Potent insights and movement memories with core members Julia Sebastian (she/her) and Nicole Wires (she/her), interviewed by Zara Zimbardo (she/her). Julia, Nicole and Zara reflect on the impact of WNC. They recount fond memories and lessons from the work of over a decade.
To learn more about Zara and her offerings, check out:
https://www.zarazimbardo.com/
Potent insights and movement memories with core members Julia Sebastian (she/her) and Nicole Wires (she/her), interviewed by Zara Zimbardo (she/her). Julia, Nicole and Zara reflect on the impact of WNC. They recount fond memories and lessons from the work of over a decade.
To learn more about Zara and her offerings, check out:
https://www.zarazimbardo.com/
All right, we can press record on voice memos and I'm going to press record on zoom Recording in progress.
I can go first this time Hello listeners and welcome to the White Noise Collective podcast.
This is Jay sharing an update. Our beloved collective has made the difficult decision to sunset our organization this year and to make space for other expressions expressions of our work to continue to grow and iterate out in our movements and in our lives.
As a part of honoring our legacy, we are proud to share this conversation, part of an archival series featuring our core collective members, close friends, and comrades.
Here we share our stories, history, and context for our work, including our learnings and questions, knowing that some of us has emerged for us could also likely be of use for other movement organizations both now and in the future.
If you're interested in reading our full statement detailing more about our sun setting, please check out conspireforchange .org. We are grateful for all the ways you and so many have shaped and brought us together.
the vehicle of White Noise Collective to life. Alright,
so here we are for White Noise Collective Sunset Reflections with members from the Corps Collective. It's the end of this video. January,
2024, January 31st. And my name is Zara Zimbardo, also a core member. And I'm in Oakland,
Northern California, Oloni land. Could you each introduce yourselves? - Yeah, it's so good to be here. I am Julia Sebastian,
also here in Oakland. on Lonely Land with Sarah, who a number of streets would take to get to each other, but I can see you now, which is nice. And,
yeah, a core member of Buoy Night Selective, happy to be here. Yes, and I am Nicole Wires. I am on Loch Tamesh and Nooksack Land in Northern Washington State.
state. I am also a core member, and yeah, it's been a long time coming to have this conversation. So I'm grateful to be here with you both. - Yeah,
likewise, and it has. So this is, I think, yeah, the last recorded conversation of folks who've been in the like integral white noise core, just taking some time to look back in East Elm Memories in Northern Washington state.
reflections and connections from this multi -year project. Yeah, I'd be grateful to have this time. And let's start if you could each share just a little bit about what first drew you,
the white noise collective. And if you want to say anything more about what your role was as a core member, making everything we did happen. I can. can start. Yeah,
it's interesting to think back on it, but I remember, wow, it must have been 2011 -ish. I had recently graduated college.
I was working my first job out of college. And in my undergrad, I had done a lot of work internationally and I kind of got disillusioned with the work that I was seeing and decided I wanted to focus more locally.
And I got a job at a nonprofit in a low income community of color and started to make a few friends with some colleagues who were in other nonprofit organizations in the area.
And like, that was my first sort of introduction and politicization around race. And they were super kind, but definitely invited me into an interview.
of whiteness. And I found, like of my own accord, I found a training for change training in Philadelphia that I like.
I remember I took PTO for and paid my own way to fly up to Philadelphia to go to this three day training. And it's so funny to look back on it now. But, you know,
we did some classic exercises. of understanding your own white racial conditioning. And I was definitely at the level of like, "I don't have racial conditioning. Like what do you mean? I didn't get any messages about race as a kid,
like still very new in my journey." And it rocks my world, but in a sort of like frustrating way. Like I was like, "I don't really get it. I need space to be in community around it." And so when I came home,
I was like, "I don't really get it." Googling places to continue to deepen in the Bay Area. And White Noise was really one of the only ones that was actually felt open and accessible.
There seemed to be a few other places, but I would email them and never hear back from them. And so at that time, I was living in the South Bay on the peninsula, and there was a dialogue once a month.
