Missing Witches - Lammas 2022： Panel For CHOICE with Olaomi aka GOT2BOSHUN and Mackenzie Ni Flainn

00:00:01.000 Just a reminder that the Missing Witches podcast is entirely listener-funded.

00:00:06.420 If you love the project and want to support us and join in on conversations like this one live,

00:00:12.420 find us on Patreon at patreon.com slash missingwitches. 1.00

00:00:17.260 You aren't being a proper woman, therefore you must be a witch. 1.00

00:00:23.620 You must be a witch. 1.00

00:00:25.480 Hello again to the Missing Witches coven. 0.75

00:00:28.100 Thank you for joining us on this Lamas celebration, question mark, maybe a celebration of righteous anger, we can call it, but it will definitely be a celebration of the protection that we require of each other and that we are able to give to one another when we are in circle, whether these circles are in person as they are in this moment, or the larger circle that we create in with our lives.

00:00:58.100 spell that is our lives. I want to invoke Dr. Beverly Smith, who once told me that a conversation

00:01:08.600 can be a protection spell, and that is all I want out of this. We are in fear, and we are operating

00:01:22.940 from a place of fear. And that's not what witches are into. Witches are into facing the dark.

00:01:33.740 And sometimes, the dark is just a little too much. And at those times, those are the best

00:01:42.700 times to gather in circle, to support one another, to ask hard questions, to give hard answers.

00:01:50.620 but ultimately, as I said, we want to thank Dr. Beverly for reminding us that a conversation

00:01:58.020 can be a protection spell. We want to thank so much our guests who are with us in circle today.

00:02:05.880 I want to start with Twyla, who could not be here. Twyla and I were in talks since early spring

00:02:12.040 that she would be here, and unfortunately, she is currently, in this moment, at the hospital with

00:02:18.300 a family member. So, Twyla, may this conversation of protection extend to you and your family as

00:02:24.800 well. But here with us today, we have Mackenzie Mee Flynn, who is a clinical herbalist, a full

00:02:33.180 spectrum doula, a street medic, the co-founder of Black Thistle Street Aid. We're going to hear all

00:02:39.280 about it. And also with us today is Ilosa Olaumi Akalatunde. She's an author, an educator, a

00:02:48.980 priestess, and perhaps better known to some or most of you as Gottobe Oshun. Thank you so much

00:02:56.960 for being with us. I want to turn my attention to Risa first and ask if you can help us to kick off

00:03:03.780 this spell of protection for Llamastide, this first harvest. Thank you for being here. Thank

00:03:12.920 you, listeners. Thank you, witches. As usual, when our hearts are broken and we come together

00:03:21.540 enraged, there's such a gift in seeing each other's faces, even if our faces are pissed

00:03:29.520 and exhausted and sick, even if we carry the weight of a medical system that doesn't recognize

00:03:35.720 our right to joy and pleasure, let alone our body autonomy, even if we exist in places where it's

00:03:44.300 not safe to be who we are, even if our ancestors and our parents have still and constantly struggled

00:03:52.500 for their body autonomy to be recognized even if we carry all of this uh this is a season for me

00:04:01.100 where i feel so on the tipping point i know it doesn't feel like that where most of you are

00:04:07.320 i know it's heat wave and the climate is fucking collapsing but where i am some of the leaves are

00:04:12.700 turning red if you can believe it where i am it was cold today the heat broke um and had the first 0.64

00:04:19.760 taste of fall and I am always at lamestide reminded that things turn again and there's

00:04:27.100 vines deep in the woods there's vines climbing over everything I can see the mountain is thick

00:04:33.040 with them and those vines are holding us they really are they have held us for centuries

00:04:40.440 they have reached out across when we've been alone some of those vines have helped us control 0.99

00:04:46.600 cycles for those of us who can get pregnant have helped us keep our fucking bodies to ourselves 0.95

00:04:52.600 when we did not want to be pregnant um some of those vines like the raspberry vines climbing 0.96

00:04:58.960 up the bush have helped us be ready to be pregnant you know these these plants have been with us and

00:05:04.420 so at lammas when we are in this circle this conversation that is a spell of protection i

00:05:10.840 call in all the plants that are around you in the cracks and the pavement outside your door

00:05:15.720 all of those plants are with us in this moment of owning our right to our joy and our pleasure

00:05:23.740 and our autonomy

00:05:25.120 hello Omi I want to start with you um reaction video sounds trite but you did a reaction video

00:05:38.640 when the overturning of Roe v Wade happened um if if you're here today you can go on YouTube and

00:05:45.060 find that. It's Black Witch's reaction to overturning Roe v. Wade. If you're listening 0.97

00:05:50.680 to the recorded version of this, I'll put it in the show notes because it really was 0.96

00:05:54.900 angry, but with some shit productive. And this is always my issue with my anger is that I can't 0.89

00:06:04.440 always seem to channel it into something productive. So again, Olomi, I want to turn

00:06:11.340 to you and quote you. You were talking about our organs. You said, they belong to us. They are

00:06:17.960 ours. We are in control. Can you please expand? Well, greetings, first of all, to all. Blessed

00:06:29.560 llamas to one and all. We are always blessed to be on Earth Mother Onele as she moves through

00:06:36.000 the seasons right now. So it's a blessing regardless, right? It's a blessing regardless.

00:06:43.440 I think that there has always been, since the overturning of the matriarchies, a clash,

00:06:54.020 right? And there were clashes before, right? Human beings clash. Let's just say that's a

00:06:58.800 thing that happens however living in a male-dominated society there is always a clash

00:07:06.800 and it generally seems as though it's created and generated to keep us in a state of terror

00:07:12.940 so for those of us who have lived in marginalized bodies and that's everybody here right I don't see

00:07:21.120 anyone here that is exempt from that then we know that we have been raised and socialized to believe

00:07:28.580 that our bodies are a means of production. Every marginalized body is only seen as useful when it 0.61

00:07:37.280 is performing or when it is producing, right? For queer people, if they're performing, then they're 1.00

00:07:43.220 useful. For black and brown people and people who are considered to be women or people in

00:07:48.000 presenting bodies, they are useful when they are producing. So we've been taught and socialized

00:07:55.400 to believe that our bodies are not ours. In that state, when we hear someone telling us

00:08:04.140 you will have children whether you want to or not, it automatically kicks us into a state of fear.

00:08:12.100 Adrenaline magic is what you work when you're in fight, flight, or freeze. And that's short-lived,

00:08:18.280 deep-seated changing magic magic that changes the trajectory of life you have to be in your body to

00:08:27.460 do it so when I saw this being overturned and I mean of course I wept it was a right that my mother

00:08:34.600 had I never considered truly to be honest that I would ever not have it I've given birth to

00:08:41.120 daughters I've also given birth to gender fluid people who have uteruses I never considered that

00:08:46.920 this was something that someone was going to take away. So I cried. I wept. I was trying to

00:08:52.580 understand, but I also remembered that we have to stay in our bodies. To stay in your body,

00:09:00.220 you take ownership of it. Regardless of what an agency says, this belongs to you.

00:09:09.760 don't ever forget it don't ever act as though it's not true this belongs to you so what you

00:09:18.940 want it to do then that's what you make a way for it to do what you don't want it to do then you

00:09:25.240 make a way for it not to do this right and we will have to hearken in this time to the wisdom

00:09:33.180 of our grandmothers and to the wisdom of our past you know the past people in our lives who had

00:09:39.160 uteruses and these types of things were forced upon them. We will hearken unto that and their

00:09:44.680 memories will let us know that this body is yours, regardless of how someone tries to enslave it,

00:09:52.920 regardless of how someone tries to force their reproductive beliefs onto it. This body is yours.

