calling manipulation. It felt like there's a sense
Speaker 1: of manipulation inside of this, that we're only engaging in
Speaker 1: relationship to the degree that we can manipulate people to
Speaker 1: do what we've already decided they should do, which is
Speaker 1: to vote for this person, whether or not that's of
Speaker 1: most service to them, whether or not we understand what
Speaker 1: their needs are. And again the cyclical nature of it meant,
Speaker 1: you know, by the time I wrote the book, you know,
Speaker 1: it was like ten years of different kinds of organizing
Speaker 1: and direct action, all this stuff had passed, and I
Speaker 1: was like, do we even know how to do democracy?
Speaker 1: And I started asking this question to people. I would
Speaker 1: be in a room full of people and be like,
Speaker 1: how many of you practice democracy? And I would have
Speaker 1: everyone like, raise your hands if you think you practice
Speaker 1: democracy like in your actual life. And I would be like,
Speaker 1: and people, sometimes, so what do you mean by that?
Speaker 1: You know? Do you sit down together and talk about
Speaker 1: how you're spending the resources of your home and your community.
Speaker 1: Do you talk about how you're agreeing to keep each
Speaker 1: other safe? Do you talk about how you're agreeing to
Speaker 1: share time and who has decision making power? And do
Speaker 1: you make those decisions together? And all this right, So
Speaker 1: there would always be like these confident people would raise
Speaker 1: their hands. I'd be like, do you do this in
Speaker 1: your household? Right? And I was like, are the kids involved?
Speaker 1: Hands come down? Right? Are your parents involved as anyone
Speaker 1: else involved? Right? And that's just in the household. So
Speaker 1: I was like, okay, great for the people who still
Speaker 1: have your hands up, do you practice it in your neighborhood,
Speaker 1: like just on your block, And by practicing democracy like
Speaker 1: on your block, more hands come down. I almost never
Speaker 1: made it to community, right, that people in in whatever
Speaker 1: they think of as their community, they weren't practicing democracy.
Speaker 1: Most people in our organizations aren't practicing democracy. And so
Speaker 1: something about the fractal nature of that clicked for me,
Speaker 1: right because I was learning this concept of fractals that
Speaker 1: were each these small cells of something much larger than ourselves.
Speaker 1: So I'm like, we're trying to change was at the
Speaker 1: very top of the structure, the president. You know, we're
Speaker 1: just if we change that. But I'm like, but no
Speaker 1: one's actually practicing democracy. So even the people running for
Speaker 1: office are often people who have never actually practiced democracy
Speaker 1: in that way, right, and they're not practicing it intimately.
Speaker 1: So I got kind of excited by that problem because
Speaker 1: I was like, well, that's something solvable, Like there's practices,
Speaker 1: all right. I'm like, I respect that there is a problem,
Speaker 1: and any problem is solvable. Yeah, Like once I was like,
Speaker 1: got it, Okay, so we need to figure out how
Speaker 1: to practice to myocracy, small D democracy. And I was
Speaker 1: definitely influenced by my mentor Grace Lee Bogs. I had
Speaker 1: moved to Detroit. I was learning from her, and that's
Speaker 1: one of things she was often talking about, is we
Speaker 1: need to get people back in the practice. Like she
Speaker 1: would say, democracy is a really beautiful thing if you
Speaker 1: actually practice it, but very few of us do. We
Speaker 1: opt out. We find ways to reinstate hierarchy, to move
Speaker 1: around having to actually do democratic practice. So that piece
Speaker 1: around like, well, who am I in relationship with enough
Speaker 1: that I would want to practice democracy with them? Very few?
Speaker 1: You know, I have a very high standard for who
Speaker 1: I want to make decisions with, And that's actually not
Speaker 1: how the world is structure. You don't just get to decide.
Speaker 1: And if you were to boil down your definition of
Speaker 1: democracy with the practice of it, is it as you
Speaker 1: seem to imply just now, shared decision making, joint decision making?
Speaker 1: You just said, who am I in community that I
Speaker 1: don't want to practice democracy with? So how do you define?
Speaker 1: There's this group called Movement Generation who I adore, and
Speaker 1: they defy economy as the management of home, the management
Speaker 1: of the resources of home, which I really love because
Speaker 1: they're like, anytime we're talking about how we manage our
Speaker 1: shared resources of the earth, of our community, of our family,
Speaker 1: that's an economic conversation. And so to me, democracy is
Speaker 1: in that vein right that I'm like, we're talking about
Speaker 1: how do we make the decisions about our resources, including
Speaker 1: the resource of time, the resource of money, the resource
Speaker 1: of land, the resource of food, the resource of water,
Speaker 1: the resource of air, the resource of education, And fundamentally,
Speaker 1: I think that's what governance is about. You know, we're
Speaker 1: living our lives, but at a certain point we have
Speaker 1: to say, there's finite resources in a finite lifetime. How
Speaker 1: are we going to make the decisions related to that?
Speaker 1: And for me, I don't enjoy debating for the sake
Speaker 1: of debate. I know some people do. I'm always like, Okay,
Speaker 1: what's the most logical, practical way that we can share
Speaker 1: these resources that everyone can actually share them? And this,
Speaker 1: I'll say, braided into also the science fiction work and
Speaker 1: reading that I was doing at that time, because Octavia
Speaker 1: Butler said, you don't know who you're going to end
Speaker 1: up in the apocalypse with, and so that always felt
Speaker 1: like this like oh am I going to be a
Speaker 1: good community with who am I going to have to
Speaker 1: practice exactly? Right? So I was like, right now we
Speaker 1: have the privilege many of us are getting to choose
Speaker 1: who do I want to live with and who do
Speaker 1: I want to make decisions with and how do I
Speaker 1: want to do this? But actually, long term, we need
Speaker 1: to learn how to just do this whoever we land with.
Speaker 1: And that got me excited because I was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: what is the future I actually want and how can
Speaker 1: I start practicing a democratic way of being that moves
Speaker 1: me towards that the fractal thing and the democracy thing
Speaker 1: are so intertwined, And I think for me it's been
Speaker 1: a relief, honestly to hear someone describe the value of
Speaker 1: the small Yes, Like so much of our save democracy
Speaker 1: conversation is a lot of words and debate and not
Speaker 1: actually a lot of practice. It's inches column inches of
Speaker 1: thoughts and our beds and whatnot, but it evokes large
Speaker 1: scale structural reforms. And you're based question You're basic, not
Speaker 1: in the insult, but in the true, like elemental level
Speaker 1: question of how are we practicing democracy? And the communities
Speaker 1: were part of what communities are? We are part of first,
Speaker 1: how are we practicing? What are some of the small practices,
Speaker 1: the small activities that you think reverberate upward into the
Speaker 1: larger structure. Yeah, I mean one thing I always say
Speaker 1: to people because sometimes the binary come the people are
Speaker 1: large versus small, and like everything large is made up
Speaker 1: of small parts. We live in an atomic world, so
Speaker 1: every single thing that you can look at, from another
Speaker 1: person to a superstructure, to our governance, to a nation,
Speaker 1: everything is made up of smaller parts. So it's not
Speaker 1: an either or, it's saying, if I want to impact
Speaker 1: something large, I have to be able to tune into
Speaker 1: the smallest practice of that large thing right and then
Speaker 1: be able to judge it up right. And this has
Speaker 1: really guided a lot of what emerging strategy has focused on. Right.
Speaker 1: So conflict, being able to be in conflict with integrity.
Speaker 1: I call it generative conflict, which I learned from generative somatics.
Speaker 1: But this idea of like conflict, if we do it well,
Speaker 1: actually generates more possibilities for us. It really makes it
Speaker 1: clear that, oh, we can have differences of opinion and
Speaker 1: we can work through them and find a way for
Speaker 1: so generative conflict. Our nation is basically broken when it
Speaker 1: comes to this idea of generative conflict. Right now, conflict is,
Speaker 1: you know, dropping to the lowest common denominator, throwing insults
Speaker 1: at each other and seeing the person who you're arguing with,
Speaker 1: you're trying to dehumanize them. Actually, the democratic process of
Speaker 1: that generative conflict would be, how do I humanize you
Speaker 1: even if I totally disagree with you? How do I
Speaker 1: find the places where there's some potential alignment? And you know,
Speaker 1: the thing I always come back to is like, we
Speaker 1: only have this one planet, so we have to figure
Speaker 1: out how to get along enough to keep going on
Speaker 1: this planet. Right right, it's the ultimate resource. We're figuring
Speaker 1: out how to share exactly right. And as much as
Speaker 1: I pray every day, I'm like, aliens, you know, just
Speaker 1: help us. You don't even have to come rescue us,
Speaker 1: just let us know, like if you know a little
Speaker 1: bit more about how to do this. Um, but generative
Speaker 1: conflict feels like a really big one. And then actually
Speaker 1: being able to talk openly about power dynamics is another
Speaker 1: one that feels really important in most of our organizations.
Speaker 1: So a lot of my work during this time was
Speaker 1: facilitating organizations and I would come in, and what always
Speaker 1: surprised me was the people in power didn't seem to
Speaker 1: know they were in power, or they didn't seem to
Speaker 1: be um comfortable talking about how much power they had,
Speaker 1: and often they would even take a victim role. It's
Speaker 1: so hard being me trying to just do what I'm doing.
Speaker 1: And I know as I've ascended into more powerful positions
Speaker 1: how quickly this happen. Because you're like, no, it really
Speaker 1: is hard. It's hard, and it's this dirty word. The
Speaker 1: dirty word comes with baggage of undeserved nous. So you're like,
Speaker 1: I don't want this thing that I don't deserve. I
Speaker 1: don't want to feel like I have more than you,
Speaker 1: but I do exactly, and we also don't want to
Speaker 1: We both don't want to have it and we don't
Speaker 1: want to give it up. Like once you have a
Speaker 1: little bit of it, you're like, um, I'm not sharing
Speaker 1: this with you now, like mine is kind of nice.
