00:01:18.920Today we are speaking with the Roots of Labor Birth Collective.1.00
00:01:21.800In their own words, Roots of Labor Birth Collective, or RLBC, is committed to providing support and care for birthing members of our community.
00:01:32.240RLBC consists of birth doulas of color.
00:01:35.500We strive to reflect the communities we serve while uplifting and caring for ourselves under these guiding principles,
00:01:41.560decolonizing birth, honoring birth, empowering ourselves and each other, and sustaining doula work.
00:01:47.980On behalf of Roots of Labor Birth Collective, we are joined by Juju Angelus and Elena Aurora.
00:01:54.380Juju Angelus is an active doula of RLBC.
00:01:58.120Currently occupying Ohlone Territory, West Oakland, California, and serving the Bay Area,
00:02:04.160Juju is a mother, homeschools, works with plants, and supports people through their
00:02:08.600pregnancy, labor, birth, and postpartum journey.
00:02:12.320Juju is the founder of Baby Mama Hood, an online platform to dismantle, reimagine, and
00:02:17.940reclaim solo parenting for women and people of color in the hood.
00:02:21.620Elena Arora is the co-founder and education director of Roots of Labor Birth Collective.
00:02:26.520It is her honor to organize with the radical and inspirational doulas of the Bay Area,
00:02:32.020She is mixed race, Peruvian, and European descent, and has an environmental project0.99
00:02:36.660called Woke and Wasteless that queers the conversation between the disposability of stuff1.00
00:02:41.520and the disposability of people of color. Well, thank you so much for joining me today,1.00
00:02:47.760Elena and Juju. And I'd really like to begin this interview by centering the topic of reproductive
00:02:53.620justice as it relates to healing communities. For our listeners, I'll mention that the term
00:02:59.620reproductive justice was coined by a caucus of black feminists at a 1994 pro-choice conference
00:03:05.540in Chicago, and it is intended to extend beyond discourse that solely focuses on the right to
00:03:12.220have or not have children, but also the right to raise that child in a safe and healthy environment.
00:03:18.580It forces us to differentiate between legality and accessibility. So I'd love to open up to both
00:03:25.780of you and ask, what does reproductive justice mean to you in a culture inundated with economic,
00:03:32.840environmental and racial disparity oh yes i'm gonna take the rest of the interview
00:03:40.140awesome yeah thank you for having us we're really excited to be here thank you um juju do you want
00:03:48.740to start what what does reproductive justice mean for us basically it really you know for me as a
00:03:55.480as a poverty scholar, someone who, who, um, really comes from also a class perspective on this. Um,
00:04:04.040I just feel like there's never going to be no justice until the land is free. So when the land
00:04:09.920is free, that's when we're going to see a lot of these, these paradigms that we have of violence
00:04:15.400and destruction, whether in a, on a community level, as someone who lives in the hood or like
00:04:20.400on a more global, even like American US level, where all this war and extraction on bodies and
00:04:27.020minds and earth is like so prevalent. And so freedom, justice for me is really rooted
00:04:32.500in all of those things. We really cannot talk about freedom without really thinking about
00:04:38.300what is free and nothing is free. People own the land. Why do people need more than one house?
00:04:44.660Why do we need to, you know, to, why do we need to ship things?
00:04:48.700Why is, you know, globalization is like also killing our planet.
00:04:51.820So, but how does this all tap into reproductive justice?
00:04:55.640I mean, it taps into capitalism too, because capitalism is where, you know, race came into play.
00:05:02.940Like the reason why there was slavery and why native people were also enslaved and their land was taken away was because of this idea of capitalism.
00:05:11.080and, you know, like the survival of all this fucked up, excuse me, all this, I should have
00:05:15.860asked him to curse on this podcast, um, all this messed up, you know, notions around who gets to0.64
00:05:21.520have land and who gets to exploit the land and who benefits from the land. And the same thing is
00:05:26.240happening to people's bodies who are pregnant and given birth is that this is big business.
00:05:30.980And so because it's big business, we're doing all the things to show, um, to tell people who
00:05:36.820are pregnant um that they don't have the capacity all the power to to give birth on their own terms0.84
00:05:42.680that they need to be numb that they need to have all these you know medicines because why be a
00:05:48.980martyr why you know why do this on your own like why why right and so we know that these realities
00:05:55.120impact women and people of color the most because we have the ones that have always been silenced
00:06:02.180We have the ones who've always done all the labor without any recognition, the emotion labor, the home labor, the labor of dealing with families who are being broken up by this.
00:06:12.160So all this stress has compounded to the way, to the point where, I forget the scholar, the woman scholar, the black woman scholar who talks about weathering on the bodies of black people in particular, but I'm sure it could also extend to indigenous people of this land because they have also faced insurmountable just pain and struggle and a lot of silence, but even more so than black people.
