Democracy, Fractals, and Sci-fi (adrienne maree brown)

just a quick refresher. We've identified four key pillars upholding what it means to citizen. One to citizen is to participate assume we have a role to play beyond outsourcing that participation via voting. Number two to citizen is to invest in relationships with ourselves, with our communities, and with our planet. We are interconnected and there was no way

to citizen alone. Number three two citizen is to understand power and the many ways we have to generate and express it, from spending money and gathering in groups to spreading ideas and giving our attention to something. And finally, number four, to citizen is to value our collective self interest, not just our individual self interests as we practice all

the above. In this season, we're exploring how we create a culture of democracy, and we'll be highlighting ideas that inspire us to think differently and more deeply about this word. This word we toss around so easily and frequently but rarely defined. Democracy at its root is literally people power. It's people wielding our power to govern ourselves, to manage our resources, and to benefit our communities. And as you've probably heard by now, we are in a crisis of democracy.

Democracy faced its most serious crisis and debt. Democracy in democracy is facing a crisis of confidence. So he's American democracy in crisis. I think a lot of what we end up arguing over and fretting about with this democracy crisis is the mechanics. How does the constitution determine who the president is? What's the makeup of the court system? Where are the boarders drawn between voting districts? Hey? Do

we even count votes anymore? And don't get me wrong, the mechanics and the structures are important, but we need to go deeper. We need to dig into the soil out of which we grow the democracy we experience. I think of that soil as culture, the collective norms, behaviors, and attitudes that establish the conditions for the ways we practice democracy. To me, a culture of democracy is one that encourages, incentivizes, and prepares us to practice democracy and

to engage in people power in a healthy way. A healthy culture of democracy helps us citizen, and to help us launch this season's journey, we have writer, activist, and movement facilitator Adrian Marie Brown. I first came across Adrian's work nearly twenty years ago, back in two thousand four, through this group she co founded called the League of Piste Off Voters. We were both part of a wave of activists trying to prevent George W. Bush from winning

a second term as president. And I just love their swagger. I mean their logo was the statue of Liberty with a baseball bat. I'm like, yes, that's how you get free. Years later, I started hearing Adrian Marie Brown's name all over the place when her book, Emerging Strategy came out. In that book and her work since, Adrian focuses on that second pillar too, citizen is to invest in relationships with ourselves, our community, and our planet. She sees that

relational work as essential to any political work. In this conversation, Adrian helps us see democracy as a personal practice, and she and I get personal in ways I didn't see coming. After the break, Adrian Marie Brown talks practicing democracy at home. Writer, facilitator, activists, science fiction super nerd Adrian Marie Brown has been organizing with various movements for justice since two thousand and one. We're talking the League of Young a k A. Piste

Off Voters, the Ruckis Society. Writer of seven books that I Know of fiction and non fiction, including of Course, Emergent Strategy, Pleasure Activism, and her latest Fables and Spells. Currently, Adrian is a writer in residence at the Emergent Strategy Ideation Institute, which she established. Also, she co hosts two podcasts, Octavia's Parables and How to Survive the End of the World. We've got a live virtual audience here with us, so

without further Ado, welcome to our podcast. Adrian Marie Brown, how do you do? I'm so good, It's so exciting to be here. UM, I feel like you hunted me down. I've never had so many people like I don't know how you did this, but you reached out and I had so many people like Barrow Tune Day wants to talk to you. And I was like, well, if there's a Virgo man out there trying to talk to me, then I need to answer that call and figure it out. So what's up? How are you? What's up? Virgos? This?

I'm great and our birthdays are very close together. Yes, you're a September I am a September baby. We're the best. Thank you. I've been telling my wife, I've been telling anybody who can't tell them all, especially the significant others. They need to understand, they need to recognize our grid. Um. It is just really really an honor and a beauty to exchange this time with you. So thank you. I feel the same. Thank you. All Right. You often use

this term right relationship in your work. Can you provide an overview of that? Well, how do you define right

relationship as distinct from something else? Yeah? I heard that term when I was working with indigenous communities for the first time, like really embedding myself and trying to understand really in the biggest picture way, what went wrong here on this land, Like what has happened and how do we get ourselves back into a relationship that is not transactional, not abusive, not oppressive, not even you know, now, I think distracted, Like I think a lot of our relationships

are ones where we're barely there. We're always passing in the night, passing in the night, passing in the night. Everyone's so busy with living lives that they're not even satisfied by So this idea was taught to me that it was like, there's actually an order of things. There's a right relationship between humans and the earth that we live in, and humans amongst ourselves and humans with all the other creatures that are here, and my sci fi

throws and probably humans and other life forms. But there is a way that we can be in relationship that is not you know, just peace and blessings all the time. But there's a way that they can have equanimity, that it can have justice in it. And I got really intrigued, like it instantly, it resonated throughout my system that I was like, Yes, at that time, in movement work, everything

was very siloed. So you were either working on environment, or you're working on racial justice, or you were working on electoral or aizing, or you know, everything was very separated out, and so it's very easy to be like to see all the problems as these distinct, separate things. And right relationship is this idea that there's a wholeness to it all and there's a way that we can drop into a whole world perspective and see ourselves as a part of that world. And Yeah, that sent me

down a whole other life path. I want to rewind into that path, and I think part memory, yes, oh, we're gonna have some tunes. I don't know if we can license these things, but we can not. Capello. It so exactly your journey into getting into right relationship with democracy. I'm old enough Adrian to remember the League of piste off voters. I had y'all stickers. I'm pretty sure it was a statue of liberty with a baseball bath. There were some there was some emotions through that attempt to

stop George W. Bush from gatting a second turn. And so can you take us back to this effort that you co led to get President George W. Bush out of office? What motivated you to do that work back then? And where you just trying to get Bush out or were you trying to accomplish something more or different than that. You know, I thought of myself as a very young, feisty revolutionary, Like I was like this, we've got to

figure this out. And I had been doing harm reduction work with active drug users and sex workers through the Harm Reduction Coalition, and George W. Bush had cut the funding for all that work because he was only funding absence related work. Right, you had to be cold Turkey, no sex, no drugs, or you weren't going to get any support. So I was upset. And then the build

up was happening. You know, you know it's nine eleven, right, So nine eleven happened, and then we're having this reaction from the US that was like we've got to go to warm, We're going to bomb Iraq, We're gonna bomb Afghanistan. I got moved into direct action through that because I was like, we've got to stop this, like we're misunderstanding what this moment is or misunderstanding our role as a nation, and he's foolishly leading us into a vengeful, fatal situation.

We've got to stop him. And so it was about him, but it wasn't just about any one issue. It was like I can see how he's impacting my work. I can see how he's impacting all of us. And his worldview, which was this, you know, white male, conservative worldview, I was like, this is dangerous for all of us. So I didn't really know anything about electoral politics. I always say this, like, coming into that, I was just like, I know about organizing. I'm learning about how we move people.

And at the time it felt very innovative right to be like, we need to bring everything we know about organizing into how we do electoral work. And I still think that I don't think we've mastered that bridge, you know. I do think that I came to understand the placement of these different strategies as part of all larger way of doing the work. But at that time, it was

actually really invigorating to go. You know. I ended up book touring that book because we had like something like twelve or thirteen authors and hijinks and sued a lot of people. I didn't plan to book tour. I thought I was just gonna be editing, But then something happened when I got up in front of people, like a spark would come through me. And that's where I learned that I could get up in front of people and that I could channel something of the moment into a

room of people. But yeah, we were lit up about this idea that electoral organizing should be part of a larger strategy for how we build community and how we change policy. And we just had this moment of like none of us even know how to, Like we're trying to we're trying to change the world, but none of us understand how policy gets developed. None of us understand

how our electoral system even works. None of us understand where the loopholes are, and so we're getting you know, redline, we're getting misdirected, we're getting disenfranchised from a system that has actually lot of power over our daily lives. So I felt really hopeful. I thought we were going to win.

