For The Wild - ADRIENNE MAREE BROWN on Emergent Strategy⌠ENCORE⌡⧸68

00:00:00.560 Hey, For the Wild community, Ayana here. I want to share a few community updates.

00:00:06.440 First, we're looking for land partnerships for our biodiversity enhancement test plots as part of the One Million Redwoods Project.

00:00:13.140 We're also looking for interns for the One Million Redwoods Project and expanding our research team.

00:00:19.280 So if you have experience as an ecologist or mycologist, get a hold of us at engage of forthewild.world.

00:00:27.160 We're also in need of some camera support for our Reciprocity Retreat, which is happening

00:00:32.540 over the weekend of July 20th, about an hour outside of Portland in the Gifford Pinchot

00:00:38.140 National Forest.

00:00:39.580 So if you have skills and would like to volunteer, again, email us at engageforthewild.world.

00:00:45.720 Next thing is if you're a musician and you would like your music showcased on the podcast,

00:00:51.200 go to our website and upload your music.

00:00:53.700 and lastly tomorrow we are launching a crowdfunding campaign for the podcast

00:00:59.820 on drip which is kickstarter's version of patreon we're really honored to be a part of their beta

00:01:05.720 group so keep checking out our social media and our newsletter to learn more about how you can

00:01:11.240 get involved and support for the wild podcast through this network all right thank you so much

00:01:23.700 so i just returned home to my beloved cougar mountain from detroit michigan where i was at

00:01:38.040 the allied media conference attending workshops and also hosting a panel on objectivity intimacy

00:01:45.080 and integrity in journalism and storytelling and i was honestly just blown away by my experience

00:01:53.140 there, and I had the honor of taking a few workshops with Adrienne Marie Brown, so the

00:01:59.960 whole team thought that it would be a good idea to rebroadcast her interview from March 18th,

00:02:06.120 2018, as it's also a team favorite. So if you haven't heard the podcast already, you're in for

00:02:13.480 a real treat, and if you have, I'm sure you're going to get even more out of it this time around.

00:02:18.600 Now on to the show.

00:02:23.140 The silence is broken by somebody crying

00:02:31.700 Trying to be heard, never a word

00:02:35.200 Always the attitude, sort out your own

00:02:38.720 Always alone

00:02:40.520 Wishing for something the world is denying

00:02:44.400 Out in the wilderness somebody's crying

00:02:49.560 Somebody wishing for something to happen

00:03:02.860 Wishing to tell, wishing to help

00:03:06.300 Someone was listening, someone who cared

00:03:10.120 Never despaired

00:03:11.980 Someone to lean on and someone to trust

00:03:16.620 Hello and welcome to For the Wild podcast. I'm Ayanna Young. Today we are speaking with

00:03:36.340 Adrienne Marie Brown. Adrienne is the author of Emergent Strategy, Shaping Change, Changing

00:03:43.000 Worlds, and co-editor of Octavia's Brood, Science Fiction from Social Justice Movements.

00:03:50.300 Her upcoming book is Pleasure Activism, The Politics of Feeling Good. She facilitates social

00:03:56.840 justice and Black liberation through the Emergent Strategy Ideation Institute. It is on the teaching

00:04:02.840 body of Black organizing for leadership and dignity and generative somatics. She and her

00:04:09.140 sister co-host how to survive the end of the world podcast and she writes the pleasure dome

00:04:15.160 column for bitch magazine hello adrian thank you so much for coming on thank you so much for having

00:04:24.140 me oh well i'm so excited to welcome you to for the wild podcast today and i have to say that

00:04:31.780 shortly after this interview was scheduled we realized that many of us on the for the wild team

00:04:37.540 were already reading Emergent Strategy. So on behalf of all of us, your work is truly a gift

00:04:48.580 to this time. Thank you so much. I appreciate that. Tell everyone I said hi. I will. And

00:04:55.400 okay. Well, I'd love to begin by talking about the concept of emergence itself.

00:05:03.780 okay and i'll just read the definition you share in emergent strategy from nick

00:05:08.760 obolensky of complex adaptive leadership quote emergence is the way complex systems and pattern

00:05:16.420 arise out of a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions end quote and for me tapping into

00:05:23.420 emergence is really enlivening and once i'd done so i began to see it everywhere and i just love

00:05:30.300 how it describes patterns both biological and social, and scales up from molecules self-organizing

00:05:38.120 into cells all the way to the Earth's climate or our societal structures. It seems that awakening

00:05:45.820 into emergence is essentially awakening to our ability as individuals and earthly communities

00:05:52.820 to shape the direction of change through small actions.

00:05:57.440 So I want to open this conversation by asking you to speak about emergence

00:06:01.660 in any way you feel called to in this moment.

00:06:06.060 I first came across the ideas of emergence without realizing that's what I was coming across,

00:06:13.300 but first seeing it as like, oh, this is a way that change can happen.

00:06:16.840 And in the writings of Octavia Butler, who was a black science fiction writer who wrote 12 novels and a collection of short stories, and her protagonists basically had these very different ways of leading than what I had been taught to do or taught to look for or pay attention to.

00:06:35.260 They were rarely bombastic, charming, linear, top-down leaders. They were much more often

00:06:43.020 highly adaptive, highly interconnected, and interdependent to the point of symbiosis.

