Timeline of the PMC including practices and protocols
2014-2015 The People’s Movement Center opens
The People’s Movement Center was founded by Alejandra Tobar Alatriz to be a space for practitioners to come together and share individual and collective o erings for the community. The PMC was first established as an individual business under Alejandra’s name. Alejandra identified the building (in partnership with Z Puppets who would manage the front of the building), did the (immense) amount of internal work needed to turn an old church (and Domino’s Pizza space and recording studio and corner store) into a community space She pulled together a first
(FromaflyercreatedduringthePMC’sfirstyear)
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team of people to provide both labor and vision. Her vision was always to evolve into a collective process and she saw herself as holding the launch to support that process
The physical space was a main room with a wooden floor for group activities and a side seating area for folks waiting or for small meetings We shared a bathroom with Z Puppets on the first floor that was through the door that divided our spaces There were then stairs to the basement where we had a bathroom and two bodywork rooms with a small storage space and sink in between. The bathroom in the basement was painted with a sparkly rust gold paint that was pretty awesome Pulling together the space was truly a community event Folks brought their kids and partners and neighbors and curious kin and everyone was all hands in.
Folks at the PMC decided to speed up their work in order to open the space in alignment with the national Healing Justice For Black Lives Matters event on December 18, 2014. Some of the reflections following the PMC’s opening included noticing that the event was made up of mostly white attendees attending something at a majority BIPOC organization This raised questions that the collective would sit with for a number of years: how to be a multiracial space in the Twin Cities that resists the centering of whiteness.
Shortly after this event, in January 2015, the core collective managing the PMC came together for a visioning check in. We called it “building our culture.” This was our opportunity to pause and to notice that we had opened our doors, and now what did we want to see happen? Some of the visions shared include:
● A place for sustaining movement/movements through healing work and bodywork, a place where inspiration and recharging and ideas and relationships are built to support larger movement work.
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● A place where play is our discipline.
● A space for mentoring; for learning about and teaching on a healing justice framework
● Centering indigenous sovereignty and the awareness that we are doing healing work on land that we have not been invited to inhabit
● And then, following this visioning time, a very lengthy to do list
At the same time as we were building our culture, we also held a fundraiser to help us get the final materials we needed to be fully open. Organized by some of the PMC community members, the fundraiser was a reading, a gathering, and a local launch, all at the same time.
A few weeks later, we held the second part of this building the culture conversation, and these are some of what rose up:
● Deepening our understanding of intersectional. “Acknowledging our multiple identities means that we are not only one: oppressed or oppressor There is beauty in our multipleness.”
● Going deeper into our identities: what surprises us, what moves us, what do we want to lift up?
● The rest of the time was focused on us thinking together about what it means to center BIPOC and queer and trans people in our space
What followed was then the rhythm that we aspired to throughout our time together but only sometimes managed: core group meet and then share at community meeting and then back again. For the length of the PMC, we created and recreated multiple structures, trying to identify how to hold a mountain of work without burning anyone out. While Alejandra was the first owner, once we became a collectively run organization, we went through four di erent ownership groups
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Throughout these early months, we had the energy of new creation which means we facilitated a constant stream of gatherings, meetings and more Just one example in April 2015, there was an event celebrating the life and work of Selena as a gathering for Latinx love and healing. We were on fire!
In July 2015, we put together an orientation document to support new people joining the PMC The orientation document included information on cleaning and physical space protocols, on how to be in the space, on the current structure of PMC management, on how to pay for the times when you rent the space, and on the meeting times for the practitioner gatherings. At around this time, we organized ourselves through a committee structure with the committees being: finance, facilitation, programming, communications, legal, new practitioners and physical space. Our goal was to have everyone involved with the PMC be on at least one committee so that we could operate the space collectively.
At the end of 2015, we continued to have culture conversations and the one that defined the second half of this year focused on disability justice In particular, as practitioners, we spent time thinking through how we could weave DJ into all of our spaces. For us, this meant building a scent free policy, getting a ramp to get into our space and having a clear ramp to get to the bathroom on the ground floor It also included creating a way to provide bodywork on the ground floor, such as pulling together screens and lighting to create a closed area upstairs.
2015/2016 Second wave:
During the PMC’s second wave, we structurally moved from an owner operator business (thank you, Alejandra) to a shared ownership model, working with a pro bono attorney to get the right paperwork in order.
During this period, we continued to try a lot of new things but we couldn’t keep up with our own excitement anymore Community response about our work was growing and the number of emails and phone calls was increasing.
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We started a Movement Lab and yoga classes and continued to hold readings and public events while also figuring out how to manage a business
We also continued to struggle to have regular practitioners paying a regular rent. We were committed to supporting emerging practitioners which meant practitioners who did not have large or regular practice sessions This meant our income was tight and the core group lived on a month by month basis watching how dollars came in and went out. Our ongoing economic stability kept pushing against the breadth of our vision and the programming we wanted to do At the same time, we continued to o er the space and to build trust and relationship with each other.
During this time, we began a fiscal sponsorship relationship with Pangea World Theater which enabled us to apply for grants and to receive other kinds of donations This was at a moment when there still wasn’t much support for healing work within movement spaces. Funders did not yet support healing justice work, unlike in 2022 where an increasing number of funders are looking for ways to support this part of movement building
After the Healing Justice for Black Lives Matter event, we decided to continue o ering a regular collective healing practice space. We called the event Collective Bodywork Day and worked with a mix of PMC practitioners and other community practitioners to o er low cost care for people in a group setting At one point this shifted to include a full weekend of care, inviting people to come in and to try di erent modalities. We talked a lot about care literacy, about the ways in which we could safely support people to experience all kinds of care to find what suited them the best
And we continued to try new ideas. Some of these were practices that various practitioners at the PMC wanted to try and some were strategies for bringing more cash into our cashbox We also brought in a lot of local and national names to hold workshops and book readings including: Cara Page, Mia Mingus, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna Samarsinha, Eli Clare, Jaime Grant, Carolyn Holbrook and others.
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And the PMC held healing circles for and with specific communities including a Black healing circle, and Asian/API healing circle
Beginning in 2015, we began a semi regular newsletter for spreading the news about events at the PMC as well as profiling other related work in the community
2017 2018 Getting clearer/stronger with structure
By the start of 2017, we had been around for a few years and were beginning to develop more stable structures to support our work We shifted our organizational structure again, consolidating ownership and core management into one group of people. In 2017, we began a monthly sponsor program through paypal and, at any given point, had between 50 and 120 monthly sponsors generating between 800 and 1200 dollars a month This significantly helped as we continued to struggle with generating enough stable income through rent of the bodywork spaces.
We also took a moment to regroup and strengthen our purpose statement We named ourselves in this way:
ThePeople’sMovementCenterbelievesthathealers*areanessentialpartof movementbuildingandsocialchange Wesupport, sustain, nurtureandgrowthe practicesofhealers, particularlythosewhoarePOC/Native/queerandtrans*. From thisbase, weprovideandholdspaceforcommunityhealingpracticesand strategies boththosedevelopedbythePMCandthoseledbyothercommunity members. Becausewebelievethathealingisaboutintentionalsustainedworkand immediateurgentresponse, PMCwillshowuptopartneronspecificcommunity needsand , ingeneral , asahealingjusticecollectivedeeplyinvestedinourshared liberation
WhilethePMCcontinuestobeintheprocessofbuildingourwork , someofhowwe currentlyorwillsoonlivethispurposeinclude:
● collectivesupporttowardsbuildingthepracticesofpoc, native, queerand transpractitionerssothattheyaresustainableandgrowing
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● trainingsandotherformsofcollectivesupportandlearningthatsupportsthe deepeningofourworkinservicetocollectiveliberationforpractitioners includingthosewhoarenotmembersofPMC
● individualbodyworkavailableatthePMConaslidingfeescale
● individualbodyworkmadeavailableatotherlocationsinsupportofactions, eventsormomentsofspecificstruggle
● PMC ledgroupeventsthatsupportcollectivehealing, liberationandlearning
● Community ledgroupevents, bothclosedandopen, thatareinalliancewith ourpurpose
● Involvementinpartnershipsandcommunityconversationsthatfocuson culturalandindividualhealing
Around this same time, we built an infrastructure for advertising and managing rentals which also began to bring in more income. This included bringing in more materials that would make renting more accessible, setting up cleaning rotas, and working with the space to set up protocols that provided ease for scheduling, private space and collective space. During all of this time, we had physical structure issues to contend with: a second basement that was filled with mold, and other old building issues that took away from our overall accessibility Our physical team worked to meet these but also struggled with the same capacity issues as the rest of the team.
It was around this period when conversations about the healing justice framework as a part of movement and change work began to spread across the community We began getting called by nonprofits and state organizations and other collectives to provide di erent kinds of healing or collective facilitation work. At this point, the PMC was the most visible organization doing this kind of work locally, although we weren’t the only ones This built income for our members but it didn’t build income for the PMC
We also began to talk about project incubation or the ways in which we could support other HJ projects, either those started by PMC members or by those in the community The Youth Healing Justice Network (YHJN) was led by Rebeka Ndosi in
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partnership with other community members, particularly Irreducible Grace. YHJN held a range of gatherings for and with young people of color and those who work with young people of color. Additionally, alongside the work, Rebeka created a series of cards on yoga poses featuring young people of color in the poses
In the summer of 2017, we held a block party for our neighborhood and broader community. This had long been a vision for the PMC; to be a place not only for folks who found their way to us, but for those who lived alongside us.
With music and poetry and kids games, collective bodywork and a food truck, we had hundreds of people come to the corner of Chicago Avenue south and 41st Street. In preparation for the event, we fancied up the outside of our building with some new painting and were gifted with a design by Olivia Levins Holden that we then sold as t shirts As part of this event, we also built a protocol on how we recognize the land that we practice on. We spent some time doing a deeper history of the land, including going further into understanding this corner in relationship to the traditional territories of the Dakota people as well as on the edge of the red lining district in south Minneapolis
In 2018, recognizing that we wanted to support our practitioners even as we were trying to build our capacity to support ourselves, we started the Owners Emergency Fund This was our attempt to practice mutual aid as we established that owners could ask for an emergency grant to help meet basic needs. We were getting a bit
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more cash in so we solidified our stipending practice for work, paying people $250/month for their work in managing the space
We began to define ourselves further, identifying more fully that one of our roles was to support emerging practitioners. To define an emerging practitioner, we said this: if two of the things on the list below are true for you, then you are an emerging practitioner If less than two or none of them are true, then you are not an emerging practitioner:
● You have been actively seeking clients for two years or less and you are seeing at least 6 people a week
● You have been actively seeking clients for four years or less and you are seeing less than 2 people a week.
● You use a sliding fee scale and rarely receive over $50 for a session
● You have less than 5 clients who see you regularly (and a client seeing you once a month is still a regular client)
● You do not actively and regularly receive requests by new clients (less than 10 people every three months) of course not valid if you have stated on the website that you aren’t accepting new clients
We also formalized a protocol we had been working with for defining how we hold “ open space. ” In particular, this is what we shared:
The People’s Movement Center lifts up and centers marginalized healing practices and communities We particularly center the lives and experiences of people of color and indigenous people and queer and trans people. In order to ensure that these are the experiences that are centered in our rooms, when the PMC holds open events or workshops, we ask participants to register ahead of time Our intent is to create rooms that are at least 75% BIPOC and a majority queer or trans identified participants This means that the size of our workshops is sometimes based on the people who register. We see this work as being a regular practice to shift the patterns of
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unintentionally centering white experiences and/or straight and gender nonconforming experiences in our public open spaces We believe that part of healing is also about shifting patterns and habits so that new ways of being can emerge. Although you register, you are not “in” the workshop until you receive a confirmation email. We will send out confirmation emails as we track the demographics of those who are registering
And events keep taking place, from collective bodywork days to readings Carolyn Holbrook o ered a series of writing workshops on writing about trauma. Cara Page came and, along with Susan Ra o, held a workshop on healing justice that looked at the role of the medical industrial complex in shaping care practices
At around this time, we were approached by a community member, someone who was in a relationship with a number of the PMC members
She asked if she could help us in some way support people who can’t a ord bodywork to come and receive bodywork at the PMC. A number of us had already been in conversation about how to establish a People’s Fund and Gri en in particular had been focused on dreaming up a structure for it before the o er was made. The Fund’s purpose was simple: “To increase access to bodywork for folks who would otherwise not be able to receive and to increase practitioner sustainability so that individual bodyworkers are not personally carrying the cost of accessible sessions” Happily, while the PMC closed, the fund continues to this day
As we neared the end of 2017 and moved into 2018, now fully three years into managing the space, the core group members are beginning to get weary. We have brought in new people and have continued to face the same struggles from the beginning: not enough economic capacity to pay ourselves for the amount of work we are holding and not enough time spent together in community to do more than work. We tried many di erent tactics: community family meals, weekend retreats and more but, as is true for so many mostly volunteer movement organizations, our people did not have the time and space needed to do this deeper work together due to other forms of paid work, the needs of our children and elders, and general burnout. We decided to fundraise to hire a paid sta person.
