Somatics for White Racial Justice Organizers with Dara Silverman and Amanda Ream

Welcome to the White Noise Collective Podcast! This is our first episode, and we are so excited and grateful! We’ll begin with interviewing the powerful Amanda Ream and Dara Silverman, white racial justice organizers offering transformative somatic practices to our movements. We discuss their powerful contributions, in particular over the last year, engaging hundreds of white racial justice movement organizers in politicized somatic training for the sake of collective liberation. 

Not sure you’re familiar with this word somatics? Check out more info in the show notes featured on our website, conspireforchange.org. 

If this conversation inspires you, we encourage those who are able to donate directly to Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity BOLD. 

 After the interview, you’ll get to experience a guided somatic practice offered to us by Dara in a separate link. 

Transcript

Intro

Jay

Welcome to the White Noise Collective Podcast! This is our first episode, and we are so excited and grateful! We’ll begin with interviewing the powerful Amanda Ream and Dara Silverman, white racial justice organizers offering transformative somatic practices to our movements.

Zara

Hi, I’m Zara Zimbardo

Jay

And I’m Jay Tzvia Helfand

Zara

We are both core members of the WNC, WNC is a volunteer anti-racist feminist collective that since 2010 has offered spaces for deep reflection, dialogue and political education to amplify racial justice action in our movements and our lives. Our work focuses on the patterns of interaction between white racial privilege and gender marginalization. We are located in and recording this podcast on Chochenyo Ohlone land in Oakland, CA. Go to conspireforchange.org to learn more. 

Jay

In this time of transformation, we want to offer voices of movement builders in the fight for racial justice for the long haul. We welcome people who are newly activated in movement work, and people who have been engaged for a long time. Especially for newer white people, what does it mean to stay in the struggle? 

Zara

Starting out interviewing long time white anti-racist organizers and activists to offer reflection, story and tactics for current and future generations. 

We are lucky enough to begin our interviews with movement organizers AR and DS. We discuss their powerful movement contributions, in particular over the last year, engaging hundreds of white racial justice movement organizers in politicized somatic training for the sake of dignifying, enlivening and sustaining our work for collective liberation. 

Jay

Not sure you’re familiar with this word somatics? We will break it down for you here, and include links on our website conspireforchange.org to some of the various terms and organizations referenced. 

If this conversation inspires you, we encourage those who are able to donate directly to Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity BOLD. 

Zara

After the interview, you’ll get to experience a guided somatic practice offered to us by Amanda and Dara. 

A note about the audio quality: we know there are moments it is choppy. Please check out the written transcription of this show, linked in the show notes, for greater access. 

Interview 

Jay  0:03  

All right.

Jay 0:05  

So welcome.

Jay  0:08  

We'd like to begin by just hearing from both of you around your individual backgrounds as organizers,

and journeys into somatic work.

Dara  0:28  

Great. Thanks, Jay. Thanks, Zara. 

My name is Dara, and I use she/her pronouns. And you know, my journey into somatic work is that I was an organizer for about 20 years. And like a lot of organizers who do well, I got elevated to be the director of groups, and often elevated beyond my capacity to be present with other people to manage other people. 

And I came from a Jewish family where I was really taught that my body was like a vessel that carried my brain around. And so, you know, I had been in different practices, I had a sitting meditation practice and a yoga practice, for about 10 years. When I had been the director of Jews for racial and economic justice. And I left after five years, and I was really burnt out. And I became a consultant. And a friend was like, “Hey, I just went to this somatics thing, you should go try it out”. So I went to a course that the Strozzi Institute did at a hotel in Northern Virginia, which is like the least, somatic place to feel anything, is a corporate hotel next to the highway. And I came back home to New York City where I was living at the time, and I quit therapy. I was like, I just got more in four days than I've had in seven years of therapy, like, what, what is this, and I was really hooked.

I was planning on getting a coaching certificate. And there was a master coach who was in my program, who was like, go get a coaching certificate somewhere else, and then come back here and learn how to coach somatically, because you want to get like the basics. So I did that. I went to Coaching for Transformative Leadership that works, which no longer exists, but was a program that was really trying to grapple with race and power and privilege and teach coaching fundamentals. And then I came back to Jersey and did the Somatics coaching program, and took courses back and forth between generative somatics and Strozzi.