00:09:59.660 Let the lives of your ancestors be proof of that. You know their bodies were theirs because we're

00:10:06.160 here today right we're here today and so you have to sit in that and not sit in that fear the terror

00:10:15.880 to me is their main tool and has always been the main tool of this particular regime and this

00:10:23.300 particular agenda that we're now living under is that terror so we especially as witches especially

00:10:29.920 as those who understand the ancient ways especially as those who talk to the flowers and the sun and

00:10:35.940 the moon, we have got to come outside of allowing that terror to move us at all, right? Cry, moan,

00:10:43.860 weep, go outside and break some shit, do whatever you need to do, but then come on up out of that 0.99

00:10:49.580 terror mode. We can't fix nothing in that, and we can't unite in that, and we can't sit here 0.99

00:10:55.640 as a coven in that terror mode and get shit done. And if nothing else, we know it's time to get 0.91

00:11:01.920 as a collective yes I think we're all going to be rubbing our necks tonight from the furious

00:11:10.400 nodding I think there's going to be a lot of that I really just want to repeat this

00:11:17.120 we have to stay in our bodies and I know that for me in my life some of the worst moments

00:11:27.680 have felt like out-of-body experiences like I remember being on my way home from particularly

00:11:34.640 traumatic day and being on my way home and saying I just want to go home I just want to go home I

00:11:41.860 just want to go home and and I was on my way to my house but I I don't think I was necessarily

00:11:47.120 talking about my house and I'd never really thought about it until you said Olomi we have 0.62

00:11:57.360 to stay in our bodies because we have to as in we don't really have much of a choice

00:12:05.520 you know either either we're we're in our body or we're not on this earth anymore you know or

00:12:12.340 we've become soil maybe um but we also also like as a as a choice as a mental as a psychological

00:12:19.940 as a spiritual tool to stay in our bodies i love that i'm putting that in my pocket

00:12:26.980 to stay to stay in my own body I want to turn to Mackenzie can you tell us a little bit about

00:12:36.440 your practice and how staying in your body has facilitated that practice

00:12:43.660 oh my goodness well first I want to say I'm going to take away the phrase adrenaline magic

00:12:50.900 that so resonates with me right that's that magic that like lifts the car off your baby

00:12:56.000 or you know like kicks you into gear and it is not the same magic that we have to shift into

00:13:03.400 to do that deep marathon lifelong work right they're like and something that I think

00:13:11.740 that brings up for me a lot is like that is also the concept of individualism

00:13:19.040 that comes up a lot when we start having these conversations about movement spaces and unpacking

00:13:24.160 our whiteness and urgency, urgency, urgency, urgency, which is a tactic to keep us burnt out

00:13:29.780 and keep us chronically in response mode, keep us chronically in that adrenaline magic so that 0.90

00:13:34.300 we're fucking exhausted and out of our bodies and not in our true seat of power. Yeah, body work is

00:13:41.700 embodiment, re-embodiment magic is definitely still an ongoing journey for me. I mean, me,

00:13:48.720 myself as a femme presenting person um you know was chronically traumatized over and over again

00:13:56.420 as especially and especially as I interacted with our health care system our quote-unquote

00:14:03.180 so-called health care system in the quote-unquote the so-called United States and I think that

00:14:09.160 the reclaiming of our bodily our autonomy the reclaiming of our embodiment the reclaiming of

00:14:15.820 sovereignty. I think something that I often unpack with especially new people coming in

00:14:24.480 to this work or being radicalized right at this moment is the fact that you cannot separate the

00:14:31.900 conversation around abortion from the conversation of the ways that what we call health care in the

00:14:39.720 United States does not believe in our bodily autonomy. It does not actually believe in our

00:14:45.800 personhood. I know that we already want to have a conversation about the ways that our

00:14:52.440 myriad healthcare system was founded. But when you start unpacking the concept that abortion

00:15:05.760 is healthcare, and that you have sovereignty over your own body, then you have to go, it's a deep

00:15:11.540 rabbit hole that you fall down in talking about how that intersects with what we call the practice

00:15:16.940 of medicine in the United States. And by that, I don't necessarily, and by that, I mean both

00:15:21.720 the heroic system that is currently legalized and the healing that has been illegalized or outlawed

00:15:30.240 through practitioners like myself, practitioners like Elomi, the many, many community wise ones

00:15:36.140 that we all still have that are not allowed to be out and to talk about what they do or, you know,

00:15:43.160 are just doing their, their granny healer thing. When they came for those people all the way back 0.98

00:15:52.100 and back and back, they, they, they instituted those tenants, the tenants of capitalism upon

00:15:59.060 our bodies like a little me was just talking about that we are we are modes of production

00:16:03.320 rather than our own sweet sovereign selves so one way that i return to my body is by like 0.98

00:16:10.120 fucking learning from radical folks about like how that happened and like how even the fuck did that 0.96

00:16:15.560 happen and um and what are the tactics that have been done to reclaim that for ourselves and what 0.99

00:16:25.200 can I do and focusing always as I re-embody myself always on the long road of what does 0.93

00:16:36.180 this look like resisting not that we shouldn't show up and like light shit on fire or whatever 0.93

00:16:41.440 like individually not that we shouldn't not that we shouldn't show up and lift the car off our

00:16:46.040 sisters as like they are being like deliberately oppressed not that we shouldn't do that but

00:16:52.020 to remember to check myself in and out of adrenaline magic and to learn from the ancestral

00:16:57.340 techniques of fighting this thing all the way back and back and back I'm talking all the way

00:17:03.220 back to the witch hunts I'm talking all the way back like this magic has been we are part of a

00:17:07.120 history that is so long that it cannot even be told that resistance magic is a tide and what we

00:17:16.120 are fighting is also magic what we were fighting is also a glamour cast over us right it's a I

00:17:24.700 think it wasn't that long though you guys had you guys had a I was another panel and I forget who

00:17:29.600 said it and I feel bad that I don't remember their name but they talked about white supremacy

00:17:32.980 and colonialism as a curse and I was like yes yes yes we we we remember always to plant the seed

00:17:41.520 we remember always to cut the cord we remember always to light the candle right to recognize

00:17:47.640 that what we are fighting is also magic and that we're part of the the the always rising tide

00:17:56.340 against it yes i think that um and we'll talk more about this but we can probably safely

00:18:04.720 call this a war on women, a war on femme, but we can also call this class warfare because we know 0.98

00:18:14.540 that the wealthy and the privileged will not have to live under the same rules and regulations that

00:18:23.960 we do, that there will always be ways around if you have enough resources, if you have enough

00:18:29.420 money. There's a great piece called The Only Moral Abortion Is My Abortion. Is anyone familiar

00:18:40.900 with this? It was compiled by Joyce Arthur, and she worked in clinic and compiled these stories of

00:18:51.000 femmes, women, pregnant people, moving from the protest line in front of the clinic into the

00:18:58.420 clinic to have their abortion and then going straight back out to the picket line

00:19:03.300 there's a question in there somewhere for both of you i'm not i'll let risa ask the question

00:19:15.640 i want to go i want to go from there back to this question of activist history you know we look at

00:19:25.780 activist history in canada for example there's this where we live there's a specific history 0.96

00:19:30.580 right of all women in church basements being like you know what we need is a fucking right 0.96

00:19:37.760 to health care like we have a right we have a right to health care and that is the same law 0.98

00:19:43.460 now that protects our right to abortion is it challenged here yes do we all suffer from the 0.99

00:19:50.140 bullshit of capitalism, curiarchy of patriarchy. Yes. But right now our right to abortion is 0.99

00:19:58.320 simply encoded within our right to healthcare. As far as I understand, I'm not a fucking legal 0.98

00:20:01.780 scholar, but so when you talk about that, I would love Mackenzie for you to go back to this, this, 0.96

00:20:08.940 this digging into your history and your current work. We look at like how this idea of individualism,

00:20:16.880 this loneliness is really a lie it's a glamour that breaks us from this fundamental right

00:20:22.900 that we can believe in when we're in our bodies that we have a right to care yeah I mean but

00:20:30.520 it's so long right I mean we're just you know someone was talking about you know the traditions

00:20:38.480 in Babylon earlier but like before we were talking like but I think the name that always

00:20:43.480 gets brought up when we start talking about there's always the jane collective right and the jane

00:20:46.480 collective we start with was only in the 60s like they were i love them they were complicated and

00:20:54.860 they also did good work and they reclaimed the ability of lay people to do collectivist

00:21:02.320 abortion work at a very important time and also this work is as long as there has ever been laws

00:21:10.820 um as long as there have ever been pregnant people on this planet so i mean the activism

00:21:17.000 itself that we could talk about goes all the way back to the again the witch trials back in the

00:21:22.720 early back in the 14th 15th 16th centuries back to the times when midwifery was coming under attack

00:21:30.040 and the foundational like the quote-unquote founding of what is so-called obstetrics and