We didn't, as everyone knows, but yeah, I felt like I learned a ton about organizing there, because you know, the way election organizing works is cyclical, and so it's the cycles where you're like, we're gonna go do our thing and oh now, community, hey, hey, community, we didn't forget about you on the back. We still need to support and then forget about it, and so it's like, how do we make this a sustainable process, like something where the people who are elected see themselves as every

day a part of a larger movement of change. It's holistic politics in some way, holistic power contention. You, um, just thank you for Emergence Strategy book. We have it in our house. My wife quotes you like all the time, and the word emergent is just like a part of

our relationship. I'm glad. Yeah, it's very cool. Yeah, And I want to you know, on your journey to publishing that book, you were publicly chronicling what I would describe as like the evolution of your your thoughts and practices around this right relationship concept, around emergence itself, and in

you wrote the following on your blog. The invitation of Emergent Strategy is to come together in community, build authentic relationships, and see what emerges from the conversations, connections, visions, and needs. I don't see this as creating something from scratch, but rather innovating from need. So I want to share a brief thing and then ask you a thing. You know, our podcast is how to Citizen and developing it, we

developed core principles. One of them is that to citizens to invest in relationships with yourself, with others and the planet around you. And so I just I feel very SYMPATICO right now we're swimming in similar waters and honestly probably influenced by you. But this overlapping key that relationships come first. They're like an input into a development, not

an afterthought or just a money raising content. How did you arrive at this inside of prioritizing these authentic connections And is there a line from your stop bush work into a deeper respect and prioritization of community and relationship as the first step. Yeah, for sure. You know, I think that loss taught me a lot because we were surrounded by people who were supposedly the most strategic people.

We were getting trainings and we're getting you know, we were going through so much work to try to understand how this all work. And and I was like, something's not working, and there's a what at the time I

was really calling manipulation. It felt like there's a sense of manipulation inside of this, that we're only engaging in relationship to the degree that we can manipulate people to do what we've already decided they should do, which is to vote for this person, whether or not that's of most service to them, whether or not we understand what

their needs are. And again the cyclical nature of it meant, you know, by the time I wrote the book, you know, it was like ten years of different kinds of organizing and direct action, all this stuff had passed, and I was like, do we even know how to do democracy? And I started asking this question to people. I would be in a room full of people and be like, how many of you practice democracy? And I would have everyone like, raise your hands if you think you practice

democracy like in your actual life. And I would be like, and people, sometimes, so what do you mean by that? You know? Do you sit down together and talk about how you're spending the resources of your home and your community. Do you talk about how you're agreeing to keep each other safe? Do you talk about how you're agreeing to share time and who has decision making power? And do

you make those decisions together? And all this right, So there would always be like these confident people would raise their hands. I'd be like, do you do this in your household? Right? And I was like, are the kids involved? Hands come down? Right? Are your parents involved as anyone

else involved? Right? And that's just in the household. So I was like, okay, great for the people who still have your hands up, do you practice it in your neighborhood, like just on your block, And by practicing democracy like on your block, more hands come down. I almost never made it to community, right, that people in in whatever they think of as their community, they weren't practicing democracy.

Most people in our organizations aren't practicing democracy. And so something about the fractal nature of that clicked for me, right because I was learning this concept of fractals that were each these small cells of something much larger than ourselves. So I'm like, we're trying to change was at the very top of the structure, the president. You know, we're just if we change that. But I'm like, but no

one's actually practicing democracy. So even the people running for office are often people who have never actually practiced democracy in that way, right, and they're not practicing it intimately. So I got kind of excited by that problem because I was like, well, that's something solvable, Like there's practices, all right. I'm like, I respect that there is a problem, and any problem is solvable. Yeah, Like once I was like, got it, Okay, so we need to figure out how

to practice to myocracy, small D democracy. And I was definitely influenced by my mentor Grace Lee Bogs. I had moved to Detroit. I was learning from her, and that's one of things she was often talking about, is we need to get people back in the practice. Like she would say, democracy is a really beautiful thing if you actually practice it, but very few of us do. We opt out. We find ways to reinstate hierarchy, to move

around having to actually do democratic practice. So that piece around like, well, who am I in relationship with enough that I would want to practice democracy with them? Very few? You know, I have a very high standard for who I want to make decisions with, And that's actually not how the world is structure. You don't just get to decide.

And if you were to boil down your definition of democracy with the practice of it, is it as you seem to imply just now, shared decision making, joint decision making? You just said, who am I in community that I don't want to practice democracy with? So how do you define?

There's this group called Movement Generation who I adore, and they defy economy as the management of home, the management of the resources of home, which I really love because they're like, anytime we're talking about how we manage our shared resources of the earth, of our community, of our family,

that's an economic conversation. And so to me, democracy is in that vein right that I'm like, we're talking about how do we make the decisions about our resources, including the resource of time, the resource of money, the resource of land, the resource of food, the resource of water, the resource of air, the resource of education, And fundamentally, I think that's what governance is about. You know, we're living our lives, but at a certain point we have

to say, there's finite resources in a finite lifetime. How are we going to make the decisions related to that? And for me, I don't enjoy debating for the sake of debate. I know some people do. I'm always like, Okay, what's the most logical, practical way that we can share

these resources that everyone can actually share them? And this, I'll say, braided into also the science fiction work and reading that I was doing at that time, because Octavia Butler said, you don't know who you're going to end up in the apocalypse with, and so that always felt like this like oh am I going to be a good community with who am I going to have to

practice exactly? Right? So I was like, right now we have the privilege many of us are getting to choose who do I want to live with and who do I want to make decisions with and how do I want to do this? But actually, long term, we need to learn how to just do this whoever we land with.

And that got me excited because I was like, Okay, what is the future I actually want and how can I start practicing a democratic way of being that moves me towards that the fractal thing and the democracy thing are so intertwined, And I think for me it's been a relief, honestly to hear someone describe the value of the small Yes, Like so much of our save democracy conversation is a lot of words and debate and not

actually a lot of practice. It's inches column inches of thoughts and our beds and whatnot, but it evokes large scale structural reforms. And you're based question You're basic, not in the insult, but in the true, like elemental level question of how are we practicing democracy? And the communities were part of what communities are? We are part of first, how are we practicing? What are some of the small practices, the small activities that you think reverberate upward into the

larger structure. Yeah, I mean one thing I always say to people because sometimes the binary come the people are large versus small, and like everything large is made up of small parts. We live in an atomic world, so every single thing that you can look at, from another person to a superstructure, to our governance, to a nation,

everything is made up of smaller parts. So it's not an either or, it's saying, if I want to impact something large, I have to be able to tune into the smallest practice of that large thing right and then be able to judge it up right. And this has really guided a lot of what emerging strategy has focused on. Right. So conflict, being able to be in conflict with integrity. I call it generative conflict, which I learned from generative somatics. But this idea of like conflict, if we do it well,

actually generates more possibilities for us. It really makes it clear that, oh, we can have differences of opinion and we can work through them and find a way for so generative conflict. Our nation is basically broken when it comes to this idea of generative conflict. Right now, conflict is, you know, dropping to the lowest common denominator, throwing insults at each other and seeing the person who you're arguing with,

you're trying to dehumanize them. Actually, the democratic process of that generative conflict would be, how do I humanize you even if I totally disagree with you? How do I find the places where there's some potential alignment? And you know, the thing I always come back to is like, we only have this one planet, so we have to figure out how to get along enough to keep going on this planet. Right right, it's the ultimate resource. We're figuring

out how to share exactly right. And as much as I pray every day, I'm like, aliens, you know, just help us. You don't even have to come rescue us, just let us know, like if you know a little bit more about how to do this. Um, but generative conflict feels like a really big one. And then actually being able to talk openly about power dynamics is another one that feels really important in most of our organizations.

So a lot of my work during this time was facilitating organizations and I would come in, and what always surprised me was the people in power didn't seem to know they were in power, or they didn't seem to be um comfortable talking about how much power they had, and often they would even take a victim role. It's so hard being me trying to just do what I'm doing. And I know as I've ascended into more powerful positions how quickly this happen. Because you're like, no, it really

is hard. It's hard, and it's this dirty word. The dirty word comes with baggage of undeserved nous. So you're like, I don't want this thing that I don't deserve. I don't want to feel like I have more than you, but I do exactly, and we also don't want to We both don't want to have it and we don't want to give it up. Like once you have a little bit of it, you're like, um, I'm not sharing this with you now, like mine is kind of nice.

