For The Wild - BRONTË VELEZ on the Pleasurable Surrender of White Supremacy, Part 1 [ENCORE]⧸273

00:00:00.000 Hey for the wild community, it's Ayana here and I wanted to let you know that this is part one

00:00:07.100 out of a two-part episode with Bronte Velez and I also wanted to share that this is a very

00:00:15.080 playful and also vulnerable conversation for Bronte and I. It's not like anything we've done

00:00:21.500 on the podcast so far so we appreciate you sitting with us in this exploration and I hope that you

00:00:29.980 enjoy what you're about to hear. All right, now on to the show.

00:00:36.980 I'm excited about the kind of power that is accountable to climate collapse right now.

00:00:44.380 I'm excited about the kind of power that's accountable to consensual pleasure.

00:00:50.720 Welcome to For the Wild podcast. I'm Ayanna Young. So today we are speaking with Bronte

00:00:57.600 velez bronte they them is guided by the call that quote black wellness is the antithesis of state

00:01:04.580 violence end quote mark anthony johnson a black latinx interdisciplinary artist and designer

00:01:10.740 they are currently moved and paused by the questions quote how can we allow as much room

00:01:16.140 for god to flow through and between us as possible what affirms the god of and between us

00:01:22.300 what is in the way how can we decompose what interrupts our proximity to divinity

00:01:28.320 What ways can black feminist placemaking rooted in commemorative justice promote the memory of God,

00:01:34.660 which is to say love and freedom between us, end quote.

00:01:38.340 They relate to God as the moments of divine space-time that remind us we are not separate,

00:01:44.020 the moments that re-belong us to the earth.

00:01:46.620 They encounter these questions in public theology, black prophetic tradition, and environmental justice

00:01:52.600 through their eco-social art praxis,

00:01:54.660 serving as creative director for led to life design collaborative media director for oakland

00:02:00.580 rooted farm and nursery planting justice and black queer life ever committed to humor

00:02:06.420 and liberation ever marked by grief at the distance made between us and all of life

00:02:12.420 oh my goodness bronti it is so good to see you it is so good to be with you in this moment

00:02:21.260 I wanted to start with this quote from Frederick Jameson quote it is easier to imagine an end to

00:02:32.640 the world than an end to capitalism end quote but recently I started reading Fred Moten and

00:02:38.900 Stefano Harney's The Undercommons and I'd like to begin this interview with a passage from Fred

00:02:44.800 Moten, whom you'd referenced in our first conversation, quote, you talk about being

00:02:50.260 able to be in two places at the same time, but also to be able to be two times in the

00:02:55.680 same place.

00:02:56.800 In other words, it's very much bound up with the Jameson notion of the future in the

00:03:03.160 present.

00:03:04.320 And classically, the prophet has access to both of those.

00:03:07.900 The prophet is the one who tells the brutal truth, who has the capacity to see the absolute

00:03:13.340 brutality of the already existing and to point it out and to tell that truth, but also to see the

00:03:19.340 other way, to see what it could be, that double sense, that double capacity, to see what's right

00:03:25.300 in front of you and to see through that to what's up ahead of you, end quote. And I just wanted to

00:03:31.700 offer this passage to our listeners because it feels so very fitting for many of the topics we

00:03:38.140 will be threading together in this conversation. So Bronte, thank you for being with us, for sharing

00:03:43.900 this time with me. I love you dearly and deeply. And like I was saying earlier, being in relationship

00:03:50.580 with you is one of the sweetest gifts that I have in this life. I feel very excited to be in

00:03:57.560 conversation with you and just grateful to be here. So in the past, we've spoken about how

00:04:04.180 you're thinking about the submission of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy and this being

00:04:11.820 a submission that transpires through pleasure, not shame. And often we focus on the difficulty

00:04:19.660 of transition or the impossibility of imagining futures so much so that we neglect to give

00:04:26.580 creation to possible realities. And I'm eager to hear you elaborate on your definition of submission

00:04:33.800 in the context and the idea of a paradigmatic shift

00:04:39.500 transpiring through pleasure-filled submission.

00:04:42.840 So essentially, what would this collapse of white supremacist,

00:04:47.660 capitalist patriarchy look like, feel like, tastes like,

00:04:51.720 if it's being done out of submission through pleasure rather than through shame?

00:04:57.100 I think it feels somehow that collapse has felt paradoxical or antithetical to pleasure.

00:05:03.800 I think that this moment of the fatalistic kind of notions accompanying late capitalist collapse feel like it just feels like about largely loss.

00:05:20.100 And, yeah, losing resource, losing power, losing status, losing a kind of historical way of especially white men and white supremacy knowing itself.

00:05:37.020 And I feel like a lot of the ways we, and when I say we, I mean folks leaning towards an activist framework or folks leaning toward liberation, the kind of ways I think we request white supremacy to surrender power often looks like reifying the shame that they've placed us inside of.

00:06:02.800 So a lot of it is about like, how can we continue to re-implement and make them feel the kind of shame that all of oppression operates from?

00:06:13.500 And that in that punitive response to what they've done to us, maybe they'll feel kind of a glimpse of what our ancestors, we have felt in all of this time.

00:06:23.100 And I also think it would serve white folks, though, and the earth and this transition in all of us as beings if they moved from a place of pleasure and not shame. 0.57

00:06:39.360 I think Adrienne Marie Brown's work with pleasure activism is critical.

00:06:43.560 I think Audre Lorde's politic of the erotic is critical.

