These offerings and musings, are currently taking place on the ancestral, traditional, stolen, and Unceded lands of the Musqueam people the lands also known as Vancouver.
This newsletter was supposed to come out last week. However, my very good friend Wakumi came to visit me and it is just what my heart and mind needed. Please take time to honor the platonic relationships in your life while you can!
There are currently 60 days left in 2019 and in this decade. The last ten years have both flown by and gone by painstakingly slow. I have been thinking deeply about this grand closing of the 2010s. Sociopoitcally we have changed as a society. We are in the midst of a radical paradigm shift. Everything has been unsettled, everything has been destabilized, and everything is demanding redefinition.
This past decade we experienced our first Black president, #BlackLivesMatter movement, #metoomovement, The Arab Spring, The Occupy movement and etc. I suspect that the next decade will be equally as politically charged and dynamic. We are living in a world where Black, Indigenous, and People of Color are centering ourselves in ways that isdemanding a shift in the status quo. The margins are becoming center and the question I have for us all is do we have the political will and discipline to deal with this level of change? Who do you want to be in this next decade and year? Will you resist change and succumb to atrophy or will you rise to the occasion and fight for your humanity and the survival of our planet. There is no option where one can opt-out.
The next decade is going to require us to be clearer, bolder, and more intentional about the worlds that we want to build. We are going to become more divided, we are going to be more principled, and we are going to be more unrelenting in our fight for recognition, justice, and decolonization. There is no neutrality in this era that we are already in. Find your people, find your ethical line, build your social justice practice, stay curious, and know that the future will belong to those of us who are willing to fight for it.
VIEWINGS / READINGS
How To Support Harm Doers in Being Accountable-for those of you interested in abolition and transformative justice practices you will appreciate this video.
Black people in Canada are not settlers-just read it!
Miley’s Pansexual, But That Doesn’t Mean She Cares About Queer People-this essay males me think about why the “born this way” narrative is too facile to be universalized. What if Miley is playing queer in the same way Rachel Dolezal is cosplaying with Black womanhood?
Doubling Down on Love by Brene Brown- this next decade needs us to double down on more love
LISTENING
Mogul Season 2:Miami- is all about the genealogy and evolution of Miami hip-hop. It focuses on 2 Live Crew and Uncle Luke. If you are a hip-hop head and you love Miami and Southern hip-hop this podcast is for you. Thank me later!
NPR Fresh Air Ronan Farrow- I DON’T make it a habit to cape for white men (or men period), but Ronan Farrow is that dude to me. He should never ever be allowed to buy his own drink in any bar on this planet if I had my way. Ronan Farrow IMHO exhibits in the truest sense of the word what a male ally should be doing to help disrupt rape culture. This podcast episode is about his book about Harvey Weinstein. It is a great interview. I am low key a Terry Gross stan!
The Happiness Lab: You can change- This podcast is the brainchild of Dr. Laura Santos who created the Happiness course at Yale that got lots of press. I am determined to be a happy well-adjusted Black woman and this podcast episode discusses the science of happiness and how happiness takes work
The Nod-Cha Cha Now Y’all- I hope this episode makes you as happy as it made me. This episode is the genesis story of the Cha Cha slide. Trust me you want to know!
Dolly Parton’s America-Sad Ass Songs WNYC is doing 9 podcast episode series on Dolly. This first episode gave us a complicated look into Dolly’s song writing and politics. This episode is drenched in white feminism and all the ways its limited and problematic, but overall, I enjoyed the episode