0:02

Welcome to how to citizen with baritone

0:05

day, I'm bar tune day. What's

0:07

up? If you've been a listener? Is

0:10

good to have you back? If you knew, Welcome

0:12

to the journey. This is season

0:15

four, Who Who Now?

0:17

In season three, we focus on technology

0:20

and how our relationship with it could help us

0:22

citizen. In season two, we took

0:24

a similar topical approach, but

0:26

with the economy. In our first

0:28

season, we sampled a buffet

0:30

of awesome people who embody the

0:33

idea of citizen as a verb and

0:36

just a quick refresher. We've

0:38

identified four key pillars

0:40

upholding what it means to citizen.

0:43

One to citizen is to participate

0:46

assume we have a role to play

0:48

beyond outsourcing that participation

0:51

via voting. Number two

0:53

to citizen is to invest in relationships

0:56

with ourselves, with our communities, and

0:58

with our planet. We are interconnected

1:01

and there was no way to citizen alone.

1:05

Number three two citizen is to understand

1:07

power and the many ways we have to

1:09

generate and express it, from

1:12

spending money and gathering in groups

1:14

to spreading ideas and giving our attention

1:16

to something. And finally, number

1:18

four, to citizen is to value

1:20

our collective self interest, not just

1:23

our individual self interests as

1:25

we practice all the above. In

1:28

this season, we're exploring how

1:30

we create a culture of democracy,

1:33

and we'll be highlighting ideas that

1:35

inspire us to think differently

1:38

and more deeply about this word. This

1:40

word we toss around so easily

1:43

and frequently but rarely

1:45

defined. Democracy

1:52

at its root is literally

1:54

people power. It's people

1:57

wielding our power to govern

1:59

ourselves, to manage our resources,

2:02

and to benefit our communities. And

2:05

as you've probably heard by now, we are

2:07

in a crisis of democracy.

2:09

Democracy faced its most serious

2:11

crisis and debt. Democracy

2:14

in democracy is facing

2:16

a crisis of confidence. So he's American

2:18

democracy in crisis. I

2:24

think a lot of what we end up arguing

2:26

over and fretting about with this democracy

2:29

crisis is the mechanics. How

2:31

does the constitution determine who the president

2:34

is? What's the makeup of the court system?

2:36

Where are the boarders drawn between voting districts?

2:38

Hey? Do we even count votes anymore? And

2:41

don't get me wrong, the mechanics and

2:43

the structures are important, but

2:46

we need to go deeper. We

2:48

need to dig into the soil out of which

2:50

we grow the democracy we experience.

2:53

I think of that soil as culture,

2:56

the collective norms, behaviors, and

2:58

attitudes that establish the

3:00

conditions for the ways we practice

3:02

democracy. To me, a

3:05

culture of democracy is one that encourages,

3:08

incentivizes, and prepares us

3:10

to practice democracy and to engage

3:12

in people power in a healthy way.

3:17

A healthy culture of democracy

3:19

helps us citizen, and

3:22

to help us launch this season's journey, we

3:24

have writer, activist, and movement facilitator

3:27

Adrian Marie Brown. I

3:31

first came across Adrian's work nearly

3:33

twenty years ago, back in two thousand

3:35

four, through this group she co founded called

3:38

the League of Piste Off Voters.

3:40

We were both part of a wave of activists

3:42

trying to prevent George W. Bush from winning a

3:45

second term as president. And I just love

3:47

their swagger. I mean their logo

3:49

was the statue of Liberty with a baseball

3:52

bat. I'm like, yes, that's

3:54

how you get free. Years

3:56

later, I started hearing Adrian

3:58

Marie Brown's name all over the

4:00

place when her book, Emerging Strategy

4:03

came out. In that book and

4:05

her work since, Adrian

4:07

focuses on that second pillar too,

4:09

citizen is to invest in relationships with

4:12

ourselves, our community, and our

4:14

planet. She sees that relational

4:16

work as essential to any political

4:18

work. In this conversation,

4:21

Adrian helps us see democracy as

4:23

a personal practice, and she and I

4:25

get personal in ways I didn't see

4:27

coming. After the break,

4:30

Adrian Marie Brown talks practicing democracy

4:33

at home. Writer,

4:42

facilitator, activists, science fiction

4:44

super nerd Adrian Marie Brown

4:46

has been organizing with various movements

4:48

for justice since two thousand and one. We're talking

4:51

the League of Young a k A. Piste Off

4:53

Voters, the Ruckis Society.

4:56

Writer of seven books that I Know of

4:58

fiction and non fiction, including

5:01

of Course, Emergent Strategy, Pleasure

5:03

Activism, and her latest Fables

5:05

and Spells. Currently, Adrian

5:08

is a writer in residence at the Emergent

5:10

Strategy Ideation Institute, which

5:12

she established. Also, she

5:14

co hosts two podcasts, Octavia's

5:16

Parables and How to Survive the End

5:18

of the World. We've got a live

5:21

virtual audience here with us, so without

5:23

further Ado, welcome to our

5:25

podcast. Adrian Marie Brown,

5:28

how do you do? I'm so good,

5:30

It's so exciting to be here. UM,

5:33

I feel like you hunted me down. I've

5:37

never had so many people like I don't know how

5:39

you did this, but you reached out and I had so many

5:41

people like Barrow Tune Day wants to talk to

5:43

you. And I was like, well, if

5:45

there's a Virgo man out there trying to talk to me, then

5:47

I need to answer that call and figure it out. So

5:50

what's up? How are you? What's up? Virgos? This?

5:53

I'm great and our birthdays are very close

5:55

together. Yes, you're a September I am

5:57

a September baby. We're

5:59

the best. Thank you. I've been telling

6:01

my wife, I've been telling anybody who can't tell

6:03

them all, especially the significant others. They

6:05

need to understand, they need to recognize

6:07

our grid. Um.

6:10

It is just really really

6:13

an honor and a beauty to exchange

6:16

this time with you. So thank you. I feel the

6:18

same. Thank you. All Right. You

6:20

often use this term right

6:22

relationship in your work.

6:25

Can you provide an overview of that? Well,

6:27

how do you define right relationship

6:30

as distinct from something else?

6:32

Yeah? I heard that term

6:34

when I was working with indigenous communities

6:37

for the first time, like really embedding

6:40

myself and trying to understand really

6:43

in the biggest picture way, what went

6:45

wrong here on this land, Like what has

6:47

happened and how do we get ourselves

6:49

back into a relationship that is

6:52

not transactional, not

6:54

abusive, not oppressive,

6:57

not even you know, now, I

6:59

think distracted, Like I think a lot of our relationships

7:02

are ones where we're barely there.

7:04

We're always passing

7:06

in the night, passing in the night, passing in the night. Everyone's

7:09

so busy with living

7:11

lives that they're not even satisfied by

7:13

So this idea

7:16

was taught to me that it was like, there's actually

7:19

an order of things. There's a right relationship

7:22

between humans and the earth that we live in,

7:24

and humans amongst ourselves

7:27

and humans with all the other creatures that are

7:29

here, and my sci fi throws and

7:31

probably humans and other life

7:33

forms. But there is a way that we

7:35

can be in relationship that is not you

7:37

know, just peace and blessings all the time. But there's

7:39

a way that they can have equanimity,

7:42

that it can have justice in it. And

7:45

I got really intrigued, like it instantly,

7:48

it resonated throughout my system that I was like,

7:50

Yes, at that time, in

7:52

movement work, everything was very siloed. So

7:54

you were either working on environment, or you're

7:57

working on racial justice, or you were working on

7:59

electoral or aizing, or you know, everything

8:01

was very separated out, and so it's

8:03

very easy to be like to see all

8:05

the problems as these distinct, separate things.

8:08

And right relationship is this idea that there's

8:10

a wholeness to it all and there's

8:13

a way that we can drop into a whole world

8:15

perspective and see ourselves as

8:17

a part of that world. And Yeah, that sent

8:19

me down a whole other life path. I

8:22

want to rewind into that path,

8:24

and I think part memory,

8:27

yes, oh, we're gonna have some tunes.

8:30

I don't know if we can license these things, but we can not. Capello.

8:32

It so exactly your

8:34

journey into getting into right

8:37

relationship with democracy. I'm

8:39

old enough Adrian to remember

8:41

the League of piste off voters.

8:44

I had y'all stickers. I'm

8:46

pretty sure it was a statue of

8:48

liberty with a baseball bath. There

8:51

were some there was some emotions

8:54

through that attempt to stop George

8:57

W. Bush from gatting a second turn. And

8:59

so can you take us back to this

9:02

effort that you co led to get

9:05

President George W. Bush out of office?

9:07

What motivated you to do that

9:09

work back then? And where you just

9:12

trying to get Bush out or were you trying

9:14

to accomplish something more or different

9:16

than that. You know, I thought of myself as

9:18

a very young, feisty revolutionary, Like I was like this,

9:20

we've got to figure this out. And

9:23

I had been doing harm reduction work

9:25

with active drug users and sex workers

9:27

through the Harm Reduction Coalition, and

9:29

George W. Bush had cut the funding

9:31

for all that work because he was only funding

9:34

absence related work.

9:36

Right, you had to be cold Turkey, no sex,

9:38

no drugs, or you weren't going to get any support.

9:41

So I was upset. And then the

9:43

build up was happening. You know, you know it's

9:45

nine eleven, right, So nine eleven

9:48

happened, and then we're having this reaction

9:50

from the US that was like we've got to go to warm,

9:52

We're going to bomb Iraq, We're gonna bomb Afghanistan.

9:55

I got moved into direct action through that

9:58

because I was like, we've got to stop this, like

10:00

we're misunderstanding what this

10:02

moment is or misunderstanding our role as

10:05

a nation, and he's

10:07

foolishly leading us into a

10:10

vengeful, fatal

10:12

situation. We've got to stop him. And so

10:15

it was about him, but it wasn't just about

10:17

any one issue. It was like I can see how

10:20

he's impacting my work. I can see how he's impacting

10:22

all of us. And his worldview,

10:24

which was this, you know, white

10:27

male, conservative worldview, I

10:29

was like, this is dangerous for all of us. So

10:32

I didn't really know anything about electoral politics. I always

10:34

say this, like, coming into that, I was just like, I know

10:36

about organizing. I'm learning about

10:38

how we move people. And at

10:41

the time it felt very innovative right to be

10:43

like, we need to bring everything we know about organizing

10:46

into how we do electoral work. And

10:48

I still think that I don't think we've mastered

10:51

that bridge, you know. I do think

10:53

that I came to understand the placement of these

10:55

different strategies as part of all larger

10:58

way of doing the work. But at that time,

11:00

it was actually really invigorating to go. You

11:03

know. I ended up book touring that book because

11:05

we had like something like twelve or thirteen authors

11:07

and hijinks and sued a lot of

11:10

people. I didn't plan to book

11:12

tour. I thought I was just gonna be editing, But

11:14

then something happened when I got up in front of people,

11:17

like a spark would come through me. And

11:20

that's where I learned that I could get up in front of people and

11:22

that I could channel something of

11:24

the moment into a room of people.

11:27

But yeah, we were lit

11:29

up about this idea that electoral

11:32

organizing should be part of a larger strategy

11:35

for how we build community and

11:37

how we change policy. And we just

11:39

had this moment of like none of us even know how to, Like

11:41

we're trying to we're trying to change the world,

11:43

but none of us understand how policy gets developed. None

11:46

of us understand how our electoral

11:48

system even works. None of us understand

11:50

where the loopholes are, and so we're getting

11:53

you know, redline, we're getting misdirected,

11:56

we're getting disenfranchised from

11:58

a system that has actually lot of power

12:00

over our daily lives. So I

12:02

felt really hopeful. I thought we were going to win. We didn't,

12:07

as everyone knows, but yeah, I

12:09

felt like I learned a ton about organizing

12:12

there, because you know, the way election organizing

12:14

works is cyclical, and

12:17

so it's the cycles where you're like, we're

12:19

gonna go do our thing and oh now, community,

12:21

hey, hey, community, we didn't forget about

12:23

you on the back. We still need to support

12:26

and then forget about it, and so it's like, how do we make

12:28

this a sustainable process, like something

12:30

where the people who are elected see themselves as

12:32

every day a part of a larger movement

12:34

of change. It's holistic

12:37

politics in some way, holistic

12:40

power contention. You,

12:43

um, just thank you for

12:45

Emergence Strategy

12:48

book. We have it in our house. My wife

12:50

quotes you like all the time, and

12:53

the word emergent is just like a

12:56

part of our relationship. I'm glad.