00:06:47.280 And for me, it would look like people hearing the call to submit and surrender to the earth, collapsing, shaking, going fugitive as a call into a fantasy that was unimaginable into something that might be more life affirming.

00:07:07.300 And this, I mean, specifically towards white people, because in relationship to climate apartheid, I don't think that climate collapse might look like pleasure. I'd love to revisit that. But I wonder what it would look like for white people to, and especially white men, to surrender in a way that felt like where the earth is in this dominatrix energy right now. 0.64

00:07:30.820 the earth is out like with these storms and with these um yeah they're in this moment of like

00:07:41.500 I'm gonna bring you completely to your knees your project of capitalism of expansion without

00:07:48.560 reciprocity without limits without boundaries your project of extraction I'm not gonna have

00:07:54.860 it and I'm gonna bring you to your knees and I'm at this point of just the I have this vision of 0.70

00:08:00.700 just wanting to see especially white men in power I want to see them on their knees and I want to

00:08:06.680 see them give up and I know they're tired I know they're so tired so I want to see them give up

00:08:14.460 and I want to see them release this like exasperated sigh and I want to see us all feel

00:08:20.940 that release there's so much to say about it but I don't think that shame is a generative tool

00:08:29.360 to liberate us. And I don't feel like white people working from that and realizing

00:08:33.900 the histories that they're a part of. I think operating from the place of shame 0.61

00:08:40.100 doesn't allow you to actually be accountable. And I think surrender leads us into some other

00:08:46.700 kind of pleasurable accountability and also restorative justice. I love that vision.

00:08:55.180 oh my goodness i love that vision and i think there's something so

00:09:02.440 alluring and seductive about surrendering in pleasure and not from a place of a negative

00:09:12.560 type of sacrifice like oh i have to give this up or i'm defeated we can surrender without being

00:09:18.840 defeated and patriarchy can surrender as an offering of pleasure and joy and it's pleasurable

00:09:26.260 for both parties it doesn't have to be painful for one to surrender and i think there's so much

00:09:33.040 to that and i love that vision of white men and patriarchy and and all those in power who are

00:09:39.520 being destructive on their knees and worshiping the other so that they can then be worshiped

00:09:48.100 I mean, I think it is reciprocal when we can submit when it is our time to submit, and

00:09:54.480 there's so much there.

00:09:56.920 And, you know, it's curious to think about submission, at least in the context of sexual

00:10:02.260 submission, as the process in which one lets go of personal responsibility and what this

00:10:09.840 means for accountability, especially for folks who think accountability is necessary because

00:10:15.700 as the dominant actor, then becomes completely accountable and responsible for the submissive

00:10:21.180 one. Do you think we need to hold the powers that be for their mistakes and injustices

00:10:26.320 that they've perpetrated under this paradigmatic shift, or is a part of the pleasure that they're

00:10:34.140 promised relinquishment of responsibility? Yeah, wow. What a way to enter this.

00:10:41.360 and and maybe i'll just i'll read this quote from mira zussman shifts of consciousness and

00:10:49.120 consensual snm bondage quote it is the bondage which is sweet for you relinquish free will and

00:10:56.220 all decision making it is freedom which is bitter and most hard to endure for you must take

00:11:01.200 responsibility for your actions end quote so maybe that's a little more juiciness for your response 0.93

00:11:07.500 I think there will be, in the same ways that there are subcultures of folks who are moved and pleasured by kink practices, I feel like there will be subcultures of how we believe liberation and accountability should be embodied.

00:11:26.800 And I think there will be a select sacred group of us who want to be in those roles, who will receive pleasure from witnessing that kind of surrender and that kind of submission.

00:11:41.480 I think I may have mentioned this on the last interview but I'm not sure but a brother named

00:11:47.440 Tioka Sengos Horse who was one of the mentors a Lakota elder who was one of the mentors for

00:11:53.780 the spiritual ecology fellowship that I was a part of he would reframe the powers that be

00:12:00.580 as the powers who think they are which I really love and imagining like I'm imagining calling in

00:12:07.720 those powers who think they are with this kind of subgroup or subculture into some play with how

00:12:14.320 power has has operated it feels like such a difficult question because there's so much

00:12:20.500 trauma wrapped up in the ways that white supremacy and patriarchy have operated

00:12:27.700 so I feel like I feel hesitant to play when I know people are seeking yeah I know people like

00:12:36.420 would today be happy about Donald Trump being on a chopping block like that feels like a righteous

00:12:43.000 and dignified longing to see someone go into that yeah to be held accountable in that way for all of

00:12:50.360 the all of the trauma he's causing and continuing but yeah I'm I am curious what might be possible

00:12:57.560 in them, not necessarily relinquishing responsibility. I don't know exactly what's

00:13:06.080 possible after the moment of submission and play. I feel like I'm just curious about that moment

00:13:13.880 and then to see what wants to emerge after. I think I have no frame of reference or imagination

00:13:20.960 because I haven't seen white men be willing to surrender.

00:13:26.180 I saw on Pose recently where there's a moment where there's a white man, 0.65

00:13:33.020 I won't give too much away, but there's a white man who his kink is, 0.96

00:13:37.920 he wants to be left alone in like leather wrap and he wants to be blindfolded 0.98

00:13:44.700 and he wants his ears to be covered and he wants to not know that anyone's

00:13:48.660 going to come back for him or ever find him.

00:13:50.960 And that he might be forgotten about. And one of the women who's serving as his dom, black trans woman in the show, whose character's name is Electra.