And I didn't have a car, I would take public transportation, ride my bike to the train. station, take the train, switch to BART, take the BART, it was like an hour and a half one way to get to the dialogue, but I started coming like very dedicatedly every month and that was the only space I had to sort of like be deepening and growing in this area,
which felt so important to me and so it felt like such a relief and inspiration and support to find white noise. noise. And from there, yeah, I continued to show up and eventually joined the corps,
I think, a few years later. - Yeah, it's like a somewhat similar story. It's so funny, 'cause I remember my first dialogue, which is also how I entered in. I remember you, Nicole,
with just the full -biked panniers and the feeling coming in the door of like, I just traveled an hour and a half to get here. You are one of the darkest characters in the world. my mind at that time.
Like, wow, dedicated. I think also in college, you know, there's just such a focus, especially in the school that I went to, on service, volunteerism,
definitely like elite college kids do service and are like changing the world. And in a way that I just like always felt was kind of sickening, but there wasn't that many other options.
There were some like really strong. worker organizing that was happening that some of the students were involved in, but it was on the periphery. And it wasn't until my last year also through more like an international focus that for me was really about race and colonization that structural power just started to really come to the forefront and then to apply it to the U .S.
.S. context and just like what was happening all around. So there was more conversations explicitly about racism and white privilege that were happening. It's so wild to look back on how different it is,
you know, like even, you know, at the first step, when I was like, maybe 12 years ago, also 2011. And I guess that was maybe 2010. And yeah, I graduated and I knew for myself,
I was like, I'm going to try not to get a job. I'm going to kind of of have side hustles. I want to be living in Oakland and basically just kind of like volunteering for the most radical organizations that I could find because I knew that like that was just like not at all part of my education.
And I had been kind of like really kept from that. So that was kind of my basic trajectory. And so that brought me to living in Oakland. And I must have also just done some research because I was working for different organizations.
organizations through like internships or whatever that were led by people of color and that had a really, really strong analysis, of course, of race. And it wasn't a place to be processing,
really. I think it was like that feeling of like, okay, it's a fire hose of like emotions, worldview, shifting, just like very particular study,
et cetera. And that's so different than being in communities. physically with people feeling them and just like working stuff out, particularly with people that you trust are motivated for the same reasons.
So I must have found white noise, I don't know, maybe through the interwebs, I'm not sure. And came to my first dialogue, which I feel like is the entry point for so many people. And it had all the trappings of like,
just I think a humane community. in terms of you know food and circle and story and listening and hard grappling I think I also I really wanted a place where people were really trying to excavate themselves and not look away not let themselves I think off the hook I you know I appreciate that about the says but that was also doing that kind of deep reflection reflection and what we call praxis,
that application, that reflection, that action and putting it together. I'm wanting the other people to succeed in it. So like being in a supportive kind of relationship. I was kind of intoxicated by the culture,
I think is what drew me in. And I started, yeah, just showing up to dialogues more and more and over the course of the, I don't know how long it took years years or so,
eventually got to join the core, which I felt like was a huge privilege. I was so excited, especially to be so approximate to people that I really looked up to, like Sara,
like you, and Lovanna and others, to feel like what a beautiful type of like mentorship while also kind of being able to get back in the concrete ways, because it's a, you know, all volunteer -run collective.
So I think that was kind of the origin story for me. me. Thank you for sharing these. I love hearing these trajectories. Yeah, it's just so powerful to hear and reflect and feel of just all of our different trajectories and how they just all like intersected and formed this river of collaborative work for,
you know, like around a decade. Yeah. And so in this decade, what is a memory that you particularly treasure or that stands out to you? Well, I know this collective was around for,
you know, years. before I even joined. There is an arc. It's beautiful to look back at the 10 plus years and to see the development of the collective,
obviously within the context of the way our entire world was changing and racial consciousness was just exploding. I mean, so powerful to have been able to do this work through.
the inception of Black Lives Matter, but I mean, so many movements that influenced the work we were also doing and the ways that you just get more sophisticated and it's always,
I would say the trajectory is always towards more nuance. You enter into any paradigm shift, something you're really trying to work to clarify yourself and how you walk in the world.
and how you walk in the world collectively with others and organize and all those kind of things. And I felt like we were constantly pushing to try to bring more nuance. And I think, yeah,
that humanizing aspect, because when there is a lot of complexity, humanity is often a thing that kind of gets dropped out in the brain and like the kind of intellectualizing takeover.
So I don't know, some of the treasured memories that I have, I couldn't even place them in time, somewhere in the middle there, was one dialogue that I think a lot of us remember,
which we say is the longest title ever or something. It was like, I had to not throw ourselves and other white people under the bus towards an aspirational radical white identity or something like that.