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2018/2019: Bringing in our first contracted person
With bringing in a new person, we had one last organizational structure shift We were now organized with a paid sta person at the center, who we called our CNS or Central Nervous System, with the owners, and the second circle around them. The second circle was made up of all of the practitioners who were part of the space but were not the owners
This final chapter is a sad one. Right before we decided to fundraise to hire a CNS, we almost closed our doors. People were tired and wanted to step back and take a break At the same time, we still wanted to see the PMC succeed Some of us were beginning to take sabbaticals and other kinds of time o , which was gorgeously needed, but which also contributed to a lack of continuity in how the work moved forward. When we hired the CNS, while perhaps none of us would have said it at the time, we had hopes that they would come in and just, well, kind of save us As a collective of owners, we instituted a rotating supervision process without spending time building agreement on how and what we thought supervision should be and how to manage the new work structure. Bringing someone in was like a “fingers crossed this will make it all better” moment and instead, our burnout was louder than our hope The whole scenario was di cult for the person we hired, di cult for the owners and di cult for the second circle It was during a planning meeting, when two of us were holding the PMC while the rest of the owners were on sabbatical and break, that we looked at each other and said we can’t do this anymore.
After that, things began to move fairly quickly We first talked with the rest of the ownership, to see if anyone wanted to step in and carry the PMC to a new version of itself. They all said no. We then checked in with the Second Circle to see if anyone wanted to step in and carry the PMC And then we started moving through the closing process We brought in someone to help us with the transition As owners, we were mostly in alignment with each other with the closing, but we were also tired and sad. We closed the physical space on July 31, 2019 and did the final sunset of the PMC as a legal and fiscal entity on December 31, 2019. It is startling to notice that lockdown for the pandemic began only a few months later
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Inthewinter, PMCeventsmeantamountainofshoesrightatthedoor . Asevents ended , therewasusuallyabody rushofshoehuntingwithakindofcollective “hey, where’smyblueboot”mutualinvestigationparty
And so after the outline of what we did and when we did it, we move into a conversation about what it felt like, what we learned, and what we miss…..
*******
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Interviews
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IHOTU JENNIFER ALI | INTERVIEW
Interviewed10/5/21
PMCrole:SecondCircle
Ihotu (meaning “love” in the Idoma language) is a reproductive health and racial health disparities researcher, cultural healer and bodyworker, and womb massage therapist She was raised by multiple cultures and countries, as the granddaughter of a traditional chief in Nigeria and Polish Irish farmers in Minnesota
A graduate of Columbia University’s School of Public Health, Ihotu conducted maternal health research with the United Nations before becoming a doula in 2011. Fascinated by the connections between western and indigenous medicines, Ihotu spent a decade studying Afro indigenous and global cultural practices for childbirth, ancestral and womb healing. Now as a doctoral student in chiropractic care, Ihotu studies the physiological impact of trauma, grief and racial violence in the body, and integrates indigenous, eastern, and western medicines into a specialty practice treating chronic physical and emotional pain.
Ihotu is a co founder of the Minnesota Healing Justice Network, featured in Rolling Stone magazine for her focus on rest in Minneapolis after the killing of George Floyd, and is now Founder and Director of the Oshun Center for Intercultural Healing. She o ers advanced learning and mentorship for health care workers, healers, and birthworkers in reproductive justice, anti racism in medicine, and economic justice tools like the sliding scale fee She is an appointed member of the Minnesota Maternal Mortality Review and active in local birth justice work You can follow her work at wwwihotualicom or on social media at @ihotuali
Value of a healing justice space
Oh my god, healing justice spaces, during COVID and at other times, are so needed! And not just healing space, but it would be awesome if there was teaching as well because it's become clear to me there's no possible way, at least in the BIPOC community, there's no possible way we have enough healers or that healers are equipped to do what's needed At this point, I feel embarrassingly unable to o er what I know is needed
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Advice
Everyone I've talked to has talked about capacity and has given advice like slow down and get support for the owners themselves
Because I wasn't in the inner circle I don’t know exactly what those folks needed. It seems like we needed more funding in general. Maybe more conversations about money There is so much confusion about money We're trying to create new world budgets, while we still have old world bills If you have a sliding fee scale practice, that's important and beautiful, but maybe you’ll also need a coach or extra support to make sure you can make your own bottom line, to sustain yourself in the work.
Just before the PMC closed, I was starting to do equity and abundance workshops and had worked with Gri en on a sliding fee scale research and report (link at the end of the report) because I felt that sustainability was important. How we do this work and how we sustain ourselves is everything, it’s the future of everyone ’ s access to healing and medicines
Income and Minnesota economics
I don't think I realized how di erently I thought about money than other people in the group, and how that a ected keeping my relationships with other people The fact that I came from New York meant I had a di erent approach In New York, you're supposed to hustle Black people hustle in New York that's a lot of the culture of what it is to be Black in New York, to “win” at the capitalism game (because our ancestors had lost at it) and here in Minnesota, I felt more of an anti capitalism culture altogether
As a person of color in New York, at least at that time, I felt the sense that when you make money, it means you've made it. You want to be able to buy a house for your mom, or build generational wealth, or see people like you in positions of power and privilege There was not a lot of conversation around capitalism and rejecting those systems, or the reality that even wealthy Black people still experience racism and the loss of humanity that can come with chasing material wealth.
I wanted to make my practice accessible to my community, but my survival as a practitioner at times conflicted with that I had grown up on Food Stamps and in Section 8 housing. I was recently divorced and had to cover my rent and help my family while also healing from heartache, and I was not in a position to give my
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work away. People of color, and people with complicated histories are often not in a position to give our work away, even though our communities need it
I want my work to be accessible, but I also want to thrive. How do we negotiate between those two things so that neither goes away?
My rate was $175 and I would lower it for anybody who asks, down to $75, for example, or use the People's Fund to go all the way down to $0 To get by, I also had a lot of clients who were financially comfortable. Doing it this way feels more common in New York. At the PMC, I felt like bodywork wasn’t the main source of income for a lot of folks, perhaps it was heart work that unfortunately didn’t pay their bills, or something they did on the side Perhaps more of them wanted it to be their entire profession, if it could have been more financially supported.
In Minnesota, the population of well o people of color is far smaller than in New York, a city of over 9 million, where over half of residents are people of color, including large communities of Black and Brown wealth I was told stories about how Harlem became a historic Black neighborhood, because of the economic diversity of famous civil rights writers, artists, and politicians in Brownstones who lived alongside public housing apartments, and how the culture of Blackness kept the neighborhood together, while the economic diversity kept the city running In Harlem, I was able to sustain my practice with primarily Black families as clients, of both low and high income levels. It’s an entirely di erent economic situation here, and that a ects all of us for whom work with Black and Brown clients is our love and our priority
The lesson I learned from the PMC is that now my work always includes a solidarity network or third party funding to help support our discounted services. We have white people and people of color with privilege, behind the scenes, fundraising with us, and helping us get into broader audiences I realized that in Minnesota, it's near impossible to settle our nervous systems into financial stability unless we're working in some way with people of privilege. We have to take care, to find the right people with privilege who are doing their inner work, and stay vigilant, so that it truly is a supportive and healing relationship, of renegotiated power balance
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MALIA BURKHART | INTERVIEW
InterviewedMay26, 2021 PMCrole:Owner, SecondCircle
Somatic Massage
My role as a practitioner is to help each client gain a better sense of their own body through massage and movement Sessions may include: Fascia unwinding through deep steady pressure, releasing patterns of holding and tension; Supported movement and assisted stretching; Deep muscle tissue release, outlining and describing specific muscles to release and relax; Quiet, slow, and more subtle forms of touch that communicate with the body with gentleness and calm; and subtle methods to integrate shifts and changes Every session is unique, responding to your body’s needs For more information,visit wwwkochikaracom
Moving Stories Workshops
“Moving Stories” is a form of body sourced improvisation involving authentic movement and spontaneous storytelling Memories are stored in our kinesthetic memory By freeing our bodies to express, we rediscover these experiences and describe them in poetry and stories In these workshops, I guide participants in following their own intuition, and build group trust as we learn to hold safe space for each others’ explorations Check here for more information about workshops and performances: https://artsbymaliacom/category/performance art
Value of the PMC
I was excited and honored to be part of a group of high vibration, healing oriented people creating something collectively together.
The space we created was refreshing, loving and supportive And, even though it was sometimes hard, there was a deep sense of respect and love I really treasure that experience.
I hope something like this can spring up again in the future It's so very needed
We need more POC practitioners and it's just so hard to start up: Renting a space is tough when you don't yet know if you have clients to cover the rent. I really believe in the mission, and hope that something like it can emerge.
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Space
One piece of advice is to get the space you choose as close as possible to the actual space that you want There are a lot of compromises that we made, and selecting the space that we were in meant a lot of things that weren't ideal, such as, no natural light and needing stairs to get to the massage rooms.
The space itself limited how many people we could have at any given point There were only so many appointment times available and so only so many people who could use it. If we had had a bigger space, maybe we could have had more members or more rotation of folks to step in when others got tired.
Organizational structure
We tried on many di erent organizational structures and leadership structures. Next time I’d be more cautious of watching how some people take on too much and then get burned out. Maybe we could have built in some sort of cycling, or term limits or phasing in and out of the core team They were doing the majority of the heavy lifting They weren’t really compensated for the work and it was a lot
I stepped out to the second circle partway through the life of PMC. I was closer to the center of the circle in the middle of things for three years and then the last two years I stepped back to focus on being a parent I really saw how much it was taxing Susan and Ayo and Gri en in particular.
I really liked some of the decentralized o erings that we had, like o ering work in parks or during protests, and even having work o ered out of an ice shanty right after the killing of Jamar Clark One of the main roles that I held in the PMC was in co coordinating our Collective Bodywork Days. Those events were really successful in raising funds for PMC, and connecting new clients with PMC practitioners. That was a beautiful use of the space and the energy we raised together amplified the healing work
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AYO CLEMONS | INTERVIEW
Interviewed7/22/21
PMCrole:Owner
Ayo Clemons is a somatic coach, facilitator, and bodyworker. With fifteen years of experience as a community organizer, racial justice advocate, and facilitator, Ayo has utilized her skills to connect with hundreds of people to articulate their vision and advocate for change in their communities.
As a Global Somatics Practitioner, Ayo’s personal somatic practice began in 2012 and later transformed into supporting others with healing trauma, connecting with their bodies, and recognizing their individual and collective power.
Ayo joined the People's Movement Center in 2014 to support space for individual and collective healing In 2016 she created Ayo’s Somatics where she supports individuals and organizations to understand how to navigate the ways trauma and resilience show up in the body through massage, energy work, meditation, and somatic coaching wwwAyoSomaticscom
Beginnings
There was a big group of us in the very beginning, I think there were 16 people in that first circle. It took some time to break things down and figure out who's going to be part of the leadership team and who wants to move forward. It was a kind of get in where you fit in type of thing
When we looked around the table, we saw that we were a constellation of people that support our various communities. So when we talked about our work we said that the PMC was a space for black, brown, indigenous, trans and queer folks because that’s who were
We were around for five years and, in that time, I think we did a lot of really good work. We were able to support and serve hundreds of people locally and nationally through one on one bodywork, training, and facilitation There were also a lot of other work opportunities that came through the PMC Susan and I did a year of training and healing support with Voices for Racial Justice, for example
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There were many of us who were starting our practices, and some with more established practices, who found a home base at PMC It gave us support to keep things moving and expand our practices.
Working to not replicate systems we’ve come into
As far as challenges go it was a lot of the same that I see in many di erent groups and organizations We have this beautiful purpose We're committed to it But how we show up and actually do this work, knowing that we all came up in an unjust system, and we're all indoctrinated by it, that’s what’s hard. We spent a lot of time figuring out how to show up in the best way, the most relational way possible
I really love in adrienne maree brown’s book EmergentStrategywhen she talks about moving at the speed of trust. It’s such a key piece in building sustainability and planning for sustainability. I feel like we had trust in a lot of ways and still there was more of a slowing down and listening to ourselves and each other, that was needed to cultivate a deeper sense of trust We didn't close because we couldn't pay our bills, we didn't close because we were being kicked out of our space or anything like that. We closed because we were working over capacity for too long, and didn't take enough time to check in with ourselves and each other about the impact of that
This way of working and being is a part of white supremacy culture. Depending on your proximity to white supremacy, you will embody white supremacy ’ s pace, and you will embody white supremacy ’ s way of engaging relationally And then when you're in a group with people of di erent communities, di erent cultural backgrounds, di erent perspectives, di erent ways of being in conflict, of communicating, and you're moving at this, white supremacist system pace, trying to build something from the ground up, it makes sustainability di cult
As the owners I felt like we had pretty good relationships at the time Looking back, I see we needed to work more on accountability, on how we were accountable to each other and the work. That would have supported sustainability. When it comes to accountability and relationships, it’s important that it’s baked into the system that you're creating You can't just give voice to it and then expect it to happen It takes time and practice to embody.