00:14:00.700 she's like do you know the privilege of what it is to request loneliness the pleasure that you 0.66

00:14:09.760 receive an eroticism from not belonging and being forgotten about that you could pay for that kind 0.91

00:14:17.680 of option of a kink and starts to trace it back to the ways that trans folk queer folk especially

00:14:24.380 Black trans women have that kind of loneliness is never, and absence of belonging is never something someone would seek. So yeah, I'm curious what would be possible in playing with this on a structural level, the things that BDSM queer culture teaches us about surrender and domination and how we might, as oppressed peoples, how we might occupy a culture of like dominatrixhood. 0.66

00:14:51.460 That's kind of what I'm like calling in of like, what might that feel like for us to be in that kind of dignity and to demand that these powers, I think they are be brought to their knees. 0.66

00:15:04.960 Yeah, very hard question.

00:15:07.200 I'd be curious what other folks think about this too.

00:15:11.160 And I like how you keep using the word play because this is a play of imagination.

00:15:16.480 this is something we get to you know swirl around in our minds and and feel either turned on or

00:15:25.040 turned off and i'm also interested in just when i hear this what happens in my somatic self

00:15:30.620 and it'd be interesting to also hear what happens for other people because i think there's something

00:15:36.120 that the body's intuition when hearing these things may also give us direction on how stuff

00:15:42.140 like this could unfold like how does it feel to even hear these things and for me it feels

00:15:47.680 tantalizing and it's like oh whoa okay well what is that even because it's not something that

00:15:53.540 I have been conditioned or maybe even allowed in a lot of circumstances to even think about

00:15:58.980 so I appreciate just having this space this safe space with you as hard as these questions are

00:16:05.320 it's really fun to play with them and I'm wondering what spaces do we have to create

00:16:11.300 in order to allow this submission to materialize, given that patriarchy has prevented a culture

00:16:17.760 from forming that welcomes the exploration of power through relinquishment. And within that,

00:16:24.940 it's like, what language or terminologies do we have to drop or recreate in order to materialize

00:16:31.680 this shift? Yeah, thank you so much for that question. And I want to kind of combine the

00:16:36.720 last question and this question i i was wanting to share that i also think for me i'm speaking

00:16:42.800 from a place as someone who has a politic that every every being is worthy of redemption

00:16:50.740 and liberation so i i truly believe that everyone is deserves that and i i feel like so much grief

00:17:00.860 about the ways especially we've all been socialized but I imagine that it I don't want to use the f

00:17:10.520 word but that it's really sucks to be a white man in America right now honestly I can't imagine that 0.68

00:17:18.740 it really feels like a pleasurable thing when right now actually that culture of dominance 0.96

00:17:24.100 has brought them into such a deep place of not belonging and or only belonging to themselves

00:17:30.060 through continuing projects of domination, terror, trauma, lack of consent, lack of permission,

00:17:36.840 extraction, capitalism, all these things. So I know that it is hard to imagine those beings being

00:17:43.520 worthy of redemption. And I also, for me, the politic of like, allowing someone to be in a play

00:17:50.680 of surrender is that, say, white supremacy surrendered itself. Where do they go? I think

00:17:56.740 an Afro-pessimist or like a Black militant perspective, which sometimes I lean towards

00:18:02.300 on days that I'm, you know, enraged by the extreme violence of what white supremacy does,

00:18:09.380 I'm like, bye. I don't know where you, I don't know if there's a place for you. I don't know

00:18:14.160 if there's a place for you. And on other days where I'm really resourced and have capacity,

00:18:18.180 which feels like a privilege to imagine something nonviolent and another kind of

00:18:23.620 liberation I'm and redemption I am like what will happen for this community of people who

00:18:31.580 whose identity actually was marked by absence uh marked by not having belonging or having

00:18:41.420 belonging to just power so I'd be curious what a dom-sub relationship I can't I love

00:18:47.560 that we're having this combo would be with also submitting to reparations. To me, that reparations

00:18:53.900 is about the pleasure of giving back, the pleasure of getting on your knees and giving back,

00:19:01.040 giving back the land, giving back the breath, giving back the water, giving back power to those

00:19:07.900 who are in right relationship with place, giving back and over listening. Yeah. So I feel like the

00:19:14.640 conversation around reparations could also be one that would be pleasurable for those

00:19:19.440 who are empowered to redistribute what has been unrighteously taken. And yeah, I think in terms

00:19:27.120 of a language of what will come and what would this look like or what would this look like to

00:19:32.560 be in this kind of play, I'm curious about memes and consent culture and how people,

00:19:39.080 what kinds of spaces might happen where, and performance work might happen to reclaim

00:19:46.420 sites where power operates most significantly or most visibly to encounter playing with the way

00:19:55.940 power moves in those sites through performance, through kink performance, through invitations for

00:20:02.580 people to surrender. I'd be curious about what protests could look like in that sense.

00:20:10.880 Or, you know, ethical leather walk, you know, in terms of like people just in this dominant

00:20:17.640 culture of pornography, patriarchy, violence, the ways we conceive of how we can use pleasure

00:20:24.760 for liberation has been so, so distorted. So yeah, I'd be curious what ways to reframe that

00:20:32.700 loving the earth at this critical moment and loving the peoples of the earth and the beings

00:20:38.180 of the earth who have been most impacted by the violences of white supremacy would be a pleasurable

00:20:42.540 redemption.

00:21:12.540 My touch is my touch is my touch.

