Contemplative and playful conversation with core members Toran Ailisheva (they/them) and Zara Zimbardo (she/her). Two of the founding core members, Toran and Zara reflect on the impact of WNC, sharing about their political evolution in collaboration for over a decade.
To learn more about Toran and their offerings, check out:
http://dropsinthewaterfall.com/
To learn more about Zara and her offerings, check out:
https://www.zarazimbardo.com/
Contemplative and playful conversation with core members Toran Ailisheva (they/them) and Zara Zimbardo (she/her). Two of the founding core members, Toran and Zara reflect on the impact of WNC, sharing about their political evolution in collaboration for over a decade.
To learn more about Toran and their offerings, check out:
http://dropsinthewaterfall.com/
To learn more about Zara and her offerings, check out:
https://www.zarazimbardo.com/
We're doing it, and if we don't like it, nothing has to be published. Right. All right, I'm pressing record on my phone. All right.
So. Yeah. And here we go. Yeah. Mm -hmm.
Okay. -Yeah. -Mm -hmm. 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 what 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. All right,
here we are. Here we are. Yeah, so good to be with you in this format. My name is Zara Zimbardo. and today is September 6th,
2023, Virgo season, and we both are in Oakland's Huchun Ohlone Lands,
California. And I'm Torrin Eilishewa, and I'll just add in that I use they /them pronoun. Thank you. you. And I use she /her pronouns.
And both of us are friends and long -time colleagues and co -conspirators working with the White Noise Collective for over a decade,
an anti -racist organization that has just recently sunset. And so we're taking time to reflect what's with the White Noise Collective. close collaborators on what this project's been about,
how we grew the work and how the work grew us. Yeah, well said. How are you feeling in this moment? What is surfacing for you?
In this moment, feeling anticipation and excitement about the transition into fall. Also just with this conversation that we're having,
there's a mix of sadness and sweetness with an ending. And grateful that we're ending in a way where we get to take time to really harvest lessons from it.
And this amazing work that's been such a huge part of our lives for such a long period of our lives. So, yeah, feeling a mix, a mix of emotions and really grateful that we're ending in a talk with you.
How are you doing today? - Yeah, I mean, similar. I feel very tender and excited just for this process of getting to really intentionally look backwards and like figure out what threads are there that really wanna be pulled forward to inspire whatever comes next for us and everyone else in the world.
Also, moving through some... some like back and body pain, which is something that has been true for me in the whole time of white noise and so it feels fitting, I guess, to be feeling that today and like think back on how many dialogues I was maybe like laying on the ground and just like all of the ways we supported each other in accessing all of this over the years.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I hear that. I feel that. Let's start. just with a question of what first drew you to White Noise Collective? Or in this case,
since we are the two people who have been around since the beginning, like what drew you to what eventually became White Noise Collective? Yeah. And I want to honor that I came around just a little bit after you.
So there's some of the origin story that preceded me, but you know, what first drew me was like a first workshop that you were a part of, organized. that was really looking at this intersection,
this confluence of whiteness and gender. And for me at that time, I was really new into some identity -based activism around queerness and looking at whiteness in the ways it was showing up in the San Francisco Bay Area and political scenes and occupy and labor movements.
movements and being messy all over the place and so really being grateful to like find a space to try to make sense of it and at the same time was a really new therapist,
social worker working in community mental health in like frontline marginalized communities and trying to figure out how to show up in that recognizing my privilege and you know,
position and also just feeling really complicated about all of it and white noise I think really met me in a lot of those needs at that time. - Hmm. - Yeah,
what about you? - Yeah, I mean, that first workshop which really birthed what would become white noise, I think there was like maybe half a dozen different people, all of whom identified as white women who worked on this curriculum curriculum that was really about grappling with white femininity and narratives of white womenhood and what this has to do with racial justice and anti -racism work and what were,
what are patterns that folks at this identity intersection around white privilege and sexism and heterosexism at the time.
is what we were really investigating. What were patterns, unconscious patterns that needed to be made conscious? Because if they weren't, then they were getting in the way of relationship or limiting the potential of anti -racism work.
And from that experimental two -day workshop, there was such an amazing group of folks who attended and there was so much enthusiasm that from there it was like, "Oh, let's continue this with white privilege." and with other things that then started to take shape in the form of a collective." And I know for me,
at that time in my life, I was really on fire with anti -war work. I was on fire with anti -racism work.