00:06:37.440um because for me it's easy to find scholarship on on african-american people and black people
00:06:42.880globally but it's harder for indigenous people of this land i feel like and even of the lands that
00:06:48.300i represent as a taino descendant of the dominic republic quesqueja so i mean it's it's all it's
00:06:56.440all intricately tied and woven and the impact on our dna and in our people has really really like
00:07:05.620inform the way that we give birth and it's and stress is a killer and it's killing our people
00:07:13.340um even in the hospital room which is the majority that's where overwhelmingly where
00:07:20.320black people even white folks are giving birth at and so it's it's it's really deep this work
00:07:27.680is extremely hard I was just telling Atlanta like people be like oh you're a doula and they think
00:07:32.120it's glamorous it's not glamorous work like i'm not doing this work because it's beautiful and
00:07:38.100euphoric and i get all these wonderful feelings when people give birth um that's not the that's
00:07:43.740not the crux of it that's a very small moment on this journey of parenting and also on this hearing
00:07:49.940the hearing the fear and the struggle that people of color are birthing their children in
00:07:55.560is like i'm trying to give my folks hope just through baby mama hood alone but like it's it's
00:08:02.120it is beautiful, but it's also very, very, very, very hard. And black mothers, indigenous mothers
00:08:08.240are afraid to give, or I should say parents just to be non-binary, but we are afraid to give birth
00:08:14.500into this society because we know, and we actually feel what it, what it's like to be a person of
00:08:20.600color in this world. And so there's so many facets and so many ways that this work is connected to
00:08:28.000everything because everyone has to be born yeah thank you juju that's yeah that that hits on the
00:08:36.000head i i think i'll add that like you talked about the fear and struggle and i just as working with
00:08:42.960our clients as people for people of color black folks indigenous folks migrant folks native folks
00:08:48.580um latino folks the fear and struggle that that people that the conditions that people are in
00:08:55.740that reduce maternal heart rates, that are maternal health rates, that reduce fetal birth
00:09:02.360weights and things like that. Those are actually symptoms of climate change, which is a symptom
00:09:07.340of colonization, which is a symptom of capitalism. So it's like, you know, it's all very interrelated.
00:09:13.380We're here on the front lines working with our clients, making sure that they get what they need,
00:09:17.540facing racism in the hospitals, you know, whatever the case is. And we know that these are all
00:09:22.940side effects of a larger systemic issue of a sick society well thank you both so much for that
00:09:30.500introduction that really set the stage and i want to go a bit more into these reproductive rights
00:09:38.780issue and historically the state has always intervened on issues of reproductive rights
00:09:44.420when it comes to women of color sanctioning this medical control through the guise of
00:09:49.320concern for health and well-being when the true motivation is always forced assimilation and0.94
00:09:55.840control. Examples of this vary from the one in four Native women who were sterilized without
00:10:03.740consent or knowledge in the 60s and 70s, Mexican, Latinx, and Black women who were targeted during
00:10:10.520the era of eugenics, and then the 1977 Hyde Amendment Act, which withdrew all federal
00:10:16.840funding for abortions, but still allowed the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare
00:10:21.400to federally fund surgical sterilizations, inevitably forcing low-income women to choose
00:10:27.520permanent infertility if they wanted to exercise their reproductive rights. Or in Canada, how
00:10:33.100prior to the decriminalization of contraceptives in 1969, the government distributed birth control
00:10:40.480to First Nations women in an effort to curb birth rates. And then in relationship to midwifery,
00:10:45.900the mid-1900s witnessed a wave of government interventions across the country to control
00:10:51.680and regulate midwives with the goal of long-term elimination. In the South and Southwest,
00:10:57.700governments specifically went after African-American, Indigenous, and Hispanic midwives,
00:11:02.820forcing them to get permission slips from licensed doctors, undergoing cleanliness and
00:11:08.880medical bag inspections, and forbidding them from carrying herbal remedies.
00:11:12.740i know there was a lot there but i really would love if you could share with us how many are still
00:11:20.180presently forced to make reproductive choices that are directly influenced by colonialism and
00:11:25.740white supremacy yeah you know all of the examples that you that you just laid out i appreciate you
00:11:33.020putting that out there because those are our ancestors those are the people who direct our
00:11:38.640work today like whether they're elders in the community who remember those things who have
00:11:43.540lived through them um or our grandparents were no longer with us who remember those things and
00:11:48.680lived through that so i just want to take a moment to honor them and honor their journeys in
00:11:54.260reproductive justice and that that they have brought us both myself and juju but us as a
00:11:59.260greater collective us as a greater consciousness of society um to this place you know i don't think
00:12:04.580it's a coincidence that reproductive justice is in this sort of wave of resurgence. And a lot of
00:12:11.500what you said, I want to dial back to specifically the pieces around abortions, especially granny
00:12:21.040midwives in the South, both black women and indigenous women, as you mentioned, were banned
00:12:25.560from carrying their herbs or banned from carrying their medicines. And I want to point it out that
00:12:30.220the reasons why that that happened is because of the misogyny and patriarchy that exists within
00:12:35.220the medical system that before Western medicine came from Europe and came to these lands,
00:12:42.900people were taking care of their own. And, um, I just want to point out that especially for black
00:12:48.400people who were slaved, they were, they didn't have access to medicine in the sense that the
00:12:55.300white folks wouldn't let them have access to medicine. So they carry their own, which is from
00:13:00.400their homelands, which is from learning the herbs, learning the land, building relationship.