00:21:42.540 this vision turns me on so much to imagine the relinquishment being pleasurable the

00:22:00.880 reparations being pleasurable and it makes sense to be reconnected or connected for the first time

00:22:07.900 ever for probably many of these people holding destructive power to be loved, to be seen as

00:22:15.040 somebody who can take care of others rather than hurt others. I can't imagine that feels good to

00:22:22.140 have on your psyche that you are somebody who is making others suffer. I mean, obviously,

00:22:28.780 there are some people who I guess are into that. But I think for the most part, people don't want

00:22:32.920 that. Even people in power, I think they have to tell themselves that they're doing the right thing

00:22:36.620 a lot and I don't think that they fully believe that so to imagine the release and saying like

00:22:42.540 I don't have to hold this responsibility of destruction anymore that is so beautiful

00:22:52.080 and it's playful and it is erotic and it's embodiment and I think so many of the issues

00:22:58.920 we face right now is because we're not embodied it's because we're desensitized when we're

00:23:05.240 embodied, we're embodied with the earth. To be alive is to be one with the body of the earth.

00:23:10.680 And I'm so excited by the possibilities of when we're able to

00:23:15.080 be in that sensory place and feel stimulated pleasurably. I think so much can happen.

00:23:22.820 And to think about the submission of patriarchy calls into conversation what some would define

00:23:31.380 is feminine energy, power, like the goddess archetype, etc. And I think of the historical

00:23:37.120 disavowal of feminine power in order to marginalize, solidify gender binaries and

00:23:44.780 narrow scopes of power. And I'm also thinking about how our understanding of what feminine

00:23:51.240 power or energy is has become incredibly convoluted. So I'm wondering what is your

00:23:57.540 definition and why is it important to tap into feminine power outside of its gendered or

00:24:03.160 disguised manifestations? One of the failures of encountering femininity has been its gendering 1.00

00:24:10.320 and then the ways we understand or the socializations we've encountered also like 0.69

00:24:18.520 find or encounter effeminate or women approximate or anything associated with women

00:24:27.420 those things as weak. Mostly, yeah, weak. And for me, when that's taken out of a binary 0.99

00:24:35.120 kind of conception of gender, but is moved more into, because I love the masculine connection

00:24:43.520 in me and in the land. And I think it's beyond what we can understand in terms of

00:24:52.140 masculinity and femininity have been so wrapped in notions of gender, gender performance,

00:24:58.340 that it's hard to know what those energies are actually asking of us. For me, with masculinity

00:25:05.540 being something that has become, I want to use the word intoxicated by imbalance. It operates

00:25:15.000 in this way of like outside of like patriarchal notions of masculinity I feel like the masculine

00:25:22.120 the masculine energy spiritually is about like a kind of a kind of support a kind of caring

00:25:30.520 a kind of lifting a kind of uh holding it down just a holding space for and then this feminine

00:25:40.360 wild feminine energy for me feels yeah for me it feels like this mysterious infinite

00:25:48.440 pleasure-centered erotic birth queen not on like a you know kingdom thing but like 0.81

00:25:58.680 just this kind of a regal um way that the that the earth holds themselves and like

00:26:05.780 lots of other beings that are gendered as male birds or male species are very feminine are very

00:26:14.460 are very queer um and are showing up in this way where like i think of always of the birds of

00:26:20.100 paradise where the quote-unquote male birds have evolved to dance perform put on a show um be in 0.62

00:26:29.520 full-on regalia to get the punani and to continue the life of their community. So for me, I'd be

00:26:38.860 curious about how we all, all beings have capacity for the feminine. All beings have the capacity

00:26:46.200 to be in this alive, awakened, hearthed energy. And yeah, it makes me sad the ways that that energy

00:26:54.280 has been capitalized on enslaved to the male patriarchal gaze and used for pornographic

00:27:06.100 violent ways and distorted as weak.

00:27:10.660 And I think right now, actually, this call to rebalance with the feminine, and I feel

00:27:15.720 like Vandana Shiva speaks a lot to this.

00:27:18.100 I feel like that call to come into that balance, which is something in me, I'm also in

00:27:24.180 encountering. Yes, to come back into touch with pleasure and to come back into the rituals of

00:27:30.100 being with the land and these kind of ways that women have been assigned to be in. I feel like

00:27:40.080 folks socialize as women have been relegated to the domestic space and to the home. And in that 0.99

00:27:46.180 they've been in these craft making or land tending or these care practices, maintenance work. And

00:27:53.720 I'm thinking of an artist, I can't think of her name at the moment, but she's mentioned in Ginny

00:27:58.680 O'Dell's How to Do Nothing text, resisting the attention economy. And there's an artist who back

00:28:05.960 in the 70s focused her work on what she was calling maintenance art and care work. She had a

00:28:13.040 baby and then people were like, do you do anything now? And she was like, this is the work. This is

00:28:18.100 the work right here. So I feel like that mother and that culture of nurture, of nurturance,

00:28:26.280 of caretaking, of attending to, of tenderness, all of these elements, I think, will facilitate

00:28:34.280 a pleasurable, just transition towards being more accountable to the earth. Yeah. And to one

00:28:43.140 another when i think about feminine and masculine energies something that really excites me is

00:28:50.340 the freedom to hold both the feminine energy is so powerful and the masculine is as well

00:28:57.880 and i am so frustrated that they have been relegated to genders so much and what that

00:29:07.560 does to us as people we can't be fully in our divine humanity when we are not allowed to express

00:29:15.300 in all of the ways and bring all of ourselves to the table and in my own personal journey i've