12:58

Yeah, it's very cool. Yeah, And

13:00

I want to you know, on

13:02

your journey to publishing that book, you were

13:05

publicly chronicling what I would

13:07

describe as like the evolution of your your thoughts

13:09

and practices around

13:11

this right relationship concept, around

13:14

emergence itself, and in you

13:16

wrote the following on your blog. The invitation

13:18

of Emergent Strategy is to come

13:21

together in community, build authentic

13:23

relationships, and see what emerges

13:25

from the conversations, connections, visions,

13:27

and needs. I don't see this as creating

13:29

something from scratch, but rather innovating

13:32

from need. So I want to share a brief

13:34

thing and then ask you a thing. You

13:37

know, our podcast is how to Citizen and developing

13:39

it, we developed core principles. One

13:42

of them is that to citizens to

13:44

invest in relationships with yourself, with

13:46

others and the planet around you. And

13:49

so I just I feel very SYMPATICO

13:51

right now we're swimming in similar waters and honestly

13:54

probably influenced by you.

13:56

But this overlapping key that relationships

13:59

come first. They're like

14:01

an input into a development,

14:03

not an afterthought or just a money

14:06

raising content. How

14:08

did you arrive at this inside of prioritizing

14:11

these authentic connections And

14:13

is there a line from your stop

14:16

bush work into a deeper respect

14:18

and prioritization of community and

14:20

relationship as the first step. Yeah,

14:23

for sure. You know, I think that loss

14:25

taught me a lot because we were

14:27

surrounded by people who were supposedly

14:30

the most strategic people. We were getting trainings

14:32

and we're getting you know, we were going through so

14:34

much work to try to understand how this all work.

14:36

And and I was like, something's

14:39

not working, and there's a

14:42

what at the time I was really calling manipulation. It

14:44

felt like there's a sense of manipulation inside

14:46

of this, that we're only engaging

14:48

in relationship to the degree that we

14:51

can manipulate people to do what we've already

14:53

decided they should do, which

14:55

is to vote for this person, whether or not that's

14:58

of most service to them, whether or not we understand

15:00

what their needs are. And again the cyclical

15:02

nature of it meant, you know, by the time I wrote

15:04

the book, you know, it was like ten years

15:07

of different kinds of organizing and direct action,

15:09

all this stuff had passed, and I was like, do

15:12

we even know how to do democracy? And I

15:14

started asking this question to people. I

15:16

would be in a room full of people and be like, how many of you

15:18

practice democracy? And I would have everyone like,

15:20

raise your hands if you think you practice democracy

15:22

like in your actual life. And I would be

15:24

like, and people, sometimes, so what do you mean by

15:26

that? You know? Do you sit down together

15:29

and talk about how you're spending

15:31

the resources of your home and your community.

15:33

Do you talk about how you're agreeing to keep each

15:35

other safe? Do you talk about how you're agreeing

15:38

to share time and who has decision

15:40

making power? And do you make those decisions

15:42

together? And all this right, So there would always

15:44

be like these confident people would raise their hands. I'd be like, do you

15:47

do this in your household? Right? And I was like, are

15:49

the kids involved? Hands come down? Right? Are

15:51

your parents involved as anyone else involved? Right?

15:53

And that's just in the household. So I was like, okay, great

15:55

for the people who still have your hands up, do you practice it

15:57

in your neighborhood, like just on your block, And

16:00

by practicing democracy like on your block, more

16:02

hands come down. I almost never made

16:04

it to community, right, that

16:06

people in in whatever they think of as their community,

16:08

they weren't practicing democracy. Most people

16:11

in our organizations aren't practicing democracy.

16:13

And so something about the fractal nature

16:16

of that clicked for me, right because

16:18

I was learning this concept of fractals that were

16:20

each these small cells of something much

16:22

larger than ourselves. So I'm like, we're trying to

16:25

change was at the very top of the structure,

16:27

the president. You know, we're just if we change

16:29

that. But I'm like, but no one's actually practicing

16:31

democracy. So even the people

16:33

running for office are often people who have never

16:36

actually practiced democracy

16:38

in that way, right, and they're not

16:40

practicing it intimately. So I got

16:42

kind of excited by that problem because I

16:44

was like, well, that's something solvable, Like

16:47

there's practices, all right. I'm like,

16:49

I respect that

16:52

there is a problem, and any problem

16:54

is solvable. Yeah, Like once I was

16:56

like, got it, Okay, so we need to

16:58

figure out how to practice to myocracy,

17:00

small D democracy. And I was definitely

17:02

influenced by my mentor Grace Lee Bogs.

17:05

I had moved to Detroit. I was learning from her, and

17:07

that's one of things she was often talking about, is

17:10

we need to get people back in the practice. Like

17:12

she would say, democracy is a really beautiful thing

17:14

if you actually practice it, but very few of

17:17

us do. We opt out. We

17:19

find ways to reinstate hierarchy, to

17:21

move around having to actually do

17:24

democratic practice. So that

17:26

piece around like, well, who am I in relationship

17:29

with enough that I would want to practice democracy

17:31

with them? Very few? You know, I

17:34

have a very high standard for who I want to make decisions

17:36

with, And that's actually not how the world is structure. You don't just

17:38

get to decide. And if you were

17:40

to boil down your definition of

17:42

democracy with the practice of it,

17:45

is it as you seem to imply just now,

17:48

shared decision making, joint decision making?

17:50

You just said, who am I in community that

17:52

I don't want to practice democracy with? So

17:55

how do you define? There's this group called Movement Generation

17:58

who I adore, and they defy economy

18:01

as the management of home, the management

18:03

of the resources of home, which I really love

18:05

because they're like, anytime we're talking about

18:07

how we manage our shared resources of the

18:09

earth, of our community, of

18:11

our family, that's an

18:13

economic conversation. And so to

18:15

me, democracy is in that vein right

18:18

that I'm like, we're talking about how do we

18:20

make the decisions about our resources,

18:22

including the resource of time, the resource

18:25

of money, the resource of land, the resource

18:27

of food, the resource of water, the resource

18:29

of air, the resource of education,

18:32

And fundamentally, I think that's what governance

18:34

is about. You know, we're living our lives, but at

18:36

a certain point we have to say, there's finite

18:39

resources in a finite lifetime. How

18:41

are we going to make the decisions related to that? And

18:45

for me, I don't enjoy debating for the sake

18:47

of debate. I know some people do. I'm

18:49

always like, Okay, what's

18:51

the most logical, practical way that we can share

18:53

these resources that everyone can actually

18:55

share them? And this, I'll

18:58

say, braided into also the science

19:00

fiction work and reading that I was doing at

19:02

that time, because Octavia

19:05

Butler said, you don't know who you're going to end up in the apocalypse

19:07

with, and so that always felt

19:09

like this like oh

19:12

am I going to be a good community with who am

19:14

I going to have to practice exactly? Right? So

19:16

I was like, right now we have the privilege many of

19:18

us are getting to choose who do

19:21

I want to live with and who do I want to make decisions

19:23

with and how do I want to do this? But

19:25

actually, long term,

19:28

we need to learn how to just do this whoever

19:30

we land with. And that

19:33

got me excited because I was like, Okay, what

19:35

is the future I actually want and how can

19:37

I start practicing a democratic way

19:40

of being that moves me towards that the

19:43

fractal thing and the democracy thing are so

19:45

intertwined, And

19:47

I think for me it's been a relief,

19:49

honestly to hear someone describe

19:51

the value of the small Yes, Like

19:54

so much of our save

19:56

democracy conversation is

19:58

a lot of words and debate and not actually

20:01

a lot of practice. It's inches

20:03

column inches of thoughts and our beds and whatnot,

20:05

but it evokes large scale

20:08

structural reforms. And

20:11

you're based question You're basic,

20:13

not in the insult, but in the true, like elemental

20:16

level question of how are we practicing

20:18

democracy? And the communities were part of what

20:20

communities are? We are part of first, how

20:23

are we practicing? What are some of

20:25

the small practices, the small activities

20:27

that you think reverberate

20:30

upward into the larger structure. Yeah,

20:32

I mean one thing I always say to people because

20:36

sometimes the binary come the people are large versus

20:38

small, and like everything large

20:40

is made up of small parts. We live in an atomic

20:43

world, so every single thing

20:45

that you can look at, from another person to

20:47

a superstructure, to our governance, to

20:49

a nation, everything is made up of smaller

20:51

parts. So it's not an either or, it's

20:54

saying, if I want to impact something large,

20:56

I have to be able to tune into the smallest practice

20:59

of that large thing right and then be

21:01

able to judge it up right. And

21:03

this has really guided a lot of what

21:06

emerging strategy has focused on. Right. So

21:08

conflict, being able to be in conflict

21:11

with integrity. I call it generative

21:13

conflict, which I learned from generative somatics.

21:16

But this idea of like conflict, if we do

21:18

it well, actually generates more possibilities

21:20

for us. It really makes it clear that,

21:22

oh, we can have differences of opinion and we can work

21:25

through them and find a way for so

21:27

generative conflict. Our nation

21:30

is basically broken when it comes

21:32

to this idea of generative conflict. Right

21:34

now, conflict is, you

21:36

know, dropping to the lowest common denominator,

21:38

throwing insults at each other and seeing the

21:41

person who you're arguing with, you're trying

21:43

to dehumanize them. Actually, the

21:45

democratic process of that generative conflict would

21:47

be, how do I humanize you even if

21:49

I totally disagree with you? How do I find

21:51

the places where there's some potential

21:53

alignment? And you know, the thing I always come

21:55

back to is like, we only have this one planet,

21:58

so we have to figure out how to get

22:00

along enough to keep going on this planet.

22:03

Right right, it's the ultimate resource. We're

22:05

figuring out how to share exactly right.

22:07

And as much as I pray every

22:09

day, I'm like, aliens, you know, just help

22:11

us. You don't even have to come rescue us, just let us know,

22:13

like if you know a little bit more about how to do this. Um,

22:16

but generative conflict feels like a really big one. And

22:18

then actually being able to talk openly about power

22:21

dynamics is another one that feels

22:23

really important in most of our

22:25

organizations. So a lot of my work during

22:27

this time was facilitating organizations and

22:29

I would come in, and what always surprised

22:32

me was the people in power didn't seem to

22:34

know they were in power, or they didn't seem to

22:36

be um comfortable talking about

22:38

how much power they had, and often

22:41

they would even take a victim role. It's so hard

22:43

being me trying to just do what I'm

22:45

doing. And I know as I've ascended into

22:47

more powerful positions how quickly this happen. Because

22:49

you're like, no, it really is hard. It's hard,

22:52

and it's this dirty word. The dirty word comes

22:55

with baggage of undeserved nous.

22:57

So you're like, I don't want this thing that I don't deserve.

