Real Reading Rainbow: Queer Black Intergenerational BookLUST! Kwanzaa edition!

Lex's favorite books challenge and qualify Kwanzaa.

https://www.facebook.com/events/264913493551887/

Greetings,

Tomorrow is the day for Body Ecology's 2nd RingShout for Reproductive Justice! Dress warmly, fill your thermos and prepare yourselves for what will be a gripping and enlightening public art performance.

What is a RingShout? A ringshout is a method for praise and worship. In the ring shout people sing, dance, testify. Body Ecology recognizes the technology of the circle has made black women and black communities un-breakable. It is our circle that keeps us focused on the whole, the light in our community, the hopefulness that we can collectively vision.

Body Ecology affirms that this campaign, this ring shout this circle of energy and creativity is our best asset for addressing justice and reproductive health.Our RingShout is a performance of healing, truth-telling, humor and recovery. We do this through the performance of original poetry, narrative, choreography. Expect to be moved! Each ringshout ends with a community cipher/ story circle so bring a dance, a poem a testimony about health, legacy, reproductive justice or creativity! Join us!

In solidarity,
Ebony Golden
Betty's Daughter Arts Collaborative
www.bettysdaughterarts.com

whirlwind for the warrior healers

to the warrior healers organizing trust

notes from post-tornado Durham

with Audre Lorde in transition

after Gwendolyn Brooks

“You have enabled yourself to prove of incalculable aid to many, many women—not just today’s women, but women down the ages...I am have been and always will be proud of you.”

Gwendolyn Brooks to Audre Lorde

“This is the urgency: Live!

and have your blooming in the noise of the whirlwind.”

-Gwendolyn Brooks “Second Sermon on the Warpland”

i.

brook open stream woke

this is how we conduct our blooming

brash and gentle at kitchen tables

falling apart

on living room floors

noise and whip and head turned around

did you just say…

something scattered here

(our several dreams)

played into particles

stepped and stepped over it

trip and trip over

trip over

over

done

something flew apart

arrival is in the instant of yes

glitter your hands with the grace of grief

knot your hair with knowing

never meant to hold money

never meant to braid it into noose

never knew another way was

blooming

ii.

warrior healer be we

who know

how to go there

and when

warrior healer be we

who wont be who we are

until we are

warrior healer be

we who don’t know what

to say

until we say

who speak

when voice shake

better be

we

say this

warrior healer be

yes

just be

warrior healer be

iii.

salvation salvaged

medication defined

stylized splendor

for Bessie and we

iv.

warrior poet be watching

smiling sometime

laughing

warrior mother poet be

looking down

picking up

wind

love,

lex

'Indigo Was the Folks': Afterschool Brilliance

"There wasn't enough for Indigo in the world she'd been born to, so she made up what she needed. What she thought the black people needed.

Access to the moon.
The power to heal.
Daily visits with the spirits."

-Ntozake Shange on little sister Indigo in her first novel Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo


We are in my car with the top down dodging the falling leaves when Assata drops knowledge on the subject of grades, a new clarity gained during this first term of 6th grade: "Grades are bullying the alphabet." The girls find out that their hands can bend in ways they never knew. They read outloud parts of the books they are reading. They punch each other very lightly at the sight of a volkswagen bug. And this is just the car ride.

The Indigo Afterschool Program was an idea that 11 year old Alex Lockhart shared with her mother, using the words: "I want to go to an afterschool program at Alexis's house." Inspired by Ntozake Shange's character "Indigo" from her first novel Sassafrass, Cypress and Indigo, the Indigo Afterschool TeaParty is a place to share dreams, make art, blow bubbles and investigate Indigo's practices of healing, self-love, dream interpretation, doll-making, compassion and full self-expression! Girls from 3 Durham middle schools participate!

We check in over tea and snacks letting a deep breath out at the end of our check-ins by blowing a real or imaginary bubble. We make dolls that listen, healing remedies for emotional emergencies, books for our dreams, collages for our visions, love notes for each other in the name of Indigo who used all these things to create the world she needed when she was right in the arena of the menstrual transformation.

It is an honor to participate in the building of community and sisterhood among these brilliant young women, and as the Crunk Feminist Collective reminded us with their development of a women's studies 101 workshop for high school students (http://crunkfeministcollective.wordpress.com/2011/10/26/feminism-101-or-why-womens-studies-cant-wait-a-workshop-for-girls/)
the intentional support and nourishment of the love, transformation and brilliance that is already living and growing and possible in young people can never start to early.

Indigo Afterschool uses the model of Indigo...just one of many audacious, inventive, complex, community accountable and wise young Black characters created by Black feminist writers to give young folks a chance to love each other and explore their own magical skills, a space to critique the norms they are noticing at school, and a validation of the practices of breathing, creating and listening.

As people around the country reclaim space in their communities to activate their visions I am proud that the space that these 11 year olds (who have just proposed an expansion of the program to bi-weekly sessions) have decided to takeover my living room with their dreams.

(Here is what Alex left on the chalkboard)



Indigo Style Remedies:

Yesterday we read some of Indigo's remedies that she creates after difficult experience and share with her community of dolls so that her growth can also benefit them. Oh Indigo!!!

Rock in the manner of a quiet sea. Hum softly from your heart. Repeat the victim’s name with love. Offer a brew of red sunflower to cleanse the victims blood and spirit. Fasting & silence for a time refurbish the victim’s awareness of her capacity to nourish & heal herself.

-from "Emergency Care For Wounds That Cannot Be Seen" in Ntozake Shange's Sassafrass, Cypress and Indigo

The Indigo After School crew also wrote their own remedies yesterday (they also wrote a healing recipe for popcorn, getting past writers block and "boredness").

Here is some of their advice...that I recommend keeping on hand or enacting right now for your own healing:

Emergency Care for the "the funk"
by Bailey
(i.e. like on Glee, when they were in a funk because they were afraid their singing group wasn't good enough)

Surround oneself with loved ones, then go on top of a tall object and scream to hearts content all of ones deepest feelings. If this does not work, go in private room and listen to songs that mention only of happy things, then write down all of ones problems and think of a way to turn them around.