00:06:50.380 Leaders who were focused on relationship and focused on integrity inside of relationship

00:06:55.340 and focused on constantly creating more possibilities. So I got tuned into this and

00:07:02.440 started paying attention to it and getting excited because I, I was feeling the limitations of the

00:07:07.640 kind of organizing that I was being invited into and trained into. And I, you know, it was really

00:07:13.260 good stuff. And I could feel like this is really good stuff if we just want to stop something bad

00:07:19.360 from happening, but I'm not sure that this will ever get us to a place where we can turn towards

00:07:24.960 what it is we really long for and start to generate it and practice it in our lives. And so something

00:07:31.400 about that understanding how ecosystems work and how the rest of our natural world works it's like

00:07:37.300 oh if we make the right small moves and lots of us make these right small moves and and get involved

00:07:44.840 in these smaller practices we actually can shift the the future and we're not going to be able to

00:07:51.580 actually get to a large-scale critical mass unless we begin with small actions before we hopped on

00:07:58.900 the call, I was talking with my tax representative. And I want to share this because it feels

00:08:05.180 relative. You know, for years, I was a war tax resistor, like, for maybe 12 years of my life.

00:08:12.340 And it really felt to me like the kind of small action I'm talking about, like, if I resist this,

00:08:18.440 if I refuse to participate in anything that will lead to war, then that'll change the world,

00:08:23.760 right and it makes a fine point for me between what is individual action versus what are small

00:08:30.760 communal actions and I feel like emergence really focuses on the small communal actions like it's

00:08:35.780 not just what can I as an individual do although you do look at yourself as the front line for

00:08:41.140 change but because I was acting very individually in my war tax resistance now years later the IRS

00:08:48.040 has caught up with me and I don't have community necessarily around me to be like oh we've got you

00:08:52.600 will protect you. Here's what we're going to do. And so I'm like, oh, if I was to do this strategy

00:08:57.320 again, I would do it very differently. Having learned what I've learned about emergence in

00:09:01.560 that time, it's like, what are the ways that communities of people can come together and

00:09:07.040 start small divestment processes that actually help to liberate resources from governments that

00:09:12.800 are making decisions we don't agree with? And then how do we build that? Because ideally,

00:09:16.640 we would be in a place like in this political moment, where we could say we're not going to pay

00:09:21.540 into a system that is being led by someone we deeply disagree with who every single day

00:09:26.500 is making decisions that dishonor our humanity, right? We're not at that place yet in terms of

00:09:33.180 having been practicing at a small scale in order to scale it up. So a big part of emergence also

00:09:39.440 that I'll say is the idea of fractals, that fractals exist all throughout the natural world.

00:09:46.560 and it's the idea that there's systems that operate from the smallest scale to the largest

00:09:51.980 scale. And we have to pay attention to what's happening at the smallest scale, because that's

00:09:57.260 what gets replicated and replicated all the way up to the largest scale. I think for social justice

00:10:02.700 movements, we have to always be paying attention to what we're practicing at the smallest scale,

00:10:07.020 not just what we tell other people to practice or think should be practiced or in some amazing

00:10:13.140 future we will practice but like what are we practicing every single day and how is that

00:10:18.280 generating futures that align or don't align with what we actually say we want how did you land upon

00:10:27.000 juxtaposing emergence with strategy i think it was in a way like a blend with my community

00:10:34.600 that i had been working as a facilitator and i'd also had some jobs within movement so i was

00:10:42.540 for a while the executive director of a group called the Ruckus Society and had done other

00:10:48.460 work before that and then got to be co-director there and then I've been on different boards and

00:10:53.440 so I was just in these different spaces and alliances both my own organizational spaces

00:10:59.560 and then larger national and international alliances of work and the thing I kept hearing

00:11:06.200 all the time was strategy strategy strategy this person is strategic this group is strategic

00:11:12.000 and I started to really wonder what people meant by that I grew up in a military household I had

00:11:19.880 grown up around this terminology also like what is strategic and you know when I looked it up

00:11:24.660 just out of curiosity it was like it just means a plan of action towards a goal I had this like

00:11:29.120 kind of aha moment of like oh we're using this word as if it means something different or more

00:11:35.680 than it means if we actually want to speak about people being strategic and work that strategic in

00:11:41.740 ways that actually align with what we want, then we should articulate what we mean by strategic.

00:11:47.800 So then I thought, why don't we call this emergent strategy, strategies that focus on

00:11:53.580 the relational and that focus on small scale. I'm still learning what all is possible with

00:11:58.920 emergent strategy, honestly. You know, when I approached the book, I was really thinking

00:12:04.080 as strategies for facilitation, strategies for bringing people together, for holding and creating

00:12:09.820 space with each other, for guiding ourselves in organizational processes and through organizational

00:12:15.980 processes that are liberatory. So I was like, okay, these are plans of actions that will get

00:12:21.100 us towards a goal of liberation in ways that align with the cooperative aspects of the natural world.

00:12:28.320 And one of the things I always try to emphasize is the natural world will support any worldview.

00:12:33.680 You know, there's also the top down alpha creatures in nature, right?

00:12:38.420 I don't want to misrepresent nature or take anything away from the beautiful complexity

00:12:43.700 of nature and be like, everyone's just hunky dory ants getting along.

00:12:47.240 That's totally not what's happening.

00:12:48.980 There's prey, there's predators, there's natural disasters, there's human disasters

00:12:53.620 that creatures cannot respond to, like all of that's happening.

