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Psychic Militancy 🤯🔽💫
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Dear community I’ve been sitting with Lara Sheehi’s phrase psychic militancy. It has hit my heart hard and rocked how I think about my “career” (loose career!). As I understand Sheehi, it is a practice of noticing how power shapes our thoughts, and refusing to let it decide what futures are possible. The question underneath it feels familiar: What happens when systems of oppression start to live inside the way I think? How much have I lived true to my vision of an anti-oppressive future? How much have I allowed capitalism and oppression to cultivate my psyche? Did I wait for donor funding to do the right thing? Did I allow disagreements to be settled by those with the most power? Did I stay quiet because I played small? I’ve spent much of my career trying to make health services more equitable. For years, I did that work largely within the rules of existing institutions. I challenged decisions that excluded communities. I pushed for local knowledge to carry more weight. When challenge wasn't accepted my frustration came out. Perhaps I thought I had more positionality than I realised. Perhaps that is part of my internal oppression! 🤯 I started to absorb what was “realistic” - until I took a stance on racism and suddenly everything became so much clearer. Messages can sound sensible. Versions of them appeared in emails I received: The funder will never agree. The community cannot manage that responsibility. We should be grateful for the resources we’ve been offered. We just need to get the job done quickly. Sometimes there are real constraints behind them. Sometimes they are the voice of a system protecting its own authority. I want to get better at telling the difference. I want to be in community with others who are also looking for that difference. I don’t ask questions to punish myself for every decision I made within those systems. I ask because I still work within them, and I want to notice when their limits become the limits of my own imagination. That is what I take from psychic militancy as I learn more...it feels like a practice of asking:
Adrienne Maree Brown’s Emergent Strategy takes me to the next question: What if we imagined beyond the world we have inherited, then practised that future in how we relate and organise now? I want to ask that with others, so we can act on the answers together. In community. ➡️Prompt I wonder if I can invite you to sit with these questions. Perhaps meditate on them, write them on a Post-it, journal, or just notice what comes up: What is your vision, bigger than just one person? Where have we caught ourselves believing is “just how things work”? My head explodes thinking of this last question! ➡️ Event Emergent Strategy: Imagining and acting into a different future 🌍 Online Together, we’ll reflect on the amazing book Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds. I’ll bring three key questions to help us connect as a community, become a murmuration, and think practically about how we might bring change into our work and lives. How to sign up: Reply to this email with an emoji! 🌱🙏🏾➡️💫💖 Donation-based. And I’d love you to bring someone from your community or workplace with you. ❤️ ➡️ Song for your day
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Mohammed Ali (The Innovation)
If you are working on social impact and social justice this is a newsletter to energise your journey - sign up by adding your email below
Dear community Gosh, what a week it’s been! I feel privileged to be around people who are holding big problems but also holding bandwidth to look at big themes too. Here's some themes coming out. Send me an emoji which section resonates. 🤖❤️🩹😁 Power and responsibility 🤖 When we have a homogeneous team, there are going to be blind spots. This could be class, colour, schooling or less obvious. If you ignore that you have a homogeneous team, it will bite you on the a** sometime. Are we afraid to...
Dear men of the community I sometimes forget that others see me as a man. I’m often more aware of my femininity, my colour and my neurospicyness. But I am seen as a man, and I need to pay attention to what comes with that. This week, a dear friend sent me the image below. Please download it. 🔽🔽🔽 Some of its words stopped me. It reminded me that, however I understand myself, I have a responsibility to face the harm men cause. I have caused harm. I have used male entitlement, sometimes without...
Dear amazing community As the earth turns towards a new season, I’m wondering what feelings are present for you right now? Overwhelm? Anxiety? Drive? Groundedness? All are welcome. As many of you who work with me will know, we often talk about how we are not our feelings. We are the ones who can witness them. That being said, let’s talk events! Rise in Our Roots 📍 London 📅 24 September 🕙 10am If you’re feeling the need to reconnect with yourself, your identity and your sense of agency, and...