Our beloved collective has made the difficult decision to sunset our organization this year (2023/2024), and to make space for other expressions of our work to continue to grow and iterate out in our movements in our lives. As a part of honoring our legacy, we are proud to share this conversation with WNC New York Chapter. Chapter leaders Lissa Vanderbeck, Natalie McClellan, Sarah Kaplan Gould, Lexi Sasanow and Kate McNeely speak with Zara Zimbardo about the legacy and impact of White Noise.
Our beloved collective has made the difficult decision to sunset our organization this year (2023/2024), and to make space for other expressions of our work to continue to grow and iterate out in our movements in our lives. As a part of honoring our legacy, we are proud to share this conversation with WNC New York Chapter. Chapter leaders Lissa Vanderbeck, Natalie McClellan, Sarah Kaplan Gould, Lexi Sasanow and Kate McNeely speak with Zara Zimbardo about the legacy and impact of White Noise.
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. So we are here with the New York White Noise Collective chapter.
coming together to reflect on this period of organizing and creating that sick place. And it is November 12th,
2023. My name is Zara Zimbardo and I'm here with five of the numbers. I'm Natalie McClellan,
Sarah Kaplan -Gould. I'm Lisa Vanderbeck. Black being.
What drew you to it? And when did it start? and I was a part of White noise in the Bay.
It was just a huge part of my political development at that time, like coming into the Bay and I was like a special community of Black organizing and, you know, in the Black cancer tradition and just like really being unclear about my role and honestly like my inherent goodness as a white person in the world period.
And yeah, I think like what White noise did for me in the Bay gave me a space to process some of those feelings. Processing that was part of being able to contribute in powerful ways.
to multiracial organizing. And that felt just like very valuable. It was really important. I say sometimes that like leapfrogged me over series of like shame and paralysis that I saw a lot of other people struggling with at that time.
Anyway, so when I moved to New York, Natalie is one of my best friends and Julia, who's part of the white noise core and open as my other best friend and this conversation happening. I was like, how do we bring this here?
We need this here. I'm going to pass it to Natalie to tell what happened after that. Yeah. So what I'm remembering is from what I was doing at that time, I was doing a lot of organizing around climate and environmental justice with an explicit like racial justice,
racial capitalism, with that analysis. And it was like at the time in the months just after Michael Brown was playing by Dan Wilson in Ferguson,
sparking the Ferguson uprising. So in that time of like a rise of larger racial consciousness in the U .S. and in movement spaces that weren't necessarily organizing directly around racial justice,
it was like, oh no, but if you're doing organizing, it is around racial justice because the way oppression happens in. our culture happens through a racialized lens.
So I think the organizing that I was doing I was like needing more space for processing and reflection around like how to bring that lens into all of the organizing I was doing and to like figure out how to feel like some of the things you're saying like not feel like sort of like frozen as a white person in movement space.
spaces. Like, do I belong here? What am I supposed to be contributing? How am I supposed to be doing this? Lyssa, you and I started having conversations around white noise as a place that you had found some of those things.
And Kate, you and I were doing a lot of climate stuff together at the time. Lexi, you had just moved back to New York City from Boston area. So Lyssa, you and I were talking about being a new community.
you were like, "Oh, I think my friend Lexi, "who just moved back from Boston, "would be excited about this." And I was like, "Oh, I think my friend Kate, "who I'm doing climate stuff would be excited about this.
"Let's us four get together and see what we could do." - And Alyssa and I live together in college in a collective house called the Lady Cave. And our house is like a hub during Occupy as like a place where we can get together.
that students from all over Boston would come like for parties and pop looks and stuff and we had done a lot of that organizing together and like both of us were majoring in American studies in college where like there's a particular lens on like American studies is just like a cool ass discipline.
It's like intersectional in its core a lot of the conversations we were having in our house were always about. the ways that race and gender were showing up in everything. And so that was a part of our growing up together.
And so this made sense. That fall and winter were so high tension, and when Freddie Gray was murdered in Baltimore as well, I think brought more people into this kind of project.