We always struggled with wordsmithing to decide. the description. Places that are a strong suit, yeah. Yeah, sorry. You fractured them before you met, right, luck title. Right,
and I remember, I remember kind of being in like, I was almost like a semi, kind of like, we always met in people's houses, basically, and it was maybe like semi -underground, low lighting,
and packed. And I think, you know, something that we immediately recognized was that we struck a nerve with people because because there was two, three times as many people attending this dialogue as some of our others.
I think it really spoke to, and now there's so much that's moving in this area, but it really spoke to the way the culture of the racial justice movement and particularly the ways white people had entered it was really through a self -deprecating,
perfectionism, right? It was interesting in all the ways that, you know, white people are socialized often for this sense of like, okay, you know, are we at our root and are at our core evil and,
you know, need to kind of be brought in line in this kind of constant sense of being really strict and not trusting ourselves, I think, fundamentally. And, you know, when you don't trust yourself and...
you know, you really, really question, I speak for myself, like, you know, is it possible to have any innate goodness as a human in this white body?
You also project that onto other white people, too. I did that, and I would say that it was a common pattern that we would see in our movements as well, which would just wreak havoc on so many of our relationships,
you know, when you're trying trying to actually do concrete work organizing protest events, you know, actually for some campaign or whatever, like all of that stuff just comes up. And so I think there was this question of,
which was really quite prefigurative, one of trying to analyze those conditions and name them, which felt very edgy, you know, it felt like we're not supposed to focus on ourselves in general,
why people have already taken up so much more. room, so much space in the world and the movement and everything, though it's really, you know, you come and you serve and you kind of don't really necessarily trust yourself in these spaces.
And I think there was together when we came together in this, you know, little basement space, a question of like, how do we stop this process of not trusting ourselves when it we understand our place in this fight?
There's so many organizations who now have this, it's so clearly expelled out, but at the time it was, it felt kind of taboo. And then the, this interesting prefigurative part around an aspirational kind of radical white identity,
which is, you know, if whiteness is a construct and it is in and of itself this creation out of an othering of people of color and therefore like in an othering of ourselves and our own humanity,
you know, what so many amazing authors like Baldwin and others have spoken about, the two sides of that coin, then what in hundreds of years might look like, you know, when we evolve culturally,
what would we call ourselves? What would an identity look like for us as people with white and light skinned bodies, where we forge ourselves out of a sense of wanting to live and contribute and be in a world that is racially just,
right, or like, how would we understand our identity? And so it was just a really exhilarating time. And I think it was the first of what it ended up becoming an arc of work that we did over many years.
And I think we came back to that theme and trying to put nuance on those questions, both of naming kind of of the dynamics within our movement spaces,
our multiracial movement spaces, and ourselves, and the roles that we played in them, and then this interesting North Star question of like, who are we becoming? Who do we want to be identity -wise,
even if the conditions aren't here right now? Like, when we are in these little spaces that are intimate and private and where we can be as real as possible and as edgy as possible,
like, how are we? forming ourselves? So that's definitely a memory that like sticks out to me that I really cherish. - So put remember just vividly that dialogue,
that the process, it's like the atmosphere, the space that was connected, right? Which was like deeply nourishing in terms of like actual food as well as just like the depth of listening and care that got created was...
such a antidote for what a lot of folks were suffering from, of like very profound alienation from themselves, from relationships, from the movement,
from this work. Thank you for sharing that, Julia. I remember that dialogue so well. It's funny, I can totally picture the downstairs -ish space of it,
kind of sub -ground level entry. Yeah, there are so many memories that come to mind. to mind. Some that I just, I don't even know that I have a concrete memory to convey, but there are some where it's just like, together as a core.
We had some hilarious times. Like, we actually had a lot of fun. And speaking of pithiness, thinking of that title, I was remembering our process of trying to come up with a tag name.
And we had like, 1000 tag phrases that were like... 80 words long, we just could not get it. Or even the sentence to describe who it is we work with and how we do our work was like such a funny process.
I think the things that like resonate most deeply are that I still can like feel into energetically were the sort of affinity group mobilizing that arose out of white noise Collective and its relationship to a constellation of other people and organizations during the Movement for Black Lives and the invitation to form an affinity group which became a group of 10 to 20 people who had been deeply involved in White Noise
dialogues and workshops over time who over a series of years three to six years, like really got deeply trained up in high -risk direct action skills and contributed to a series of really powerful actions in the movement for Black Lives.
