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I’ve been thinking about fascia, the connective tissue between our issues and movements. The many nodes and intersections that expose how our systems connect and collude with one another. Just this week a 10 year old Ohio girl is forced to travel to Indiana to access abortion care, cops shot a man running away SIXTY TIMES, a white man opens fire at a July 4th parade that leaves seven dead and more than two dozen injured (one of more than a dozen mass shootings this weekend). The history and present of forced birth, police violence and gun culture is evidence of a system of dominance dead set on controlling bodies and maintaining power.
Of course, these deaths are not unique. Nor is the cycle we are caught up in. The one that goes 1) something really bad happens 2) we all express outrage on social media for a few days 3) no one actually does anything (including politicians who can really do something) 4) everyone goes back to normal.
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But breaking the cycle means choosing to do something different. Examining the ways we are embodying patterns of separation, supremacy and scarcity and practicing new ways of being and doing. We repeat what we don’t repair. And if we really believe we deserve a better future, we’re going to have to work for it.
Kerri (she/her)
Art by @ninaturnerforohio
Our stories have been steeped in guns for so long that they have become an inevitable-seeming element of our lives. How our gun myths have held America hostage for too long. [[link removed]] [click to tweet] [[link removed]]
Body Sovereignty is our inherent human right, a right Indigenous peoples have asserted since before the United States of America has existed. For Indigenous Peoples, abortion is a religious right. [[link removed]] [click to tweet] [[link removed]]
The right to abortion is an affirmation that women and girls have the right to control their own destiny. Abortion is about freedom, not privacy. [[link removed]][click to tweet] [[link removed]]
Get ready for a judicial coup. [[link removed]]SCOTUS Gerrymandering case may let GOP state legislatures control federal elections. [click to tweet] [[link removed]]
Often erased from history, scholars are now realizing that transgender and nonbinary people have existed in most human societies across time. The Trans History You Weren’t Taught in Schools [[link removed]]. [click to tweet] [[link removed]]
What does bodily autonomy have to do with have to do with movements to end police violence and criminalization? Everything. Criminalizing bodies is antithetical to healing, care and wellness. When we understand abortion criminalization as a part of a larger web, we can identify the many points of intervention and explore how our movements can organize in solidarity with each other. Interrupt Crim put together this helpful resources "Abortion Decriminalization Is Part Of The Larger Struggle Against Policing And Criminalization". [[link removed]]Here are some ways to resist:
AMPLIFY and lift up the history, framing and demands of the reproductive justice movement.
DIVEST from mechanisms and sites that criminalize reproductive autonomy (including carceral logics, health treatment restrictions/regulations, abortion bans, policing and incarceration, family regulation system)
INVEST in affirming care, bodily autonomy and reproductive justice (including clinical escorts and community safety programs, accessible and voluntary mental health and substance abuse treatment, full spectrum doula care, easy access to health services and providers, models of care that provide holistic support, de-escalation training, universal healthcare, housing and other basic conditions for wellbeing.
DESTIGMATIZE Abortion by helping shift the culture from shame, stigma and isolation to love, community and compassion.
Art by @orcsandorganizers and wisdom by @interuptingcrim (with permission). You can support their work by donating to the Bluestockings X Project NIA “free store” which is providing resources to people recently released from jail/prison. [[link removed]]
“Healing is not what they are selling us. It is an inside-out process of recovery that conspires to return us to wholeness. We are not a thing to be fixed. We are whole human beings who deserve to thrive on our terms. Detoxing from the culture of healthism and normativity is reclaiming our right to heal. It has nothing to do with someone else’s idea of “normal,” instead it meets us where we are and values our whole selves. Recovery is an embodied practice that helps us remember and reclaim all parts of ourselves as we move towards our own self-determined expression of health. It is a whole-system approach to healing that acknowledges we are only as well as our systems, and demands that we challenge the medical industrial complex and imagine new ways of caring for each other”.
While the issues we are facing right now feel urgent, the healing is slow. Make space to feel, grieve, rage, release. How we meet ourselves and one another in this moment will determine who we become in the future
Art and adapted excerpt from American Detox [[link removed]]
Tell a different story.
RETREAT ALERT: We must recognize the ways in which we have been conditioned by dominant culture, commit to a continual process of detoxifying from toxic patterns that lead to collective suffering, grieve, and find points of refuge. Join Michelle Cassandra Johnson, author of Finding Refuge and Skill in Action and Kerri Kelly, [[link removed]] author of American Detox, for a one-of-a-kind retreat experience bridging the practice of detox and refuge. July 30th - August 4th, Kripalu, Lenox MA [[link removed]]
CTZNWELL is community powered and crowd-sourced. That’s how we keep it real. Please consider joining us on Patreon [[link removed]] for as little as $2/month so that we can keep doing the work of creating content that matters for CTZNs who care.
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