00:13:05.080And that the reason why they were able to be so targeted around cleanliness was actually because0.86
00:13:11.500of abortions. Because back then, a midwife would take care of any reproductive need that you had,1.00
00:13:17.120whether you were going through menopause, whether you were having hot flashes, whether you were0.63
00:13:20.500having a baby, whether, um, you had been raped and needed to get, have an abortion or not0.51
00:13:25.560raped and you just didn't want to have a kid taking care of the body and having like ownership
00:13:29.720and control of, of, of your own reproductive cycle was handled by midwives because abortions1.00
00:15:30.280So again, like how language controls the narrative, because they were just midwives.
00:15:35.160You know, they weren't Granny Midwives.0.94
00:15:36.820The Granny Midwives identified them as Black, also enslaved folks.
00:15:41.120And they were doing the work that these providers didn't want to do because a lot of these doctors, they're really there to deal with high risk or like, you know, potentially really bad things.
00:15:53.360And I also wonder, like, where does these GYN folks, where did they learn about birth?
00:15:57.780They learned through the midwives.0.66
00:15:59.340And they had, I feel like, a secret collaboration where the granny midwife of the South, sorry, the grand midwives of the South and these doctors are working together.0.78
00:16:08.420and it was like it seemed like a good marriage between you know medicalized care and traditional0.98
00:16:13.780care but then after a while they just started to phase them out and I think they phased them out
00:16:19.180because they got everything that they needed to get they learned all the things they needed to
00:16:23.000learn right and so you know I also forgot what the question was but I do think that like I do
00:16:29.520think that is really important that that you know I appreciate that you took time aside to really
00:16:35.300ground us in knowing that this is our history. And it's a very painful one. And for me,
00:16:43.180there's such a link now with the infant maternal mortality rate and the phasing out of these
00:16:48.780providers. There's a direct link between that. And when we talk about sterilization and forced
00:16:55.080sterilization and population control and yada, yada, yada, that's also very true. I told you0.67
00:17:01.580the story before i had this white radical anarchist that i squatted in a house with in west oakland
00:17:06.500years ago when i was trying to find housing and i have a daughter who's 11 her name is zion
00:17:11.440and you know and at the time i everyone knows me knows that i want to have more kids and i
00:17:17.240and i generally want to do it as a solo parent and and he was like why would you have more kids0.77
00:17:22.740the world's fucked up and i was just like whoa buddy i'm gonna have to slow you down first of0.98
00:17:26.800you a white man you cannot tell me or ask me a question why I want to have kids why I live in a0.99
00:17:32.800society where I can have kids freely why not you know that wasn't afforded to us we were either
00:17:39.400hands on the field or or you know or or somehow we have to like negotiate with people around
00:17:48.240when I when can I have kids or when can I not have kids and you know I think that like my right as a
00:17:53.600person who can give birth is that I should be allowed to birth freely. Um, and it should not
00:17:58.580be based on any, you know, outside notion. If I don't want to have kids, then I've also had
00:18:03.540abortions. I should also have that right too. So I think that like, it's interesting, this idea of0.99
00:18:09.860population control and also with climate change, right? Cause we're thinking like no more kids
00:18:14.080because we, you know, the, it's the, the earth is finite and we can't have any, but who is that1.00
00:18:20.220message for is is i've never seen anyone talk to any other person besides black or brown folks0.95
00:18:27.500around who should not have kids you shouldn't have a kid because you poor well i think i should have0.99
00:18:33.240a kid because i am poor because i take up less resources i reuse every damn thing you know i0.83
00:18:38.360like you know my people were already environmentally friendly before this whole green wave or whatever
00:18:44.340came up to be we live that way we live frequently because that that's what our life that's what our
00:18:49.780life was and and and you know and this idea of poverty like it never really bothered me you know0.96
00:18:55.740like I'm not my aspiration is not to get rich so that I can buy more shit like my aspiration is to
00:19:01.280just be free and free of everything else along the way and so I think that like um I believe that0.97
00:19:09.660forced sterilization and population control was just a racist way to try to basically exterminate0.90
00:19:16.980black and brown folks because that's what that's what they've been trying to do ever since slavery0.99
00:19:21.480end is to start killing us off because no no longer could society or white men benefit or0.98
00:19:29.360white families benefit from the labor of black folks in particular and of course we want to0.99
00:19:34.520silence native american people and have less of those people so they can never have rights to0.99
00:19:39.460their land because the land is not you know the land is not this is not their land in a deeper
00:19:46.140spiritual sense it's our land in a political sense this ain't your land you know it's not and
00:19:51.320and and it's you know it's all intricately bound up and so tight that you know trying to unravel
00:20:00.580the pieces everything else is going to kind of spin out I feel like too there's so much
00:20:04.480there's so much that we're holding because of this and and I and for me I understand that
00:20:10.080forced sterilization for me is it was about exterminating us but I also think it was about0.60
00:20:15.200practicing on us to benefit white folks.