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“Moving at the speed of trust”
There was a closeness between the owners but we didn’t do a good job of bringing the second circle along with us We didn’t involve them in di erent points of decision making or support. Some people just wanted a place to practice. Some people wanted to have more of a voice in the organization, but there wasn't room for everyone to have a voice. That was a hard part for me because I felt like I was one of the people who kept pushing to try to make room for others, but then there would be di erent blocks that seemed logical but ultimately were not good This was hard because I think there were relationships impacted by how the core group was moving that I didn’t always feel comfortable with.
All that being said, I think we all did the best we could All of this is a part of what it means to be a part of a group working to make something happen. Especially when there’s a lot of people at the table with di erent perspectives. I really appreciate every single person who was a part of the PMC, who has come through the PMC, it was a powerful group and experience to be a part of
The advice I would give? Before embarking on a major project, get to know the people who you're working with, know their values, know how they move, spend some time getting to know each other So you really know what you're stepping into So you're not caught o guard when things come up and can support each other with authentic care and understanding.
Have a plan or some practice in the relationship about how you want to navigate accountability and agreements A lot of the preliminary work that goes into creating a group or an organization is about relationships, talking about what our values are and how we are going to embody them. It’s about getting clear about what sustainability looks like. It’s about taking intentional time to really plan and look at all of these pieces of relationship, who we are, where we come from, how that impacts how we move, before launching A lot of people don't want to do that work
I think that’s such a big mistake. Every situation is di erent, so sometimes you need to jump in and start getting things moving, but at the PMC we jumped in, we started getting things moving right away and then we had to keep up with bills, we had to keep up with this keep up with that, and the things we hadn’t talked about started to clog us up.
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Self management and group dynamics
If we're talking about sustainability, let's also talk about energy management How do you manage your energy as the individual who is holding a bunch of work? How you do or don't do that is going to impact the group. What you do at home or don’t do at home is going to a ect how you show up in your group. It’s going to impact the energy that you do and don’t have for the work.
I want to be someone who takes the time to listen to and truly be with the people in my life which means I have to ask myself, am I getting enough sleep? Am I drinking enough water, am I eating? Am I tending to my own needs? These things impact the group as well as your own body
As healers, we hold space for folks, we do our best to tune into what it is that the person in front of me needs. I’ll ask myself Am I listening to every level of what I'm picking up, what are the vibrations that I'm picking up, what are the sensations in my body, how can I support this person in being with or moving through what is happening? I know I’m on track when there is a resonance, a clarity, and a deepening of capacity voiced by the people I am working with. The level of sensitivity that supports this is continually cultivated by doing my own inner work. We have to be willing to look at our whole self and our shadow, be with our shortcomings, and be with the truth of how everything is impacting us and how we are impacting everyone else. I believe this practice is key for us as practitioners especially as we engage in collective work.
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GRIFFEN JEFFRIES | INTERVIEW
Interviewed9/30/20
PMCrole:Owner
Gri en (Fen) Je ries is a bodyworker and facilitator who brings deep listening and a commitment to integrity to all aspects of the work he does He honors both the inherent wisdom of our bodies to heal, along with the power and necessity of support from others
Gri en draws on diverse training to partner with people in 1:1 healing including di erent amounts of talking, movement, and hands on work. The frameworks he has most training in and draws from most prominently are Internal Family Systems, Somatic Experiencing, and Craniosacral therapy
Gri en’s group facilitation work is focused on supporting change processes and transformational experiences He has experience with a broad range of facilitation ranging from conflict resolution to small group healing intensives to large group meeting facilitation.
Gri en arrived at this work through his own healing journey including ongoing re connection to di erent parts of himself and the world He continues to deepen and expand his understanding and awareness of the many ways systems of oppression reside in, around, and between our bodies and how this work can be part of resisting, surviving, fighting, and shifting those systems and creating, remembering, strengthening, and sustaining other ways of being. He brings his experiences and identities as a queer and trans person of european descent and works to be accountable and in authentic solidarity towards liberation and healing for all individually and collectively
Abundance and scarcity
When I reflect on the PMC, I feel a mix of gratitude and grief and power and abundance and scarcity and possibility and learning and pain, all at once All of us who were the PMC in that shape at that time and place were such an imperfect and beautiful and incomplete small part of all of the work of healing justice It is my hope that with this report there can be communication from this small part of the body of the work to other parts past, present and future
PMC was a space It was a space for “the justice in healing and the healing in justice” When I look back what stands out to me most are the concrete ways this happened In this space people came and went for 1:1 sessions, connections happened in the waiting space, navigation between partners or ex partners or co workers or friends or metamours or lovers all coming to see di erent or the same practitioners joyful and challenging moments of overlap. We navigated 2 bodywork rooms side by side that did not have complete sound privacy and we talked with our clients about what it meant to hear
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someone ’ s cries next door in the middle of a deeply quiet session We talked about what was unhelpful disruption and what was remembering that we are always connected in our healing We asked our people, where is it helpful to remember and be met with all of our community interconnections, and where does that cause unnecessary complication to the work we are all doing? There were many questions we sat in in the mix of deeply practical and ideological overlap
Disrupting individualized healing
For me, the PMC disrupted in (however small) practical ways some of the white capitalist patriarchal colonial shapes of individualized healing. I was early in my 1:1 practice when the PMC opened, and it was powerful to grow my practice in that space. I know many 1:1 healing practitioners experience isolation in their work and for me I had the gift of getting going with my practice in the context of collectivity. It also was supportive financially, as the arrangement was that rooms were rented by the hour (as opposed to needing to pay a flat monthly rate), and also at times we had supportive rates that were di erent for those just beginning than for those with established practices.
PMC was a space for 1:1 sessions, for workshops, for Sunday morning BIPOC Pilates classes, for meetings, for spontaneous lying on the floor crying, for emerging direct action prep, for deep political conversation, for organizing connections. It was a place where there was both midnight high activation DA prep one night and the silence of a slow and steady craniosacral session the next day Where we created relational networks that supported presence at the third precinct occupation after the murder of Jamar Clark, giving massages on the sidewalk and setting up a move able indoor space
In this way, I think PMC embodied some piece of healing justice the piece that knows that none of these are, or should be, separated from each other The energies of all of these things were felt in the space, and many people wove in and out of di erent elements of what happened there
We also learned (especially in its closing) that regardless of how often people came to the space, the PMC meant something to many people simply by its presence The fact that this sort of space existed the possibilities that it invited and the space that it held was felt by many
Sustainability, Clarity and Transformative Justice
Looking back, I wish we had paid more attention from the beginning to three main things: Sustainability, Clarity, and Transformative Justice/Accountability and how to weave these things into everything we were doing.
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From the beginning, we were in over our heads with what we were trying to keep up with and this perpetuated patterns of overwork and scarcity throughout PMC’s existence In the future, I would choose to start smaller and grow in direct proportion to the resources that were actually there tangibly including people’s time, energy, relationships as well as money etc all the kinds of resources I would focus on mobilizing needed support and resources before taking leaps of growth I would want to move from clear orientation to where everyone involved was at, what they could o er, and what that meant for our work together I would want to hold the beauty of vision in closer relationship with the realities of our lives
With that, I would want to work with a clearer and narrower focus At the PMC we always had many beautiful visions of possibilities, but were never fully clear about what was and wasn’t our work although we did get somewhat clearer on that over time I think a clearer focus would have supported us in knowing how and where to put our energy in a more potent and directed way. I would desire a greater clarity of roles, relationship, resources, purpose, communication, boundaries around what was our work and what wasn’t our work, who we were to each other and what we wanted to be for each other and what we felt like we could and couldn’t do.
And then from the start, I would want so deeply to ground our work in a transformative justice and a conflict engaged framework. We all held values around these things, but were not necessarily collectively able to be fully in the complicated work of how to engage that in practice. Often we were so maxed out with maintenance and personal and collective basic survival that we did not have capacity/were unable to prioritize time and attention to arising complicated situations that came up within the circles of PMC This lack of capacity caused harm at times in a variety of ways I would want to be real about what was necessary to truly give time and energy and attention to this; to support being in the transformative and deeply complicated work of moving through it; to have this be centered in how the organization was formed and functioned
And through it all, I would wish for all of us more support to have reached out sooner and more for individual and collective support in what we were navigating Through facilitation support, fundraising, clearer communication about where we were at and what we were needing and more
I am grateful for the depth of lessons and for all the epeople that made up the fabric of PMC in so many di erent ways whether through a moment or a longer chunk of time And I am so deeply grateful for the relationships that formed and grew deeper through the work of PMC
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MICAH HOBBES FRAZIER | INTERVIEW
Interviewed10/26/20
Micah Hobbes Frazier is a Black queer mixed gendered facilitator, somatic coach/healer, and magic maker; living, loving, laughing, and building in Tulum, Mexico. In June 2012 he created The Living Room Project, an accessible healing justice & community space serving Queer/Trans People of Color (QTPOC) Micah facilitates spaces for individuals and organizations engaged in transformative work to address conflict and harm/violence, work through trauma and grief/loss, and create sustainable culture and practices that are aligned with their principles, mission, and vision.
Micah is a commitment to facilitating spaces where healing and transformation are possible His work identifies and names the long term impacts of trauma and oppression, increases compassion for the di erent ways in which people survive/heal, and creates e ective strategies for working with and transforming trauma Micah is deeply grounded in Harm Reduction, Transformative Justice and Healing Justice principles/practice, and his work is heavily informed by the many years he spent working, training, and organizing with generationFIVE, The Harm Reduction Coalition, and Generative Somatics He continues to be an active part of a growing network of Healing Justice practitioners and Community Accountability facilitators serving individuals/communities most impacted by trauma, violence and oppression Micah began his journey in transformative work over 25 years ago, working with youth and young adult populations
As the 2nd oldest child of self employed entrepreneur parents, Micah appreciates self determination, hustle and creativity as well as the ability to take a nap in the middle of the day whenever you want to Although he sometimes misses the warm summer nights of the east coast where he grew up, he definitely prefers the occasional Bay Area earthquake to Boston winters Micah is a proud Aquarius born February 13th, but not on a Friday He loves wolf dogs, most things blue, and considers eating good cheese a form of resilience
Image and bio from https://micahhobbesfrazier.love/
Value
When I lived in Oakland, I went to this place called The Source Chiropractic And, you know, it's a chiropractic center And that's the main thing they do there, but they operate as a community space And so the community and people go there for years. I've gone there for free. And, they decided that it was extremely important for them to stay open through the [pandemic]. They never shut down.
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As crazy as that may sound, what they understood is how important community spaces are, especially when things are uncertain and unstable And community spaces o er an important grounding and stability. It's important to really understand what they bring to the community and how important it is to keep it going Even if you have to adjust; The Source adjusted in a lot of di erent ways, right, but they never shut down
In terms of understanding our place in community, we need to find ways to continue to support people, their mental health, their physical health, even when times are urgent During this pandemic, I've realized that supporting people’s spiritual health and well being is an important part of this
Spaces need to be flexible and adaptable, to be able to adapt to community needs. We do as much as possible to prepare for things up front, which means having strong systems in place, but I think what's even more important is having strong values and principles that we consistently ground in Those are what allow us to be flexible and adaptable as conditions and contexts change. We don't know what things are going to look like in six months, and when you have really strong values and principles to ground in, that allows you to be able to adapt, and be flexible, to continue to meet community needs, no matter what is happening It also helps to handle things like conflict or harm, or those things that we never think are going to show up, but always do.
U.S. Social Forum
A group of us that met for a year in preparation for the US Social Forum, where we created a healing justice space and a People’s Movement Assembly. We spent a lot of time talking about what we meant when we said healing justice, about our values and what our values would look like in practice
We used the US Social Forum as an opportunity to introduce healing justice as a framework and also as a practice. We brought together teams of healers, and doctors and nurses who were able to respond to the things that came up at the Social Forum That work started out as a lot more of relationship building, including sometimes getting doctors and nurses to consider healers as people they would even work with.
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The Living Room Project
In 2012, I opened the Living Room Project, which was a healing justice space that came in some ways directly out of my work with Susan and others from the US Social Forum. It was a continuation of a space that I'd had from 2004 to 2006. In 2012, I started the Living Room Project project as a healing in community space for queer and trans people of color
What I realized was that at that time in Oakland, queer and trans communities of color were not getting access to space as a resource. I knew that this space needed to be held with a healing justice framework I am a somatic practitioner and so I used that space for my own client work and then made the space available to other healers who are all people of color, all queer, trans people of color to be able to do their work as well. We had a couple of massage therapists working out of there, and someone who was doing writing workshops, and really the space was available for community events, celebrations, and other healing practitioners
Financial sustainability
To be honest, one of the hardest things about the Living Room Project was financial stability, and sustainability. I ended up funding it primarily by myself. I would say, one piece of advice I would give that really worked for The Living Room Project is that the space has to be anchored in community and relevant to community That is really what got the Living Room Project o the ground.