Emergency for Sadness
by Assata

1. go to the bathroom and turn on hot water. let it steam.
2. get your favorite incense and burn it
3. get a robe and put it on
4. put the incense in the bathroom
5. put a stool in the bathroom
6. write all the things you are sad about on a piece of paper
7. write on the steamed mirror all the things that are peaceful
8. sit in the bathroom and be peaceful with the steaming and the incense


Forged by Fire (for hard experiences that change you forever):
by Alex

Bathe in a tub of warm water without bubbles. Slowly lie down and let all the bad energy out. When you get out, don't dry off, instead go to a silent room and let the peaceful air dry you off. Next rub your skin with soothing lavender oil. Now go outside and let the sun wrap its loving rays around you.

Amazing! Priceless and here is how you can support this space!

1. Of course donating to the Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind one time


or becoming a monthly sustainer helps infinitely to sustain this free program for superhero youth.



2. This community of readers is the best thing ever. Want to send as a winter break gift 1 or 3 copies of your favorite young adult book from when you were around 11? The Indigo afterschoolers are self-identified "cool nerds" and will need a lot of reading material when school lets out next month to keep their brains engaged! Email alexispauline@gmail.com for the address.

3. Or contribute to the Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind Library that surrounds and uplifts the participants and their parents and grandparents and younger siblings and friends by donating a book from the Eternal Summer amazon wishlist!
http://www.amazon.com/gp/registry/wishlist/9JXRNX84Z3R9


Keeping it quirky, eternal and off the hook!
Love,
lex

"I Know What That Is": Coming Out as Undocumented

Amnesty International Conference: Come Out, Rise Up and Join the Movement
Lunch Plenary on Coming Out in the South as Queer and Undocumented

Dedicated to Ms. Vera Martin





To get to Ms. Vera we faced our greatest fear. We drove through Arizona. Scarier even than the Mississippi police who separated us for questioning when we told them we were driving across the country interviewing visionary Black LGBTQ feminist elders, was that drive through Arizona in the middle of the night. The closest my partner Julia and I, raised in North Carolina and Georgia, have ever come to the segregation stories we've heard all our lives about travellers scared to stop for gas, to pee, to talk to a stranger, especially after sundown. When we finally did stop, because hail and fog and the presence of elk made it impossible to keep driving through Tonto national park, we put signs on every side of our purple and turquoise RV explaining that we didn't want to stop and we weren't trying to tresspass, but we just couldn't keep going.
We knew where we were: Arizona in the era of the state bill that is a hate bill, where it is illegal to be a person of color, standing still, on land, asking for help. That night was the closest we have come to the stories that make our parents and grandparents shake at the words "police," "highway," "bathroom," "night." The reason my mother tracks our queer black deviant adventurous behinds on Google latitude every step of the way. Probably the reason that Ms. Vera, living in Apache Junction Arizona in a retirement RV park full of white lesbians doesn't get many visitors and in fact laughed out loud at the concept of us, two queer black young people willing to drive through Arizona just to see her, to sit and talk with her in person.
For us, the scary thing about Arizona was that we knew that conservative copy-cat laws would pop up in our region, taking us back to the good old days that give our relatives nightmares, that still turn my father into a completely different person if he gets pulled over by a white Georgia cop. Our folks that know that no amount of hard-boiled eggs and fried chicken packed lunches can save us from that knowledge in the pit of your stomach that for us there is no such thing as home that cannot be taken away, that for us, for generations it has been about trying to move through undetected our queer selves our colored selves in a land where it is illegal to be us and to be loved and to be here all the way, where anyone might notice us and be transformed.
That cop that stopped our purple and turquoise love-mobile in Mississippi was flabbergasted. Queer, feminist, black and intergenerational? What do you mean your "elders"? He squinted. And then he called for back-up.

To love who we love, to claim who and were we come from is dangerous and possibly contagious. We are counting on the contagion of queer Black intergenerational love which is why we would go through Mississippi and Arizona and hail and hell to get to Ms. Vera. Who knew better than anyone why we cannot allow the laws that would pre-emptively and comprehensively invalidate our families. Including anti-immigration laws and includes narrow marriage amendments and includes anti-choice legislation and suggestions to legally say there is no such thing as rape. Ms. Vera knows best of all why we cannot believe for one second the lies those laws would tell about us and must in every moment recognize those attacks as the desperation they are against our brilliance, our unstoppable power against how radiant we are that we inspire even those who try so hard to hate us. We are love and we know it and we are contagious.
And so it makes complete sense that when Ms. Vera told us about her trip to the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force's Creating Change conference, the first thing she spoke of was her love for the young undocumented activists speaking out. "Because I know what that is," she said. Ms. Vera was born in Louisiana in 1924. "I know what that is," she said. Where there is no law that will protect you, only laws to hurt you. Where there are people who can see that you are human and don't want to know it, so they try to make you illegal. "I know what that is," Ms. Vera said. "And I love those young people because they're not gonna take it."

Lex on Black Issues Forum! Watch the full episode here!

Watch Empowering Force of Feminist Teaching on PBS. See more from BLACK ISSUES FORUM.

RingShout for Reproductive Justice Continues Nov. 19th!


Body Ecology continues its RingShout for Reproductive Justice Campaign with a second public performance and street story circle. Check back soon for more information about the performance and how you can get involved!

Lauded as the "father of gynecology", Dr. James Marion Sims brutally experimented on enslaved African women in Birmingham, Alabama. There just so happens to be a monument built in his honor on 5th Avenue. Body Ecology wants this memorial removed!

We are calling on the power of the women who suffered at the hands of this "doctor" as we offer our second installment of RingShout for Reproductive Justice. We are calling on the power of the women are experiencing joy, trauma, revelation, doubt, and a myriad of emotions and feelings that relate to our reproductive health and choices.

What is a RingShout?

A ringshout is a method for praise and worship. In the ring shout people sing, dance, testify. Usually the songs are lead but there is time for each person to speak or sing. You may be more familiar with recent configurations of the ringshout including the cipher or even the "sista circle" or sacred circles for women. The idea is that the circle is sacred and when those join in the circle they harness an energy and power to manifest what they choose. Also, there are theatre makers who are using the ring shout in traditional theatre settings for similar purposes.

Body Ecology recognizes the technology of the circle has made black women and black communities un-breakable. It is our circle that keeps us focused on the whole, the light in our community, the hopefulness that we can collectively vision. Body Ecology affirms that this campaign, this ring shout this circle of energy and creativity is our best asset for addressing justice and reproductive health.