So that and then I think we need to get really good at like redistributing resources, and that is actually very difficult, especially if you're right now. We're socialized in America into a capitalist worldview that says, accumulate as much as you can, as individually as you can, and that's how you know you lived a good life. Um And even though we see that doesn't seem to pan out, we see a lot of people who are very wealthy, who are very depressed, very isolated, spinning out all the time.

Now we get to see it all on social media, taking over social media, ruinning it. You know, all kinds of fun things are happening for the wealthy. But what we see is they struggle deeply with actually relinquishing, you know, the amount they've gone over what they need. So those are some of the things that I'm like, Oh, do I know how to redistribute my resources? Do I know how to share decision making power? Do I know how to have integrity and a fight? Do I know how

to decentralize power and make decisions with others? I'm great at it in some contexts. I'm not great at in all contexts. And I think even being able to be clear with ourselves about that is useful, you know. Merger strategy.

I had a friend reflect back to me recently that so much of it is can you become self aware of your like where you are in the organization of all things, can you become self aware and from that self awareness have agency over the choices and the decisions you make and how you operate, the way you do your relationships and the beauty and the challenge of that is it requires internal assessment, internal work, and other than our training and hyper individualism and growth at all costs,

we have an external training to go out there, be active out there, like activism is an external thing. You find an enemy, you find a villain, and you protest them, and you go against them. Yeah, point at them and the me and the us and the eye. It said, well, I'm fine, I'm the activist, I'm overlord, I'm the virgo pect I mean literally perfect, Yes, I mean well, this is what my mentor again, Grace Lee Box said to me. You know, we must transform ourselves to transform the world.

And can you briefly remind us of who Grace Lee bog I would love to. Grace Lee Boggs was a Chinese American activist who threw her lot in with the Black liberation struggle in Detroit, and she was an incredible thinker and writer. She was always finding a new learning ground and when I met her, she was nine two and she lived to be a hundred and so those eight years of overlap, we're really meaningful years for me. But yeah, she started a ton of organizations. She was

always starting new experiments and projects. And she and her partner Jimmy Boggs in Detroit and they started Detroit Summer. They started a bike cooperative. They helped with the Avalon Bakery getting off the ground. But they were always figuring out. Like the mayor at one point said, you guys are a bunch of naysayers, and she was like, oh, yeah, we can create stuff too. We're not just saying no

to you. We can also create, and so really abundant creative force and thinker, um, you were bringing up grace in the context of this internal work and the world we have to be internally well. I think when I first heard her say that, I was like, we've got such big problems out here, Like I don't need to go meditate and be quiet with myself. That's not what's necessary.

Like we've got to save the whole world. And what has happened as I have matured and been humbled by life has been this recognition that the front line of all these systems is actually inside of me. And again, just like there's not a mall versus large, there's not an in versus out that's an illusion. Right. It's like all these systems I'm trying to fight against live within me as well. And so even as I'm doing the external work, I also have to be noticing where it's

showing up within me. Right, And I'm like, oh, I'm yelling at Jeff Bezos for his billionaire behaviors, but using Amazon to buy my holiday packages. Like I really look back at my life and I'm like, oh, transphobia had taken root in my life. I've had to work to clear that in my heart and to be aware of it. Fat phobia landed in my life. I had to work to love myself. I had to feel how do I heal that? Capitalism, patriarchy, all these things are within us.

And that's why we're not able to succeed when we just go with this external fight, because they call out our hypocrisy, and our community calls out our hypocrisy. I think right now we're in this very tender moment inside of movement space because everyone's pointing in every direction like wait, you're the you know, It's like yeah, we're all out. If we like this idea that some of us are

good and bad, we could get so much more done. Right, It's like we're all infected by these viral systems, and we can actually infuse our networks, are my cilial networks

with other energy that actually helps us heal. So if the inside is the outside and the small is the large, these ideas come from your obsession with fractals, and I just want to spend a beat on My memory of fractals goes back to probably high school, maybe middle school, something, some pubescent times where my hormones and physiology or confusing

my ability to locate it in time specifically. But I remember pretty pictures, you know, and I remember the idea of this like small pattern replicated to this large and beautiful scale which had the exact same pattern in the meta. How are you defining fractals and tell me a little bit more about the importance of the from the science to the application of movement. Yeah, I mean, I feel like I'm still constantly always trying to understand it scientifically,

and sometimes I'm like to have it. It's this it, you know. But there's the way I understand fractals is this the way that we can understand patterns that replicate themselves in the same way no matter what scale you find them at, So from the very small to the very large. And we live in a fractal universe, so there's patterns that we can find all over all around

us that replicate from the smallest to the largest. And it's like simple stuff like looking at broccoli or ferns, or looking at the way the roots of a tree look, and looking at the way our lungs look, looking at the way delta's um look from the sky, looking at the way blood moves through our systems, Like we are fractal representation of the way the Earth looks and works and the universe. It's really exciting, right, I always say, I'm like the we have these the same shape on

our fingerprints as a galaxy. It's really cool, right, Like you could just geek out and be like, who you know, I can't stop exactly right, But the revolutionary potential inside of that is what makes me even more excited, almost titilated, right, is that, oh, if these patterns replicate, then when we notice a pattern, we could start to shift it at a small scale and possibly change the what is able to even replicate up into the largest scale. That excites me.

Do you have a brief story that exemplifies where a small pattern shift rippled out and led to a bigger pattern shift a demonstration of the power of fractal theory and movement. Yes, I do. So. There's a young black woman that I hired to work for me back at the Leaga Piste off voters and stuff was a mess. The organization was trying to figure out how to organization. She did not get handled well. But I knew she was a genius. I knew she was brilliant. I knew

she deserved every chance that she could get. So when I went to ruck At Society, I hired her again. I was like, I know that they didn't treat you well, but I'm bringing you to work with me. And she learned she was a black strategist, and she learned everything about direct action, and she was like, black people need to have this skill set, and I was like, yeah,

run with that, like build it out. She ended up becoming one of the co founders or something called the Blackout Collective, which trained all these people in black direct action, including tons of people who were part of the Black

Lives Matter movement. So when it was time for Black Lives Matter to escalate and do all this action, they had some of the best training that you could have that came through the channel of this black woman who stays behind the scenes, like she's like, I don't want all the attention, I don't need all the light on me. But because of her, they were some of the most coordinated, brilliant, effective, and media delicious right the mean it was like, oh,

my goodness, this action. I'm like, yes, and I look at to me like those stories where I'm like believing in one person and seeing how one person has a particular bridge available in them that maybe no one else can see, and letting them build that bridge leads to a whole movement being supported and effective and changing the conversation of our time. Every time I see anything about Black Lives matters impact and you know, people on the

cover the magazines and everything, I think about her. You know, I think about that trajectory. Thank you for that clarity. And I think there's such an interpretive tension where someone could say, like, oh, she's saying I don't have to worry about the big stuff. I could just be me, myself and I in my little abode, in my nuclear family situation and kind of disconnect, and I think, what what I'm hearing is, it's all connected. Everything is everything, Hello,

Lauren Hill. And so if we start to adjust at the small it can ripple out. It's the opposite of trickle down. Yeah, and it actually it's like more than it can, like it does all the time. So part of it, part of fractal awareness, is just starting to take responsibility for what am I currently putting into the pattern.