The people who are running it also have to be very anchored in the community I was able to raise a lot of money to even get the space and renovate the space so that it could be available primarily because of my community relationships as an organizer and healer in Oakland for a lot of years.
I had some help from some friends and did a fundraising campaign I learned to not make assumptions about what people can a ord, or about people's ability to decide for themselves what they can and want to give to and support.
The Living Room Project was not only for trans folks of color, but also for working class/low income folks who didn't have a lot of access to financial resources People were more than willing to support the Living Room Project All of our donations and stu came from individuals, we were never grant funded at all.
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I went back and forth a lot about whether I wanted the Living Room Project to become a 501c3, and be grant funded, and really didn't want that In some ways that made it harder. I was very clear that I wanted it to be a community funded project. I think if I were to do it again, I would probably still have it rooted in community funding One of the things we were moving towards before we closed was finding a fiscal sponsor to help us find more dollars to help the space
Open up as many pathways to resources as possible. And keep it rooted in relationship. ⬤
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TANUJA JAGERNAUTH | INTERVIEW
Interviewed10/22/20
Tanuja Devi Jagernauth is an Indo Caribbean playwright and dramaturg who believes in the necessity of creation during times of destruction In 2016, she shifted career paths from Traditional East Asian Medicine to theatre in hopes of practicing four frameworks for collective liberation and wellness: self/community care, harm reduction, trauma informed practice, and body positivity You can find some of Tanuja's plays in process on the New Play Exchange.
When she's not writing, Tanuja can often be found walking her dog, Wellington, co organizing mutual aid projects, and working for the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization (LVEJO) as their Just Culture and Operations Director She is the creator and editor of understory quarterly
Tanuja is currently honored to be devising a musical adaptation of FAUST with Olivia Lilley (Director), Vero Maynez (Assistant Director), Sofia Fey (Dramaturg), Kenya Hall (Production Dramaturg), Alec Phan (Composer), and a wickedly talented ensemble
Tanuja was honored to have her play, HOW TO PICK A LOCK, presented at RhinoFest 2019 in Chicago Her play, FIRST DATA GOLD, was presented as part of Our Perspective: Asian American Play Readings at Steppenwolf Theatre. Her short play, BATTLEGROUND, was recently part of Revolutionary Acts, the 6th National Asian American Theater Conference & Festival, and her short play, SKIN, was recently part of the Our Perspective: Asian American Play Readings at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago It has been workshopped and produced by The Pulp Stage in Portland, OR
In 2021, Tanuja wrote SUN ON ICE, Episode 4 of Jackalope Theatre’s Living Newspaper Festival, inspired by this opinion piece She also had the honor of workshopping and presenting her short play, WOMEN WHO TAKE LIMBS, as part of The Pulp Stage’s Pulp Factor: a workshop presentation.
Dramaturgy credits include LITTLE WOMEN, adapted by Heather Chrisler; Olivia Lilley's DIARY OF AN EROTIC LIFE, an adaptation of the Frank Wedekind LULU plays; Kristin Idaszak's STRANGE HEART BEATING; Olivia Lilley's NEVERLAND; Pegasus Theatre's production of ECLIPSED, Sideshow’s Freshness Initiative workshop and staged reading of PRO AM by Brynne Frauenho er, Stage Left's production of Robert Schenkkan's BUILDING THE WALL, Pegasus Theatre's production of THE GREEN BOOK by Calvin A. Ramsey, and Cloudgate Theatre's production of ANOTHER JUNGLE by Kristin Idaszak
Photo and bio from https://wwwtanujadevicom/about/
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Street medic to acupuncturist
I came to Chicago in 2001 and the goal at that time was to be [in Chicago] for one year, and to basically do a one year Volunteer in Service to America program with AmeriCorps. I was supposed to spend just one year with the Department of Public Health and collect an education credit. At the time I was like, “I'm gonna go to Atlanta and then I'm going to go to school at Emory and become a virus hunter basically, and work for the CDC, and treat infectious and communicable diseases”
That vision totally shifted once I came to Chicago. I came in August of 2001, right before September 11 happened, so when September 11 happened, I got involved with direct action, became a street medic, and through my street medic training I then became an acupuncturist
I was like, “Okay, I want to become an acupuncturist so I can do grassroots global healing and barefoot doctoring.” So I go to acupuncture school and realize, “Oh, it's a private Institution” I realized that not everybody's here from the place I'm coming from Not everybody's invested in movements for social justice
I thought, let me just continue on this path. I graduate, and by then I had met a couple of people in school who were down with actual justice, and I thought, while I wait for them to graduate, I will have my own practice I spent two and a half years in private practice.
Getting real about money
We created Sage Community Health Collective in 2010 It was a four person health collective Today I would make some di erent decisions in the way I co created the collective.
First, my financial state...it's really complicated, because on one hand, I essentially experienced what I created and signed up for On the other hand, it was not exactly what I signed up for
When you come out of acupuncture school, you have a load of student debt. I still have massive student debt, and I'm not going to give you my number because I don't need to give you the anxiety that I deal with, but I had this debt, and there was this urgency that comes with needing a job, right? I had to jump into practice right away.
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But I didn't have solid financial practices, and this comes back to being an immigrant and having a certain relationship with money that's connected to my family and the legacy of colonialism that I carry. I'm not coming from old money or a ton of privilege. I don't have a trust fund and things like this, and that's important to know
Today, if I were to go into any financially binding relationship with anyone, I'd say, we need to have a way of talking about our finances and our material conditions, because I need to understand what your stakes in this are versus mine.
So that's number one I would also be very interested in saying, real talk, are we talking about retirement funds? Are we talking about debt payments? What do you actually really need in order to not just sustain yourself so you have money for food and a bus pass, but what do you really need to be secure as a human? And can we truly create a business model that is truly supportive of that?
If the answer is no, then we need to do some thinking and really think about, do we need to do some fundraising first? Do we need to look into investment because we chose to not be a non profit We didn't want to be competing with local organizations for a very tiny pot of money
We also weren't trying to do this thing of profiting from healing justice, and turn it into a thing we didn't want to interface with, because foundations are fickle, and we didn't want to become poster children for Exelon and whatnot
It always rubbed me wrong to see foundations funding projects. I noticed with foundations how they will find one or two people and they will announce "This is the person!" and that's just antithetical to collectivity in my opinion, and I think it's done a bunch of damage
I think that when money gets involved, and people feel that they're competing for money and resources, or they're competing for cultural capital, or they're competing for recognition, or whatever the fuck, it impedes the work and impedes our relationships
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Political values are not enough
Upon reflection, I would also say that political values are not enough Other values and practices are just as important, such as being able to be accountable, being able to be honest, saying what you mean, meaning what you say, and if you say you're going to do something, you actually do it. Those are really important things.
Our model put us in the position of still being freelancers and gig economy people In retrospect, we could have been doing more to support each other materially I think, within that, we could have partnered with other organizations, maybe to not have an overhead cost for rent or something. I don't know exactly.
Racial analysis
Two years after we opened, two of the four founders had left the collective, and the model was changing. In 2015, it was just me and one other person, and this other person was white and didn't have a developed analysis around race at the time. Their analysis was on the surface okay, but when it came to Black people they would still say things such as, "Well, I don't see color, you know," and I was like, “Ooh.”
I never realized this is how deep your denial is as a white person When I tried to push her on this, it was just not working We came to the decision that she would not remain an owner of the collective That left me as the sole owner and operator
Collective member economics
In our model, we had collective members who were not owners and operators We called them splitters These were people who just wanted to do their practice at our space They would come, do a service, and they would keep 60% of the fee paid to the space. The space would keep 40%. The former collective owner who became a splitter ended up making more every month than I did, as a splitter. So the finances really, really fucked me up
Here's another thing I would do di erently. All these collective members who came on, I think, at the very beginning, I would have had all of us sign some sort of thing saying, like, when you leave the collective, you are responsible for any debts that we have collectively accrued up to this point so that when you leave, you're not just leaving other people with the debt
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When I closed the collective in 2016, I was left with $4,000 of collective debt to our accountant that I ended up paying myself That was hurtful That was so hurtful
The accountant was very cool. They let me do a payment plan for $200 a month or whatever, but it took me a few years to do that I just felt very abandoned and a bit betrayed because when I asked for collective support to help pay the debt, people did not come through Some people did, but it wasn't enough to cover the debt
We had a very embarrassing fundraiser, and I was like, “What happened?” We spent close to five years, quote unquote, building community, but then what happened? In 2016, I was definitely left with a pile of debt from our accountant, much greater student loan debt, a lot of confusion, and lost and damaged relationships.
I think not just being about the mission [is important] I think I was very owning myself I was very attached to the work I was attached to the mission I was very focused on doing the “good work” I think that I had a lot of internalized, I don't know what it is, if it's martyrdom, or, just some form of internalized oppression, that I'm “just here to serve ” ...
Community care, self care, financial wellness
I wasn't okay. I was never okay, and I didn't have strong enough relationships with other healing justice practitioners. I remember in 2015 realizing that I needed help. I wished I could reach out to my healing justice community, but I didn't, I couldn't. I didn't feel that I had real, true, strong relationships with enough people who I could reach out to for help
We even had a community advisory council and things like that, but either they weren't asking me the right questions about how it was going, or I was just hiding the reality
I think all this comes down to how community care and self care has to include financial wellness.
I think I need to name as well, what eventually, most definitely, kind of broke me There were two things. Actually, I think I've talked to Susan about this. I was experiencing loss. My friends were dying from things like cancer, and I had no space
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to process and no time to process, actually.
November 3 is the anniversary of my best friend passing away from cancer in 2015 She passed, and I think I had a couple days o , but I had to go back to work, and I will never forgive the galaxy, the universe maybe one day, I will, but I'm still working on it [I had to be] running our collective and I definitely couldn't be there for my friend when she was passing in those quiet ways that you really need and want to be there for somebody
Another friend of mine died from cancer, and I was not able to be as present for her as I had wanted to when she was passing I'm saying this because those relationships were really important to me
But again, the reality was, if I don't work, I don't eat. The lights don't stay on. Our splitters don't have a place to practice And there was no space, no time, to even ask for support if that makes sense Impossible
The loss happened, and I realized, wait, I'm busting my ass. I'm not grieving, even though I am grieving. And then the microaggressions from clients continued to pile on, right? I was holding space for people with privilege, holding so much space, hearing about their various issues
Meanwhile, I didn’t have space to be witnessed, and that was very harmful for me. And there's just a lot inside of that that I think I still need to parse out and unpack, but it feels just like the advanced accumulation of not setting up systems of support for the practitioner
Internal policies
We had no leave policy We had no bereavement policy We had no resilience fund So in a really awesome future scenario, it'd be great if there was just like, yo, if you need to shut this shit down for a month, because you're losing your shit, it's cool Rent is covered, bills are covered, and here is some money for you. We had none of that. Yeah. Bullshit. And that's something that I co created.
I'm saying this to take ownership, but also I'm just understanding more and more how I helped to create a scenario that was truly harmful for me on many di erent levels.
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We were working in a superficial way I think that's all I can say about it I think the work was superficial You know, we believed, obviously, in the philosophical and political underpinnings, and so on and so forth.
I don't know if it was that solidarity was missing, or analysis was missing, or true connection was missing I don't know what was missing But it's something around not practicing the real community of care, which means that I'm invested in not just how you show up to do your work, but I'm invested in...how are you getting home? And what kind of home are you getting home to? And are you able to do you have space and time to even rest at home? And do you have food in your fridge? You know, those sorts of things?
Your work cannot provide all those things, but I don't know, our work does become our village, for better or for worse
So, it's a puzzle I don't have good answers, but I feel a way to break it down is looking at this really great tool about white supremacy culture. I think it's from…it’s called Dismantling Racism [by Kenneth Jones and Tema Okun].
All of those characteristics of white supremacy culture, right? I kind of want to go through each of these and do some writing about these things. Because when I look at these di erent characteristics, I'm like, “Yep. Yeah, we dealt with that.” We had to do "quantity over quality," "worship of the written word," maybe, I don't know. "One right way," I think I internalized some of that paternalism
We tried to push back on it in support of our patients and to really undo the typical patient practitioner dynamic.
I just think we had more political work to do amongst ourselves "Individualism," I think that's the piece that is connected to the financial stu ; we may be doing this collective thing to extract an income, but our debts are still very individual.