23:00

I don't want to feel like I have more than you, but

23:02

I do exactly, and we

23:05

also don't want to We both don't want to have it and we don't want

23:07

to give it up. Like once you have a little bit

23:09

of it, you're like, um, I'm

23:11

not sharing this with you now, like mine

23:13

is kind of nice. So that and then

23:15

I think we need to get really good at like redistributing

23:18

resources, and that

23:20

is actually very difficult, especially if you're

23:23

right now. We're socialized in America

23:26

into a capitalist worldview

23:28

that says, accumulate as

23:30

much as you can, as individually

23:32

as you can, and that's how you know you lived

23:34

a good life. Um And even though we see

23:38

that doesn't seem to pan out, we see a lot of people

23:40

who are very wealthy, who are very depressed, very isolated,

23:42

spinning out all the time. Now we get to see

23:44

it all on social media, taking

23:47

over social media, ruinning it. You know, all kinds of fun

23:49

things are happening for the wealthy. But what we see

23:51

is they struggle deeply with actually

23:54

relinquishing, you know, the amount

23:56

they've gone over what they need. So

23:58

those are some of the things that I'm like, Oh,

24:00

do I know how to redistribute my resources? Do I

24:03

know how to share decision making power? Do I know

24:05

how to have integrity and a fight? Do

24:07

I know how to decentralize power and

24:09

make decisions with others? I'm

24:11

great at it in some contexts. I'm not great at in all

24:13

contexts. And I think even being able to be clear

24:15

with ourselves about that is useful,

24:19

you know. Merger strategy. I had a friend reflect

24:21

back to me recently that so much of it

24:23

is can you become self aware of

24:25

your like where you are in

24:27

the organization of all things, can you

24:29

become self aware and from that self awareness

24:32

have agency over the choices and the decisions you

24:34

make and how you operate, the way you do your

24:36

relationships and

24:38

the beauty and the challenge of that is

24:41

it requires internal

24:43

assessment, internal work, and

24:46

other than our training and hyper individualism

24:48

and growth at all costs, we

24:50

have an external training to go

24:53

out there, be active out there, like activism

24:56

is an external thing. You find

24:58

an enemy, you find a villain, and

25:00

you protest them, and you go against them.

25:02

Yeah, point at them and the me and

25:04

the us and the eye. It said,

25:06

well, I'm fine, I'm the activist,

25:10

I'm overlord,

25:14

I'm the virgo pect I mean literally

25:16

perfect, Yes, I mean well,

25:18

this is what my mentor again, Grace

25:20

Lee Box said to me. You know, we

25:23

must transform ourselves to transform the world. And

25:26

can you briefly remind

25:29

us of who Grace Lee bog I would

25:31

love to. Grace Lee Boggs was a

25:33

Chinese American activist who

25:36

threw her lot in with the Black liberation

25:38

struggle in Detroit, and she

25:42

was an incredible thinker and writer. She

25:44

was always finding a new learning

25:47

ground and when I met her, she was nine two

25:50

and she lived to be a hundred and

25:52

so those eight years of overlap,

25:55

we're really meaningful years for me. But

25:58

yeah, she started a ton of organizations.

26:00

She was always starting new experiments and projects.

26:03

And she and her partner Jimmy Boggs

26:05

in Detroit and they started Detroit Summer.

26:07

They started a bike cooperative. They helped

26:10

with the Avalon Bakery getting off the ground. But they

26:12

were always figuring out. Like the

26:14

mayor at one point said, you guys are a bunch of naysayers,

26:17

and she was like, oh, yeah, we can create stuff

26:19

too. We're not just saying no to you. We can also

26:21

create, and so really abundant

26:23

creative force and thinker,

26:26

um, you were bringing up grace in the context

26:30

of this internal work and the

26:32

world we have to be internally well. I

26:34

think when I first heard her say that, I was like,

26:37

we've got such big problems out here, Like

26:40

I don't need to go meditate and be quiet

26:42

with myself. That's not what's necessary. Like we've

26:45

got to save the whole world. And what

26:48

has happened as I have matured

26:50

and been humbled by life

26:53

has been this recognition that the front

26:55

line of all these systems is actually inside

26:57

of me. And again, just like there's not a mall

27:00

versus large, there's not an in versus

27:02

out that's an illusion. Right.

27:04

It's like all these systems I'm trying to fight

27:06

against live within me as well. And

27:08

so even as I'm doing the external

27:11

work, I also have to be noticing

27:13

where it's showing up within me. Right, And

27:15

I'm like, oh, I'm yelling at Jeff

27:17

Bezos for his billionaire behaviors,

27:19

but using Amazon to buy my holiday

27:21

packages. Like I really look back

27:24

at my life and I'm like, oh, transphobia had taken

27:26

root in my life. I've had to work to

27:28

clear that in my heart and to be aware

27:30

of it. Fat phobia landed in my life.

27:32

I had to work to love myself. I had to feel

27:34

how do I heal that? Capitalism,

27:37

patriarchy, all these things are within

27:39

us. And that's why we're not able

27:41

to succeed when we just go with this external

27:44

fight, because they call out our hypocrisy,

27:46

and our community calls out our hypocrisy. I

27:48

think right now we're in this very tender

27:51

moment inside of movement space because

27:53

everyone's pointing in every direction

27:55

like wait, you're the you

27:57

know, It's like yeah, we're all out. If

27:59

we like this idea that some of us are good and bad,

28:01

we could get so much more done. Right, It's like we're

28:04

all infected by

28:06

these viral systems, and

28:09

we can actually infuse our

28:12

networks, are my cilial networks

28:14

with other energy that actually helps us

28:16

heal. So if the inside

28:19

is the outside and the small is the large,

28:21

these ideas come from

28:23

your obsession with fractals, and I just want to spend

28:25

a beat on My memory

28:27

of fractals goes back to probably

28:29

high school, maybe middle school, something, some

28:32

pubescent times where my

28:34

hormones and physiology

28:37

or confusing my ability to locate it in

28:39

time specifically. But I remember

28:41

pretty pictures, you know, and I remember

28:43

the idea of this like small

28:46

pattern replicated

28:48

to this large and beautiful

28:50

scale which had the exact

28:52

same pattern in the meta. How

28:55

are you defining fractals and tell

28:57

me a little bit more about the importance of

28:59

the from the science to the application

29:01

of movement. Yeah, I mean, I

29:04

feel like I'm still constantly always trying to understand

29:06

it scientifically, and sometimes I'm like to have

29:08

it. It's this it, you know. But there's

29:10

the way I understand fractals is this the way

29:12

that we can understand patterns that replicate

29:15

themselves in the same way no

29:17

matter what scale you find them at, So from the

29:19

very small to the very large. And

29:23

we live in a fractal universe, so

29:25

there's patterns that we can find all

29:28

over all around us that replicate from

29:30

the smallest to the largest. And it's

29:33

like simple stuff like looking at broccoli or

29:35

ferns, or looking at the

29:37

way the roots of a tree look,

29:40

and looking at the way our lungs look, looking

29:42

at the way delta's um look

29:44

from the sky, looking at the way blood moves through our systems,

29:47

Like we are fractal representation

29:50

of the way the Earth looks and works

29:52

and the universe.

29:54

It's really exciting, right, I always say, I'm

29:56

like the we have these the same shape on our

29:59

fingerprints as a galaxy. It's

30:01

really cool, right, Like you could just geek out

30:03

and be like, who you know, I can't

30:05

stop exactly right,

30:08

But the revolutionary

30:10

potential inside of that is what makes me even

30:12

more excited, almost titilated,

30:14

right, is that, oh, if these

30:16

patterns replicate, then

30:19

when we notice a pattern, we could start to shift

30:21

it at a small scale and possibly change

30:24

the what is able to even replicate up into the

30:26

largest scale. That excites

30:28

me. Do you have a brief story

30:31

that exemplifies where

30:34

a small pattern shift rippled

30:37

out and led to a bigger pattern shift

30:40

a demonstration of the

30:42

power of fractal theory and movement.

30:44

Yes, I do. So. There's

30:47

a young black woman that I hired

30:49

to work for me back at the Leaga Piste off voters

30:52

and stuff was a

30:54

mess. The organization

30:56

was trying to figure out how to organization. She

30:58

did not get handled well. But I knew she was a

31:00

genius. I knew she was brilliant. I knew she deserved

31:03

every chance that she could get. So when I went

31:05

to ruck At Society, I hired her again. I

31:08

was like, I know that they didn't treat you well,

31:10

but I'm bringing you to work with me. And

31:12

she learned she was a black strategist,

31:15

and she learned everything about

31:17

direct action, and she was like, black people need to

31:19

have this skill set, and I was like, yeah, run

31:22

with that, like build it out. She

31:24

ended up becoming one of the co founders or something called the

31:26

Blackout Collective, which trained

31:29

all these people in black direct action,

31:31

including tons of people who were part

31:33

of the Black Lives Matter movement. So

31:36

when it was time for Black Lives Matter to escalate

31:38

and do all this action, they had some of

31:40

the best training that you could have that

31:43

came through the channel of this black woman

31:45

who stays behind the scenes, like she's like, I don't want all the

31:47

attention, I don't need all the light on me. But

31:50

because of her, they were some of the most

31:52

coordinated, brilliant, effective, and

31:54

media delicious right the mean it was like, oh,

31:56

my goodness, this action. I'm like, yes,

31:59

and I look at to me like those

32:01

stories where I'm like believing in one person and

32:05

seeing how one person has a particular bridge

32:07

available in them that maybe no one else can see,

32:10

and letting them build that bridge leads

32:12

to a whole movement being supported

32:15

and effective and changing the conversation

32:17

of our time. Every

32:20

time I see anything about Black Lives

32:22

matters impact and you know, people

32:24

on the cover the magazines and everything, I think about her.

32:26

You know, I think about that trajectory.

32:29

Thank you for that clarity. And I

32:31

think there's such an interpretive tension

32:33

where someone could say, like, oh, she's

32:35

saying I don't have to worry about the big stuff. I could

32:37

just be me, myself and I in

32:39

my little abode, in my nuclear family

32:42

situation and kind of disconnect,

32:44

and I think, what what I'm hearing is,

32:47

it's all connected. Everything

32:49

is everything, Hello, Lauren Hill. And so

32:51

if we start to adjust at the small

32:54

it can ripple out. It's the opposite

32:57

of trickle down. Yeah, and it actually

32:59

it's like more than it can, like it

33:01

does all the time. So part of it, part

33:03

of fractal awareness, is just starting to take

33:06

responsibility for what am

33:08

I currently putting into the

33:10

pattern. If I'm not paying attention,

33:13

if I'm mindless, like if I'm just

33:15

operating by what I was trained to do, or if

33:17

I'm just reactive, most

33:19

of the people who are operating that way are putting

33:22

unhealthy conflict, unhealthy

33:24

patterns, passive aggression. Like

33:26

I tell people, look in your family, what are the

33:28

patterns of emotional behavior

33:30

and conflict resolution you see in your family?

33:33

That's usually the same pattern that you're then

33:35

helping replicate in the world. Right,

33:38

all these people coming from places where fighting

33:40

is either done through extreme violence and

33:43

yelling and anger and awareness

33:46

or extreme repression. That was my way,

33:48

right, push it down, put a smile on it, keep

33:50

it moving. And if those

33:52

forces are trying to come into relationship, it's

33:54

going to be a total mess. And so what

33:57

needs to change on both sides? You know, in my family

33:59

we been in this practice now, Like I'm

34:02

upset with you, Like

34:04

it's a shock to my system every time I have to be

34:06

like I'm upset, and I'm

34:08

trying to close the gap between when I

34:10

feel upset and when I can express

34:12

that I'm upset, right, And

34:15

then I'm also trying to work from that Buddhist

34:18

principle of is it kind? Is it true? Is

34:20

it necessary? When I communicate that? So

34:22

it's like I'm upset, and

34:24

I'm not trying to smash

34:26

you or harm you, or or denigrate you or shrink

34:28

you. I'm trying to tell you so that

34:30

we can adjust, so that we can find that

34:33

that right relationship again. And I

34:35

always bring up my friend Princess himp Hill, who

34:37

teaches us that boundaries are the distance

34:40

at which I can love you and me simultaneously.