00:29:22.320 as you know very well i have really been wanting to embody all of it and even things that seem like

00:29:29.980 they're on the other end of the spectrum it's like yes i'm on this end of the spectrum and i'm on the

00:29:33.980 opposite end of the spectrum and I'm on here and I'm there. And isn't that beautiful? Isn't that

00:29:39.240 complexity fascinating? And to learn about those complexities in others and see where we feel

00:29:46.520 similar to see where we don't and all of that charge that can happen when we allow the complexities

00:29:52.040 of who we are in completely, it feels like the possibility is just open. It feels like there's

00:29:57.740 whole portals that opened that I couldn't have even began to see existed until I was able to

00:30:05.100 allow myself to embody the spectrum of masculine and feminine. And yeah, I think that the feminine

00:30:13.500 energy has completely been squashed. It looked at as weak, looked at as not as intelligent, not, 1.00

00:30:20.960 oh, that's just emotional. It's like, oh, well, okay, so there's no such thing as emotional

00:30:25.660 intelligence you know all these things that make the feminine powers seem weak but i think that's 1.00

00:30:30.440 absolutely by design like patriarchy doesn't want feminine energy to be on top like why would they 1.00

00:30:36.020 want that then they wouldn't be able to control even within men you know has been squashed and

00:30:43.340 it's not surprising and so i kind of want to take this idea of control and power and and move into

00:30:49.900 a conversation explicitly that addresses power with you right now, yeah, with this power, I feel

00:30:55.900 like there is this inherent attraction of it. And we can say that we don't want power or that power

00:31:02.360 is evil, but every day we are giving other people power. We are supporting their power directly

00:31:08.800 or indirectly or both. And so I'm curious to hear how you frame power or perhaps the

00:31:15.640 reappropriation of power, you know, refusing to allow oppressors from holding on to power?

00:31:22.060 I've been in my own process of asking questions about my own relationship to power

00:31:28.520 and how, especially for me as a Black queer person who socialized and lives my life,

00:31:35.980 mostly seen as a woman, I feel like I've arrived to where I am because there was so

00:31:40.800 little space often where I saw representation of folks like me in places of power, i.e. only Oprah

00:31:49.700 as a little girl. You know, there were these notions that power was equal to like a certain

00:31:59.580 kind of status or a certain accumulation of wealth or, yeah, a certain number of assets.

00:32:06.460 yeah all all wrapped up in capitalism and I think often of this dream that I've had that I think is

00:32:13.520 really important to share where I'm I'm at the Eiffel Tower and I'm in Paris and the Eiffel Tower

00:32:20.760 is also a ride from Atlanta called Acrophobia at Six Flags and Acrophobia is the fear of heights so

00:32:28.200 I'm getting on the Eiffel Tower as a ride and I'm getting strapped in and it's a circle where the

00:32:34.220 circle of people go up and then are dropped back down. As I'm getting strapped into the ride,

00:32:38.820 Donald Trump comes and is running up to me and he's weeping and he is my father. The energy is

00:32:46.220 a clear thing that he's my father and he's profusely weeping and profusely asking me for

00:32:53.800 forgiveness. And I am so upset because I'm being exposed because I've tried to disown him. So

00:33:00.540 everyone's realizing that he's my dad and I'm at this point really powerful and I start to

00:33:07.580 try and hush him up he's on his knees speaking of being on the knees he's on his knees begging me 0.91

00:33:14.400 to forgive him and I'm going shut up shut up no like I do not want anybody to know we're related 0.89

00:33:22.680 and then he's reaching out to me and the ride begins and I am ascending I'm ascending I'm 0.84

00:33:30.200 ascending above the city. And my feet start to dangle and my stomach is in knots and I'm nauseous

00:33:36.320 and I'm so high up. We extend beyond the Eiffel Tower and we're just above Paris. And at the

00:33:42.000 moment where we're about to be dropped, I get ejected lightly off into the front lawn. And

00:33:48.240 when I started to move into the work that's led to life, I started to have a lot of dreams about

00:33:52.940 ascension and power because I started to embody my own trust and dignity that we can manifest

00:34:01.700 another story of how we live on this earth with one another. And I could feel my capacity to

00:34:07.460 integrate that with my community and this notion of like Black prophetic traditions that we can

00:34:13.140 call in what we want to see and we can live it. And then to notice that some ways I was still

00:34:21.000 so entangled with capitalism and hierarchy and yeah I I have questions about like do we mean the

00:34:31.360 power that we seek when we talk about empowering people is it about empowering people with

00:34:37.080 continuing the project of capitalism and white supremacy is that the power we just want to

00:34:42.320 reverse who's in those systems or is the power we're talking about and the energy justice the

00:34:48.900 spiritual kind of energy justice we're talking about in where that merit is determined by an

00:34:55.940 accountability to our ecosystems and to one another and accountability a power that is about

00:35:01.060 being in balance being in what is ours to do at this moment and being able to be given the space

00:35:07.720 and trust to be where we need to be and I think I feel like right now so many folks who should be

00:35:15.000 trusted with power, which is to stay trusted with responsibility and trusted with vision and trusted

00:35:21.060 with resource, should be folks who are making life more livable for all beings. And yeah, I love when

00:35:28.700 I'm in my power right now. I feel like I'm excited about the kind of power that is accountable to

00:35:36.840 climate collapse right now. I'm excited about the kind of power that's accountable to consensual

00:35:42.960 pleasure yeah

00:35:44.160 but when you ask

00:35:57.380 do I have anything

00:35:58.720 always there for you

00:36:02.920 though the answers

00:36:05.280 may not be true

00:36:06.600 searching an engine for the ghost

00:36:09.320 of truth

00:36:10.640 Why are the animals in you

00:36:13.820 God's a tangible in you

00:36:16.560 In you

00:36:18.180 Your heart, your guts, your skin

00:36:20.500 God's a tangible in you

00:36:24.440 In you 0.80

00:36:27.020 In God's animals

00:36:31.140 God's a tangible

00:36:33.300 Amazing Grace, I miss you badly

00:36:44.820 I had to search the meaning

00:36:47.920 Stole it, love it sadly

00:36:50.500 With all this forward leading

00:36:53.540 If it's in me

00:36:56.860 What good is all this reading?