Our RingShout is a performance of healing, truth-telling, humor and recovery. We do this through the performance of original poetry, narrative, choreography. Expect to be moved!

Each ringshout ends with a community cipher/ story circle so bring a dance, a poem a testimony about health, legacy, reproductive justice or creativity! Join us!


More about the RingShout for Reproductive Justice Campaign

Read More Here:
http://www.bettysdaughterarts.com/#!ringshout-for-reproductive-justice

www.bettysdaughterarts.com

Love is Lifeforce: June Jordan and the Horizon of Education

Greetings loved ones!  I'd love to see you at the second installment of the Survival Series: Black Feminism for the Future at Stanford L. Warren Library!

Tuesday, November 1 · 6:30pm - 8:30pm

Stanford L. Warren Library

1201 Fayetteville Street

Durham, NC

In this the second part in the "Survival Series: Black Feminism for the Future" this lecture draws on author June Jordan's essay “The Creative Spirit in Children’s Literature” which explains that “love is lifeforce” and describes the intergenerational work of nurturing the spirits of children as the most sacred work that adults can do. In a time when the education budgets for Durham schools are under attack and the Wake County schools are actively resegregating, Dr. Alexis Pauline Gumbs will present a multi-faceted vision for educational justice in our times.

“We Are More Loved Than We Know”: Masculinity, Feminism and the Love that Will Save Our Lives

From http://thefeministwire.com

June Jordan teaches that: “Love is lifeforce.”  And the healing power of love has saved my life more than once.  In the name of this truth I affirm the arrival of Freeing Ourselves: A Guide to Health and Self Love for Brown Bois, a recent resource published by the Brown Boi Leadership project and written by masculine of center queer people of color and their allies.

I think of this resource guide as a chapter that should have been, but never would have been in Our Bodies Ourselves or even in Jambalaya.   A resource that my partner, who identifies as a Black feminist boi and a gender queer artist, and our children one day will probably not read cover to cover chronologically like I did, but will flip through, looking at affirming and beautiful photography, reading stories of how people we know and strangers survived trauma, transformation and the oppression of the medical industrial complex.    They will browse it for a list of self-advocating questions before finding a health care provider.   We will look at for options of how we want to get pregnant, what health issues we should look out for at different ages, how one gender affirming surgery differs from another one.   Freeing Ourselves is a non-linear invocation of a community of people with different needs, at different stages of life, with different approaches to their own wellness and wholeness who will interact with this book from where they are at, and then differently again at another moment.  It is a tiny, audience-specific, audience-accountable encyclopedia.

“We are working towards profound social change, knowing that there are no disposable people or communities.   We all need to be here.”

– Brown Boi Health Manifesto by Prentis Hemphill (119)

Read the entire review here:  http://thefeministwire.com/2011/1

BDACs current campaign is called the RingShout for Reproductive Justice!

Join us for our 2nd RingShout November 19!

https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=264913493551887

What is a RingShout?

A ringshout is a method for praise and worship. In the ring shout people sing, dance, testify. Usually the songs are lead but there is time for each person to speak or sing. You may be more familiar with recent configurations of the ringshout including the cipher or even the "sista circle" or sacred circles for women. The idea is that the circle is sacred and when those join in the circle they harness an energy and power to manifest what they choose. Also, there are theatre makers who are using the ring shout in traditional theatre settings for similar purposes.

Body Ecology recognizes the technology of the circle has made black women and black communities un-breakable. It is our circle that keeps us focused on the whole, the light in our community, the hopefulness that we can collectively vision. Body Ecology affirms that this campaign, this ring shout this circle of energy and creativity is our best asset for addressing justice and reproductive health.

Our RingShout is a performance of healing, truth-telling, humor and recovery. We do this through the performance of original poetry, narrative, choreography. Expect to be moved!

Each ringshout ends with a community cipher/ story circle so bring a dance, a poem a testimony about health, legacy, reproductive justice or creativity! Join us!

This Body Ecology: Creativity & Transformation Residency will be looking at the connection between spiritual practice and creative performance. Expect to deepen conversations around ritual, Shange, Alice Walker, Sonia Sanchez and others. Expect to be asked to "perform something that pushes you to a new awareness of yourself and your creative potential". Join us!


https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=197374113662828

Join Betty's Daughter Arts Collaborative in our inaugral cultural arts direct action campaign!!! We begin tomorrow!

Body Ecology: Creativity and Transformation Residency


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Public Performing Arts and Activism Workshops for South Bronx Community
Contact: Ebony Noelle Golden
Email: ebonygolden@bettysdaughterarts.com


www.bettysdaughterarts.com

South Bronx, New York --6 pm on September 28, Betty's Daughter Arts Collaborative in collaboration with Casa Atabex Ache will launch the Body Ecology: Creativity and Transformation

residency for women and trans folks of color . The residency will address reproductive rights, environmental justice and spiritual activism over a period of a month. The residency will

feature public performance opportunities, creative dialogue, dance, writing and theatre workshops at Casa Atabex Ache. Participants will also have the opportunity to participate in two

public performances: one at Casa Atabex Ache and the other at the Harriet Tubman Memorial statue in Harlem. The performances will feature the original work of participants who will be

exploring the role of creative arts in working for individual transformation and community action.


The workshops will take place 6-8 p.m. at Casa Atabex Ache located at 471 East 140th Street Bronx, NY 10454. Participants have the option of paying between 20 and 40 dollars each

session, although no one will be turned away due to lack of funds.

Dates & Topics Include:

September

Reproductive Justice Cultural Arts Direct Action Campaign Debuts

28: Body Ecology Residency Begins @ Casa Atabex Ache. Register Here. Reproductive Justice!

October

1: Ringshout for Reproductive Justice 3 pm @ the Harriet Tubman Memorial Plaza 122nd and St. Nick.

3: Performance/Workshop: Ritual Theatre & Choreopoem Aesthetics @ Medgar Evers College

5: Environmental Justice Workshop

12: Spiritual Activism Workshop

19: Solo and Collaborative Performance Workshop

22: Body Ecology at The Black Girl Project Symposium

26: Final Benefit Performance in Support of Casa Atabex Ache and Project Zanzibar


The residency is a part of Betty's Daughter Arts Collaborative's inaugural cultural arts direct action campaign season dedicated to using arts to address issues of reproductive justice within

the African Diaspora community. Ebony Golden, Creative Director of Betty's Daughter said, “This cultural arts direct action campaign has been a dream for several years. I am excited to

use the arts to vision a world I want to live in with the rest of the ensemble and community. We are not fighting against anything, we are honoring our autonomy over all that we choose to

create-artistically, politically, spiritually, economically, educationally...” The goals of the campaign are to raise awareness, increase creative action, facilitate dialogue and support local

organizing efforts.