Speaker 1: So that and then I think we need to get
Speaker 1: really good at like redistributing resources, and that is actually
Speaker 1: very difficult, especially if you're right now. We're socialized in
Speaker 1: America into a capitalist worldview that says, accumulate as much
Speaker 1: as you can, as individually as you can, and that's
Speaker 1: how you know you lived a good life. Um And
Speaker 1: even though we see that doesn't seem to pan out,
Speaker 1: we see a lot of people who are very wealthy,
Speaker 1: who are very depressed, very isolated, spinning out all the time.
Speaker 1: Now we get to see it all on social media,
Speaker 1: taking over social media, ruinning it. You know, all kinds
Speaker 1: of fun things are happening for the wealthy. But what
Speaker 1: we see is they struggle deeply with actually relinquishing, you know,
Speaker 1: the amount they've gone over what they need. So those
Speaker 1: are some of the things that I'm like, Oh, do
Speaker 1: I know how to redistribute my resources? Do I know
Speaker 1: how to share decision making power? Do I know how
Speaker 1: to have integrity and a fight? Do I know how
Speaker 1: to decentralize power and make decisions with others? I'm great
Speaker 1: at it in some contexts. I'm not great at in
Speaker 1: all contexts. And I think even being able to be
Speaker 1: clear with ourselves about that is useful, you know. Merger strategy.
Speaker 1: I had a friend reflect back to me recently that
Speaker 1: so much of it is can you become self aware
Speaker 1: of your like where you are in the organization of
Speaker 1: all things, can you become self aware and from that
Speaker 1: self awareness have agency over the choices and the decisions
Speaker 1: you make and how you operate, the way you do
Speaker 1: your relationships and the beauty and the challenge of that
Speaker 1: is it requires internal assessment, internal work, and other than
Speaker 1: our training and hyper individualism and growth at all costs,
Speaker 1: we have an external training to go out there, be
Speaker 1: active out there, like activism is an external thing. You
Speaker 1: find an enemy, you find a villain, and you protest them,
Speaker 1: and you go against them. Yeah, point at them and
Speaker 1: the me and the us and the eye. It said, well,
Speaker 1: I'm fine, I'm the activist, I'm overlord, I'm the virgo
Speaker 1: pect I mean literally perfect, Yes, I mean well, this
Speaker 1: is what my mentor again, Grace Lee Box said to me.
Speaker 1: You know, we must transform ourselves to transform the world.
Speaker 1: And can you briefly remind us of who Grace Lee
Speaker 1: bog I would love to. Grace Lee Boggs was a
Speaker 1: Chinese American activist who threw her lot in with the
Speaker 1: Black liberation struggle in Detroit, and she was an incredible
Speaker 1: thinker and writer. She was always finding a new learning
Speaker 1: ground and when I met her, she was nine two
Speaker 1: and she lived to be a hundred and so those
Speaker 1: eight years of overlap, we're really meaningful years for me.
Speaker 1: But yeah, she started a ton of organizations. She was
Speaker 1: always starting new experiments and projects. And she and her
Speaker 1: partner Jimmy Boggs in Detroit and they started Detroit Summer.
Speaker 1: They started a bike cooperative. They helped with the Avalon
Speaker 1: Bakery getting off the ground. But they were always figuring out.
Speaker 1: Like the mayor at one point said, you guys are
Speaker 1: a bunch of naysayers, and she was like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: we can create stuff too. We're not just saying no
Speaker 1: to you. We can also create, and so really abundant
Speaker 1: creative force and thinker, um, you were bringing up grace
Speaker 1: in the context of this internal work and the world
Speaker 1: we have to be internally well. I think when I
Speaker 1: first heard her say that, I was like, we've got
Speaker 1: such big problems out here, Like I don't need to
Speaker 1: go meditate and be quiet with myself. That's not what's necessary.
Speaker 1: Like we've got to save the whole world. And what
Speaker 1: has happened as I have matured and been humbled by
Speaker 1: life has been this recognition that the front line of
Speaker 1: all these systems is actually inside of me. And again,
Speaker 1: just like there's not a mall versus large, there's not
Speaker 1: an in versus out that's an illusion. Right. It's like
Speaker 1: all these systems I'm trying to fight against live within
Speaker 1: me as well. And so even as I'm doing the
Speaker 1: external work, I also have to be noticing where it's
Speaker 1: showing up within me. Right, And I'm like, oh, I'm
Speaker 1: yelling at Jeff Bezos for his billionaire behaviors, but using
Speaker 1: Amazon to buy my holiday packages. Like I really look
Speaker 1: back at my life and I'm like, oh, transphobia had
Speaker 1: taken root in my life. I've had to work to
Speaker 1: clear that in my heart and to be aware of it.
Speaker 1: Fat phobia landed in my life. I had to work
Speaker 1: to love myself. I had to feel how do I
Speaker 1: heal that? Capitalism, patriarchy, all these things are within us.
Speaker 1: And that's why we're not able to succeed when we
Speaker 1: just go with this external fight, because they call out
Speaker 1: our hypocrisy, and our community calls out our hypocrisy. I
Speaker 1: think right now we're in this very tender moment inside
Speaker 1: of movement space because everyone's pointing in every direction like wait,
Speaker 1: you're the you know, It's like yeah, we're all out.
Speaker 1: If we like this idea that some of us are
Speaker 1: good and bad, we could get so much more done. Right,
Speaker 1: It's like we're all infected by these viral systems, and
Speaker 1: we can actually infuse our networks, are my cilial networks
Speaker 1: with other energy that actually helps us heal. So if
Speaker 1: the inside is the outside and the small is the large,
Speaker 1: these ideas come from your obsession with fractals, and I
Speaker 1: just want to spend a beat on My memory of
Speaker 1: fractals goes back to probably high school, maybe middle school, something,
Speaker 1: some pubescent times where my hormones and physiology or confusing
Speaker 1: my ability to locate it in time specifically. But I
Speaker 1: remember pretty pictures, you know, and I remember the idea
Speaker 1: of this like small pattern replicated to this large and
Speaker 1: beautiful scale which had the exact same pattern in the meta.
Speaker 1: How are you defining fractals and tell me a little
Speaker 1: bit more about the importance of the from the science
Speaker 1: to the application of movement. Yeah, I mean, I feel
Speaker 1: like I'm still constantly always trying to understand it scientifically,
Speaker 1: and sometimes I'm like to have it. It's this it,
Speaker 1: you know. But there's the way I understand fractals is
Speaker 1: this the way that we can understand patterns that replicate
Speaker 1: themselves in the same way no matter what scale you
Speaker 1: find them at, So from the very small to the
Speaker 1: very large. And we live in a fractal universe, so
Speaker 1: there's patterns that we can find all over all around
Speaker 1: us that replicate from the smallest to the largest. And
Speaker 1: it's like simple stuff like looking at broccoli or ferns,
Speaker 1: or looking at the way the roots of a tree look,
Speaker 1: and looking at the way our lungs look, looking at
Speaker 1: the way delta's um look from the sky, looking at
Speaker 1: the way blood moves through our systems, Like we are
Speaker 1: fractal representation of the way the Earth looks and works
Speaker 1: and the universe. It's really exciting, right, I always say,
Speaker 1: I'm like the we have these the same shape on
Speaker 1: our fingerprints as a galaxy. It's really cool, right, Like
Speaker 1: you could just geek out and be like, who you know,
Speaker 1: I can't stop exactly right, But the revolutionary potential inside
Speaker 1: of that is what makes me even more excited, almost titilated, right,
Speaker 1: is that, oh, if these patterns replicate, then when we
Speaker 1: notice a pattern, we could start to shift it at
Speaker 1: a small scale and possibly change the what is able
Speaker 1: to even replicate up into the largest scale. That excites me.
Speaker 1: Do you have a brief story that exemplifies where a
Speaker 1: small pattern shift rippled out and led to a bigger
Speaker 1: pattern shift a demonstration of the power of fractal theory
Speaker 1: and movement. Yes, I do. So. There's a young black
Speaker 1: woman that I hired to work for me back at
Speaker 1: the Leaga Piste off voters and stuff was a mess.
Speaker 1: The organization was trying to figure out how to organization.
Speaker 1: She did not get handled well. But I knew she
Speaker 1: was a genius. I knew she was brilliant. I knew
Speaker 1: she deserved every chance that she could get. So when
Speaker 1: I went to ruck At Society, I hired her again.
Speaker 1: I was like, I know that they didn't treat you well,
Speaker 1: but I'm bringing you to work with me. And she
Speaker 1: learned she was a black strategist, and she learned everything
Speaker 1: about direct action, and she was like, black people need
Speaker 1: to have this skill set, and I was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: run with that, like build it out. She ended up
Speaker 1: becoming one of the co founders or something called the
Speaker 1: Blackout Collective, which trained all these people in black direct action,
Speaker 1: including tons of people who were part of the Black
Speaker 1: Lives Matter movement. So when it was time for Black
Speaker 1: Lives Matter to escalate and do all this action, they
Speaker 1: had some of the best training that you could have
Speaker 1: that came through the channel of this black woman who
Speaker 1: stays behind the scenes, like she's like, I don't want
Speaker 1: all the attention, I don't need all the light on me.
Speaker 1: But because of her, they were some of the most coordinated, brilliant, effective,
Speaker 1: and media delicious right the mean it was like, oh,
Speaker 1: my goodness, this action. I'm like, yes, and I look
Speaker 1: at to me like those stories where I'm like believing
Speaker 1: in one person and seeing how one person has a
Speaker 1: particular bridge available in them that maybe no one else
Speaker 1: can see, and letting them build that bridge leads to
Speaker 1: a whole movement being supported and effective and changing the
Speaker 1: conversation of our time. Every time I see anything about
Speaker 1: Black Lives matters impact and you know, people on the
Speaker 1: cover the magazines and everything, I think about her. You know,
Speaker 1: I think about that trajectory. Thank you for that clarity.