00:37:00.040 Open attachment feeding

00:37:01.740 how do we allow ourselves to be empowered by bringing all of ourselves to the table

00:37:17.180 especially in activist spaces where there's this identity around what it is to be an activist

00:37:24.760 what we think we need to be in order to be accepted, in order to have power in the ways

00:37:31.080 we can.

00:37:32.700 And it's frustrating to me because sometimes I feel like there's all this constraint that

00:37:37.700 so many of us are hiding power because of these constraints of gendered ways of understanding

00:37:44.800 power and energy.

00:37:45.920 We're not allowed to be our full selves or full humans. 0.99

00:37:48.760 as a woman it's like well you can't be powerful and intellectual and feminine and you know sexual

00:37:57.360 and erotic and you can't be all those things like if you're a woman in the science world like you 0.84

00:38:02.400 have to dress like this you have to not talk about certain things you can't be overly sexual you can't

00:38:08.060 be all the things you are and still have respect and that is very frustrating and that's very

00:38:14.840 disempowering to tell people that you can only have respect in certain worlds if you either look

00:38:23.760 a certain way, act a certain way, shrink other parts of yourself, highlight different parts of

00:38:29.180 yourself, and then you will have some kind of respect, but you'll still never be fully empowered.

00:38:34.160 Even as For the Wild is a non-profit. It's like, oh, well, you're a non-profit. That means you have

00:38:38.440 to hold events that look like this you have to speak in this way that doesn't piss anybody off

00:38:46.300 I'm so tired of that I'm so tired of the constraints of how to achieve being powerful

00:38:52.840 and empowered at the same time and having to shrink I can say myself in certain ways in order

00:38:59.580 to have a type of acceptable power for my specific identity that people project onto so this question

00:39:08.000 is a bit personal for me at this moment and also something that I just want to speak to for those

00:39:14.300 of us who feel like especially in activist spaces I think there's something there people feeling

00:39:20.680 like they have to look a certain way act a certain way to have respect and in turn I think it is

00:39:28.540 disempowering to the movement in general, when we put all of these rules and regulations on

00:39:38.020 who people can be, and still be accepted in spaces and respected. And I know I felt that

00:39:45.020 way to Occupy. I felt like, oh, I didn't have the look. I didn't have the look of the Occupy

00:39:51.280 activist, and therefore I didn't feel as welcome. And I think that's really strange, especially in

00:39:57.180 in movements where it's like we need everybody to care and we shouldn't compartmentalize

00:40:04.500 who gets to have power based off making people small or parts of their personality small now

00:40:12.420 i'm not talking about like if you're part of your personality is to be rude yeah no like

00:40:16.120 shrink that i'm not talking about those things i'm talking about you know it's like that that

00:40:23.000 can go if you're in yeah you know it's like we don't need that kind of you know part of your

00:40:27.920 personality yeah yeah I also want to talk about this other thing regarding power that seems

00:40:35.900 important to bring up it's about being in relationship to power versus letting it control

00:40:41.920 you especially if we're talking about playing with power in terms of liberation and collapse

00:40:48.080 you know what is the importance of fluidity phases and seasons of power thank you yeah

00:40:55.420 um well to speak to like shrinking and like not being able to like possibly embody a fuller self

00:41:07.140 in certain communities that are working towards liberation i feel like we just gotta let go like

00:41:15.060 anybody who's being judgmental and like let go like I'm so tired it's it's weird if like people

00:41:24.080 have like a kind of idea of how who should belong to a thing um and then have an idea about like

00:41:30.760 what that aesthetic looks like and they're being actually an aesthetic to these spaces it's so

00:41:36.460 funny because I have on my partner's earth first shirt and I'm thinking about being at that the

00:41:41.440 rendezvous just being like yo what's this everyone has the same aesthetic for like punk anarchist you

00:41:47.560 know vibes and just this kind of interesting way people create niche communities to cultivate

00:41:54.040 belonging where there hasn't been so I see that need to create kind of a cultural agreements about

00:42:01.240 yeah how people want to be with one another and I feel like it's it's historical and cultural to

00:42:07.280 like have an aesthetic about a thing but I feel like when that ostracizes people it's whack like

00:42:13.920 we don't need that and like people being a hating ass energy I'm so I'm so done with it like yeah

00:42:21.120 I've heard on the healing justice podcast and I'm sad that I can't think of the name of the

00:42:25.920 interview but it's one of the practice episodes it's about like how do people encounter safety

00:42:32.860 accountability validation and belonging like or security and safety are kind of together and like

00:42:38.360 how do they know those things and yeah I feel like a product of like being maybe traumatized

00:42:47.580 or ostracized is you start perpetuating those perhaps those kinds of paradigms and it's whack