34:43

Right, You're gonna make me cry

34:45

up in here. I cry all the

34:47

time about this stuff. Like when I'm like, oh

34:49

my god, Like you know, I'm in my mid forties

34:52

and I'm like, what would it look like what my

34:54

whole life look like if I started

34:56

out learning how to fight fair

34:58

and how to have good boundary race, and that

35:00

it was okay to express us something hurt my feelings?

35:03

And then how would that lead into the kind of

35:05

governance that I have done in my life? What kind of leader

35:08

would I be if I wasn't all the

35:10

time trying to run away from conflict and I could really

35:12

say how I felt? And then

35:15

what would my city look like

35:17

if we weren't punitive with

35:20

people but instead we're like, oh, there's some harm

35:22

here. How do we bring it to the surface

35:24

and adjust and hold it as a community? I

35:26

mean, it's all connected. It's

35:29

all connected. The that conflict

35:31

avoidance and desire

35:33

not to fend offend or push

35:36

away by stating needs, by stating

35:38

hurt resonated deeply with

35:40

me. And so that's where the emotions coming

35:42

from shown up for you. Oh,

35:48

I think you know. I have a very

35:50

sacred story around my own mother and

35:53

all the things she did for me

35:56

for me to survive and just be here and be able

35:58

to talk to you. It's a little too simplistic

36:01

and binary in the like good person,

36:04

She was a good and

36:06

so I didn't allow her a lot of shades of

36:08

other ways of being or

36:10

any real fallibility. And so

36:13

I grew up very sensitive to her

36:15

needs and stall

36:17

my role as like assisting in that and

36:20

so not really articulating my own like I'm

36:22

a good

36:26

and so I didn't have conflict, you

36:29

know, I accommodated, I supported,

36:31

I stood by, or I smothered, you know, my own

36:34

sense of conflict. At at some level, I was worried

36:37

that this one person who was taking care of

36:39

me would it, So

36:43

that fear prevented in my own

36:46

full expression and prevented my own

36:48

full reception. I think of her

36:50

expression, which was more than just good

36:53

person, because there's no such thing. She was

36:55

just person capable of all kinds of things.

36:58

Yeah. So I've been feeling

37:00

through and growing through and emerging from

37:03

kind of that story and and trying

37:05

to shift my pattern so it fractals out

37:08

and and become something else. Yeah.

37:14

After the break Adrian Marie Brown

37:16

on using fiction to see democracy

37:19

not just as crisis but as possibility.

37:27

As I was looking through the principles

37:29

of emergence that you all have listed

37:31

on the Emergence Strategy Institute site several

37:34

of them resonated with there's

37:37

this you know, changes constant,

37:39

be like water, and trust

37:42

the people. If you trust the people, they

37:44

become trustworthy. And

37:46

I'm gonna I'm gonna take you on a brief

37:48

journey through my mother or Anita Lorraine

37:50

Thurston, because I saw where

37:52

you got that from loot Zoo, the each

37:55

Ing, the Chinese Book of Changes. I

37:58

grew up with that text. My

38:00

mother was a practicing Taoist,

38:03

Divenor, she consulted

38:06

the Eaching. I literally have like

38:09

six translations

38:11

on my desk right now, and so when

38:13

I was looking up, you know the origin

38:16

and that hexagram's kind of

38:18

the chapters the verses that this

38:20

practice points to in terms of

38:22

this line, if you don't trust the people,

38:25

they become untrustworthy, which you all

38:27

flipped. If you do trust the people, they've be

38:29

contrustworthy. That's made of two

38:31

tails. That's made of the top one

38:34

is essentially a water or a

38:36

lake. The bottom is thunder rumble,

38:38

and they can symbolize like joy on

38:40

the top and movement on the battle,

38:44

and the harmonious intersection

38:46

of joy with movement. That

38:48

just represents a lot of my mother,

38:50

as I more fully see her. It certainly represents

38:52

a lot of you, and so you're

38:55

like, you're all up in my fractal right now,

38:57

I'm

39:00

glad in terms of seeing seeing

39:02

that connectivity. So I just share

39:04

that first as a as a point of connection,

39:06

as a point of gratitude. I just love

39:09

the ways our moms were like and our

39:11

parents. You know, I'm like I always it took

39:13

me so long to be like, oh, you have culture like

39:15

you you have culture, like you have

39:18

things that you bring into the house, you know, Like

39:20

my mom had Khalil Gibron's the Prophet

39:23

around and we read it every year, and it's

39:25

just certain things. And I'm like, oh, that's infused into

39:27

my system in ways that

39:29

I will never be able to, like even

39:31

pull apart. And so I love that the eaching

39:33

is in there and the Tao is in there for you. Um

39:36

I want to add an addendum is the

39:38

people will become trustworthy or the

39:40

boundaries will become clear. I feel like I

39:42

didn't understand that until I was experimenting

39:45

more with emergent strategy,

39:47

that not everyone will become

39:49

trustworthy in my lifetime.

39:52

Right, I have practiced

39:54

hard at extending my trust to people in

39:57

spite of my intuition or in spite of their

39:59

being and being like, oh,

40:01

you know what, I have to also trust myself.

40:04

I have to trust myself to know when a boundary

40:06

is needed. So I just wanted to I always try to make

40:08

that sure that's added on there. Thank you.

40:11

The other principle that I want to ask you about

40:13

is there's always enough time for

40:16

the right work. Yes, in

40:18

this time when we think about

40:21

shifting patterns and practicing

40:24

democracy and creating a healthier culture

40:26

of it, what do you see as the right

40:28

work right now? You

40:30

know, listening back to the book or like listening

40:33

back to things from the book, I can feel how my virgo

40:35

was such at the front, Like the word right is everywhere

40:37

in it. And what I mean by

40:39

right there is meaningful work,

40:42

transformative work, the work

40:44

that is radical in the sense

40:46

of what Angel Davis talks about, like going

40:48

to the route and actually trying

40:50

to pull something up from the root. And

40:53

so when I was facilitating as my

40:55

main way of spending my time, I

40:58

was always looking for that. I'm like, Okay, we're

41:00

having a conversation up here and

41:02

it's petty and it feels chaotic,

41:05

but could we go deeper? Could

41:07

we go underneath that? Like what's

41:09

actually at stake? And you know

41:12

there's something really tender and what you just said about your mother

41:14

where you're like, if I had a conflict

41:16

with her, what I stopped being cared for?

41:18

Like it goes so deep actually, and

41:20

for most of us, that's what's happening is if

41:23

this thing breaks, is my survival

41:25

on the line? Is my fundamental

41:27

belonging on the line? Like, and

41:29

we don't want that to be what we're talking about when

41:31

we're having an organizational struggle,

41:34

when we're having a familiar struggle, we're having a community

41:36

struggle, but usually that's what we're saying, am

41:38

I going to be left out? And

41:41

am I not going to live? Or is no one going

41:43

to love me? Am I unlovable? Like it's really

41:45

deep territory. So as a facilitator,

41:47

I was always like, can we get to

41:50

the twenty leagues as quickly

41:52

in the meeting as possible because that's

41:54

where the shift will happen that will

41:56

allow this thing to move. Um.

41:59

I I was like, I don't want to be the kind of facilitator

42:01

who's like making a very beautiful deck chair

42:04

arrangement on a Titanic, right, I really want

42:06

to be like, if the ship is sinking,

42:09

what do we have to do? And I think we're in that

42:11

moment of human

42:13

history, human existence, and particularly

42:16

nation. You know, I call myself a post nationalist,

42:18

which doesn't mean that we won't

42:20

be citizens of something. I think that we have to learn

42:22

how to be citizens to each other, citizens

42:25

of something that we can actually belong to, and the cares

42:27

for us and loves us. I'm not sure that

42:30

the US experiment will be that right,

42:32

and I feel like we have to be able to say that, Like, if this ship

42:35

is sinking, but we're all still alive,

42:37

and there's still an earth here, there's

42:40

still a way to live. How

42:42

quickly will we tune into that? How

42:45

quickly can we have the right conversation?

42:47

And that's what I'm now trying

42:49

to affect on the largest scale, Like most

42:51

of my writing, most of my books are like, the

42:54

climate condition is no longer pending.

42:57

It's just a matter of your level of privilege

42:59

in terms of how much you're experiencing it. And

43:02

the climate situation is not the only thing, but

43:05

it is a big, potentially unifying

43:07

human condition, and we're being

43:10

distracted from it. You know, Tony Morrison talked about

43:12

racism is a distraction, but there's so many

43:14

others as well. There's so many things that we are

43:17

being distracted from our best selves to

43:20

stay battling for our right to exist, and it's like,

43:22

no, we have the right to exist. The Earth gives

43:24

us everything we need. Can we

43:26

accept the gift? Can we get back into that

43:28

right relationship? Can we spend our

43:30

time on the right works. That's what

43:33

that arc is mm hmm.

43:35

Thank you for putting voice

43:38

to the possibility that the story

43:40

that we've created of something like the

43:42

United States or nation in particular, isn't

43:45

the end of the communities we

43:47

can define for our own survival and our

43:49

own thriving and to get deeper than that. Empires

43:52

fall, empires, fault, humans continue,

43:54

people continue. Yeah, so far

43:57

and we can see us continue. Am really

43:59

into hum is

44:04

my preferred my strong preference

44:06

for a planet like my strong preference too. I'm like until

44:08

we find like other Earth situations, um,

44:11

you know, but I do think like throughout

44:13

human history, it gives me some

44:15

kind of peace to be like, oh, the Roman Empire,

44:18

the British Empire, these empires, like things

44:21

change but then humans are so wonderful.

44:24

I mean, you know, we do awful things to each

44:26

other. But I really have also been

44:29

really trying to say, how do I bring my attention to

44:31

what's best in us? And how do we

44:33

grow that? You know, I always say what we pay attention to grows,

44:35

And so I'm like, that moment you're talking about

44:37

with your mother, I'm like, that might be the best part of

44:40

you, right, is that tender, vulnerable

44:42

part of you that loves your mom, And like, from

44:44

that place is learning how to love in your life.

44:47

You know, I feel that way with my parents and

44:49

my grand I'm just having a major breakthrough

44:51

with my grandmother after a long estrangement, and

44:53

I'm like, I

44:56

mean it's just really yeah, it's really fresh.

44:58

But it's like, can I give possibility

45:01

for this woman who's ninety

45:03

to love me still, you

45:05

know, or love me again

45:07

or fall back or come learn how to love me

45:10

in spite of all her beliefs And

45:12

it's so tender. It's like everything about

45:14

love and humans is in those moments.

45:18

Thank you for sharing that and where

45:20

you're at right now. And this

45:22

word possibility kind of coincides

45:25

with the sci fi

45:27

world that you're also so deeply

45:29

embedded with and inspired by and

45:32

contributing to. Now, I

45:34

mean China Meavil's work and inspiration

45:37

shows up. I remember from the Scar the

45:39

Possible Sword, So I

45:41

want everyone. I'm like, I can't believe we're

45:43

not all talking about the Possibiley Sword all the time, the

45:47

cost thing that ever happened than anyone

45:49

ever wrote. I

45:51

really yeah, please make all your people

45:53

read it. Okay,

45:57

hold up, wait a minute, we

45:59

interrupt this black nerd moment to

46:01

offer an explainer tune day about

46:03

the Possible Sword. Back in

46:05

the early two thousand's, a friend introduced

46:08

me to China Mieville, this British

46:10

science fiction and fantasy author who writes

46:12

incredible supernatural and speculative

46:15

world I read three of his works,

46:17

all set in the same world of boss Log,

46:20

and in one of those books, the Scar, this

46:22

thing called the Possible Sword was introduced.

46:25

According to the boss Log Wicki, you

46:27

gotta love the Internet, a fake place with a real

46:29

Wicki entry quote. The

46:32

Blade minds possibilities from

46:34

the swordsman's motions. By injecting

46:36

controlled uncertainty into his or her movements,

46:39

the swordsman is able to land an arbitrary

46:41

number of solid possible hits

46:44

in addition to the factual hits.