Speaker 1: And I think there's such an interpretive tension where someone
Speaker 1: could say, like, oh, she's saying I don't have to
Speaker 1: worry about the big stuff. I could just be me,
Speaker 1: myself and I in my little abode, in my nuclear
Speaker 1: family situation and kind of disconnect, and I think, what
Speaker 1: what I'm hearing is, it's all connected. Everything is everything, Hello,
Speaker 1: Lauren Hill. And so if we start to adjust at
Speaker 1: the small it can ripple out. It's the opposite of
Speaker 1: trickle down. Yeah, and it actually it's like more than
Speaker 1: it can, like it does all the time. So part
Speaker 1: of it, part of fractal awareness, is just starting to
Speaker 1: take responsibility for what am I currently putting into the pattern.
Speaker 1: If I'm not paying attention, if I'm mindless, like if
Speaker 1: I'm just operating by what I was trained to do,
Speaker 1: or if I'm just reactive, most of the people who
Speaker 1: are operating that way are putting unhealthy conflict, unhealthy patterns,
Speaker 1: passive aggression. Like I tell people, look in your family,
Speaker 1: what are the patterns of emotional behavior and conflict resolution
Speaker 1: you see in your family? That's usually the same pattern
Speaker 1: that you're then helping replicate in the world. Right, all
Speaker 1: these people coming from places where fighting is either done
Speaker 1: through extreme violence and yelling and anger and awareness or
Speaker 1: extreme repression. That was my way, right, push it down,
Speaker 1: put a smile on it, keep it moving. And if
Speaker 1: those forces are trying to come into relationship, it's going
Speaker 1: to be a total mess. And so what needs to
Speaker 1: change on both sides? You know, in my family we
Speaker 1: been in this practice now, Like I'm upset with you,
Speaker 1: Like it's a shock to my system every time I
Speaker 1: have to be like I'm upset, and I'm trying to
Speaker 1: close the gap between when I feel upset and when
Speaker 1: I can express that I'm upset, right, And then I'm
Speaker 1: also trying to work from that Buddhist principle of is
Speaker 1: it kind? Is it true? Is it necessary? When I
Speaker 1: communicate that? So it's like I'm upset, and I'm not
Speaker 1: trying to smash you or harm you, or or denigrate
Speaker 1: you or shrink you. I'm trying to tell you so
Speaker 1: that we can adjust, so that we can find that
Speaker 1: that right relationship again. And I always bring up my
Speaker 1: friend Princess himp Hill, who teaches us that boundaries are
Speaker 1: the distance at which I can love you and me simultaneously. Right,
Speaker 1: You're gonna make me cry up in here. I cry
Speaker 1: all the time about this stuff. Like when I'm like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, Like you know, I'm in my mid
Speaker 1: forties and I'm like, what would it look like what
Speaker 1: my whole life look like if I started out learning
Speaker 1: how to fight fair and how to have good boundary race,
Speaker 1: and that it was okay to express us something hurt
Speaker 1: my feelings? And then how would that lead into the
Speaker 1: kind of governance that I have done in my life?
Speaker 1: What kind of leader would I be if I wasn't
Speaker 1: all the time trying to run away from conflict and
Speaker 1: I could really say how I felt? And then what
Speaker 1: would my city look like if we weren't punitive with
Speaker 1: people but instead we're like, oh, there's some harm here.
Speaker 1: How do we bring it to the surface and adjust
Speaker 1: and hold it as a community? I mean, it's all connected.
Speaker 1: It's all connected. The that conflict avoidance and desire not
Speaker 1: to fend offend or push away by stating needs, by
Speaker 1: stating hurt resonated deeply with me. And so that's where
Speaker 1: the emotions coming from shown up for you. Oh, I
Speaker 1: think you know. I have a very sacred story around
Speaker 1: my own mother and all the things she did for
Speaker 1: me for me to survive and just be here and
Speaker 1: be able to talk to you. It's a little too
Speaker 1: simplistic and binary in the like good person, She was
Speaker 1: a good and so I didn't allow her a lot
Speaker 1: of shades of other ways of being or any real fallibility.
Speaker 1: And so I grew up very sensitive to her needs
Speaker 1: and stall my role as like assisting in that and
Speaker 1: so not really articulating my own like I'm a good
Speaker 1: and so I didn't have conflict, you know, I accommodated,
Speaker 1: I supported, I stood by, or I smothered, you know,
Speaker 1: my own sense of conflict. At at some level, I
Speaker 1: was worried that this one person who was taking care
Speaker 1: of me would it, So that fear prevented in my
Speaker 1: own full expression and prevented my own full reception. I
Speaker 1: think of her expression, which was more than just good person,
Speaker 1: because there's no such thing. She was just person capable
Speaker 1: of all kinds of things. Yeah. So I've been feeling
Speaker 1: through and growing through and emerging from kind of that
Speaker 1: story and and trying to shift my pattern so it
Speaker 1: fractals out and and become something else. Yeah. After the
Speaker 1: break Adrian Marie Brown on using fiction to see democracy
Speaker 1: not just as crisis but as possibility. As I was
Speaker 1: looking through the principles of emergence that you all have
Speaker 1: listed on the Emergence Strategy Institute site several of them
Speaker 1: resonated with there's this you know, changes constant, be like water,
Speaker 1: and trust the people. If you trust the people, they
Speaker 1: become trustworthy. And I'm gonna I'm gonna take you on
Speaker 1: a brief journey through my mother or Anita Lorraine Thurston,
Speaker 1: because I saw where you got that from loot Zoo,
Speaker 1: the each Ing, the Chinese Book of Changes. I grew
Speaker 1: up with that text. My mother was a practicing Taoist, Divenor,
Speaker 1: she consulted the Eaching. I literally have like six translations
Speaker 1: on my desk right now, and so when I was
Speaker 1: looking up, you know the origin and that hexagram's kind
Speaker 1: of the chapters the verses that this practice points to
Speaker 1: in terms of this line, if you don't trust the people,
Speaker 1: they become untrustworthy, which you all flipped. If you do
Speaker 1: trust the people, they've be contrustworthy. That's made of two tails.
Speaker 1: That's made of the top one is essentially a water
Speaker 1: or a lake. The bottom is thunder rumble, and they
Speaker 1: can symbolize like joy on the top and movement on
Speaker 1: the battle, and the harmonious intersection of joy with movement.
Speaker 1: That just represents a lot of my mother, as I
Speaker 1: more fully see her. It certainly represents a lot of you,
Speaker 1: and so you're like, you're all up in my fractal
Speaker 1: right now, I'm glad in terms of seeing seeing that connectivity.
Speaker 1: So I just share that first as a as a
Speaker 1: point of connection, as a point of gratitude. I just
Speaker 1: love the ways our moms were like and our parents.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm like I always it took me so
Speaker 1: long to be like, oh, you have culture like you
Speaker 1: you have culture, like you have things that you bring
Speaker 1: into the house, you know, Like my mom had Khalil
Speaker 1: Gibron's the Prophet around and we read it every year,
Speaker 1: and it's just certain things. And I'm like, oh, that's
Speaker 1: infused into my system in ways that I will never
Speaker 1: be able to, like even pull apart. And so I
Speaker 1: love that the eaching is in there and the Tao
Speaker 1: is in there for you. Um I want to add
Speaker 1: an addendum is the people will become trustworthy or the
Speaker 1: boundaries will become clear. I feel like I didn't understand
Speaker 1: that until I was experimenting more with emergent strategy, that
Speaker 1: not everyone will become trustworthy in my lifetime. Right, I
Speaker 1: have practiced hard at extending my trust to people in
Speaker 1: spite of my intuition or in spite of their being
Speaker 1: and being like, oh, you know what, I have to
Speaker 1: also trust myself. I have to trust myself to know
Speaker 1: when a boundary is needed. So I just wanted to
Speaker 1: I always try to make that sure that's added on there.
Speaker 1: Thank you. The other principle that I want to ask
Speaker 1: you about is there's always enough time for the right work. Yes,
Speaker 1: in this time when we think about shifting patterns and
Speaker 1: practicing democracy and creating a healthier culture of it, what
Speaker 1: do you see as the right work right now? You know,
Speaker 1: listening back to the book or like listening back to
Speaker 1: things from the book, I can feel how my virgo
Speaker 1: was such at the front, Like the word right is
Speaker 1: everywhere in it. And what I mean by right there
Speaker 1: is meaningful work, transformative work, the work that is radical
Speaker 1: in the sense of what Angel Davis talks about, like
Speaker 1: going to the route and actually trying to pull something
Speaker 1: up from the root. And so when I was facilitating
Speaker 1: as my main way of spending my time, I was
Speaker 1: always looking for that. I'm like, Okay, we're having a
Speaker 1: conversation up here and it's petty and it feels chaotic,
Speaker 1: but could we go deeper? Could we go underneath that?
Speaker 1: Like what's actually at stake? And you know there's something
Speaker 1: really tender and what you just said about your mother
Speaker 1: where you're like, if I had a conflict with her,
Speaker 1: what I stopped being cared for? Like it goes so
Speaker 1: deep actually, and for most of us, that's what's happening
Speaker 1: is if this thing breaks, is my survival on the line?
Speaker 1: Is my fundamental belonging on the line? Like, and we
Speaker 1: don't want that to be what we're talking about when
Speaker 1: we're having an organizational struggle, when we're having a familiar struggle,
Speaker 1: we're having a community struggle, but usually that's what we're saying,
Speaker 1: am I going to be left out? And am I
Speaker 1: not going to live? Or is no one going to
Speaker 1: love me? Am I unlovable? Like it's really deep territory.
Speaker 1: So as a facilitator, I was always like, can we
Speaker 1: get to the twenty leagues as quickly in the meeting
Speaker 1: as possible because that's where the shift will happen that
Speaker 1: will allow this thing to move. Um. I I was like,
Speaker 1: I don't want to be the kind of facilitator who's
Speaker 1: like making a very beautiful deck chair arrangement on a Titanic, right,
Speaker 1: I really want to be like, if the ship is sinking,
Speaker 1: what do we have to do? And I think we're
Speaker 1: in that moment of human history, human existence, and particularly nation.