And there are so many that I can remember, and I can just remember. I remember meeting as an affinity group in people's homes, like the same homes we'd been to many times because of dialogues,
and it's late at night. The action is scheduled for the next day and we're talking through our safety plans and just the energy in the room of knowing that people are taking an escalated risk,
taking an action that may result in arrests, making plans for pet care and family care and the things that need to be taken care of and feeling closer than at any other time,
I think, to to the possibility of the power that can be built out of the kind of organizing and space that White Noise Collective has created.
And I remember the first action that I was involved in was the shutdown of the Oakland Police Department shortly after the non -indictment of Darren Wilson for the murder of Mike Brown in St.
Louis. And just feeling like, you know, I was probably 26 or something. I don't know exactly how old I was, but I remember this feeling of like, holy shit,
like the revolution is here. We're doing it, you know, which is sweet and naive to look back on from this vantage point. But yeah,
just like a real true sense of possibility and the bravery to like take those kinds of actions because I felt surrounded. by this network of relationships that felt really deep and supportive.
So I think those are the memories that kind of resonate most deeply with me still. - And remembering, I think we were in the same group. Probably, Nicole, maybe there was two groups of us for that action in particular.
I remember there was like a chant, like we're so comfortable to like even create ritual with each other. other that that evening, I think one of our friends had maybe said like body and bones and maybe blood or something together.
And we were kind of like just can't hit together and just that full embodied experience with people that can only come through like an intimacy of like yeah,
many years of building trust focused on. that common goal and fight. And yeah, just such a beautiful merging of bringing your bodies together for something,
which like it starts, yeah, it starts in circle and with food and in like conversation. And then it gets to kind of that level where you're literally like, you know, chained to each other and,
you know, taking those kind of physical risks, but feeling so connected. It is like all part of that. trajectory. - As you were both sharing, and thank you for these incredible memories and like the context within which they were.
And as you were both sharing just these like very like formative and transformative trajectories that you were on when you came into white noise, what is a way that being a part of this transformed you?
- Yeah, I can start. It's like, it's almost hard to pinpoint. a specific way. It was such a part of my development and transformation during that decade.
It was such a core part of that process in so many ways. I think white noise became a real political home in a lot of ways.
A lot of my politicization and radicalization happened through. engagement with key ideas and frameworks and texts and things that were happening in current events and popular culture and being in dialogue and conversation with others in white noise with the core and more broadly with the whole collective in our dialogues.
And each of those deepened and radicalized me getting connected to the direct action organizing and the movement for black lives. and seeing that process unfold was also a big part of my transformation during that time and feels really connected to white noise.
And also at a much more personal and interpersonal level, you know, a big theme in white noise throughout the years was the relationship between whiteness and therapy and personal healing and there were many people in the collection.
who are therapists or social workers. And it was often a space where we processed the dynamics of race and power and how they show up in those kinds of interpersonal relationships.
But also like many of us were on a therapeutic journey of our own in one form or another. And I think having that be culturally normative contributed to me like getting into therapy.
and doing my own therapeutic process and a lot of my own kind of like personal work around shame and trusting myself were also just core themes that showed up a lot in white noise and they were were in our just as much about my early family life and my you know family conditioning as they are about structures of power and race and gender.
those things aren't really separate from each other. So everything was a space for deeper exploration within white noise. So on so many levels, I mean, I can think back to times in my life,
different stages of development that I was in white noise and see the growth and see the transformation that I've been through and how much of that transformation like white noise was just a core part of.
of? Yeah, our resume was a lot there. They almost like I have anything to add to that I mean, certainly the word political home I feel like came up again and again and throughout the years.
I think we really recognized it was often Especially for those of us on the core, you know, who just spent so many hours together and intentionally thinking about how to create this community Political homeless a word that was used a lot lot and the ways in which we were able to as a core and doing collective work,
collective volunteer work, amidst all of life's other demands and hardships and all the things that come, just work through so much and be in relationship and still be creating something that we really believed in and wanted to like gift out.
to the world and to specific people right like they were our community and we wanted to like see them and be in those spaces together and I think I just feel really grateful.