00:12:56.980 But then inside of that, there is this collaborative thrust of the universe, this complexity of

00:13:03.660 the universe that does seem to flow with those who are able to adapt and those who then survive

00:13:10.580 the longest. And so I really wanted to pay attention and bring all of our attention to that

00:13:15.160 place and to say, okay, what are the strategies that allow for longevity? And it does feel like

00:13:21.820 collaboration is such a huge part of them and getting a right relationship with change is a

00:13:26.580 huge part of them. And so I was also tired of being with groups who wanted to generate strategic

00:13:31.640 plans that were like here's a five-year plan and we've we're looking at everything but those plans

00:13:37.440 they weren't actually focused on what do we care about and what are we trying to move a lot of

00:13:42.140 times they were really focused on like what will we do and we're going to do it this way and they

00:13:47.660 they often were not flexible and they often were not familiar to the entire organization right it

00:13:53.800 was like whoever was there when they worked on the plan maybe knew it and everyone else was just

00:14:00.160 going about business as usual. So I also wanted to kind of interrogate what we mean by a strategic

00:14:06.360 plan and how do we create plans? Because it's not like you should never plan, but how do we create

00:14:12.460 plans that enhance our capacity to be present with each other and get in right relationship with

00:14:17.120 change and with all the people around us? One of the pieces of emergent strategy that's really

00:14:23.180 showing up in my life right now and in For the Wild as a growing organization is the emphasis

00:14:29.560 on critical connection over critical mass and I love how you say our movements should be a quote

00:14:37.940 an inch wide and a mile deep instead of a mile wide and an inch deep and I'd really like if you

00:14:45.960 could speak about this and how the strengthening and scaling up of our movements calls for showing

00:14:51.920 up with vulnerability and a willingness to deepen our relationships with one another.

00:14:56.300 I heard that for the first time from an organizer here in Detroit, Lottie Spady, who has done a 0.55

00:15:06.000 bunch of stuff with environmental justice, food justice, land. She also makes a mean whipped 1.00

00:15:12.880 shea butter. And she had been doing this work called In Our Own Backyards for a long time and

00:15:18.240 had been doing all this media work. And so she was the first person I heard it from. I'm not sure

00:15:22.500 she said it first but that's where I heard it I was really blown away by that idea and how that

00:15:27.420 represented so much of what I saw happening in Detroit in terms of how people built movement

00:15:32.580 that it was like it's not about trying to get the broadest collection of people together

00:15:37.660 necessarily because a lot of times that super broad collection is a very shallow connection

00:15:42.360 that does not hold up under pressure and instead what does it mean to come together and get into

00:15:48.240 relationships that you're in over the period of your lifetime basically you're kind of expecting

00:15:52.820 like oh here we are we're going to create change together we're going to grow together things are

00:15:57.980 going to be different in a little while and we're going to shape that difference together rather

00:16:03.740 than being super focused on building institutions that are just massive how do we build relationships

00:16:10.640 that are flexible and relationships that are that can sustain pressure and I think about this a lot

00:16:17.000 It's like, how do you know if something can sustain pressure until it gets tested?

00:16:21.760 So some of the ways you test relationships are knowing that a relationship can really

00:16:26.620 handle some conflict and that all the people in the relationship, in the organizational

00:16:33.220 relationship or collective relationship, that people are like, oh, I can actually bring

00:16:36.980 myself even when I'm not at my best.

00:16:40.140 I can ask for help.

00:16:41.800 I can give help.

00:16:43.140 I can be in power sometimes in more power or less power. Sometimes I don't have to be

00:16:50.360 everyone's equal all the time when they're not. And I also don't have to just continuously be

00:16:55.360 in a paradigm where someone, one person holds power who doesn't necessarily earn it or deserve

00:17:01.000 it, that we can really be in honest conversations around power and around conflict and around

00:17:06.260 tension. So those were some of the things that excited me and that I was seeing witnessed

00:17:11.400 when I moved here and then started noticing as I looked around, as I was facilitating,

00:17:17.320 as I was going into different spaces, it started to be a measure of like, oh, how do these folks

00:17:21.800 recover from change or from difference or from conflict? Like, how do they recover? How do they

00:17:27.640 come back to each other? And what does it mean to hold a standard that we come back stronger

00:17:33.640 and stronger and stronger rather than we come back more and more compromised?

00:17:39.220 we have a strange society Ayana right like we we live in a society where we are conflict avoidant

00:17:47.000 but pro-war right I've been thinking about this a lot lately that it's like fight fight fight

00:17:52.180 everyone needs a gun everyone needs a weapon but no one actually learns like well how do you

00:17:56.320 navigate conflict really well and so that shows up even in our social justice work where we're

00:18:00.540 like we're trying to change the world but it's really challenging to actually practice transformative

00:18:05.680 justice or restorative justice or anything that's not just straight up punitive power over ways of

00:18:12.600 being with each other so all of this stuff is kind of what's swimming in the water of what it takes

00:18:18.480 to build those mild deep relationships and to stay in them for the long haul you know we treat each

00:18:24.800 other as if there's like an endless amount of people who are down for social justice work

00:18:29.040 And we can just like toss anyone out the boat because they, you know, mess up or say the wrong word or, you know, different kinds of things that we hold these standards for.

00:18:39.480 We're like, well, you're canceled.