And then "the right to comfort" piece; centering the comfort of the patient at the expense of the practitioner I think that's what I experienced Because very often, I'd realize, I need to call this bitch out, but no, I cannot do that because I depend on their $20 every week, right? To keep some lights on. That's bullshit. And we set that
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up, you know what I mean? [laughter]. We set it up like that.
We did our best, and we did do some good People still say good things [about us] and it's great, and at the same time there was a reality they didn't know and couldn't know, and we didn't want them to know and maybe they didn't want to know
Community accountability
Just before our interview I looked up what kinds of funds are out there today, and I do see that in 2016, after EmergentStrategy[by adrienne maree brown] came out, some folks came together and created the Emergent Fund
So today, it seems like emergency funds do exist. Maybe today there could be something to reach out to if someone found themselves in a situation similar to mine.
I have learned so much from creating and running Sage and all the experiences I have had since then working in the theater industry.
Today I do operations, and I work for the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization We're trying to build better systems and better practices that really support everyone in the org financially, but also we're trying to change and build upon the culture in the organization.
The culture has had real problems with accountability, and we're working on that by bringing in transformative justice and bringing in more healing justice So that's my current work: after years of being really hurt and mad and just pissed, I feel like I have come out on the other side. Through having a full time job that values my voice, that pays me okay, I can finally address my student loans in a consistent way My actual basic needs are finally being met
How long did that take? It's really wild. I'm helping other orgs to think about their operations and their systems of accountability now, and I'm really interested in digging into this conversation around money and our actual lives
The other thing that really drove me to want to close the collective and transition is that I'm a writer. I've always been a writer, and I just remembered that in our
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practice of healing justice, we did do some collective practices.
We had a writing circle that I think was dope We did peer acupuncture circles, and then we brought that framework to everything that we did. I feel proud of that.
But I wanted to explore healing justice and its potential for collective healing through things like theater and storytelling That’s what I'm working on now in partnership with theaters
I feel like I'm just understanding what this looks like, but taking healing justice into theatre is a whole other conversation because the theatre industry is so toxic, and so white supremacist, and so whoo it's been, painful and wild
At the same time, I've met some people who say, “Tell me more about harm reduction, tell me more about trauma” There are little pockets of people who say, “Yes, we need to do this healing thing collectively,” but we are really at the very, very beginning of that
I've definitely transitioned to doing more community accountability work and transformative justice work because my political analysis also developed while we were running Sage, and I realized, wow, I am really not including prison abolition inside of my healing justice analysis to the level I'm comfortable with.
I really do see transformative justice and community accountability as being really important for this moment, as part of your healing justice work So for instance, I don't call myself a healer; I don't identify that way But I do work that is still considered healing and care work.
Acupuncture licensing
When the pandemic began I did reconnect with a group of acupuncturists who are doing ear acupuncture I wanted to see if there was a way for us to be responsive to the moment and o er the NADA ear acupuncture protocol to the community. I just love it. It’s what got me into acupuncture.
I said, “I will come back to do NADA” But the thing is, it's interesting, I don't have a license anymore. So if I ever go back to do ear acupuncture, which we're so close to being ready to do, we've been setting up our systems and our processes all
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summer, I would have to work under one of my former students for their license in Illinois And they're saying, “Yes, of course, that's fine” But this puts them at a certain level of risk What a fucking mess [laughter]
In some states, if you are over the age of 18, you can be trained in the NADA protocol and practice it However, because of some really weird policies around acupuncture in Illinois, in order to legally do NADA ear acupuncture in Illinois, you must be a licensed acupuncturist or a nurse practitioner This makes what should be a form of medicine for the people inaccessible, and it criminalizes those who wish to practice it without the “right” credentials.
This whole industry, this whole system They just don't really tell you about it when they sign you up for school and encourage you to take out private loans. It’s an economic setup if you want to make your services accessible to your own communities I was 22 fucking years old when I went to acupuncture school, like a goldfish being dropped into a bin of crabs
The costs involved in being a licensed acupuncturist ended up being a barrier for me. It costs $500 every two years to renew your license, and in order to be recertified, you have to do 20 CEU units, which usually are $200 per credit hour When I was running Sage and making a total of $1400 per month, these costs were way out of reach for me.
I'm working on a play right now that’s a devised musical adaptation of FAUST. Every single thing we talked about in this conversation is embedded in that play
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MARIE MICHAEL | INTERVIEW
Interviewed8/1/20
PMCrole:SecondCircle
Marie is an educator, somatics practitioner, partner, and mother. She loves pinto beans, green chile, homemade tortillas, and tomatoes fresh from the garden Since childhood, Marie has been an avid reader and perpetual journal writer, both as means to understand and enter the world She has mostly written creative nonfiction and poetry Lately, she has focused on using writing as a means to get free If she could, she’d spend most of her time talking to weeping willow trees, sitting with turtles, and learning from her ancestors Healing justice is at the center of all her work because she sees it as a direct, radical path to liberation.
Coaching & Facilitating: As an embodied coach and facilitator, Marie uses strategies she’s learned from Somatics Experiencing and Generative Somatics to support clients in listening deeply to themselves to support healing and build resilience; to solve problems and address conflict and tension with others; and to better align their actions with their values She teaches self care strategies and somatic awareness to help clients recognize and transform default actions that limit their mindset and ability to move forward
Equity & Social Justice Training & Consulting: Marie also uses an embodied approach to equity and social justice training and consulting with educators, schools and organizations She creates individualized workshops based on a group ’ s needs and developmental stages As a Qualified Administrator of the Intercultural Developmental Inventory (IDI), she uses the IDI to support individuals, groups and organizations in learning to work more e ectively across cultures. Skilled at facilitating, she also works with equity practitioners and organizational leaders to develop long term equity plans and design training geared to their organization’s particular needs
Youth Healing Justice: Marie has been teaching high school English for over 20 years She is an avid reader and writer who believes in the power of words to change us As a part of the Youth Healing Justice Network, she supports and trains youth. She teaches self care strategies to build awareness, resilience, and capacity. She creates programming for youth to read, write and create together, combining somatic strategies with an exploration of words and language as a way for youth to find and express voice and power
https://wwwmariemichaelcom/
Value of community
My initial connection really with PMC was when I went to a Generative Somatics
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training with Susan and Gri en and Eiko. I was really excited about coming back and being in a community of folks who had similar values and ideas about having individual practices focused on healing ourselves, the people that we were serving, as well as a larger community.
As I've been doing somatic work over this last decade, what I have really learned in our circle is that healing is not just individual, but it's also collective And I think that's what the PMC represented, For me was this collective space for healing When I started using the space for my own individual practice, I just liked being there.
I liked being there knowing that there are other healers doing work I liked being there when people were upstairs, I used it as a space to do Jo practice I rented it out as a way to contribute to the space and to have a space to do my practice. And so, I came there because of the way in which PMC was serving the community, the values of the folks there, and it felt like a really good space
As someone who was working in a school, where I wasn't feeling valued, it was just incredible to be in this space that was dedicated to healing work. The more I learned about the space, the more I was dreaming about the kind of practice that I could have there, the more excited I became
I think the PMC was a symbol of...there's a way in which it was already serving a community, which was much bigger than the building, right. I think it was a symbol of the fact that we're collectively healing ourselves.
There's a number of healers that are doing a lot of work, but if I was doing it inside PMC, I'd be part of a collective that's doing this work. That is di erent. It’s di erent from just being an individual practitioner. My work really is much more individual than I think that it would have been if I was still a part of PMC, even if we weren't always in the building It was a healing community And we would be in conversation with each other about all the things that were going on.
The PMC was a space for healers to be connected to each other and to be supported in doing their own healing work so they don't get burned out The PMC served as a particular point of reference, a particular community, a way to gather resources and share them in a larger context. For me, it felt like it was a center, a place where people would go to share information and then that information will be
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shared with the larger community.
What we need
What could [a place like PMC] be o ering [during the pandemic, uprising]? All the things that I just said, right; right now, I'm doing a lot of work with individuals. I mean, it's just an interesting thing. I'm doing work with individuals who are having their own struggles with racism and white supremacy, primarily in the individual practice that I have This would be happening anyway but now it's happening inside of a pandemic, where it's even harder to get the kind of support that you need.
There’s a lot of people who need one on one support and who could really benefit from having a collective space to gather Obviously, it's tricky, in a pandemic, to figure out how to gather inside of a space but I imagine that if the PMC existed, there'd be conversations about that and how to do it safely and maybe finding outside spaces where that could happen.
PMC capacities
There was a time where I was facilitating the owner ’ s meetings to support them because they were struggling with being able to be productive and get things done. It's clear that there are patterns of things that were a problem pretty early on, that kept being a problem that became more and more urgent I think the reason it was such a surprise when they closed was it was just this day where it was like, okay, we're now done. You know what I mean? We've been doing this all this time. It's interesting to me how things like that happen, where you have no idea that it's going to be tomorrow at two, that you're reached the brink and you just can't take it anymore
It’s so important to really address these things early on when they show up and to have people who can support you in addressing those patterns early on, instead of making do I think there was a lot of that, just trying to make do, and not really resolve it
Administrative support as a businessperson
In doing work like this, it’s so important to be able to have administrative support It seems to me that was part of the load that was really heavy I'm really realizing right now that I could use administrative support for my own practice It’s really hard to be doing your own work and keeping track of the business portion. Not to
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mention scheduling yourself so that you're not a crazy person. And getting paid. And I'm just one person, right?
[At the PMC] You have all these independent contractors who are doing all that for themselves, and then trying to figure out who's doing the stu for the collective. So if you're able to all contribute to an administrative person who you can pay, well, that person might be able to carry the load for the collective and maybe even a little bit for individuals
The PMC [if it still existed now] could be a place that actually o ers those (LLC creation, the business side of the work, etc) services You need the tech skills, and you need some of the business skills
One of the other things that felt important about the PMC was to know that there's a place where people have been vetted I can go there and I don't have to worry about them taking advantage of me It would be amazing if such a thing existed for BIPOC practitioners Just to know that there is someone who's helping BIPOC folks get o the ground, and launch the thing that they want to launch, so that we can actually focus on our practice, and not be going through the exhaustion of administration alongside practice
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EIKO ELISE MIZUSHIMA | INTERVIEW
Interviewed8/3/20 PMCrole:Owner
About
I am of Japanese and Irish descent. I am an occupational therapist and bodyworker with a focus on healing through ecosystems, social connections, DBT informed education, and engaging in meaningful activity through adaptations and emotional support I’ve always been interested in healing as a kind of ecology because I am interested in complex interdependent relationships and the way energy ricochets, remembers and transforms in ways that are both predictable and emergent all at the same time The outdoors make me feel more alive I’ve studied black bears, endangered species, and climate change which led me to the world of environmental justice which led me to the worlds of social justice and healing justice
The more I worked within social movements the more I felt how historical and present trauma/pain got in the way of building the world we believed in. This inspired me to learn more about decolonization and healing Bodywork was a way to heal and connect, to practice the way I want to be in a relationship with myself and others I believe that healing and justice need each other, that they are inseparable and interdependent
Value
One of the things that made me so proud to be part of the PMC was that it felt like we were shifting some of the conditions in our community that made it impossible to heal and grow the world we needed. This was in terms of being able to be a support system for people who didn't and won't ever feel safe receiving care within the medical industrial complex, connecting healing with organizing and living out politicized healing together
At the same time we were also creating a space for people to gather, experiment and live out dreams, gatherings, and places to learn and share We wanted to be able to lift up and show people that we could do the things that we want to do, like be in radical solidarity and learn healing practices in an accountable, liberating, and just way. We were able to do that, though it took some time beyond the time of the PMC closing to see that. I see people using Pod Mapping Sheets in many di erent contexts now years later, which was from a workshop Mia Mingus facilitated at the
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PMC. Myself and others are more able to talk about healing modalities within the context of cultural appropriation in a way that feels accountable and also just In 2020 when George Floyd was murdered, I wish we had been around still to help hold the immense pain and organizing that was required. I saw Lake street on fire, folks dying in Powderhorn Park, and witnessed two folks get shot in 2020, it felt like new levels of hypervigilance in my nervous system that I had not experienced at a neighborhood and community level before I wanted to go to the PMC and I know many other people did too and our community was still grieving the loss of the PMC when George Floyd wa murdered. However the principles and the learning were still present even though the physical space was not, the healing in justice, the justice in healing How are folks supposed to heal without justice? How can there be justice in a carceral state and a punitive justice system? What does actual healing and actual justice look like? Step one, make it stop. These questions led many people to police abolition which was being talked about more and more to the extent where it isn’t as new of an idea in 2022, it almost seems like a common perspective which is amazing
After we closed, I saw the Healing Justice Network really be a place where BIPOC, queer, trans, and politicized people were going to receive healing. Also, a place where people could seek like minded folks and look for resources A Facebook network has its limitations, but during COVID, an online space was so helpful However, having a physical space was also a very powerful thing, and I wish we had both and more; more places where QTBIPOC folks can organize for healing justice. The physical space helped us have a group of folks who had built, worked, created, fought, listented, learned, played, touched, and loved each other many times over COVID has been really e ective at increasing disconnection, and the PMC’s purpose was to increase connection to the mind, body, spirit, of the land and the people. The PMC held ancestral work, spiritual work These deep connections can overcome any obstacle including the obstacles of time, place, and death In this way the PMC’s existence, not because it was made, not necessarily because of the individuals behind it, but because of the knowing and wisdom that came through as a result of how it was held will always exist as long as this way of knowing and being is passed forward Having a place to gather did assist with this spreading of energy which is organizing I find myself feeling both proud but then also not wanting to overstate what we were. We also struggled. But I do know that the fact that the PMC existed gave people a sense of safety and security this “really cool place exists that I need
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to exist whether I go here or not because it validates my existence”. It mattered to have a space and practitioners who were all publicly committed to healing, justice, centering marginalized peoples, having folks who were well versed in anti racist organizing, centering land and immigrants, trans and queer people in the work. We had trust and relationship to hold the conflict that naturally emerges within groups of di erent identities and privileges Things just move slower, or move fast and then fall apart when you haven’t had the time or don’t take the time to build that trust
We prioritized taking that time as best as we could, and that was the beauty and it was also where because we weren’t paid for that time, we struggled to survive in a capitalist economy.
