Ep. 3: Black Love and Imagination with adrienne maree brown

Written By Nikishka Iyengar
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  • adrienne maree brown 0:00

    But what does it mean to start from a Black imagination? And to me this is what I think of as Afro-futurism, what I think of as Black speculative fiction. It's why I want to write in that realm. It's like, how do I tap into my own Black imagination? How do I listen to the ancestors that remember before white folks touched the shore of the Motherland that's in me that's in my DNA. It's in your DNA. It's in anyone who has African ancestral DNA.

    Road to Repair Theme Song 0:30

    You ready, we gettin' down to business. Investing in existence. Shifting from a system steeped in extraction, that steady sappin' our peoples and planet to cash in, slashing. Widening gaps in our access to land, wealth, peace, satisfaction. Imagine basing relations on more than transactions. It's time for new pathways, and we need to shape them through our inner landscapes, our relations, our approach our dedication, we're on the road to repair as a commitment to transformation.

    Show Intro 1:04

    Welcome to the Road to Repair, a podcast exploring our journey out of a business as usual economy towards collective healing and liberation. I'm one of your co-hosts Nikishka Iyengar, and I'm joined by Andrew X and Jessica Norwood.

    Jessica Norwood 1:23

    Hi, I'm Jessica Norwood and I'm your host. And in this episode, I talk with my homegirl adrienne maree brown. adrienne is a writer, doula, auntie, and my favorite title for her the Pleasure Activist. That's because it sums up who she is perfectly sweet, playful, and impactful. An old-school friend, I've watched Adrienne emerge as a voice for a generation that brings direct action with courageous love and transformative conversations in order to build a movement for economic liberation. Adrienne is the author of six books and counting: Octavia's Brood; Emergent Strategy; We Will Not Cancel Us; Pleasure Activism, Holding Change; and Grievers. Each book is part love letter, part organizing tool that promises to bring all power to the people.

    I couldn't think of anybody better to talk to than adrienne, when I wanted to have this conversation about repair, and particularly the intersection of imagination. We've lost our ability to really deeply imagine another way than what we're currently doing. adrienne is such a dynamic storyteller. And here's the thing, she has been like that since I have known her if you've been following her, she has been a writer through blog posts, through and through. And I felt like she had a lot of language, that we needed right now. Because we're in this space where transformation is happening. I like to think of this as a portal, that we're coming through the gateway on the other side. And the question I have is, "who do we have to be on the other side of that?" That is one of those core imagining questions, "who do we have to be?" Right? How do we build a structure of an economy that acknowledges this deep need for interdependence, this deep longing for relationship and connection to one another? How do we put ourselves in a place where we understand and acknowledge what really matters, particularly how we work, what we produce? These kinds of things require a whole new lexicon, a whole new being, a whole new idea of what is possible. Inherently, this is about shifting narrative and storytelling. And so you need a dynamic storyteller, like adrienne. So when we were preparing for this, I talked about imagination, and particularly Black imagination all day long, because I wanted to really underscore what I felt was missing when we're talking about repairing something right now. So I would say that in this idea of "road to repair" and an economy and an economic system that has not seen black/brown people, it hasn't seen their creativity there. In fact, it has been more exploitative. It's seen it. Maybe that's the proper way to say but it's definitely been exploitive. But I think there's some things that when we have an economy that has racially undermined and structurally and systemically removed people from its relationship to the planet, and the people around, it's important to engage a conversation about imagining something new. Who gets to imagine that is as important as the topic of imagining the thing. Right? I think we lose so much right now by not investing in, you know, black/brown entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs of color at a more robust way than what we're doing. I think we lose that imagination, particularly because the people who can solve problems in your communities are people who come from those places who understand intimately, the policies and procedures and things happening in that local area. So they don't have to work to be on the ground working on something, making that product or that idea reach that particular community because they from that community, they get it much more intimately. I think when we lock out imagination, we lose the talent. And we don't see the talent, who can actually solve the problems that are most facing our community. I think when we lose black imagination, in particular, but blackness broadly, so when I say black, I'm talking about blackness, all related to black. When we talk about black imagination, I think that there is a healing balm mixed inside of black imagination that we are not accessing right now. It mixes joy, and play, and turns it into a strategy for living and for loving. And that imagination that brings in that joy in that place is something that we need right now we have been kind of moving along a pathway that stops acknowledging pleasure, that stops acknowledging the fullness of who we are and the activities that we want to be engaged in for the betterment of ourselves and the planet. We it takes that away, we don't even get to explore that we are put inside of this box and expected to perform a particular way. And the world is changing. And so where is that imagination that we get to access that gives us new ways, new pathways, new ideas, I think there is broadly probably, maybe this is the biggest reason I would say that this conversation about imagination is so present with me, there is a danger and living inside of the imagination of other folks, particularly when we think about white supremacy and white imagination, that there has been a dangerous outcome of black people living inside of a white imagination. It shapes who we are, it puts limits on what we can do. And it never gives the full spaciousness for that person to actually actualize to become fully what their heart and spirit is intended, because it is always seen inside of a power dynamic, some sort of racialized construct that is meant to maintain these systems of inequality, I asked adrienne, what does it mean to start from a place of black imagination as a reparative strategy?

