Recommended resources shared by Dr. José Miguel Paez (he/him/his), LCSW, Ed.D
CSUN MSW Department – guest speaker March 18, 2021
Johanna Hedva (yo-haw-nuh head-vuh; they/them/their) is a Korean-American writer, artist, musician, and astrologer, who was raised in Los Angeles by a family of witches, and now lives in LA and Berlin. Hedva’s practice cooks magic, necromancy, and divination together with mystical states of fury and ecstasy. There is always the body — its radical permeability, dependency, and consociation — but the task is how to eclipse it, how to nebulize it, and how to cope when this inevitably fails. Ultimately, Hedva’s work, no matter the genre, is different kinds of writing, whether it’s words on a page, screaming in a room, or dragging a hand through water.
Mariame Kaba is an organizer, educator and curator: “My work focuses on ending violence, dismantling the prison industrial complex, transformative justice and supporting youth leadership development. After over 20 years of living and organizing in Chicago, I moved back to my hometown of New York City in May 2016.”
Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot: “As a portraitist, I am witness, archeologist, spider woman, storyteller, and mirror…probing—through art and science, empathy and discernment—the layers and subtexts of human experience; listening for the voices and silences, documenting the good, and honoring the chaos and contradictions, the ironies and ambiguities threaded through our lives.” Check out some of her scholarship by clicking here.
Eve Tuck is Associate Professor of Critical Race and Indigenous Studies at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto. She is Canada Research Chair of Indigenous Methodologies with Youth and Communities. Tuck is the founding director of the Tkaronto CIRCLE Lab. Tuck is Unangax̂ and is an enrolled member of the Aleut Community of St. Paul Island, Alaska. She grew up outside of her community, living in Pennsylvania as a child, and New York City as a young adult. She earned a PhD in Urban Education from The Graduate Center, The City University of New York in 2008. Tuck’s work is on urban education and Indigenous studies. As a whole, her research focuses on how Indigenous social thought can be engaged to create more fair and just social policy, more meaningful social movements, and robust approaches to decolonization. She makes a podcast with graduate students at OISE, University of Toronto, called The Henceforward, on relationships between Indigenous and Black communities on Turtle Island. Check out one of Eve Tuck’s articles “Suspending Damage: A Letter to Communities.”
Thich Nhat Hanh is the living embodiment of mindfulness. His mindfulness teachings and practices have very wide appeal to people from various religious, spiritual, and political backgrounds. He is is one of the best known and most respected Zen masters in the world today, prolific author, poet, and peace and human rights activist. Check out “How to Fight” by clicking here.
Frances Lee is a Cultural Studies scholar: “I am interested in the ways that culture does the work of power.” Check out their article: “Excommunicate Me from the Church of Social Justice.”
Other Open-Access “academic” Resources:
Towards Anti-Carceral Social Work (2020)
This paper addresses social work’s place in the movement to “defund the police.” We argue thatsocial work’s collaboration with police and use of policing constitutes carceral social work. In defining carceral social work, we specify the ways in which coercive and punitive practices are used to manage Black, Indigenous, other people of color and poor communities across four social work arenas – gender-based violence, child welfare, schools, and health and mental health. To inform anti-carceral social work, we provide examples of interventions in these arenas that dismantle police collaborations and point to life-affirming, community-centered, and mutual aid alternatives.
Videos:
Addressing Harm: Building Accountable Communities
Lots of people are using the word “accountability” with respect to various forms of harm. It is clear however that there isn’t any agreement about what this idea means. Is accountability punishment? Is it possible to move towards repairing harm without punishment? Panelists explore transformative justice approaches to addressing different forms of harm. Learn more from this panel discussion featuring adrienne maree brown, Shira Hassan, Mimi Kim, Priya Rai, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna Samarasinha, and Amita Swadhin, and moderated by Ejeris Dixon. Recorded at Building Accountable Communities: A National Gathering on Transforming Harm on April 27, 2019 at Barnard College, NYC.
Abolitionist Social Work: Possibilities, Paradox and Praxis
As demands to defund the police often look to social work as an alternative, panelists Tanisha “Wakumi” Douglas, Mimi Kim, Kirk “Jae” James and Cameron Rasmussen discuss the cautions of and possibilities for abolitionist social work. Social work, historically and today, has been deeply embedded in systems of carceral control. With social work’s legacy of ties to policing and oppressive family regulation through the child welfare system, the social work community is actively imagining and working towards a social work rooted in abolition, turning to traditions of resistance that also characterize its history. This conversation, organized by the Network to Advance Abolitionist Social Work (NAASW) in partnership with Haymarket Books will look at challenging carceral social work through the development and practice of an abolitionist social work. The Network to Advance Abolitionist Social Work (NAASW) is a group of social workers from different parts of the US, building a year-long initiative to support abolitionist work in the field of social work. The initiative includes ongoing political education, research / knowledge generation around carceral and abolition social work, developing an online hub of abolitionist social work resources, and broader organizing and advocacy efforts to build abolitionist ideas and practices into social work.