00:20:45.200the for the wild podcast team is so grateful for the continued support through our patreon
00:20:51.980subscribers if you haven't signed up yet head over to www.patreon.com slash for the wild
00:20:58.840to engage directly with our team weekly guests to hear additional content
00:21:03.420and receive access to other bonus material throughout the year
00:21:15.200wow thank you both so much for going so deep and there's so much that you both brought up but i
00:21:38.580wanted to stay on a very charged topic for a minute longer, this idea of overpopulation and
00:21:48.940who should be having kids in the Anthropocene, in climate destabilization, in a time when resources
00:21:55.200like water and soil are depleting rapidly. And I've heard so many different opinions on this.
00:22:03.900you know there's the opinion of the earth has reached its carrying capacity and we just simply
00:22:09.940shouldn't be nobody should be having more children for the most part what doesn't matter what color
00:22:15.160you are like the earth cannot sustain 9 billion people 10 billion 11 billion people people start0.67
00:22:22.020to show these graphs of i don't remember but a hundred years ago it was a couple million and now
00:22:26.800it's billions like just the rate of human growth has gone so quickly and more humans equal less of
00:22:33.280everything else more humans less orcas more humans less beavers more humans less land for any other
00:22:39.060creature whether it's a mammal or bug or tree or whatever so there's that train of thought then
00:22:44.920there's this also thought that i really get riled up about that people are like oh well we should be
00:22:50.880the ones having children because we're the educated ones or we have the resources to provide for the
00:22:55.520children which i'm sure you know you kind of had mentioned it juju in your last statement
00:23:00.100a little bit and then there's another train of thought that you know people for instance
00:23:06.280indigenous people to have like how important it is for them to have children to continue passing
00:23:11.880down the lineage the knowledge the traditional ecological knowledge the knowledge of the land
00:23:16.540re-establishing language connection indigenous sovereignty indigenous empowerment so on and so
00:23:23.180forth and i mean i could keep going on and on and on and i know this is such a charged topic for so
00:23:28.880many people I've seen it um unravel in many group settings and I would love to just kind of give you
00:23:36.820both an open space to share your thoughts regarding whether you know things that I had
00:23:43.420just mentioned or just your own take on it completely yeah uh I like it's an interesting
00:23:49.620question I like how you framed it um I'm gonna be wearing multiple hats as I answer it both my
00:23:55.720Woken Wasteless hat and my Roots of Labor hat, and me as a mixed race person, both part white
00:24:03.940and person of color. And I guess I want to start off by saying that this idea of, you know,
00:24:11.640overpopulation, or what is the threshold that the planet can hold, is so controversial, because
00:24:18.740these scientists and different studies, from what I've seen, are mostly run by white folks.0.70
00:24:25.720um, specifically white men. And so their numbers and data are kind of all over the map and aren't
00:24:31.560really, um, aren't really representative of what's happening globally. Um, although they try to in an
00:24:38.500unbiased way. And so they, you know, what is the carrying capacity of the planet? I'll just name
00:24:44.600that we don't really know. And there's so much controversy around it. Um, which I think you
00:24:49.400alluded to and also that how could somebody say the planet is overpopulated we meaning all of the
00:24:58.700people on the planet need to stop having children when we everyone who lives on this planet knows
00:25:05.740that people have been disproportionately affected by genocide disproportionately affected by
00:25:11.320climate related things factory farming um living by industrial waste sites like they this is
00:25:17.940And that is a form of population control, because it is reducing people of color's ability to give birth, because their bodies are being exposed to toxins. So all of those things are already in effect. And then you have populations of people who are able to be fertile and continue to continue to give birth.
00:25:37.620And I think that it's a tricky question because you did name something like we as educated people should be able to reproduce.
00:25:46.700I'm not saying that that was your opinion, but that, you know, you quoted that.
00:25:50.200And who are the educated people, right?
00:25:52.660They're usually white, middle class or upper class folks.