A lot of this was around challenging Islamophobia. And it hadn't been that long. ago that I'd really come into any kind of critical understanding of what whiteness is.
So that was like a new understanding, was like, "Oh, okay, here's these issues that I care very deeply about. What does it mean that I'm white? What is the social construction?" And then those beginnings of that workshop looking at whiteness and gender and looking at narratives of white womanhood.
womanhood really blew my mind, which was like this is lifting up all kinds of mirrors to all kinds of aspects of identity, culture,
patterns that are out in our society, patterns that go deep, deep, deep into the history of the United States in terms of reckoning with specifically the weaponization of white femininity that really shook me to my core and was like this really merits ongoing investigation on a collective level.
Yeah, I mean from there then both of us have been a part of the core collective ever since, from sunrise to sunset. We've developed a ton of curriculum, facilitated workshops, hosted dialogues all around the Bay Area,
and been a part of different types of organizing and creative interventions, a whirlwind montage, but let's linger in some of those places. The montages is flowing through my head of just like really thinking back on just like the breadth and depth and like so much of different things we have done and being there from the beginning and thinking about all of these ways that it formed and the ways that we've grown it
over the years. Is there more that you wanna say there about the origin story of white noise? - I think just to acknowledge that this has been a volunteer project this whole time.
And so there's people who were really passionate at the beginning who then were like, my work here is done and faded out. And then there's been this organic process with different people coming into the core over time.
But just to acknowledge that it's really been been this labor of love to really create and hold different kind of spaces, right,
these offerings of these particular investigations as a type of movement support. Like, I think from the beginning, like some of what animated that very first workshop was looking at barriers between white and terrorist folks of just being like,
how are we actually not being allied? to each other and tearing down and kind of sabotaging each other's best efforts and engaging in a ton of shame and blame, and then bringing in,
looking at ways that internalized sexism and gender oppression can also then hook into that. Yeah, that's something that I feel really proud of. We were responding to that toxic pattern and being like,
how can this work be more humanizing? How can it be more humanizing? relational and how can we look critically at what's holding it back? Some of that work is interpersonal.
Some of that is on a larger scale. Some of that is deeply internalized. - Yeah, absolutely. And yeah, I think that that's something that really touched a lot of people from the beginning and onward.
Starting to understand and reckon with the ways that we have these contradictory messages, right? And what does it mean to... to be conditioned or socialized into multiple ways of holding space,
of valuing what we have to say, of understanding how to be in movement spaces, how to be in leadership, and that on one hand there's this experience of gender,
and for me that was an experience of society telling me to be quiet. and that what I had to say wasn't really valuable, and so I want to learn to speak up,
and then in legacies of feminism, really taking up more space, but then recognizing also that whiteness was teaching me that everything I had to say was valuable,
was right, and then questioning myself. Right, and so I know for me, I was like, I really could spiral in that, and so starting to understand and contextualize what does it mean to be holding all of this in one body,
one experience, one identity. And then from there, without awareness, get to make choices around like how to show up. I really appreciate you bringing up some of the contradictions and contradictory messages and narratives in this work,
because that feels like that's been something that we've kept spiraling around across this whole time and has been like an animating thing from the beginning that has brought white noise into being of how do we inhabit or engage with these contradictions in a way that they're not immobilizing or dehumanizing or just like super stagnant,
like what is the way, you know, and just on that level of like finding voice and to speak out. out as an anti -racist, when you're dealing with these internal messages of being like voices of sexism,
which can be like second guessing yourself to death or what I have to say isn't as important, et cetera. And then yeah, just like you were saying, then there can be the entitlement or the assumptions of whiteness. And then there can also be becoming more conscious as a white anti -racism person,
which can also then be a lot of second guessing. And so all of those... those internalized voices can bring up a lot of nuanced consideration of, like, how are we speaking out and using our voices in solidarity alongside others?
And that's been, like, one area of curriculum that we've created that I really loved that was using a lot of Theater of the Oppressed methodologies and exercises, like cops in the head,
where you're basically externalizing internalized messages from society. society and so some of that was looking at internalized contradictory messages from patriarchy and from white supremacy and there was something cathartic about in a group of people just to being able to name and express all of those different voices and all of their dissonance and then to be like,
"What are other ways?" Yeah, and I know for me it helped me move through a lot of my defensiveness and my impulses towards fragility to start to understand. that within these larger contexts that it wasn't just me being a bad person,
right? That it was like, "Oh, okay, this is me being steeped in this, right? This is the air I breathe, and now I can act from that awareness." And so then when I did make mistakes,
you know, whereas prior to that I might have been, like you said, immobilized into shame responses and shut down. And I think that there are a lot of times where where I was like, how do I even be in this movement?