The campaign will take the ensemble to Boston, Washington, DC, and Baltimore. Local allies include Casa Atabex Ache, Ocean Ana Rising, Brecht Forum, and WOW Cafe Theatre.


Betty's Daughter Arts Collaborative, LLC is a cultural arts direct action group that inspires, enlivens, and incites justice and transformation of individuals and communities through

creativity, cultural arts and radical expressiveness.

Betty's Daughter Arts Collaborative envisions and works for a world where cultural and artistic practice envelops and sustains wellness and justice movements for individuals and

communities.

Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind Congratulates the Juneteenth All-Stars

Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind is proud to congratulate the brilliant, purposeful, passionate and presence-filled participants in the Juneteenth Freedom Academy for Educators, August 8-12 in Durham, NC.

Your recharged, reconnected, next-level genius educators are:

Alexis Pauline Gumbs (facilitator, Durham NC)
Janaka Bowman (Charlotte, NC)
Analena Hope (Los Angeles and Oakland, CA)
Shantay Armstrong (Brooklyn, NY)
Isabell Moore (Charlotte, NC)
TaMeicka Clear (Winston-Salem, NC)
Deborah Rosenstein (Efland, NC)
Melody Makeda (Brooklyn, NY)
Holly Hardin (Durham, NC)
*Danielle Parker (Durham, NC)
*April Johnson (Winston-Salem, NC)
*Matthias Pressley (Durham, NC)
*Marcella Camara (Durham, NC)
**Julia Roxanne Wallace (Atlanta, GA)

*not pictured
**took the picture!

re:generate: FREE wellness and resilience day-retreat Sept. 3rd, Atlanta, GA

Saturday, September 3 · 4:00pm - 10:00pm

St. Marks Youth Center

781 Peachtree Street Northeast (accessible by Midtown Marta Station)

Atlanta, GA

Join the Mobile Homecoming Project, Quirky Black Girls and Kindred Southern Healing Justice collective during Atlanta's Black Gay Pride Weekend for a historic day-long retreat designed to build community among Black LBGTQ women of all ages, share self-care, grounding and healing practices and celebrate the power of our LOVE!!!

Highlights:

4:30pm Intergenerational Discussion on Staying Amazing for the Long Haul and Avoiding Burnou...t as Activists, Artists, Healers and Transformative Educators

Ongoing: Delicious self-care booths of all kinds!

Lex sharing new archival miracles of Audre Lorde and Pat Parker's correspondence about survival and cancer and more...

6pm Cooking with our favorite body-loving recipes and eating together!!!

8pm Intergenerational Dance Party with DJ Lynee!

VOLUNTEER:
Have a self-care practice or favorite recipe or dish that you want to share? Email us at mobilehomecoming@gmail.com!!!


PARTICIPATE in the TAPESTRY OF TRANSFORMATION

*****Participate in our love-filled fundraiser to support this event from Join the Mobile Homecoming Project, Quirky Black Girls and Kindred Southern Healing Justice collective during Atlanta's Black Gay Pride Weekend for a historic day-long retreat designed to build community among Black LBGTQ women of all ages, share self-care, grounding and healing practices and celebrate the power of our LOVE!!!

Highlights:

4:30pm Intergenerational Discussion on Staying Amazing for the Long Haul and Avoiding Burnou...t as Activists, Artists, Healers and Transformative Educators

Ongoing: Delicious self-care booths of all kinds!

Lex sharing new archival miracles of Audre Lorde and Pat Parker's correspondence about survival and cancer and more...

6pm Cooking with our favorite body-loving recipes and eating together!!!

8pm Intergenerational Dance Party with DJ Lynee!

VOLUNTEER:
Have a self-care practice or favorite recipe or dish that you want to share? Email us at mobilehomecoming@gmail.com!!!

PARTICIPATE in the TAPESTRY OF TRANSFORMATION

*****Participate in our love-filled fundraiser to support this event from near or far! Have the name of a loved one of yours who demonstrates, demonstrated or could use some wellness and resilience energy painted onto a tapestry that will be part of the altar for this healing space! *******

1. go to paypal.com
2. click "send money"
3. send to mobilehomecoming@gmail.com
4. INCLUDE THE NAME OF YOUR LOVED ONE IN THE NOTES SECTION!!

So excited to see you there!!!!!
love,
lex

Project Zanzibar:: Cultural Arts Residency

BDAC needs your help to get to Zanzibar!!! Each dollar is an investment!

Donate here: http://www.indiegogo.com/proj​ectzanzibar



Our Story
In August of 2010, Ebony Golden was introduced to Bi Aida and Mbaruk (Directors of Creative Solutions) by Tufara Muhammad at the Highlander Research and Education Center. During Cultural Workers' Weekend, Bi Aida and Ebony talked about the possibility of community cultural arts residency at their Creative Solutions school in Zanzibar. By the end of the weekend, Ebony was sure that this collaboration would be an awesome opportunity to learn and share art in community, while beginning an intentional and sustainable relationship with an international collaborator. This weekend, Project Zanzibar:: Cultural Arts Residency was born.

Utilizing art and creativity, Project Zanzibar:: Cultural Arts Residency seeks to amplify the voices and creativity of young adults and women at Creative Solutions Resource Systems school located in Mangapwani, Zanzibar.

The residency is a collaborative effort between Creative Solutions and Betty's Daughter Arts Collaborative, based in New York, NY.


Goals and Outcomes
1. 3 Yoga Workshops
2. 2 Dance/Movement Workshops
3. 2 Writing Workshops
4. 1 Story Circle
5. 2 Theatre/Performance Workshops
6. 1 Visual Arts Workshops
7. 1 Community Performances

More About The Collaborators
Creative Solutions Resource Systems is a non profit community learning center, located in the village of Mangapwani, approximately 27 kilometers from Zanzibar town and one kilometer from the beach. We are a grass roots organization providing access to education through both traditional and modern systems. CSRS strives to unleash the creative energy within each individual through participatory workshops, classes and demonstrations. CSRS is committed to the philosophy of creating solutions through self-help.


