What it really takes to do liberatory work
Many, too many, people focus on liberatory work in one direction. YES, that work is important.
But it’s crucial to understand that systems of oppression work in many directions simultaneously. For example, it’s not JUST racism at play. Even the ‘flavor’ of racism varies from the space and the specific colonial action. For example, we have settler colonialism, orientalism, anti-blackness, and colorism to name a few.
And it’s really unhelpful to look only at racism, without also looking at other aspects of oppression like gender, class, disability, queerness, poverty, education, access, size, religion, citizenship, and so on. Actually, without analysis or understanding of how these things intersect, we’ll miss out on creating a truly liberatory praxis.
The thing is capitalism has inexplicably linked systemic oppression, dehumanization, productivity/worth and climate destruction. If we’re only pulling at one piece without understanding or seeing the connected pieces, we inevitably replicate the same power structures. It’s like my what my dad told me about weeding, we needed to get them out roots and all, otherwise they would grow right back.
In our businesses, just looking at racism might mean we focus on ‘diversity initiatives’ that only lead to tokenism or making BIPOC scholarships without making our spaces inclusive to support BIPOC. We must look at racism and the myriad of ways it impacts our businesses and work to address the systemic pieces with a multi-pronged strategy for inclusion and equity.
Same thing with capitalism.
We need to have a wider discussion and a multifaceted approach to dismantling it and building something beyond capitalism. That's where our course comes in.
Join Moriah and I as we take our next cohort on a 14-week journey on understanding how these things fit together and create your own personalized praxis. You’ll have a chance to design and fine tune your praxis based on what your circumstances, needs, capacity, and community, with others who in our course. We invite you to apply. And as always, PM me if you need support in the application process, and YES we made the course as accessible as possible in a variety of ways.
We'd love to have you join us!
In solidarity,
Anuradha