Happy 45th Birthday Mich!!

 
For the past 2+ years I have been working with an amazing spectrum of talented organizers and healers across the country to develop the Political Healers project, a project that insectionalizes healing and political engagement, through base building and leadership development, centered on womxn of color, queer and trans womxn, and nonbinary and gender non-conforming people. 


We’ve done this through training and political education on feminine leadership and through the creation of community-building spaces, called Community Gatherings. Community gatherings are spaces where people can come together to build relationships, share experience, heal, politicize their trauma and be called to take collective action. The fundamental principle is healing and relationship building, and the fundamental aim is community repair. Our work toward one fair wage, healthcare for all, to guarantee homes for all, or for quality education, to name a few, are radical efforts to bring about community repair. Community gatherings create unique spaces where people who are usually left out of political leadership to be developed into political healing leaders at the speed of their experience, their needs and their levels of trust. 


Sound good? Looking back, we really could have used these community building spaces. In 2017 we saw hundreds of thousands of people in the streets, in anti-Trump actions, against the Muslim ban, and in the numerous fights to defend the ACA. From the vantage of working on a national level in many states, I watched grassroots organizations struggle to absorb the breadth of people clamoring to be more deeply engaged in these fights. Our structures were limited to recruiting and absorbing only some kinds of people with certain kinds of lifestyles that allowed them to more easily engage in our work. People who are regularly excluded, exploited and underserved in our society, and people who are targeted for destruction (directly and indirectly) by state and corporate actors continue to have fewer, if any access points. This is unacceptable to most of us, yet we continue to struggle to figure out how to build power with impacted people in a way that’s far beyond tokenization. 


This is NOT a criticism of progressive movement work. It is EVIDENCE of the way racial capitalism and heteropatriarchy have INFECTED progressive movement work. There is still much work to do to change the policies and practice that make it difficult for impacted people to operate and lead sustainably in our movement spaces. The Political Healers project addresses these challenges through political education and training of impacted folk to develop agency and protagonism, as well as by working with nonprofit organizations to develop trauma-informed structures that enable them to recognize, understand and respond to trauma. 


Over the next 3 years I am working to build the Political Healers project as a feminine leadership development frame which, positioned at the nexus of healing justice and political engagement, will train, develop, heal, inspire and mobilize womxn of color and other people most impacted by structural problems to effect transformative change in the public arena. We will also be collaborating with nonprofit organizations to develop trauma-informed structures that enable them to recognize, understand and respond to trauma. Our initial work will include training and organizing the masses of people who both seek innovative solutions for healing and community repair through political engagement, and who, because of their lack of access to life-giving resources, have had no other choice but to come up with innovative solutions for their own and their community’s survival. 


On my birthday today, while you seek to wish me well -- and I am ever so grateful for all of your well-wishes -- I’m asking you to invest in my leadership and my vision of a world where more womxn of color, queer and trans women, as well as nonbinary and gender non-confoming people are at the center of our economic, social and political transformation. Invest in the development of the Political Healers project. Invest in MY leadership!


If you know and care about me, if you’ve been trained, mentored or coached by me, If you personally share a vision of feminine leadership in the world, and believe that there are new possibilities of community repair and justice through the development of this leadership - INVEST in me and you and US now!


My birthday goal is to raise $5,000 and to win your ongoing support and investment by agreeing to be added to the Political Healers online network of supporters. There you will get regular updates of our work, and will have opportunities to more deeply engage online and in-person!


Please give $4.5 or $45 in honor of my birthday today, or at any other level you feel best represents your investment. Use the following link to DONATE NOW!


Thank you for your time in reading this post, and heartfelt gratitude for your continued support of me and the Political Healers project. 


Peace and Blessings,

Mich