And like Serge was doing a ton of organizing, and it was also like a really intense moment in gentrification organizing that a lot of us were involved in,
particularly I would say like in Crown Heights, Flatbush and Bushwick in Brooklyn. That sort of like factored into how do we talk about race and gender together as we like take up space in this country,
in the city, in the borough, in the neighborhood. And I think at least what I was thinking about at the time related to all of that is sort of what is the role for white women. women in direct action. That particular moment in organizing in New York,
there had been the climate march and Flood Wall Street in September of 2014. And then there was this huge racial justice march, millions march,
and a lot of actions happening in New York because it was that like Michael Brown, Eric Gardner, Freddie Gray. And there was a lot of affinity groups from Occupy,
Reblossoming, Reconfiguring. I was thinking at the same time, Natalie, the Rising Tide NYC chapter was reforming itself and that we were both a part of that.
It was a moment in which people were like, "Okay, here we are in New York and we clearly have a good activist network that has been in existence for a while. A lot of people have roles,
but also there was this larger reckoning, sort of what Natalie was talking about, of like, how does these individual movements whether, and also like, like the climate movement and racial justice,
like how do those fit together? How does displacement, immigration and gentrification fit with racial justice and climate movement? Like, there was a lot of this sort of cross movement analysis at the time.
And I think I was hungry for for a place where I could also really reckon with my own personal identity as a white woman in that.
And there wasn't really a space for that to be explicit. And I think it was a moment in which like the question of like, what do we explicitly talk about to make ourselves safer and more organized in the street?
Like, it was a time for that mean to be totally honest. I was probably in a manic spiral but I think it was a moment in which people were coming together and formalizing their relationships pretty regularly so it wasn't just like oh we're just having dinners and talking about this thing around the table like no we're going to make an organization we're going to do this intentionally publicly and for these purposes.
One thing I just wanted to add was like how hungry people were for it. Like we weren't doing a lot of follow -up. You know, we would just like send out, this thing is happening at this time and this place and it would be like the living room full of 30 people,
you know, as far as I remember. I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't, we weren't like following up with people who said they were gonna come. - I would even put that in like one of our possible like mistake columns, the organizational base building work.
Like we were not doing that. We were just pop -up intellectual emotional space on the regular. I think that was a tough question for a lot of movement organizations at the time also of we're responding to needs,
we're in a hectic period, we're doing all of this stuff. None of us are resource to be able to do base building. Other organizations were holding that right like surge was holding on a lot of the base building organizing for white anti -racist organizing.
We were sort of just like adjacent to and then brought in when they had issues of gender. I don't want to skip ahead too far because I know we are going to talk about some of like lessons and stuff.
But I think I remember having a lot of conversations about that as well. Like I think it was, you know, maybe a missed opportunity to not be doing more basic base building or putting people towards,
I think we talked a lot about like, we want to have this space, but we don't want to be building a base. We want people to be doing base building in multiracial spaces. But yeah, I mean,
I know it was always kind of like a question for us of like, we are building this community, we can't deny that. And our kind of intention isn't to build a base of white people.
people. We want base building to happen multiracially. But I remember that question coming up in different iterations over and over again. - And in the years that White Noise Collective,
New York City chapter existed, what were the offerings? What were the spaces that you created and held? - I mean, we did a lot of like mostly like workshops and facilitated dialogues and then like directed people.
to take action or join in as Natalie was just noting. We occasionally would talk about planning an action together. The one that I like particularly remember is the Dr.
Marion, the like Godfather of Gynecology, who had like done all kinds of unethical things to black women in service of science, all in aggressive quotations.
We're going to like. topple the statue. Like that was like the one big DA that we were talking about. But largely we would like come up with ideas for dialogues and workshops around different issues that were coming up in our organizing and in our lives.