There's so many ways to be an activist and this was such a particular experience and gift to be able to be active in this way.
and particularly to be able to have that as a compliment to, you know, I think all of us were and still are doing racially just aligned or explicit paid work,
often in the nonprofit whatever, the nonprofit sphere or, you know, teaching or whatever. So that was a big part of our lives action as you spoke to Nicole and the ways in which we would show up in particular campaigns and strategizing.
But this just felt so different. It's only through being part of deep relational community that's focused on kind of the deepest kind of meaning -making in terms of the world you want to see that is a transformative process,
I think. And so I think I just really believed in it over the time and felt so grateful. grateful, like believed in its value. And then all the things that are that are present in that type of culture,
you know, always begs the question, well, like, how can I bring that like into my life? How does the ways in which we are together relate to how I am with people on,
you know, in my individual life, how I'm with people at work in movement spaces. And I think that was a lot of the. goal was not just have a reflective space, but to like have practice and how we like treat each other and how that be something that we can take into other parts of our lives.
So I do, I feel transformed for that. Yeah, also through therapy, I really wish for activists to have a political home, you know, because like a home is a sense of in its notion as a word,
you know, potentially a sense or for me a kind of like a sense of kind of like safety, being your full self and to feel like you have that access to that in either activist spaces and or like the larger political context in which you're operating where things are fierce and like scary and it like gets your nervous system like way wound up.
Like it's just so different to carry home with you. You know, you get to have those physical experiences that then become imprinted on your body and in your memory and then you get to carry them with you.
So I think I feel transformed by being part of the community in general. Beautiful. I'm so inspired by your giving voice to all of this. I mean, in a lot of what you're saying in terms of the time,
I'm like, "Politicized healing and, you know, our core value or another north star of praxis that it's not this either or of like it's either reflection internal tending or it's action in the world but it's like that that can be in this continually dynamic alternating that like reflection feeds action action feeds new reflection and to have a collective space to get to investigate and reflect on that is a real blessing.
Yeah just to say I think that there still can be be this kind of false binary that exists, that it's like either you're doing this internal work or it's all external.
And I think that we did a pretty amazing job of breaking that down in an ongoing way. Yeah. And so shifting years a bit, as you look back,
what comes up for you in terms of like... like growth edges, where we may have made mistakes or mistakes that generated important lessons or even like looking back and just like doubting certain things,
seeing them in a different light, what feels like an important growth edge to name and remember? Well, I remember one. I'm so curious what you would say in a fault, but just one that we got caught on.
a lot was the value of mono -racial spaces and the challenges with that versus multi -racial spaces.
And I think this is like really reflective of certainly this was happening in white noise. I mean, the Bay Area is a place that has a lot of different racial kind of affinity spaces.
It is all the things to be said about why those are important, of course. And for a time, especially in like the actual movement work, particularly in more like direct action spaces or kind of like in campaign spaces,
there was different racial affinity groups that there was a segregation that was happening. And I think we would reflect on like, you know, is this like something they can really only happen in like the Bay or other places where you just have such an incredible abundance of activity.
who have, by and large, you know, compared to the entire spectrum of, let's say, the United States, like, are very, very aligned on our politics, but, you know, have different spaces, you know,
compared to maybe some place in, you know, maybe more rural, small town in the States where, you know, you don't get to choose your folks, you get maybe like 15, you got to roll together,
which is, I don't know, an aside, but I think we, at some point, point, I think we're struggling with like, okay, this is this broader landscape that we're kind of operating in. There's a number of groups. I mean, at some point we were doing like internal strategizing across like the five different like white and light skin privileged groups to figure out like how we could be coordinating better.
So definitely abundance in terms of, you know, the people who are movement oriented in the Bay, and I think think I noticed that, you know, we struggled. If I remember back like this,
you know, one of the core questions was like, does the isolating of each other separating from each other reify some of the dynamics where we really just like,
as a movement need to be facing each other and be in a real relationship, like, you know, very closely, and we're really not going to be able to do that. that unless we're in space together and building the bonds that within each of our affinity groups we were building.
So I think we started to question like almost like is this more harmful than helpful I think in terms of that or have we evolved to a new place like we needed that and now we need to integrate together and you know not to say that that wasn't happening at some level but it we're not at the scale.
that it felt like we could be doing. So I think that we struggled with that question for a long time. And I think for us as individuals, right, where it was like maybe individually, I feel like I have so much capacity and time in my life.