Betty's Daughter Arts Collaborative, LLC is a cultural arts direct action group that inspires, enlivens, and incites justice and transformation of individuals and communities through creativity, healing arts practices and radical expressiveness. Betty's Daughter Arts Collaborative envisions a world where cultural and artistic practice envelops and sustains wellness and justice movements for individuals and communities. Betty's Daughter Arts collaborative provides workshops, residencies, performances and consulting services to communities working for justice and transformation.

Check out BDAC at work--http://youtu.be/j5evUIC​B7as and http://vimeo.com/17252820


The Impact

Participant Impact
Transformation: Creativity heals, transforms, liberates and enlivens individuals and communities. This experience will provide participants with tools they can use in their everyday lives to reflect, rejoice and renew through writing, performance, movement and meditation.

Community Sustainability: Creativity is integral to building and sustaining community. The residency will provide participants with tools to investigate art and creativity as a practice for solving issues impacting local communities. Through creative visioning, action and reflection participants will experience movement from issue to resolution while at the same time building a tool kit to continue the forward movement for community sustainability and growth.

Literacy: Creativity is directly linked to achievement in literacy and basic skills. Because arts practice supports the overall critical thinking skills of students, it is extremely important to find new and innovative approaches to getting students writing and thinking outside of books. Creativity helps students conceptualize and envision experiences that extend comprehension of texts and problem solving skills. The activities used in this residency will be useful to students as they work to achieve their educational goals.



Organizational Impact
Creative Solutions is looking for ways to offer its students quality cultural arts programming. These costs, of course, are steep for a community school. Through our collaboration, Creative Solutions will have a month-long residency that it can use as a template for building and sustaining cultural arts programs throughout the year. Because BDAC is looking to its supporters to help fund this residency, Creative Solutions will not have to worry about payment for the services and use those funds to sustain other educational projects.

The Bottom Line
1. If this project does not happen, Creative Solutions quite possibly will not have intensive cultural arts programming for the month.
2. Participants will not have access to a transformative arts experience.
3. BDAC will not be able to begin its international arts initiative.


What We Need
BDAC Needs 2500.00 for the residency. Here is how it will be spent.

1500-flight
200-medication
700-Food and Lodging
100-Flip Cam

What You Get
Mention in Newsletter
Mention on website
DVD of Residency
Residency Chapbook
A gift from Zanzibar
A post card from Zanzibar


Other Ways You Can Help
Tweet about the residency using the #ProjectZanzibar hashtag
Mention the residency and our campaign on your Facebook wall or status update
Come to the going away party in Brooklyn July 16th.
Donate books, media or school supplies to Creative Solutions
Donate yoga mats
Donate DVDs
Donate art supplies
Donate frequent flyer miles
Get your social club to donate
Purchase mailing of materials
Come up with another way to help and let BDAC know!

Lex in Atlanta Tomorrow!: The Revolution Starts at Home: Transformative Justice with Alexis Pauline Gumbs

Wednesday, July 13, 7:30-9pm

Charis Books and More

1189 Euclid Ave. NE Atlanta, GA 30307 (404)524-03

Join us in welcoming back a longtime member of our Charis family, Alexis Gumbs as she reads from her essay in The Revolution Starts at Home and shares some of her strategies and wisdom about creating transformative justice in all of our communities.

Based on the popular zine that had reviewers and fans alike demanding more, The Revolution Starts at Home
finally breaks the dangerous silence surrounding the "open secret" of
intimate violence—by and toward caretakers, in romantic partnerships,
and in friendships—within social justice movements. This watershed
collection compiles stories and strategies from survivors and their
allies, documenting a decade of community accountability work and
delving into the nitty-gritty of creating safety from abuse without
relying on the prison industrial complex.

Fearless, tough-minded, and ultimately loving, The Revolution Starts at Home offers potentially life-saving alternatives for creating survivor safety while building a movement where no one is left behind.

http://www.charisbooksandm​ore.com/book/9780896087941

This event is part of our Organizational and Community Building Project and is co-sponsored by Southerners on New Ground (S.O.N.G.)

Rainbow Reclamations Durham (Red) "Keep Your Sorry" Break Up Poetics

Sunday July 24th 2011

5pm-8pm

Inspiration Station, Durham NC (email brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com for directions)

Dedicated to the broken ground of your healing heart! This session for women of color and and feminists of color who do not conform to the gender binary is about lifting up break-up poetics as necessary and transformative clarity that can help us to create the lives, loves, and spaces we deserve! If you have ever been through a break-up, need to transition a relationship or are in the midst of a relationship transition right n...ow come to this event!

By popular demand and with infinite love WE CONTINUE a seven month process called Rainbowed Reclamation, a colorful women of color juicy poetry and food-filled space of sacred discussions that reclaim our bodies, collectivize our spiritual energy and the brilliant choreopoem For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf.

These monthly discussion/rituals are love in practice towards creating a spiritually …aligned, intimately interconnected, queer affirming and self loving community of women of color and genderqueer people of color ready to support each other in transforming the world.

This month’s activity is specifically about visible solidarity as and with sex workers of color. We will be having a ritual and making a banner of belief to place at the site of the Duke Lacrosse House.

*****Please wear RED and bring some food to share if you can. *******

Childcare will be provided!

If you are a woman of color and/or a genderqueer person of color anywhere near Durham…COME! If you are a woman of color and/or a genderqueer person of color anywhere in the world email brokenbeautifulpress@gmail

.com to find out how to host your own event and send folks in North Carolina to us!!! If you are an ally spread the word and please send this to people who need this space!!!!

On Being (Good): A Workaholic's Confession

"Am I a child of potion? Am I a child of folklore, or family crisis, some need for gender balancing?...Are my brothers really brothers to me, or am I sister to bay leaf and scorched root of cayenne?"

-Deneese/Denise in A.J. Verdelle's "The Good Negress"

Maybe every black girl is a wish, a lingering morning dream, a quieter need than the masculinist awe of sons. Maybe a daughter is a gendered spell, a tea towards transformation a shapechanging intervention into what a warrior looks like. This week some spell, some secret, some ancestor blessed accident sent A.J. Verdelle's The Good Negress into my life like a need.

