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On my mind this week is how we’re told not to look when our backyards are burning, our streets are flooding our oceans are boiling. How we’re told not to look when corporate America tells us exactly how much they don’t care about us.

Don’t Look Up was a satire about a distracted and dissociated society facing the end of times. Sound familiar?

It assumes that we can’t handle the truth. That we would rather numb ourselves and turn away than face the truth of who we are and how we got here. But when we choose to escape the discomfort of our predicament, we also miss the deep the joy, the love the magic that is also life.

When we turn towards life with all that it has to offer - the good, the bad, the pain, the joy - it shows us that we can keep going. That we can look up and see clearly what we are up against, discover that we are not alone and find joy and hope together along the way.

I’m holding onto this truth as Mother Nature continues to demonstrate her rage, as capitalism continues to try and take and destroy, and as white supremacy continues to try and flatten and diminish us. In remembering who we are beyond this, I find new ways to survive and thrive.

Kerri (she/her)

Art by stand.earth

NTK (need to know)

1. The hood is off. The GOP’s going full white nationalist even sooner than I expected as what was once extremist and fringe has gone mainstream.

2. Floods, Heat, Smoke: The Weather Will Never Be Normal Again. Global warming is accelerating, with temperatures not just rising but rising faster than ever. Every day, it seems, we get better at normalizing extreme weather.

3. The White Media Has Missed a Key Part of the Affirmative Action Ruling, The upshot isn’t just that colleges must end affirmative action but that they’ll have to cut Black enrollment to avoid lawsuits questioning their compliance with the decision.

4. Hollywood Studios reveal strike endgame is to let writers go broke. If SAGAFTRA joins writers on the picket lines their greed is likely to backfire.

5. Doing the Work While Doing the Work. How can social justice organizations prioritize mental health issues while finding ways for their staff and members to stay in solidarity with each other?

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Solidarity

What’s happening? Over the last few decades, the GOP has been doubling down on school board elections. What used to be a down-ballot sleeper contest has become the locus for culture wars shaping everything from banned books to curriculum censorship to ending CRT programs to discriminatory LGBTQ+ policies to COVID policies and more. Partnering with organizations like Moms for Liberty, the GOP has poured invested tons of money to recruit, train and support conservative candidates around the country. Their strategy, exploiting the anxiety parents felt in the wake of the pandemic (and mass shootings) is to pit ‘parents rights’ against freedom of education and expression in our schools.

What you can do? There are more than 80,000 elected school board positions in the US (21k+ seats are up for election in 2024). Over 60% of school board races go uncontested. The best way to show up is to encourage your peers/community to run for school board. You can look up potential seats at runforwhat.net. Another thing you can do is help fund outreach/support. Donate here.

Source: Amanda Litman, Run for Something

Practicing Justice

The self help adage that we shouldn’t live with guilt is misguided. Guilt is not the same as shame. Guilt says that we did something bad. Shame says that we ARE bad. Any feeling that diminishes the self (ie: shame, unworthiness) isn’t helpful in healing. But feeling through guilt can be productive. “It turns out that grief is a specific form of love,” says Tim Jensen, author of Ecologies of Guilt in Environmental Rhetorics “Well, it’s possible that we can also look at guilt as a specific form of care. We feel [guilt] because we harm something that we actually care about. Which means guilt directs us to what we care about, but we’re so eager to get rid of it as a feeling—understandably—that we actually move [away] from where it’s pointing us.” Learn to listen to your guilt. Consider what it is trying to tell/teach you.

Source: Atmos “Punish Us Orcas”

*New Program*

Recovering ourselves: A 12-step Approach to Liberation weaves new/old wisdom, neuroscience research, somatic healing, rites and rituals and relational organizing towards a shared practice detox and recovery. Led by recovery specialist, Nikki Myers and movement organizer, Kerri Kelly, this training will be a deep and embodied exploration into how we've been shaped by dominant culture rooted in separation, supremacy and scarcity and what it’s going to take to heal. 

Join us July 16th - July 23rd as we journey through an inside out process of healing to build capacity and resilience, cultivate skills for application and action and embrace a readiness and responsiveness to the path of recovery and wholeness. 

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We-ness

Let’s root for each other. Let’s have each other’s backs. Let’s cooperate over compete. Let’s celebrate each other’s successes. Let’s trust abundance over scarcity. Let’s remember there is enough room for all of us.

Thanks for subscribing to WELLREAD. For the last six years we’ve been providing folks with the need to know (NTK) news, calls to actions and resources for how to stay engaged and resourced along the way. But now, we’ve added an option to “upgrade to paid” to help sustain our work. While we will never put our content behind a pay wall, we depend on the support of our community to keep us going. 💛

Upgrade to paid

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