If I'm not paying attention, if I'm mindless, like if I'm just operating by what I was trained to do, or if I'm just reactive, most of the people who are operating that way are putting unhealthy conflict, unhealthy patterns, passive aggression. Like I tell people, look in your family, what are the patterns of emotional behavior and conflict resolution you see in your family? That's usually the same pattern

that you're then helping replicate in the world. Right, all these people coming from places where fighting is either done through extreme violence and yelling and anger and awareness or extreme repression. That was my way, right, push it down, put a smile on it, keep it moving. And if those forces are trying to come into relationship, it's going to be a total mess. And so what needs to

change on both sides? You know, in my family we been in this practice now, Like I'm upset with you, Like it's a shock to my system every time I have to be like I'm upset, and I'm trying to close the gap between when I feel upset and when I can express that I'm upset, right, And then I'm also trying to work from that Buddhist principle of is it kind? Is it true? Is it necessary? When I communicate that? So it's like I'm upset, and I'm not trying to smash you or harm you, or or denigrate

you or shrink you. I'm trying to tell you so that we can adjust, so that we can find that that right relationship again. And I always bring up my friend Princess himp Hill, who teaches us that boundaries are the distance at which I can love you and me simultaneously. Right, You're gonna make me cry up in here. I cry

all the time about this stuff. Like when I'm like, oh my god, Like you know, I'm in my mid forties and I'm like, what would it look like what my whole life look like if I started out learning how to fight fair and how to have good boundary race, and that it was okay to express us something hurt my feelings? And then how would that lead into the kind of governance that I have done in my life? What kind of leader would I be if I wasn't all the time trying to run away from conflict and

I could really say how I felt? And then what would my city look like if we weren't punitive with people but instead we're like, oh, there's some harm here. How do we bring it to the surface and adjust and hold it as a community? I mean, it's all connected. It's all connected. The that conflict avoidance and desire not to fend offend or push away by stating needs, by stating hurt resonated deeply with me. And so that's where the emotions coming from shown up for you. Oh, I

think you know. I have a very sacred story around my own mother and all the things she did for me for me to survive and just be here and be able to talk to you. It's a little too simplistic and binary in the like good person, She was a good and so I didn't allow her a lot of shades of other ways of being or any real fallibility.

And so I grew up very sensitive to her needs and stall my role as like assisting in that and so not really articulating my own like I'm a good and so I didn't have conflict, you know, I accommodated, I supported, I stood by, or I smothered, you know, my own sense of conflict. At at some level, I was worried that this one person who was taking care of me would it, So that fear prevented in my

own full expression and prevented my own full reception. I think of her expression, which was more than just good person, because there's no such thing. She was just person capable of all kinds of things. Yeah. So I've been feeling through and growing through and emerging from kind of that story and and trying to shift my pattern so it fractals out and and become something else. Yeah. After the break Adrian Marie Brown on using fiction to see democracy

not just as crisis but as possibility. As I was looking through the principles of emergence that you all have listed on the Emergence Strategy Institute site several of them resonated with there's this you know, changes constant, be like water, and trust the people. If you trust the people, they become trustworthy. And I'm gonna I'm gonna take you on a brief journey through my mother or Anita Lorraine Thurston, because I saw where you got that from loot Zoo,

the each Ing, the Chinese Book of Changes. I grew up with that text. My mother was a practicing Taoist, Divenor, she consulted the Eaching. I literally have like six translations on my desk right now, and so when I was looking up, you know the origin and that hexagram's kind of the chapters the verses that this practice points to in terms of this line, if you don't trust the people, they become untrustworthy, which you all flipped. If you do

trust the people, they've be contrustworthy. That's made of two tails. That's made of the top one is essentially a water or a lake. The bottom is thunder rumble, and they can symbolize like joy on the top and movement on the battle, and the harmonious intersection of joy with movement. That just represents a lot of my mother, as I

more fully see her. It certainly represents a lot of you, and so you're like, you're all up in my fractal right now, I'm glad in terms of seeing seeing that connectivity. So I just share that first as a as a point of connection, as a point of gratitude. I just love the ways our moms were like and our parents.

You know, I'm like I always it took me so long to be like, oh, you have culture like you you have culture, like you have things that you bring into the house, you know, Like my mom had Khalil Gibron's the Prophet around and we read it every year, and it's just certain things. And I'm like, oh, that's infused into my system in ways that I will never be able to, like even pull apart. And so I love that the eaching is in there and the Tao

is in there for you. Um I want to add an addendum is the people will become trustworthy or the boundaries will become clear. I feel like I didn't understand that until I was experimenting more with emergent strategy, that not everyone will become trustworthy in my lifetime. Right, I have practiced hard at extending my trust to people in spite of my intuition or in spite of their being and being like, oh, you know what, I have to also trust myself. I have to trust myself to know

when a boundary is needed. So I just wanted to I always try to make that sure that's added on there. Thank you. The other principle that I want to ask you about is there's always enough time for the right work. Yes, in this time when we think about shifting patterns and practicing democracy and creating a healthier culture of it, what

do you see as the right work right now? You know, listening back to the book or like listening back to things from the book, I can feel how my virgo was such at the front, Like the word right is everywhere in it. And what I mean by right there is meaningful work, transformative work, the work that is radical in the sense of what Angel Davis talks about, like going to the route and actually trying to pull something

up from the root. And so when I was facilitating as my main way of spending my time, I was always looking for that. I'm like, Okay, we're having a conversation up here and it's petty and it feels chaotic, but could we go deeper? Could we go underneath that? Like what's actually at stake? And you know there's something really tender and what you just said about your mother where you're like, if I had a conflict with her,

what I stopped being cared for? Like it goes so deep actually, and for most of us, that's what's happening is if this thing breaks, is my survival on the line? Is my fundamental belonging on the line? Like, and we don't want that to be what we're talking about when we're having an organizational struggle, when we're having a familiar struggle, we're having a community struggle, but usually that's what we're saying, am I going to be left out? And am I not going to live? Or is no one going to

love me? Am I unlovable? Like it's really deep territory. So as a facilitator, I was always like, can we get to the twenty leagues as quickly in the meeting as possible because that's where the shift will happen that will allow this thing to move. Um. I I was like, I don't want to be the kind of facilitator who's like making a very beautiful deck chair arrangement on a Titanic, right, I really want to be like, if the ship is sinking,

what do we have to do? And I think we're in that moment of human history, human existence, and particularly nation. You know, I call myself a post nationalist, which doesn't mean that we won't be citizens of something. I think that we have to learn how to be citizens to each other, citizens of something that we can actually belong to,

and the cares for us and loves us. I'm not sure that the US experiment will be that right, and I feel like we have to be able to say that, Like, if this ship is sinking, but we're all still alive, and there's still an earth here, there's still a way to live. How quickly will we tune into that? How quickly can we have the right conversation? And that's what I'm now trying to affect on the largest scale, Like most of my writing, most of my books are like,

the climate condition is no longer pending. It's just a matter of your level of privilege in terms of how much you're experiencing it. And the climate situation is not the only thing, but it is a big, potentially unifying human condition, and we're being distracted from it. You know, Tony Morrison talked about racism is a distraction, but there's

so many others as well. There's so many things that we are being distracted from our best selves to stay battling for our right to exist, and it's like, no, we have the right to exist. The Earth gives us everything we need. Can we accept the gift? Can we get back into that right relationship? Can we spend our time on the right works. That's what that arc is

mm hmm. Thank you for putting voice to the possibility that the story that we've created of something like the United States or nation in particular, isn't the end of the communities we can define for our own survival and our own thriving and to get deeper than that. Empires fall, empires, fault, humans continue, people continue. Yeah, so far and we can see us continue. Am really into hum is my preferred my strong preference for a planet like my strong preference too.