Fellow Warrior Healer and Quirky Black Girl Almah mentioned Verdelle's book during an Indigo Days afternoon at the Eno River as her favorite and maybe the best novel she has ever read. And that really means something coming from Almah, self-identified glitter-fairy and Lex-identified scatterseed griot, who has an inspired quotation for every instance of black prismatic life. I knew I had to read Verdelle's book, but I hadn't had a chance to do anything about it when days later, QBG exemplar, black feminist scholar and spiritual leader Akasha Gloria Hull (co-editor of But Some of Us Are Brave and author of many books including Soul Talk-a QBG must-read that focuses on black women's spirituality through indepth years of conversations with Lucille Clifton, Sonia Sanchez, Toni Cade Bambara and Michelle Gibbs) sent two huge boxes filled with books as a donation to the Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind Lending Library and guess what was one of the dozens of books she sent? Yes! The Good Negress. Who can help but live a charmed life when their everyday is filled with black feminist geniuses? That was more than enough. I started reading the novel immediately.

And as I facebooked Almah the other day it seriously put me through some changes. So this blog post should be understood not as a good summary of the book or even a literary analysis of its project (though I may want to do that sometime too), but a reflection on how this book reflected me back to myself in a way that gave me yet another opportunity to do the quirky and abundant lifelong work of becoming more honest and willing to transform.

Or to become a child of potion, a person with the capacity to create a version of personhood. Myself.

"In this way the subject is changed and changed and changed." (from The Good Negress)

Over and over again in these posts I testify to you all about the power of embracing "being" instead of always "doing." I confess to you my own internalized capitalism, how I have been a workaholic, how I have used work to avoid my fears about being present to intimacy, space, time, love, awkwardness, and anything less dependable and familiar in my life than work.

I also now realize that I used work to set me apart from other people in my own evaluation of myself, so I could define myself through the strength of my specific work and not the vulnerabilities I share in common with all other people. This is something that provided me tentative security (note that I am not saying "safety") and plenty of isolation. The solution to any problem is that I should get back to work, not that I should ask for help. This blocks me from fully collaborating with people on actualizing my vision. It also means I don't expect to see my issues reflected in the people around me and certainly not in works of literature, so journeying a piece of the road with the protagonist of The Good Negress, whose workaholism manifests in a life with deeply different details from my own was a surprise and a wake-up slap.

Denise/Deneese is traumatized by the death of her father, abandonment from her mother, separation from her grandmother and by ongoing exploitation and lack of accountability from her family. Verdelle is brilliant as she reveals the traumatic ways these experiences replay in our hearts and reproduce themselves in our lives within the dialogue of the characters and in the structure of the text. We can call it "changing the subject." When anyone, especially Denise/Deneese brings up her pain or her critique of her situation, someone in her family changes the subject. This is especially pronounced in the conversations between Deneese/Denise and her mother, they change the subject from loss, abandonment and their clumsy attempt to rename each other across trauma and resentment into something they CAN talk about...clothing, chores, the mundane and repetitive. At the same time Verdelle structures the narrative about Deneese/Denise's life in a circular way, as if it was told by someone who keeps leaving out something important and therefore has to go back and get it. We get the aftermath of Deneese's mother leaving her with her grandmother before the actual scene, before the death of Denise's father that makes that choice necessary. Verdelle structures the storytelling like the infinite sideways eight trajectory of someone cleaning the same counter again and again and again, which is not a mere coincidence because Denise/Deneese turns to compulsive housework and then later schoolwork as a way to keep her body and mind occupied, to create distance between herself and the story she needs to tell.

I do the same thing. Workaholism, the fact that there is always something urgent to be done, especially in the midst of a crisis or confrontation, has been my method of internally changing the subject, a switch that I can flick in order to not be present to my own situation or to the people in my life. The way Verdelle illuminates the consequences of "changing the subject" cumulatively over time allows me to transform my subjectivity by asking myself whether the infinite tasks that so urgently need to be done are more important than the collective story of my life in the context of my loved ones and my community. Am I willing to miss out on my own life and yours in service to an addiction to work? And work for what?

"I thought it was school that had made me but it wasn't."

Well. Imagine me, your sister-comrade, at the end of her very first year of life out of school since 1984 when she was 2-years old, encountering a phrase like this. "I thought it was school that had made me, but it wasn't." Although the economy of Denise/Deneese's life as a child of southern migrants growing up in Detroit in the 1960's as a young woman expected to play the role of a domestic servant within her family and the economy of my life as an affirmative action baby/scholarship kid encouraged to participate in enriching educational experiences at all times are profoundly different, Deneese/Denise also meets a teacher who project her DuBoisian beliefs onto the young woman and encourages her to immerse herself in schoolwork in order to "rise above her station." Denise (this is the spelling of her name that the teacher prefers) easily turns to her studies has another form of work that she can use to escape the contradictions and confrontations of her life. She also uses her education to build a sense of self that can counter the disempowered definition of her own worth that she feels like her subservient role in her family has enforced. But in a moment of clarity she realizes that neither institution, not the school and not her family are ultimately accountable to her as a person. She is still meant to be used, as a symbol as a worker low on the totem pole, as a means to an end that she did not design.

And so imagine me. 29 years old and finally out of school, with a deep internalized capitalism and addiction to intellectual task-making and with no possible higher degree to blame it on! Imagine the author of a zillion scholarship applications faced with the task of reclaiming her own worth outside of the context of the markers that educational institutions value. Imagine someone faced with possibility of a new meaning of life, with the predicament of freedom and self-determination. Am I a child of potion? Maybe you see yourself. Imagine that we are here, responsible for our own magic and accountable first to each other (also known as ourselves), the other person we can feel ourselves becoming, the irresistible possibilities of our own transformation that we try to resist anyway by being too busy to live as the much needed magical spell the universe already knows us to be.

Like the category of "the good negress," the obedient daughter, the star pupil, the always there for everyone else friend, the top notch token, the non-stop activist, the spokesperson for whatever, the famished poster-child...none of these caricatures of ourselves are healthy places to live. I have valued being "good," worthy, valuable in internalized capitalist terms over the miraculous experience of this amazing lifetime that I get to live in the presence of such as YOU!

So I'm over it. And I'm telling you so you can call me out, bring me back, remember me as more than who I let myself be. And I see you too.

With love for the bad indulgent transformative out-of-gendered-character negress-ness in all of us.

And thanks Almah, Akasha and A.J.!!!!