And I remember one of my favorite ones that I ever facilitated was with Natalie in your old apartment in Williamsburg. And we talked about street harassment and like, white women's complicity and violence against black men that's being done around the preservation of our safety and purity and what safety is,
what community safety is. And it's informed a lot of the work that I do now as somebody who organizes Jewish people around ideas of Jewish safety. I'm trying to remember exactly like the Halloween costume.
thing, somebody else. Yeah, I was going to say that that was really early on. That was an action that we did in the different Halloween stores in New York City with it's a culture,
not a costume. I think we could call that action where we did, I remember I made a bunch of stickers to put on the party city attention. This is cultural appropriation stickers to put on all of those costumes.
And then we had two teams, we went in and we did the action of putting all the stickers, the warning labels for cultural appropriation costumes. Then we went in as a second group and had pretend theater of the absurd conversations about,
"Look at that label. Oh my God. Yeah, I know. You've heard about this, haven't you?" We did it at three, I think, different party city stores around New York, if I remember. I think part of the cool thing about... about, for me,
was that our core actions that we were doing, our core work, was these workshops and conversations, so that even when we did other things, that type of analysis and space to talk about things was brought into it.
Very common, right, after you do an action, you break down how did it go, how things work. But I remember, particularly with that Halloween action, having an amazing conversation afterwards, not just about how did it feel for people to do the action and what worked and what didn't.
But I remember the conversation talking about how we were each raised as white, gendered female humans in the world and our desires towards making trouble and getting in trouble,
how that manifested during protest actions. And I remember having a really deep conversation, identifying what were the similarities. in terms of how we were raised with our race and our gender of being allowed to get in trouble or cause problems.
And it wasn't a relatively dangerous action, but it brought up those things and we had those conversations afterwards. I know that when I let the sort of hitting the bullets, most of our stuff was workshops and discussions.
And then starting in the beginning, we were talking a lot about action. and then we started doing a lot of solidarity work and support. And I think some of that,
at least in my memory, some of that came out of this idea of like, how do we not, going back to what you were saying, Natalie, like, you know, how do we incorporate in our organizing strategy of what we're doing,
this idea that this isn't a white caucus -based building. space. How do we actually do things as white noise that is in groups that we were working with already or accountable to and open tab on the accountability thing in the sense that,
yeah, I think that all of us in the beginning were really clear with each other. I'm assuming this is a white noise Bay Area model of who were we accountable as an organization and who were we as individuals accountable to as organizers,
particularly women of color that we were working with, formal accountability and informal accountability. I remember those early conversations where we talked about all of that individually and what would it look like as an organizational model as well.
So interesting to hear these reflections because I came on to the core I think in 20 years. or 2018. So it was pretty far on and I was a true baby organizer.
When I first came in, I wasn't doing multiracial organizing. I was like, "Oh, I know that that's what I need to be doing, but I wasn't sure what I should be doing." And New York is just a whole beast just in terms of organizing and just the amount of people and the amount of different organizations.
So I came in and I feel like I just kept showing up to things. So then when it was time to kind of like... reconfigure a core, when there had been kind of like a shift, Natalie was like, "Hey, you've been around a lot. "Do you want to come to this conversation?" One of the things that really shaped me about those conversations around accountability and then also just entry points to the work and what it meant to
situate myself and show up in really authentic but clear ways was around Harriet's Apothecary. And I wasn't there for the initial conversations and like relationship building that happened.
But I probably did, I think maybe like three years of organizing mostly white folks to show up for Harriet's Sapothecary, which is like a black -led healing village, I think is how it was framed.
So there was food and there were different workshops and just a lot of really beautiful offerings in community building that happened once or twice a year in Brooklyn. And so, yeah, the first time I showed up, I just was cleaning.
We just cleaned up afterwards and set up a crew. And I feel like... like a lot of those same tensions of like accountability, I think the last year we did it, it had a sense of like, oh yeah, there's just like a bunch of white women who like have their ideas of like showing up with a bunch of food that like was maybe not fully like as connected.
But I think like I learned, I mean that like I, the space really politicized me into understanding what that could look like and kind of became a like jumping off point for me in multi racial organizing.
where I hadn't come in from that. So I feel like sharing that is important thinking both about those accountability conversations, what that looks like, what my relationship was in those coming in later,
but then also thinking about the space for me. Yeah, it was the first space. I remember one time we read "Sick Woman Theory" by Joanna Hedba being in that space transformed me.