    And here is what she said.

    adrienne maree brown 8:19

    You know, Tony Morrison also talked about this idea of like, what does it mean to live outside of the white imagination. And I think about it all the time. My partner, and I talk about this all the time is that, first you have to recognize you're in the white imagination. First, you have to recognize and humble yourself to the fact that you are living inside of an imagination that did not care about you and did not see you as someone powerful or worthy of love or any of those things. And, you know, it's playing out in movement. Right now there's this huge dynamic about light skin, dark skin Ebola, and it's like, all of that is in relationship to the white imagination and white supremacy and how white people defined race and what Blackness was or wouldn't be and what does it mean, what you're experiencing, I think is so healing. What does it mean to go to places where Black imagination has always held the center line? It doesn't mean we're perfect, right? But what does it mean to start from a Black imagination, and to me, this is what I think of as Afro futurism. What I think of as Black speculative fiction, is why I want to write in that realm. It's like, how do I tap into my own Black imagination? How do I listen to the ancestors that remember before white folks touch the shore of the Motherland that's in me that's in my DNA is in your DNA is an anyone who has African ancestral DNA, like their stories that are then given to us through our DNA to tell how do we listen for those and then we are in a complex time because many of us have multiracial histories, even if it's not in this one generation, right. You know, almost none of us are like some something pure. That was like this is the original tribe that my people were And I'm still bad, right? Almost everyone has had tribal mixing, national mixing, regional mixing. And so it's really listening for what is the opportunity of this time that we have the DNA, that we have the lineages that we have these ancestors, that we have these stories? How can all of that help us now hear the next instruction? For our purposes, humans on this planet? And I think it comes to the imagination, I think we have to imagine, you know, Octavia Butler said, Our destiny is to take root amongst the stars. Does that mean we need to go to space? Does that mean we root deeper into this planetary experience? Right? What do you imagine? And I'm asking people that all the time, can you imagine being satisfied? What would it look like to live inside of a species that feels satisfied? Can we imagine that? What would satisfy us? I'm like, there's a lot of people who live their entire lives, working for someone else as a cog in the wheel, coming home, having a meal, sitting in front of the television, going to sleep and doing it again. And I think we're so far from, from satisfaction, in what we're socialized to experience right now that we can't imagine that perhaps our purpose is not to work at all. Perhaps our purpose is purely to play and to create, to make love, you know, to feel joy, right? Perhaps, you know, it's possible. And then what would happen inside of that imagining, perhaps our whole purpose is to find a million names for God. And that's why we keep doing that over and over again. I just I get so curious. Jimmy box, you know, my mentor was Grace Lee Boggs here in Detroit, or her partner was Jimmy. And he said that he wrote about this of like, what could we do as workers to harness this technological age. So the technology could handle so much of what we think of now as work. And that then our work, our labor could be our imaginations and our thinking, and this was an a Black southern auto worker in the 60s 70s 80s. Right? I love I'm just like, we know, we're supposed to be imagining something different. We just need a little space

    Jessica Norwood 12:07

    to do so. So at this point, it is 2015. And adrienne and I are in Phoenix, Arizona, and we're in town for the Bali conference, sued for building local alliances for local economics, I'm probably butchering it. But what matters is now is called common future. Now, before it was common future, it still has been this amalgamation of all of these amazing people all around the country, who are building local economies and thinking about what the innovation is, where the disruptions are around ownership, and land and business access. And so we are there at this conference, and I'm in the audience. I think I might have been a fellow at the time. And Adrienne is on the main stage, and she is giving what is quite honestly a really, really powerful speech. so powerful, that it stuck with me. And I couldn't help but to ask her what she thought about those words. Now, I'm going to play this for you. And then we're going to hear from adrienne.

    adrienne maree brown 13:22

    We are in an imagination battle right now. Claudia Rankin and Terry Marshall have both spoken of this, Trayvon Martin and Mike Brown and Renisha McBride and all of them are dead because in some white imagination, they were dangerous, and that a May imagination is so respected, that those who would kill based on an imagined racialized fear of Black people are rarely held accountable. Imagination has people think that they can go from poverty to millionaire as part of a shared American Dream. Imagination turns brown bombers into terrorist and white bombers into mentally ill victims. Imagination gives us borders and gives us superiority and gives us a race. We have to imagine beyond those fears, we have to ideate together, the poverty that results from our current system allows this imagining to be fed by the results of a scarcity economics. We must imagine new worlds that transition us from seeing Black people as murderers or brown people as terrorist or aliens to ones that can see Black and brown people as cultural and economic innovators and peers. Yes.

