AUDIO BOOK - How We Fight White Supremacy
Description
Vocal Characteristics
Language
EnglishAccents
North American (General) North American (US South)Transcript
Note: Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and may contain errors.
all the good old days. Let's see, I grew up in then Eyes, a working class suburb of L. A made up of mostly undocumented Latino immigrants, some black folks and some poor white people. I was very concerned about the environment in elementary school and middle school. I think I adopted a whale in elementary school, and I was concerned with animals going extinct. At the time, the environmental movement had the best stronghold on messaging, around organizing and activism. I learned my actual organizing skills at a social justice camp up in the mountains of California. When I was 16 the camp was run by a national conference for community and justice. We had seven days of training in a tolerance curriculum, but I wanted in action components of that. At one point doing my training as a youth leader, I asked a group I was working with. Do you take on the police? They said, No, we're an environmental justice group, I said, OK, I'll take it steal. No matter how much I tell people I've been a skilled strategist for 14 or 15 years, people don't see it. I think it's because I'm a woman and black, and it's a more exciting thing. Toe. Imagine Oh, you popped up out of nowhere. People don't understand that organizing isn't going online and custom people out or going toe a protest. Calling something out That's the most visible ship. We're not putting our boring *** meetings on Social Media organizes our strategists. We are a part of producing and building The campaign. Activists are showing up to the things that organizes plan, signing the petitions going on social media to promote the action. Sometimes Organizer's are activists as well. They could be out front and work behind the scenes. As black lives matter. The brand of Ble um, grew. It didn't follow us, God forbid black women or behind something huge. So I made an executive decision when the Melissa Harris Perry's show did a panel about beyond them without inviting me are co founders Alicia Garza and Opel committee. It was like, No, that's not going Toe work this time were black women. We know the story of being erased were 40 years in and just now really talking about Ella Baker. That's no distant MLK. But ******* hundreds of black women did work for the march on Washington. And after women did that work, male organizer's decided that women weren't going to speak. So I decided that this time patriarchy was not going to rule the land. Or at least we were going to compete with it. We're are wired for patriarchy. It's how our bodies work. It's not even in our minds. It's in our belief system. We still believe in black me and more than black women. That's how you get a black man as a leader of be a limb. At least MLK actually was a leader. We need a culture shift. This work takes an extreme amount of restraint, and it's very lonely, very isolating. Sometimes I wanted to go on social media and go the **** off. But then I go call somebody. It takes community support, a commitment. So what's bigger? And I try not to feel sorry for myself. I literally have a centering practice. Jordan. Semantics. It looks like being ableto wake up and sit on the edge of my bed, standing up and taking beat breaths and healing into the deepest parts of me. I remember that I'm human and doing the best that I can. I keep it in perspective by keeping my oldest homes close, people who aren't a part of the movement. That gives me grounding and perspective that we did something different than I would say our old guarded. We were talking about trans black people about police violence against black women. We were looking at harm and violence inside of the black community. For us, every victim is special and important, no matter their past. We've got to tell a different story about blackness. Velma are Mitchell.