00:21:35.740 gynecology but even before then like in the modernized era um one of the reasons why I

00:21:42.460 reached out because I recently learned about uh about a person in my own home area in Portland

00:21:47.540 Oregon who practiced for 30 some odd years from 1920 all the way up to just a few years

00:21:55.700 before Roe was even was passed and she was a lay person um named Ruth Barnett who

00:22:03.040 what trained with physicians and then provided like never lost a person over that time period

00:22:10.540 like when we talk about the activism specifically around abortion and abortion provision

00:22:16.380 and we intersect that with health care there becomes this narrative that before there were

00:22:23.420 physicians doing it it was deadly everything was deadly it is a true narrative it is a true

00:22:31.280 narrative that illegality of abortion increases the number of deaths. What the combination of

00:22:41.040 illegality and white supremacy and patriarchy does is it creates isolation. They take us away

00:22:49.340 from community. It doesn't matter. It literally does not matter. And there is some hot scholarship

00:22:56.340 coming out about this from someone everyone should follow named Molly Dutton-Kenny. She's

00:23:02.900 a midwife up in y'all's area. About home abortion with myriad different methods, including herbal

00:23:10.580 abortion, including medication abortion, including extraction methods. The thing that kills is when

00:23:19.580 we are driven into isolation, when we are taken from our community. So this ties into my thoughts

00:23:24.960 about herbal abortion and my complicated and strong feelings about the outrush of the many

00:23:32.200 beautiful zines that were created in the 60s and onwards, is that if we distribute information

00:23:41.840 about becoming our own providers, which we have the right to do,

00:23:46.640 we have to first unpack our own training that we've been given through the obstetric and

00:23:55.740 gynecology industry of the modern American complex which tells us that the only way to be safe 0.97

00:24:02.320 is to be alone and hidden and away from them that's not how abortion was ever practiced under

00:24:09.560 any other communal system in our histories and our lineages amongst our grandmothers and our

00:24:15.700 aunties and our great great greats and are great and are on the way back no one was ever hidden

00:24:20.900 and alone not when they were in not when they were in a loving system right now not when not

00:24:26.020 when we were in all intact and everything was magical right that the history of activism

00:24:33.340 is not the root of it is not even necessarily in reclaiming all of those many different

00:24:39.460 tactics it is around reclaiming the community that keeps us safe

00:24:43.820 when these many different heroes that we all idolize or you know these different techniques

00:24:52.940 that people get so they get they get radicalized they find out about menstrual extraction or they

00:24:56.660 find out about herbs and they are like proselytizing they're like everyone should

00:25:00.440 have an abortion this way and then we all come through that phase of radicalization

00:25:05.300 we realize that it's so much bigger than that the work of it is so much bigger than that

00:25:12.600 so as we come into activism and as we learn about these histories we have to recognize that it is

00:25:19.200 that it was always collective it is always community it is always our our connection to

00:25:26.320 our ancestors that keeps us in our bodies and keeps us safe let me I don't know if you I like

00:25:35.080 I feel like you probably have things to say about this

00:25:37.460 a big old hand clap of praise of course and all of the agreement but yes we def first of all

00:25:50.520 we have to remember as you stated so eloquently that um the win has been to divide us

00:26:00.440 right that's that's the victory as you said is when they divide us and make us believe

00:26:06.180 that it's just me i'm the only person who doesn't want to have a baby and so it's sad and it's

00:26:13.700 terrible and i have to do it by myself right in this terrible place because i'm also being punished 0.52

00:26:20.220 for liking orgasms which human beings are supposed to right so there's a punishment aspect

00:26:26.920 And that punishment aspect is how they keep us separated and divided and outside of community.

00:26:33.680 But as you stated so beautifully, no reproductive work was done in isolation.

00:26:41.760 How could any of this possibly have been done in isolation?

00:26:45.620 It would not have made any sense.

00:26:47.240 And it doesn't work that way.

00:26:48.860 So definitely returning to the community that keeps us safe, returning to the community that heals us.

00:26:56.920 right the healing is a communal effort one of the sayings of the ancestors in the Yoruba tradition

00:27:04.360 is we must gather together as trees do to form a forest right we must gather together and that

00:27:13.220 they said that the ancestral mothers do not bless us singly they bless us in groups and so that's

00:27:20.140 why the trees gather and that's why we as human beings have to gather as well so definitely the

00:27:26.280 strength, the power, the ability to move through these different states of being lies in community.

00:27:36.180 And reproductive work has always been about moving through different states of being,

00:27:42.260 right? You're a vessel. You decide whether or not this is something that you're going to keep. 1.00

00:27:47.700 You move into this other state of being to let this thing go, to send this thing on its way,

00:27:52.440 Then you come back into this state of being. It's always reproductive work has always been magical work. It can't be anything else. Right. So definitely must be done in community. And as you said, the history has to be put into place, has to be put into place.

00:28:13.180 If we don't remember that it was the same fight at the Salem Witch Trials, right, and this same group of black and brown, femme, and gender fluid people, this was us.

00:28:27.520 It was just us then, too, right? 0.99

00:28:29.480 If we don't remember that, we're just time traveling with this shit, right? 0.99

00:28:33.260 It was us then, too. 0.99

00:28:34.780 It was the same.

00:28:35.520 It was why we recognized each other. 1.00

00:28:36.800 It's why we can have a damn conversation because we talked about this shit before, right? 0.99

00:28:41.240 So now we're down here. 1.00

00:28:42.460 it's 2022 same goddamn conversation same goddamn group of people right so what we know is what 0.99

00:28:50.660 we won we know the end we win right we know we win because we're here 0.99

00:28:56.360 so yes we have to stay connected we have to understand why it's so important to divide us

00:29:05.020 and then it's incumbent upon us to not recognize those divisions right when you're amongst which

00:29:12.220 is you amongst witches. We don't recognize other divisions. We don't bow to those other divisions

00:29:17.020 because they're pretend. As you stated, they're a damn glamour. It's not real. So we don't recognize 0.99

00:29:23.500 that shit. We can look at each other and say, okay, this is my people. If we saw each other 1.00

00:29:27.840 out in public, we'd be like, I think that's my people, right? We would be wondering. I think

00:29:32.460 that might be my friend. That might be my person. So we have to stay connected. Completely agree.

00:29:38.960 yes and we'll be reminding people that this shit is a glamour because sometimes it's the 0.99

00:29:45.020 word that you put on it that sticks in the people's mind um one of our favorite theorists 0.99

00:29:52.200 uh sylvia frederici contends that part of the thrust of the witch hunt was to make us suspect

00:30:00.040 our neighbor to the first point in history where we could look at our next door neighbor and think

00:30:05.460 can I trust you I shouldn't trust you I should be afraid of you um Mackenzie did you want to

00:30:10.820 say something before I jumped in yeah well also I hope that someday there's an episode on Sylvia

00:30:18.160 Federici or a book club just on Caliban and the witch because it's like was mind-blowing to me

00:30:22.500 but yes and I was just I was rolling with Alomi I was like yes and this um uh also as we're

00:30:31.520 unpacking, as we unpack the history particularly of activism, right, we have to continually say

00:30:36.820 the phrase over and over again that Roe was never enough. Roe was never enough and Roe was never

00:30:43.260 ever meant to be, at least not on our side, the be-all and the end-all. The fight is not to attain

00:30:51.400 permission from a system that is genocidal upon us. Yes, Roe gave us access in some really

00:31:01.420 important ways and there are some people suffering repercussions from it being gone right now that

00:31:04.980 are horrific to my mind and also it was never enough and there was deep division that needed

00:31:13.860 to be undone with its with with the primary activism that went into it right white feminist 1.00

00:31:19.580 activism at the same time that it did some things it had repercussions that it actively divided us 0.98

00:31:27.700 at the same time right as we move forward as this new this new fight that we're going to be in

00:31:34.740 health care is a human right tying together the fact that healing does not happen within

00:31:45.760 the system that is killing us that as we reclaim ourselves we must also reclaim community

00:31:54.720 and that that cannot be done in isolation is like big yeah for those of you who are listening

00:32:04.740 and can't see Mackenzie is doing hand gestures that are both frantic and somehow bringing us

00:32:11.080 together frantically bringing us together but I do want to talk about unpacking unlearning