I'm like until we find like other Earth situations, um, you know, but I do think like throughout human history, it gives me some kind of peace to be like, oh, the Roman Empire, the British Empire, these empires, like things change but then humans are so wonderful. I mean, you know, we do awful things to each other. But I really have also been really trying to say, how do I bring my attention to what's best in us? And how

do we grow that? You know, I always say what we pay attention to grows, And so I'm like, that moment you're talking about with your mother, I'm like, that might be the best part of you, right, is that tender, vulnerable part of you that loves your mom, And like, from that place is learning how to love in your life. You know, I feel that way with my parents and my grand I'm just having a major breakthrough with my grandmother after a long estrangement, and I'm like, I mean

it's just really yeah, it's really fresh. But it's like, can I give possibility for this woman who's ninety to love me still, you know, or love me again or fall back or come learn how to love me in spite of all her beliefs And it's so tender. It's like everything about love and humans is in those moments. Thank you for sharing that and where you're at right now. And this word possibility kind of coincides with the sci fi world that you're also so deeply embedded with and

inspired by and contributing to. Now, I mean China Meavil's work and inspiration shows up. I remember from the Scar the Possible Sword, So I want everyone. I'm like, I can't believe we're not all talking about the Possibiley Sword all the time, the cost thing that ever happened than anyone ever wrote. I really yeah, please make all your people read it. Okay, hold up, wait a minute, we interrupt this black nerd moment to offer an explainer tune

day about the Possible Sword. Back in the early two thousand's, a friend introduced me to China Mieville, this British science fiction and fantasy author who writes incredible supernatural and speculative world I read three of his works, all set in the same world of boss Log, and in one of those books, the Scar, this thing called the Possible Sword was introduced. According to the boss Log Wicki, you gotta love the Internet, a fake place with a real Wicki

entry quote. The Blade minds possibilities from the swordsman's motions. By injecting controlled uncertainty into his or her movements, the swordsman is able to land an arbitrary number of solid possible hits in addition to the factual hits. The effect is that the swordsman's arm appears to blur and the swords targets suffers several dozen cuts with each swing of the sword. So basically, the possible sword is this object that represents both what we do with it and everything

we could do with it. And China Mievil didn't stop there. The possible sword is powered by a possibility engine. This is some magical quantum technology. Obviously not real or is it? To me? It just means that we all have more possibilities within us than we often acknowledge, and sometimes we need fiction to remind us of our ability to change facts. And knowing that Adrian Marie Brown has read and incorporated ideas from authors like China Mievil, it's simply dope to

me and hopefully to YouTube. Now back to my giddy nerd out moment over sci fi writers, Please make all your people read it because it is the coolest thing I've read, because it gives shows up. But but but no one shows up more than the name. You've already sided, the woman you've already started, Octavia Butler. You've got a whole podcast dedicated to sharing her work. Thank You were that.

I dove into the parable of the solar and parable of the talent during COVID lockdown, as I was traveling the country heavily alone making the America Outdoors PBS series, writing my relationship with nature, with this system in my head during the apocalypse, choosing community. But what stood out to me is the possibility of growth and community and democracy, even and especially in an apocalyptic setting. You know this this acorn community that that is featured, and the way

people show up for each other. What do you think Octavia Butler can teach us about citizening as a verb

about practicing democracy. Mm hmm. Yeah. One of the reasons I go back to her over and over again is because she was writing from a place of despair, like she was paying attention enough to be like, yeah, yeah, this is very upsetting and a lot of we call her profect, many people say she's prophetic, but really she was like, I'm just paying attention and this is the inevitable place that things lead to if we don't change

our behavior. And I love that because that seems to me like a fundamental citizen skill is to be like, can you actually take in what's really happening and and just follow that thread and just be like, oh, is that the Am I down with that? Am I down to participate in that? I think if more of us thought that way, they'd be interventions we would make in the immediate because we're like, oh, I don't want us

to get there. But she also said so many things around who we asked to lead us or who we allow to lead us, and what are the qualities of

what we think of as leadership. So I think right now we've gotten very comfortable with having people in leadership who lie to us, and we give a lot of money to people to campaign in ways that we know are dishonest and saying things that were like the they may or may not ever do that, and then when they get in office they don't do it, and we're like, you know, it's like the normal thing now is to be like, who's the best, most charming, maybe somewhat attractive,

married liar that we can Yeah, I want my liar, not your liar, right exactly, you get me. So I think one of the things Octavia is often pointing to is what does it mean to be a leader? Who tells the truth. What does it mean to be a leader who especially when the truth is hard and it's like, this isn't the truth you wanted to hear. I'm really interested right now, and like, who are people who are willing to lead and say things are probably going to

get worse? Like we're heading into a period of human history where what we're experiencing now, a lot of the shock of it is because those who could have prepared us for it have not nowhere more clear than climate exactly. I'm like, you don't want to there's no positive pitch to the amount of pandemic we're heading into. There's no positive pitch to the amount of climate crisis we're heading into. But there's possibility in it if we actually say we're

heading into it. The storm is directly ahead for some of us were already in it, and we can make adaptations right now that increase maximum survival and that actually make it so that survival could be generative and pleasurable and fun. But it requires letting go of some of the ways we were imagining this time. So Octavia was like, what if we let go of even the idea of having to stay here at Earth? Like, what if the possibility for human life is to take root amongst the stars?

And that felt like a viable possibility for her. Something I know from studying some of the papers in the drafts that she's done of the Parable of the Trickster, which would have been the third book in that trilogy, was that all the other planets that she could imagine depressed her, Like she couldn't actually finish the next book because she was like, I think trying to write other

planets made her love Earth so much. Then from reading that, my conclusion is taking root amongst the stars would also mean taking root here, like this is our place amongst the stars, and if we don't take root here, then the Earth will have to cast us off. You know, everything else goes extinct and the Earth continues. Has been the pattern, And I'm interested in leaders who are like, hey, let's not go extinct, right, Let's make the adaptations we need to make to not go extinct. What does that

look like? And I also think that she she believed in the small community. So you mentioned the Acorn community where they were practicing, but Acorn, you know, spoiler, I feel okay spoiling it because it's been out for so long. But spoiler, that community gets destroyed by the Christian right in her book, and her people don't give up. Right, their children are kidnap from them, they still don't give up.

They change their strategy to a Zapatista model where they're going door to door and saying, let's build a shared vision. Here's what earth seat is, here's what the practices are, and all we need is a small and mighty crew that believes in this and we can actually hold on to some possibility for humanity. Right. And that has been really meaningful to me as an organizer because I'm like, oh, some of my comrades go the biggest bucket and I love that, and it's I get really moved by the

work that they do. But what I have been drawn to is how do I approach every single person I interact with as a potential freedom fighter, as a potential comrade, and whatever location they're in is their front line, including the front line within themselves and wherever they are, And I find really interesting people ready to roll and play and experiment with me in that way unexpected, right. And I'm always like, yeah, I think we really underestimate folks

who are at the barbershop. We underestimate the person on the bus, We underestimate the stranger we meet on the plane, We underestimate our coworkers. You know, I'm like, you're not just the job title you have, Like how are you going to survive? Let's talk about it, right, And I'm trying to encourage more people to have those conversations. You know,

There's been these moments for me. I was in Italy when COVID nineteen, like when it hit, was like, oh, this is a crisis and like everything's about to shut down. There's these moments in history where you're like, oh where am I Am I with people that I can trust right now? Will these people keep me safe? I was in Italy. I was like I don't speak the language. I mean this little world town. I have to go back home. I was like, I need to find people

that are my people enough to starve in your own earth. Yeah. I had to go find my earth right, which was with some whales in Hawaii. But it was like this is what it Also, the whales have a lot to tell us. There's also seems like that's the consistent message. Everyone has a lot to tell us. If we're able to listen, and there's this fractal link I'm feeling between you and someone like and say who fought you know who reminds us the way you talked about the barbershop

person or your coworker. We underestimate them, We don't ask much of them, we don't see much potential in them. But if we shifted that and saw the opposite, we'd have so much more access to power collectively. And so the whale, the harbor, the co worker, the non voter, these are all possible allies and community members to help us practice democracy with exactly And you know, in our nation, I would also have to say the non citizen, right, the person who can't vote, the person who you know.