Organizers who have done their own healing work
Alejandra and Susan took time to make sure I felt welcomed when I joined and Alejandra worked hard to support me and make sure my business was financially sustainable. For everyone who was a part of the PMC, I had that awe struckness you get when you meet people who are embodied and powerful, you want to be it, you want to be around it, everyone gets bigger, everything is more fun, and is more seen around that energy. It’s an irresistible energy. It is the opposite way you feel when you experience racism, homophobia, and all the isms that make you feel indirectly small and insignificant
Figuring out the mission
Norma Wong came and helped us figure out our mission. At the time, we were stuck in an identity politics representation discussion. We were stuck in a discussion about who were the people who needed to be in the room, who had the identities that needed to be included, before we could move forward It was such a conundrum that we were in and Normal Wong came and was able to witness who we were and what we were up to. And she just told us: You are the ones who are here right now. And so you are the ones who are meant to be here.
That was huge Because we had been having some identity battles within the PMC, and then within myself, and it was just ripe for conflict, we weren’t as ethnically or racially diverse as we wanted to be and we didn’t know what to do with that, except resign and recruit new folks For Norma to be able to say this, to tell us that it just wouldn’t work to stop, find new people and keep doing what we were trying to do, that it would be more destructive, and performative.
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Having someone we respected and trusted tell us that “it's okay”, what we ’ re doing “is ok”, taking this emphasis o of representative perfectionism, that was huge
Susan had drafted this massive statement. At the time I thought, this is great, massive, but comprehensive, but then Norma Wong kind of came through and said "too long, too much" She listened to us talking and talking Within that listening circle, she drafted out what she heard us say and like that, we had our vision and mission and strategies
It was concise, dialectic, and gorgeous. The healing in justice, the justice in healing; our mission to heal and be healed That statement I get chills thinking about it because it feels so true and right
If anyone else wants to create a healing justice space, think about how healing and justice are mutually dependent interdependent; how they will always need each other
We didn't have an emphasis on definitions at the PMC. Sometimes that was confusing, but it was also nice because we didn't get stuck in the weeds about it and it helped us be more free
Something that we needed to work more on was providing support for practitioners who needed to learn how to hold trans folks better. We said that we centered trans folks but we wanted to have more training for PMC folks to make our space better for trans folks There was a lack of resources and time to follow through on this more deeply and in a high quality way which was one of the areas where we were out of our integrity. The intention and the commitment was there but we weren't ever really able to organize the training that people needed.
Being relationship centered
We focused a lot on relationships, we were always checking to see if people knew this person, and if not, then we would have more of a formal process around working with them. I know that that felt exclusionary to some people. We were trying to strike a balance, but it was hard to do at times
Boundaries
A recommendation to others creating spaces like the PMC: boundaries. Boundaries
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with work, dating etc.. We came up with guidelines as needed and that was liberating and felt like we could just respond to specific circumstances, but also meant that because we didn’t have predetermined boundaries that say a HR department would have, that boundaries then felt like they were made on a individual basis, which can have huge drawbacks, like depending on individuals to figure things out, determine their wants and needs (usually during very stressful moments in their lives), when structural guidelines could take the pressure o of them to have to figure everything out Navigating dual roles was incredibly di cult at times. We didn't have an HR department and the core group ended up being financial directors, diversity and inclusion directors, communications, IT, the HR department, all the while trying to sustain individual bodywork practices, and that just was not possible to sustain So some basic general boundaries to assist with the dual roles ahead of time would have been helpful. Also, we needed to make like five times more money to finance all these areas that workers actually need to stay afloat We did not have the infrastructural financing needed to sustain the emergencies that arise within groups of people
We didn't do a lot of preventative strategizing because we just didn't have the capacity.
Labor and support
We had this model where people provided unequal labor and whoever did more labor, we tried to give more decision making power. This was driven by the labor movement, workers being in charge. We started with more shared decision making power but then that wasn’t working when some folks were working more and knew more than others What happened for a while was that people who used to have more of a say didn't have as much of a say anymore, and like any request for behavior change it took a bit of time to shift to that strategy.
Some of that was just the growing pains of transitioning to new frameworks, but all of the transitions took a toll on folks Transitioning to an administrative lead the Central Nervous System model and transitioning out of core leadership control was a beautiful idea. In theory it looked great, and in practice it was really hard.
If we'd been able to bring in more income, I think that practitioners could have been more present at the PMC and therefore more invested in its running. It was hard to function without consistent shared time.
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People would o er support, and we got to the point where we didn't even have the capacity to accept the support That was a sign for us that we had to close All of this happened right when we took the step to hand o more work to the CNS position. We kept saying, okay after this, after this things will be better. We'll be able to breathe and hopefully bring in new second circle people and step back from the core group That was the hope with hiring an admin position Sadly, the hand o didn’t work that well and then we had poured all of our financial, emotional, spiritual resources into that shift and when it didn't take root, it was like, this is [the end]. I think there were some people who said, we want to fund you now that you're floundering, we can help, but it was too late We were too spent
Asian American complexities
Susan was the first person who presented to me this idea of the original wounds of this land and holding that as a framework. The framework is that slavery and genocide are the original wounds of this land, and that if we can heal these original wounds every other wound will go away This was really helpful for me as an Asian person who has felt confused sometimes about what framework to use in terms of when do I center myself and when do I uncenter myself. How does one not bend to the will of the oppression olympics and also center people being most impacted in the context of erasure, ignorance of each other, chronic invalidation and pain of this land?
The original wounds framework, when I first heard that idea, at first I felt that it was replicating a racial hierarchy, with whiteness or a racial binary of just whiteness and blackness, and it didn’t sit right with me Then the more that I was able to listen and learn from that framework, the more it felt okay. I thought about wounds in the body, and how when you get to the source of it, things shift and when you don’t, other wounds pile on top of it It felt really di erent from the binary of whiteness and blackness and it was held in a solidarity energy, not one that felt competitive that I often feel when people use the oppression olympics to ignore Asian people/people who are not black or white only. I was more able to hold the multiple truths and use discernment to try and see how strategies always need to consider context, which is always changing
I felt like the idea of the original wounds helped me hold both and helped my pain. Sometimes as an Asian person I feel invisible… I wanted to discuss that framework
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with more Asian people and I never really got to. It felt like at the PMC that people were okay with multiple truths for all people Both of you, and both of these ideas are valid and we will figure a way forward And that just felt good It doesn't make decision making easy, but it does make sharing space a hell of a lot easier.
Healing justice and abolition
I think about how in Minneapolis, police abolition is really getting traction, more and more Abolishing the police is not just a concept, it's about being able to have an embodied experience of remembering what justice actually feels like and what healing actually looks like. When I was at the first protest for George Floyd I had a sign that said “Abolish the Police” on it and there really weren’t any other signs or chanting about it, I remember feeling sad that it didn’t seem to have traction at the protest, and two years later it’s everywhere.
Being able to think about what it means to embody justice really helped me and others feel clear that police abolition is the only answer to creating a world where we're not just replicating harm To me that's massive and it's definitely one of the best things that came out of the PMC, a true sense of knowing that transformative justice is the only way. We brought Mia Mingus early on to talk about podwork. She went around the country asking survivors: What does justice look like? I did an interview with her about some of my own experiences for the Living Bridges Project and I didn't even know that I had this experience of justice in my life that was outside of the police state. Embodying justice with others, creating the world that we need, that is the most life sustaining force there is. I’m grateful that work existed inside and outside of the PMC and says more about this place, Minneapolis, than anything
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REBEKA NDOSI | INTERVIEW
Interviewed 1/17/2020
PMCrole:Owner
Rebeka is of Tanzanian and African American ancestry She is a mother, wife, daughter, sister, friend, and human Rebeka received her Masters degree in Chinese Medicine in 2005 and has been a trained teacher of Kundalini Yoga and Meditation since 2006 In addition, she has advanced study in Five Element acupuncture, a Community Coach in Healing Justice and a nationally certified Soul Answer Healer. She focuses her practice and classes on internal medicine and the healing and transformation of trauma into thriving In 2020, Rebeka founded Maji ya Chai Land Sanctuary, a nature based sanctuary centering rest, healing and intergenerational connection for black, indigenous and people of color in northeast Mni Sota Makoce
Rebeka is passionate about teaching tools for self regulation to young people. She teaches yoga and meditation for children and youth in schools and community centers in Minneapolis and St Paul, and created the Warriors of Light toolkit, yoga and meditation practices centering children of the African Diaspora in 2017
She sees acupuncture, herbal medicine, yoga and meditation and soul listening as tools for activating the healing capabilities we innately hold, and for becoming devoted partners with our true selves.
Community space
I would answer questions about the PMC di erently now than a year ago Closer to our closing, I was feeling more drained, energetically and psychically I didn't have any space left over to relax into the 'what have we learned' or the bigger picture because it was so urgent all the time And there was just a I don't know, it feels like a lack of space to be able to move, to be able to dream, or even create more at that point
And so now, over a year out, almost a year and a half out, I am able, I think, to see more of what all that we did...and more of what we've inspired, more of what I appreciate from my time with PMC I think this is a much better time for this conversation in general, though those ways that I was feeling are also really valid
I'm certain that we were very needed and appreciated as far as what we brought to community, to our di erent communities The space that we created, the intentions
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that we held, and what we centered, I think those were all needed, more than needed. Because we stuck around for a while, we were sought out. Because we became a possibility, which hadn't really been there in such a concrete way before, people looked to us We opened up space to acknowledge people’s desire to have places of healing that felt nourishing outside of even the current alternative healing and medicine spaces We o ered a space that was really rooted in culture, and lineage, or at least acknowledged it We were rooted in di erence, and diversity and it opened something up, or was part of something opening This is the kind of care that we want
There’s di erent groups and people in many places continuing to form healing justice spaces and work, which is good.
Finance
Finance was the hardest part, oh my gosh, it was totally the hardest part. I feel like the reality then definitely, and the reality even now is that healing work work that is actually supportive and healing for our spirits, and our energy and our bodies and our minds is something that is taken for granted. It is something that is not supported, however much it is sought out during times of urgency.
Because of that, we as healers struggle We struggle in both ways of doing this work: the '”work within the system” route, which can be really unfulfilling, and also completely block access to people who really need it the most and the “I'm going to do it completely outside the system,” which is not fully supportive of one's life financially We were trying to be somewhat mostly outside, but also walking in the lines of a nonprofit, like applying for grants We had a fiscal sponsor, but it was very piecemeal
I think this part was devastating, because we didn't spend as much time volunteering We needed a foundation to be there so that the actual healing work and facilitation space that we sought to provide could thrive. We needed to have a solid organizational foundation, which could not last with volunteers only. And so I know that we tried to find general operating funds time after time, especially Susan was looking out for it and applying for grants all the time. We kept getting turned down or we got a portion, but full funding? That would mean that we were sustainable, at least for a period of years. We never found that.
This is very much how the nonprofit space works which is project by project, piece by piece but never enough to fully sustain and to catch momentum, and to then be able to build something that lasts.
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Some of us had certifications and licenses and things that others of us did not. For somebody like me who has a license and a board certification I had more places to go, more spaces where I could do my work because some places won’t let you work there without a license or certification And even with that access, it still wasn’t easy to find the support for this work
So many people are seeking something but they don't know what they are looking for So they think, well, maybe we need to bring in someone who works with mental health And so they do and that's it, but that’s also not it Mental health work doesn't completely work with spirit; it doesn't work with everything Or they say: 'Art, let's bring in an artist' Wonderful But still not quite it Like it does something, but it's not the same. 'Maybe we should just look at fun and play,’ they say. And that's great, too. But it's, I think that what I find is people are really seeking spaces where they can be heard, that they can be themselves, connect with folks, and spaces where they can trust who is holding the space.