How do I show up? And like understanding more and more, I think there was a quote we used, I'm forgetting the author, right? But that like we are on these moving sidewalks and how do we like learn to walk the other direction and not just get carried along with the ways that we're conditioned in the world.
Maybe it's Patricia Hill Collins, I'm forgetting right now. And like understanding some of that, it's Patricia Hill Collins, I'm forgetting the author, I'm forgetting the author, I'm forgetting the author, I'm forgetting the author, I'm forgetting the author. especially like thinking about like some of the things that were happening in the world through the years of the white noise collective,
right? Like Black Lives Matter movement and land back movements and emergence of leadership of color and centering and understanding all of that,
right? And like finding our place as white people in these movements, really helpful to have that understanding and context. Yeah. Yeah, I really appreciate how you just said that. And that in itself, right,
of like finding our places in movement can have all kinds of contradictions that may not be like easily settled or resolvable or like, "Ah,
figured this all out," but just like, "Oh, this is a dynamic space constantly of questioning and why it's so valuable to have places," you know, and I'm thinking of like our practice.
of dialogues, which, you know, we did for a decade -ish, places to really think out loud in community. And it's not about like having the answers, but being like,
here's a topic that's weighing on our minds and hearts. What is it like to talk in an unrehearsed way? What is it like to have many different lights shown on it from different people's perspectives?
What is it like to go from what you already know you know to what - you haven't considered before or to be able to think new thoughts or to feel less isolated around some of these different topics.
Maybe let's just share a little bit around what our dialogue practice has been because that's been one of the hearts of white noise collective. Yeah. I mean, I remember when we were first developing dialogue practices and coming up with ideas of,
like, what is it like to go from what you already know to what you haven't considered we were going to talk about at some of our very first dialogues. Yeah, maybe we'll include links somehow to share with folks all the dialogues we did over the years, because we certainly can't actually talk about all of the topics that we talked about.
>> Dozens that are all beautifully archived, yeah. >> This process of coming together, and it evolved over the years in so many different ways of just trying to be intentional about.
like how we gathered, who we gathered, where even, right? I mean, we were often in just like in the living rooms of participants. It was just always free and open. You know, at times it was like just anyone could show up and at times,
you know, we experimented with what it meant to maybe have a little conversation with someone before they came just to make sure there was a little bit of shared understanding just around like some of the basics of privilege and...
just even understanding what is racism, right, and making sure that we could all come in with some shared understandings. But yeah, like having topics, having loose questions, and then just really opening space to evolve and go in whatever directions we really were turning on together.
Is there more you would add around the dialogues? Yeah, I mean just like context -wise that we were practicing something something very specific of a commitment to Frerian dialogues by Paulo Freire,
the Brazilian educator of popular education and critical consciousness. That dialogue as a practice that helps inform action,
that we're very much looking at how to bring together lived experience and theory. as a politicized practice. We really lived into that,
creating a space where it's not about figuring out one truth but surfacing multiple truths and really grounded in love and humility and respect for people's humanity.
And I think just in a general sense with the dialogues, like I just remember so many times, you know, in the Bay Area, so often people including... including myself, are often stretched very thin,
and these would happen in the evening. And a lot of times I would show up, or I remember other people would show up just feeling tired or feeling like, "Oh, commitment to this tonight,
but I don't have much energy." And then leaving at the end, feeling super energized and super nourished by the space. And we would literally have potlucks, so food that people brought and just being in that space.
space where it's like dropping down into listening and curiosity and connection, just what a restorative practice that was.
And I feel like that word like nourishing is something that I heard so much from so many people, which is not what you always hear about white anti -racist spaces, right? It can often be where people are feeling like very ego inflames or like shut down or kind of of on edge,
or where there is a lot of shame blame, there's a lot of like, you need to have the right analysis, and this was really meant to be an antidote to that, in terms of like thinking as a group, and even getting to like question some of your own beliefs.
So that just as a general vibe comes up for me, and I remember one dialogue in particular, I think it was radical self -love, and how to not throw each other under the bus,
something like that. like that. It had a long title. But I remember being really moved hearing from a couple people just talking about how very severely burnt out they had been on whatever type of racial justice organizing work they had done.