I took a couple years off when I became the director of SURJ, and was working to incorporate somatic practices and for myself and for people within search. And then when I left, I came into a strategy teacher training in 2017. Or I guess, a couple years after I left, SURJ. And I was consulting again. And I was working with groups that were just really struggling both with issues around race, and racial justice and white supremacy. And then also with people being able to connect, and like name what was happening and turn and based hard conversations. And so it's just been something as I've been training at the Strozzi Institute of like how so many social justice groups, both groups that have staff and groups that are all on here are really grappling and really looking for tools of like how to be human in our interactions, and how to bring more of ourselves and our longings and to recognize the patterns that we have from childhood that cause barriers with other people. And so, for me, it's sort of like a life lens like now that I have cymatics. I bring it to everything I do.

Amanda  3:57  

I'm Amanda Ream, I'm a union organizer. And I've worked in the labor movement since 1996. And like so many things in my life, how I came to somatics was through workers, through workers showing me what's possible. And I would say sometime around 2010, there was this amazing moment where the National Domestic Workers Alliance and generative somatics were in a collaboration. And I've been working for some time in the traditional afl-cio union labor movement with immigrant workers,

with domestic workers. And when I saw what those workers were able to embody, in their leadership through somatic practice, or so I want to say that for 20 years at that point, I had been trained and I had understood and I had felt one of the love what it was like to be in the presence of worker leadership. I was around workers all the time who could move other workers through their embodiment, through their authenticity, through their commitment to justice, through their care,

you know, but on strike with workers in the hotel industry and the restaurant industry and seeing the way that a worker leader could transform the experiences of other workers and bring them into leadership in our movement. And so I hope for those of you who are organizers who are listening to this, like somatics, and the practice of somatics, has given me theory and giving me words for what I felt as a younger organizer, and what became possible for me and my own leadership and my own life being in the labor movement.

And in particular, I want to talk about September 11, I was a union organizer with the workers from Windows on the world restaurant, all the workers died, and I worked with their families and their co workers to help create a worker center that became and is now known as ROC, the restaurant Opportunity Center. And so going through this experience with workers who are from more than 20 countries, of the impact of 911, of losing their closest friends and colleagues of grieving of celebrating, and a building, building an organization that contains is, by for back of the house, low wage restaurant workers to this day, transformed me.

And it made me much more able to feel into my own history as an organizer who came into the movement through in the 90s Act Up and the AIDS movement, and learning how to celebrate and grieve together with other queer people for the purposes of our liberation, for dignifying ourselves in our wholeness for fighting and for winning on behalf of our people and all people. And I can say a lot more about that movement, but coming into somatics allowed me to be able to feel backwards and forwards towards a future that I was longing for as a queer person, who was metabolizing a lot of what was happening right in this country in the United States through my experiences of being in movement with other people. So started practicing really earnestly in generative somatics from 2010 till till now. And I feel so lucky to have been in the generative somatics community because I'm around people who are, I would say generative somatics has transformed several key movements right now.

Certainly the transformative justice movement, movement against the Prison industrial complex (PIC), the immigrant rights movement and domestic workers movement, so many others. So to be part of, what are the movements that we can build, through having more capacity to feel and be more ourselves.

Movement formations, actually reflects our longings and to be able to measure and carrying on towards our longings been. It's made everything make a lot more sense in my life, and a lot more possibility in my movement location in the labor movement.

Zara  8:49  

Thank you so much. It's really inspiring, and fortifying to just hear your long trajectories of transformative work.

So the term somatics is spreading, and people are using it, perhaps more than ever with different meanings. And so before we dive deeper into looking at your recent collaboration, I'm wondering if one or both of you could speak to just like, What is somatics? And what are we talking about when we're talking about shaping and sites of shaping and just another layer with this?

what's meant by politicized somatics?

Dara 9:44  

It's a three parter. Thank you.

So maybe I'll take the first couple of parts and then Amanda, if you want to jump in for politicize somatics, we can do that break down.

So you know, for us You know, and coming out of this stream of somatics, coming from the Strozzi Institute and generative somatics, it's really about believing that that change in the self comes through shifts in the body. And that when we say, body, there's really not a separation. You know, a lot of times, in current Western society, there can be this artificial divide between the brain and the body. And so a big part of this is that we don't see there as being that divide. It's really like the soma, which is a Latin term, that means the living energy in the body.