00:42:55.440 like it's whack I think we should be able to come as our full selves who we are to the work from our

00:43:01.420 unique personalities and essences and textures and vibrations like I felt for so long that I've 0.71

00:43:09.580 I've shrank um humor in myself and shrink my my sexual being my erotic being my queer life 0.56

00:43:17.360 in service to like a genteel kind of crunchy granola palatable to whiteness kind of black 0.79

00:43:25.740 girl and I'm like if I want to be hood I'm gonna be hood in your space if I want to look cute well

00:43:30.400 y'all all look crunchy granola i'm about to look cute i feel like us being in our true expressions

00:43:36.140 is what will be ultimately liberatory for all of us um so i feel excited about that and like these

00:43:43.300 other beings the more than human world is going off right now they're being flamboyant they're

00:43:48.000 showing out and showing up okay i'm like we actually really need i don't know if you're

00:43:53.460 speaking to this with aesthetic but aesthetic revives us into our senses it brings us alive

00:43:59.460 I think coming from that place of being in the listening of who you are and bringing that forth is something that should be honored and being in our dignity about what we bring and trusting that us being in our gifts, in our light, in our expression is essential to our community's health and liberation, actually.

00:44:22.940 whether or not because they're always going to be haters but like just releasing releasing that

00:44:27.900 that's been something I've been in of like and I just started being in my power the earth is asking

00:44:32.300 that of us right now and yeah I think that that that should also be still though I feel like as

00:44:38.660 long as our power is not harming anyone if it's not harming other beings to be in our energy if

00:44:44.900 it gives life I say let's go for it and whatever like cultures of activism that are like putting

00:44:51.640 themselves on a pedestal about ideas of you know your being more approximate to suffering makes

00:44:58.860 you more loyal or down for the cause or are you willing to do you know x y and z we all have our

00:45:05.720 niche in our role everybody not supposed to do each and every kind of each and every kind of

00:45:12.140 aspect so yeah I've been in a deep learning of choosing humility over shrinking which I have 0.85

00:45:19.600 been conflating for a while because I was told I was intimidating by white women and white

00:45:26.620 leadership. And I'm like, that's because y'all not, you're, you're socialized to feel insecure

00:45:33.600 around black women, black femmes in power. And that's not my problem. That's not my problem. 0.98

00:45:39.700 So I feel like let's be in our power. That should be pleasurable for you to see me in my power,

00:45:46.240 for you to see me in my brilliance, for you to see me thriving.

00:45:49.560 And you should know that it liberates you too.

00:45:56.280 Well, the church said, well, we got to be well.

00:46:06.900 Well, a pitted place.

00:46:11.340 Well, a seed.

00:46:14.020 will the echo

00:46:18.300 will so deep 1.00

00:46:22.180 Mark says black wellness is the most radical act

00:46:27.680 against state violence

00:46:29.120 and we say well

00:46:33.840 we become so well

00:46:37.020 so well that we are the well

00:46:39.760 a reservoir of joy absorbing all light 1.00

00:46:43.880 and laughter this skin made of soil can sip on. 1.00

00:46:48.000 White's supposed to reflect all light that enters it. 0.99

00:46:51.560 All these reflections and they still can't see themselves?

00:46:55.600 But we gon' keep on being mirror.

00:46:58.500 We gon' keep on keeping on.

00:47:01.060 Cause we gotta be well.

00:47:03.260 So well that we are the well.

00:47:06.960 We learn about the sovereignty of our prayer. 1.00

00:47:10.740 Ceremony as a place for the unhomed. 1.00

00:47:13.880 Where black ain't a vacuum, ain't the shadow of whiteness, but its own grace. 0.98

00:47:19.960 We so black now, we done decomposed darkness as evil out our mouths. 0.50

00:47:25.820 We love the night so much that we became the night.

00:47:29.480 We love the unknown so much that they ain't never gonna find us.

00:47:33.160 Our laughter made us fugitives under the spell of numbness.

00:47:37.100 And we say, well, the prophecy has already been written.

00:47:44.660 No need to conjure nothing new.

00:47:47.360 Tubman already let us know, my people are free.

00:47:53.520 My people are free.

00:47:57.700 My people are free.

00:47:59.340 And Alexis said to us, may we continue to breathe in the presence of our freedom, so we inhale, trust it is already here.

00:48:12.400 Nothing future about our freedom, because my people are free.

00:48:19.140 Right in the here and now, my people are free.

00:48:23.000 So if we already free, all we got to do is lay down everything that makes us unfree.

00:48:33.920 All we got to do is be well.

00:48:46.660 Someday, we let go of all of this.

00:48:50.140 even this language won't last on our tongues now we know too many prayers the shape of freedom

00:48:57.740 and english never call that kind of imagination anyway we in our bodies and not afraid of them

00:49:05.560 we in our bodies disciples of listening we in our bodies entrusted to our flesh

00:49:12.820 we created the initiations to prepare us to hold the earth while they are birthing us anew

00:49:19.160 We learned to dance inside the contractions

00:49:22.580 Learned to shake and shapeshift 0.92

00:49:24.880 Ancestors taught us to stir, twirl, drop it low and close to the ground 1.00

00:49:30.220 Orbit our own flesh

00:49:32.360 To fall in love with our body

00:49:34.560 And the many shapes they can take

00:49:36.800 The earth taught us to do this as they got warmer from ignorance and waste

00:49:41.340 As the weather became more erratic

00:49:48.120 as disaster was declared.

00:49:51.040 We listened to the earth and followed suit.