00:18:41.100 And I keep leaning into those moments and being like, hmm, what would it look like?

00:18:47.760 What would it look like to treat each other in a little bit of a more precious way?

00:18:52.160 And even if we can't necessarily all work together, which I also don't think can happen, right?

00:18:56.760 Like, I think there are definitely people who are not meant to work together.

00:19:00.140 And I do think there are occasionally, but it's very rare, but I think occasionally there

00:19:03.900 are people who it doesn't make sense for them to work with each other or even to be

00:19:11.000 in movement spaces.

00:19:12.020 You know, I say this sometimes is that there's a lot of folks who are really hurting and

00:19:17.140 traumatized and they need some healing before they can even do any movement work, right?

00:19:21.220 So I think making distinctions there, it's like, oh, do you need some help?

00:19:24.740 Like, let's make sure you get that help.

00:19:26.320 And then, oh, do you guys need conflict resolution and some space? Let's make sure you get that. But the last, last, last resort should be exiling someone from movement spaces or exiling each other from community spaces. We need more people, right?

00:19:41.160 Like that thing about critical connection matters more than critical mass.

00:19:45.360 It doesn't mean that we don't also need critical mass to create change.

00:19:48.660 It's just that that critical mass needs to be full of authentic relationships and on authentic sharing of vision.

00:19:55.120 And that requires getting in and doing the dirty work of moving through conflict together a lot of times.

00:19:59.820 Well, to stay on this topic, because it feels so relevant and so necessary to talk about this critical mass and critical connection and also the epidemic of horizontal hostility and vicious critique that seems so hard to shake from our movement circles.

00:20:20.540 and when it comes down to it like you said there aren't that many of us doing this work

00:20:25.740 it feels to me that we need to be family and a family that can hold one another through

00:20:31.820 difficulties a family that can continue to embrace more and more people as it blossoms and expands

00:20:39.060 but not necessarily that like you said everyone needs to work together in the same room in the

00:20:44.740 same community, but have some type of loving respect for one another. And I'm wondering

00:20:52.400 how you think we can be better at growing deeper relationships through conflict,

00:20:57.480 instead of abandoning and demonizing one another when interpersonal fissures arise?

00:21:04.100 Well, a couple of thoughts came up as you were sharing just now. One is, I feel some hesitancy

00:21:11.000 around the frame of family right because on one side I'm like yes from a very what I think of as

00:21:17.780 indigenous wisdom and indigenous rightness worldview that it's all my relations that

00:21:23.700 everything on this planet is related and connected to each other in that sense yes family but I think

00:21:29.620 when we look at what's happened with the human family so many human families have become kind of

00:21:35.080 the primary point place for trauma where trauma happens to us and where we learn to sublimate

00:21:42.340 our longings and our desires and our truths, um, for the sake of politeness or for navigating

00:21:49.540 people's ignorance or, you know, different things that keep us caught up. So I think one thing is

00:21:54.220 we can use the language of family, but then I think we have to be really, really precise around

00:21:59.340 what kind of family we mean. As a queer person, I love the language of chosen family. The idea

00:22:06.260 that even those people who I was born and have blood relationships with, there's a certain

00:22:11.520 element of choosing how deeply I'm going to be engaging with them. I have some family now who

00:22:17.660 are very conservative. And while I haven't written them out of my life necessarily,

00:22:23.620 I definitely have given myself permission to step back and take a break from engaging with them

00:22:31.520 during this period, right? I need to be able to sustain myself and sustain my hope through this

00:22:38.980 work. It's really difficult to do that in the face of people who know me and say they love me and

00:22:44.980 still make choices that impact my livelihood, my well-being, my freedom, my safety. So, you know,

00:22:51.060 I just think all of that complicates the framework of family. And then, right, the contradictions,

00:22:56.860 and that's still the goal, or that still needs to be a place we're moving towards.

00:23:00.720 So in terms of practices, the number one practice that I recommend to people, and that I've,

00:23:06.040 you know, I only recommend practices if I've been in them, right, myself. And the one that I've been

00:23:11.000 in, and I recommend to people is really about honesty, growing, or redeveloping our capacity

00:23:17.960 to be honest with each other. I think if you have ever spent time around really young children,

00:23:23.980 people who are learning to speak and learning to communicate, learning to express what they want

00:23:30.640 and don't want and their boundaries and their needs, there's so much honesty there that we

00:23:35.620 get taken aback. We're like, oh my gosh, that child just said, you're fat. I've had children 0.96

00:23:41.560 look at me and be like, you're fat. And I'm like, wow, that's kind of amazing though that you're

00:23:45.460 just saying like what people are thinking when they look at me um but maybe not saying and and

00:23:51.500 then being able to be in a right relationship with a child around that right that's like yeah i am

00:23:55.220 fat i feel great in my body right and actually go down that path together but it's like we start

00:24:00.720 from truth and we keep walking along the path of truth as adults we get trained away from that

00:24:06.480 truth in all these different ways a lot of it is in the name of kindness or politeness we're like

00:24:12.560 don't make anyone uncomfortable so don't tell someone if you don't like their food right just

00:24:18.280 eat it suffer through it it's your grandma's pie whatever it is then all of a sudden you find

00:24:22.800 yourself kind of down that river of having practiced being polite and putting the politeness

00:24:30.540 and not hurting other people's feelings ahead of your own truth so many times that you might even

00:24:35.300 lose track of what's true for you you might even lose track of the fact that you could just say

00:24:40.300 that, right? You could just say that. And there's even ways, compassionate, kind, honest ways to

00:24:46.060 speak truth to people. I experienced it as a pretty American thing, a U.S. thing, although

00:24:51.560 the U.S. and Canada thing. So there's this, you know, niceness that can get in the way of

00:24:57.400 authenticity. And so I've been in a practice with several friends of let's be really authentic with

00:25:03.920 each other. Let's be a thousand percent honest. And I'm going to go out of my way to be honest

00:25:09.480 with you, particularly around things that might cause me shame or might cause me to shrink myself

00:25:16.720 in some way or to feel like this is not me or I don't want to be associated with this.