How do we start to see, you know, not just the different parts as all integrated, but there are so many messages that we're getting in our bodies, that a lot of times, you know, white supremacy, capitalism, patriarchy teaches us to override. And that hurt of many, many, many different cultures all around the world is really feeling that the self is indistinguishable from the body, there's not some separation, and that our bodies change. And that through practice, we can change towards the things that we want, that we're always practicing certain things, and how do we start to align what it is that we're doing on a daily or weekly or monthly basis, with our longings with the things that we really want to move towards that align with our politics, and our vision of the world. And so if we see the body as a domain of coordinating action, both for ourselves and with other people, that one of the roles of being in leadership, and for us, it's not about being a hierarchical leader, that can be leadership in partnership with others, it can also be leadership in in movements, is that we have to be able to know what we're longing for, and also know what our automatic responses are under pressure. So how do we start to be able to, you know, coordinate our actions, our moods, our learnings, and be and both are full dignity and be with the dignity of other people.

So if we think about sort of there being a couple of different key components of leadership, that there's being able to have a long horizon of time to be able to plan over long periods, that there's having a skill in a specific domain, like coaching or organizing or gardening or farming, and then that there's possessing the qualities where we can manage ourselves and manage our reactions and our responses and our presence so that people want to be in relationship with us and trust us. So somatics is really about the process that that third one of like, how do we build our sense of ourselves, and to be able to move towards the things that we want, doesn't mean that we're not going to make mistakes, that we're not gonna have to try things multiple times. But how quickly can we keep coming back to a sense of center within that, and to build our capacity to be able to respond under pressure, not the way that we might have when we were younger or a child, but to be able to respond under pressure towards the things that we care about? You know, and for those of us who are organizers or coaches or do direct action, there are a lot of situations where we're going to come under inordinate amounts of pressure. And for white people, there's also the pressures of white supremacy, and how do we learn to recognize those pressures, and be able to respond differently than maybe our parents or the people in our communities did, but to make different choices? Yeah.

Amanda  14:13  

So Dara, is really pointing to what's embodied in us, and how does it get there? And I want to respond to this question about what is politicized somatics. And what is politicized healing, that we're talking about our embodiment, right, and that this unequal distribution of power in our society, that violence and force, the shape us, and so a politicized somatics can act as a collective practice of building power, having more presence and capacity, developing the skills that we need to actually seize the means of power right to generate large scale change and so the individual right is shaped in all these different ways. And then so is our collective body. And by doing somatics, together by being in a politicized somatics, together, we can actually forward this theory of change, that, you know, embodied transformation, let's our actions are ways of being our ways of relating and perceiving line up with that future that we're fighting for and towards together, that we have the ability to, along all these axes of change, make liberation possible that we can embody liberation, that we can invoke body justice, in our movements, in our collectives, and ourselves. So in that way, we're shaping forward, the way that we've been shaped, we're shaping back what can now become possible. And I think that's what's really exciting about being inside of somatics, with organizations, and why we're really committed to building the capacity of white people to be able to do this work. And part of how we got into this work is that a lot of people of color in organizations and formations, that we have some connection to, over our time organizing have said to us, like, man, I really wish that the white people would be doing more of their work, that white people would be doing somatics, that white people would have a more complex understanding of themselves inside of this ally ship or this movement work that we're doing together. And so it was in the uprisings of 2020 that Dara and I decided to start making this offer more broadly, to organizers who are white, who are in organizations with a racial justice commitment. So they're already in practice? How can we bring somatics in to support their transformation in our transformation towards being more embodied, more trustworthy, white people in our movement locations?