I think of that Worrisonshire poem all the time, and it's like the person who had to leave where they were to come here, because this felt like the safest possible option real quick for anyone wondering. That Worrisonshire poem referenced is called home now. Worrisonshire is a Somali British writer and poet, and she wrote that poem inspired by a visit she made to the abandoned Somali embassy in Rome,

which some young refugees had turned into their home. We've got it linked in the show notes if you want to check it out. Hint, you want to check it out now? Back to Adrian felt like the safest possible option. Powerful poem. Yeah, I get reminded often. I'm like, you don't understand the privilege of this place. And I think about that. I'm like, how would I operate if I did? How what would change if I wasn't complaining all the time but figuring out what do I have the freedom

to practice? I've been saying this lately that I feel like one of the freest people to ever live, and it kind of that's daunting to me, because I'm like, do I deserve this freedom? Am I doing the right thing with it? But I think the right thing is to be in it, right, to actually be in it and feel what becomes possible inside of that um And I want to invite everyone who's listening. I'm like, it's not just me, it's also you, Like we are amongst the freest people to ever live, and I don't think

we're taking it seriously enough. Yeah, Imagination Battle, you have used this phrase and said that we are inside of. Essentially we're engaged in an imagination battle. Can you explain

what you mean by that. I learned this from my friend Terry Marshall, who does a project called Intelligent Mischief in Boston, and it was this idea that everything that we live inside of right now was imagined by someone, because especially the stuff we were like, I'm not inferior to a man, like I can tell I can feel it in my body, but a man. Yeah, I've met men, and you know, I'm not saying I'm superior to all

of them, but I do recognize that or white supremacy. Right, It's like the idea that whiteness is superior to everything else as someone imagined that. That's not how the world is actually set up as a fictional concept, but when that person imagined it, they were so compelling, right, and whiteness was their fear was so compelling to them. The story addressed some of their fear of coming across people that look different from them and not knowing how to

process that. That story is still compelling. You know. When I wrote Emergent Strategy, one of the vignettes that I included in there was the fact that if you look at what happened with with a Mike Brown, is that he was killed because of the white imagination that sees him as a threat, that sees him as a danger as an unarmed black young person, right, And that now it's not unusual that those who have the authority to be armed and policing our communities can go into a

court system or can take this to their boss and say, I imagine they were dangerous, and that's considered a qualifiable defense to why they murdered someone. Right. So the power of the imagination in that context has to be taken seriously, and it means that then we have to take our imagination seriously for moving our way out of this. And my friend Jeanine d Novaje is working on a book right now called Brave Community that's going to come out.

She talks about the post racist imagination. I think about this all the time, like, how do we harness our imagination to actually advance the world we want and to invite people into a compelling space to practice that world rather than staying stuck in someone else's imagination. Jeanine is a regular member of the how the citizen community is here literally right now you're probably feel love it. I love you. We'll probably see if we can bring her

up in a moment. Yes, excited about about Janine's book, But that imagination work is the thing right that. It's like, right now, are we able to imagine? You know? I also think about this with what stories get told. They're all the post apocalyptic movies and everything, kind of like, who's putting out those stories that can imagine us surviving? I really loved the story of Station eleven, so hoping you were going to say that, I had my fingers and toes crossed, but I didn't want to be loved it.

I thought it was such a beautiful imagination of what it could look like. Yeah, I totally agree. I'm on board. Imagination is powerful and we need to imagine better, essentially for ourselves with each other. What are some ways that we can practice that. I feel like we've stifled our imagination. We are very good at adopting other people's stories and other people's fictions and finding freedom within that. But that feels really sma all when you expand the canvas and say,

but what about a whole another premise? So what are ways we could practice flexing our imagination, stretching our imagination in the domain of what do you even means to practice democracy? Yeah, I mean I have this practice I call collaborative ideation, and it's really having people sit in a community, sit in a circle and say, what in our community needs are the medicine of our imagination? The medicine of our imagination? Where do we feel so stuck

that we can't figure out the policy way forward? We can't figure out this five year plan, like we can't figure it out? And have people I D eight together place yourself in the future. You know, however far you can most of us about ten years is how far we can actually go out. Anything beyond that is like, let's stretch and actually say if we had landed this, if we had applied the medicine and this thing was actually healed and it was functional, what would that look like?

And the ideation is like what would housing look like, old transportation look like, how would we talk to our kids? What would be the normal values and principles? And so we kind of build a world together and then ask everyone to write short stories in that world, and a lot of people are like, I'm not a writer. I don't write fiction. I'm like, you lie to yourself all the time. You write fiction all the time, You come up with stories about when someone else is thinking about.

Everyone is writing fiction all the time, right, But it's taking that harnessing and just making you could tell about the story. Sometimes that's the way. Just tell me, like in a movie of this, what would happen, and then have people share that with each other, and you're it's

amazing how much is living inside us already. But it requires setting down the scroll, putting down the social media, putting down all that external incoming doom news, and actually sitting down with people that you love and care about and just being like, can we just imagine what it could look like if this was no longer a problem? Which is also what Octavia did was she was like, let's have new problems. I resolved this one, but now

there's new ones that are emerged. Because we're humans, there's going to be more. But I love that practice, and in a small scale, the fractal practice. It's in a conversation when you hear someone stuck asked them, could you imagine what it would be like if this was resolved? Like what would it feel like in your system? Let it. Let yourself feel at first, and then tell me what's different. That's a powerful practice. I'm gonna I'm gonna practice at dinner.

I'm gonna practice at drinks with friends. Yeah, especially people who have kids know this. I'm like, we are the creators of anything that comes beyond us. It's all in our bodies. Were born with everything about the future all in our bodies, So we have to believe that's also true for our ideas. Yeah, it's all the same stuff. It's all energy. That's a whole another chapter. Look, you've

been flexing your imagination. You've been not just facilitating people bringing out their short stories and fictional stories, but writing your own your latest book and from the Emergence series Fables and Spells Collected and new short fiction and poetry. What are you hoping to emphasize is with this collection of loved as well as new works. Ah well, I mean first, it was the most fun book that I've

pulled together. Um, I really let myself like, I just gave myself permission to lean into my witchy, magical spell casting self. And you know I talked about when I've learned what I could do in a room, and now I look back and I'm like, oh, I can cast spells, Like I have an energy that moves through me and I know that I have to be responsible with it. And it's the same thing that happens when I write a story. So I'm just like, this is a spell.

We're casting spells all the time, so fables of spells. I let myself write about extraterrestrials. I let myself write about water women and witch magic, and I wrote Spells to the Moon and yeah, I just was like, what are all the things that I'm doing to try to transform how I think about the world. And most of the stories are about people coming into their power, because that's what I'm very interested right now, is like how do we come into ourselves? Because I think when we

come into ourselves, we necessarily come into our power. And I was like, oh, I know who I am and now no one can take that from me. Like that's the beauty of I think aging. But I also think it's the beauty that babies have. Like when you meet a kid, they're not like, oh, what are you going to think about me? They're like, you think I'm awesome? And I just pooped all over the place. And like, I'm the cutest person to the fullest, so true to themselves.

I'm like, how do we return to that that. I'm like, even coming to this podcast with you, I'm like, let me not assume that bartun days trying to catch me in something or you know. I was like, let me assume that I can just be myself and you're going to meet me by being yourself and magic will happen, because that's what happens when humans are actually being themselves, you know. So the book is basically one story after another of that, you know, moments of people claiming a

little bit more of themselves and their power. And I created an entire extraterrestial species, says Virgos. So I hope that you that I'm starting with that story. I'm jumping right to that one non linear story consumption. Yeah, I really like non linear books too. I'm like, please put this in your bathroom and just open up to whatever pages right for you at that moment. Jump around. So, um, we ask all of our guests, if you were to define citizen not as a legalistic noun but as a verb,

what does it mean to citizen? How would you interpret that to me? To citizen means to take responsibility for the fact that I'm part of something larger than myself and to be a contribution of life moving towards life in whatever structures I'm a part of. Mm hmm, thank you, thank you. We have reached that moment in our show where we bring the people into the fray. So first up,

Alison Mosqueta. Hi, Alison, I'm Alison Mosqueta. I'm here in Denver, Colorado and cerious about how do we citizen in fun ways? So how to citizen has really stretched my thinking about our collective responsibility as a member of society and ways that I was never taught, especially around policy, government, democracy. Um never learned any of those things growing up in school, right, never learned exactly what it means to be involved and

engaged and be a democracy. So how do we do that in fun ways that are exciting and energizing, especially maybe in private sectors like nonprofits in my own community. It's really exciting to think about if we do this now and we start instilling this in younger and younger generations,

what is the next thing going to look like? Right? Yeah, So you know the thing that comes to me is like you have to stay in touch with the part of you that knows how to have fun, which I think is one of the things that often we accidentally set down when we become an organizer because I must save the world and I must be so serious. So part of it is just apping back authentically into the

part of you that knows how to have fun. But I have to tell you, when you first said the question, I heard fund raise and I was like, um, that's a whole another podcast, but fun ways, I'm like, yeah, I think most of it is what actually brings you joy. So recently I've been building out this project that's a musical ritual and it's because I like singing in groups

with people. And I remember I've been like, oh, yeah, I used to love being in a choir when I was a kid, like coming together and singing, like just everyone's sitting down the house and have a good time.