And in part of it, it was because of those dynamics, isolation, shame, feeling dehumanized in the work, and it was really moving to hear about just some of the mental...
health challenges of people's commitment to liberatory work and feeling like they couldn't continue. And then being in this space, being like, "Oh, this is kind of like reigniting my desire to do this," that this can be a place of connection,
nourishment, growth, feeling rehumanized. Yeah. And I love how you really surface some of the practices themselves, right, and inspired by prairie and dialogue practices. And another one that I always held and that I think,
you know, really still is really core to how I've evolved is the both and. Like just like really starting to understand, it was really through white noise that I got an embodied understanding of what it means to move past right and wrong.
That those are these like ways that I've been colonized, right? And like these are symptoms of white noise. white supremacy, this idea that there is a right and there is a wrong just at all and that how do we hold this both and,
and practicing that, practicing that in our lives and practicing that in dialogues and practicing that in conflict and figuring out how do we actually hold these possibilities.
And all the different themes, you mentioned that one and I can think back on that one as well. And I just love them. wide range of topics. I'm just thinking back now on across the board,
all the different types of things we talked about, everything from shame and not throwing each other under the bus to understanding how this all intersects with classism, or ableism,
or work and grind culture and productivism, or even just yoga and cultural appropriation. We've spent a lot of time looking at culture appropriation for sure.
Yeah, right? And just like so many different ones and like even dialogues that just were responding to like that political moment or what was happening in our culture or a society or a world and how do we just like hold each other through pain and grief,
all of it, right? Yeah, thank you for naming that as well, that this was like also a place just to hold emotion in community. There's something about that that can be medicinal to see it.
the least. And with what you were just saying, that made me think of also of just times when for some years we had dialogues that were specifically right before like the end of the year holidays,
when folks would likely be going to see family and then practicing doing role plays of difficult conversations about race, which then became its own curriculum offering and workshop that we did a whole bunch of times.
particularly with surge showing up for racial justice. But yeah, it's just sweet to think of like how that started. It was starting as this supportive practice place where people could then,
when they are with their family struggling during winter holidays or whatever it may be, to feel that here's this community of folks at your back, you know, rooting for you. Being like,
remember to breathe. Here's the somatic grounding practice you can do," or, "Hold the both and," or, "Get curious," or, you know, et cetera. Yeah, it's true. I'm thinking back now,
and I think almost all of our workshops, if not all of them, sprung out of dialogues, right? It was like, we just started by digging in, getting curious, right? And then from there,
where there were sparks, we evolved them into like, "Oh, this is something we really want to spend more intentional time with." with." And then they became workshops that we started to offer over and over in community.
So antidotes to white fragility, the difficult conversation, saviorism, the buffer zone, right? All of those started out as dialogues. Yeah. And then hearing people get lit up about it and being like,
"Oh, let's cultivate this into something bigger." I mean, we've always driven to be really responsive to where it felt like... there was different needs or different requests or just different enthusiasm.
And Torn, I'm curious to ask you, like we were reflecting on in terms of the ways that White Noise Collective grew and some of our growth edges, particularly around gender, this would be great for us to,
yeah, reflect on together of just what have been some of those big changes over this period of time. Right. I mean, yeah, it's been such an arc. arc. - Yeah, it has been such an arc.
You know, in the origins, some of what we were looking at was with this weaponization of white femininity and ways that folks socialized as white and women would oftentimes be like,
oh, I'm not part of the problem, you know, in terms of looking at roles in white supremacy. And it's like, no, no, no, very distinct. particular roles, narratives,
images, messages, patterns of ways that narratives of white womanhood to whatever degree people who would show up to our offerings like identified with that or not, right?
Has been a key pillar propping up white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, you know, and something that we looked at a lot was the virtuous victim narrative, right? Which goes down to just like the deep DNA of this...
country, of white women being portrayed as damsels in distress, as pure, innocent, angelic, etc., all of that to demonize Native American men,
black men, men of color, and that dynamic continues to today. It is very old. And so we started out with certain specific projects in terms of ways that we were trying to challenge white women.
supremacy and patriarchy, which really expanded and really shifted. - Yeah, right. I mean, thinking back into some of our earlier days, right? Going into captivity narratives, going into like even just looking in media and culture around like how is white womanhood portrayed?