Love always,

QBG Lex

P.S. Instead of cultivating and validating hard-working escapism in my life, I am now a born-again evangelist of PRESENCE! See details below for the Juneteenth Freedom Academy for Educators this August which focuses on rituals that bring us back to presence!!

Announcing Juneteenth Freedom Academy Summer Institute for Educators: August 8-12 in Durham, NC

Juneteenth Freedom Academy Summer Intensive for Educators:

Rituals for Transformative Presence

August 8-12, 2011

Durham, NC

because you were that genius kid in the back of the room looking out the window. because you were that young Malcolm X that the teacher wasn’t ready for. because you were that Charlotte Hawkins Brown making your own school in yards and parlors. because you have always known that where ever you are learning is possible. because you don’t remember much of 10th grade biology except that the teacher seemed to really listen to really make it accessible even when you didn’t care. because there was something that happened in the classroom that made you want to come back and fix it, come back and honor it, come back and create a classroom of your own. because you are here for the kids, not for the standards and obviously not for the money. because you remember every day that people’s movement in the US and in the world have been led by students. because you know that the place where nerds meet gang members is the place where the Black Panther Party was born, and that meeting could be reconvened in any classroom any day now. because it’s still about that moment when you learn something new and the students realize that they are teachers already, and leaders and a force in the universe that cannot be stopped.

Because your presence is a catalyst, because your students are a prophecy. Because June Jordan said it best… “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for.”

The Premise:

Every social justice artist and genius and their brilliant mama is publishing a curriculum, hoping to reach the students you work with, without ever seeing their faces. And sometimes the content is brilliant. But most educational institutions, including public schools, after school programs, independent schools, community colleges and four-year colleges and graduate programs already have their own mandatory or chosen content. So…

This course acknowledges what has the most influence on students while they are in the classroom, the people who are there, the educators and each other and the energy we are all empowered to bring into the space.

This course offers:

*Silence (templates for self-generated, updateable affirmations and reminders designed to get you ready to be powerfully present and spiritually grounded before you enter the classroom)

*Sound (ways to fine tune and amplify your level of listening and responding to/being present for your particular students)

*Space (a process for designing guidelines and rituals that allow students to be present to EACH OTHER and the wisdom that surrounds them)

*Support (co-mentoring relationships and networking with other transformative teachers)

The Paradigm:

Juneteenth Freedom Academy is created in honor of the black feminist educator, poet, parent and political activist June Jordan. We invoke her work as part of our task in continuing to spread the scattered message that slavery is over, in particular to those systems that continue to sell life and kill dreams. We believe that teaching in oppressed communities with accountability to oppressed people can be a subversive act that is ultimately accountable to freedom, not the reproduction of conformity as usual across generations. June Jordan taught in public libraries and schools, in independent underfunded Saturday supplemental programs, in state university classrooms, at Yale, in prisons, in community centers, in children’s books, in lectures and in living rooms. The Juneteenth Freedom Academy for Educators draws on Alexis’s privileged access to June Jordan’s archival materials to use her syllabi, unpublished essays, course readers and student publications as resources for freedom in our lifetimes.

My brilliant and beloved co-conspirator and teaching partner Gardy Perard speaks with the clarity and precision of a mathematician. He says that the primary question for educators is how to bring freedom, possibility, power and connection into every teaching context. Together with Nia Wilson, Nikki Brown, Heather Lee and Zachari Curtis as co-facilitators of the Choosing Sides Program, a SpiritHouse program based in an alternative school in Durham serving students who were long-term suspended or expelled from Durham Public Schools, often for activities related to their involvement in street organizations, we created a student centered atmosphere of transformation and learning based on our internalized memory that the place where academics meet criminalized street organizers is a place of unstoppable power, is the generative collaboration that made the Black Panther one of the fiercest, most effective and most revolutionary organizations we know about.

Our accountability to the particularity and genius of the students that we worked with over the years pushed us to create practices to honor the truth that transformative education is not about transforming students. It is about being present for their inherent brilliance and assisting them in transforming their and our relationships to oppressive institutions. This is sacred work. Because most of our teaching takes place in places impacted by oppressive systems, and because we and any student we might encounter are impacted by oppressive institutions the work of creating liberatory space takes rituals and practices before, during and after the classroom encounter that generate the transformative energy of staying present to each other’s brilliance no matter what.

Supportive Course Components:

*weeklong summer institute in Durham, NC to work with templates, practices and to engage readings from June Jordan, the Black Panther Party, and Alexis Pauline Gumbs! (August 15-19)

*full color PDF workbook with posters, pocket reminders and accessories

*first month back interactive and motivating conference calls (August 25-September 25)

*video seminar to share with colleages

*quarterly optional online-enabled participant hosted gatherings

*the presence podcast and reminder PSA’s from Alexis

Sign Up:

1. email brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com BY JULY 20th with your intention to participate and responses to these 3 questions

a. what is the community of students you are accountable to/working with

b. what do you hope to gain from this course

c. what is every possible way to contact you

d. how you will support the course

2. Support the course!!!

Support the Course!!!

Your presence is priceless. No one will be turned away from the course for financial reasons. HOWEVER support for the course is crucial. Here are suggested ways to support your participation and to keep transformative autonomous spaces like this thriving:

*Please ask your school, organization, institution, employer, community to support your participation in this priceless experience. The institutional sponsor rate is sliding scale $200-500 depending on your assessment of what your institution can afford.

*Another option is to support the course individually in relatively affordable installments. Become a sustainer of the Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind at a level you feel comfortable with:

*Mobilize your community! Take the opportunity to share the awesome thing you are doing with your mentors, friends, loved ones and allies and allow them to donate in your name. Send them this button and remind them to put your name in “notes” so that I can tell you to thank them!

*And offer a trade! Want to bring other resources to the event? (Food, materials, healing practices, resources I haven’t imagined?) Make a proposal.

See you there!!!!!

Love,

Alexis Pauline Gumbs

Announcing Juneteenth Freedom Academy for Educators August 8-12 in Durham, NC!