Not because you're trying to sound the most beautiful are perfect, but the singing with is the thing, right, And we always talk about preaching to the choir, but I'm like the choir these reminders on how to be a choir, like how do we harmonize, how do we find the right volume so that we can all be heard and make something larger than ourselves. So for me, that's a super fun way to have people come together and do what could be important serious work also, but it's doing

it in a way that's really enjoyable. I also find adding celebration, like doses of celebration into any community is really helpful. So it's your birthday, Like, let's take a moment and actually celebrate that you just got a divorce. Yay, I'm sure it was the right decision. You know, something happened with your kid, You've got a new degree. Like taking the time to celebrate each other in community because

and then also celebrate the small winds. You know. Back when I was a facilitator, I always lift this up because I'm like, this is so funny to me. But I had a group that was like they could not make a decision, Like they just could not make a decision together. It was like, we're how we're gonna save the world. We can't even And we figured out how to order lunch together, and I was like, you know what we wanna do is gonna pause and we're gonna put on Mary J. Blige we're gonna just sing. You know.

Adding music into anything I think improves the fun capacity of it. And then I think having fun that's not tied to transaction, so really being like, oh, we have bowling nights that are not about trying to raise money. We have movie nights. You know. There's a group here in um North Carolina in Durham where I live called Spirit House, and like every time a big black movie comes out there, just like we rented out of the theater and we just go and we're like Wakonda forever,

Like it's all of us. We have shared values. Everyone's wearing a mask. We don't have to worry about all this stuff, and we can just enjoy each other and there's no organized component to it. It's really being together. So to me, that part of being with your community is super important because that's what actually forms the connective tissue that makes you even want to act as a community. Team building. Yeah, in a fun way. Thank you all right, Next up, we have we've heard this name once already.

Please welcome to the stage. I had to do my my live event MC voice for this one. I love the way you did that. That was so exciting. My name in silly. What's up everybody? Hi? And Marie Brown? Hi. My question is everyone from the Boys to Marry m Kaba that has attended to black liberation and had like a home and the politics of it found the need to go to the culture and the arts of it. Everyone. So I want you to talk to us about what that's looking like for you. Because I heard that you're

making music. Now I heard Oh, I love this question. One thing is I think that there's a huge overlap between the poetic force within us and the part of us that wants to save the world. A lot of people who I meet who are like, I love the earth, I love the world, I love humans. It's because we're paying attention to what's beautiful, and we're paying attention to

what hurts. We're empathetic, we're letting it in. I meet so many people who are organizers, are activists, and then like one step under that, they're like, I'm a poet, I'm a singer, I'm a writer, I'm a rapper, I'm writing plays, and I imagine a future often where one of the ways we know that we've healed from a lot of these oppressive tendencies that we're actually spending most of our time making and sharing art. But I also love what happens when people are able to just drop

into the cultural space. And I've been allowing that for myself. So I have an album coming out that's related to the Fables and spells work. It's all like spell songs and songs that feel like magic to me. And then I just did this huge music ritual that I'm work shopping and taking around the country to be like, can we create a portal into the future through songs that we sing in choir in chorus together, and can we

create a space and opening for ourselves through music? And I think the reason that there's this direct pathway from trying to change the world too into that culture space is that eventually you recognize that what we're trying to shift is culture. Is we're trying to change the culture through which people see themselves as a part of this whole you know, Audrey Lord said that we don't live compartmentalized lives, right, We don't live in these little silos

apart from ourselves. We are whole us. We are whole people. And I think what we want to invite into the public sphere more and more often is spaces where people can come together and be whole. And when I'm singing a song, my political self is there, and my insecure self is there, and my little girl who knows I'm the ship is there, and my grown up who has

pain and heartbreak is all there. And I'm only interested in being with people when all of us can all be there, right, And the cultural space for me is where that opens up. And it has been amazing to look around and see so many of my comrades also

doing this. So I look over and I'm like Charlenne Carruthers, who is part of the YP one hundred for a long time, has made a film, and Patris Colors is doing all these arts installations, and I know so many people who are writing books, writing fiction who are like Toronto Burke is like, I've got fiction out ahead of me, like right, because we're imagining the new world. These are all people who have spent a ton of time imagining the world and now we're trying to find ways to

share it with everyone. And yeah, I will say it's thrilling, Like I'm still vibrating off of the musical portal that got opened on Saturday in New York and for me, as someone who people are like they look at and be like, oh, you know things, you're so wise. It was so incredible to get to come into something and be like, I'm also a part of the choir, so

I can sing with my own solitary voice. But what makes me feel the most alive is when I'm singing with four people in a circle and we're catching each other and we're vibing off of each other, and like we remember that we're bigger than just our solitary selves. It's very healing. It is. You've reminded me of a middle school experience singing in a school production with a bunch of other black kids that was mostly white school and white kids were singing with us too. Was doing

some kind of gospel song. I'm not even Christian like that, but the song was so moving and were like thugs were happy, you know what I mean, Like, that's that's listen okay, because there's something universal that taps you into yourself. And I will say the music, the musical ritual is basically taking the technology of gospel music and interacting it with the ideas of emergence, strategy and pleasure activism and

transformative justice. So it's absolutely unlocking that place. Like people come in there like oh hold up, I don't know if we could do this, and it was like, yeah, we can feel really really really excellent together, and like that's medicine we need. It's getting to that under level that you talked about earlier. It bypasses. Yeah, I had

people crying. I can't imagine you may compeople. I love is having people like being able to grieve together, because I do think in this period of history, we have so much to grieve and so few places to actually let that grief come through, and we need these collective spaces where we can actually let the grief come through because it also helps us figure out what we can do. Like the world we're going to build is one that is built from our grief as much as it is

built from our visions. It's like what am I done losing? And what am I accepting? And what am I dreaming? So all right, we have Carol Wombledorff. You will correct me, Carol, you will say your name and where you're at and get to your question. Hi, Carol Wommeldorf. Is that German? Oh yeah, yeah, I was raised. I was. I grew up in Germany, Like half of my childhood was in Germany. You know, there's an S between the L and the

D if you're in Germany. So, um, how do you respond to folks who say voting is irrelevant and rigged? And I mean, it's such a mundane but it's a real day to day kind of question when you want to help people understand that it is rigged and it's still matters. That's right, that's beautiful, Carol. Where are you geographically before when makes Cincinnati, Ohio? We're really batters? Yeah, okay, well I hear that all the time. I think it's a little bit of a both end. Like I never

tried to take that away from people. I'm like, you're very smart, you're not wrong. Is rigged and it is unfair, and it still matters. I think of it as the harm reduction strategy for this period of history, as we're in the shift, so harm reduction for those who may or may not be aware of it. As the idea with drug users that you're like, you might not be able to make it all the way to abstinence, you

may not be able to live a sober life. But you can reduce the harms that come from your drug use, and you can reduce the harms in ways that make sure you still have a home and you still have access to your kids, that you still have the maximum health in your body, and you can learn to trust yourself without judgment and be in that So I approach voting that way where I'm like, if we're going to get to a different way of doing nation state, if we're going to get to a practice where we do

have multiple viable parties, for instance, that give us actual options to express ourselves politically, we won't get there by

fully giving up on participating in the current system. And I actually encourage people when they say, I'm like, you probably actually need to be voting more rather than not voting at all, because a lot of times people say that around the national elections and they're upset because we only have a two party system and it's a party that is like central and right, like we don't really have a strong left at the national level, and I mean from a movement perspective, right, I'm like, my dad

would argue differently, but I feel like when I hear that, I'm like, yes, And the reason that exists is because we're not necessarily engaging in the electoral process at our local level. That feeds up into what's possible at the national level or was possible at the state level. Right, it's all fractals. Elections are a very fractal process. Like what happens at any federal or national level is only possible because it was happening at all the local levels.