00:25:22.260 And each time I cross one of those lines and I'm like, here's the thing I don't want to say

00:25:27.720 that's true. It blows my mind to see, A, how that gets received. People respond pretty well

00:25:35.880 to honesty. I think people are hungry for honesty. And I think that it's a learning

00:25:41.360 curve, like learning how to be honest, where it's like, I'm not just spouting out anything

00:25:45.640 that comes to mind. I'm being honest in order to attend to my needs and in order to be whole

00:25:51.720 in myself and understand what's happening with myself. So that's one of the first practices,

00:25:57.220 because at the root, so often conflict is about people not saying what they really wanted or

00:26:03.960 needed or what was really happening in a moment and letting something fester. And once something

00:26:09.160 festers, it's so much worse than it was when it first happened. Most of the time, it's like

00:26:13.540 three years ago, you said that you thought I was selfish. And like that thing just lingers and

00:26:18.900 it's powerful, right? Instead of in the moment being like, actually, I contest that. I don't

00:26:23.840 think that that's true. Or I want to understand where you're coming from or any number of

00:26:27.240 conversations you can have in real time. So that would be the first thing.

00:26:30.620 what an incredible insight that in so many ways we've been conditioned out of even knowing our

00:26:38.060 own truth because we've been cut off from our intuition and our instinct even on that deep of

00:26:44.980 a level yeah and it's not accidental right it's capitalism you know I always say that it's like

00:26:50.840 there's no accident like if you cut people off from their own truth then you can fill them with

00:26:55.920 any desire. And if you can fill them with any desire, then you can fill them with a desire to

00:27:00.720 work for you, pay into your system, participate in things that are oppressive to them. You can do a

00:27:09.000 lot once you have, you know, sort of disconnected people from their truth. So, so much of the work

00:27:15.040 is like, oh, how do I reconnect people to their truth, to liberate them into choice and agency?

00:27:22.400 There's so many more things that we have agency over that we don't remember or don't think that we have choice over, right?

00:27:29.360 So, yeah.

00:27:52.400 me is

00:27:53.840 Take a look

00:27:58.560 around you

00:28:00.740 Just as there's

00:28:04.520 sun in misery

00:28:06.020 You won't find

00:28:08.480 you'll never be free

00:28:10.200 Until you let it

00:28:12.540 all go

00:28:13.580 What gives with the misgives

00:28:18.480 You gotta live

00:28:20.920 My thoughts have run

00:28:26.280 So far beyond my way

00:28:29.860 So to you I say

00:28:32.420 Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey

00:28:35.760 Be not divided

00:28:38.940 From this pain

00:28:42.180 No words to say

00:28:46.700 I'll sing hymns

00:28:53.440 I'm out of ocean

00:28:55.420 To sing my mind into your grooves

00:29:00.780 Take a look around you

00:29:06.180 This world is one, it's me, it's you

00:29:12.620 thinking about the intuition and instinct and it links to this chapter for me in your book

00:29:32.960 called magic and spells i just want to say how greatly i appreciate the way you embody

00:29:39.020 magic and spirit in your writing i just love how you sprinkle poetry and how you incorporate

00:29:47.260 calling upon forces that live beyond the reductionist and socialized realms of our mind

00:29:53.500 the spirit of the land just the miraculousness of our own bodies and really valuing these other

00:30:01.040 ways of knowing and the spiritual powers that we all harbor it just feels like a watershed of

00:30:07.240 guidance that our movements are yearning for. I've been so surprised at how people are interacting

00:30:13.580 with it. Like I have to just say, you know, because of all the things you just said,

00:30:18.140 when I was working on it, I was like, no one is going to read this book. You know, a small number,

00:30:25.760 you know, I was like some friends will read this book, but because it feels like such a personal

00:30:30.560 awakening process around whatever you want to call that sense of connectedness, because

00:30:37.160 I think people call it a lot of different things and assign a lot of different narratives and story

00:30:42.080 to it. But for me, I'm just like, oh, I am a miraculous being. Like I can't recreate myself.

00:30:48.840 That which animates me is mysterious to me. And thus it's precious to me. You know, it's like,

00:30:55.460 oh, I can't figure it out and just mass produce it. I think that we see a lot of people who spend

00:31:00.460 their entire lives trying to figure that out. I think artificial intelligence in a lot of ways

00:31:04.860 is that kind of thrust of like, how do we figure out what life actually is? And can we make it?

00:31:10.220 And it's like, we can do a lot of things, but this so far we have not figured out.