And I was like, "Oh yeah, yeah, "like I am a chronically ill person who at that point... point identified as a woman. What does it mean to like show up and hold these things and move to like grounded action? You know, like, yeah,
I feel like there's just so much there. So it's kind of all over the place. But the space politicized me and myself to like show up better and like understand what that meant and could look like. It's so powerful to hear all of these reflections over time and also just the conditions of just what was present and what you all were receiving.
to. You already spoke into it, but I'm just curious to ask what other treasured memories do you have from this time? Some of the ways that being involved in this particular work alongside other organizing work transformed you or just memories that you keep close?
- I have one. It's so funny, a lot of these are like, I can't help but think of like, I've been deep into like lessons learned from social movement organizing recently. And in terms of a treasured memory that was brought up because we're recording this and talking with each other,
and I know I have a recording of this somewhere of us when we went up to visit with Naomi Jaffe. It was part of our core retreat anyway, which was lovely.
And I have some really wonderful memories of that. I had been organizing in all different ways for quite a while. but there was something about the way that we were diving into how to organize with each other that really helps coalesce how I talk to people and how I organize and how I relate and what could be in the way of that.
And I just remember not cognizant of it at the time, but especially now looking at it, just how much intention we put towards everything. And one of the things that came up was that we felt like we didn't have elders,
or we were looking for elders and looking for this sort of like depth in organizing without feeling alone. And I think some of that comes from the place. And this is what I mean when I was like thinking of lessons learned.
I think one of the lessons that I didn't know how to reckon with at the time and or mistakes is like the hierarchy of the core to the rest of the organizing group, in the sense that a lot of times it felt,
at least for me, that that we were leading these workshops and being asked to be seen as experts or leaders in this space or teach people rather than explore. I was really always walking in that space because some people would come in and did need to be handed information and taught,
and then also we were all still learning. The difference between saying, "I'm not an expert," and actually living, "I'm not an expert, I'm not an expert." I think. Being able to go and just sit and listen to Naomi Jaffe talk about her organizing time and her issues of race and gender throughout organizing career of decades and decades.
I just remember feeling really deep in siblinghood with each other after that, like getting to sit and listen to this with all of y 'all.
'all. And then we went back to, I don't know if Alyssa, that was your family's house or something. And we had been having these huge conversations about like why were we doing this work and getting into it and revelations about how we all talked differently.
I remember that as a big conversation that weekend of like how we all communicate and our history of communications with our family. And then they had this really wonderful conversation with a older movement.
sibling. And sort of like, what is that feeling of family, of belonging? Yeah. And I think just like to carry on with what Kate was saying, I think the core was like a really treasured part of my experience of white noise.
I think probably in some ways that was like where I developed the most. And I think we always felt kind of bad. Like we get to have these like super nuanced, like in -depth conversations with just the five of us or whatever.
And like we have these dialogue. once a month with people, but like really so much of the development for us is happening in these core spaces. I think the intimacy of being in people's houses like lent itself to that a bit. Like even for dialogues,
you know, there was something like we're just a bunch of people here trying to figure this out. At the end of my time in the core, we were playing a little bit with the idea of like having people have dinner conversations with their friends. Like what actually is the most organic way to do this work?
Because I think what Natalie was saying, like, like for me, I think at least in looking back, it's like, I don't think base building was our job. I think we were like, you know, working to like support people to base build a multiracial spaces.
And I love the question like, how do we best do that? Do we best do that by creating these like workshops? Or actually do people just need to be like supported to have these conversations in like places with trusted people or like more organic formats,
like their own communities, their own network. And I'm sure like the answer to that is, is some of both. And I think that's like something I'm taking away from white noise is that I still have a community of people, Natalie and Julia and a few other people who like,
we basically function like a core, you know what I mean? Like we bring questions to each other and we continue the camaraderie and development in the spirit of and in the legacy of white noise, you know,
just like in an informal way. So I always think about like how can we informally keep doing this work, even if it's not happening. in a structure. The structure isn't like calling for people of time and energy anymore.