What are those narratives? What are those stereotypes? How are we upholding them? How do we subvert them? I mean, just like really like getting deep into that, I think was so... so valuable. And yeah,
it has been interesting to like look at the ways that we evolved, right, around gender over the years. I think that looking at the ways that white womanhood is weaponized is no less important today than it was 10,
15 years ago, for sure, you know, especially as we see the rise of more overt forms of white supremacy, you know, and at the same time, I think there was a lot of... effort in our collective to both hold that and not lose sight on how important it is to look at the ways that we can be upholding these systems of oppression from any identity,
even if it's an identity that also experiences oppression. And at the same time, how were we also evolving into inclusivity, right? We, even in our core and our collective and folks who are showing up,
many of us were in places of like questioning our own gender and like what is our role in womanhood? What if we don't identify as women? How are we still complicit in these,
you know, how do we sort of break down ideas around gender and move away from rigid ideas around like what it means and how it's defined? So I think it's interesting to see the ways that we,
as a collective, really pushed ourselves to figure out how to hold gender, right? Even our language, right? And our invitations and how we held community and who we invited to show up into our spaces,
like changed so much over the years. And you know, I think in the beginning we did, you know, use a lot more of the terms like, you know, women and feminine and femaleness and not that those terms stopped being relevant.
I think we leaned a lot more into like maybe like an experience of gender marginalization or inviting folks very specifically of like trans and gender non -conforming experiences who have had experiences of questioning their role within these systems.
I'm really pushing towards inclusivity while we also try to like hold and be critical. of these larger systems. Yeah,
I think we held that tension, right? There's a lot of trying to figure out how to be both and of holding and being a space where we can show up no matter how we identify around that spectrum,
but also not losing sight of the ways these are still showing up in society and that we need to question them. Yeah, I really love how you reflected all of this.
and it's an interesting tension that we've been in in terms of what is it to try to deconstruct, dismantle, strategically intervene into certain dominant identities while being a space that is welcoming of a wide range and spectrum of identities who may have a whole range of relationships with that dominant identity of like investing.
in it, conformity, rebellion, subversion, disidentification, etc. Right. So many people who are in our dialogues are actively trying to deconstruct gender.
And at the same time, recognizing the way the gender is weaponized. And there's such a both and there. Yeah, absolutely. And you also just mentioned that,
you know, we've been talking about white people. supremacy and white privilege for 12 plus years. And 10 years ago, we would often, you know, preface things by saying, like, we're not actually talking about the Klan or we're not talking about far right,
right, overtly bigoted groups, white supremacist groups. And in recent years, there's been such a increase in ascension or even like mainstream of white supremacists,
organizations, ideologies, white nationalism, just to name that, that shifts some of the focus, some of the strategies, some of what we feel like we can and can't engage with in terms of reframing some of those questions about like,
what is my place? What is my role? What can we do from our particular social locations? Just Just to name that when we've been talking about the system of white supremacy, it went from talking more about nuances about how this lives in more liberal and progressive and radical spaces to being like,
actually now we're also very much talking about overt increasingly other than covert white supremacy. Right. And that even as we focus so much on combating overt white supremacy and fascism,
right, in our world, in our community, communities that it doesn't make it any less important to also still look at those more subtle ways that white supremacy culture can be shaping our relationships,
our organizations, our political structures, all of that. And we have to figure out how to have conversations about both and see how we're perpetuating these systems across the spectrum.
right, and that it just becomes like maybe a more difficult discernment to figure out. That's well said, because so often within white anti -racism work, what we're engaging with is defensiveness and denial and distancing,
or being like, "That's not me," or "That's those people," right? "I'm a good person," or "I'm on the right side of history," or "When you're saying white supremacy, those are like scary people that I have nothing to do with," and then we're like,
"No, no, no, this system." lives in you. Let's like inquire into this while then like you said now also being like, and we are also talking about these movements that are increasingly terrifying.
Yeah. And I know for me, and like over the years in workshops and more and more like I always include this like opening framing around like your essential goodness is not being questioned, right, because we're not trying to attack each other in these spaces of dialogue.
dialogue and workshop that it is really about opening up into this way of just understanding how these systems are operating in us. And I think that people have always responded so well to that invitation to just let go of feeling attacked because we spend so much of our lives feeling attacked.
We are actually in the world often being attacked. And so like what does it mean to create these spaces where it's like no no, no, no, no, like, we're gonna assume that everyone is showing up here to learn.