00:31:14.140 And that humbles me so much that I'm like, I get to be alive without understanding why,

00:31:22.060 without understanding exactly where I'm going. I get to spend my whole life wondering about that

00:31:26.600 and shaping that and being in a relationship with that. And I'm a Virgo. I spent the first

00:31:32.360 part of my life. Like I know everything, you know, I know, I know, I know. And then this part of my

00:31:38.000 life so far has just been so much of like, I don't know. And that's the amazing part. I get to find

00:31:43.640 out. I still get to learn. There's so much ahead of me. I'll never know all of it. So yeah, it feels

00:31:49.000 like the book is me being like, I don't know, like in so many ways. Um, and being like, I don't know,

00:31:53.960 but I have noticed this or I have seen this. I really went away from doing something that was

00:31:59.300 very like scientifically like grounded like it's not like every single thing I say and I'm like

00:32:03.300 and here is my proof of that you know it's like if you're alive you have also seen these things

00:32:09.160 so that's been very cool people responding to it like I've had a lot of people reach out to me and

00:32:14.760 be like yes I also notice these things and feel these things and long for these things and the

00:32:22.260 book in some ways is just a permission book like it's a book that says yeah great you know that's

00:32:29.280 That's true. You're not alone. I also feel that. And I've been getting that back from the world

00:32:33.940 of so many people being like, Elsa, Adrian, you're not alone. We also feel that. And

00:32:38.580 that is a nourishment in and of itself. When my mind entertains the more magical aspects of this

00:32:46.100 work, I think about what you write on radical imagination and Afrofuturism. And I'd love if

00:32:54.700 you could describe those both and why they are essential as we imagine liberation together.

00:33:01.600 One of the ideas that was sort of introduced to me by a thinker in Boston named Terry Marshall

00:33:06.840 was this idea that we're actually in an imagination battle and that we're living inside of someone

00:33:12.840 else's imagination for what this world would look like, how it would work, how power would work

00:33:18.680 inside of it, how we would be in relationship to resources. And this imagination battle has

00:33:24.120 been happening a long time there's other world views and other ways of approaching it some have

00:33:29.140 been dominant at different points and now have been pushed down so we're in this space and it's

00:33:35.380 like oh if there's an imagination that created these conservative inhumane conditions then we

00:33:42.400 need to have a radical imagination that moves us through and out of them we have to be able to see

00:33:48.260 something beyond this moment and something about seeing it gives us something to orient towards

00:33:55.120 and I also think an aspect of radical imagination is collective imagination that it's not just

00:34:01.180 going off and coming up with your own brilliant little idea and then pitching it to people

00:34:06.740 selling it to people but rather like when you feel the seedling of an idea turning to other people

00:34:12.920 as like other seeds, as water, as sun, as air, like how can we nourish this kernel together

00:34:21.180 and other kernels and how can we create an ecosystem of ideas? So radical imagination

00:34:25.880 falls there. And I was really lucky to get to work with Walida E. Marisha on the book Octavia's

00:34:32.500 Brood, which came out before Emergent Strategy. It's an anthology of social justice writers who

00:34:39.240 basically created short stories to address some of these issues she also walida came up with this

00:34:47.360 phrasing of visionary fiction of like how do we actually write fiction that decenters the white

00:34:54.380 straight male narrative and recenters something that is much more global and realistic right it's

00:35:01.800 like what's the world we live in who lives in it how do we center ourselves in our stories

00:35:06.180 and how do we talk about how change really happens which is bottom up generally not top down

00:35:12.340 which is you know that grassroots structure so in all of that we're in conversation with

00:35:18.380 afrofuturism which is in the most basic sense this i concept that black people will exist in

00:35:24.300 the future right there's a lot a lot of conversation and controversy and other folks

00:35:29.660 who you know folks who choose to say black speculative fiction you know there's a lot

00:35:34.060 that can happen within like terminology and genre but in the broadest sense of it right this idea of

00:35:40.500 black people in the future it's simple and so radical it's so radical when we look at like the 0.99

00:35:46.800 world we live in now where you can kill black people with no punishment no um not even punishment 1.00

00:35:55.000 but like no containment like society doesn't contain the harm against black people that black 0.99

00:36:01.080 people are expected to, even though we're being shot on a regular basis and being brutalized on

00:36:06.760 a regular basis, we're expected to walk as if we are normal and untraumatized and everything's fine.

00:36:13.140 And we're expected not to resist. We're definitely expected never to take direct actions to say to

00:36:17.960 people, this is not okay. Um, would you pay attention to this? Then if we do that, we're

00:36:22.680 considered again, impolite, right? So this idea that we counter all that and say, you know,

00:36:28.020 we're not we're going to be impolite now we're going to create disruptions now we're going to

00:36:31.620 make people pay attention now we're going to stop the cycles now because we're going to fight for 0.74

00:36:35.800 black people to exist in the future so for me after that's where afrofuturism is exciting when

00:36:41.400 you give people a concept of themselves in the future it gives us something that we want to act

00:36:45.540 on behalf of right now and i think that to me is why afrofuturism black speculative fiction

00:36:53.340 science fiction, visionary fiction are all really important tools for generating futures. And I

00:37:00.360 don't know if you've read the Combahee River Collective, but this idea that they put in there, 1.00

00:37:04.680 they forwarded intersectional feminism. And this idea that if you look at a society in which Black 0.58

00:37:10.320 women are free, that everyone else would necessarily have to be free because of the 1.00