Speaker 1: You know, I call myself a post nationalist, which doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that we won't be citizens of something. I think
Speaker 1: that we have to learn how to be citizens to
Speaker 1: each other, citizens of something that we can actually belong to,
Speaker 1: and the cares for us and loves us. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure that the US experiment will be that right, and
Speaker 1: I feel like we have to be able to say that, Like,
Speaker 1: if this ship is sinking, but we're all still alive,
Speaker 1: and there's still an earth here, there's still a way
Speaker 1: to live. How quickly will we tune into that? How
Speaker 1: quickly can we have the right conversation? And that's what
Speaker 1: I'm now trying to affect on the largest scale, Like
Speaker 1: most of my writing, most of my books are like,
Speaker 1: the climate condition is no longer pending. It's just a
Speaker 1: matter of your level of privilege in terms of how
Speaker 1: much you're experiencing it. And the climate situation is not
Speaker 1: the only thing, but it is a big, potentially unifying
Speaker 1: human condition, and we're being distracted from it. You know,
Speaker 1: Tony Morrison talked about racism is a distraction, but there's
Speaker 1: so many others as well. There's so many things that
Speaker 1: we are being distracted from our best selves to stay
Speaker 1: battling for our right to exist, and it's like, no,
Speaker 1: we have the right to exist. The Earth gives us
Speaker 1: everything we need. Can we accept the gift? Can we
Speaker 1: get back into that right relationship? Can we spend our
Speaker 1: time on the right works. That's what that arc is
Speaker 1: mm hmm. Thank you for putting voice to the possibility
Speaker 1: that the story that we've created of something like the
Speaker 1: United States or nation in particular, isn't the end of
Speaker 1: the communities we can define for our own survival and
Speaker 1: our own thriving and to get deeper than that. Empires fall, empires, fault,
Speaker 1: humans continue, people continue. Yeah, so far and we can
Speaker 1: see us continue. Am really into hum is my preferred
Speaker 1: my strong preference for a planet like my strong preference too.
Speaker 1: I'm like until we find like other Earth situations, um,
Speaker 1: you know, but I do think like throughout human history,
Speaker 1: it gives me some kind of peace to be like, oh,
Speaker 1: the Roman Empire, the British Empire, these empires, like things
Speaker 1: change but then humans are so wonderful. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: we do awful things to each other. But I really
Speaker 1: have also been really trying to say, how do I
Speaker 1: bring my attention to what's best in us? And how
Speaker 1: do we grow that? You know, I always say what
Speaker 1: we pay attention to grows, And so I'm like, that
Speaker 1: moment you're talking about with your mother, I'm like, that
Speaker 1: might be the best part of you, right, is that tender,
Speaker 1: vulnerable part of you that loves your mom, And like,
Speaker 1: from that place is learning how to love in your life.
Speaker 1: You know, I feel that way with my parents and
Speaker 1: my grand I'm just having a major breakthrough with my
Speaker 1: grandmother after a long estrangement, and I'm like, I mean
Speaker 1: it's just really yeah, it's really fresh. But it's like,
Speaker 1: can I give possibility for this woman who's ninety to
Speaker 1: love me still, you know, or love me again or
Speaker 1: fall back or come learn how to love me in
Speaker 1: spite of all her beliefs And it's so tender. It's
Speaker 1: like everything about love and humans is in those moments.
Speaker 1: Thank you for sharing that and where you're at right now.
Speaker 1: And this word possibility kind of coincides with the sci
Speaker 1: fi world that you're also so deeply embedded with and
Speaker 1: inspired by and contributing to. Now, I mean China Meavil's
Speaker 1: work and inspiration shows up. I remember from the Scar
Speaker 1: the Possible Sword, So I want everyone. I'm like, I
Speaker 1: can't believe we're not all talking about the Possibiley Sword
Speaker 1: all the time, the cost thing that ever happened than
Speaker 1: anyone ever wrote. I really yeah, please make all your
Speaker 1: people read it. Okay, hold up, wait a minute, we
Speaker 1: interrupt this black nerd moment to offer an explainer tune
Speaker 1: day about the Possible Sword. Back in the early two thousand's,
Speaker 1: a friend introduced me to China Mieville, this British science
Speaker 1: fiction and fantasy author who writes incredible supernatural and speculative
Speaker 1: world I read three of his works, all set in
Speaker 1: the same world of boss Log, and in one of
Speaker 1: those books, the Scar, this thing called the Possible Sword
Speaker 1: was introduced. According to the boss Log Wicki, you gotta
Speaker 1: love the Internet, a fake place with a real Wicki
Speaker 1: entry quote. The Blade minds possibilities from the swordsman's motions.
Speaker 1: By injecting controlled uncertainty into his or her movements, the
Speaker 1: swordsman is able to land an arbitrary number of solid
Speaker 1: possible hits in addition to the factual hits. The effect
Speaker 1: is that the swordsman's arm appears to blur and the
Speaker 1: swords targets suffers several dozen cuts with each swing of
Speaker 1: the sword. So basically, the possible sword is this object
Speaker 1: that represents both what we do with it and everything
Speaker 1: we could do with it. And China Mievil didn't stop there.
Speaker 1: The possible sword is powered by a possibility engine. This
Speaker 1: is some magical quantum technology. Obviously not real or is it?
Speaker 1: To me? It just means that we all have more
Speaker 1: possibilities within us than we often acknowledge, and sometimes we
Speaker 1: need fiction to remind us of our ability to change facts.
Speaker 1: And knowing that Adrian Marie Brown has read and incorporated
Speaker 1: ideas from authors like China Mievil, it's simply dope to
Speaker 1: me and hopefully to YouTube. Now back to my giddy
Speaker 1: nerd out moment over sci fi writers, Please make all
Speaker 1: your people read it because it is the coolest thing
Speaker 1: I've read, because it gives shows up. But but but no
Speaker 1: one shows up more than the name. You've already sided,
Speaker 1: the woman you've already started, Octavia Butler. You've got a
Speaker 1: whole podcast dedicated to sharing her work. Thank You were that.
Speaker 1: I dove into the parable of the solar and parable
Speaker 1: of the talent during COVID lockdown, as I was traveling
Speaker 1: the country heavily alone making the America Outdoors PBS series,
Speaker 1: writing my relationship with nature, with this system in my
Speaker 1: head during the apocalypse, choosing community. But what stood out
Speaker 1: to me is the possibility of growth and community and democracy,
Speaker 1: even and especially in an apocalyptic setting. You know this
Speaker 1: this acorn community that that is featured, and the way
Speaker 1: people show up for each other. What do you think
Speaker 1: Octavia Butler can teach us about citizening as a verb
Speaker 1: about practicing democracy. Mm hmm. Yeah. One of the reasons
Speaker 1: I go back to her over and over again is
Speaker 1: because she was writing from a place of despair, like
Speaker 1: she was paying attention enough to be like, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is very upsetting and a lot of we call
Speaker 1: her profect, many people say she's prophetic, but really she
Speaker 1: was like, I'm just paying attention and this is the
Speaker 1: inevitable place that things lead to if we don't change
Speaker 1: our behavior. And I love that because that seems to
Speaker 1: me like a fundamental citizen skill is to be like,
Speaker 1: can you actually take in what's really happening and and
Speaker 1: just follow that thread and just be like, oh, is
Speaker 1: that the Am I down with that? Am I down
Speaker 1: to participate in that? I think if more of us
Speaker 1: thought that way, they'd be interventions we would make in
Speaker 1: the immediate because we're like, oh, I don't want us
Speaker 1: to get there. But she also said so many things
Speaker 1: around who we asked to lead us or who we
Speaker 1: allow to lead us, and what are the qualities of
Speaker 1: what we think of as leadership. So I think right
Speaker 1: now we've gotten very comfortable with having people in leadership
Speaker 1: who lie to us, and we give a lot of
Speaker 1: money to people to campaign in ways that we know
Speaker 1: are dishonest and saying things that were like the they
Speaker 1: may or may not ever do that, and then when
Speaker 1: they get in office they don't do it, and we're like,
Speaker 1: you know, it's like the normal thing now is to
Speaker 1: be like, who's the best, most charming, maybe somewhat attractive,
Speaker 1: married liar that we can Yeah, I want my liar,
Speaker 1: not your liar, right exactly, you get me. So I
Speaker 1: think one of the things Octavia is often pointing to
Speaker 1: is what does it mean to be a leader? Who
Speaker 1: tells the truth. What does it mean to be a
Speaker 1: leader who especially when the truth is hard and it's like,
Speaker 1: this isn't the truth you wanted to hear. I'm really
Speaker 1: interested right now, and like, who are people who are
Speaker 1: willing to lead and say things are probably going to
Speaker 1: get worse? Like we're heading into a period of human
Speaker 1: history where what we're experiencing now, a lot of the
Speaker 1: shock of it is because those who could have prepared
Speaker 1: us for it have not nowhere more clear than climate exactly.
Speaker 1: I'm like, you don't want to there's no positive pitch
Speaker 1: to the amount of pandemic we're heading into. There's no
Speaker 1: positive pitch to the amount of climate crisis we're heading into.
Speaker 1: But there's possibility in it if we actually say we're
Speaker 1: heading into it. The storm is directly ahead for some
Speaker 1: of us were already in it, and we can make
Speaker 1: adaptations right now that increase maximum survival and that actually
Speaker 1: make it so that survival could be generative and pleasurable
Speaker 1: and fun. But it requires letting go of some of
Speaker 1: the ways we were imagining this time. So Octavia was like,
Speaker 1: what if we let go of even the idea of
Speaker 1: having to stay here at Earth? Like, what if the
Speaker 1: possibility for human life is to take root amongst the stars?