00:25:55.900We are seeing a surgence of like black, brown, indigenous folks in college and schools.0.96
00:26:00.160And I really want to honor them in their journey of doing that because it's hard work and it's extremely oppressive.1.00
00:26:06.120um so what does it mean for people who have achieved economic and education educational
00:26:11.960privilege to then be the ones to give birth um when the reality is that um babies are going to
00:26:17.720happen people keep having sex um condoms break you know birth control doesn't work um stuff happens
00:26:24.640and also you know as as a mixed race person for me personally i don't want to give birth um
00:26:31.720because I don't think that my, the privilege that my father's family has ridden on in the
00:26:39.460United States for the last couple hundred years, um, they've been able to have their kids and
00:26:44.120they've been able to like have their kids and comfort and in all of those things. Um, and I
00:26:49.780don't think I need to carry on that legacy. Will I ever raise children? I don't know. I don't know
00:26:54.740if that's something that I want. Um, but I don't need to birth them because, uh, I know that that
00:27:00.180generation, those generations of my family have had that privilege and that's not something that
00:27:04.880I need to do. Um, however, my partner is mixed race and indigenous. And I do believe that we
00:27:10.280need to carry on more indigenous folks with their ancestral DNAs and their understandings of what0.77
00:27:15.240has happened in their lifetimes, um, and continue those legacies. Um, so those are the hats that I0.94
00:27:20.560wear. I will, I will say that there's this documentary, I believe it's on Netflix called
00:27:26.720a plastic ocean i think that's the right one where they talk about some some islands um in
00:27:34.200maybe samoa i'm not i can't quite remember now um but they're talking about how there's so much
00:27:40.040trash that's washing up on their shores it's affecting their fertility rates there's no
00:27:44.600scientists telling them that oh this is what's happening but they're like hello we're swimming
00:27:48.340in trash we're like live live literally living in trash and all of our people cannot get pregnant
00:27:54.140When someone gets pregnant, it's a big deal. Um, and so the, the communities that are most
00:27:59.940affected by climate change and the climate devastation are often the communities that
00:28:04.220are closest to industrial waste and all of those things, which are always placed in communities1.00
00:28:08.760of color. Um, I used to say, Oh, communities of color and, or people in poverty, because I wanted0.93
00:28:13.740to include that, like sometimes white communities are, are in that areas too. I recently found out
00:28:18.600that that's actually not true. Um, that it, whether, I mean, there are, I'm sure some,
00:28:23.000but that um statistically speaking they are way more disproportionately placed um toxic waste sites
00:28:30.340are way more disproportionately placed in black and brown communities so um yeah that's all that's
00:28:36.800all i'll say for now around around caring capacity yeah there was something came up but i kind of
00:28:42.340forgot i think it was along the lines around who gets to decide who has kids but also just let's
00:28:48.280be real like why do we always blame the people like why did the people have to stop having kids
00:28:53.700right like and when I say the people I mean like people on the ground people who are not
00:28:59.160in positions of power like why is it the onus on us why when I go into a store why is the option
00:29:05.380that I buy something in plastic why isn't the people who are so-called educated and have all
00:29:10.680the land and all the know-how and can have all the kids why we're not forcing them to do something
00:29:16.480about it why have we gone have gone to them and say no we need to stop doing this we need to find
00:29:21.700an alternative way to to do this or to factory or whatever or to agriculture because it's actually
00:29:26.520clean on the planet but why is it that me and you have to think about whether or not we should have
00:29:31.000kids or not because it's if i'm if y'all like the mamas and the daddies of the world and y'all
00:29:36.140control everything right and we are so called this analogy your children why is the why are
00:29:41.300the children the one to blame. In a household and the child is emotionally messed up or physically
00:29:46.500messed up, we'll never blame the kid. We'll blame the people who are their parents, right? People
00:29:51.100who are the ones that have control over someone of their livelihood and in the culture, whatever,
00:29:56.900you know? So it's always to blame us. Always. We always is the one to blame. It's never them. It's
00:30:02.320not the people who actually have the power and the capacity to actually change their mind and
00:30:06.400actually make a lasting impact and so you're right who decides what is the caring capacity
00:30:12.020of the earth i hear mama earth tell me that that you know that was it you know and you know it's
00:30:17.420i think it's really unfair that we're we always almost always blame poor folks for everything
00:30:22.540poor people can't you homeless and you haven't a kid people are looking like at you like you're
00:30:26.900crazy when reproductive justice or reproductive health is everyone's god-given right it's
00:30:32.960everyone's is it has nothing to do whether you have no money no house no nothing no education
00:30:38.260or nothing it is a biological function of the earth it is a natural way that things have always
00:30:44.100been done and so what's unnatural is wealth hoarding and resource hoarding that's what's
00:30:48.920unnatural what's unnatural are these toxic waste dumps what's unnatural are these factories that
00:30:54.800are being built in communities that's messing up our asthma all these trucks all this production
00:30:59.440That's what's unnatural. It's not whether or not people should have kids because that's going to happen. And so we constantly, I feel like me as a person who likes to work with plants and herbs and who is in this work, I'm always trying to convince people to consider to go back to natural because we are slowly, and also with technology, we're slowly becoming so disconnected from the earth and one another that what we see as natural is hard.
00:31:27.080it's too hard you plant your own stuff you make your own medicine it's too hard you know i could
00:31:31.960just pop a pill you know i could just you know get a c-section i could just you know whatever
00:31:37.340and i'm not trying to say that those things are bad and we shouldn't have them that's not what
00:31:41.660i'm trying to say what i'm trying to say is that the way that we the way that we always blame
00:31:47.480poor folks in in general for every ailment in society single all these studies against single
00:31:53.960parents your child is 80% more likely to go to jail if there's only a mom in the household I'm
00:31:59.920like really that's what we're going to blame we're not going to we're not really going to look at the
00:32:03.660structural things that are happening that are in play that you know the rent how the rent is so
00:32:09.520astronomous that people have to have like three to four jobs to just even have a home over their
00:32:15.120head you know I live with housemates because I have to I love who I live with but I also have
00:32:20.500live in community because if I don't live in community, I'm not going to be a good person.