Healing work is not supported in the way that it ought to be. At least not sustainable long term healing work. It doesn't really fit within a capitalist system. It's just, it doesn't compute. Because it doesn't compute within the systems.
I think the PMC’s closing was inevitable given that we did not have the financial resources to support the time and energy to hold the space. We tried, we tried and tried, but it wasn’t enough.
It does not work to have a bunch of volunteers doing this for the long term. We also need to support ourselves and our families This work takes all of you, all of your energy It takes working on di erent levels to try and create things from a di erent place, a place that doesn't come from the systems, doesn't come from the wounds Sometimes we succeeded, and sometimes we didn't, because we're human And inevitably, at di erent times, di erent ones of us were coming from woundedness That was also true
And then, as a collective, we had wounds And so there were things we did that came from urgency and reactivity, and hurt and pain That then, you know, perpetuated those things, those wounds. I feel a lot of grace for us in that process. I hope that folks who are impacted by our wounded processes are able to get to a place of grace too because we're figuring it out as the humans that we are. So it was really flawed in a lot of ways.
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Understanding the financial strain, I think it was inevitable that we closed. We couldn't have continued the way that we were And we shouldn't have honestly, because of how much more it took to give, to keep the PMC going and to hold this space and create the opportunities for people while we're then scrambling to make sure that we are taken care of financially in our lives
Relationship with yourself and your truths
When I think of supporting others to do this work, I want to encourage them to be in an even deeper relationship with themselves as an individual, and with what is true for them. Keep track of what resonates for you and what feels right and what doesn't. Don’t be afraid to feel di erently from even the colleagues around you. I think that's the biggest thing I would say.
In terms of the PMC, leadership, I think we had enough in common, where it makes sense that we work together but I know that for myself sometimes it didn't feel right. Aside from Susan, I was the only parent in the group. And five years ago, my kid was nine. When I started, I was a single parent. There were a lot of things around scheduling and the assumptions we held about people's time and lives that did not work for me. It took me a really long time to speak up about that. There were things that didn't always resonate for me as a healing practitioner But there's this great force, you know, it's the thing about social justice initiatives and racial justice and all these, you know, justices there's a collective consciousness that gets really, really strong But within that you can lose yourself And I am certain that every person is here for a very specific reason and has very specific skills and talents And they don't all have to mesh or even align at the same time They really don't
I think there was a fear of not being down, right, that I think I heard from some other people afterwards, or along the process along the way, this feeling of how I can't say this or that. I feel like I’m not supposed to agree with somebody who I'm not supposed to agree with, it feels like it compromises the truth for the collective. Feeling like we can’t speak our truth, that's not a good thing.
I want us to be able to find space in our circles of healing in our circles of justice for everybody to really have their truth. And so it doesn't have to be just the echo chamber. I don't think that serves us...that makes parts of us shrivel, and then that becomes unhealthy. And then little things start to seep in. You know, and there's no perfection, we're all human.
But I think that part of the evolution of any collective of beings is how we make
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room for each other to flourish as we are and still be connected. To not always understand each other and have that be ok.
Healing justice has become like a thing We have to watch that it doesn't become performative And to do this work, you just got to be listening so carefully, so closely all the time
It’s a gift that takes a lot of attention, and it takes dedication, and there's some amazing things that can happen when you're in that space They might be completely unexpected And they might be exactly what the person or group you may be working with needs at that time But to get there is about trust and letting go of some of the things we ’ re holding tightly to and that isn’t always easy
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SUSAN RAFFO | INTERVIEW
Interviewed 8/4/20 PMCrole:Owner
I began to study bodywork in 2005 and struggled to feel that this work was as politically relevant as the community organizing I had done for years previously In 2009 I attended the Healing Justice Practice Space at the US Social Forum in Atlanta and it changed my life. For the first time I found movement people, radical people, social justice people, who were interested in the places where systems of power and oppression were held in the tissues of the individual body as well as within systems and communities I am still interested in this work, work that refuses to separate how we individually connect with life from how we collectively claim our lives I believe part of this includes working towards the end of the medical industrial complex and the institutionalization of care away from relationships and community. I believe this includes lifting up practices and traditions that have been co opted or forced into disappearance as part of colonization, forced assimilation or the general selectivity of racial capitalism
I am also a writer and community organizer I am an intermittent blogger I published Queerly Classed in 1995 and Restricted Access in 1997 and Liberated to the Bone with AK Press (Nov, 2022) www.susanra o.com
Connective tissue
I remember the PMC's first event; we were one of the organizers of the national event, Healing Justice for Black Lives Matter We co organized this with Leah Lakshmi Piepzna Samarsinha and Adaku Utah. At that point, while there were certainly people who were doing di erent kinds of healing work and practitioners who were related to movement, there wasn't a lot of organizing of practitioners There were practitioners working within culturally grounded communities, in relationship to their own lineage, and then there were mostly a lot of isolated and separated individual practitioners. To some degree, that’s still true today, even as it has shifted and changed.
I remember having conversations with a lot of local and national practitioners at the time; white and of color. For many, it was the first time they encountered the framework of healing justice. Encountering the framework happened alongside the increasing visibility and emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement I think that is part of what shaped those early moments At the Healing Justice for Black Live
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Matter event in 2014, I think we heard back from 170 practitioners around the country about the money they raised, over $28,000 We know that there were others who didn’t report out, even as they participated
The HJ for Black Lives Matters event at the PMC was the opening event. This was huge Alejandra had largely been doing the work of readying the physical space on her own and with support from other friends and community members The space was emerging based on time and cash capacity but suddenly we had a date and an event that would go from the PMC being somewhat open to then being fully ready. Major props to Alejandra who probably didn’t sleep for weeks as she finished painting and nailing and carrying in chairs and other things We asked local practitioners to show up and give sessions that day and I think we had over a dozen practitioners, although I can’t remember the exact number. Once this event was past, we kind of looked at each other and were like, well, ok, I guess we ’ re open. The HJ for Black Lives Matters event also led to our most regular PMC event: Collective Bodywork Day The shape and format of it changed over the years but it was largely a kind of collective practice space for people to get accessible bodywork and to experience doing this kind of work alongside other people. We were interested in collective bodywork in a number of ways. I think it’s Ayo who first started to talk about care literacy, or using Collective Bodywork Day to support people to come in and get a sense of di erent kinds of modalities We talked a lot about how we make the space more accessible across experience. We also talked about the importance of challenging the idea that healing and vulnerability only happens in closed rooms and in private, even as we know that making it safe for people to heal together is a huge issue Every Collective Bodywork Day was di erent; sometimes very quiet and slow and other times, all it took was one person to begin to express more loudly or visibly, and it would change the field. I remember often kneeling next to the table when the person on top was holding back an emotion or sound that wanted to come through and whispering that they were safe, they could make noise, and that when they release, they give permission to others to do the same. For some of you reading this, you might think, well check out Minneapolis with all of that held privacy even in majority BIPOC spaces. But maybe not. There has been a lot more collective healing practice over the last ten years and even how things happen here in the Twin Cities is di erent
During the first year of the PMC, in addition to Collective Bodywork Days, we also tried all kinds of events. We had that bubbling energy of something that was brand
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new and exciting and we wanted to do ALL of it. We organized something called Movement Labs which were just practice spaces for di erent PMC folks to bring somatic or embodiment teachings for those wanting to apply it to their thinking or organizing. Our idea was that folks could bring a struggle or a question or a relationship and work it/live it through the Movement Lab process to support noncognitive practices We did maybe nine Movement Labs before we set it aside for capacity reasons Some of our people taught yoga and other movement forms, we had di erent speakers and leaders come and share their brilliance, and more Eli Clare, Mia Mingus, Jaime Grant, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna Samarsinha, Cara Page, Aurora Levins Morales, Carolyn Holbrook, and more: so many people coming and bringing their care and thinking into the space
Things at the PMC sharpened against when Jamar Clark was murdered in November 2015 in Minneapolis. An occupation of the 4th precinct emerged and we organized a care space at the occupation site One of our community members who has since passed, Colleen Cook, lent us a shed on wheels which had heating and we brought that to the site as a warm space and a space for providing care Some of the folks at the PMC were very involved, not only giving bodywork at the site but also organizing other practitioners and working in partnership with Black leadership at the 4th Precinct on how care was made available and when Thinking back on this, this is such a significant moment in these last seven years of liberatory work in the Twin Cities. Healing justice as a framework and care work as part of occupations and direct action still felt like a newer practice, one that we were learning and stumbling through. When Philando Castile was murdered seven or so months later, in summer 2016, there was clear Black community led care leadership and organizing Practitioners at the PMC participated as bodyworkers and trauma workers at the occupation of the Governor’s Mansion in alignment with that leadership.
It was sometime during this period, probably in early 2016, when the challenges of holding a practice space that provided care for those who came to the space and also showed up in community, well when that began to illuminate. We had far less monthly overhead than lots of other spaces, but we still had bills and needs. Practitioners paid rent for their sessions which was one of the primary ways that we had planned on getting income The only problem was that most of the PMC practitioners were emerging. They were holding down other jobs and then providing sessions as and whey they could. This meant that our monthly rent shifted
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constantly and money anxiety was a real thing in 2016 and 2017. We received income from di erent events we held We had a major summer bash in 2017 with a street party that was completely and utterly fabulous (thank you Alejandra and Eiko, in particular) and raised some good cash but only because Alejandra and Eiko worked their asses o for no payment. We started getting monthly supporters, which was awesome, and slowly we were increasing our income but at the same time, we were getting more and more ragged and burnt out We were, for the longest time, in this space between the amount of extra (unpaid) time that people had to lift the PMC to the next step and the need for cash paid sta to help do the work that the PMC needed to survive. By the time we reached that glory moment of having enough funding and time to hire someone, the PMC owners were completely burnt out and exhausted and couldn’t hold it for the final transition into paid sta ng We made so many mistakes in those final months and definitely hurt ourselves and each other as we were trying to figure out how to make this work. Towards the end, a number of the owners were taking some time o , which they needed, and those of us left suddenly looked at each other and realized we didn’t have what we needed to do the next big lift It felt sudden to the community, and particularly to the broad community of practitioners who weren’t owners but were close in as members, but for the owners, it had been this slow build of exhaustion mixed with fierce care and longing
During those final years and especially after the PMC closed, I heard friends say that some of PMC's impact was deeply psychological and visionary, even more than the specific things we did. Lots of people have said to me, “You don't understand how important it is to know that the PMC is there, that this this space in Minneapolis that centers BIPOC, queer and trans lives and experiences, unapologetically, you don't know how huge it is.”
When I think of the PMC’s positive impact, I think we provided some pretty amazing spaces I also think that in that moment of the Twin Cities’ political histories, it mattered that we asserted the idea of public space as curated towards a BIPOC and queer majority. We had identity specific events, but when we were organizing “ open ” events, we still asked for registration. We made sure that all PMC public events were at least 75% BIPOC attendees and a majority queer trans This meant that the size of the event was about that ratio and not about how many people could fit in the space. We shared this formula with people wanting to do things at the PMC and some used it and some didn’t but for us, whenever it was a PMC event, we
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worked to uncenter the truth of rapid white registration and the idea of who was the majority
In our earlier days, there weren’t a lot of other visible groups of people doing this kind of work and so we got phone calls and emails from so many di erent organizations nonprofits, collectives, state/city, faith based and more It feels like we were awake in a very specific moment, as organizations were orienting to what it means to pay attention to trauma, to non rational ways of thinking, to embodiment I ended up writing about it because it felt so specific, being able to watch this collective awareness emerge. During our final years, as there were more visible individuals and organizations showing up and holding wisdom and practice in these areas, it didn’t feel anymore like the PMC was the only game in town I actually think that is part of what helped us let go when it was time to let go.
I am clear that the PMC had a role in lifting the framework of healing justice and supporting its emergence in the Twin Cities, but I'm very wary of overclaiming that role because it wouldn't be true This is a land where Dakota and Lakota and Anishinaabeg healing and cultural practices resisted the violence of the boarding schools and where the relationship between care and political work has been held in reproductive justice spaces, arts spaces and a range of other culturally grounded spaces Maybe it didn’t call itself healing justice work, but the work was still there
To me, it’s more interesting to look at the lineage of how collective care and resistance and creativity manages to show up again and again, under di erent names and with di erent practices, but still true to the people and moment it is being practiced Those through lines are more interesting to me than who held which piece when….and, at the same time, I am so deeply grateful that I got to be part of the PMC at a very important time in my life. It shaped everything that has happened since I have so many good memories from the PMC, so many From public events to moments during our core meetings when someone was struggling and we threw the agenda to the floor in order to care for them. This didn’t happen as much as it might have, and I know that my tight hold sometimes on the agenda and process got in the way. My own shaping by white supremacy culture around how work gets done was, I know, a huge pain in the ass I still grieve over how I learned more about this in practice and not theory, and have (hopefully) shifted so much in other work I do, because of how it impacted people I care about at the PMC.
