We Are Not Okay: What Happens When You Fund the Fight But Not The Recovery

Aug 12, 2022
 

This event is for organizers and activists engaged in U.S movements who feel exploited and disappointed by the lack of organizational support when experiencing burn out, unprocessed grief, or personal crisis as a result of sacrifices made for the movement. It’s for all of us who are struggling against internalizing the lie that our struggles result from personal failings and not systemic ones. It's for people who need to be resourced to rest.

Its a chance for movement veterans, healing justice practitioners and movement strategists from across the ecosystem of social movements in the U.S to discuss the toll that trauma, scarcity, martyrdom and the culture of silence has taken on organizers. A panel will shed a light on how the fundamental contradictions of U.S society-its over development materially and its underdevelopment spiritually and culturally–are showing up in our movements. The crises of belonging, social reproduction and unacknowledged history are destroying our organizations.

Then participants will be offered space to break the silence around this dysfunction and illustrate how it is not a problem of individual personalities but a reflection of our societies broader collapse. We will discuss our vision of what a collective response might look like. WildSeed will offer our preliminary vision for what is needed and invite folks to add to it.

Movements, especially Black and Indigenous lead movements, are severely underfunded. They are also funded only for the fight and not for the recovery. The basic movement ethos that requires heroic sacrifice for the cause is a reflection of our patriarchal, extractive culture. We need a fundamental shift in how we think about what movement work is. This means not just funding more or differently but rethinking what it means to be good stewards of resources. We have to move beyond idolizing scrappy organizations and theories of change that require visible self sacrifice to move hearts. These strategies prove to turn movement organizations into slaughter houses where organizers are disposed of like cattle.

SPEAKERS

Vahisha Hasan -Crisis Response Organizer and Movement Healer

Vahisha Hasan (she/her) is a faith-rooted organizer moving at the intersections of faith, social justice, and mental health. She is the Executive Director of Movement in Faith, a project of Transform Network. She is a powerful public speaker, transformative facilitator, social justice trainer, minister, and writer with a deeply prophetic voice and imagination for how faith communities can be an active part of healing and collective liberation.

Vahisha is the Director of the SEAL Initiative at American Baptist College in Nashville TN (SocialJustice, Equity, Advocacy, and Leadership). Vahisha is also a core team member of TRACC4Movements (Trauma Response and Crisis Care) providing supportive tools for wellness for those who labor in freedom and liberation. She also serves as an associate minister at Christ Missionary Baptist Church, under Rev. Dr. Gina Stewart, Senior Pastor, where she was licensed and ordained June 23, 2019.

Erika Totten -The Light Guardian

Erika Totten is a dynamic facilitator, pleasure activist, healer, spiritual life coach, and community builder from Washington, D.C. initiated as a Sistah, Goddess, Priestess, Healer in the lineage of her mentor Dr. Shola Arewa. Erika supports people breaking free of the lies empire teaches us about our selves and stepping into the gorgeous, powerful and erotic truth of who we are. She is the founder and director of Unchained Visioning, co-creator of Black Lives Matter: DC, and a core member of Harriet's Apothecary Healer's Collective.

 

Aaron Goggans - The Steward of the Pattern

Aaron Goggans is a writer, facilitator, organizer and architect of the future. Aaron peers into the emerging future while being rooted in deep history of the present moment to envision pathways into a future where we all got free. Co-instigator of Black Lives Matter: DC, the Insight-Incite Collective and founder of the Well Examined Life.

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