I was lying in bed on Monday. Thinking about how I was simultaneously so inspired and fired up by al the incredible direct actions and freedom struggles- from the Blackout Collective’s all Black action shutting down BART on Black Friday by locking down at West Oakland BART, to everyone who refused to shop on Black Friday and made sales drop 11%- and full of grief and rage at the fact that a Black person is killed by law enforcement every 28 hours, the brutal murders by white supremacists of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Renisha McBride and so many others.
But I am chronically ill and it is cold and I can’t take part in a lot of direct actions or stay at the rally too long because I’ll get sick or flare and be unable to work for a while. So what was something I *could* do, that was accessible?
Well. I could donate a day’s income- on Thursday December 18 – from my intuitive healing practice to Black Lives Matter. I could do that. I got excited thinking about it. That could be around $300- a lot more than my individual $25 donation! It felt really good.
I posted about it on Facebook, where i get a lot of my clients. People were into it. Another radical healer, Susan Raffo, was excited and said she;d do the same thing with her bodywork practice.
Wednesday morning, we talked, and we put out a call- how many healers would be into doing the same thing on the 18th? The response blew up so fast. On the Allied Media Conference listserv for folks who have worked at the Healing Justice Practice Space and on Facebook, everyone got excited. People offered to read cards, do lineups, donate their day’s income as sex workers, therapists and massage therapists. Dori Midnight made a flower essence called The Fire This Time, to support resiliency in the midst of struggle and grief. Laura Luna donated one day’s income from her Queer Fat Chicana vintage Etsy shop. Heaven Mousalem donated all the proceeds from her Queer Shimmy class, which just happened to be on December 18, My computer blew up. At the end of the day, 55 healers had offered to donate money to Black Lives Matter, from across North America and beyond, and healers in Minneapolis, Chicago, Oakland, New York and Detroit were figuring out if they could offer group practice spaces.
Adaku Utah, the genius Black Queer healer who has held down Black healing justice spaces at Ferguson and in New York, put out a separate call asking for folks to donate free healing for Black organizers and Black and POC folks dealing with grief and pain from the verdicts. We decided, on late night FB chat, that the events were siblings and would love and support each other- because the movement needed money, and Black freedom dreamers needed free healing.
Doing this work feels like the best kind of witchcraft. The best kind of lightening energy, wher things coalesce when the time is right and people all are yearning for the same thing together. It feels like we are casting a spell, sending one giant chunk of change as a winter solstice present to Black Queer Freedom Dreamers who are themselves casting a spell of healing. And it feels generative in the way I love about the AMC, in the “We focus on where we are powerful, not on where we are powerless” way. This is some of the power we have. No matter what systemic power we don’t have.
The event is here: https://www.facebook.com/events/728881563862374
Adaku’s google doc where you can offer free healing to Black folks if you are a BIPOC healer, or someone who wants to and can listen, write love letter to organizers, hug, hold space: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19DAe5-cyJ-oFsRAkCexhZ9YarPCK0mSYekCC1r2LTxs/edit#gid=0
let’s keep up our revolutionary dreaming.
and- when I started getting overwhelmed by 48 FB notifications an hour and wondering if weird white culturally appropriative people were gonna jump on board- I stopped and took a breath with Susan. And thought about how I could do this work joyfully, without burnout or stress overwhelm or overwhelm period and my back going out and my body going into a flare. And I am still thinking about and practicing this- how to ride this energy joyfully. How to pause. And how, right now, to go to bed when it is 1:40 AM and turn the computer off
in love,
Leah
Brownstargirl Tarot 