00:32:25.120And hence, I'm not going to be a good parent. And so it's always, it's always these scientists,
00:32:31.160these people who have the power and the knowledge or whatever, the wherewithal, they're always
00:32:36.740blaming the people on the ground when they're the ones creating these systems and these societies
00:32:43.060in such a way where we have to conform and exist in a certain way. So is having less babies going
00:32:49.080to change anything no we have to change the adults right the mama and the daddies of the world not
00:32:54.340you know we have to change them to change their minds so they can change their behaviors that we
00:32:59.080can actually live in this abundant overflow that the herb has been given us for billions of years
00:33:04.820yes why is this problem now and not then when people are having less kids then no they weren't
00:33:11.240my mom comes from a household of six kids my my father's side of her she had 10 kids
00:33:17.720i don't have 10 kids my cousins don't have 10 kids they have one two we're not having more
00:33:24.260babies we're having actually we're having less kids the folks who are having more babies are0.99
00:33:29.300the non-malinated folks they're the ones who are having the more babies now if we look at0.97
00:33:34.380the trends now so you know for me it's just it's all very interesting to just say the least0.99
00:33:39.960yeah juju i like what you said around well everything but also like uh this idea that
00:33:45.720You're talking about, like, in the grocery store giving us options, plastic-free options.
00:33:49.260I'm thinking about, like, consumerism and how, like, especially, you know, I hear this
00:33:53.700term a lot with greenwashing around how, you know, even if you go to Target or something,
00:33:58.920which Target is one of the three of the most harmful, Target, Amazon, and Walmart, the
00:34:04.460most harmful, like, environmental destructors in California because of their warehousing
00:34:08.940and because of the logistics industry and what they're causing, they're causing asthma
00:34:12.900rates, birth defects, and things like that because of their diesel trucks.
00:34:15.720in the Inland Valley, in Southern California. And so but you walk into Target, and they have so
00:34:21.440many advertisements, especially to new parents, you know, how many of my clients have gone into
00:34:25.280Target to get their registries, you know, their birth, their baby shower registries, or whatever.
00:34:31.760And, you know, you want to get green diapers, and you know, all of these things, and, you know,
00:34:35.440the word is called greenwashing. But the idea that we can buy our way into being a good green
00:34:41.340parent or you know like an environmental parent especially we live in the bay area it's everywhere
00:34:46.300and we have to be careful with that and because marketing is tricky and it makes my clients feel
00:34:51.760good to know they can get environmental things and i'm sitting here being like oh my god it's
00:34:55.700not really environmental it's just marketing you know but um you know and of course we i have those
00:35:01.480conversations carefully with my clients um but on a bigger scale of course a parent is going to want
00:35:07.640to try to get the more environmental friendly thing but marketing and capitalism is so clever
00:35:13.260that it jumbles us up it does it to me all the time you know I live my life zero waste
00:35:17.360and you know you can look at Woken Wasteless if you want to see what that looks like but also
00:35:22.040it's hard because their systems aren't set up like that and so what I love about Roots of Labor
00:35:26.880Birth Collective is we constantly have these conversations and we as a collective like we do
00:35:32.540different like we do uh baby showers of upcycled good um goods because you know babies grow out of
00:35:37.940their onesies in like two days and you know and but somebody else needs them or their car seats
00:35:42.420or whatever and so we try to have like an upcycle economy within roots of labor and clients can come
00:35:47.080and get their stuff for free and it's really just use things that are still in good condition that
00:35:51.260can be you know used by someone else um and all kinds of things but that's a way that roots of
00:35:57.140labor. And the community here has really tried to, to move away from like the consumption patterns
00:36:03.340because it's really, I mean, it's literally killing our people. Oh my goodness. You both
00:36:07.440brought up so much, so much important perspectives. And I'm like, oh, oh, I want to talk more about
00:36:16.220that. I want to talk more about that. I want to talk more about that. But I'll just start with
00:36:20.240wanting to talk more about the toxicity especially for people of color because like both of you are0.93
00:36:29.040talking about how whether it's the landfills the toxic runoff the power plants the refineries1.00
00:36:36.660you know where are they located they're located in communities of color and that's by design0.99
00:36:43.180And I want to read a quote by Katsy Cook, who is a Mohawk midwife, environmentalist, Native American rights activist, and women's health advocate.1.00
00:36:55.120Women are the first environment. In pregnancy, our bodies sustain life. At the breast of women, the generations are nourished. In this way, we as women are earth, end quote.0.80
00:37:08.080but of course learning about the high levels of contaminants we harbor in our bodies0.81
00:37:14.700women harbor their bodies specifically but honestly all people um but women those contaminants
00:37:21.740can only be flushed out through pregnancy as they cross through the placenta or through lactation
00:37:27.460cook added that the women can unfortunately be landfills too um i was also speaking with0.96
