Resourcing Networks of Community Care

WHO: This online event was for people who want to hear from two Black led organizations about what building infrastructure for care looks like on the local and national level

WHAT: This Fireside Chat focused on the work WildSeed and Womanist Working Collective are doing to build infrastructure of care. This includes building robust systems of mutual aid, piloting guaranteed income programs and offering wrap around support to frontline movement stewards.

WHY: This is part of an ongoing series of talks about how a more caring response to the crises we face is possible. We are living in a moment where cruelty and carelessness are being weaponized against the public infrastructure we all rely on to meet our needs. The goal is to overwhelm and starve the country into compliance. We are at risk for our communities to be deprived to mount a defense to more direct attacks to our safety and freedom that are surely on the horizon.

As we face these conditions it becomes more important than ever that we find ways to not only support each other but do so in ways that build community power. As daunting as that sounds, it's even easier said than done. That is why we want to have an open conversation with our community about what we have learned about building power while offering care. Please join us in this critical discussion - for ourselves and for our movements.

SUPPORT: If you'd like to support these community care programs, please donate here >>

SPEAKERS:

Okichie Davis is Co-Organizer of Operations and Wellness Programming at the Womanist Working Collective. Okichie Davis (they/them) is a queer, non-binary Black woman and a Licensed Professional Counselor. Okichie holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Humanities and a Master of Science degree in Counseling with a specialization in Clinical Mental Health, both from Villanova University. Okichie is a board-certified trauma therapist and has been practicing since 2014. Okichie is an experienced community organizer; they have been organizing with WWC since 2016 and are also the Program Director of the Hibiscus Rose Therapy Fund, which they founded in 2020.

Cierra Freeman is Co-Organizer of Finance, Development & Resource Mobilization at the Womainist Working Collective. Cierra Freeman (she/her) is a Queer Black woman and mother of 2 AFAB children. Philadelphia born, raised and taught, Cierra is a Freedom Schools baby, and a Student of Life with an educational focus on Social Equity by way Collective Impact & Funding. She holds a Diploma in Non-Profit & Organizational Management, Certificates in Community Organizing & Mobilizing, Resource Mobilization, Sociocratic Governance, Grassroots, Digital & Traditional Fundraising, Grantwriting, and Small Business Management & Marketing strategy. Cierra has organized with WWC since 2017 and is also the Founding Director of a local community organization.

Aaron Goggans is the Dream Gardener at the WildSeed Society - where he builds movement infrastructure before people know they need it and helps them achieve things even he never imagined were possible. Aaron is writer, facilitator and organizer working within the Black Radical Tradition to support the Labor, anti-war and Black Liberation movements for almost 20 years.

Womanist Working Collective

The Womanist Working Collective is a radical grassroots social action and support collective for Black folks of marginalized gender experience, specifically women (trans* and cis), femmes, and other gender expansive folx. Our Community of Practice unapologetically centers our Quality of Life and livelihoods through Community Organizing, Mutual Aid and Holistic Wellness. Established in October 2015 as an affinity group on Meetup, we began gathering as a group of likeminded Black women, femmes and gender expansive people. Our overarching purpose is to improve Black women, femmes, and gender expansive people’s Quality of Life by dismantling the Interlocking Systems of Oppression, which we’ve identified with the help (read: text/work) of bell hooks, Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw and the Combahee River Collective as the Imperialist White Supremacist Capitalist CisHeteroPatriarchy. Through our work, we seek to shift the reality and culture of how society holds, supports, protects, funds, heals and educates Black women & girls, femmes and gender expansive folks while we’re simultaneously developing for ourselves the tools and language to thrive against these interlocking systemic oppression reinforced by the local social determinants impacting us daily (i.e. Neocolonialism's Gentrification, Capitalism's poverty, White Supremacy's Racism, Cissexism's Transphobia, Heterosexism's Homophobia, Patriarchy's Misogynoir). We believe the projects we develop or support externally can help change the reality of how Black women & girls, femmes, and gender expansive people thrive in this country, locally and currently.

WILDSEED SOCIETY

The WildSeed Society is a political, spiritual and economic community that is inviting people to build a 21st century Underground Railroad together. We are building a series of refuges from the current exploitative world to new worlds where we all get to belong and be cared for - by focusing on Spiritual Liberation, Social Transformation and Economic Revolution. We seek to experiment and prototype our way into a new way of life - in community and in right relationship with the land.

The WildSeed Society is stewarded by a collective of movement veterans, spiritual teachers, and organizational development nerds. Many of the instigators of the collective were involved in the Black Lives Matter movement before starting WildSeed. It is inspired by the vision of futurist Octavia Butler of gifted misfits finding community together before transforming the world.

If you would like to financially support this work, please consider donating here.