I want to be in more multiracial spaces doing this work. And so what are going to be the trade -offs there? That was a major growth edge. And I think that remains for, you know, movements and actually spaces in general within the racial justice movement.
And others, I think you could apply that to other types of movement spaces as well. What is that balance? Where do you need to be able to really be working together very closely?
And where is it useful to have affinity spaces? So that's one question that I think we came back to over the years. Absolutely. Yeah, that was definitely a core co -on of ours,
sort of unanswerable question, I feel like, that we continue to grapple with. I don't know if this is like a mistake or a growth edge so much, but the first thing that came to mind when I heard the question is just thinking back to some of the earlier workshop facilitation and just being like,
oh my gosh, I was so young. You know. like I was so young. And in many ways, I was fragile myself.
And despite working on and supporting through our work itself, people to develop some antidotes to some patterns that have been named as white fragility,
I feel like I still, myself, expressed many of those patterns and would like feel a lot of shame. if I facilitated something and it didn't go well or someone asked a question and I didn't know how to answer it.
And all totally normal things that arise in facilitation, but I just look back at myself and think like, oh my goodness, I was a baby, I was like such a baby facilitator. And I mean,
it's almost like there's no way through but through and you have to start from somewhere and develop those skills in some context and I'm really grateful for having had that experience.
And also, I'm like, I kind of wish I could go back and do those all over again, you know, like with 15 years of experience, as beautiful as it was, I think, you know, it could have been an even more nourishing and beautiful space with more,
just with more kind of experience and grounding. So yeah, that's the thing that comes to mind. for me. - Yeah, I mean, we built so many layers of grounds and experience over the years for sure.
And that's also something that I just really cherished about the spaces that we created was the intentional, like, oh, what are my personal growth edges as a facilitator? Can I be like witnessed and supported in that?
You know, like, what are the ways that I'm wanting to intentionally grow through practice? Like you said, like, you know, way through but through. Thank you for all of those shareings. Is there anything more that you would want to share just in terms of thinking about positive impacts or ripples on kind of the larger movement in the Bay and beyonds or impacts on communities?
I mean, maybe going on the facilitation piece and yes, it's kind of impossible to know where you're having impact or not, and I felt like we had a pretty good pulse on the kind of movement landscape,
at least in the Bay Area, and maybe these trajectories would have evolved anyways, and we were just definitely very, very interested in some of the facilitation techniques that were more body -based,
and now obviously somatic -focused workshops. especially around race, are much more common. And I think we all knew when we came in to the movement spaces,
especially when it comes to the political education side, it was a lot more about information and presentation. And we weren't seeing a lot,
I think, if that's right, you guys, we weren't seeing like other ways of doing that. that and really like leaned on each other. And we did a lot of pedagogy of the oppressed,
obviously, you know, like there are these lineages that we drew from and very intentionally applied them to like current context, political education for the Bay Area where there was,
I think, a strong hunger for a different way of learning, processing, going through transformative experience. as like a workshop participant. And I think that that is something that we were certainly contributed to,
at least in our local movement, you know, in our local communities. Our workshops really, I would say on the spectrum, like, tended that way and we did that quite early.
And then it was great to work with others, you know, we've got to work with Serge, you know, which is a huge body, you know. you know, who touches a huge number of people. But we were doing those workshops with them for their membership base,
like before they really had a training program set up. And like, I think, you know, coming in early, you know, to make those connections within our networks, within our movement landscape and influencing things in that direction,
I think would probably was pretty impactful and felt right. And we got a lot of really great response from people who worked with us. got to go through those experiences and continuously iterate on it. And so I think that would be one of our main contributions.
- Yeah, totally. Yeah, I mean, another thing that comes to mind for me, and this maybe speaks as much to like the growth edges as the contributions is we often said,
at least internally, that we felt like. like we were creating space for the reflection component of people's praxis and that we trusted that people were out in the world in their various forms of activism acting.