00:32:19.000 unschooling olomi i know you wrote a book about raising revolutionaries so for those of us who do

00:32:27.200 have children or for those of us who are working on our own biases can you give us some tips for

00:32:34.380 raising ourselves if we're not raising children with this notion of unlearning yes first thing

00:32:42.520 is question everything. Question everything. The second thing, trust what we call in the

00:32:51.120 Yoruba language, your ori. Your ori is your head, your mind, yourself. Trust yourself. 0.98

00:32:58.820 And I always say, I teach it in all my classes, believe your eyes. If something looks like

00:33:04.760 bullshit, it's bullshit. If it sounds like bullshit, it's bullshit. Don't let nobody 1.00

00:33:09.300 come and then convince you that it's something beautiful. Don't do that. Yourself knows,

00:33:15.000 especially what's best for your destiny. And that's at the root of unlearning, right? Because

00:33:22.080 learning is a way of teaching us to follow the status quo, right? I teach Afrofuturism at a

00:33:29.780 university here in Florida, and I love doing it. I love it. I'm so glad, you know, that the mothers

00:33:34.180 put me here. However, I am anti the education system, to be completely honest, because it takes

00:33:41.980 people and its purpose is to make you do things one way, right? I stay in an argument with my

00:33:50.220 director because I'm supposed to be teaching people how to write. What they want me to do

00:33:56.060 is teach people how to write this weird standardized way, which doesn't come naturally

00:34:01.160 to any of us. I'm a writer. I'm a good writer. I'm a, you know, I teach English at a university.

00:34:05.420 So obviously I'm, I can write in the way they want me to write. However, that doesn't come

00:34:10.300 naturally to anyone. So when we think about unlearning, question it all, let it all go as

00:34:18.100 many times as you need to, right? Say fuck it to as much of it as you need to. And whatever pieces 0.99

00:34:25.380 are working for you, then you keep those pieces until such time that it's time to let them pieces

00:34:31.740 go too, right? I'm an old woman. I'm in my crone years, all praises. So happy to be here. Would

00:34:38.140 not have it any other way. Hey, go crones, right? And so many times in my life, I've had to let go

00:34:45.860 of a belief. I've had to sit a belief to the side that I was passionate about and that I worked

00:34:50.580 towards be willing to let any of that shit go hold on to you and that's it right so unlearn 0.96

00:34:57.780 that way and anything that keeps you away from other people other human beings you really got 0.98

00:35:08.960 to check that out you really got to dig deeper into that because we were all raised with in a

00:35:15.700 capitalist society somebody has to be us somebody has to be other so we were all raised with an

00:35:21.820 other in mind right so we all every day have to say wait that's not an other right my mother and

00:35:31.300 all of her sisters had eating disorders and we are already tiny people i am 5'2 120 pounds on a

00:35:39.520 good day we're tiny our bodies are made tiny but in our family because of these eating disorders

00:35:45.440 there was a whole lot of fat phobia right that was just the way of the day so if you develop a

00:35:52.400 normal natural body size 14 that's a normal natural body don't ever forget it right if you

00:35:58.100 developed into that there was a lot of you know backlash that you were going to have to have in

00:36:04.100 my family and so when I recognized my own eating disorder you know shock of all shocks I was I was

00:36:12.120 in my 40s before I could admit and say, wait a minute, I think, I don't think my relationship

00:36:17.460 with food is correct. Even though I was raised by all these women who I had identified as having 0.95

00:36:22.500 them, two of them who died from them. It took me until I was in my 40s to say, wait, I think I'm,

00:36:28.700 you know, dealing with this too. I had to then begin to unpack my own fat phobia.

00:36:35.920 I had to unpack it, right? It was somebody that I was allowed to other.

00:36:39.880 i had always been allowed to other that i had to then unpack it so that's what i mean anything

00:36:46.940 that you have in your mind that takes you away from other people you got to check that out

00:36:52.740 you got to check that out and be like why why do i think that where where is that thought coming

00:36:58.480 from that's not based in reality so where is it coming from so unlearn unlearn for yourself now

00:37:05.980 While you're unlearning do not judge yourself

00:37:09.860 That doesn't mean don't change your behavior

00:37:13.660 But that means don't say ugly stuff to yourself 1.00

00:37:17.420 Oh you were so stupid to ever have thought that 1.00

00:37:19.680 Don't do that 1.00

00:37:20.420 Don't do that 1.00

00:37:21.900 Just say oh damn that was fucked up that I was raised that way 1.00

00:37:24.920 I ain't finna do that shit no more 1.00

00:37:26.740 And then just stop doing it 1.00

00:37:28.040 So don't use it as a tool to be mean to yourself again 0.99

00:37:31.940 The way that the people who taught you that shit were mean to you 0.99

00:37:35.340 don't use it as a tool to re-traumatize yourself forgive yourself and be like oh damn that was some 1.00

00:37:41.420 dumb shit let it go and move on i we're talking about isolation and and the way you you spoke 1.00

00:37:49.700 about it allow me i i feel like we are in an abusive relationship with our society and the 1.00

00:37:57.640 first thing that you hear in domestic violence circles is that that isolation first they didn't

00:38:07.280 want me talking to this or that friend then you know they they kept me away from my family until

00:38:13.220 all I had was them and I think we can apply that to the status quo I'm not getting any nurturing

00:38:21.460 but at least I know that I am in line with what I was told to do. I think it's a

00:38:28.120 useful metaphor, especially when you're talking about not reproducing that

00:38:34.680 abuse onto yourself, is to recognize that we are in an abusive relationship with our society. I mean,

00:38:42.700 a statistic that I just learned this year was that the number one cause of death of people who

00:38:50.120 are pregnant is homicide that being pregnant is dangerous for many reasons outside of how it 0.51

00:39:01.440 affects the course of our lives and again I just keep coming back to this notion of like this war 0.88

00:39:07.240 on femme and I and I just need both of you and all of you and everyone who's listening to tell me

00:39:13.060 like how to keep fighting this this war risa has an answer or a follow-up question it's like my

00:39:22.760 question is related because my question is like how do we build community and not make other

00:39:31.080 of the people on the other side of this issue on the other side politically who are also in a

00:39:39.700 domestic violence situation relationship with the same political leaders the same political system

00:39:45.580 like how do we how do we reach those people even when they're in our own family or in friends

00:39:51.120 family where it just seems ludicrous it just seems so I wanted to add that part where it's like can

00:39:56.620 it be can it be something beyond a war can there be community building even with them if we see

00:40:01.600 them as in the same violence? Malomi, help us. I think that, I always think that they know.

00:40:15.660 They know that they're actually in community with us. And this is the old woman, me speaking. Had

00:40:21.200 you asked me this 20 years ago, I would have been like, no, we can't build no community with their 1.00

00:40:25.100 ass, you know, chop them, that's what I would have said. But the old woman, me, all praises to her, 1.00

00:40:33.100 I'm so glad she's here, has to say they know, right? There is not a femme presenting person. 0.96

00:40:41.200 There is not, you know, a person who is living and feeling this pressure on them all the time

00:40:47.720 that doesn't know that the pressure is there. The difference is just that we have said,

00:40:53.380 I ain't gonna do that and they have said I'm gonna do it I'm gonna acquiesce to it so we can

00:41:00.020 always have community with them because we remember the times when we acquiesce to it as well

00:41:04.420 right we have to acquiesce to it a little bit every day or they ain't gonna let us eat we ain't

00:41:10.540 gonna eat if we don't acquiesce something a little bit every day so since we're still all in it then

00:41:15.960 we are in community with them I think we have to be careful right because people like that can be

00:41:21.380 dangerous literally life-threatening however i do agree with you we have to bear in mind

00:41:27.500 that we're one human family trying to move into a better condition that is literally what is going

00:41:34.420 on while keeping in mind that people can be wrong people can have wrong opinions people can think 0.99

00:41:41.520 some wrong shit people can say some wrong shit people can enact some wrong shit they do it all

00:41:46.580 the time right and we don't have to there doesn't necessarily have to be love lost especially when 0.99

00:41:51.880 we're talking about family members when we talk about family members we want we definitely want

00:41:55.880 to hold a space right where we can try to find some sort of reconnection but i find what i find

00:42:02.560 is helpful with my siblings and my you know older aunties and uncles is reminding them that this is