Dara 

I think just one part that I would add there is that, you know, I'm sorry, you asked about sites of shaping, which is a chart, that sort of concentric circles of all the places that were impacted from ourselves the ways that we internalize privilege and oppression to our families and communities, to the institutions that were part of the structures and communities were a part of. And part of the ways that we see this, like Amanda was saying is that white people, often, particularly in terms of whiteness, don't see ourselves as actually being shaped, we think we just sort of sprung full form, like Athena from the head of Zeus, that we just showed up this way. And in fact, we're shaped at all those different levels. Right. And so the habits of white supremacy as the article by Tema Okun, and Kenneth Jones goes into really brilliantly names a bunch of the ways that white people are shaped. And we know she just released a new version of it that we're really excited to dig into with others. And that there's also shaping that happens, not just us individually, but it happens if we work in a school, or if we're a part of a community organization, or union, or a church or a synagogue or a temple. And so we're shaped at all those different levels as white people. And that actually changing or responding to that shaping takes more than just each of us individually. And so how do white people start to learn to coordinate with other white people? So around race? How do we learn to turn to other white people, and work through how our racism, how our whiteness might be showing up and not always expect people of color, to give us the answers or to do that work for us, but actually build our muscle and capacity to do that with each other.

Jay 19:12  

So powerful to get to hear about this work, and also the ways that both of you, in your own locations are naming it and we're really wanting to deepen into more of what you all both just referenced around this last year. And just would love to hear a little bit more for people that don't know just what have you all been up to, as far as organizing people and what of what are the common patterns you've been seeing that also might inform for us to have these shared commitments to transforming cultures of whiteness.

Amanda 19:53  

Thanks for that. I think we're really in a period of reflection based on the opening that the pandemic has offered us to get in more closely with other white people. For me, the movement for Black Lives has been an endless opening, right an opportunity to get closer to other white people and white organizers. And the pandemic has made it possible for us to do that in the online space. So to be in day to day practice and connection with organizers from all across this country. And I want to say that

one of the strongest themes in our work is the amount of contraction that no surprise, organizers hold in a sense of having to have it all figured out having to have the right answer, a deep sense of unworthiness, because what's underneath that is the sadness, the terror, everything that remains to be felt, when we come into real, I would say somatic awareness around what the costs have been of white supremacy that's embodied in us. And so a lot of what we're up to is a dignifying what has made it possible for racial justice organizers who are white, to come into the movement, to stay in the movement, to stay in relationships, to keep working their piece of the movement, whether it's setting up the chairs, getting the food, helping make the agenda, you know, all the mutual aid projects have been an incredible place and resource for white people to do work over this last year and a half. So somatically, what's happening inside of our work is Dara I have generated through being in I would say for myself deep relationship with workers in the labor movement, some sense of my own dignity, and how I enter into movement work. So I'm lending my dignity to the people who are working with us in this white organizers for racial justice space, and then they're lending their dignity back to me. So we're in this process of lending belonging and receiving belonging. So it's relational. And it makes it possible for us, all of us, Dara and I, and the people that were within this, to take more risks, to be more present, open and connected for what comes so many grabs, right, so many things in the everyday life of an organizer who's dedicated to racial justice, so allowing more of our aliveness to become possible, more of ourselves to be felt and known in multiracial spaces and with other white people. This is what we're practicing towards.

Dara  22:52  

Yeah, thanks for that, Amanda. And, you know, just to add in a little bit of the framework of what this looks like, is that since last spring, we've been running eight week sessions, with about 50 organizers per session. So by the end of this year, we anticipate that we'll have trained a couple 100 people, white organizers, consultants, coaches, and that a third of the funds from this is going to BOLD black organizing for leadership and dignity, which is a group that is supporting and resourcing the movement for black lives and black worker center. And these contributions are supporting their entire organizer sabbatical program this year.

And just to build on what Amanda said, about lending or dignity, you know, I think for both of us and our backgrounds, as organizers, a lot of the shapes that we learn was how to do it alone, like that we were often the only white people in certain spaces working with majority, black and brown members. And I think for me, a real shift came when I began to work at JREJ of like, oh, what does it mean to organize white people? And how is organizing mostly white Jews different from organizing low income communities of color? And I really came to that work, because black organizers were like, Who are your people? And I was like, I don't know, who are my people, like, I'm white, and I'm Jewish, and I'm queer. Like, I guess there's something there. And I had to go on like a multi year exploration for it. And I think we're finding a lot of people in our courses where now you know, 20 years after I was in that process and conversation with myself, there are a lot of white people who are organizing in white communities and in partnership with black and brown organizers, and in that process, have have felt like they had to make themselves smaller, and have lost some of their dignity and have a lot of shame about being white. And one of the things that we've really heard from black and brown organizers is like to win multiracial to build multiracial, democratic structures that are based on working class communities. We need white people that we bring all of themselves. And how can white people show up more fully and not be in? You know, because it's a podcast, you can't see I'm like crunching my shoulders together and like getting really small and in and it's like, how can we expand out to the edges of our bodies and like, take up our rightful space? That doesn't mean we're not going to make mistakes, and that we're not going to have to be able to apologize. But how do we not dwell in those moments? And like marinate in the shame of it, but how can we move through those moments, take accountability be in mutually accountable relationships, and keep staying committed to our bigger goals and to the work?

