These offerings and musings are currently taking place on the ancestral, traditional, and stolen lands of the Seminole, Miccosukee, and Tequesta First Nations. These lands known as Miami.
These are stolen lands built by stolen people
This month, the Social Justice Doula is sharing the recording of the "Anti-racist Check in" instead of the traditional essay. It is available on Youtube until February 14th so be sure to check it out while it's free. Otherwise, patrons have lifetime access to the recording.
Additionally, I wanted to also share an excerpt from my "Be a Revolutionary like Coretta" talk I did at Mount Holyoke College last week on Coretta Scott King.
The title of this talk is “Be A Revolutionary Like Coretta” because Coretta Scott King was a revolutionary - she was that girl! And, of course, she was because it would have to take a giant of a woman to be partnered with Martin Luther King. I will resist pedestals or turning Dr. King into a saint, but a man of his convictions and moral clarity needed a formidable partner, and that is exactly what Dr. King had in Coretta Scott King. Politically she was far more bold, progressive, and revolutionary in her ideas than Dr. King. Coretta Scott King, a Black woman, profoundly understood the interlocking nature of domination and oppression. She truly believed and put into praxis Dr. King’s words, “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” While preparing for this talk, I watched old interviews with her on YouTube and read what Black feminist scholars said about her. I found myself crying and being in awe of this woman. Shortly after the death of her partner by a racist, violent state that made her a single mother of four, she was still kind, gracious, and even more committed to her sociopolitical values. Although her partner, lover, and comrade had been taken from her, Coretta Scott King refused to privatize her pain. She understood what the death of her husband meant to the nation and that her grief was a collective one. In her 60 Minute interview with Mike Wallace marking her first Christmas without Dr. King, Coretta Scott King was unwavering in her principles she used her grief as compost and turned it into a form of clean, renewable energy to power her activism and chart her path forward.
VIEWINGS AND READINGS:
Dean Spade: Should Social Justice Work Be Paid? - “In this talk, Dean Spade will explore a vexing question being discussed in many movement groups: should people be paid to do this work? Should groups should seek funding to create staff positions or stipends for people participating in the work? Is it a matter of racial, economic, gender and disability justice to pay people to be part of movement groups? Does the process of raising money tie groups too closely to philanthropists or governments? Does paying participants limit the potential growth of movements? Is payment the best way to recognize labor in groups? Is paying people a good way to reduce barriers to participation? How does paying people impact the culture of social movement work? Does it institutionalize the work? These questions have immediate practical significance, and also unearth larger themes about what it means to do resistance organizing within capitalism where people are demobilized, isolated, and struggling to meet basic needs.”
Your Stuff is actually worse now -“A better iPhone would be one that I can use for 20 years and keep upgrading,” Bird says. “But that’s not how we define better, right? Nobody wants an iPhone 14 because it will last for 10 years. They want it because it has a fancier camera or whatever.”
Even if you do want to hop off the treadmill of constantly buying and keep what you already have, companies have made that harder too. Your goods probably have a shorter life span than they did years ago, and if you want to repair them — especially tech — you’ll come up against major barriers.
Talking Less Will Get You More - “Once, when I put my foot in my mouth at work, I lost my job and the promise of millions of dollars. Worse, my lack of conversational impulse control led to a separation from my wife, and nearly cost me my marriage. It was then, living alone in a rented house, away from my wife and kids, that I conducted what members of Alcoholics Anonymous call a “searching and fearless moral inventory” of myself, and acknowledged that in ways big and small, overtalking was interfering with my life. This sent me on a search to find the answers to two questions: Why are some people compulsive talkers? And how can we fix it? Early on in my process, I discovered there’s a word for my problem: talkaholism, a term coined by a pair of communication-studies scholars to describe a form of extreme overtalking. They created a self-scored questionnaire to identify people who suffer from the condition.”