Juneteenth Freedom Academy Summer Intensive for Educators:

Rituals for Transformative Presence

August 8-12, 2011

Durham, NC

because you were that genius kid in the back of the room looking out the window. because you were that young Malcolm X that the teacher wasn't ready for. because you were that Charlotte Hawkins Brown making your own school in yards and parlors. because you have always known that where ever you are learning is possible. because you don't remember much of 10th grade biology except that the teacher seemed to really listen to really make it accessible even when you didn't care. because there was something that happened in the classroom that made you want to come back and fix it, come back and honor it, come back and create a classroom of your own. because you are here for the kids, not for the standards and obviously not for the money. because you remember every day that people's movement in the US and in the world have been led by students. because you know that the place where nerds meet gang members is the place where the Black Panther Party was born, and that meeting could be reconvened in any classroom any day now. because it's still about that moment when you learn something new and the students realize that they are teachers already, and leaders and a force in the universe that cannot be stopped.

Because your presence is a catalyst, because your students are a prophecy. Because June Jordan said it best... "we are the ones we've been waiting for."

The Premise:

Every social justice artist and genius and their brilliant mama is publishing a curriculum, hoping to reach the students you work with, without ever seeing their faces. And sometimes the content is brilliant. But most educational institutions, including public schools, after school programs, independent schools, community colleges and four-year colleges and graduate programs already have their own mandatory or chosen content. So...

This course acknowledges what has the most influence on students while they are in the classroom, the people who are there, the educators and each other and the energy we are all empowered to bring into the space.

This course offers:

*Silence (templates for self-generated, updateable affirmations and reminders designed to get you ready to be powerfully present and spiritually grounded before you enter the classroom)

*Sound (ways to fine tune and amplify your level of listening and responding to/being present for your particular students)

*Space (a process for designing guidelines and rituals that allow students to be present to EACH OTHER and the wisdom that surrounds them)

*Support (co-mentoring relationships and networking with other transformative teachers)

The Paradigm:

Juneteenth Freedom Academy is created in honor of the black feminist educator, poet, parent and political activist June Jordan. We invoke her work as part of our task in continuing to spread the scattered message that slavery is over, in particular to those systems that continue to sell life and kill dreams. We believe that teaching in oppressed communities with accountability to oppressed people can be a subversive act that is ultimately accountable to freedom, not the reproduction of conformity as usual across generations. June Jordan taught in public libraries and schools, in independent underfunded Saturday supplemental programs, in state university classrooms, at Yale, in prisons, in community centers, in children's books, in lectures and in living rooms. The Juneteenth Freedom Academy for Educators draws on Alexis's privileged access to June Jordan's archival materials to use her syllabi, unpublished essays, course readers and student publications as resources for freedom in our lifetimes.

My brilliant and beloved co-conspirator and teaching partner Gardy Perard speaks with the clarity and precision of a mathematician. He says that the primary question for educators is how to bring freedom, possibility, power and connection into every teaching context. Together with Nia Wilson, Nikki Brown, Heather Lee and Zachari Curtis as co-facilitators of the Choosing Sides Program, a SpiritHouse program based in an alternative school in Durham serving students who were long-term suspended or expelled from Durham Public Schools, often for activities related to their involvement in street organizations, we created a student centered atmosphere of transformation and learning based on our internalized memory that the place where academics meet criminalized street organizers is a place of unstoppable power, is the generative collaboration that made the Black Panther one of the fiercest, most effective and most revolutionary organizations we know about.

Our accountability to the particularity and genius of the students that we worked with over the years pushed us to create practices to honor the truth that transformative education is not about transforming students. It is about being present for their inherent brilliance and assisting them in transforming their and our relationships to oppressive institutions. This is sacred work. Because most of our teaching takes place in places impacted by oppressive systems, and because we and any student we might encounter are impacted by oppressive institutions the work of creating liberatory space takes rituals and practices before, during and after the classroom encounter that generate the transformative energy of staying present to each other's brilliance no matter what.

Supportive Course Components:

*weeklong summer institute in Durham, NC to work with templates, practices and to engage readings from June Jordan, the Black Panther Party, and Alexis Pauline Gumbs! (August 15-19)

*full color PDF workbook with posters, pocket reminders and accessories

*first month back interactive and motivating conference calls (August 25-September 25)

*video seminar to share with colleages

*quarterly optional online-enabled participant hosted gatherings

*the presence podcast and reminder PSA's from Alexis

Sign Up:

1. email brokenbeautifulpress@gmail.com BY JULY 20th with your intention to participate and responses to these 3 questions

a. what is the community of students you are accountable to/working with

b. what do you hope to gain from this course

c. what is every possible way to contact you :)

d. how you will support the course

2. Support the course!!!

Support the Course!!!

Your presence is priceless. No one will be turned away from the course for financial reasons. HOWEVER support for the course is crucial. Here are suggested ways to support your participation and to keep transformative autonomous spaces like this thriving:

*Please ask your school, organization, institution, employer, community to support your participation in this priceless experience. The institutional sponsor rate is sliding scale $200-500 depending on your assessment of what your institution can afford.

*Another option is to support the course individually in relatively affordable installments. Become a sustainer of the Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind at a level you feel comfortable with:

*Mobilize your community! Take the opportunity to share the awesome thing you are doing with your mentors, friends, loved ones and allies and allow them to donate in your name. Send them this button and remind them to put your name in "notes" so that I can tell you to thank them!

*And offer a trade! Want to bring other resources to the event? (Food, materials, healing practices, resources I haven't imagined?) Make a proposal.

See you there!!!!!

Love,

Alexis Pauline Gumbs

Indigo Days Podcast: Sacred Black Feminist Blues

Greetings loved ones,

Indigo Days a transformative gathering of warrior healers came to close this past Thursday. But the impact of warrior healers is ETERNAL so of course the impact of Indigo...Ntozake Shange's visionary creation and of the work of black warrior healers does not end. For all of you who attended Indigo Days and blessed the space with your transformative love, and all those who wished they could have been there in body as well as spirit and all those who supported with food, transportation, space, donations and materials this brilliant podcast...created by the resident blues scholars and DJ of the Quirky Black Girls Movement is for YOU!!!!

Enjoy!!!!

[audio http://brokenbeautiful.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/bbs-podcast.mp3]

Direct Link: http://brokenbeautiful.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/bbs-podcast.mp3

P.S. If you'd like to be part of the Indigo Days Conversation...post your brilliance here:

http://blueblackblessing.tumblr.com/submit

If you'd like to support the ongoing sacred work of eternal summer of the black feminist mind (including the Indigo Night School coming this Fall!!!) donate one time here:

or on a monthly basis at a rate that makes sense to you!