Yeah, I mean that's sort of reminding me why I left the core. I was waiting tables full time at the time and so like I didn't go up and meet Naomi Jaffe and I like got the FOMO all over again because I like couldn't give up my shifts that weekend and it was like if I only have like three nights a week that I can do things and I'm spending the ones that I can in white noise,
then I'm actually not participating in multiracial space at all. And I'm here because I have made these new friends who I'm obsessed with who are in this core of organizers,
but I haven't developed deeper relationships with people we might call our members if we were doing base building, but the people who would show up to stuff. Like, my relationships were with y 'all and I was just like,
I'm not showing up like in the movement in a way that like feels like the best use of the like limited time that I have. And so I think I was the first of the original six of us.
I don't know if we've like brought Lauren and Lauren in really but like Lauren and Lauren were there building this with us. Lauren Hawk who Natalie and Kate were doing a lot of climate work with and I actually don't remember how how Lauren and Kate were doing a lot of climate work with and I actually don't remember how Lauren and Kate were doing a lot of climate work with and I actually don't remember and I actually
don't remember how Lauren and Kate were Lofan showed up, but I left first 'cause I was like, I need to do other stuff. And I think I was also really hungry. This was like right after Trump was elected,
I was really hungry to be around more Jewish people. It was like not very Jewish in our white noise, which was confusing to me as a person who was from New York city and most of the people that I knew in my life who were white were some combination of Jewish Irish Italian.
In an Irish. was having some feelings about being back in my hometown that had changed so much since the last time I had been there and feeling confused about where there were places for me,
what the use of the time was. And if I was using it right for me, it was my exit. - Where did Lauren Wolf on come from? - My memory is that they were part of the housing justice organizing that was happening.
around Mayday and came to a number of early organizing things that we did. My brain says at one point, like, in this question of, like, who are we as white noise?
That question of, like, what is our role? What are we doing? Are we just a group of folks that, as a core, does these services and this public education? Because I think it was a very different time. You know, I think about,
like, the movement space of the last couple of years about how many resources there are for folks that are just trying to get into an understanding of an anti -racist lens and how easy it is to find that stuff and how hard it was to find that stuff 10 years ago.
It was a very particular movement moment of Black Lives Matter. I think there was a lot of issues of how white people show up in those movements.
I think a lot of that early couple of years. felt like a service provider of like education. I think we held it really well. You know, it felt more like a potluck rather than like having to feed people all the time intellectually speaking.
But I do think that there was a moment where we were like, we need more people involved in the core with us because we didn't have the capacity to really provide the things that people were looking for.
for and hungry for. And I think that's how Lauren Wolf -Wong got involved with us and also just thinking back on the question of important lessons learned in all of this.
I think that question of where the knowledge sits, I've been thinking about this while we were talking, where do you put all the knowledge and the things that you gather? And I think that when things get built in moments of momentum.
and in movement moments, like our group did, they're sort of in the DNA of who you are is like, we're just doing this. You know, I remember a lot of like people saying at the time,
I don't know if it was white noise or other groups of like, well, we're building the plane as we're flying it as an analogy that was like always thrown around in movement stuff. And I am like, I wish that I really thought from the beginning of like,
where do all those files live? What is true transparency? and organizing look like? How did the necessity of just doing stuff, I mean, you're saying like having jobs and other organizing commitments and everything mean that stuff just sort of happened?
Because I just left white noise. I don't think I ever was like, "Hey guys, I'm not going to be," I just like was gone for some sort of, you know, whether it was mental health things.
things of the time and also traveling for work and other stuff. But I think one of the mistakes I made was like, not giving some continuity of work done and resources gathered or whatever that was bigger than myself or beyond myself or,
I don't know, I just think about like, all of the energy that went towards it and then how I just sort of walked away. - Yeah, I think I was the only person who was involved in white noise. NYC the whole time until the pandemic fizzling.