00:42:08.820 a new world right and we're so grateful for the new world that they tried to build that they begin

00:42:14.620 to build in the 60s and this is our addition to that right my children remind me that they're

00:42:21.060 grateful for the new world that we tried to build in the 90s right and this is their addition to

00:42:26.020 that and somehow that usually helps people to ease more into being accepting of the fact that

00:42:34.480 you know nobody's going to roll over and take bullshit forever because that's what blows my 0.98

00:42:38.540 mind to be honest is that people think well if you're black if you're femme presenting if you're 1.00

00:42:45.340 trans if you're queer you're gonna roll up and take shit forever it blows my mind that history 1.00

00:42:50.560 has been rewritten to make people believe that being these things means that you're just gonna 1.00

00:42:56.960 take shit when we i'm like these are the people who have been rebelling the whole time these are 0.99

00:43:02.260 people that have been kicking your ass the whole time so why do you get to 2022 and decide if we 1.00

00:43:09.220 can beat them down this one last time they're going to do what we say that's just never we've 0.99

00:43:14.220 never done what you say it's it's strange to me that they still think this one last you know beat 0.99

00:43:21.440 down and yeah finally they'll submit what that's always to me the kicker like what the fuck history 0.98

00:43:29.860 are you reading? Where you been all these 0.98

00:43:31.880 past 3,000 years?

00:43:33.780 Mackenzie.

00:43:36.460 Respond.

00:43:39.260 No, Riz,

00:43:39.900 I'm adding, I'm going, I'm

00:43:41.400 following along behind a lot of you.

00:43:43.760 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:43:46.580 Yes, and also

00:43:48.400 I'm also a person that has a deeply conservative

00:43:53.640 family that grew up

00:43:55.820 in a lot of, that has like a lot of

00:43:57.840 it's hard to go home and have a conversation that doesn't start some kind of fight

00:44:03.200 I feel that pain deeply and I think where I'm at right now is I'm focusing on building

00:44:11.980 I'm focusing on building that nest within my own community of forming that safe protective 0.88

00:44:19.920 layer around us because like, uh, like, uh, we just said, let's keep those people cross the

00:44:30.440 picket line. Everyone needs abortion. Everyone needs healthcare. Everyone needs healing at some 1.00

00:44:37.820 point and they will find you and they will find you and you will welcome them in. You will give

00:44:45.240 them what they need. And then they won't be, even if they cross back over the picket line,

00:44:48.780 because they believe that they will be cut off

00:44:50.660 from their family if they don't write

00:44:52.620 with like any of those things.

00:44:54.580 When we remove the glamour from ourselves

00:44:56.840 and we're able to see the many intersecting lines

00:45:01.080 that people hold on the other side

00:45:03.660 and we're able to just hold, to just see it,

00:45:06.660 to just see all those intersecting threads

00:45:09.100 that are attached to them

00:45:10.040 and to say, sometimes both, right?

00:45:13.940 I also still hate you for what you're doing.

00:45:17.080 I still hate you for what you're doing.

00:45:18.780 And if you come to me, I, and also I'm creating the way for you and we're, we're making, we are

00:45:26.500 making the way forward and it's even for you. And you can go back and forward as many times as you

00:45:31.780 need to, honestly, we'll stop you when you come to violence for us. But I think reclaiming those

00:45:40.940 spaces, reclaiming that healing for myself and my communities, that's still the first place that I,

00:45:46.180 still the first place that I go and it's still not a reality for so many of us

00:45:50.740 yeah I think if like you were saying you know some of us are in environments where it's it's

00:46:00.720 not safe for us maybe we are too young to move out of our parents house maybe we are not in a

00:46:06.440 financial position to get out of a bad situation um but if it is possible and safe I would love

00:46:15.400 for this notion of shout your abortion to really come to light I was talking to my mother who was

00:46:23.340 a good Christian woman and therefore you know despite being feminist my whole life um thinks 0.97

00:46:32.400 that abortion is wrong you know it's the baby killing equation but I think part of the reason

00:46:39.060 is that she told me in this conversation she doesn't think she knows anyone who has had an

00:46:43.400 abortion. And I said, you're wrong. I'm not going to say any more than that, but let me just say

00:46:50.160 you're very, very wrong. And I think it's easy for people to think that this is, again, the only

00:46:57.180 others have abortions. Only this type of person has an abortion. Only that type of, you know,

00:47:05.260 the sluts have abortions, you know, that kind of thinking. So I think if we can be more vocal 0.98

00:47:13.320 about the realities of our lives that we can sort of open up this gate I will say I've never had an 0.92

00:47:19.440 abortion my body doesn't want to make a pregnancy and you know that that's a different kind of

00:47:24.100 body struggle but I did have a condom break once and I went straight to the pharmacy and I told

00:47:30.880 the pharmacist I would like a morning after pill and they said here you are madam and I think it

00:47:37.020 was, you know, $17 or something like that. And I took it and then I didn't worry so much and it

00:47:45.420 was easy and it was simple and it was safe. And I got it from a healthcare professional who was

00:47:52.820 able to answer my questions about what the side effects might be. So I really, again, if it's safe

00:47:58.980 for you, for those of you who are listening, if you have had this experience in your life,

00:48:02.640 I would love for you to feel like you can be honest about it, because I feel like that

00:48:07.380 will change the world. This notion of community is this honesty, is this vulnerability. I want

00:48:16.100 to go back to Mackenzie quickly, because I want to ask you about being a street medic.

00:48:19.760 I want to ask you about this front line of all front lines. And first of all, how you got into

00:48:27.380 this field and secondly what protection magic do you use on yourself so that you don't burn out

00:48:35.360 yeah it the story of how I got into this work is

00:48:45.940 actually you know I'm just realizing now that I love it because because it's

00:48:52.980 as i was talking about a little bit before i think that we we get caught in this notion of

00:49:01.180 compartmentalizing abortion is separate from maternal fetal medicine abortion is separate

00:49:07.500 from obstetric and gynecology abortion is its own particular thing harm reduction is its own

00:49:13.020 particular thing drug users don't intersect with abortion and they don't intersect with being

00:49:16.600 pregnant. Unhoused people, once they enter into the street, that's all they become. They don't

00:49:23.160 become any other type of demographic. So the story of how I, the first thing, how I very first got

00:49:32.280 into healthcare advocacy was that I was, um, asterisk trigger warning, I was assaulted by

00:49:41.960 a physician as part of my introduction to the gynecologic industry of the United States I was

00:49:47.900 given a non-consensual pelvic exam that was so painful that I shook and cried on the table I was

00:49:56.540 16 years old and I never went back to a physician for over a decade and I started studying how to

00:50:07.600 keep myself healthy. I had already had a lot of, I was very lucky to grow up in a beautiful rural

00:50:14.000 area. So I had a lot of access to green space and plant communications from a very young age

00:50:18.960 and had this ancestral memory that plants could heal. So I went to that and that's how I got

00:50:26.480 started in herbalism. So my, the foundation of my work has been in reproductive sovereignty

00:50:30.860 since I was 16 years old, trying to figure out how we remove ourselves from the, I use this word 0.69

00:50:38.320 very intentionally, genocidal system, that is the obstetrics and gynecologic industry,

00:50:44.880 particularly in the United States, and that is then outsourced to multiple other areas

00:50:50.140 across the world, particularly the global south.

00:50:53.520 i moved um i grew up in washington state and in a really rural area and then i moved to eugene

00:51:06.720 oregon about five or six years ago and eugene oregon has the infamous um claim to fame that

00:51:15.840 it has the highest per capita uh rate of houselessness in the entire united states

00:51:22.200 little eugene oregon like disproportionately proportionate to the population we have the

00:51:28.040 highest concentration not the highest overall numbers right that's like new york and la and

00:51:33.880 things like that but condensed into this tiny little city of i don't even know like i think

00:51:38.760 it's less than 200 000 people or something like that we have around 9 000 people living without

00:51:47.060 shelter on the street. Um, and I have been trying to work full time as a full spectrum doula and a

00:51:58.100 clinical massage therapist and an herbalist. And I've been trying to make it work in the

00:52:03.280 predominantly white, predominantly upper class, alternative healing, quote unquote,

00:52:09.440 alternative healing networks. Um, like trying to like do the thing. And when I landed in Eugene,

00:52:16.040 I landed with a group of activists that were providing absolutely free street based medical

00:52:21.940 care called Occupy Medical. And they took me in and they trained me up. And it was the first place

00:52:27.280 that I ever was able to unpack for myself, my own intersection with classism around being someone

00:52:35.380 who is driven into healing for myself, and then moving into circles where it was totally normal

00:52:43.140 to give someone a regiment of natural medicine

00:52:46.520 that was like several hundred dollars, right?