00:37:14.540 intersecting conditions that Black women live in. Liberating Black people is not just for Black 0.99

00:37:19.200 people. It's a statement on what is humanity up to? What are we capable of? Where do we want to

00:37:25.860 be heading? That we should be heading a direction where the least of us are in the safest place and

00:37:32.300 are made to feel precious and made to feel like we can live abundant lives. Because if we can do it,

00:37:37.480 every other being on the planet can do it. I'm just so struck by this thought that

00:37:44.720 imagination has been colonized and how when you're speaking about um radical imagination

00:37:52.920 and visionary fiction and afrofuturism reclaiming that imagination is liberating and necessary

00:38:00.440 for like you said all species and yes everything that lives

00:38:05.560 it takes us down to this uh place that is beyond so beyond reductionist thinking or

00:38:17.200 how so many of us have been conditioned to believe how the world functions

00:38:22.020 another thing that really has me wonderfully shaken is non-linearity and how i think it's

00:38:32.540 important to talk about the non-linearity of our needs as individuals and communities

00:38:36.660 and the non-linearity of what we consider progress or success. It seems like, yes,

00:38:43.200 we need clear visions and strong values, of course, but we may also need to be more accepting

00:38:49.060 of the messiness of transformative processes and the oscillations of our movements. And this is

00:38:55.500 something you so beautifully detail in Emergent Strategy. There's a lot of really incredible

00:39:02.440 experiments happening right now where people are making long-term commitments to learn together

00:39:08.440 so rather than the commitment being like we are going to build a massive institution which you

00:39:15.120 know what goes into that is like a huge amount of compromise and a huge amount of like um contorting

00:39:22.240 in order to find out what philanthropy will fund and then trying to make what you're trying to do

00:39:28.480 fit into that. And like, it's a whole game. So there's a lot of folks who are like, we want to

00:39:32.980 get off the wheel of that game. We want to figure out other ways to create change. And so what I

00:39:37.880 see are a lot of people who are like, it's not that we're going to stop having organizations,

00:39:41.540 but we're going to start building relationships with each other that are outside of those

00:39:45.300 organizations, beyond those organizations. And in those relational spaces, we're going to make

00:39:49.780 commitments to learn and experiment together. And that experimentation approach, right, is like,

00:39:57.240 we understand that we don't know the answer yet because if we knew the answer we would be free

00:40:02.360 so since we humble ourselves we say we don't know the answer but we've looked at the data and we

00:40:08.320 have a hypothesis for what we think could actually change these conditions and we're going to make

00:40:13.220 based on our hypothesis we're going to do this experiment together and when a group gets into

00:40:18.240 that level of communication and commitment and humility i think that's kind of the sweet spot

00:40:25.260 from which a lot of incredible organizing and accountability can happen, right? Because then

00:40:30.960 rather than just being like, well, we didn't do what we said we were going to do in our grant 0.99

00:40:34.480 and now we suck. So sorry, you know, instead it's like, oh, this didn't go the way we thought it

00:40:40.980 would. It didn't produce the results we expected. It produced some other results that are actually

00:40:45.760 really interesting and worth the time and effort, or it produced some results that are not actually

00:40:52.280 that interesting to us. We're not going to keep building this thing. We're not going to keep going

00:40:55.960 down this path. We want to make some transitions or make some different moves in the next round of

00:41:00.480 this experiment. I'm trying to get as many people as possible to move into that mode of being in

00:41:08.000 organization with each other. Because I think that's a sweet spot. You really do need people

00:41:13.080 who are like, I'm willing to make a long-term commitment to growing and changing and learning

00:41:18.560 together as opposed to I'm going to make a long-term commitment to you know building this

00:41:24.400 wall and keeping it for as long as possible and that distinction feels important

00:41:29.040 that's such good advice to think about especially in organizing this

00:41:37.400 non-profit industrial complex the ways in which people feel like and in ways not even feel like

00:41:45.860 but are in a sense forced to contort so that they can get the funding or get the right grant

00:41:53.400 or get the next step and how you said I forgot the exact words but it keeps people in this wheel

00:42:00.180 and it's really the opposite of creativity in a lot of ways because people are forced to stay

00:42:08.960 in this structure and how that really cuts off so much emergence and just presence in how we are

00:42:18.660 growing and learning together and I love the idea of creating this parallel system outside of that

00:42:26.440 where you're wanting to welcome more and more people into supporting each other and not in this

00:42:32.760 other paradigm that actually keeps a lot of people separate and competitive and it's it's such an

00:42:40.160 interesting topic for me right now especially building up this organization kind of being a

00:42:45.420 fledgling in this world yeah stepping back and seeing how similar it is to corporate capitalism

00:42:52.880 in the for-profit world and how similar even in philanthropy we can see these really destructive

00:43:01.420 ways of organizing. It's just kind of frustrating and sad. And it makes me think about other topic

00:43:11.660 you speak about in Emergent Strategy, which is nonstop reaction. You also spoke about responding

00:43:18.400 to change. And I feel like whether it's within organizing or just in general, there's this

00:43:24.880 way of living that is in this nonstop reaction and it tends to keep us responding to change

00:43:32.580 with fear or resistance or blockage like you're talking about this wall I'd really like if you

00:43:39.940 could help expand on this idea of nonstop reaction and how we can grow through that

00:43:46.220 especially when there's just so much systemic injustice and violence and division