Zara  25:59  

Wow, there's so much there.

To say the least, and wondering if we could just linger here a little longer with what you both have said, just because it's so dense and so profound.

Yeah, I'm curious to ask, what are some of like, the specific patterns that you see among white racial justice organizers? Like what is some of that specific contraction around a lightness or around feeling dehumanized, while trying to be brave in this work, or contractions around a sense of belonging and dignity?

And like how your work how this offering these spaces that you've created, engaged with that, and one thing I want to just also pose, I mean, you were just speaking to at some, but you know, there's so much so many different types of anti racism trainings for white people, which is really about this, like investigating and unlearning white racial conditioning and being like, here's how we were shaped and here's these patterns. And then there can be a white anti racist cultural shaping, which right can look different ways but can be rigid, can be dehumanizing in some ways can shut down vitality

ways, you know, that people learn to shut down emotions, for example, knowing how corrosive it can be to express emotions or tears in certain ways, just as one of many examples.

Dara  27:41  

So yeah, in ways that these patterns can be very, like counterproductive, counter revolutionary, you know, not conducive to deeper relationships and showing up. 

Yeah, and shame.

Okay. Um, so, yeah, well, she was woven through a lot. Yeah, no, I mean, I appreciate you naming that. Sorry. Because I think that you know, that as much as we talk about the nonprofit industrial complex, I think we're also in a moment where there's like, you know, and I say this as someone who does racial justice trainings, right, there's the like, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion complex of like, there's this such a desire from organizations to like smack a training on something and feel like the problem like that we can check a box that like things are different. And it actually is so much bigger attach change ourselves to change structures and organizations, to change institutions and systems. So you know, some of the patterns that we see white people taking on that I think we're really working to build some practices and some antidotes around our deference, you know, I'm going to defer to all the black and brown organizers, because they know better than me, and to really discount any experience that white people can have. And that can also show up as smallness or shrinking, you know, not taking up the space that we have, you know, and this can show up in organizations that are both staffed and volunteer. You know, a lot of times, black organizers and leaders will talk about the silence of white people and how loud it is. That way people are so scared of making a mistake, that we just put all of the work on to black and brown people to lead and what does that mean if we're not holding our fair share of it? And over correcting or over accountability? So the ways in which we're like, oh my god, I have to fix it. I'm going to take up all the space talking about how I have to fix whatever it is, and perfectionism and micromanaging and it feels so important, right? Because there

can be this. There are a lot of white people now who are like, Oh my god, I'm counting my perfectionism, what do I do about it and can sort of spin around any of these patterns. And really for us, these are all sort of automatic responses that folks can move into under pressure. And there are three primary ways that we work with them. One is really how do we blend with whatever that shape is, and be like, Oh, you know, if you take one hand, and you make a fist, and you take the other hand, and you try to open the fist, if the fist is trying to stay a fist, it's gets tighter when you try to open it. But if you have a fist in one hand, and you take your other hand, and you hold that fist, and you're like, Oh, good job, being a fist, go job doing whatever it is that you're doing, um, these patterns around perfectionism and over accountability, like, part of what Amanda and I are working to do is how do we blend with folks when they're in that shape when they're in that tightness, so that it can release some like that fist when there's something that can blend with it? So we blend with some of those patterns. We also ally with each other, like how do you not feel so alone in it? How can other white people be in this with you and take some of the weight? So it's not just on your shoulders? And then how do we build new practices, you know, some of these responses can become so automatic under pressure, they're like a superhighway, like, it's really easy to get on the superhighway. And doing something different, like being vulnerable, or asking for help is like a path through the woods. And if we want to make that path bigger or more well worn, we have to actively practice going on it. And so that's what we're doing in our courses is giving people multiple opportunities to practice on their own daily with a buddy in a small coaching group. And then in these weekly sessions.