00:52:48.580 You need to take all of these supplements

00:52:49.900 and you have to get all these weird, not weird,

00:52:52.740 but like very exotic herbs

00:52:54.200 that come from somebody else's culture

00:52:55.720 and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

00:52:57.280 And I couldn't make it work.

00:52:58.840 It didn't make sense to me.

00:53:00.140 I hate it.

00:53:00.660 Like I wasn't, it wasn't working for me.

00:53:02.600 And I landed in this place

00:53:03.580 where all of the herbs were grown and harvested

00:53:06.560 and the medicine was all made

00:53:07.860 and then we gave it out for free. 0.99

00:53:10.000 And it was a fucking revolution for me. 0.97

00:53:13.140 I was with them for a couple of years and, um, got a lot of, got a lot of political education 0.99

00:53:22.620 about the intersectionality of houselessness. And it's sort of hard. It's hard not to think

00:53:29.500 when you start looking at houselessness, it's hard not to think that it isn't like the ultimate 1.00

00:53:33.100 intersectional, like the ultimate intersection of like disproportionately people of color, 0.91

00:53:38.760 disproportionately LGBT, disproportionately youth LGBTQIA folks, and sort of counterintuitively

00:53:45.880 overwhelmingly male because of the ways that misogyny creates isolation and individualism

00:53:52.460 and forces people out of community. And the just, the ways that you don't even conceive that

00:54:02.840 modernity creates barriers for people like you just if you're going if you're trying to look at

00:54:10.920 how to make things accessible then you have to talk about people living on the street

00:54:14.680 if you want to talk about police violence you have to talk about people living on the street

00:54:19.580 you want to talk about the opioid epidemic you don't talk about the drug use epidemic you have

00:54:24.000 to talk about people living on the street like it's just like it was it was it really blew my

00:54:30.380 work wide open it blew my activism wide open um and when the pandemic hit

00:54:36.900 there when the pandemic hit the cdc made open guidance that

00:54:43.380 people that cities were no longer allowed to enact sweeps which are like we have people who

00:54:51.480 are living outside and they look kind of dirty and we don't like them so we're just going to

00:54:55.440 kind of chronically sweep them along, like take away all of their things so they don't look dirty

00:55:01.060 anymore, and then hope that they go someplace else. This is like an overarching tactic that's

00:55:06.300 created. So when the dual, we had three different disasters overlap, or not disasters, we had three

00:55:15.180 different things happen within the city of Eugene. The pandemic hit, and the city of Eugene

00:55:19.500 didn't stop sweeping people in the face of a pandemic that was killing people internationally

00:55:26.040 they continued to enact sweeps on the houseless individuals like deliberately putting them at 0.94

00:55:31.780 risk then the uprisings happened and by the uprisings i mean the black lives matter

00:55:36.860 uprisings of 2020 which were revolutionary and they set off police violence particularly against

00:55:46.140 and housed individuals like nothing we'd ever seen. Then we had a wildfire happen. This is all

00:55:53.940 in one year cycle. We had a wildfire happen that literally wiped two towns off the face of the

00:55:59.100 earth and an additional 500 households had no place to go. And out of that, we very quickly,

00:56:10.180 where we had been holding a clinic before we moved into providing direct street outreach we put

00:56:16.980 backpacks on and we went out we found people in these little nooks and crannies we started and

00:56:24.160 we learned about police defense we learned about eviction defense we learned about harm reduction

00:56:28.480 and keeping people safe inside their tents we learned about ways to mitigate smoke and like

00:56:34.220 it just took off and it became its whole other beast and that's how black vessel street aid was

00:56:40.440 born and has continued to run we're only in eugene but we're part of a larger

00:56:46.280 nationwide international actually wide network of activists that are

00:56:52.100 trying to stop the genocide that is killing people who are forced out onto the street

00:56:59.620 In the United States, we lose over 10,000 people a year to houselessness. Like, they die for issues related to houselessness. And that, though the population is overwhelmingly, by vast majority, male-identified individuals, the people who are femme-identified on the street die disproportionately even there.

00:57:25.420 And there are also, this is a whopper of a statistic, but over 90% of them report sexual

00:57:31.920 assault at some point within the past five years.

00:57:36.160 Access to reproductive care, access to STI care, access to all these things are all things

00:57:41.440 we deal with on a daily basis.

00:57:45.780 In the course of this condensed, what I feel like has been like boot camp for the long

00:57:53.520 run of the end of our, like the, the late stage capitalism. I feel like I've been like in bootcamp

00:57:58.880 for the past three years of like, what is the work going to continue to fucking look like? Um, 0.95

00:58:07.200 I also suffered a miscarriage at 15 weeks and I needed care that intersected with

00:58:17.600 the only care that I got was it was at home provision for myself 0.98

00:58:24.060 I had community who were a bunch of radical fucking midwives and doulas and street medics 0.96

00:58:33.700 who surrounded me and created a capsule so that I never went to the hospital never went in I went 0.97

00:58:40.200 for long-term care there was like you know some stuff going on it was the most radical act of

00:58:46.320 magic that has ever happened to me to be able to give birth to my child that was also a death

00:58:53.120 of my child with my partner at home surrounded by community 0.99

00:58:57.720 and to say fuck you to the obstetrician gynecologist you're not allowed to lay hands 1.00

00:59:06.860 on me I know who I am I know what my power is and I have witches around me that are willing to 1.00

00:59:12.920 defend that that are willing to create space for me I suffer from

00:59:20.940 overextension constantly the the the tactic of like how to avoid burnout I have not learned but

00:59:29.060 I have been shown how if you do not protect yourself how low the lows can go I we will

00:59:40.200 never know why our miscarriage happened but I know that I happened to fall pregnant at a moment

00:59:44.500 where I was had been chronically over responding for like two and a half years and I strongly

00:59:51.040 suspect that the intersecting pressure of the stress and the those systems took my child from

00:59:58.380 is what I say to myself the systems that asked me to show up and do this work when it should not

01:00:05.520 have to be done took my child from me and I had to stop and I had to take a long rest and a long

01:00:18.180 look at myself and a long look at my own systems of care for myself and I don't know that I there

01:00:26.640 are solution I don't know there is a solution because we're going to have to keep finding a

01:00:31.080 way to keep getting back up every day. And we do. We always have. But the magic that I cast over

01:00:38.000 myself in this time is to remind myself that I am enough. I'm enough for myself and I'm enough

01:00:56.400 for my community even if the work looks so insurmountable that it breaks my breaks breaks

01:01:03.880 my breaks me all the way down and I just have to do that every day I just have to do that every day

01:01:12.480 I think part part of your aunt thank you so much first of all um we around here are all about that

01:01:20.260 vulnerability is strength life and you have illustrated that beautifully for us today and I

01:01:26.680 think you answered the question in another way which is to say for all of you who are listening

01:01:31.960 if you make community building part of your activism if you center community building in

01:01:40.920 your activism then this can be the the orboros that allows you to keep eating your own tail

01:01:48.140 you know because you will get that that support as as part of your activism not as an aside or

01:01:56.580 something that happens separately but as a part of it you made me want to ask Ola Omi if if you

01:02:05.860 are so bold as to tell us what radicalized you

01:02:09.700 life i was born in um columbia tennessee and i'm a little black girl whose mother told her she was

01:02:23.640 a witch when she was three so it wasn't that i couldn't be nothing but this i had there was

01:02:32.360 nowhere else to go I tried I was I was the wonderful separate wife housewife for about

01:02:37.240 10 years and I it was suicidal for me in literally so this is this is really all that I could be but

01:02:45.660 I think that for me the moment of knowing has all knowing you know you have got to do this you have

01:02:59.440 got to fight this system you have got to make this better was um also of course a reproductive

01:03:07.720 moment which I think I guess it is for a lot of people with uteruses so when my first when I was