Transformative Justice in the Era of #DefundPolice: Lessons from the Past, Strategizing for the Future Conversation with Shira Hassan and Mimi Kim
On the Road With Abolition: Assessing Our Steps Along the Way by Haymarket Books
Podcasts:
The Melanated Social Work Podcast
The Melanated Social Work podcast focuses on the intersections of race, masculinity, politics, and mental health in order to decolonize and destigmatize healing practices in communities of color.
WELL FOR CULTURE is is a grassroots initiative which aims to reclaim and revitalize Indigenous health and wellness. We study and implement the lifestyle teachings of our ancestors, meanwhile incorporating new information to contribute to this ancient and ongoing chain of knowledge. Indigenous culture has always been dynamic, and wellness is an inherent aspect.
A conversation about social work, oppression, and liberation.
The official podcast of the Emergent Strategy Ideation Institute – each episode we dive deeply into the life, practice and experimentation of a person or group who we see as living embodiments of emergent strategy. Emergent Strategy is about how we get in right relationship with change – what are the simple interactions that can shift and shape complex systems and patterns? Hosts are Sage Crump, Mia Herndon and adrienne maree brown.
How to Survive the End of the World
A podcast with adrienne maree brown and Autumn Brown on learning from the apocalypse with grace, rigor and curiosity.
Brittany Packnett Cunningham is an activist, educator, and popular TV commentator—and a trusted voice for millions of people interested in social justice. Now, with UNDISTRACTED—an original podcast from The Meteor and Pineapple Street Studios—she aims her focus on the most pressing issues of our time through the lens of intersectional feminism. From the latest headlines to deep-dives with today’s most fascinating changemakers, UNDISTRACTED is your weekly guide to the revolution.
Each episode will go deep on a big story you’ll definitely want to hear more about. We’ll share with you our best investigations (think private prisons, electoral skullduggery, Dark Money, and Trump’s Russia connections), and informative interviews with our reporters and newsmakers. We’re hoping to make your week more informed with the stories that really matter, told by us, the folks you trust for smart, fearless, reporting.
Sites to check out:
The Nap Ministry was founded in 2016 by Tricia Hersey and is an organization that examines the liberating power of naps. Our “REST IS RESISTANCE” framework and practice engages with the power of performance art, site-specific installations, and community organizing to install sacred and safe spaces for the community to rest together. We facilitate immersive workshops and curate performance art that examines rest as a radical tool for community healing. We believe rest is a form of resistance and name sleep deprivation as a racial and social justice issue. We are very active on social media because we view our pages as one of our many tools to help deprogram the masses from grind culture. Please feel free to follow us to learn more about this justice movement.
We must leave evidence. Evidence that we were here, that we existed, that we survived and loved and ached. Evidence of the wholeness we never felt and the immense sense of fullness we gave to each other. Evidence of who we were, who we thought we were, who we never should have been. Evidence for each other that there are other ways to live–past survival; past isolation. Leaving Evidence is a blog by Mia Mingus.
TransformHarm.org is a resource hub about ending violence. We are not an organization. This site offers an introduction to transformative justice. Created by Mariame Kaba and designed by Lu Design Studio, the site includes selected articles, audio-visual resources, curricula, and more. You can use what is here, and submit recommendations to be added to the focus areas listed here. We hope you will use these materials to foster your own education and also share them with your communities to build something new. Only together can we transform our relationships to each other and society. We hope that this site helps in this effort.
Dean Spade has been working to build queer and trans liberation based in racial and economic justice for the past two decades. He works as an Associate Professor at Seattle University School of Law. Dean’s book, Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics and the Limits of Law was published by South End Press in 2011. A second edition with new writing was published in 2015 by Duke University Press. Bella Terra Press published a Spanish editionin 2016. In 2015, Dean released a one-hour video documentary, Pinkwashing Exposed: Seattle Fights Back!, which can be watched free online with English captions or subtitles in several languages. Dean’s new book, Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the next) was published by Verso Press in October 2020.
Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective
The Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective (BATJC) is a community group based out of Oakland, CA working to build and support transformative justice responses to child sexual abuse. We envision a world where everyday people can intervene in incidences of child sexual abuse in ways that not only meet immediate needs but also prevent future violence and harm. Our work consists of securing safety and intervening in current violence, while also building long term spaces of accountability and strategies for healing and resilience for all survivors, bystanders, and those who have caused harm. We also hold labs, studies, and community spaces where people can learn about transformative justice and build up their skills around various topics that undergird this work. Our goal is to strengthen and support our community’s collective capacity to respond to harm in all the spaces they move within.
The Melanated Social Worker Homepage
Melanated Social Work was built to decolonize mental health practices by shifting the dialogue around wellness and healing in communities of color. Founded by four Black and Brown therapists, we host a podcast, provide workshops for current and soon-to-be clinicians, lead trainings on wellness support for Black and Brown communities, host healing spaces, and keep culture all in the service of collective care and liberation.
Dr. Jennifer Mullan (Pronouns: She/ Her) creates spaces for people and organizations to heal. She believes that it is essential to create dialogue to address how mental health is deeply affected by systemic inequities and the trauma of oppression, particularly the well-being of Queer Indigenous Black Brown People of Color (QIBPOC). Dr. Mullan offers a curated Decolonizing Therapy Resource List for practitioners and those seeking services. Follow her on IG @decolonizingtherapy
Sista Docta Alexis Pauline Gumbs
Alexis Pauline Gumbs is a Queer Black Troublemaker and Black Feminist Love Evangelist and an aspirational cousin to all sentient beings. Her work in this lifetime is to facilitate infinite, unstoppable ancestral love in practice….Alexis is the founder of Brilliance Remastered, an online network and series of retreats and online intensives serving community accountable intellectuals and artists in the legacies of Audre Lorde’s profound statement in “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House” that the preceding statement is “only threatening to those…who still think of the master’s house as their only source of support.” Through retreats on ancestor accountable intellectual practice, and online courses on topics from anger as a resource to transnational intellectual solidarity Alexis and her Brilliance Remastered collaborators have nurtured a community of thinkers and artists grounded in the resources that normative institutions ignore….All of Alexis’s work is grounded in a community building ethic and would not be possible without her communities of accountability in Durham, NC the broader US Southeast and the global south. As a co-founder member of UBUNTU A Women of Color Survivor-Led Coalition to End Gendered Violence, Warrior Healers Organizing Trust and Earthseed Land Collective in Durham, NC, a member of the first visioning council of Kindred Southern Healing Justice Network and a participant in Southerners on New Ground, Allied Media Projects, Black Women’s Blueprint and the International Black Youth Summit for more than a decade she brings a passion for the issues that impact oppressed communities and an intimate knowledge of the resilience of movements led by Black, indigenous, working class women and queer people of color.
This website is conceived and designed by Tema Okun with support by and from many genius colleagues and friends:
These pages contain artwork, poetry, quotes, and videos from racial justice activists, ancestors, warriors, and healers. I am hoping to transgress white supremacy culture in the website’s design and content in an attempt to acknowledge how we learn in so many different ways. I want to make this a space where you can linger if you want to do that, dig in, consider, reflect, question, go “ah ha” or “oh dear” or “yes.” The home page offers a general overview and serves as one gateway to the pages about the characteristics (see buttons below). Please also take a look at the list of brilliant human beings who offered to read the website and give feedback before and as it launched. You will also find a printable downloadable version of the website at the bottom of this page. The what is it? page summarizes one take on setting white supremacy culture in its historical context. The intent is to offer a way of understanding what white supremacy culture is, explain the use of the word “source” and of the word “we.” The page includes a juicy video conversation with Susan Raffo about white supremacy and belonging. On the about page, you will find a longer explanation about the why behind the website. I take a quick look at white supremacy’s roots as a tool of the Christian ruling class, and I offer a short bio. This page also includes credits to and for those who informed the original article and make up beloved community for and with me now.
The characteristics page is the gateway to the pages about each of the characteristics (as is this home page). The page also offers an explanation of what white supremacy culture characteristics are not, as well as a request to avoid weaponizing the characteristics. You will also find a printable downloadable version of the characteristics. The racial equity principles page offers ten grounding principles developed by the Dismantling Racism Works collaborative. These principles have, in our experience, proven useful in guiding racial justice practice. I use at least one of them every single day. On the and… page, you will find some of the many ways that creative people have taken the original list and illustrated it, adapted it, revised it, and improved it.
On the joy page, I have added links to a range of different things that remind us of our ability to cultivate our creativity in the service of our joyful resistance to oppressive dynamics, in the service of joyful energies that keep us going in our commitment to our individual and collective freedom. My hope is that you will send me some version of whatever brings you joy if you would like me to add it to that page.