46:46

The effect is that the swordsman's arm appears

46:48

to blur and the swords targets

46:50

suffers several dozen cuts with each

46:53

swing of the sword. So basically,

46:55

the possible sword is this object

46:57

that represents both what we do with it

47:00

and everything we could do with it. And

47:02

China Mievil didn't stop there. The

47:05

possible sword is powered by

47:07

a possibility engine. This

47:09

is some magical quantum technology. Obviously

47:12

not real or is it?

47:15

To me? It just means that we all

47:17

have more possibilities within us than we

47:19

often acknowledge, and sometimes

47:22

we need fiction to remind us of our

47:24

ability to change facts. And

47:26

knowing that Adrian Marie Brown has read

47:28

and incorporated ideas from authors

47:31

like China Mievil, it's simply dope

47:33

to me and hopefully to YouTube. Now

47:39

back to my giddy nerd out moment over sci

47:41

fi writers, Please make all

47:43

your people read it because

47:46

it is the coolest thing I've read,

47:49

because it gives shows up. But but but no one shows

47:51

up more than the name. You've already sided,

47:54

the woman you've already started, Octavia Butler. You've

47:56

got a whole podcast dedicated to sharing

47:58

her work. Thank You were that. I

48:00

dove into the parable of the solar and parable

48:03

of the talent during COVID

48:05

lockdown, as I was traveling the country heavily

48:07

alone making the America Outdoors

48:09

PBS series, writing my relationship

48:11

with nature, with this system in my head during the apocalypse,

48:14

choosing community. But what stood

48:16

out to me is the possibility

48:19

of growth and community

48:22

and democracy,

48:24

even and especially in an apocalyptic

48:27

setting. You know this this acorn

48:29

community that that is featured, and

48:31

the way people show up for each other. What

48:33

do you think Octavia Butler

48:36

can teach us about citizening

48:38

as a verb about practicing democracy.

48:42

Mm hmm. Yeah.

48:45

One of the reasons I go back to her over and over

48:47

again is because she was writing

48:49

from a place of despair, like she was paying attention

48:52

enough to be like, yeah,

48:55

yeah, this is very upsetting and

48:58

a lot of we call her profect, many people say

49:00

she's prophetic, but really she was like, I'm just paying

49:03

attention and this is the inevitable

49:05

place that things lead to if we don't change

49:07

our behavior. And I

49:10

love that because that seems to me like

49:12

a fundamental citizen skill is

49:14

to be like, can you actually take in what's really

49:16

happening and

49:18

and just follow that thread and just be like,

49:20

oh, is that the Am I down with that? Am I down

49:22

to participate in that? I think

49:24

if more of us thought that way, they'd be interventions

49:26

we would make in the immediate because

49:28

we're like, oh, I don't want us to get there. But

49:31

she also said so many things

49:33

around who we asked to lead

49:35

us or who we allow to lead us, and

49:38

what are the qualities of what

49:40

we think of as leadership. So I

49:42

think right now we've gotten very comfortable with having

49:45

people in leadership who lie to us,

49:47

and we give a lot

49:49

of money to people to campaign in

49:52

ways that we know are dishonest and

49:54

saying things that were like the they may or may not ever

49:57

do that, and then when they get in office they don't

49:59

do it, and we're like, you know, it's

50:01

like the normal thing now is to be like,

50:03

who's the best, most charming, maybe somewhat

50:05

attractive, married liar that we

50:07

can Yeah,

50:10

I want my liar, not your liar, right exactly,

50:13

you get me. So I think one of the things Octavia

50:15

is often pointing to is what does it

50:17

mean to be a leader? Who tells the truth. What

50:19

does it mean to be a leader who especially

50:22

when the truth is hard and it's like, this isn't the truth

50:24

you wanted to hear. I'm really interested

50:26

right now, and like, who are people who are willing to lead and

50:28

say things are probably going to get worse?

50:31

Like we're heading into a period of human history

50:33

where what we're experiencing now, a

50:35

lot of the shock of it is because those

50:38

who could have prepared us for it have not

50:41

nowhere more clear than climate exactly.

50:44

I'm like, you don't want to there's no positive pitch

50:46

to the amount of pandemic we're heading into.

50:49

There's no positive pitch to the amount of climate

50:51

crisis we're heading into. But there's

50:53

possibility in it if we actually say

50:55

we're heading into it. The storm is directly

50:58

ahead for some of us were already in it, and

51:00

we can make adaptations right now that

51:03

increase maximum survival and that

51:05

actually make it so that survival could be generative

51:07

and pleasurable and fun. But

51:10

it requires letting go of some of the ways we

51:12

were imagining this time. So Octavia

51:14

was like, what if we let go of even the idea

51:16

of having to stay here at Earth? Like,

51:19

what if the possibility for human life

51:21

is to take root amongst the stars? And

51:24

that felt like a viable possibility

51:26

for her. Something I know from studying

51:28

some of the papers in the drafts that she's done

51:31

of the Parable of the Trickster, which would have been the third book

51:33

in that trilogy, was that all the

51:35

other planets that she could imagine depressed

51:37

her, Like she couldn't actually finish the next

51:39

book because she was like, I

51:41

think trying to write other planets made

51:44

her love Earth so much. Then from

51:46

reading that, my conclusion is taking

51:48

root amongst the stars would also mean taking

51:50

root here, like this is our

51:52

place amongst the stars, and if

51:54

we don't take root here, then

51:57

the Earth will have to cast us off. You know,

51:59

everything else goes extinct and the Earth continues.

52:01

Has been the pattern, And

52:04

I'm interested in leaders who are like, hey, let's not go

52:06

extinct, right, Let's

52:08

make the adaptations we need to make to not go extinct.

52:10

What does that look like? And

52:13

I also think that she

52:16

she believed in the small community. So you mentioned the

52:18

Acorn community where they were practicing,

52:20

but Acorn, you know, spoiler,

52:23

I feel okay spoiling it because it's been out for so

52:25

long. But spoiler, that community

52:27

gets destroyed by the Christian right in her

52:29

book, and her people don't

52:31

give up. Right, their children

52:33

are kidnap from them, they still don't give up. They

52:36

change their strategy to a Zapatista model

52:38

where they're going door to door and saying, let's build

52:40

a shared vision. Here's what earth seat

52:43

is, here's what the practices are, and

52:45

all we need is a small and mighty crew that

52:47

believes in this and we can actually hold

52:50

on to some possibility for humanity. Right.

52:53

And that has been really meaningful

52:55

to me as an organizer because I'm like,

52:57

oh, some of my comrades

52:59

go the biggest bucket and

53:01

I love that, and it's I get really moved

53:03

by the work that they do. But what

53:06

I have been drawn to is how

53:08

do I approach every single person I interact with

53:10

as a potential freedom fighter, as a potential comrade,

53:13

and whatever location they're in is their front

53:15

line, including the front line within themselves

53:18

and wherever they are, And I

53:21

find really interesting people ready to

53:23

roll and play and experiment with me in that way

53:25

unexpected, right. And

53:28

I'm always like, yeah, I think we

53:30

really underestimate folks

53:32

who are at the barbershop. We underestimate the

53:34

person on the bus, We underestimate the stranger we meet

53:36

on the plane, We underestimate our

53:38

coworkers. You know, I'm like, you're not just the

53:41

job title you have, Like how

53:43

are you going to survive? Let's talk

53:45

about it, right, And I'm trying to encourage

53:48

more people to have those conversations. You

53:50

know, There's been these moments for me.

53:52

I was in Italy when COVID nineteen,

53:55

like when it hit, was like, oh, this is

53:57

a crisis and like everything's about to shut down.

54:00

There's these moments in history where you're like, oh where

54:02

am I Am I with people that

54:04

I can trust right now? Will

54:06

these people keep me safe? I was in

54:08

Italy. I was like I don't speak the language. I mean this little

54:11

world town. I have to go back home.

54:14

I was like, I need to find people that are my people

54:16

enough to starve in your own earth. Yeah.

54:20

I had to go find my earth right, which

54:23

was with some whales in Hawaii. But it was like this

54:25

is what it Also, the whales have a lot to tell

54:27

us. There's also seems like

54:29

that's the consistent message. Everyone has

54:32

a lot to tell us. If we're able to listen, and

54:34

there's this fractal link I'm feeling between

54:37

you and someone like and say who

54:39

fought you know who reminds

54:41

us the way you talked about the barbershop person

54:43

or your coworker. We underestimate them, We don't

54:45

ask much of them, we don't see much potential in

54:47

them. But if we shifted

54:50

that and saw the opposite, we'd

54:53

have so much more access to power

54:56

collectively. And so the

54:58

whale, the harbor, the co worker,

55:01

the non voter, these are all

55:04

possible allies and community members

55:06

to help us practice democracy with exactly

55:09

And you know, in our nation, I

55:11

would also have to say the non citizen, right,

55:14

the person who can't vote, the person who

55:17

you know. I think of that Worrisonshire poem all the

55:19

time, and it's like the person who had to leave where they

55:22

were to come here, because this felt

55:24

like the safest possible option real

55:27

quick for anyone wondering. That Worrisonshire

55:29

poem referenced is called home now.

55:32

Worrisonshire is a Somali British writer

55:34

and poet, and she wrote that poem inspired

55:36

by a visit she made to the abandoned Somali

55:38

embassy in Rome, which some young

55:41

refugees had turned into their home. We've

55:43

got it linked in the show notes if you want to check

55:45

it out. Hint, you want to check

55:47

it out now?

55:52

Back to Adrian felt

55:54

like the safest possible option. Powerful

55:56

poem. Yeah, I get reminded often.

55:58

I'm like, you don't understand the privilege

56:01

of this place. And I think

56:03

about that. I'm like, how would I operate if

56:05

I did? How what would change if

56:07

I wasn't complaining all the time but figuring out

56:09

what do I have the freedom to practice? I've

56:11

been saying this lately that I feel like one of the freest people

56:14

to ever live, and it

56:17

kind of that's daunting to me, because I'm like, do

56:19

I deserve this freedom? Am I doing the right thing with

56:21

it? But I think the right thing is to be in

56:24

it, right, to actually be in it and

56:26

feel what becomes possible inside of that um

56:29

And I want to invite everyone who's

56:31

listening. I'm like, it's not just

56:33

me, it's also you, Like we are amongst

56:35

the freest people to ever live, and

56:39

I don't think we're taking it seriously enough. Yeah,

56:43

Imagination Battle, you

56:45

have used this phrase and said

56:47

that we are inside of. Essentially we're

56:50

engaged in an imagination battle. Can

56:52

you explain what you mean by that. I learned

56:54

this from my friend Terry Marshall, who

56:56

does a project called Intelligent Mischief in

56:58

Boston, and it

57:01

was this idea that everything that we

57:03

live inside of right now was imagined by someone,

57:05

because especially the stuff we were like, I'm not inferior

57:08

to a man, like I can tell I can feel

57:10

it in my body, but a man.

57:12

Yeah, I've met men, and

57:15

you know, I'm not saying I'm superior to all of them, but

57:18

I do recognize that or white supremacy. Right,

57:20

It's like the idea that whiteness

57:22

is superior to everything else as someone imagined

57:24

that. That's not how the world is actually set up as

57:26

a fictional concept, but when that person

57:29

imagined it, they were so compelling,

57:31

right, and whiteness was their fear

57:34

was so compelling to them. The story addressed

57:36

some of their fear of coming

57:38

across people that look different from them and

57:40

not knowing how to process that.

57:42

That story is still compelling. You know. When

57:44

I wrote Emergent Strategy, one of the vignettes

57:47

that I included in there was the fact

57:49

that if you look at what happened with with a

57:51

Mike Brown, is that he was killed

57:53

because of the white imagination that sees

57:56

him as a threat, that sees him as a danger

57:59

as an unarmed black young person,

58:01

right, And that now

58:04

it's not unusual that those who have the

58:06

authority to be armed and policing

58:08

our communities can go into

58:10

a court system or can take this to their boss and

58:13

say, I imagine they were dangerous,

58:15

and that's considered a qualifiable

58:17

defense to why they murdered someone.