Speaker 1: And that felt like a viable possibility for her. Something
Speaker 1: I know from studying some of the papers in the
Speaker 1: drafts that she's done of the Parable of the Trickster,
Speaker 1: which would have been the third book in that trilogy,
Speaker 1: was that all the other planets that she could imagine
Speaker 1: depressed her, Like she couldn't actually finish the next book
Speaker 1: because she was like, I think trying to write other
Speaker 1: planets made her love Earth so much. Then from reading that,
Speaker 1: my conclusion is taking root amongst the stars would also
Speaker 1: mean taking root here, like this is our place amongst
Speaker 1: the stars, and if we don't take root here, then
Speaker 1: the Earth will have to cast us off. You know,
Speaker 1: everything else goes extinct and the Earth continues. Has been
Speaker 1: the pattern, And I'm interested in leaders who are like, hey,
Speaker 1: let's not go extinct, right, Let's make the adaptations we
Speaker 1: need to make to not go extinct. What does that
Speaker 1: look like? And I also think that she she believed
Speaker 1: in the small community. So you mentioned the Acorn community
Speaker 1: where they were practicing, but Acorn, you know, spoiler, I
Speaker 1: feel okay spoiling it because it's been out for so long.
Speaker 1: But spoiler, that community gets destroyed by the Christian right
Speaker 1: in her book, and her people don't give up. Right,
Speaker 1: their children are kidnap from them, they still don't give up.
Speaker 1: They change their strategy to a Zapatista model where they're
Speaker 1: going door to door and saying, let's build a shared vision.
Speaker 1: Here's what earth seat is, here's what the practices are,
Speaker 1: and all we need is a small and mighty crew
Speaker 1: that believes in this and we can actually hold on
Speaker 1: to some possibility for humanity. Right. And that has been
Speaker 1: really meaningful to me as an organizer because I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: some of my comrades go the biggest bucket and I
Speaker 1: love that, and it's I get really moved by the
Speaker 1: work that they do. But what I have been drawn
Speaker 1: to is how do I approach every single person I
Speaker 1: interact with as a potential freedom fighter, as a potential comrade,
Speaker 1: and whatever location they're in is their front line, including
Speaker 1: the front line within themselves and wherever they are, And
Speaker 1: I find really interesting people ready to roll and play
Speaker 1: and experiment with me in that way unexpected, right. And
Speaker 1: I'm always like, yeah, I think we really underestimate folks
Speaker 1: who are at the barbershop. We underestimate the person on
Speaker 1: the bus, We underestimate the stranger we meet on the plane,
Speaker 1: We underestimate our coworkers. You know, I'm like, you're not
Speaker 1: just the job title you have, Like how are you
Speaker 1: going to survive? Let's talk about it, right, And I'm
Speaker 1: trying to encourage more people to have those conversations. You know,
Speaker 1: There's been these moments for me. I was in Italy
Speaker 1: when COVID nineteen, like when it hit, was like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is a crisis and like everything's about to shut down.
Speaker 1: There's these moments in history where you're like, oh where
Speaker 1: am I Am I with people that I can trust
Speaker 1: right now? Will these people keep me safe? I was
Speaker 1: in Italy. I was like I don't speak the language.
Speaker 1: I mean this little world town. I have to go
Speaker 1: back home. I was like, I need to find people
Speaker 1: that are my people enough to starve in your own earth. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I had to go find my earth right, which was
Speaker 1: with some whales in Hawaii. But it was like this
Speaker 1: is what it Also, the whales have a lot to
Speaker 1: tell us. There's also seems like that's the consistent message.
Speaker 1: Everyone has a lot to tell us. If we're able
Speaker 1: to listen, and there's this fractal link I'm feeling between
Speaker 1: you and someone like and say who fought you know
Speaker 1: who reminds us the way you talked about the barbershop
Speaker 1: person or your coworker. We underestimate them, We don't ask
Speaker 1: much of them, we don't see much potential in them.
Speaker 1: But if we shifted that and saw the opposite, we'd
Speaker 1: have so much more access to power collectively. And so
Speaker 1: the whale, the harbor, the co worker, the non voter,
Speaker 1: these are all possible allies and community members to help
Speaker 1: us practice democracy with exactly And you know, in our nation,
Speaker 1: I would also have to say the non citizen, right,
Speaker 1: the person who can't vote, the person who you know.
Speaker 1: I think of that Worrisonshire poem all the time, and
Speaker 1: it's like the person who had to leave where they
Speaker 1: were to come here, because this felt like the safest
Speaker 1: possible option real quick for anyone wondering. That Worrisonshire poem
Speaker 1: referenced is called home now. Worrisonshire is a Somali British
Speaker 1: writer and poet, and she wrote that poem inspired by
Speaker 1: a visit she made to the abandoned Somali embassy in Rome,
Speaker 1: which some young refugees had turned into their home. We've
Speaker 1: got it linked in the show notes if you want
Speaker 1: to check it out. Hint, you want to check it
Speaker 1: out now? Back to Adrian felt like the safest possible option.
Speaker 1: Powerful poem. Yeah, I get reminded often. I'm like, you
Speaker 1: don't understand the privilege of this place. And I think
Speaker 1: about that. I'm like, how would I operate if I did?
Speaker 1: How what would change if I wasn't complaining all the
Speaker 1: time but figuring out what do I have the freedom
Speaker 1: to practice? I've been saying this lately that I feel
Speaker 1: like one of the freest people to ever live, and
Speaker 1: it kind of that's daunting to me, because I'm like,
Speaker 1: do I deserve this freedom? Am I doing the right
Speaker 1: thing with it? But I think the right thing is
Speaker 1: to be in it, right, to actually be in it
Speaker 1: and feel what becomes possible inside of that um And
Speaker 1: I want to invite everyone who's listening. I'm like, it's
Speaker 1: not just me, it's also you, Like we are amongst
Speaker 1: the freest people to ever live, and I don't think
Speaker 1: we're taking it seriously enough. Yeah, Imagination Battle, you have
Speaker 1: used this phrase and said that we are inside of.
Speaker 1: Essentially we're engaged in an imagination battle. Can you explain
Speaker 1: what you mean by that. I learned this from my
Speaker 1: friend Terry Marshall, who does a project called Intelligent Mischief
Speaker 1: in Boston, and it was this idea that everything that
Speaker 1: we live inside of right now was imagined by someone,
Speaker 1: because especially the stuff we were like, I'm not inferior
Speaker 1: to a man, like I can tell I can feel
Speaker 1: it in my body, but a man. Yeah, I've met men,
Speaker 1: and you know, I'm not saying I'm superior to all
Speaker 1: of them, but I do recognize that or white supremacy. Right,
Speaker 1: It's like the idea that whiteness is superior to everything
Speaker 1: else as someone imagined that. That's not how the world
Speaker 1: is actually set up as a fictional concept, but when
Speaker 1: that person imagined it, they were so compelling, right, and
Speaker 1: whiteness was their fear was so compelling to them. The
Speaker 1: story addressed some of their fear of coming across people
Speaker 1: that look different from them and not knowing how to
Speaker 1: process that. That story is still compelling. You know. When
Speaker 1: I wrote Emergent Strategy, one of the vignettes that I
Speaker 1: included in there was the fact that if you look
Speaker 1: at what happened with with a Mike Brown, is that
Speaker 1: he was killed because of the white imagination that sees
Speaker 1: him as a threat, that sees him as a danger
Speaker 1: as an unarmed black young person, right, And that now
Speaker 1: it's not unusual that those who have the authority to
Speaker 1: be armed and policing our communities can go into a
Speaker 1: court system or can take this to their boss and say,
Speaker 1: I imagine they were dangerous, and that's considered a qualifiable
Speaker 1: defense to why they murdered someone. Right. So the power
Speaker 1: of the imagination in that context has to be taken seriously,
Speaker 1: and it means that then we have to take our
Speaker 1: imagination seriously for moving our way out of this. And
Speaker 1: my friend Jeanine d Novaje is working on a book
Speaker 1: right now called Brave Community that's going to come out.
Speaker 1: She talks about the post racist imagination. I think about
Speaker 1: this all the time, like, how do we harness our
Speaker 1: imagination to actually advance the world we want and to
Speaker 1: invite people into a compelling space to practice that world
Speaker 1: rather than staying stuck in someone else's imagination. Jeanine is
Speaker 1: a regular member of the how the citizen community is
Speaker 1: here literally right now you're probably feel love it. I
Speaker 1: love you. We'll probably see if we can bring her
Speaker 1: up in a moment. Yes, excited about about Janine's book,
Speaker 1: But that imagination work is the thing right that. It's like,
Speaker 1: right now, are we able to imagine? You know? I
Speaker 1: also think about this with what stories get told. They're
Speaker 1: all the post apocalyptic movies and everything, kind of like,
Speaker 1: who's putting out those stories that can imagine us surviving?
Speaker 1: I really loved the story of Station eleven, so hoping
Speaker 1: you were going to say that, I had my fingers
Speaker 1: and toes crossed, but I didn't want to be loved it.
Speaker 1: I thought it was such a beautiful imagination of what
Speaker 1: it could look like. Yeah, I totally agree. I'm on board.
Speaker 1: Imagination is powerful and we need to imagine better, essentially
Speaker 1: for ourselves with each other. What are some ways that
Speaker 1: we can practice that. I feel like we've stifled our imagination.
Speaker 1: We are very good at adopting other people's stories and
Speaker 1: other people's fictions and finding freedom within that. But that
Speaker 1: feels really sma all when you expand the canvas and say,
Speaker 1: but what about a whole another premise? So what are
Speaker 1: ways we could practice flexing our imagination, stretching our imagination
Speaker 1: in the domain of what do you even means to
Speaker 1: practice democracy? Yeah, I mean I have this practice I
Speaker 1: call collaborative ideation, and it's really having people sit in
Speaker 1: a community, sit in a circle and say, what in
Speaker 1: our community needs are the medicine of our imagination? The
Speaker 1: medicine of our imagination? Where do we feel so stuck
Speaker 1: that we can't figure out the policy way forward? We
Speaker 1: can't figure out this five year plan, like we can't
Speaker 1: figure it out? And have people I D eight together
Speaker 1: place yourself in the future. You know, however far you
Speaker 1: can most of us about ten years is how far
Speaker 1: we can actually go out. Anything beyond that is like,
Speaker 1: let's stretch and actually say if we had landed this,
Speaker 1: if we had applied the medicine and this thing was
Speaker 1: actually healed and it was functional, what would that look like?
Speaker 1: And the ideation is like what would housing look like,
Speaker 1: old transportation look like, how would we talk to our kids?