And part of why I moved to Durham was because I was like, very excited about what's happening at the local political level here. I had a friend who was a black trans person who was elected to school board. I have someone else who I met who was elected as the d A. I met all these folks who I'm like, getting themselves into the city council, getting this like being like, actually, we're going to grow our political

power up right. And it's only by that growing up that you see things like oh, Georgia having a blue election, things where you're like, that's not ever going to happen. It happens because someone like Stacy Abrams is like, I'm going to take the local electoral process seriously as seriously as anything is happening on the national, federal level. So that's often the response I give, and I say, if you can't figure it out for yourself, do it for someone else, And like, I love to keep some of

those in my back pocket. I'm like, there are a lot of people who don't have the right to vote who are going to be negatively impacted by what feel like small scale differences, like there's no difference between the parties, And I'm like, that's because you're not a citizen. If there's no difference between the parties, that's because you're not reliant on medication for your well being. If you don't see a difference between the parties, Like, there are places

where there are distinct differences. This is one of my everything I've been saying lately. There's also a lot of fake orgasmic policies. So there's a lot of policies they're not actually the thing we want, they won't actually satisfy us, but we're being given the fake orgasm version of it right where it's like this kind of sounds like it's

moving us towards climate something good. Right, we have to actually be engaged to be able to make the distinction and be like, no, I'm not satisfied by that, and we're going to build policy that actually is effective and satisfying for our future. And we're going to build that up right. That's the other thing people often don't realize is that policy builds up right. Being able to enact a good policy at the federal level is because good

policy has been built at the local level. Adrian Marie Brown advocate for real orgasmic policies, real orgasmic policy, true satisfaction in our small D democratic lives. That's the only small D that needs to be there. That I was going to ask if you have anything else to add, I think you just did. Is there anything else you want to say? I mean, I have this book out, Fables and Spells. Please get it from a K Press directly.

I put a single out called Ancestors Use Me so you can hear me sing to you about the ancestors. And if you're interested in bringing the musical ritual to you, you can reach out through the website and we'll find a way to come to you because it's it's an in person healing experience and bar tun Day. Thank you for finding me, Thank you for hunting me down and opening this portal. I'm excited for our Virgo friendship to begin and and continue. So I echo all of that,

I fractal that back to you. Thank you for giving us ways to grow up yeah, and to be, you know, inside, the way we want to be outside, recognizing they're all the same thing. So appreciate what you've done and how transparent you've been in your own growth. Thank you, Thank you, thank you, bye y'all. By Marie Brown by There is so much that we think we have to do to

preserve and extend our democracy. We have to register people to vote and in gerrymandering, and get money out of politics, and expand the Supreme Court and end white supremacy and in the patriarchy. And it is just a giant task list. What Adrian Marie Brown reminds us of through Emergent Strategy in particular, is that what we need to do is

be together. We need to practice being together, humanizing each other, being in right relationship, working towards having generative conflict with each other, and through that let the resurgence, the expansion, the preservation of democracy emerge in order for us to have any chance at achieving that task list. And it's a worthy list. We've got to go deeper. We've got to till and regenerate that soil, that culture with a

focus on our relationships. And there's something else. The Octavia Butler line that Adrian shared woke something up in me. There's nothing new under the sun, but there are new sons. Mm hmm. I admit that there are times when I have felt stuck, uninspired, and depressed about where we go from here, and that feeling needs to be shaken and jolted and released so that I can see new possibility again.

And I think that's true for many. We are stuck so often when we think how do we save democracy because a lot of the time we limit our efforts to restoring the past, and the past is not necessarily the model. America is a long standing democracy in very thick quotation marks from most of its history, most of its people were legally not allowed to participate in most

of the mechanics of democracy. So where we really If we limit our imaginations to our existing past, then we're limiting our future to what has already passed, And so invoking the words and vision of people like Octavia Butler can help push us beyond the bounds of what we already know. Over the rest of this season, we will

push those bounds with you in this podcast. All the episodes that follow growth from seeds planted in this conversation will explore the strengths and limitations of voting within Saufa of the New Georgia Project will push democracy beyond elections in an episode focused on citizen assemblies. Will imagine bigger and better versions of our economy with Kate Rayworth, will explore how we build tech with Ruhab Benjamin, will rethink how we participate in and shape our communities with Christian

Vonnazette and Alek Jang, and so much more. We can create a healthier culture of democracy. And all these people were bringing you this season, they're helping us build it. And now it's time for some action. Let's practice imagining. Imagination is a muscle that we need to exercise in order to envision the reality we want to create. Adrian reminded us of that. Today we've broken these out into three areas, personal reflection, getting more informed, and publicly participating.

Now for internal personal reflection, ask yourself, what communities are you a part of right now? From the smallest to the largest the most local to the most global. Build that list in your mind. In which of these communities did you play some role in decision making and resource allocation? Now? Can you think of ways to bring others into those decisions more? In other words, can you think of ways, even and especially small, ways to bring more democracy to

your existing communities? In terms of actions you can take to be more informed, we want to prepare you to flect that imagination of yours. Adrian was mentored by Chinese American philosopher, writer, and activists Grace Lee Boggs. Learn more about Bogs in the documentary American Revolutionary The Evolution of Grace Lee Box. It's available on Amazon, Prime, YouTube, and

other sites for just a few dollars. Explore the power of fiction to affect the factual by reading Adrian's book Octavia's Brood, science fiction stories from social justice movements, and her newest book, Fables and Spells. And you should check out the parable series by Octavia Butler to see why Adrian and so many others are so obsessed with this writer. Don't have money, that's okay, grab a copy from your local library. Finally, in the realm of participation, we want

you to practice collaborative ideation. Return to those communities you identified in the personal reflection. It could be your household, classroom, office, department, or group. Chat. Within one of these groups, have members identify some challenge you feel as hurting or impeding the group. Then ask folks to imagine what things would be like years out if this challenge were fully resolved. How would

they feel, what would they be able to accomplish? Write this down in short form, perhaps a corny movie trailer to make it fun. In a world where none of us carry student debt, or in a world where everyone in this house is able to access the bathroom for as long as they need without preventing others from doing the same, You get the idea. It doesn't have to be super serious. The point is to try with others

to imagine a better future. If you don't have someone to play with, try this by your self, but look for ways to share your ideation with others, maybe in an email to a friend or a post on social media. If you take any of these actions, please brag about it online and use the hashtag how to citizen. Also tag our Instagram how the citizen. I am always online and I really do see your messages, so send them. You can also visit our website, how a Citizen dot com,

which has all of our shows, full transcripts, actions and more. Finally, see this episode show notes for resources, actions and more ways to connect How the Citizen with Barritton Day as a production of I Heart Radio Podcasts and Row Home Productions. Our executive producers are Me Barrittuon Day Thurston and Elizabeth Stewart. Our leave producer is Ali Graham, Our associate producer is Donia abdel Hamid. Alex Lewis is our managing producer, and

John Myers is our executive editor. Our mixed engineer is Justin Burger. Original music by Andrew Eapen with additional music by Blue Dot Sessions. Special thanks to Joel Smith from my Heart Radio and Lay Labina. Next on How to Citizen, Adrian went deep on the power of fiction and stories. And for years we've all been living in a story that isolates us from each other and sees our only

power as that of a consumer. But in our next episode, we'll talk with someone inviting us to live inside a citizens story, one that reorients us towards connection and collaboration. In ways I am sure would make Adrian proud. The important thing to recognize when you start to see these as stories, when you start to see it in this way, is that you're not just talking about like the problem is consumption, the problem is advertising like. It's much more

about the storytelling of our society. It's the fact that what I would describe what we live in today as a consumer democracy where our only agency is to choose between a fix set of options that are offered to us, where we're actually encouraged to make that choice on the basis of our own individual self interest. John Alexander tells us how learning to see the story of consumption we've been written into can change our world, and how stepping

outside that story could help save our democracy. Row Home Productions