And I think, yeah, in a lesson learned, I think that was something that was challenging for me. Feeling like we're not a base building organization. We do have these commitments to the people that we invite to these offerings and to,
you know, some of the accountability partners. Sorry, that sounds like such a non non -profit jargon -y term. But like folks at Harriet's, who we would offer things and labor to as well.
And I remember that feeling very challenging at times. And I think felt sort of like this thing doesn't have to exist. People have, I hope,
gotten things from it. I know I have and I know these relationships exist and this thing doesn't have to exist. And it feels weird if it just would cease to exist. So that was something that felt personally challenging for me at times when life would happen and people would have to step in.
And it also meant, you know, talking about how the core was such a special and unique space, you know, I got to work with other folks who aren't on this call. I want to name them Nicole Fulman, Rachel Foren.
Who am I missing? Kayleigh South Strand and Kayleigh Nolan. that was cool. And at the same time, it was difficult to know how to continue this thing going,
if it felt useful, and how and when to sunset, if it was no longer fitting the need of the time. Because as you were speaking to Kate, it was such a particular time in white people figuring their stuff out around racial justice organizing and being in...
in multiracial political movement spaces like when we began. And, you know, that was, I think, why it was cool to talk to Naomi Jeffey 'cause we got to kind of like see what a different iteration of that looked like in a different moment of history.
- I wonder if it makes sense. I don't know. I would be very curious to hear people, the last question that you have, Sara, that what's the wish that you have your legacy of white noise, that a good transition? - I think so.
like the wish that I have that has like just come out through this conversation is like just really wanting us all, like may we all carry this fear of white noise forward in informal,
organic and like ways that are like deeply rooted in our body and soul. You know, there's like times when I felt like, I don't know, like focusing on other parts of my like organizing development and things and yeah,
there's always coming coming back to like the heart of white noise, which is like, what do I really need to explore and untangle inside of myself to be able to show up powerfully for this work? And like that is to me the spirit of white noise.
And I think we created these relationships and I hope other people are carrying like that thread inside of themselves and inside of relationships that they've built. And, you know, I just wish for them and all of us to like,
(mumbles) to really carry that thread forward and white noise will be alive. If we are holding that thread alive, then white noise will be alive. I love that, Liza. And I think that hearing you talk about that,
I just realized like how much the relationships that we built with each other in the core that we built while doing this work transforms amongst with the other movement,
building it. work that was happening at the time, but transformed how I think about just relationships in my life in general that like, I even,
I said the other day to someone, you know, they were like, "Why don't you wanna hang out with this group?" And I was like, "I don't have time in my life for people who aren't self -reflective and who aren't willing to look at their own preconceived notions.
" confront them, hearing us talk about all this time. I'm like, yeah, so much of that came from, without even realizing it, it wasn't like a, I didn't have a to -do list going into white noise,
being like, I'm going to come out of it. Like, but the fact that even those of you who I haven't seen in five years, I think of so highly and so deeply and have like such siblinghood,
love, or... and know that how I build friendships now was learned during that time period and that mix of my movement identity and my personal identity sort of being one and the same and how I come into movement space with intention is also how I want to come into my relational space with intention and they feed each other.
So, you yes, echoing big thumbs up to what you said, Lisa, about having it live inside. It was inside of you all along. The real white noise was the friends we made along the way. Yeah.
And also, I think that there's been so much production of content around what white noise talks about and does that intersection in the last five years. But I think that white noise had,
like, one of the things I loved was like, we had a deeply historical framework of it. Like I think one of the first workshops that we did and did a lot was the history of policing in America and the deeply embedded relationship between white womanhood,
body safety and chattel slavery and policing in America. And I think that that type of deep dive information is really important.
And the fact that like it's been pulled together and placed through this lens and then made into PowerPoints, et cetera, even just having a Google Drive that it's out there,
particularly now in this moment that we're in right now, seeing how people who are trying to respond to a humanitarian genocide in the moment and introduce historical context and race with it.
And I'm just like, the library of white noise New York alone. And then with the Bay Area Collective and the Warpedence and just like what that means for movement response.