When Did We All Become Pop Culture Detectives- “Really, an Easter egg enthusiast is often just a conspiracy theorist with popcorn. Toeing the line between fandom and fanaticism, peering safely down the rabbit hole into the QAnonification of mainstream culture, can be thrilling. That is, until it’s not: A few days after her holiday post, Spears had seemingly had enough of the speculation, choosing to disable the comments on her Instagram account. Fans immediately took to other outlets like Reddit to weigh in on the decision, where a long scroll of supporters largely endorsed the idea. “Good,” wrote one of them. “Enough with the BAnon conspiracies.” Over on Twitter, though, not everyone was convinced. “Wasn’t her,” insisted a truther. “Was ‘her husband.”
She was a popular yoga guru. Then she embraced QAnon conspiracy theories - "Remski, the host of Conspirituality, noticed a number of yoga teachers flirting with QAnon during the early months of the pandemic. At first, he suspected it was a marketing ploy. With yoga studios around the country suddenly closed, teachers were forced to compete for the same online audience. But as the pandemic progressed, some teachers, like Guru Jagat, did not walk back their rhetoric.”
How a ‘Grass Is Greener’ Mentality Ruined My First Queer Relationship - “Looking back, I now realize that this was a classic case of “grass is greener” thinking, a documented psychological state of experiencing an unrelenting feeling that there is something better for you outside of your current situation. Much of the feeling boils down to fear: of being trapped in commitment, of boredom, of losing one’s individuality. As a result, those stuck in this state believe that pursuing something new or different will allow us to have all that we crave, want, and value.”
LISTENING:
Gender Reveal: Dean Spade -Tuck speaks with organizer and educator Dean Spade (he/him). Topics include:
Why civil rights laws won’t save us
Common mutual aid struggles: money, security culture, etc.
Why does burnout convince us that we can’t take a break?
Reflections 20 years after founding the Sylvia Rivera Law Project
Plus: dinosaur gender, x markers, and talking people out of law school
If Books Could Kill: Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers” - “In "Outliers," Malcolm Gladwell posited that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert in something. Mike and Peter proved him wrong by mastering his dumb book over the span of about 50 minutes.”
Why Is This Happening - The Debate Inside Progressive Politics With Maurice Mitchell - “My argument is because [right wing authoritarianism] is the central struggle of the day, we need the most effective, principled and impactful progressive organizations that are seeking to challenge that,” says Maurice Mitchell, national director of the Working Families Party. Mitchell is also an activist and co-founder of Blackbird, an organization that has provided infrastructure support for the Black Lives Matter movement and other groups around the country. The social movement strategist wrote a 6,000-word article for The Forge called “Building Resilient Organizations,” in which he described and shared potential solutions for overcoming some of the biggest problems within progressive spaces. He joins WITHpod to discuss the piece, roots of the longstanding political and social tensions within movements on the left and strategies for resetting.”
Land of the Giants Dating Games - “When Tinder launched in 2012, it changed dating culture and our expectations around dating forever by leveraging the iPhone and gamifying the dating experience. But did the rise of dating apps make finding romance easier or harder, and what are the consequences of playing a game that never ends?”
Imperfect Paradise Season 4: Queen of Conspiracy Theories - “Before her sudden death in 2021, Guru Jagat had become a famous Kundalini yoga teacher based in Los Angeles. But as the global pandemic grew, she started talking like a far-right coronavirus conspiracy theorist. What does her journey down the rabbit hole tell us about the appeal of conspiracies in the yoga and wellness community? This 3-episode season explores Guru Jagat's rise to fame and follows along as she responds not just to the pandemic, but to a #metoo movement scandal that rocked the Kundalini yoga world in early 2020. It also explores themes of misinformation, how a healthy distrust in government and medicine can turn dark, the "relativism around truth" in the wellness industry and the influence of social media on radicalization.”
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
There are still tickets available for our VIRTUAL Platonic Love Mixer, Galentine's edition. Join us on February 13th from 7-8:30 pm et via zoom. Grab a tiered-price ticket while you still can and come find your new bestie!
Patreon Shoutouts: We want to give a special shoutout to our patrons who pledged this month!
Andrea R
Mia H
Justin B