And so at times, like through the affinity group spaces and the Movement for Black Lives, we did directly organize our people into action. But much more often, we knew that our folks were showing.
up in action in many forms as teachers, as social workers and therapists and nonprofits, you know, disrupting some of the patterns of white privilege or white supremacy culture in unions in all of the places that they were working as parents,
etc. But that this was really like the reflective space. And so it does make it really hard for us to know our impact and very often we would get an email from someone that was like,
"I've been on your email list for like nine years and I've like followed everything you've put out and the resources have been so amazing and I've never showed up, but this has been like key to my sense of learning in the Bay Area." And it's like,
"Oh, if we had never gotten that email, we would never have known that we had touched this person in this way." So I think on the growth edge side of it, it's like we grappled with this question often and we never really came up with a strategic orientation for ourselves about how beyond just like having faith and trust that folks are out there doing things and it matters to have this space,
which I still very much believe that it matters. And it clearly it mattered for me so much as an individual and for us so much as the core that I trust. in those ripple effects and also like we would sometimes entertain the question what would it look like and what would it take have a clearer strategy and we were never the vehicle for that being like an all -volunteer collective without many resources that's still
kind of like an open curious question for me how much did we actually bring bring people into action versus how much do we like make space for people to process hard feelings but not necessarily need to be in action.
But yeah, I think those emails, those conversations, like seeing people over time, seeing people who had been, you know, at workshops previously taking leadership roles in different ways.
and referring to the White Noise Collective as a source of support and inspiration. I think those are some of the ways that I've really felt proud and joyful and grateful for the impact that we've had as a collective.
So moving towards closing as our formation has decided to to sunset.
What is one wish that you would have for the legacy of White Noise Collective? That's a really good question, and it's hard to answer.
And legacy is one way to think about it, but something, I mean, it could be something that's already been spoken to that you would hope would like continue to live on in positive ways. And or just like anything else you would want to say by way of closing.
I think there's a part of me that wants to say like I want white noise to be remembered but I actually don't think that's really it like it's not so much that I want us as individuals or this body to be remembered.
I think it's more like I feel like we were part of and an exception. expression of and contributed to some really critical evolutions in political understanding of power and solidarity and coalition building and campaigning and winning and transforming the world.
And I feel like this is probably what all movement organizers in some way want for their descendants is for those lessons to be of use and of value and meaningful and for that legacy to continue to be built upon and to not have to start where we started.
We've covered some ground and take it from here and cover new ground and let's not retread the territory that we've been on, even though of course it's a spiral and it makes sense that themes will continue.
resurface, but that for like the lessons that we've learned over time to be received. I think that there were aspects of how we practiced together that are fundamental and that are easy to lose sight of.
From the very simple that we, you know, we've talked about in terms of the ability, I mean, I mean, Lord, we went through COVID together, still, you know, having dialogues online,
like our world has fundamentally changed. There's so much about our world, like fundamentally changed. And I do think that there are ways of being human together while doing incredibly difficult work,
you know, emotionally, psychologically. psychologically, you know, materially, that shouldn't be left behind, have to actually practice it. And I think it's really easy for those kind of practices to get lost for whatever period of time and people will find them again naturally,
potentially. But I think to your point, Nicole, it's like, let's keep them close. It hasn't been that long, you know, white noise and, you know, other formations that practice with the human centered approach to movement.
work, body -based somatic focused approaches, ones that are deeply intimate in a relationship, ones that make sure that you have food and not just food,
but food that's really made from the heart that people were like, "I'm so excited to bake this thing." There's so much of that that's just visceral and really matters. I think about the generation coming up now.
and I actually don't know what they have that is bringing those kind of spaces for them to do their practice in. And so I hope that there is someone who is maybe younger when they hear white noise,
who's like connecting the dots down, or maybe someone finds the pieces on the website or whatever, uses the curriculum, sees the way in which dialogues were held. We are still alive.
and are happy to talk with anyone about this process and our lessons learned. And I think that those things will never get old. I don't think they'll ever not be needed,
but the world is not exactly a place that generates them on their own. It's not obvious or common. So I hope that that does continue because it really matters and it works well.
I think it's really important. important compliment within movement spaces and just makes them healthier all around, which we need. - So much appreciation and affection and respect for all that you've shared and we are still alive.
Yeah, maybe captured reflections, be of service for all of us on our different paths. paths. Thank you so much.
This has been a total joy. Thank you. Love you, love you too. Thank you so much for listening.
To learn more, more, check out conspire4change .org. Sound and editing for this episode is by Dave Pickering and music by Blue Dot Sessions.
(upbeat music)