- It's been a wild sort of trip down memory lane to do this. I'm thinking about like how I carry white noise with me and growth edge lesson learned framework as being a part of this community.
even though I don't really like maybe sometimes don't remember who said what. Like I have like a politic around sex work decriminalization because of white noise. Like I developed a disability justice framework because of white noise.
I like learned about like what it is to like hold though like women and women only turfy framework. How do we shift that in a space that was created for white women and have expansiveness and like what kind of of conversations we have when we talk about different kinds of gender oppression.
That came from doing this work with y 'all. And my regret is that we didn't talk about class sooner. I think that we could have talked about class much earlier in the history of what we were doing. And by the time we got there,
I have some shame around it that I will never leave my body about a way that I participated in a conversation about class. And what my life was like. is like now is that I have a supervisor who reminds me that like to be an organizer is to treat your relationships like gold.
And I think that the relationships that like we who are on this call have with people who work here and not are like the physical, the tangible,
the material impacts of this, which I am forever grateful for. Yeah, I think thinking about the legacy of... of white noise collective and specifically the work we did,
white noise collective at NYC, I think like some of the things you all are saying, right? Bringing this to mind of like, not that we like created these analyses, but like the ubiquity of a lot of the analyses and intersections that we highlighted and dug into as a collective and in our spaces are kind of like,
well -duh things in like, most like, radical progressive spaces now. I mean, the analysis runs deeper some places than others, but the way these things are more infused into our movements these days in like the best or better expressions of our movements.
It's almost like thinking back, sometimes I'm like, did we need to talk about it so much? But you know, remembering that it was a different time and a lot of those conversations are the reasons that so many of us.
do have these stronger analyses around disability justice, around how to navigate Radfemm -Turfie spaces. So I feel like that,
for me personally, is a big legacy and something that I'll take with me into spaces when I hear people having very, like, flattened conversations about like DEI or something like that,
I'm like, "Oh no, I have a strong politic around me." this," and I don't feel as intimidated to kind of dig into some of those nuances, because I've both talked about it and I've also thought about how to get past maybe some of,
like, the more inner emotional blocks that might come up for me, if something is feeling off in those conversations. I don't know if this was the first white noise thing I went to, if it was a little bit later,
but in a workshop, we were talking about antidotes. antidotes for white fragility and gender fragility. And somebody was like, "Yeah, the only antidote that I hold for that is just remembering that I'm actually not fragile." And I think about that all of the time.
And also right now in this moment, organizing Jewish people in solidarity with Palestinians and holding a lot of tensions around where people are at on the political spectrum and just where I am at. And I just think about that all of the time.
So I'm like, "Oh, yeah." like that feels like a legacy that like I hold in myself and in my organizing now of just being like, oh, yeah, I'm not fragile. Oh, okay. And that just like feels like an incredibly powerful thing, just like personally and somatically in my body.
But then also thinking about I'm like, yeah, I've shared that with so many other people in moments of like, informal conversations that like are so crucial for our movements to have space where these things are being processed.
and held in really nuanced, authentic, delicate ways. Like, I'm like, oh, I can't tell you the amount of people that I've shared that with in moments where they're freaking out, and I'm like, oh, yeah. Somebody told me once that the antidote to fragility was just like remembering that I'm not fragile.
I wish I could remember who said it and in what context, but I feel like that's what the space really gave to me, that was my wish for other folks. You all are amazing. It's a profound joy and inspiration just to hear all of this.
And I know that this is obviously like pieces and threads of memories from this period of really potent and transformative, organizing and creating these powerful spaces for reflection,
that sort of action and like unfreeze emotional blocks and really forge the gold of relationships throughout our lives. So thank you so much. for this time and it's been an honor to bear witness to your memories.
Thank you Zara and thank you all. This has been cool to sit and think about. Yeah thank you for inviting us like I didn't realize how much I wanted this.
Thank you so much for listening. To learn more, check out conspireforchange .org. Sound and editing for this episode is by Dave Pickering and music by Blue Dot Sessions.
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