01:03:13.180 pregnant with my um my eldest daughter my first daughter um if the health care system was horrible

01:03:21.280 um I was a poor black girl I was 19 you know I had gotten married of course because my mother

01:03:29.220 had insisted. And it was terrible. Everything was terrible. I was forced to do a whole bunch

01:03:35.440 of things that I didn't want to do. I have a lot of allergies to a lot of things. But when you're

01:03:40.280 a poor Black girl, nobody believes you. When you say, I can't take that, I'm allergic to that, 1.00

01:03:44.500 I'm going to, you know, I may go into anaflector shock if you put that in my body. Nobody believed

01:03:49.320 me. Nobody believed me. So I got a lot, had a lot of horrible experiences so that by the time that

01:03:55.160 I pushed my daughter into this world she wasn't breathing and I myself was was barely there as

01:04:02.860 well and um they wouldn't let me see her they kept rushing her body all over the room and she was on 0.99

01:04:09.140 she was some tiny thing you know and she my body hadn't done a good job of creating something

01:04:16.960 healthy and viable anyway because I was in a hellish stressful environment and I prayed

01:04:24.680 did everything that I did while they were resuscitating her and at some point she began

01:04:28.920 to breathe and it's at that moment that I knew because you know for a minute you believe the

01:04:35.540 narrative this is what mommy said this is what grandma said surely this is true and you saw them

01:04:43.120 doing something different but they kept telling you you've got to do this though my mother divorced

01:04:49.300 when I was two but she raised me to be a good wife why would you do that why would you think

01:04:55.600 that was gonna work mom didn't work for you why would how but that's what she raised me to be

01:05:00.560 right and it was you know it was beat into you this is what you shall be but that point for me

01:05:06.720 was the point that said no I think all of it is a lie and I had you know you discern that part of 0.99

01:05:13.640 it is a lie at some point once Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny you like okay part of this shit is 0.96

01:05:18.400 just a lie okay but then you have those big moments and you're like I think all of it might 0.96

01:05:23.900 be a lie and so you start kind of looking under the skirt of the culture and you're like oh okay

01:05:29.820 it's all a lie so that was the big huge turning point moment when I was like okay after this

01:05:36.820 I'm going to divorce this man I'm not going back to church I'm changing my name I'm shaving my head

01:05:44.620 You know, the things that we do to reclaim this vessel that we live in.

01:05:49.080 Changing my name, I'm shaving my head, I'm piercing my nose, right?

01:05:55.860 And then that's when I begin to remember.

01:05:59.680 Mama said I was a witch at three, right?

01:06:03.040 But by the time you shaved your head, you know, she ain't going to revisit that. 1.00

01:06:06.220 She ain't going to tell you what she meant by that shit. 0.99

01:06:10.980 So, yeah. 0.99

01:06:13.820 Yeah.

01:06:14.620 and can you talk a little bit about um your perception of the history of gynecology and

01:06:22.400 obstetrics yes so i have to steal mackenzie's term here and make us very aware of the fact

01:06:36.060 that health care in this country is a genocidal system by design right so there were three 0.99

01:06:43.520 maybe four Black women that were operated upon, no anesthesia. They were enslaved at the time. 1.00

01:06:55.440 And this is how every gynecological medical procedure that we do now, that's how those 0.98

01:07:02.640 were created. So that's the beginning of it. So when we think about that, you really have to 0.61

01:07:10.540 decide because i decided like mckenzie i i just didn't go back to doctors after that after you 0.93

01:07:16.260 just almost killed me because you were giving me some shit i told you i couldn't take i just didn't 0.63

01:07:21.020 go back but we have to all decide how deep into that system we're gonna go because we have to 1.00

01:07:29.340 remember that it's genocidal by design right so those black women's some of them their lives were 0.99

01:07:35.460 taken by those procedures. And of course, all of them were subjected to horrible trauma 0.99

01:07:40.500 to create this system. And the point of this system was what? To take away the power from

01:07:46.880 the midwives. My great grandmother was a granny midwife. She delivered most of the Black people 1.00

01:07:55.040 in the town where I'm from. And she delivered some of my older siblings. And when I think about

01:08:03.120 the type of power she wielded in the community that's what they wanted right so that's why they 0.99

01:08:10.760 went and created this system because my great-grandmother everybody in the community 1.00

01:08:15.000 called her big buddy right she was a tall big woman and she was everybody's friend right she

01:08:20.920 loved everybody right now she wasn't nobody to play with don't get her wrong she's saying that

01:08:27.500 in my ear like don't have me characterized out here like i was soft and she wasn't soft y'all 0.94

01:08:32.200 she's saying it in my ear but she was that big mama that delivered all of the children 0.86

01:08:38.460 knew the herbal cures bought a house from the confederates y'all bought a house from the 1.00

01:08:45.320 confederates as a single black woman and the house was huge it was five bedrooms the shit had a koi 0.99

01:08:51.880 pond in front of it right so she was that woman right but that connection that witches have 1.00

01:09:01.460 to the universe that's what makes us that type of human being and that to me is always the threat 0.99

01:09:09.620 so you have to create some horrible terrible genocidal system to combat this this can't be

01:09:17.800 combated we know that right let let us not sit here tonight and believe that our connection to

01:09:23.940 the universe can be combated you you can't fight against that right so we're not going to worry

01:09:31.020 about that, but there has always been, that's part of the glamour, is that you believe you

01:09:35.920 fighting something that can't be fought. I was asked one time to be on a panel like this, but

01:09:41.840 it was all men. And they said, we just want you to come in here so we can refute what you're saying.

01:09:50.680 And I said, oh, were some of you all born outside of a vagina? Did y'all come out of a vagina? 1.00

01:09:58.300 well that ain't what we talking about i said well that's all i'm saying is that y'all came out of a 1.00

01:10:04.080 vagina that's literally the point of what i'm saying is that you came out of a vagina so there's 0.99

01:10:10.000 nothing to refute right there's no combat there's no combat you can't combat the connection that we 0.99

01:10:17.520 have that that we as witches as the original wise ones you can't combat the connection we have to 1.00

01:10:25.740 the universe but yeah it's a genocidal system fuck it fuck everything it does it's bullshit 1.00

01:10:33.360 try your best to extricate yourself from it as much as you possibly can and then we 1.00

01:10:39.080 as a collective have to make sure we're always gathering information to help right because how

01:10:46.720 do we help our sisters that need hormone therapy if we don't know the herbs they give you a lot of 1.00

01:10:52.620 estrogen. You know what I'm saying? So we have to be gathering information too while we're combating

01:10:59.520 it. So. Yes. One of our favorite sources of information, a book that we recommend probably

01:11:07.020 like every third episode or something like that is Midwives, Witches, Witches, Midwives and Nurses

01:11:13.620 by Deirdre English and Barbara Ehrenreich. Their contention is that the witch hunt is related to

01:11:21.120 the professionalization of medicine. So when men only started training to be doctors so that they

01:11:30.320 could profit off this training to be doctors, they had to erase the competition. And the competition

01:11:37.080 was Olomi's grandmother. The competition was Mackenzie. And so that had to be erased. So we

01:11:46.180 are, we're dealing with patriarchy, we're dealing with capitalism, we're dealing with classism.

01:11:51.120 we are dealing with every form of oppression in a Venn diagram and we find ourselves at the very

01:11:59.440 center and what we can do is have conversations like this one once again i really i want to open

01:12:11.440 up the floor to our guest guests if you have a question for any of our panelists you can raise

01:12:18.640 your hand if you have a compliment you can also raise your hand and deliver a compliment it doesn't

01:12:25.380 have to be in the form of a question but in the meantime I really again I just I'm I'm so grateful

01:12:33.080 that we have the freedom to have this conversation I am so glad for the reminders that our panelists

01:12:39.440 have brought to us that we are not disconnected as as much as you know the status quo might want

01:12:47.780 us to feel disconnected because it is in their interest for us to be isolated and vulnerable in

01:12:55.980 the bad way not vulnerable in the way where we can take strength from sharing our experiences

01:13:01.040 with each other and our fears and I really feel like both of you specifically our panelists have

01:13:09.660 helped me personally to come out of that what we call it the the adrenaline magic of of fear

01:13:18.640 and urgency and just recognizing that you know the pendulum has always swung

01:13:24.560 the pendulum will continue to swing and it's just up to us to see if we can

01:13:31.920 nudge the swing so that it's not quite so the people who are listening can't see my hands but

01:13:39.280 I'm swinging them wide and then I'm swinging them short. And the short swing is the one we're

01:13:44.220 looking at where we're not going so far to one side that people die. And that is what's happening

01:13:52.040 when we ignore people who are unhoused. You know, I watched a short documentary about

01:13:59.520 homeless women having their period, homeless femmes having their period.