00:49:53.940 While they became enraged, inflamed, a fugitive in their own body,

00:49:58.540 we listened as they asked us to heal ourselves,

00:50:02.240 to bring the huracan and terremoto to our center.

00:50:06.320 We started to shake and rage and shift shape

00:50:09.160 as a reflection of the earth taking their body back.

00:50:13.060 We danced ourselves back home to source

00:50:15.660 till there was no memory of separation because this is not our apocalypse we have already been

00:50:23.140 revealed to ourselves this is not our apocalypse we have come to lay white supremacy to rest

00:50:30.260 this is not our apocalypse my people are free this is not our apocalypse we have come to lay

00:50:40.920 patriarchy and greed to the ground. This is not our apocalypse. We are giving it back over to the

00:50:48.240 soil to do their work. This is not our apocalypse. We are just offering the eulogy. This is not our

00:50:56.360 apocalypse. We are the doulas. We have been to the mountaintop. We saw that, in truth, the earth

00:51:04.240 itself had become the nigger of the world. They were unearthed and howling, ripped open to make 1.00

00:51:11.100 weapons to take black folks from this earth. We have been to the mountaintop. The mountaintop said 1.00

00:51:17.640 they don't want nothing to do with that. So we're crying out with the stones. We are crying out with

00:51:24.100 the soil and the volcanoes. We came to bring the weapons back to the earth. So the geography of

00:51:31.060 ossuaries, call them hoods, call them ghettos, call them gone. Each corner some memory of some 0.92

00:51:38.480 memory. Too many of the same story. Too many black children gone too early. We wanted a new story to

00:51:46.240 live by. We wanted sanctuary. And we didn't need to do anything to make the ground holy. The ground

00:51:53.580 was always holy. And there was nothing we needed to build. Everything was already here. There was

00:52:00.780 nothing we needed to do just shift just love just be and it wasn't easy we were so entangled

00:52:10.580 got liberation and accumulation confused how you gonna ask and dispossess people to renounce

00:52:17.800 possession and yet this is what is really of us to really be free because we found that reparations

00:52:26.500 also meant we had to repair with the earth, our only real home. We wanted our breath back,

00:52:34.280 so we took our breath back. With the artifacts of war, we brought the oaks back. We undammed

00:52:41.820 the creeks. We planted medicine everywhere. The chorus of other beings who miss the trees

00:52:48.340 are singing with us. The ecology done returned. The earth wasn't a metaphor. We had to really

00:52:55.540 asked them, what do you need? Trusting that our needs will always be in alignment with their

00:53:01.760 health and wellness. Well, we were scared. We wondered, where is black me after everything

00:53:10.380 is laid to rest? If they lay down their guns, if they lay down their chapels and governments,

00:53:17.080 who do I become when they use my body as the scaffolding for their violence? But then I

00:53:23.040 surrendered, asked, will I become you again, sweet soil? Ocean, will I be like you, full

00:53:33.160 and everywhere? We keep our breath flowing so our joy can come home. We undam our chest.

00:53:41.720 Our joy, like water, like salmon, got perfect memory. It is always on its way. We always

00:53:51.900 on our way. We always been the way. My people are free. My people are free.

00:54:05.380 My people are free. We must cultivate a culture of discernment and counsel around us. I feel like

00:54:13.540 if you're someone who is encountering that you have more access, more resources, do not go on

00:54:18.200 that journey alone. The reason power has become toxic is because people did not have any

00:54:23.400 accountability or counsel or community or rites of passage that held them to that and told them

00:54:29.580 like, hey, now's the time for you to sit back or step down or shift, you know? So I think being in

00:54:37.400 that listening of like, you know what, right now I'm a little off and I need to gain some

00:54:44.660 perspective I need to go fast I need to go rest I need to allow someone who knows maybe more than

00:54:53.020 me than I you know sometimes we we're off the mark a little bit and so how to to be willing

00:55:00.580 to be in that emergence adaptability flexibility so that we're able to listen with to when we need

00:55:05.960 to relinquish shift ecologize our access yeah

00:55:10.160 you figured out so much out there on your own now let us step in thank you for listening to

00:55:18.640 another episode of for the wild podcast i'm ayanna young you just heard an excerpt from

00:55:26.100 the well prophecy written by bronte velez and recited by bronte velez ra malika imhotep co-founder

00:55:34.020 of the Church of Black Feminist Thought

00:55:35.960 and Yasmeen Calderon-Torres

00:55:38.960 and Liz Kennedy from Led to Life.

00:55:41.700 The music you heard today

00:55:43.520 was from the Led to Life Oakland Ceremony

00:55:46.120 and the incredible Esperanza Spalding.

00:55:49.600 I'd like to thank our incredible team,

00:55:52.920 Aidan McCray, Andrew Storrs,

00:55:55.880 Carter Lou McElroy, Erica Ekrem,

00:55:59.260 Erin Wise, Francesca Glassbell,

00:56:02.060 Hannah Wilton

00:56:03.420 Melanie Younger

00:56:04.900 and Suzanne Daliwal

00:56:06.640 also if you haven't rated us on iTunes

00:56:09.400 please do so

00:56:10.600 it really helps spread our message to a wider audience

00:56:13.540 and that's what we're here for

00:56:15.020 to continue to uplift these incredible voices

00:56:17.440 of the resistance

For The Wild - February 16, 2022

BRONTË VELEZ on the Pleasurable Surrender of White Supremacy, Part 1 [ENCORE]⧸273

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