00:37:33.900somebody who had mentioned something like um some like 90 of a woman's toxic load comes out
00:37:39.700with her first child through breast milk so this is such a emotional topic but i'm interested to
00:37:48.380hear from both of you how you see climate change or more specifically pollution toxicity and even
00:37:52.860nuclear fallout as a threat to fertility and the ability to bear healthy children and then
00:37:59.100furthermore how can we live inside of our bodies and care for them knowing they're contaminated
00:38:04.300and we risk spreading this contamination to our children yeah i mean you know with the
00:38:13.200breastfeeding thing that you just mentioned i always steer clear of that with my clients
00:38:18.280specifically because depending on on what demographic and what race my client is
00:38:23.680the benefits of breastfeeding will outweigh the toxicity that the baby is getting because the
00:38:29.260baby is going to live like we live in toxicity when the fires happened uh here in the bay area
00:38:34.120or in northern california and the bay area was unbreathable and unlivable you know kids couldn't
00:38:39.480go outside we couldn't go inside people were having like stress really like mental and
00:38:43.740physiological stress physical stress of not working out being outdoors at all and the reality
00:38:49.160is like you know lots of people got air purifiers and those things which is great um but the reality
00:38:56.020is it's toxic all the time it just was really heightened during the fires so we live in a toxic
00:39:01.860environment like apocalypse is here like we've been living in it so how do we manage it and for
00:39:07.480me it's around educating folks that like you should get an air purifier because yes they're
00:39:11.480expensive yes they're an investment but it could increase the like your lung capacity and your
00:39:16.380asthma rates and things like that. So the benefits of breastfeeding definitely outweigh. But if I'm0.99
00:39:22.900talking to like a black client, I know that potentially this client has had a ton of
00:39:28.500stigma around breastfeeding, going back to slavery. If I'm talking to native clients,
00:39:34.080the same. If I'm talking to Latina clients, you know, especially young folks, I'm really trying
00:39:39.360to think about how do they feel? Does it feel uncomfortable? Does it feel too sexual? Like
00:39:43.820there's so many other emotions and feelings that we most of the time with my clients I never get
00:39:48.480to the pollution aspect so I never get to those um unless they're a client who's already like
00:39:53.260we're very like-minded and we can they already know that that's the work that I do but for the
00:39:57.400most part we really like have to balance it um and I guess the reality is like we've people of
00:40:04.120color we've been living this way for generations right these toxic sites have been around us for
00:40:10.680a long time. Um, I think about in, you know, a friend just reminded me of the story that in
00:40:16.720Japan, when the nuclear waste was happening, it was the elder folks who knew that their lifespan,
00:40:24.380their lifespan was coming to an end who volunteered themselves to go clean up that
00:40:28.600nuclear toxic waste. And to me, I'm like, that is reproductive justice. Those are people,
00:40:33.340elders who have lived out their lives, who know they're going to die, who are going to like clean
00:40:37.720up this toxicity. And when we see I was at the grocery store the other day, some hippie Berkeley1.00
00:40:43.420Bowl, which is like, for the most part, pretty hippie, white, mostly shoppers, grocery store in
00:40:49.060the Bay Area. And there was this Asian woman who had a baby. And I could tell they were pretty
00:40:53.240early, like, you know, she was only a few weeks out, maybe six or seven weeks out. And she was
00:40:58.960doing okay, you know, but like, of course, I'm a doula. I was like, Hey, what's up? We were chatting.
00:41:03.100um and she needed help like moving moving something from her basket to the conveyor belt
00:41:09.400and no one around me was going to help her and I turned around I looked like do you want to move
00:41:14.500that she was yeah please thank you I didn't know what to do you know and it's remembering moments
00:41:18.960like that where like people who are parents need support right like we need to step in and fulfill
00:41:25.960their roles whether it's a sacrifice or not I mean that's obviously not a sacrifice me moving
00:41:30.560something from a cart to a, to a table. But we really need to think of our pregnant people as
00:41:36.300part of our society and valuable in our society. She's tired. You could tell she was tired. I don't1.00
00:41:41.600know why she was in the grocery store, but she was tired. And, um, so when I think about like
00:41:46.600the reality that we live in pollution, that we live in these environments and we have for
00:41:50.960generations, how do we as a society come together to support our clients, right? Roots of Labor does
00:41:57.380in a very particular way around serving our clients
00:42:19.260there are some brilliant ideas that folks are creating
00:42:21.500to combat climate change and to bring back salmon.
00:42:24.420The salmon run is happening with Seguritay Land Trust.
00:42:27.380You know, there's, there's, of course, Standing Rock and things that are going on in NOLA, like all of these things are being led by indigenous communities, and they aren't separate from reproductive justice. They are, what I would love to see is more and more white folks understanding and listening to indigenous people, to black people, to Latino people, to migrant folks around what their experiences are.