01:14:06.720 And I had never thought about it before. This was my state of privilege where it had never

01:14:14.340 even crossed my mind. Obviously, it's problematic and difficult and messy and painful. And if you

01:14:23.240 don't have a situation where you can even wash yourself. And so, I mean, as tiny of an act as it

01:14:28.820 was Risa and I added a tampon drive to our Christmas party that year and then to like

01:14:35.920 every Halloween party and then to all the shows we did for the next six years because we just

01:14:44.380 hadn't thought about it before then people who bleed need our love and we are we are bound to

01:14:49.700 those people yeah and I I want to agree with that that like there's 10 of us here and there's a

01:14:55.180 couple thousand people that will hear this and each of you share it like build build community

01:15:01.960 with one person like let one person hear Mackenzie's story and weep with her and hold

01:15:08.280 that baby in their heart and let that baby's life be held and like let one person know Olomi's story

01:15:16.580 and her activism and her three-year-old witch and celebrate her like like let's hold those stories

01:15:22.860 for each other and tell one person they're not alone right now. So if our listeners want to

01:15:30.900 support you in like a practical or even financial way, let's start with Mackenzie. How can our

01:15:37.420 listeners support your endeavors or in a non-financial way? How can they lift you?

01:15:46.560 I mean, lift me by lifting yourselves. I mean, certainly you're welcome to donate to Black

01:15:52.660 thistle if you want to however the crisis of helplessness the crisis of pure access to

01:15:59.840 health care is an epidemic across the united states and i will tell you we are not alone 0.95

01:16:07.520 and we we are not singular by like black thistle street there are so many fucking radical 0.85

01:16:12.400 there are so many radical projects happening you know like you know i'm going to shout out 0.78

01:16:19.560 decolonial or decolonize herbalism in kentucky and i'm going to shout out the canoe journaling

01:16:24.180 the canoe journey herbalist up in the salish sea area like farm to prison i don't even know where

01:16:29.440 they're at necessarily but they do fucking rock work like if you are just starting 0.76

01:16:35.500 start to ask in your community and you will find them start asking your community and you will find 0.91

01:16:44.120 them. If there is no one else, reach out to people that are like close to you, but not quite close

01:16:50.120 enough and ask them for mentorship. They will give you all the shit. They will be so excited 1.00

01:16:56.860 to get you started. And don't assume, do not assume, take this away from this episode. Do

01:17:03.280 not assume that even if you are starting a project and you feel by yourself, you're not by yourself.

01:17:08.640 right and you can't do it alone it is actually essential to the project of liberation that we

01:17:15.100 formed community we formed community across communities as well as within our communities

01:17:19.060 also as radical we leftist verbalist like weirdos that we are witches that we are uh

01:17:27.620 don't hesitate to reach out and try to convert the establishment figures that are in your area

01:17:35.380 black vessel street aid works with doctors we work with nurses we work with emts sometimes

01:17:42.980 they're a hard sell and when you flip them they will be such a hard ally the main doctor we roll

01:17:50.480 with right now is literally the chief of staff of an ed and he's this older white guy who is always

01:17:57.940 learning how to leverage his older white guy-ness and walks around with like flip-flops down these

01:18:02.580 railroad tracks like asking people if they want syringes now that was a project of near a decade

01:18:09.380 of us as activists like you know reeling him in yeah showing him how herbs can be effective

01:18:17.460 showing him how these tactics can be effective teaching you know having political conversations

01:18:21.360 so it's so it's so hopeful what you said that a hard sell can turn into a hard ally

01:18:29.980 it doesn't have to be easy y'all nobody said it was going to be easy you know but nobody told me

01:18:38.280 that it's not going to be fast it's not going to be easy but nothing precious was ever cheap

01:18:44.820 not in my life anyway I want to encourage our listeners if you haven't already I've asked you

01:18:49.580 to do this many many times but I want you to purchase the book Ona Agbani it was revelatory

01:18:56.280 for me. I learned so much. It really, which is a book by, excuse me, under the name of Ayalosa

01:19:05.800 Akalatunde. It was foundational for me in my unlearning and unpacking of white supremacy

01:19:12.400 to see the beautiful, complex nature of African traditions, cultures, and, you know, how these

01:19:24.160 came to play in America. Again, the name of the book is Ona Agbani. I really, really,

01:19:28.880 really recommend it to everyone listening right now, if you haven't already bought it.

01:19:33.860 What's another way that our listeners can support you, Filoni?

01:19:38.760 My website does have a donate button, gottoboshun.org, G-O-T, the number two, the letter B-O-S-H-U-N.org.

01:19:49.760 You can donate there. For my content, I mostly do teach POC femme people. However, if you are not a 0.93

01:20:00.760 POC femme person and you are in need of some magical assistance or just some help and guidance 0.86

01:20:07.760 along that journey, please reach out to me via email. The same gottoboshun at gmail, G-O-T, 1.00

01:20:14.920 the number two, the letter B, O-S-H-U-N. But that is how you can support me. Also, 1.00

01:20:21.200 support yourself, love yourself, listen to yourself, exalt yourself, right? And remember,

01:20:29.320 like Bob Marley said, if they are the big tree, we are the small acts. We are the thing that can

01:20:35.460 cut them down, right? No worries. In the end, we win, right? We're the tarot readers. We know the

01:20:42.720 future in the end we win so no no worries you can't combat the connection we have to the universe

01:20:54.120 though they may try and try and try and try it it will always surge and resurge and surge

01:21:06.780 and research again listeners be angry do not be afraid stay angry but do not be afraid build your

01:21:16.860 communities even conversations like this one again let's invoke dr beverly smith one more time

01:21:24.400 a conversation can be a spell of protection so again i want to thank our our panelists everything

01:21:30.560 we talked about will be in the show notes for this episode um we want to wish everyone a happy

01:21:35.620 Lamas. Lamas is the first harvest. And may we harvest. May we plant and nurture and seed and

01:21:47.040 grow and then take the fruit and bite into it like the juicy peach that life fucking is. And I 0.99

01:21:56.280 see Mackenzie is doing a mime of the peach juices just absolutely spilling down our bodies. And 1.00

01:22:01.860 that's the moment that i want you to live in this llamas they cannot combat our connection

01:22:10.580 to the universe thank you again so much if anything has anyone has anything parting

01:22:16.640 to say i would love to hear can i can i give you a spell that i've been please do reciting to

01:22:26.660 myself by one art you know all hail Ursula Le Guin this is an excerpt from one of hers from one

01:22:35.300 of her poems it's not the whole thing please look it up but um someone a teacher of mine actually um

01:22:41.600 uh Ilva Mara a teacher of mine shared this with me and I've been reciting it to myself over and

01:22:47.160 over again so please bring strange things let very old things come into your hands

01:22:56.680 may your mouth contain the shape of strange words walk fearlessly well loved one be always coming

01:23:06.980 home. Thank you so much, Mackenzie and Ursula K. Le Guin and Olahomi Omakloku, also known as

01:23:17.200 Ayalosa Alakunde, if you're looking for her books. Bless it fucking be. Happy llamas. Stay in your 0.92

01:23:23.040 body. Stay in your body. Thank you so much for the opportunity. It was so great to meet you all

01:23:29.400 and to share this spell of protection with you. Yeah. Yes. Thank you. And we are blessed and

01:23:35.360 protected thank you so much thank you blessed if i can be

01:23:39.840 you must be a witch just a reminder that the missing witches podcast is entirely

01:23:49.300 listener funded if you love the project and want to support us and join in on conversations like

01:23:55.500 this one live find us on patreon at patreon.com slash missing witches

01:24:05.360 You

Missing Witches - August 01, 2022

Lammas 2022： Panel For CHOICE with Olaomi aka GOT2BOSHUN and Mackenzie Ni Flainn

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