Amanda  32:01  

We'll say a little bit more here about shame. So we ask people, we invite people into a practice of an embodied statement of commitment towards their longings. And at the beginning, almost every white racial justice organizer has a commitment that's around accountability.

And I think it's been an excellent development in our movements, that as white people who are committed to racial justice, that we're in a daily embodied inquiry and practice around accountability. But to deepen that, I want to say that we can't have meaningful accountability, none of us can, if we're not actively looking at and working with shame and its impacts. So healing shame is what makes meaningful accountability possible.

And we spend quite a significant amount of time inside generative somatics and Strozzi Institute, working with shame, and how we work with shame, as we look at what's the story of I am bad, or I am wrong, or I do take up too much space. Versus, you know, I did this thing, or I made this choice, right, something that I wish I had done differently. Shame is that landed in the body, I am bad or wrong or too much. And we look at what are the emotions underneath it. So that we can develop our capacity to be able to feel more of ourselves and look at how the stories that shame shaping have limited our choices have limited us limited us in our range of who and what it's possible for us to be in movement spaces. And we develop the capacity through somatic practice to be able to feel more of what must be felt to be able to do racial justice work in our country at this time. And so there's so much insight of shame healing, that allows us to read dignify the contributions of white people to the movement and to make them much more accountable and much, much more a clear offer to movement. And that's what we're about.

Jay  34:32  

Thanks to you both. Echoing just the richness and the depth and the gift of the naming that y'all have been really surfacing for us. And there this is a question for you, as a fellow white, queer Jew. You know, whose I know our anti racism is really deeply embedded in anti Zionism. as well and just curious for you, if there's more you want to share around your whiteness and your Jewishness.

Dara  35:09  

Thanks for that, Jay. You know, I think especially in this moment where Israeli attacks in East Jerusalem and in Gaza are at a really heightened state and seemed like they're just gonna keep increasing. I think part of what we look at is the ways in which, you know, Israel as a client state of the United States, and really as a proxy for the US and the Middle Eastern politics.

That for a lot of Jews, who for 2000 years have been a diaspora of people who have been moving,

That the idea of a homeland was never something that for many Jews was something that there was actually a longing for what there was a longing for was safety and safety as an ephemeral thing. And that assimilation into whiteness can be seen as a desire for like, I'm going to leave behind the parts of me that are being chased the parts of me that are unsafe, but we're in this dichotomy, right? And Christian hegemony or supremacy sets up a lot of binaries and dichotomies. But how do we hold this piece of like, even as some Jews get access to whiteness, anti semitism still exists anti Jewish oppression. And so while the pogroms in Eastern Europe, or the Nazi Holocaust might have been specific examples, where Jews were targeted, because it's happened for such a long period of time, so many white Jews have in our systems, this learned experience of oppression, right, like this fear that lives in ourselves. And part of the racism of the medical system is that we talk about epigenetics, and there have been lots of studies of white Jews, and how our history lives in ourselves. And there have been a lot fewer of enslaved African descendants, or other people who have been taken from their land or forced off their land. So we have this whole history for Jews about how our oppression works. And then in this moment, a state that identifies as Jewish is oppressing other people. And so part of what I think a lot of us who are Jewish need to turn on face into is, in this moment, how do we not see our anti racist commitments as separate from our Jewish identity, but see those two as embedded together? And that we can hold a complex identity of standing against racism in the United States and standing against racism in Israel as well? And what does it mean to align with Palestinian communities and be like, okay, the shame that I might feel about the way that Israel is showing up, and the way that Israel is attacking and brutalizing Palestinian communities as also the shame I feel about how the US has related and contained and control the indigenous communities, and black communities and the way that policing lives in the United States and controls and terrorizes black communities. So there's a lot of parallels, I think, for white Jews, but I think part of it is how can we drop in through that fear that we've really learned in our families going back generations to be able to name What is and I think, you know, looking at younger movements, like if not now and the youth movements in Jewish voice for peace, and really the leadership of Palestinians and of the movement for Black Lives, which is so committed to Palestinian Liberation. I think there are a lot of entry points for young Jews to be able to enter in and not feel on the outside of but really be a part of a whole international movement for Palestinian rights.