00:42:51.080And then also believe in us because there's such this, there's such this like an AK academia,
00:42:57.020right? There's such, there's such, and this all called academia, there's such this people
00:43:01.000who are educated, went to college and whatever, got a PhD or a master's. They don't want to
00:43:05.500believe you unless you have scientific data to prove it. And it's like, scientific data ain't
00:43:11.600helping. Like, look at the world. It's, you know, we're under a fire, whether it's
00:43:15.960metaphorically speaking or for real and it's just like it's just like believe us and then do the
00:43:21.980things that we're asking you to do because that is consent and what what often happens is that0.98
00:43:27.320these anthropologists right they come into our communities they dig up all this shit they find
00:43:33.160this stuff and then they create a study around it and they say these people are don't tried and0.96
00:43:37.400they don't know what to do they don't have we have our own scholarship that's why I started
00:43:41.240the podcast saying i'm a poverty scholar and i know you know i know my life i know the real
00:43:46.780ins and outs of and you know like i can look at the world and create a sentence and formulate it
00:43:51.840but this is just like folks don't want to believe us they'll be they'll just be like oh it's all in
00:43:57.120their head this happens to black women in the hospital all the time and that's why we're dying
00:44:01.380most most black women die in postpartum and they're like something is wrong no you know it's1.00
00:44:07.440yeah it feels terrible it's supposed to they're like no you know we know that now they're becoming0.94
00:44:12.700cliches we know the selena williams we know like what happened to her and this is someone who knows
00:44:17.660five languages and you know was homeschooled by the homeschool by two really strong awesome like
00:44:23.940parents and i'm like she had parents in her life she's a top you know tennis player in the world
00:44:28.700and they still ain't believe her so it's like you know it's this constant battle for white folks
00:44:36.400mostly to listen to us and i think what's dope about being in the women of color collect to
00:44:41.660bring it back to roots is that we're trying to create our own community solution because y'all
00:44:46.940not gonna believe us like you know you know and it's not an us versus them it's more like who are
00:44:52.720our allies in this work because we do have allies we do have white folks who are allies i have you
00:44:57.340know white folks have supported me financially um but i just feel like you have to listen and
00:45:03.540you have to also do the things that we ask you to do and if that's a sacrifice if that's a stretch
00:45:09.840you got to come out your comfort zone and just trust us listen to us trust us believe us because
00:45:15.700i really feel like especially through a class perspective if we get rid of homelessness
00:45:21.320you know if that means that the land is somewhat free right if we get rid of homelessness and we
00:45:28.020really stop hoarding wealth and people aren't allowed to buy eight, nine, 25, 3000 properties,
00:45:34.460houses, whatever, then we can really come from a solution based perspective. But right now,
00:45:39.400like Elena alluded to earlier, we're trying to get our basic survival needs met for a lot of
00:45:44.820our clients. As a doula, I've done things like get people's WIC checks, you know? So it's like,
00:45:49.780I'm a signature a whole week now. And I'm not probably going, I don't know if I'm going to
00:45:53.860see her you know two three years from now but if you ever need somebody to pick up some milk i could
00:45:58.840go get it for her but it's just like i think that like we really need to listen and act on the
00:46:05.980knowledge that indigenous people all over the world have already because we've been surviving
00:46:11.160under the most gruesome horrific fear-based shit right and that's not the totality of who we are0.52
00:46:18.080that's not as as I don't like saying I'm a single parent I'm not singular you know I'm a baby mom0.96
00:46:24.320I have a baby I had a baby I'm her mom and the people in my community really hold me up too you1.00
00:46:30.680know I wouldn't be where I am today if it wasn't for black women and brown women like it just0.99
00:46:36.220wouldn't I wouldn't be who I am today and neither would Zion and so I just feel like I just wanted
00:46:42.120to like pull that out with what you said Elena because we really really really need to support
00:46:46.160parents in particular but we also really really really like really need to listen to us because
00:46:52.000we're we're the ones that have the solution we know what we need and we really need to stop moving
00:46:56.940away from this top-down approach around who is the expert you know I always appreciate those
00:47:03.960mamas or those birth people that I work with who the doctor says yada yada yada and they're like
00:47:08.680no I'm gonna do it this way right and I'm just like thank you I mean this is what I've been
00:47:14.320trying to like instill and people who can birth babies is like you have everything that you need
00:47:20.660inside of you you have it all and yes there's toxins through people and through the environment
00:47:26.160outside of us but you have you are the resource that you need you are the natural resource
00:47:30.680you and tap into that and having people support that is only going to make that person much more
00:47:36.920brighter and fuller in the world and listening to what that person needs it was actually going
00:47:41.420to create change it's not going to be from some scientists it's not going to be from some Yale
00:47:46.580study it's not those things are not going to happen those things been happening and we have0.88
00:47:51.220not really seen any systemic change the only thing that poor people have seen is more materialistic0.88
00:47:57.940shit we have not seen any change around who owns the land who gets to steward that land and what0.97
00:48:05.940And do we have a decision around where factories get built, where things get dumped, blah, blah, blah, blah.0.76