Speaker 1: What would be the normal values and principles? And so
Speaker 1: we kind of build a world together and then ask
Speaker 1: everyone to write short stories in that world, and a
Speaker 1: lot of people are like, I'm not a writer. I
Speaker 1: don't write fiction. I'm like, you lie to yourself all
Speaker 1: the time. You write fiction all the time, You come
Speaker 1: up with stories about when someone else is thinking about.
Speaker 1: Everyone is writing fiction all the time, right, But it's
Speaker 1: taking that harnessing and just making you could tell about
Speaker 1: the story. Sometimes that's the way. Just tell me, like
Speaker 1: in a movie of this, what would happen, and then
Speaker 1: have people share that with each other, and you're it's
Speaker 1: amazing how much is living inside us already. But it
Speaker 1: requires setting down the scroll, putting down the social media,
Speaker 1: putting down all that external incoming doom news, and actually
Speaker 1: sitting down with people that you love and care about
Speaker 1: and just being like, can we just imagine what it
Speaker 1: could look like if this was no longer a problem?
Speaker 1: Which is also what Octavia did was she was like,
Speaker 1: let's have new problems. I resolved this one, but now
Speaker 1: there's new ones that are emerged. Because we're humans, there's
Speaker 1: going to be more. But I love that practice, and
Speaker 1: in a small scale, the fractal practice. It's in a
Speaker 1: conversation when you hear someone stuck asked them, could you
Speaker 1: imagine what it would be like if this was resolved?
Speaker 1: Like what would it feel like in your system? Let it.
Speaker 1: Let yourself feel at first, and then tell me what's different.
Speaker 1: That's a powerful practice. I'm gonna I'm gonna practice at dinner.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna practice at drinks with friends. Yeah, especially people
Speaker 1: who have kids know this. I'm like, we are the
Speaker 1: creators of anything that comes beyond us. It's all in
Speaker 1: our bodies. Were born with everything about the future all
Speaker 1: in our bodies, So we have to believe that's also
Speaker 1: true for our ideas. Yeah, it's all the same stuff.
Speaker 1: It's all energy. That's a whole another chapter. Look, you've
Speaker 1: been flexing your imagination. You've been not just facilitating people
Speaker 1: bringing out their short stories and fictional stories, but writing
Speaker 1: your own your latest book and from the Emergence series
Speaker 1: Fables and Spells Collected and new short fiction and poetry.
Speaker 1: What are you hoping to emphasize is with this collection
Speaker 1: of loved as well as new works. Ah well, I
Speaker 1: mean first, it was the most fun book that I've
Speaker 1: pulled together. Um, I really let myself like, I just
Speaker 1: gave myself permission to lean into my witchy, magical spell
Speaker 1: casting self. And you know I talked about when I've
Speaker 1: learned what I could do in a room, and now
Speaker 1: I look back and I'm like, oh, I can cast spells,
Speaker 1: Like I have an energy that moves through me and
Speaker 1: I know that I have to be responsible with it.
Speaker 1: And it's the same thing that happens when I write
Speaker 1: a story. So I'm just like, this is a spell.
Speaker 1: We're casting spells all the time, so fables of spells.
Speaker 1: I let myself write about extraterrestrials. I let myself write
Speaker 1: about water women and witch magic, and I wrote Spells
Speaker 1: to the Moon and yeah, I just was like, what
Speaker 1: are all the things that I'm doing to try to
Speaker 1: transform how I think about the world. And most of
Speaker 1: the stories are about people coming into their power, because
Speaker 1: that's what I'm very interested right now, is like how
Speaker 1: do we come into ourselves? Because I think when we
Speaker 1: come into ourselves, we necessarily come into our power. And
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, I know who I am and
Speaker 1: now no one can take that from me. Like that's
Speaker 1: the beauty of I think aging. But I also think
Speaker 1: it's the beauty that babies have. Like when you meet
Speaker 1: a kid, they're not like, oh, what are you going
Speaker 1: to think about me? They're like, you think I'm awesome?
Speaker 1: And I just pooped all over the place. And like,
Speaker 1: I'm the cutest person to the fullest, so true to themselves.
Speaker 1: I'm like, how do we return to that that. I'm like,
Speaker 1: even coming to this podcast with you, I'm like, let
Speaker 1: me not assume that bartun days trying to catch me
Speaker 1: in something or you know. I was like, let me
Speaker 1: assume that I can just be myself and you're going
Speaker 1: to meet me by being yourself and magic will happen,
Speaker 1: because that's what happens when humans are actually being themselves,
Speaker 1: you know. So the book is basically one story after
Speaker 1: another of that, you know, moments of people claiming a
Speaker 1: little bit more of themselves and their power. And I
Speaker 1: created an entire extraterrestial species, says Virgos. So I hope
Speaker 1: that you that I'm starting with that story. I'm jumping
Speaker 1: right to that one non linear story consumption. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: really like non linear books too. I'm like, please put
Speaker 1: this in your bathroom and just open up to whatever
Speaker 1: pages right for you at that moment. Jump around. So, um,
Speaker 1: we ask all of our guests, if you were to
Speaker 1: define citizen not as a legalistic noun but as a verb,
Speaker 1: what does it mean to citizen? How would you interpret
Speaker 1: that to me? To citizen means to take responsibility for
Speaker 1: the fact that I'm part of something larger than myself
Speaker 1: and to be a contribution of life moving towards life
Speaker 1: in whatever structures I'm a part of. Mm hmm, thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you. We have reached that moment in our show
Speaker 1: where we bring the people into the fray. So first up,
Speaker 1: Alison Mosqueta. Hi, Alison, I'm Alison Mosqueta. I'm here in Denver,
Speaker 1: Colorado and cerious about how do we citizen in fun ways?
Speaker 1: So how to citizen has really stretched my thinking about
Speaker 1: our collective responsibility as a member of society and ways
Speaker 1: that I was never taught, especially around policy, government, democracy.
Speaker 1: Um never learned any of those things growing up in school, right,
Speaker 1: never learned exactly what it means to be involved and
Speaker 1: engaged and be a democracy. So how do we do
Speaker 1: that in fun ways that are exciting and energizing, especially
Speaker 1: maybe in private sectors like nonprofits in my own community.
Speaker 1: It's really exciting to think about if we do this
Speaker 1: now and we start instilling this in younger and younger generations,
Speaker 1: what is the next thing going to look like? Right? Yeah,
Speaker 1: So you know the thing that comes to me is
Speaker 1: like you have to stay in touch with the part
Speaker 1: of you that knows how to have fun, which I
Speaker 1: think is one of the things that often we accidentally
Speaker 1: set down when we become an organizer because I must
Speaker 1: save the world and I must be so serious. So
Speaker 1: part of it is just apping back authentically into the
Speaker 1: part of you that knows how to have fun. But
Speaker 1: I have to tell you, when you first said the question,
Speaker 1: I heard fund raise and I was like, um, that's
Speaker 1: a whole another podcast, but fun ways, I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think most of it is what actually brings you joy.
Speaker 1: So recently I've been building out this project that's a
Speaker 1: musical ritual and it's because I like singing in groups
Speaker 1: with people. And I remember I've been like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I used to love being in a choir when I
Speaker 1: was a kid, like coming together and singing, like just
Speaker 1: everyone's sitting down the house and have a good time.
Speaker 1: Not because you're trying to sound the most beautiful are perfect,
Speaker 1: but the singing with is the thing, right, And we
Speaker 1: always talk about preaching to the choir, but I'm like
Speaker 1: the choir these reminders on how to be a choir,
Speaker 1: like how do we harmonize, how do we find the
Speaker 1: right volume so that we can all be heard and
Speaker 1: make something larger than ourselves. So for me, that's a
Speaker 1: super fun way to have people come together and do
Speaker 1: what could be important serious work also, but it's doing
Speaker 1: it in a way that's really enjoyable. I also find
Speaker 1: adding celebration, like doses of celebration into any community is
Speaker 1: really helpful. So it's your birthday, Like, let's take a
Speaker 1: moment and actually celebrate that you just got a divorce. Yay,
Speaker 1: I'm sure it was the right decision. You know, something
Speaker 1: happened with your kid, You've got a new degree. Like
Speaker 1: taking the time to celebrate each other in community because
Speaker 1: and then also celebrate the small winds. You know. Back
Speaker 1: when I was a facilitator, I always lift this up
Speaker 1: because I'm like, this is so funny to me. But
Speaker 1: I had a group that was like they could not
Speaker 1: make a decision, Like they just could not make a
Speaker 1: decision together. It was like, we're how we're gonna save
Speaker 1: the world. We can't even And we figured out how
Speaker 1: to order lunch together, and I was like, you know
Speaker 1: what we wanna do is gonna pause and we're gonna
Speaker 1: put on Mary J. Blige we're gonna just sing. You know.
Speaker 1: Adding music into anything I think improves the fun capacity
Speaker 1: of it. And then I think having fun that's not
Speaker 1: tied to transaction, so really being like, oh, we have
Speaker 1: bowling nights that are not about trying to raise money.
Speaker 1: We have movie nights. You know. There's a group here
Speaker 1: in um North Carolina in Durham where I live called
Speaker 1: Spirit House, and like every time a big black movie
Speaker 1: comes out there, just like we rented out of the
Speaker 1: theater and we just go and we're like Wakonda forever,
Speaker 1: Like it's all of us. We have shared values. Everyone's
Speaker 1: wearing a mask. We don't have to worry about all
Speaker 1: this stuff, and we can just enjoy each other and
Speaker 1: there's no organized component to it. It's really being together.
Speaker 1: So to me, that part of being with your community
Speaker 1: is super important because that's what actually forms the connective
Speaker 1: tissue that makes you even want to act as a community.
Speaker 1: Team building. Yeah, in a fun way. Thank you all right,
Speaker 1: Next up, we have we've heard this name once already.
Speaker 1: Please welcome to the stage. I had to do my
Speaker 1: my live event MC voice for this one. I love
Speaker 1: the way you did that. That was so exciting. My
Speaker 1: name in silly. What's up everybody? Hi? And Marie Brown? Hi.