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It matters that The People’s Fund has lasted past the PMC’s closing. The People’s Fund asserts that healers have the right to be paid well at the same time as community members have the right to accessible and a ordable care That is a song that we can’t sing enough.
Emergence now
When I think of what the PMC might be contributing right now and over the last three years if it still existed, I think about the holding of grief and conflict I think of all the di erent shapes of grief I'm in the relationship to locally, the wisdom to hold grief, the space for grief… but that would be with others. There are so many other individuals and collectives doing this care work, so many If anything, I wonder if the PMC would be a di erent kind of connective tissue; between health care workers and healers. This was something we talked about a lot, wanting to do something more politically motivated and collective visionary than just provide integrative care, although it includes that. My worry for care work that names itself within the framework of healing justice is that a lot of it is creating new kinds of isolated bubbles that are accessible to those who know how to enter them I always remember the visual of the medical industrial complex that Patty Berne, Mia Mingus and Cara Page created in 2015. In the corner of that visual is a cautionary note: alternative health and healing becomes part of the MIC when it is not doing the deep work of liberation, resisting ableism in pursuit of this thing called “wellness” and keeping healing as an individual act rather than something that is tied and committed to transforming local conditions that cause harm and supporting collective strategies of care that are rooted in lineage.
One of the conversations we had across the five years at the PMC, and it didn't happen for all of the reasons that I've been the naming, was we talked about building an elder circle to be able to respond to intense moments in movement, where the elders have built relationships with each other over a period of time So that in a moment of overwhelm, we get to relearn how to pivot to somebody who can say yes, this is hard and it exists within a lineage, within a timeline, and we have to hold both, the urgency of the moment against the other moments like this one that have existed.
When I imagine the PMC existing into 2022 and beyond, I think about the importance of throughlines; of memory. Cara talks about our work as memory work; a remembering across the moments of crisis and clarity, of resilience and glory.
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Maybe this is becoming more important to me because I am nearing 60 and so memories, I have lots of those wiggling around
When I think about doing this reflection, this report now and why it still matters, it’s because of that piece about memory. Maybe only one person will pick this up and read it and say, oh wow, yeah, so it’s hard to have a collective when some people can only give three hours a month and others are giving 30 Maybe we need to talk about that in our work And maybe we have to go deep into our shared values and commitments before we open, which isn’t what we did. The PMC emerged, it was Alejandra’s vision and then it became collective and it was glorious and powerful and we were always trying to figure out how to pay our bills and commit to each other across our many di erent lives Maybe things would have been di erent if we had been slow in the beginning and had said: here are the things we expect of each other. Here is how we will hold each other accountable. Here is how we will live the practices we are teaching Here are our red flags and when these red flags come up, we will stop and see if this can actually work I know that I sometimes got so fierce about the PMC succeeding and finding a way to make this dream viable and available that I wasn’t paying enough attention to the cost on us in the meantime. The other piece that grew stronger for me after we closed the PMC was that I’m not sure it’s possible to have a center or a space with the sole purpose being to o er healing. I think that’s fine when the space is filled with individuals o ering individual sessions, which is what I think most centers are these days. But a center that is focused on collective healing and safety? One of the things we struggled with was that, any time an individual said they needed to step back and miss a meeting and practice self care, we honored them We honored them because we knew how often the truth of someone ’ s pain and struggle, particularly the pain and struggle of Black and indigenous and people of color and immigrants and queers and trans and nonbinary folks and folks living with chronic pain and living with disabilities and with small children and elders they care for and so on, we knew how often the impact of these things was not and is not honored by a work space. And so we wanted to be di erent and we were di erent….. And that di erence might have hurt us because the impact is real. It’s huge and it’s real… and each time someone stepped out, and so many of us stepped out so very often, then the stability of our collective struggled We said that we would honor decisions that others made in our absence and we often did, but sometimes we couldn’t. And when we couldn’t, we went back and forth and got tired. There is a tension with centering healing work in that healing
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itself, well, who determines when it’s reached? Who decides that we have had enough space or time to come back to center? Towards the end of the PMC, I started to learn about work happening in other spaces that used a healing justice framework to create aspects of other kinds of organizing work. I think of the care spaces that Dignity Power Now holds for people after visiting their incarcerated loved ones I think of the incredible ways that COVID protocols and protections have been woven throughout the Uprisings following the murder of George Floyd I think of the many memorials created as a part of organizing and movement work where care and time for grief and struggle is held as part of the work.
I deeply believe we need to support more people who feel called to become healing practitioners, particularly Black and indigenous and immigrant and folks of color and queer and trans and all of those who are not currently represented in the schools, the curriculums and the practitioner lists (outside of culturally grounded schools) I honor work like the Latinx Therapy Network and the National Queer and Trans Therapist of Color Network We still don’t have as many similar networks for massage therapists and craniosacral therapists and somatic coaches and acupuncturists, although there are more and more for birthworkers. And then not only have those networks, but deeply support how healing practitioners are integrated into strategy building sessions and planning for movement work Healing and organizing are not separate things; they are the same thing It’s western binary brain that separates them with healing being what individuals do and organizing being what communities do. When I dream of the PMC still being awake and active, I imagine linking arms with other local folks building networks of care and sharing strategies for teaching and apprenticing and weaving practitioners ever deeper into the work of change
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ALEJANDRA (TOBAR-ALATRIZ) | INTERVIEW
Interviewed1/21/20
PMCrole:Founder, Owner
Alejandra has been a bodyworker and organizer in the arts, movement and healing arts for 20 years. Her practice is grounded in Global Somatics Process (GSP), focusing on liberation through embodiment of the Natural Body the interplay of the energetic and physical body She was the first GSP Teacher certified in 2012, taught by its founder Suzanne River Her bodywork and training approach uses movement and hands on techniques to help the body heal, integrate, relieve stress, gain insight, and deepen relationship GSP is about becoming more embodied, more fully ourselves. She is deeply committed to the idea that strong individuals make happy, healthy community organizers, healers, and meaning makers
https://linktree/alejandratobar
Containers: Relationship and Physical Space
I had the opportunity to find and provide the starting place for the People’s Movement Center. Once I understood from the universe (through opportunity, synergy, and full body knowing) that it was time to follow an enigmatic flow of creation (ie community development) in service to something greater, I soberly followed a somewhat illogical path to providing a sound and operational space from which to work for practitioners like myself.
Practically speaking, without consulting anyone but my partner Saby Labor at the time, I rented a commercial space on a handshake, and proceeded to restore this multi room space in South Minneapolis for about six months. Then, for another few months, I humbly and awkwardly asked others on board to the birthing and development of the People’s Movement Center*
This endeavor was illogical at first glance, in multiple ways. I understood that the best practice for starting a ‘collective’ was not to do it singularly, on one ’ s own. I cognitively understood that it was not sustainable to fund the start of a business on credit cards I needed a place to ground my private practice and yet rehabbing a building and starting another business was all consuming
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And still, there were so many ways in which it did make sense I had been organizing in the community for years and had specifically been holding small group conversations on a network idea and it was resonating. I was incredibly inspired by the organizing work of the healing justice practitioners working together at the 2010 US Social Forum in Detroit, and eternally grateful to Susan Ra o for bringing me into the organizing circle Also, the amount of space this provided for the quoted rent at the time was unheard of in its a ordability Granted, It was a ordable because it was not maintained well. I had just stepped out of a job doing financial literacy consulting and though not sitting on actual capital, I felt my crude assessment of the costs and benefits still ruled in my favor My core group of clients expressed their loyalty and support which meant I could count on keeping an income stream steady. And, it must be underscored that birth and found family support was what fueled me in the early days. It gave me the courage to commit fully to this idea then later again to experience that success most always follows alignment All of this kept my momentum going while overcoming zoning challenges, building permit woes, and needed neighborhood ordinances for the updates I did to the physical space. .
When I decided to say yes to this location, I was an independent practitioner making my way as a solo business owner for several years At the time when clients and puppeteering colleagues approached me to consider splitting the rent in the space, I was renting two di erent small studios (one for strength training work and one for bodywork they had di erent equipment and space needs). I had a growing sense of great dissatisfaction at how disconnected my practice felt from that of other practitioners, the community, and a larger conversation about accessibility and justice. I knew that together we could get beyond an idea of financial accessibility that relied solely on individual practitioners lowering their prices and absorbing that cost So, I reached out to those who were closest to me in relationship and a part of this movement conversation. I called for a Witnessing Circle and said, "I know you don't start a collective by yourself. But I think that we could do something collectively here in this space I now have Who’s in and how can we move from Point A to Point B" It was rough By that point I was tired and worn down and caught up in my insecurities. This meant that I was not always clear with my energy, intentions, and requests. And still, Gri en Je ries, Jessica Lopez Lyman and Susan Ra o stepped
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powerfully in to steer the first iteration of the Center in co leadership. I think we gave ourselves a name (how could we have not) and yet I am not remembering I am eternally grateful for each of them
Soon after, that coordinating group made a commitment to me and my family to reimburse our financial investment in the physical space I had invested over $3,000 of actual money (not counting barters and the hours I put in personally) That agreement and support, made outside of the legal system, was critical in regards to my capacity to stay in that organizing e ort, to be able to manage my own practice that by then was strained.
Opening and holding collective healing spaces A ritual of service
The floors were barely ready, and the paint fumes were still a question in my mind when I heard about the call for solidarity action. This is how we were to open.
A quick oversimplification of how I remember the moment: Susan Ra o and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna Samarasinha had a social media exchange about dedicating one day of work and donating their proceeds to the Ferguson Defense Fund. They agreed to do it together and invite others along. They called for bodyworkers to unite our financial power on behalf of activists on the front line That day, nationally, we raised over $20k for the fund This way to open the Center felt most important It gave us framing for relevant and critical questions. It created a powerful fractal.
Organizational structures
I once heard a trainer from Southerners Organizing for New Ground (SONG) talk about a concept that really helped us as an organization to not get stuck too often The simple idea of building a terracotta container to hold our work, and when we outgrow that terracotta container, it can be broken apart, and it can be something new I think that was a really important cultural piece in our leadership Over the years, we tried 4 5 distinct organizational models to help us function
I started the PMC as a sole proprietor and then we incorporated into an LLC. We were often recognized in the community for our cooperative nature ( even on a City of Minneapolis report on the state of Cooperatives that came out at the time), but were never an actual, registered co op
Towards the end, we definitely felt the weight of the building. I never fully let go of
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that responsibility of being the ‘physical space ’ person. We were never quite able to pay ourselves enough for the work The funding situation was definitely changing and it seems as if, with a little more work, we could have secured some good funding… but we did not have that capacity among us any longer. And we did not have the capacity to support another group of people to do so either. We felt comfortable that our sunset would not preclude the birth of the next healing justice practice space, garden and laboratory
I feel grateful that we were not seduced by the potential fundability at the end. ‘We never set out to become an institution. We came to feed a movement.’
What did we do well? What did we learn? It takes a lot of intentionality and continuously refreshed eyes to hold and organize collective healing spaces. And, I think we all find that work to be worth it We are all I believe reconsidering our next roles in relationship to that work
As we have dispersed, many of the PMC members have gotten called upon to continue to inform these kinds of organizing e orts. Like seeds in the wind, we continue
*The name, the People’s Movement Center, was inspired by a conversation Alejandra (Tobar Alatriz) had with artist Leah Nelson post rehearsal for Malia Burkhart’s piece Breathe, Love, Know, Relate.
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Image credits
Cover photo of dandelion by Олександр К on Unsplash
Table of contents photo of tree by Faye Cornish on Unsplash
Night sky photo by Nathan Anderson on Unsplash
Seedlings photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
Hand with pencil photo by Samuel Rios on Unsplash
Rubber plant photo by Scott Webb on Unsplash
Mimosa flowers on branch photo by Christina Deravedisian on Unsplash
Sources named
Healing Justice for Black LIves Matters
https://nonprofitquarterly.org/healing justice for black lives matter/ Sliding Fee Scale research https://www.ihotuali.com/blog/the sliding fee scale What people ask for when they are asking about healing https://www.susanra o.com/blog/what people ask us for when they are asking a bout healing
Medical Industrial Complex visual https://leavingevidence.wordpress.com/2015/02/06/medical industrial complex vis ual/
Gratitude
Thank you to everyone who cared about, cared for, and attended anything at the People’s Movement Center. This is, like all things, only the story as told through those interviewed There are as many stories not on these pages as there are here Thank you to Elizabeth & Melissa Scott for supporting the work of creating this report
The PMC website is still up and includes a video we made about PMC, information about the practitioners, and a link to the resource page we curated about healing justice and politicized healing wwwpeoplesmovementcentercom
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