58:19

Right. So the power of the imagination

58:21

in that context has to be taken seriously,

58:24

and it means that then we have to take our imagination

58:26

seriously for moving our way out of this. And

58:29

my friend Jeanine d Novaje is

58:31

working on a book right now called Brave Community

58:33

that's going to come out. She talks about the post racist

58:36

imagination. I think about this all the time,

58:38

like, how do we harness our

58:40

imagination to actually advance the world

58:42

we want and to invite

58:44

people into a compelling space to practice

58:47

that world rather than staying

58:49

stuck in someone else's imagination. Jeanine

58:52

is a regular member of the how the

58:54

citizen community is here

58:56

literally right now you're probably feel

59:00

love it. I love you.

59:02

We'll probably see if we can bring her up

59:04

in a moment. Yes, excited

59:07

about about Janine's book, But that imagination

59:09

work is the thing right that. It's like,

59:13

right now, are we able to imagine? You

59:15

know? I also think about this with what stories get

59:17

told. They're all the post apocalyptic

59:19

movies and everything, kind of like, who's putting

59:21

out those stories that can imagine us

59:23

surviving? I really loved the

59:25

story of Station eleven, so hoping

59:27

you were going to say that, I had my fingers and toes crossed,

59:30

but I didn't want to be loved it. I thought it was

59:32

such a beautiful imagination of what it could

59:34

look like. Yeah, I totally agree.

59:36

I'm on board. Imagination

59:39

is powerful and we need to imagine

59:41

better, essentially for ourselves with

59:44

each other. What are some

59:46

ways that we can practice that.

59:49

I feel like we've stifled

59:51

our imagination. We are very good at

59:53

adopting other people's stories and other people's

59:55

fictions and finding freedom

59:57

within that. But that feels really

59:59

sma all when you expand

1:00:01

the canvas and say, but what about a whole another

1:00:03

premise? So what are ways

1:00:06

we could practice flexing our imagination,

1:00:08

stretching our imagination in the domain

1:00:11

of what do you even means to practice democracy?

1:00:15

Yeah, I mean I have this practice I call collaborative

1:00:17

ideation, and it's really

1:00:19

having people sit in a community, sit

1:00:22

in a circle and say, what in

1:00:24

our community needs are the medicine

1:00:27

of our imagination? The medicine

1:00:29

of our imagination? Where do we feel so stuck

1:00:31

that we can't figure out the policy way

1:00:33

forward? We can't figure out this five year

1:00:35

plan, like we can't figure it out? And have

1:00:37

people I D eight together place

1:00:40

yourself in the future. You

1:00:45

know, however far you can most of us about

1:00:47

ten years is how far we can actually go out. Anything

1:00:50

beyond that is like, let's stretch and

1:00:53

actually say if we had landed this, if

1:00:55

we had applied the medicine and this thing was actually

1:00:58

healed and it was functional, what would

1:01:00

that look like? And the ideation is like what

1:01:02

would housing look like, old transportation look

1:01:04

like, how would we talk to our kids? What would be the

1:01:07

normal values and principles?

1:01:09

And so we kind of build a world together and

1:01:11

then ask everyone to write short stories in that world,

1:01:14

and a lot of people are like, I'm not a writer. I don't

1:01:16

write fiction. I'm like, you lie to yourself all the time. You write

1:01:18

fiction all the time, You come up with stories about when someone else

1:01:20

is thinking about. Everyone is writing fiction

1:01:23

all the time, right, But it's

1:01:25

taking that harnessing and just making you could tell

1:01:27

about the story. Sometimes that's the way. Just tell

1:01:29

me, like in a movie of this, what would

1:01:31

happen, and then have people share that

1:01:33

with each other, and you're it's amazing how

1:01:35

much is living inside us already.

1:01:37

But it requires setting down the scroll,

1:01:40

putting down the social media, putting

1:01:43

down all that external incoming

1:01:45

doom news, and actually sitting

1:01:47

down with people that you love and care about and just being like,

1:01:49

can we just imagine what

1:01:51

it could look like if this was no longer a problem?

1:01:54

Which is also what Octavia did was she was like, let's have

1:01:56

new problems. I resolved this

1:01:58

one, but now there's new ones that are emerged. Because

1:02:00

we're humans, there's going to be more. But

1:02:02

I love that practice, and in a small

1:02:05

scale, the fractal practice. It's in a

1:02:07

conversation when you hear someone stuck asked

1:02:09

them, could you imagine what it would be like if this

1:02:11

was resolved? Like what would

1:02:13

it feel like in your system? Let it. Let yourself

1:02:16

feel at first, and then tell me what's different.

1:02:19

That's a powerful practice. I'm gonna I'm gonna practice

1:02:21

at dinner. I'm gonna practice at drinks with friends. Yeah,

1:02:23

especially people who have kids know this. I'm like, we

1:02:26

are the creators of

1:02:28

anything that comes beyond us. It's

1:02:30

all in our bodies. Were born with

1:02:33

everything about the future all in our bodies,

1:02:35

So we have to believe that's also true for our ideas.

1:02:38

Yeah, it's all the same stuff. It's

1:02:40

all energy. That's a whole another chapter.

1:02:43

Look, you've been flexing your imagination.

1:02:45

You've been not just facilitating people

1:02:48

bringing out their short stories and fictional

1:02:50

stories, but writing your own your latest book

1:02:52

and from the Emergence series Fables and

1:02:54

Spells Collected and new short

1:02:56

fiction and poetry. What are you

1:02:58

hoping to emphasize is with this collection

1:03:01

of loved as well as new

1:03:03

works. Ah well, I

1:03:05

mean first, it was the most fun book

1:03:08

that I've pulled together. Um, I really

1:03:10

let myself like, I just gave myself

1:03:12

permission to lean into my witchy, magical

1:03:15

spell casting self. And you

1:03:17

know I talked about when I've learned

1:03:19

what I could do in a room, and now

1:03:21

I look back and I'm like, oh, I can cast spells, Like

1:03:24

I have an energy that moves through me and I

1:03:26

know that I have to be responsible with it. And

1:03:28

it's the same thing that happens when I write a story. So I'm

1:03:30

just like, this is a spell. We're casting spells all the

1:03:32

time, so fables of spells.

1:03:34

I let myself write about extraterrestrials.

1:03:37

I let myself write about water women

1:03:39

and witch magic, and I wrote Spells

1:03:42

to the Moon and yeah, I just was

1:03:44

like, what are all the things that I'm doing to try

1:03:46

to transform how I think about the world.

1:03:48

And most of the stories are about people

1:03:50

coming into their power, because that's

1:03:53

what I'm very interested right now, is like how

1:03:55

do we come into ourselves? Because

1:03:57

I think when we come into ourselves, we necessarily

1:04:00

come into our power. And I was like, oh, I know who I

1:04:02

am and now no one can take

1:04:04

that from me. Like that's the beauty of I

1:04:06

think aging. But I also think it's the beauty

1:04:08

that babies have. Like when you meet a kid, they're not like,

1:04:10

oh, what are you going to think about me? They're like, you think

1:04:12

I'm awesome? And I just pooped all over the

1:04:14

place. And like, I'm the cutest person

1:04:17

to the fullest, so true

1:04:19

to themselves. I'm like, how do we return to that that. I'm

1:04:22

like, even coming to this podcast

1:04:24

with you, I'm like, let me not assume that

1:04:26

bartun days trying to catch me in

1:04:28

something or you know. I was like, let me assume that

1:04:31

I can just be myself and you're going to meet me by

1:04:33

being yourself and magic will happen,

1:04:35

because that's what happens when humans are actually

1:04:37

being themselves, you know. So the book

1:04:39

is basically one story after another of that,

1:04:42

you know, moments of people claiming

1:04:44

a little bit more of themselves and their power. And

1:04:48

I created an entire extraterrestial species,

1:04:50

says Virgos. So I hope that you that

1:04:52

I'm starting with that story. I'm jumping

1:04:54

right to that one non

1:04:57

linear story consumption. Yeah,

1:04:59

I really like non linear books too. I'm like, please

1:05:01

put this in your bathroom and just open up

1:05:03

to whatever pages right for you at

1:05:06

that moment. Jump around. So,

1:05:10

um, we ask all of our

1:05:12

guests, if you were to define citizen

1:05:15

not as a legalistic noun but

1:05:17

as a verb, what does it mean

1:05:20

to citizen? How would you interpret

1:05:22

that to me? To citizen means

1:05:24

to take responsibility for the fact that I'm part

1:05:27

of something larger than myself and

1:05:29

to be a contribution of

1:05:31

life moving towards life in whatever

1:05:34

structures I'm a part of. Mm hmm,

1:05:37

thank you, thank you. We

1:05:40

have reached that moment in our show where we

1:05:42

bring the people into

1:05:44

the fray. So first up,

1:05:47

Alison Mosqueta.

1:05:50

Hi, Alison, I'm Alison

1:05:52

Mosqueta. I'm here in Denver, Colorado

1:05:56

and cerious about how do we citizen

1:05:58

in fun ways? So how

1:06:03

to citizen has really stretched my

1:06:05

thinking about our collective responsibility

1:06:07

as a member of society and ways that I

1:06:10

was never taught, especially around

1:06:12

policy, government, democracy.

1:06:15

Um never learned any of those things growing

1:06:17

up in school, right, never learned exactly

1:06:19

what it means to be involved and engaged

1:06:22

and be a democracy.

1:06:24

So how do we do that in fun

1:06:26

ways that are exciting and energizing,

1:06:28

especially maybe in private sectors like nonprofits

1:06:31

in my own community. It's really exciting

1:06:33

to think about if we do this

1:06:35

now and we start instilling this in younger and

1:06:37

younger generations, what is

1:06:40

the next thing going to look like? Right? Yeah,

1:06:42

So you know the thing that

1:06:44

comes to me is like you have to stay

1:06:47

in touch with the part of you that knows how to have fun,

1:06:49

which I think is one of the things that often we accidentally

1:06:53

set down when we become an organizer because I must

1:06:55

save the world and I must be so serious.

1:06:58

So part of it is just apping back authentically

1:07:01

into the part of you that knows how to have fun. But I

1:07:03

have to tell you, when you first said the question, I heard

1:07:05

fund raise and I was like, um,

1:07:08

that's a whole another podcast, but fun

1:07:10

ways, I'm like, yeah, I think most of

1:07:12

it is what actually brings you joy. So

1:07:15

recently I've been building out this project that's

1:07:17

a musical ritual and it's because I

1:07:19

like singing in groups with people. And

1:07:22

I remember I've been like, oh, yeah,

1:07:24

I used to love being in a choir when I was a kid, like coming

1:07:26

together and singing, like just everyone's

1:07:28

sitting down the house and have a good time. Not

1:07:31

because you're trying to sound the most beautiful

1:07:33

are perfect, but the singing with is

1:07:36

the thing, right, And we always talk

1:07:38

about preaching to the choir, but I'm like the choir

1:07:40

these reminders on how to be a choir, like

1:07:43

how do we harmonize, how do we find

1:07:45

the right volume so that we can all be heard and make

1:07:47

something larger than ourselves. So for me, that's

1:07:50

a super fun way to have people come together

1:07:52

and do what could be important serious

1:07:54

work also, but it's doing

1:07:57

it in a way that's really enjoyable. I also

1:07:59

find adding celebration, like

1:08:01

doses of celebration into any community

1:08:04

is really helpful. So it's your

1:08:06

birthday, Like, let's take a moment

1:08:08

and actually celebrate that you just got a divorce.

1:08:10

Yay, I'm sure it was the right decision.