Zara  39:24  

Continuing on this theme in terms of different intersecting identities, with whiteness, and in your work in somatics, for white racial justice organizers. I'm curious to ask how different identities right also gender class. Right, in terms of different patterns of shaping may show up for white racial justice organizers right with in relation to the various things you've been talking about around conflicting internalized messages about taking up space in

etc, yeah

Amanda 40:04

We really hold that identity is what gets people in the movement and stay in the movement. And so much of this time period that we are in if we look at SURJ or what the contribution are of white people to the movement is about being able to get in and stay in. Somatic practice and our work together, as I was saying, is about being able to redignify. What is the cost of what has been shaped in us related to oppression, related to those identities? And then, what becomes possible when we hold more of ourselves, more of who we are, in alignment towards racial justice. And so, in my practice, I’ve really experienced that there is no part of myself that I want to leave out of my racial justice commitments, and there’s no reason for me to leave any of it out. This path of practice has made it possible for me to be in accountability, in integrity, in meaningful mutual connection around identities.

Dara 41:13

Yeah, just building on that, one of the things that we’ve seen is that there is a lot of desire among white organizers to find their place and connect with their identities. Whether that means Irish or Italian or queer or trans identity. Whether that means having a connection to Christianity as a religion, or to Jewishness as I spoke to a moment ago. And part of what we are seeing is that there are different patterns to all of those. You know, it is different for poor and working class organizers in the SOuth than it is for members of Resource Generation, who are owning class. How to support folks to be in their full dignity where they are and connect them to other people who share those identities as white people, and whatever other identities there are so we don’t feel so alone and isolated, so that individualism doesn’t get baked in even more deeply. But how can we keep building those connections to keep turning into relationship. So we can keep in mutual connection with other organizers who are like us, so we can feel other people at our back. We are not the only people doing the big fight on our own, without anyone showing up. But how do we really, like amanda was saying, like me and Amanda lending our dignity but also supporting people to find connections with other people like them, through their coaching groups, through their buddies. You know we have people pair up and text each other every day about their practice and their mood. Someone wrote us just the other day and said 8 months later i am still texting my buddy ever other day. So how do white people learn to lean on each other and ask for help. That we are not invulnerable, and that it is actually more powerful when other people have our backs. 

Zara 43:13

Mmmm. So nourishing to hear all of this. We are coming towards the end of our time. Just to briefly zoom out, to acknowledge that at this time in history, the field of what is being called embodied social justice or embodied racial justice, right, interdisciplinary a lot of long term practitioners, is really taking off. And certainly, the explosive popularity of Resmaa Menakem’s work and embodied pathways to heal racialized trauma. Right? So many people are really on fire with this work. And curios to hear, from your vantage point, what are some of your concerns as this field becomes really thing-ified and professionalized.  

Dara 44:30 

Amanda do you want to start on this because I know you have to go? Was that a yes or a not?

Amanda 44:47

I’ll just say something and then I’ll go. For our movements to be successful in this time, we need embodied white people for racial justice. There’s many doorways to get there and I feel really lucky that I found this lineage of somatics that incorporates learnings from organizations for movement, and has this specific theory of change about how we get there. I think there’s a lot of people who are hungry to be congruent in their words, actions and choices towards white people being able to be in the movement that fully allows us to make a contribution from our aliveness, while being in relationship and accountability with organizers of color. So all the demand that is here shows me that the movement is finally coming to terms with the fact that white people have tremendous contribution to make that requires tremendous healing. So to be in the process of that and the praxis of that feels like, feels important, feels significant. And I hope that five years out, ten years out, we’re able to look back on this time of so much demand for that and say: “here are some very concrete ways that the movement shifted that we changed, that what could be possible in racial justice changed, because we deeply felt for, listened to the leadership and longings of organizers of color and our own, and we resourced ourselves to move in that direction. 