00:43:53.100 I'm part of this group I think you mentioned in the bio but generative somatics and also black

00:43:59.560 organizing for leadership and dignity and there's this practice there that's just centering and

00:44:04.700 recently I was listening to a podcast another podcast with Maya Angelou and she talked about

00:44:08.860 you have to have a place inside yourself that is inviolate that no one can reach the centering

00:44:13.840 process for me helps me get there it says like within your body there's a center there's a space

00:44:21.160 that helps you to understand, to actually feel how you're doing, where you are, what's happening in

00:44:26.840 your body, what's happening in real time, how you feel about it, what might be impacting those

00:44:31.760 feelings. And for me, that has been the core practice of this past few years that have helped

00:44:38.100 me to move out of being reactionary and to move out of being frozen in terror and help me to

00:44:45.380 continue to be like, there's something to keep moving forward for. There's something to keep

00:44:49.320 being excited and interested in. There's something to keep growing towards. And that when we learn

00:44:55.240 to center together, when movements learn to center together, then something else becomes possible,

00:45:01.100 that we are not just responding and reacting, which I see a lot of happening now. It's like,

00:45:05.680 oh, how do we pay attention to what's happening in the world, but keep our eyes on a larger prize,

00:45:11.460 on a longer-term vision?

00:45:19.320 Raven is my name

00:45:40.920 My mother is the wind

00:45:49.320 Cradled in her arms, danced together on the breath.

00:46:00.420 I have traveled to the edge of death.

00:46:08.700 Laughter fills the void.

00:46:12.420 I am dancing

00:46:17.520 I am empty

00:46:19.400 I, I am light

00:46:21.780 Shadows give way

00:46:26.140 To sight

00:46:27.860 Beyond sight 1.00

00:46:30.840 Essence of blackness

00:46:33.380 Silence of night

00:46:35.740 Stillness embodied

00:46:38.200 Fall into flight

00:46:40.440 I often say that For the Wild is a love song and I'm being wholly honest when I say that I don't

00:46:58.280 think that there's another way to be in this work if love is not the guiding force because I think

00:47:04.000 that pain and trauma and injustice are so omnipresent. An emphasis on love can be met

00:47:09.740 with accusations of ignorance of reality or you write in Emergent Strategy how, quote,

00:47:16.000 facts, guilt, and shame are limited motivations for creating change, even though those are the

00:47:22.200 primary forces we use in our organizing work. I suspect that to really transform our society,

00:47:27.720 we will need to make justice the most pleasurable experience we can, end quote. And I really

00:47:33.540 resonate with this and was so excited to hear that you're coming out with a new book this year

00:47:38.120 called Pleasure Activism, The Politics of Feeling Good.

00:47:42.100 So I now open the floor for you to say anything you would like

00:47:45.340 about pleasure activism and your new book.

00:47:49.080 I'm really excited to be working on this book.

00:47:51.180 It's almost done, and it's an anthology kind of collection.

00:47:55.760 It's like interviews, conversations, and then original essays

00:47:59.800 from people who are doing wildly divergent work

00:48:02.880 that I think connects at the root of pleasure

00:48:05.540 from folks who work in the realm of sex work to folks who do burlesque, folks who are transforming

00:48:13.180 the landscape around drug access and legality, folks who use humor in their organizing. So just

00:48:20.280 really noticing, like, what are different things that make us feel good? Who's fighting for our

00:48:23.900 right to do that? And then it ties back into Audre Lorde's work, the uses of the erotic as power.

00:48:30.100 what does it mean to feel good? What does it mean to be awake as an erotic being? And once you have

00:48:37.380 felt being awake as an erotic being, you know, Audrey talks about that you can no longer settle

00:48:41.680 for suffering. And so this book is really talking about that. It's like, how do we really allow that

00:48:46.740 full, deep awakening to happen so that we can come together and organize ourselves around no longer

00:48:52.860 suffering, but being in a clearer place. So that's what I'm working on. I'm excited about it. It comes

00:48:58.800 out in the fall and i think it's going to be a fun read at the very least well we cannot wait for it

00:49:07.720 here and thank you so much adrian for sharing this time with us just know that your work has

00:49:17.400 guided so many of us with love and waging love in this movement so thank you and have a beautiful day

00:49:26.900 thank you so much ayana and blessings to all you and your magic crew over there okay awesome bye

00:49:35.320 thank you for listening to for the wild podcast i'm ayana young the musical guest you heard today

00:49:47.780 were June West performing No Words to Say

00:49:51.840 and Ariana Sahara with Raven.

00:49:56.420 Our theme music is Silence Returns by Bo

00:49:59.880 and Like a River from Kate Wolf.

00:50:02.760 I would like to thank our incredible team,

00:50:05.820 our producers and editors, March Young and Andrew Storrs,

00:50:12.340 our research director, Madison Golski,

00:50:14.860 and our media director, Molly Lebov,

00:50:18.460 and all of the other soulmates who make this work happen.

00:50:23.760 Please consider supporting us by making a tax-deductible donation

00:50:28.180 at forthewild.world.

00:50:30.860 If you're a musician, please upload your tunes.

00:50:34.900 It's really lovely to interlace these conversations with your music.

00:50:44.860 Thank you.

For The Wild - June 21, 2018

ADRIENNE MAREE BROWN on Emergent Strategy⌠ENCORE⌡⧸68

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