1:08:13

You know, something happened with your kid, You've

1:08:15

got a new degree. Like taking the time

1:08:17

to celebrate each other in community because

1:08:20

and then also celebrate the small winds. You

1:08:22

know. Back when I was a facilitator, I always lift

1:08:24

this up because I'm like, this is so funny to me. But I

1:08:26

had a group that was like they could not make a decision,

1:08:30

Like they just could not make a decision together. It was

1:08:32

like, we're how we're gonna save the world. We can't even

1:08:34

And we figured out how to order lunch together, and

1:08:38

I was like, you know what we wanna do is gonna pause and we're gonna

1:08:40

put on Mary J. Blige we're gonna just sing. You

1:08:42

know. Adding music into anything

1:08:45

I think improves the fun capacity

1:08:47

of it. And then I think having fun that's

1:08:49

not tied to transaction, so

1:08:52

really being like, oh, we have bowling nights that are

1:08:54

not about trying to raise money. We have movie

1:08:57

nights. You know. There's a group here in um

1:09:00

North Carolina in Durham where I live called

1:09:02

Spirit House, and like every time a big black

1:09:04

movie comes out there, just like we rented out of the theater and

1:09:06

we just go and we're like Wakonda

1:09:09

forever, Like it's all of us. We have shared

1:09:11

values. Everyone's wearing a mask. We don't have to worry

1:09:13

about all this stuff, and we can just enjoy

1:09:15

each other and there's no organized

1:09:18

component to it. It's really being together. So

1:09:20

to me, that part of being

1:09:22

with your community is super important

1:09:25

because that's what actually forms the connective

1:09:28

tissue that makes you even want to act as a community.

1:09:30

Team building. Yeah, in a fun

1:09:33

way. Thank you all right, Next up, we have

1:09:36

we've heard this name once already.

1:09:38

Please welcome to the stage.

1:09:43

I had to do my my live event MC voice

1:09:46

for this one. I love the way you did that. That

1:09:48

was so exciting. My name in

1:09:51

silly. What's up everybody?

1:09:54

Hi? And Marie Brown? Hi.

1:09:56

My question is everyone

1:09:59

from the Boys to Marry

1:10:02

m Kaba that has attended

1:10:04

to black liberation and

1:10:06

had like a home and the politics of

1:10:08

it found the need to go to the

1:10:10

culture and the arts of it. Everyone.

1:10:14

So I want you to talk to us about what that's

1:10:16

looking like for you. Because I heard

1:10:19

that you're making music. Now I heard

1:10:23

Oh, I love this question. One

1:10:25

thing is I think that there's a huge overlap

1:10:28

between the poetic force within

1:10:30

us and the part of us that wants to save the world.

1:10:33

A lot of people who I meet who are like, I

1:10:35

love the earth, I love the world, I love humans.

1:10:38

It's because we're paying attention to what's beautiful,

1:10:40

and we're paying attention to what hurts. We're

1:10:42

empathetic, we're letting it in. I

1:10:44

meet so many people who are organizers, are activists,

1:10:47

and then like one step under that, they're like, I'm

1:10:49

a poet, I'm a singer, I'm a writer, I'm a rapper,

1:10:51

I'm writing plays, and I imagine

1:10:54

a future often where one

1:10:56

of the ways we know that we've healed from a lot of these

1:10:58

oppressive tendencies that we're actually spending

1:11:01

most of our time making and sharing art. But

1:11:03

I also love what happens when people

1:11:06

are able to just drop into the cultural space.

1:11:08

And I've been allowing that for myself. So I

1:11:11

have an album coming out that's related

1:11:13

to the Fables and spells work. It's all like spell

1:11:15

songs and songs that feel like magic

1:11:18

to me. And then I just did this huge music

1:11:20

ritual that I'm work shopping and

1:11:22

taking around the country to be like, can

1:11:25

we create a portal into the future

1:11:27

through songs that we sing in choir in

1:11:29

chorus together, and can we create a space

1:11:32

and opening for ourselves through music?

1:11:34

And I think the reason that

1:11:38

there's this direct pathway from

1:11:40

trying to change the world too into that culture

1:11:42

space is that eventually you recognize

1:11:45

that what we're trying to shift is culture.

1:11:47

Is we're trying to change the culture through

1:11:49

which people see themselves as a part of

1:11:52

this whole you know, Audrey Lord said that

1:11:54

we don't live compartmentalized lives, right,

1:11:56

We don't live in these little silos apart

1:11:58

from ourselves. We are whole us. We are whole

1:12:00

people. And I think what we want

1:12:03

to invite into the public sphere more and more often is

1:12:05

spaces where people can come together and be whole. And

1:12:08

when I'm singing a song, my

1:12:10

political self is there, and my

1:12:13

insecure self is there, and my

1:12:15

little girl who knows I'm the ship is

1:12:17

there, and my grown up who

1:12:19

has pain and heartbreak is all

1:12:21

there. And I'm only

1:12:24

interested in being with people when all of us can all

1:12:26

be there, right, And the cultural

1:12:28

space for me is where that opens up. And

1:12:31

it has been amazing to look around

1:12:34

and see so many of my comrades also

1:12:36

doing this. So I look over and I'm like Charlenne

1:12:38

Carruthers, who is part of the YP one hundred

1:12:40

for a long time, has made a film,

1:12:42

and Patris Colors is doing all these

1:12:45

arts installations, and I know

1:12:47

so many people who are writing books, writing

1:12:49

fiction who are like Toronto Burke

1:12:51

is like, I've got fiction out ahead of me, like right,

1:12:54

because we're imagining the new world. These

1:12:56

are all people who have spent a ton of time imagining

1:12:58

the world and now we're trying to find ways to

1:13:01

share it with everyone. And yeah,

1:13:03

I will say it's thrilling, Like I'm

1:13:06

still vibrating off of the musical

1:13:08

portal that got opened on Saturday

1:13:10

in New York and for

1:13:12

me, as someone who people are like they look at

1:13:14

and be like, oh, you know things, you're

1:13:17

so wise. It was so incredible

1:13:19

to get to come into something and be like, I'm

1:13:21

also a part of the choir, so

1:13:23

I can sing with my own solitary voice.

1:13:26

But what makes me feel the most alive

1:13:29

is when I'm singing with four people

1:13:31

in a circle and we're catching

1:13:33

each other and we're vibing off of each

1:13:35

other, and like we remember that we're bigger

1:13:38

than just our solitary selves. It's very healing.

1:13:41

It is. You've reminded me of a middle school

1:13:43

experience singing in a school

1:13:45

production with a bunch of other

1:13:47

black kids that was mostly white school and

1:13:50

white kids were singing with us too. Was doing some kind of gospel

1:13:52

song. I'm not even Christian like that, but the song

1:13:55

was so moving and were like

1:13:57

thugs were happy, you know what I mean, Like,

1:14:00

that's that's listen okay,

1:14:02

because there's something universal that taps you

1:14:04

into yourself. And I will say the music, the

1:14:07

musical ritual is basically taking

1:14:09

the technology of gospel music and

1:14:11

interacting it with the ideas of emergence, strategy

1:14:14

and pleasure activism and transformative

1:14:16

justice. So it's absolutely

1:14:18

unlocking that place. Like people come in there like oh

1:14:21

hold up, I don't know if we could do this, and

1:14:23

it was like, yeah, we can feel really really

1:14:25

really excellent together, and like that's

1:14:27

medicine we need. It's getting to that under

1:14:30

level that you talked about earlier. It

1:14:32

bypasses. Yeah, I had people

1:14:34

crying. I can't imagine you may compeople. I

1:14:36

love is having people like being able to grieve

1:14:39

together, because I do think in this period

1:14:41

of history, we have so much

1:14:43

to grieve and so few places to actually

1:14:46

let that grief come through, and

1:14:48

we need these collective spaces where

1:14:50

we can actually let the grief come through because

1:14:53

it also helps us figure out what we can do. Like

1:14:55

the world we're going to build is one that is built from our grief

1:14:57

as much as it is built from our visions. It's

1:15:00

like what am I done losing?

1:15:02

And what am I accepting? And what am I dreaming?

1:15:05

So all right, we have Carol

1:15:08

Wombledorff. You will correct me, Carol, you

1:15:10

will say your name and where you're at and

1:15:12

get to your question. Hi, Carol

1:15:15

Wommeldorf. Is that German? Oh

1:15:17

yeah, yeah, I was raised. I was. I grew

1:15:20

up in Germany, Like half of my childhood

1:15:22

was in Germany. You know, there's an S between the L

1:15:24

and the D if you're in Germany.

1:15:26

So, um, how do you respond

1:15:29

to folks who say voting is

1:15:31

irrelevant and rigged? And I

1:15:33

mean, it's such a mundane but it's a real

1:15:36

day to day kind of question when you want

1:15:38

to help people understand that it

1:15:40

is rigged and it's still matters. That's

1:15:42

right, that's beautiful, Carol.

1:15:44

Where are you geographically before when makes Cincinnati,

1:15:47

Ohio? We're really batters? Yeah,

1:15:49

okay, well I

1:15:51

hear that all the time. I think it's

1:15:54

a little bit of a both end. Like I never tried to

1:15:56

take that away from people. I'm like, you're very smart,

1:15:58

you're not wrong. Is rigged and

1:16:01

it is unfair, and it

1:16:04

still matters. I think of it as the harm reduction

1:16:06

strategy for this period of history,

1:16:09

as we're in the shift, so harm

1:16:11

reduction for those who may or may not be aware

1:16:13

of it. As the idea with drug users that

1:16:16

you're like, you might not be able to make it all the way to abstinence,

1:16:18

you may not be able to live a sober life.

1:16:21

But you can reduce the harms that come from

1:16:23

your drug use, and you can reduce

1:16:25

the harms in ways that make sure you still have a home

1:16:27

and you still have access to your kids, that you still

1:16:30

have the maximum health in your body, and

1:16:33

you can learn to trust yourself without judgment

1:16:35

and be in that So I approach voting

1:16:37

that way where I'm like, if we're

1:16:39

going to get to a different way of doing

1:16:42

nation state, if we're going to get

1:16:44

to a practice where we do have multiple

1:16:46

viable parties, for instance, that give us

1:16:49

actual options to express ourselves politically,

1:16:52

we won't get there by fully giving

1:16:54

up on participating in the current system.

1:16:57

And I actually encourage people

1:16:59

when they say, I'm like, you probably actually need to

1:17:01

be voting more rather than not voting

1:17:03

at all, because a lot

1:17:05

of times people say that around the national elections

1:17:08

and they're upset because we only have a two

1:17:10

party system and it's a party that is like central

1:17:13

and right, like we don't really have a

1:17:15

strong left at the national level,

1:17:18

and I mean from a movement

1:17:20

perspective, right, I'm like, my dad would argue

1:17:23

differently, but I feel like when

1:17:25

I hear that, I'm like, yes, And the reason that

1:17:27

exists is because we're not necessarily

1:17:30

engaging in the electoral process at our

1:17:32

local level. That feeds up into

1:17:35

what's possible at the national level or was possible

1:17:37

at the state level. Right, it's all fractals.

1:17:40

Elections are a very fractal process.

1:17:42

Like what happens at any federal

1:17:44

or national level is only

1:17:46

possible because it was happening at all the local levels.

1:17:49

And part of why I moved to Durham was because I

1:17:51

was like, very excited about what's happening

1:17:53

at the local political level here. I

1:17:56

had a friend who was a black trans

1:17:58

person who was elected to school board.

1:18:00

I have someone else who I met who was elected as

1:18:02

the d A. I met all these folks

1:18:04

who I'm like, getting themselves into

1:18:07

the city council, getting this like being

1:18:09

like, actually, we're going to grow our political

1:18:11

power up right. And

1:18:14

it's only by that growing up that you see things

1:18:16

like oh, Georgia having a blue

1:18:18

election, things where you're like, that's not ever

1:18:20

going to happen. It happens because someone like

1:18:22

Stacy Abrams is like, I'm going to take the local

1:18:25

electoral process seriously as

1:18:27

seriously as anything is happening on the national, federal

1:18:29

level. So that's often the response

1:18:32

I give, and I say, if you can't

1:18:34

figure it out for yourself, do it for someone else, And

1:18:36

like, I love to keep some of those in my back pocket.