Dara 46:43  

Just to add on briefly to that, um, you know, i feel like it is important for us, in this stream of somatics as well, to acknowledge and name some of our teachers. People like Spenta Kandawalla, Sumitra Rajkumar, Nathan Shara and David Trelaven and Prentice Hemphill and adrienne maree brown, and that you know the work of Richard Strozzi, that was then shaped by Staci Haines and Spenta in forming generative somatics is important. And like you said, it is one stream of somatics. There’s such a desire for people to feel more and for politicized somatics. There’s the work of Reverend Angel KIyoto Williams, Resmaa Menaken. There’s so many out there who are building Black somatics, who are building spaces for people to be feeling more. And i think it can be seen in a lot of different ways. It can be seen as emergent strategy or can be called transformative justice and there’s folks like Susan Raffo who have been doing this work in the Twin Cities for years and years. So it’s like how can there be a web of all these different folks who are doing this work. And we come out of this particular stream and bring in organizing that we’ve done. And you know i think looking at the work of BOLD and looking at the work of some of the organizations who are building somatics in, like the National Domestic Workers Alliance or SNAPCO in Atlanta or so many others it’s really shaped the way that organizing happens, the ways that leaders come in, and what’s possible as people are feeling themselves more, and having shared commitments for the future that they are putting into action, that they are putting into practice.

Zara 48:46 

Thank you for naming these different streams of lineage. Iti is just really exciting to name the ecosystem of these different practices, different streams of long term practice as this field is getting unified in certain ways. Part of what naming what has been around does, and naming more than what has been widely recognized. We just want to close with a final question of, when you were saying earlier about these sites of shaping and this map model of concentric circles, and the outer most one being landscape and spirit, which are also sources of resilience. And so we wanted to ask if you could touch on that, perhaps, what that is to you? Why it’s important to tend to that alongside the institutional, interpersonal, familial?

Dara 49:51

Totally. Yeah, so like you said, in those concentric circles, we often pause at the institutional/systemic level, but there is an outer ring about landscape and spirit. And you know i think how do we look at the ways different people are who grew up in the mountains, or who grew up near the ocean. Right now i live on the Hudson river. And there is such movement in me every time i go down to river and i spend time with it. Or i go to the little mountains that are near me. And you know the change that happens when you are amongst more scrubby bushes before you get to the summit. And we are shaped by the land around us. We are shaped by the people around us. By the buildings, yes, and also by the land. And so how do we really let ourselves feel that shaping and respond to it. Not just the ways we are shaped by facebook and instagram and corporate forms that are feeding us so much, but how are we shaped by the place that our food comes from? And how are we shaped by weather patterns, and the ways climate disaster is shaping our weather, and let that impact us? And then, you know, there is a piece in this stream of somatics that it’s not just about the brain, right, or the soma, this integration of body and brain. But that there’s something bigger and that’s called spirit. And you know as someone raised as a secular jew, this has been a real grapple for me. What does it mean to believe in something bigger and to feel that in a deeper way? And i think the clearest place for me is really feeling that in nature. What is it like when i am in the woods and i am so small among the redwoods? Or what is it like to be in the ocean, after you have been tumbled by a wave and you like get out of the wave and spit out the sand and the water and you’re like “Right, i am so small in this vast stream of things”. So how do we have the capacity, as white anti-racists to feel into something bigger, to see ourselves in this long stream of history. Knowing there is a call for other white people to be in relationship with white people and be in this work as a part of multiracial popular movement. And we can’t do it alone. We need all of us. The way to do it is together. And that’s connected to that much greater land and spirit that we are all a part of. 

Jay 52:36

Thank you so much for closing us out with that presencing of lineage and that great river. And just honoring the way this conversation is a part of that - your teachers, and their teachers and their teachers get to be present through it. Just so grateful to get to connect with you all, and an anchoring in this work in this vital moment. Yeah.

Dara 53:01

Yeah, we’re grateful to get to be with you as well. We’ll be doing another round of our course in the fall, so if people want to get in touch with us, they can follow us on instagram. Ream is at reamsomatics and I’m darasilver. You can also email us wrjsomatics@gmail.com and we can add you to our list so you can find out about future courses and things, goodies.

53:29 Zara

Fantastic thanks so much!     

Outro

Jay

Thank you so much for joining us for this first conversation in the White Noise Collective Podcast.

Zara

This podcast was recorded in late spring of 2021 and is brought to you by breathable california air. Breathable california air - get it and savor it while supplies last. For a limited time only.