- Yeah, and that's such a powerful foundation to create, yeah, when we talk about like brave space or spaces for like learning or growth zones or you know, what are the greenhouses that we're creating that help that happen?
- Yeah, I think understanding myself through a legacy, right, that I'm not just here showing up trying to like learn all of this from scratch, right? Like, Like recognizing that there are role models,
there are ancestors that people have been doing this work for so long and trying to fight against these systems. And yeah, that we aren't taught that history and we have to go out and we have to find it and reclaim it has been a really meaningful part of white noise for me and like just creating our role models page and just like living in and feeling into those histories and finding those ancestors that I most
deeply condone. connect with who inspire me in like when I'm in my moments of struggle, right? Like, ah, like, you know, Leslie Feinberg and Jesse Daniel Ames and like these people that I like, I draw on them and their stories to keep me going,
right? Because I want to be that ancestor someday. - Hmm, I love that. Ancestry, political ancestry, and that's been a focus of the many ways that we've - tried to counteract different types of historic amnesia,
but also to feel that there are these residences with political ancestors and to feel them at our sides and at our backs, which is actually the title of a really lovely illustrated poetry book about white anti -racist ancestors that recently came out.
Yeah, a sense of fortitude, humility, inspiration, inspiration, strength from, yeah, different historical time periods into ours. Yeah,
and it's really just so encouraging and nourishing to see just how many of the pieces that we really pushed edges around and tried to support blossoming into the world and to just see those things actually just like happening,
right? Like, it was really hard to find those histories, right, in the... beginning, and now there's books about it. And the same with just so many of the explorations that we were having, that these conversations are just so rich and deep and wide now across so many of our communities and just always inspiring.
But yeah, I mean, I just think the work of finding those stories of our ancestors and drawing from them, I think it really helped me counteract a lot of isolation. isolation and feeling like we're alone in this work and it's hopeless and recognizing that those stories were not talked to us for a reason and that it really matters that we find them and draw courage and strength.
Yeah, and just thinking about how we are hopefully trying to become and be the ancestors to those who come down the road. Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that with all the various offerings of political education, of creative process,
dialogues, somatic practice spaces, theater of the oppressed, you know, like resources, all that white noise is trying to put forward, I think all of it does relate to that,
to that we can wake up to history. we can come into different types of awareness of these different kind of tributaries that are flowing through us in our multiple identities and contradictions and can become,
you know, have choices. Our ancestors had different choices, like we have choices that we can choose more courageously and more consciously to become good ancestors. Yeah, yeah, we weave ourselves into this.
these lineages. Well, as we move towards closing this conversation, are there any like just treasured memories that you wanna share from your time in the White Noise Collective?
- Two things that come up are, one of just the ongoing treasured memory of just working within such an amazing dedicated core collective, which again, often is a like about food.
(laughs) And, you know, I just so appreciate it. the rhythms of the way that we as an all volunteer collective made this, carried this forth over so long,
always with time to reflect on what happened. Like, okay, we just launched this experimental workshop. How did that go? What did we learn? How do we think it would go? What worked differently than we thought it would?
Kind of feedback our beginning. Would we want to do differently next time? Like I think our practice game was really strong. in terms of reflection that serves action, action that breeds new reflection.
And so just taking that time always to debrief, reflect, celebrate, prep, plan, learn, you know, as a place where just like I have learned and grown so much.
And this collaboration is a tremendously great pull for. So that's like a big treasured memory that has hundreds of moments in it. And then also what comes up for me are some of the really exciting actions that we were a part of or some that we designed.
Like there was a period of years where we had created this liberate Halloween action kit where we crafted these downloadable signs that folks could cut out and put on super.
really offensive, messed up costumes in Halloween stores, particularly in the mass -produced ones like Spirit, where there's a whole section of the Wild West section,
and there's costumes with names like Reservation Royalty or Noble Savage or Indian Princess, as well as a number of others that are just horrific, perpetrating horrific stereotypes and narratives.
narratives. And so we would put these warning labels on of like warning, this may be perpetrating harmful stereotypes and damaging the community and, you know, et cetera. And it looks professional enough so that people might think like,
Oh my gosh, is this the maker of this costume putting in this warning label? And so creating that kit that folks could use, but then also doing different actions where we would go to spirit Halloween stores and it would be like,
Oh my gosh, is this the maker of this costume putting in this warning label? people and oftentimes get kicked out. But just the subversion of doing that was definitely a treasured memory at the end of October,
as well as other times that we were a part of different types of mobilizations or actions or rallies that took some degree of prep.
or nation encourage. And so the role that white noise could play, like I'm remembering before one of the major Black Lives Matter rallies when we were in like deep pandemic and uprising time.