Speaker 1: My question is everyone from the Boys to Marry m
Speaker 1: Kaba that has attended to black liberation and had like
Speaker 1: a home and the politics of it found the need
Speaker 1: to go to the culture and the arts of it. Everyone.
Speaker 1: So I want you to talk to us about what
Speaker 1: that's looking like for you. Because I heard that you're
Speaker 1: making music. Now I heard Oh, I love this question.
Speaker 1: One thing is I think that there's a huge overlap
Speaker 1: between the poetic force within us and the part of
Speaker 1: us that wants to save the world. A lot of
Speaker 1: people who I meet who are like, I love the earth,
Speaker 1: I love the world, I love humans. It's because we're
Speaker 1: paying attention to what's beautiful, and we're paying attention to
Speaker 1: what hurts. We're empathetic, we're letting it in. I meet
Speaker 1: so many people who are organizers, are activists, and then
Speaker 1: like one step under that, they're like, I'm a poet,
Speaker 1: I'm a singer, I'm a writer, I'm a rapper, I'm
Speaker 1: writing plays, and I imagine a future often where one
Speaker 1: of the ways we know that we've healed from a
Speaker 1: lot of these oppressive tendencies that we're actually spending most
Speaker 1: of our time making and sharing art. But I also
Speaker 1: love what happens when people are able to just drop
Speaker 1: into the cultural space. And I've been allowing that for myself.
Speaker 1: So I have an album coming out that's related to
Speaker 1: the Fables and spells work. It's all like spell songs
Speaker 1: and songs that feel like magic to me. And then
Speaker 1: I just did this huge music ritual that I'm work
Speaker 1: shopping and taking around the country to be like, can
Speaker 1: we create a portal into the future through songs that
Speaker 1: we sing in choir in chorus together, and can we
Speaker 1: create a space and opening for ourselves through music? And
Speaker 1: I think the reason that there's this direct pathway from
Speaker 1: trying to change the world too into that culture space
Speaker 1: is that eventually you recognize that what we're trying to
Speaker 1: shift is culture. Is we're trying to change the culture
Speaker 1: through which people see themselves as a part of this
Speaker 1: whole you know, Audrey Lord said that we don't live
Speaker 1: compartmentalized lives, right, We don't live in these little silos
Speaker 1: apart from ourselves. We are whole us. We are whole people.
Speaker 1: And I think what we want to invite into the
Speaker 1: public sphere more and more often is spaces where people
Speaker 1: can come together and be whole. And when I'm singing
Speaker 1: a song, my political self is there, and my insecure
Speaker 1: self is there, and my little girl who knows I'm
Speaker 1: the ship is there, and my grown up who has
Speaker 1: pain and heartbreak is all there. And I'm only interested
Speaker 1: in being with people when all of us can all
Speaker 1: be there, right, And the cultural space for me is
Speaker 1: where that opens up. And it has been amazing to
Speaker 1: look around and see so many of my comrades also
Speaker 1: doing this. So I look over and I'm like Charlenne Carruthers,
Speaker 1: who is part of the YP one hundred for a
Speaker 1: long time, has made a film, and Patris Colors is
Speaker 1: doing all these arts installations, and I know so many
Speaker 1: people who are writing books, writing fiction who are like
Speaker 1: Toronto Burke is like, I've got fiction out ahead of me,
Speaker 1: like right, because we're imagining the new world. These are
Speaker 1: all people who have spent a ton of time imagining
Speaker 1: the world and now we're trying to find ways to
Speaker 1: share it with everyone. And yeah, I will say it's thrilling,
Speaker 1: Like I'm still vibrating off of the musical portal that
Speaker 1: got opened on Saturday in New York and for me,
Speaker 1: as someone who people are like they look at and
Speaker 1: be like, oh, you know things, you're so wise. It
Speaker 1: was so incredible to get to come into something and
Speaker 1: be like, I'm also a part of the choir, so
Speaker 1: I can sing with my own solitary voice. But what
Speaker 1: makes me feel the most alive is when I'm singing
Speaker 1: with four people in a circle and we're catching each
Speaker 1: other and we're vibing off of each other, and like
Speaker 1: we remember that we're bigger than just our solitary selves.
Speaker 1: It's very healing. It is. You've reminded me of a
Speaker 1: middle school experience singing in a school production with a
Speaker 1: bunch of other black kids that was mostly white school
Speaker 1: and white kids were singing with us too. Was doing
Speaker 1: some kind of gospel song. I'm not even Christian like that,
Speaker 1: but the song was so moving and were like thugs
Speaker 1: were happy, you know what I mean, Like, that's that's
Speaker 1: listen okay, because there's something universal that taps you into yourself.
Speaker 1: And I will say the music, the musical ritual is
Speaker 1: basically taking the technology of gospel music and interacting it
Speaker 1: with the ideas of emergence, strategy and pleasure activism and
Speaker 1: transformative justice. So it's absolutely unlocking that place. Like people
Speaker 1: come in there like oh hold up, I don't know
Speaker 1: if we could do this, and it was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we can feel really really really excellent together, and like
Speaker 1: that's medicine we need. It's getting to that under level
Speaker 1: that you talked about earlier. It bypasses. Yeah, I had
Speaker 1: people crying. I can't imagine you may compeople. I love
Speaker 1: is having people like being able to grieve together, because
Speaker 1: I do think in this period of history, we have
Speaker 1: so much to grieve and so few places to actually
Speaker 1: let that grief come through, and we need these collective
Speaker 1: spaces where we can actually let the grief come through
Speaker 1: because it also helps us figure out what we can do.
Speaker 1: Like the world we're going to build is one that
Speaker 1: is built from our grief as much as it is
Speaker 1: built from our visions. It's like what am I done losing?
Speaker 1: And what am I accepting? And what am I dreaming?
Speaker 1: So all right, we have Carol Wombledorff. You will correct me, Carol,
Speaker 1: you will say your name and where you're at and
Speaker 1: get to your question. Hi, Carol Wommeldorf. Is that German?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, I was raised. I was. I grew
Speaker 1: up in Germany, Like half of my childhood was in Germany.
Speaker 1: You know, there's an S between the L and the
Speaker 1: D if you're in Germany. So, um, how do you
Speaker 1: respond to folks who say voting is irrelevant and rigged?
Speaker 1: And I mean, it's such a mundane but it's a
Speaker 1: real day to day kind of question when you want
Speaker 1: to help people understand that it is rigged and it's
Speaker 1: still matters. That's right, that's beautiful, Carol. Where are you
Speaker 1: geographically before when makes Cincinnati, Ohio? We're really batters? Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: well I hear that all the time. I think it's
Speaker 1: a little bit of a both end. Like I never
Speaker 1: tried to take that away from people. I'm like, you're
Speaker 1: very smart, you're not wrong. Is rigged and it is unfair,
Speaker 1: and it still matters. I think of it as the
Speaker 1: harm reduction strategy for this period of history, as we're
Speaker 1: in the shift, so harm reduction for those who may
Speaker 1: or may not be aware of it. As the idea
Speaker 1: with drug users that you're like, you might not be
Speaker 1: able to make it all the way to abstinence, you
Speaker 1: may not be able to live a sober life. But
Speaker 1: you can reduce the harms that come from your drug use,
Speaker 1: and you can reduce the harms in ways that make
Speaker 1: sure you still have a home and you still have
Speaker 1: access to your kids, that you still have the maximum
Speaker 1: health in your body, and you can learn to trust
Speaker 1: yourself without judgment and be in that So I approach
Speaker 1: voting that way where I'm like, if we're going to
Speaker 1: get to a different way of doing nation state, if
Speaker 1: we're going to get to a practice where we do
Speaker 1: have multiple viable parties, for instance, that give us actual
Speaker 1: options to express ourselves politically, we won't get there by
Speaker 1: fully giving up on participating in the current system. And
Speaker 1: I actually encourage people when they say, I'm like, you
Speaker 1: probably actually need to be voting more rather than not
Speaker 1: voting at all, because a lot of times people say
Speaker 1: that around the national elections and they're upset because we
Speaker 1: only have a two party system and it's a party
Speaker 1: that is like central and right, like we don't really
Speaker 1: have a strong left at the national level, and I
Speaker 1: mean from a movement perspective, right, I'm like, my dad
Speaker 1: would argue differently, but I feel like when I hear that,
Speaker 1: I'm like, yes, And the reason that exists is because
Speaker 1: we're not necessarily engaging in the electoral process at our
Speaker 1: local level. That feeds up into what's possible at the
Speaker 1: national level or was possible at the state level. Right,
Speaker 1: it's all fractals. Elections are a very fractal process. Like
Speaker 1: what happens at any federal or national level is only
Speaker 1: possible because it was happening at all the local levels.
Speaker 1: And part of why I moved to Durham was because
Speaker 1: I was like, very excited about what's happening at the
Speaker 1: local political level here. I had a friend who was
Speaker 1: a black trans person who was elected to school board.
Speaker 1: I have someone else who I met who was elected
Speaker 1: as the d A. I met all these folks who
Speaker 1: I'm like, getting themselves into the city council, getting this
Speaker 1: like being like, actually, we're going to grow our political
Speaker 1: power up right. And it's only by that growing up
Speaker 1: that you see things like oh, Georgia having a blue election,
Speaker 1: things where you're like, that's not ever going to happen.