1:18:38

I'm like, there are a lot of people who don't have the

1:18:41

right to vote who are going to be negatively

1:18:43

impacted by what feel

1:18:45

like small scale differences, like there's no difference between

1:18:47

the parties, And I'm like, that's because

1:18:49

you're not a citizen. If there's no difference

1:18:51

between the parties, that's because you're not reliant

1:18:53

on medication for your well being. If you

1:18:55

don't see a difference between the parties, Like, there are places

1:18:57

where there are distinct differences. This is one of

1:18:59

my everything I've been saying lately. There's

1:19:02

also a lot of fake orgasmic policies.

1:19:04

So there's a lot of policies they're

1:19:06

not actually the thing we want, they won't

1:19:08

actually satisfy us, but we're being

1:19:10

given the fake orgasm version

1:19:13

of it right where it's like this kind of sounds

1:19:15

like it's moving us towards climate something

1:19:17

good. Right, we have to actually

1:19:19

be engaged to be able to make the distinction and be like, no,

1:19:22

I'm not satisfied by that, and we're going to build

1:19:25

policy that actually is effective and satisfying

1:19:28

for our future. And we're going to build that up

1:19:30

right. That's the other thing people often don't realize is that policy

1:19:33

builds up right. Being able

1:19:35

to enact a good policy at the federal level

1:19:37

is because good policy has been built at the

1:19:39

local level. Adrian Marie

1:19:41

Brown advocate for real orgasmic

1:19:44

policies, real orgasmic policy,

1:19:46

true satisfaction in our small

1:19:49

D democratic lives. That's

1:19:52

the only small D that needs to be there.

1:19:57

That I was going to ask if you have anything

1:19:59

else to add, I think you just did. Is

1:20:02

there anything else you want to say? I

1:20:05

mean, I have this book out, Fables and Spells. Please

1:20:07

get it from a K Press directly. I

1:20:09

put a single out called Ancestors Use

1:20:11

Me so you can hear me sing to you about

1:20:13

the ancestors. And if you're

1:20:15

interested in bringing the musical ritual to you,

1:20:18

you can reach out through the website and we'll

1:20:20

find a way to come to you because it's it's an in person

1:20:23

healing experience and bar tun Day.

1:20:26

Thank you for finding me, Thank you for hunting me down

1:20:28

and opening this portal. I'm excited for

1:20:30

our Virgo friendship to begin and and

1:20:33

continue. So I echo

1:20:35

all of that, I fractal that back

1:20:37

to you. Thank you for giving

1:20:39

us ways to grow up yeah,

1:20:43

and to be, you know,

1:20:45

inside, the way we want to be outside, recognizing

1:20:47

they're all the same thing. So

1:20:49

appreciate what you've done and how

1:20:51

transparent you've been in your own growth. Thank you,

1:20:54

Thank you, thank you, bye y'all. By

1:20:58

Marie Brown by

1:21:04

There is so much that we think

1:21:06

we have to do to preserve and

1:21:08

extend our democracy. We

1:21:10

have to register people to vote and

1:21:12

in gerrymandering, and get money

1:21:14

out of politics, and expand the Supreme

1:21:17

Court and end white supremacy

1:21:19

and in the patriarchy. And it

1:21:21

is just a giant task list.

1:21:24

What Adrian Marie Brown reminds us

1:21:27

of through Emergent Strategy in particular,

1:21:30

is that what we need to do is

1:21:32

be together. We need to practice

1:21:35

being together, humanizing

1:21:37

each other, being in right relationship,

1:21:40

working towards having generative

1:21:42

conflict with each other, and

1:21:44

through that let the resurgence,

1:21:47

the expansion, the preservation of

1:21:49

democracy emerge in

1:21:52

order for us to have any chance at

1:21:54

achieving that task list. And it's a

1:21:56

worthy list. We've

1:21:58

got to go deeper. We've

1:22:00

got to till and regenerate that soil,

1:22:03

that culture with a focus on

1:22:05

our relationships. And

1:22:09

there's something else. The

1:22:11

Octavia Butler line that Adrian

1:22:14

shared woke something up in me.

1:22:17

There's nothing new under the

1:22:19

sun, but there are new

1:22:22

sons. Mm hmm.

1:22:25

I admit that there are times when I have

1:22:28

felt stuck, uninspired, and

1:22:30

depressed about where we go from here,

1:22:33

and that feeling needs to be shaken

1:22:35

and jolted and released so

1:22:38

that I can see new possibility again.

1:22:40

And I think that's true for many. We

1:22:43

are stuck so often when we

1:22:45

think how do we save democracy

1:22:49

because a lot of the time we limit

1:22:51

our efforts to restoring the past,

1:22:54

and the past is not necessarily

1:22:56

the model. America is

1:22:58

a long standing democracy in

1:23:00

very thick quotation marks from

1:23:03

most of its history, most of its people

1:23:05

were legally not allowed to participate

1:23:07

in most of the mechanics of democracy.

1:23:10

So where we really If

1:23:12

we limit our imaginations to our existing

1:23:14

past, then we're limiting our future

1:23:17

to what has already passed, And

1:23:20

so invoking the words and

1:23:22

vision of people like Octavia Butler

1:23:25

can help push us beyond the bounds of

1:23:27

what we already know. Over the

1:23:29

rest of this season, we will push

1:23:31

those bounds with you in this podcast.

1:23:34

All the episodes that follow growth

1:23:37

from seeds planted in this conversation

1:23:41

will explore the strengths and limitations

1:23:43

of voting within Saufa of the New Georgia

1:23:46

Project will push democracy

1:23:48

beyond elections in an episode focused

1:23:50

on citizen assemblies. Will imagine

1:23:52

bigger and better versions of our economy

1:23:55

with Kate Rayworth, will explore

1:23:57

how we build tech with Ruhab Benjamin,

1:24:00

will rethink how we participate in and shape

1:24:02

our communities with Christian Vonnazette

1:24:04

and Alek Jang, and so much

1:24:06

more. We can create

1:24:09

a healthier culture of democracy.

1:24:11

And all these people were bringing you this season,

1:24:14

they're helping us build it. And

1:24:18

now it's time for some action. Let's

1:24:21

practice imagining. Imagination

1:24:24

is a muscle that we need to exercise in

1:24:27

order to envision the reality we want to create.

1:24:30

Adrian reminded us of that. Today we've

1:24:32

broken these out into three areas, personal

1:24:34

reflection, getting more informed, and

1:24:37

publicly participating. Now

1:24:39

for internal personal reflection, ask

1:24:41

yourself, what communities are

1:24:43

you a part of right now? From the smallest

1:24:46

to the largest the most local to the

1:24:48

most global. Build that list

1:24:50

in your mind. In which of these communities

1:24:53

did you play some role in decision making

1:24:55

and resource allocation? Now? Can

1:24:57

you think of ways to bring others into

1:24:59

those decisions more? In other

1:25:01

words, can you think of ways, even

1:25:04

and especially small, ways to

1:25:06

bring more democracy to your existing

1:25:08

communities? In terms of

1:25:10

actions you can take to be more informed, we

1:25:13

want to prepare you to flect that imagination

1:25:15

of yours. Adrian was mentored by

1:25:17

Chinese American philosopher, writer, and

1:25:19

activists Grace Lee Boggs. Learn

1:25:22

more about Bogs in the documentary American

1:25:25

Revolutionary The Evolution of Grace

1:25:27

Lee Box. It's available on Amazon,

1:25:30

Prime, YouTube, and other sites

1:25:32

for just a few dollars. Explore

1:25:34

the power of fiction to affect the factual

1:25:37

by reading Adrian's book Octavia's

1:25:39

Brood, science fiction stories from

1:25:41

social justice movements, and her newest

1:25:43

book, Fables and Spells. And

1:25:45

you should check out the parable series by Octavia

1:25:48

Butler to see why Adrian and

1:25:50

so many others are so obsessed

1:25:52

with this writer. Don't have money,

1:25:54

that's okay, grab a copy from your

1:25:56

local library. Finally, in

1:25:59

the realm of participation, we

1:26:01

want you to practice collaborative ideation.

1:26:05

Return to those communities you identified

1:26:07

in the personal reflection. It could be your

1:26:09

household, classroom, office,

1:26:11

department, or group. Chat. Within

1:26:14

one of these groups, have members

1:26:16

identify some challenge you feel as

1:26:18

hurting or impeding the group. Then

1:26:21

ask folks to imagine what things

1:26:23

would be like years out if this

1:26:25

challenge were fully resolved. How

1:26:28

would they feel, what would they be able to

1:26:30

accomplish? Write this down in

1:26:32

short form, perhaps a corny movie

1:26:34

trailer to make it fun. In a world

1:26:37

where none of us carry student debt,

1:26:40

or in a world where everyone

1:26:42

in this house is able to access the bathroom

1:26:45

for as long as they need without preventing

1:26:47

others from doing the same, You get

1:26:49

the idea. It doesn't have to be super

1:26:52

serious. The point is to try with

1:26:54

others to imagine a better

1:26:56

future. If you don't have someone to play

1:26:58

with, try this by your self, but

1:27:00

look for ways to share your ideation with

1:27:02

others, maybe in an email to a

1:27:05

friend or a post on social media.

1:27:08

If you take any of these actions, please

1:27:10

brag about it online and use the hashtag

1:27:13

how to citizen. Also tag

1:27:15

our Instagram how the citizen. I

1:27:17

am always online and I really do see

1:27:20

your messages, so send them. You can

1:27:22

also visit our website, how a Citizen

1:27:24

dot com, which has all of our shows,

1:27:26

full transcripts, actions and

1:27:28

more. Finally, see

1:27:30

this episode show notes for resources,

1:27:33

actions and more ways to connect How

1:27:36

the Citizen with Barritton Day as a production

1:27:38

of I Heart Radio Podcasts and Row

1:27:40

Home Productions. Our executive

1:27:42

producers are Me Barrittuon Day

1:27:44

Thurston and Elizabeth Stewart. Our

1:27:47

leave producer is Ali Graham,

1:27:49

Our associate producer is Donia abdel

1:27:51

Hamid. Alex Lewis is our managing

1:27:54

producer, and John Myers is our

1:27:56

executive editor. Our mixed

1:27:58

engineer is Justin Burger. Original

1:28:00

music by Andrew Eapen with additional

1:28:02

music by Blue Dot Sessions. Special

1:28:05

thanks to Joel Smith from my Heart Radio and

1:28:07

Lay Labina. Next

1:28:14

on How to Citizen, Adrian

1:28:16

went deep on the power of fiction

1:28:18

and stories. And for years we've

1:28:20

all been living in a story that isolates

1:28:23

us from each other and sees our only

1:28:25

power as that of a consumer. But

1:28:27

in our next episode, we'll talk with someone

1:28:30

inviting us to live inside a citizens

1:28:32

story, one that reorients us

1:28:34

towards connection and collaboration. In

1:28:36

ways I am sure would make Adrian

1:28:38

proud. The important thing to recognize

1:28:40

when you start to see these as stories, when

1:28:42

you start to see it in this way, is

1:28:44

that you're not just talking about like the

1:28:47

problem is consumption, the problem is advertising

1:28:49

like. It's much more about the storytelling

1:28:51

of our society. It's the fact that what I

1:28:53

would describe what we live in today as a consumer democracy

1:28:56

where our only agency is to choose between

1:28:58

a fix set of options that are offered to us, where

1:29:00

we're actually encouraged to make that choice on the basis

1:29:03

of our own individual self interest. John Alexander

1:29:05

tells us how learning to see the story of consumption

1:29:08

we've been written into can change our

1:29:10

world, and how stepping outside that

1:29:12

story could help save our democracy.

1:29:20

Row Home Productions