And we had this dialogue on Zoom or not a dialogue exactly like a facilitated session, helping folks regulate their nervous systems and move from it.
sense of like stuckness or freeze into action and then all went out into the streets and that was just a really beautiful pairing in terms of just support to be able to show up in different ways.
So yeah, those are some treasured memories. What about you? Yeah, I mean I would echo a lot of that. I really appreciated the rigor, both the rigor and the love that we came to as like just a core in our collective of creating all of this.
I mean I can think about just the many hours we spent developing and redeveloping just our financial policies and how are we accountable around money and redistributing it back into the communities on the front lines,
just really treasuring those conversations, and yeah, the Halloween actions have been really present for me because I actually was just digging through and cleaning out my closet and found an entire entire bag of those warning labels and the little cultural appropriation zine.
So, yeah, I think there may be another round of those this year because I just have the bag of them. Sadly,
sadly, there is still a need for them and like the actions and the mobilizations and just the ways we were able to both ourselves and support others in moving into greater solidarity and action and praxis for sure.
Yeah, those are all treasured memories. And then one for me also is the vent diagrams. We talk so much about all of these contradictions and finding that way to visually hold them.
And for anyone who hasn't encountered those before, they're beautiful. And I recommend looking up and digging in with both the ones we created in white noise, but also larger, broader depositories of them.
But yeah, it's like these diagrams where it's like these two statements that are both independently true and contradictory at the same time. And like, how do you hold them both, right? And just like continuing to find space and new ways to hold and explore contradictions.
Really treasure that. Yeah. But the vent part, right? That it's a vent diagram. So like the two simple circles of the vent diagram, but that it's like, how do we we move from those overlaps? I'm saying this from like the original artist and sexualization and vent out some of the stale air where it feels like,
oh, these two opposing truths feel like they're mobilizing. I think we've been particularly curious of the ways that that can show up in different kinds of movement spaces, or in like white interracial spaces,
which they could look like, okay, well, how am I in solidarity? How am I accountable? How am I learning and growing? How am I moving? Yeah. Yeah, I mean a lot of stuffness and movement. Exactly. Oh my gosh,
I want to just talk for hours more, but we'll go to the maybe final sort of closing question. So what's one wish you have for the legacy of white noise collective and all of the work that we did?
Yeah, I just felt my heart's kind of like leap with that question. Yeah, honestly, I don't know that I could fully answer it. it in this moment or maybe I'll be answering it for a long time beyond this recording,
but I think one wish would be that folks who participated in our years of dialogues,
workshops, etc. have a felt sense in their bodies and beings and minds and spirits and hearts. that this work can and should be humanizing and nourishing and that anything like shame or a very challenging situation can in community be a place of connection and reflection and inquiry,
instead of a place of isolation and fragmentation and losing. losing morale. I think that that is one wish as well.
Yeah, just that this fire, that it's so important to continually be homing the skill and capacity to look at how privilege and marginalization interact.
And then that's a place of like ongoing inquiry and should not happen just alone. And it's not about getting super rigid about identity. but looking at like, how does this work out there in the world?
How does this work in here inside of my self, inside of my relationships, in service to larger movements for racial and gender justice? The big embrace of both ends.
Yeah, what about you? Wow, I don't know what I could add to that. That was so beautifully put. I think that for me, just to bring that back into it.
an image is, you know, all of our years and our attempts at like coming into like logo and image and art and like how to represent our work. I think about like how we always came back to this idea of drops of water like and ripples,
right? And just so I hope that this legacy is that like everyone we've touched and ourselves and our movements just continue to ripple out and the work continues and just. that we all continue to be drops of water,
right? Moving and reshaping mountains and reshaping this world into something that is a place where we can all like be liberated and live. - Thank you,
Torrin. - Oh, thank you, Zara. - It's a pleasure to talk to you about this. (laughing) - Always. - Yeah. you take this time here because we're some sitting this long project of politicized love yeah thank you thank you Thank you so much for listening.
To learn more, check out conspire4change .org. Sound and editing for this episode is by Dave Pickering and music by Blue Dot Sessions.