Speaker 1: It happens because someone like Stacy Abrams is like, I'm
Speaker 1: going to take the local electoral process seriously as seriously
Speaker 1: as anything is happening on the national, federal level. So
Speaker 1: that's often the response I give, and I say, if
Speaker 1: you can't figure it out for yourself, do it for
Speaker 1: someone else, And like, I love to keep some of
Speaker 1: those in my back pocket. I'm like, there are a
Speaker 1: lot of people who don't have the right to vote
Speaker 1: who are going to be negatively impacted by what feel
Speaker 1: like small scale differences, like there's no difference between the parties,
Speaker 1: And I'm like, that's because you're not a citizen. If
Speaker 1: there's no difference between the parties, that's because you're not
Speaker 1: reliant on medication for your well being. If you don't
Speaker 1: see a difference between the parties, Like, there are places
Speaker 1: where there are distinct differences. This is one of my
Speaker 1: everything I've been saying lately. There's also a lot of
Speaker 1: fake orgasmic policies. So there's a lot of policies they're
Speaker 1: not actually the thing we want, they won't actually satisfy us,
Speaker 1: but we're being given the fake orgasm version of it
Speaker 1: right where it's like this kind of sounds like it's
Speaker 1: moving us towards climate something good. Right, we have to
Speaker 1: actually be engaged to be able to make the distinction
Speaker 1: and be like, no, I'm not satisfied by that, and
Speaker 1: we're going to build policy that actually is effective and
Speaker 1: satisfying for our future. And we're going to build that
Speaker 1: up right. That's the other thing people often don't realize
Speaker 1: is that policy builds up right. Being able to enact
Speaker 1: a good policy at the federal level is because good
Speaker 1: policy has been built at the local level. Adrian Marie
Speaker 1: Brown advocate for real orgasmic policies, real orgasmic policy, true
Speaker 1: satisfaction in our small D democratic lives. That's the only
Speaker 1: small D that needs to be there. That I was
Speaker 1: going to ask if you have anything else to add,
Speaker 1: I think you just did. Is there anything else you
Speaker 1: want to say? I mean, I have this book out,
Speaker 1: Fables and Spells. Please get it from a K Press directly.
Speaker 1: I put a single out called Ancestors Use Me so
Speaker 1: you can hear me sing to you about the ancestors.
Speaker 1: And if you're interested in bringing the musical ritual to you,
Speaker 1: you can reach out through the website and we'll find
Speaker 1: a way to come to you because it's it's an
Speaker 1: in person healing experience and bar tun Day. Thank you
Speaker 1: for finding me, Thank you for hunting me down and
Speaker 1: opening this portal. I'm excited for our Virgo friendship to
Speaker 1: begin and and continue. So I echo all of that,
Speaker 1: I fractal that back to you. Thank you for giving
Speaker 1: us ways to grow up yeah, and to be, you know, inside,
Speaker 1: the way we want to be outside, recognizing they're all
Speaker 1: the same thing. So appreciate what you've done and how
Speaker 1: transparent you've been in your own growth. Thank you, Thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you, bye y'all. By Marie Brown by There is
Speaker 1: so much that we think we have to do to
Speaker 1: preserve and extend our democracy. We have to register people
Speaker 1: to vote and in gerrymandering, and get money out of politics,
Speaker 1: and expand the Supreme Court and end white supremacy and
Speaker 1: in the patriarchy. And it is just a giant task list.
Speaker 1: What Adrian Marie Brown reminds us of through Emergent Strategy
Speaker 1: in particular, is that what we need to do is
Speaker 1: be together. We need to practice being together, humanizing each other,
Speaker 1: being in right relationship, working towards having generative conflict with
Speaker 1: each other, and through that let the resurgence, the expansion,
Speaker 1: the preservation of democracy emerge in order for us to
Speaker 1: have any chance at achieving that task list. And it's
Speaker 1: a worthy list. We've got to go deeper. We've got
Speaker 1: to till and regenerate that soil, that culture with a
Speaker 1: focus on our relationships. And there's something else. The Octavia
Speaker 1: Butler line that Adrian shared woke something up in me.
Speaker 1: There's nothing new under the sun, but there are new sons.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. I admit that there are times when I
Speaker 1: have felt stuck, uninspired, and depressed about where we go
Speaker 1: from here, and that feeling needs to be shaken and
Speaker 1: jolted and released so that I can see new possibility again.
Speaker 1: And I think that's true for many. We are stuck
Speaker 1: so often when we think how do we save democracy
Speaker 1: because a lot of the time we limit our efforts
Speaker 1: to restoring the past, and the past is not necessarily
Speaker 1: the model. America is a long standing democracy in very
Speaker 1: thick quotation marks from most of its history, most of
Speaker 1: its people were legally not allowed to participate in most
Speaker 1: of the mechanics of democracy. So where we really If
Speaker 1: we limit our imaginations to our existing past, then we're
Speaker 1: limiting our future to what has already passed, And so
Speaker 1: invoking the words and vision of people like Octavia Butler
Speaker 1: can help push us beyond the bounds of what we
Speaker 1: already know. Over the rest of this season, we will
Speaker 1: push those bounds with you in this podcast. All the
Speaker 1: episodes that follow growth from seeds planted in this conversation
Speaker 1: will explore the strengths and limitations of voting within Saufa
Speaker 1: of the New Georgia Project will push democracy beyond elections
Speaker 1: in an episode focused on citizen assemblies. Will imagine bigger
Speaker 1: and better versions of our economy with Kate Rayworth, will
Speaker 1: explore how we build tech with Ruhab Benjamin, will rethink
Speaker 1: how we participate in and shape our communities with Christian
Speaker 1: Vonnazette and Alek Jang, and so much more. We can
Speaker 1: create a healthier culture of democracy. And all these people
Speaker 1: were bringing you this season, they're helping us build it.
Speaker 1: And now it's time for some action. Let's practice imagining.
Speaker 1: Imagination is a muscle that we need to exercise in
Speaker 1: order to envision the reality we want to create. Adrian
Speaker 1: reminded us of that. Today we've broken these out into
Speaker 1: three areas, personal reflection, getting more informed, and publicly participating.
Speaker 1: Now for internal personal reflection, ask yourself, what communities are
Speaker 1: you a part of right now? From the smallest to
Speaker 1: the largest the most local to the most global. Build
Speaker 1: that list in your mind. In which of these communities
Speaker 1: did you play some role in decision making and resource allocation? Now?
Speaker 1: Can you think of ways to bring others into those
Speaker 1: decisions more? In other words, can you think of ways,
Speaker 1: even and especially small, ways to bring more democracy to
Speaker 1: your existing communities? In terms of actions you can take
Speaker 1: to be more informed, we want to prepare you to
Speaker 1: flect that imagination of yours. Adrian was mentored by Chinese
Speaker 1: American philosopher, writer, and activists Grace Lee Boggs. Learn more
Speaker 1: about Bogs in the documentary American Revolutionary The Evolution of
Speaker 1: Grace Lee Box. It's available on Amazon, Prime, YouTube, and
Speaker 1: other sites for just a few dollars. Explore the power
Speaker 1: of fiction to affect the factual by reading Adrian's book
Speaker 1: Octavia's Brood, science fiction stories from social justice movements, and
Speaker 1: her newest book, Fables and Spells. And you should check
Speaker 1: out the parable series by Octavia Butler to see why
Speaker 1: Adrian and so many others are so obsessed with this writer.
Speaker 1: Don't have money, that's okay, grab a copy from your
Speaker 1: local library. Finally, in the realm of participation, we want
Speaker 1: you to practice collaborative ideation. Return to those communities you
Speaker 1: identified in the personal reflection. It could be your household, classroom, office, department,
Speaker 1: or group. Chat. Within one of these groups, have members
Speaker 1: identify some challenge you feel as hurting or impeding the group.
Speaker 1: Then ask folks to imagine what things would be like
Speaker 1: years out if this challenge were fully resolved. How would
Speaker 1: they feel, what would they be able to accomplish? Write
Speaker 1: this down in short form, perhaps a corny movie trailer
Speaker 1: to make it fun. In a world where none of
Speaker 1: us carry student debt, or in a world where everyone
Speaker 1: in this house is able to access the bathroom for
Speaker 1: as long as they need without preventing others from doing
Speaker 1: the same, You get the idea. It doesn't have to
Speaker 1: be super serious. The point is to try with others
Speaker 1: to imagine a better future. If you don't have someone
Speaker 1: to play with, try this by your self, but look
Speaker 1: for ways to share your ideation with others, maybe in
Speaker 1: an email to a friend or a post on social media.
Speaker 1: If you take any of these actions, please brag about
Speaker 1: it online and use the hashtag how to citizen. Also
Speaker 1: tag our Instagram how the citizen. I am always online
Speaker 1: and I really do see your messages, so send them.
Speaker 1: You can also visit our website, how a Citizen dot com,
Speaker 1: which has all of our shows, full transcripts, actions and more. Finally,
Speaker 1: see this episode show notes for resources, actions and more
Speaker 1: ways to connect How the Citizen with Barritton Day as
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio Podcasts and Row Home Productions.
Speaker 1: Our executive producers are Me Barrittuon Day Thurston and Elizabeth Stewart.
Speaker 1: Our leave producer is Ali Graham, Our associate producer is
Speaker 1: Donia abdel Hamid. Alex Lewis is our managing producer, and
Speaker 1: John Myers is our executive editor. Our mixed engineer is
Speaker 1: Justin Burger. Original music by Andrew Eapen with additional music
Speaker 1: by Blue Dot Sessions. Special thanks to Joel Smith from
Speaker 1: my Heart Radio and Lay Labina. Next on How to Citizen,
Speaker 1: Adrian went deep on the power of fiction and stories.
Speaker 1: And for years we've all been living in a story
Speaker 1: that isolates us from each other and sees our only
Speaker 1: power as that of a consumer. But in our next episode,
Speaker 1: we'll talk with someone inviting us to live inside a
Speaker 1: citizens story, one that reorients us towards connection and collaboration.
Speaker 1: In ways I am sure would make Adrian proud. The
Speaker 1: important thing to recognize when you start to see these
Speaker 1: as stories, when you start to see it in this way,
Speaker 1: is that you're not just talking about like the problem
Speaker 1: is consumption, the problem is advertising like. It's much more
Speaker 1: about the storytelling of our society. It's the fact that
Speaker 1: what I would describe what we live in today as
Speaker 1: a consumer democracy where our only agency is to choose
Speaker 1: between a fix set of options that are offered to us,
Speaker 1: where we're actually encouraged to make that choice on the
Speaker 1: basis of our own individual self interest. John Alexander tells
Speaker 1: us how learning to see the story of consumption we've
Speaker 1: been written into can change our world, and how stepping
Speaker 1: outside that story could help save our democracy. Row Home
Speaker 1: Productions