    One of the things that has struck me since since I said that since I thought and wrote that was that so much of the movement that has been unfolding, multiple movements unfolding, has started to be visionary in their language of what we're asking for. And it starts to be clear. So Black Lives Matter in and of itself is a visionary articulation of what we want to move towards right, is we want to move towards a world in which Black Lives Matter. For those of us who say the Combahee River statement, we understand that once Black Lives Matter, it would necessitate that all other lives matter because of where we sit in the economic and cultural spectrum of this nation since its founding. So it would be a first time that this had ever happened, that our lives actually mattered when that happened. And I also felt the work of me too, is this visionary work to be like, we want to name that this harm has been happening so that we can end this harm from happening, we have a vision, in which everyone who was saying me to the me to no longer has to mean, me, too. I was harmed. But Me too, I recover from trauma. And me too, I broke the cycle of harm my and they have a visionary component, and now defund the police gets added to that, which is literally a visionary economic call from black and brown people that says, We believe and Miriam Cabo puts this beautifully, that we have been in a 250 year experiment of the punitive prison system that has been very well funded, we have never actually given ourselves an opportunity to have well funded experiments in abolitionist practices of what would it look like to have deeply funded mental health services? What would it look like to be deeply funding education services? What would it look like to be deeply funding therapeutic services, so that when people are having a breakdown, when people are in conflict, that they have some place that is funded, that is a resource that is community resource that they can turn to, so that they're not being called, having the police called on them to take them up and out of community? Right? The biggest resource we're losing every day, from our community is the people in it, right? We're losing people to things that we don't need to lose them to. Because we actually have skills and practices in mediation, we understand so much of how the mind works, what breaks a heart, what helps it meant how grief functions, these things should no longer be leading us to the level of exacerbated conflict and pain that gets us into these systems. And we also know that transformative justice exists that abolition is real, that people can recover from their worst day, right? So defund the police, I think is so brilliant, because it calls all of that in it's like, we have the money. But we have been marking that money as a resource for a strategy that does not keep us safe and doesn't end harm. At what point do we say this isn't working? If it was a business model, like it was a pure business model, if this was a business, someone's running, I think it would have changed years ago, because there'd been like, so no one ever heals in the system. People don't rehabilitate, how many murders still happened? How much rape still happen? Okay. Right. Because it's a different kind of business model still rooted in slavery, we don't make that adjustment. And I think the really long haul of this moment, is that we are deciding, looking at ourselves and saying, how we weren't ready to relinquish the economic model of slavery that is rooted in punishing each other, and in rooted in dividing from each other and superiority politics. If we're really truly ready to let that down, then something actually new. What I think of as that just transition, right can emerge for our economy, which is at the center of our society is not about punishment and superiority, then it can actually be about life and connectivity, and sustainability. And I think that that move happens through movement. I think it happens through business, I think it happens to government. But I think it happens when those places feel like we are in relationship to and accountable to each other, which is something I've always thought, and I think now, and maybe I'll always think and I think at different points, parts of that system are weaker. So for the past four years, we had a troll based administration in the governmental realm. But a lot was able to still move in local government, a lot was able to still move in state government, such that we had then the shift in this last election. There are times when business is the one that's really out of alignment, right? And then it's like, okay, movement government are trying to hold those I really curious about, and this is part of why when I put out ideas like emergent strategy, I'm like, I want everyone to read this. Like I don't want it to be something that is only read by one sector or one part of society, because I'm interested in what happens if more different components of society can start to see each other as allies in where it is we're trying to get to. And I think that's part of what we're learning right now, in the spirit of repair. I do think it's going to take us a good year or two, maybe more to actually recover from the onslaught of the past four years, just having that amount of crisis every single day from the top down, and having all the media tied up in that pace of crisis. I know that I feel in my body that sense of recovery that I'm like, oh, like so nobody came out today and just like said some dumb dumb, dumb dumb Dum Dum illegal shit that we have to now all pretend is a real issue that we have to spend a 24 hour news cycle on. Okay. Like, you know, there's still stuff I disagree with. But it's actual legitimate legal battle, which is a different thing to be in, right. So I think it's going to take us some time to recover from that. I also think that a lot of people are like, wow, we really can't go there again. And I think that creates a different kind of vision to that. It's like, we know what the edge is, we know we won't survive it. If we let ourselves slip past that edge. Again, a lot of us didn't survive COVID. And the way that the US went through COVID, is directly related to letting that kind of greed based economic model move into the White House in that way. So I'm also really curious, I see a lot of people, you know, it used to be for me very staunchly anti capitalist. The vision was staunchly anti capitalist. And I still feel that way. But I feel a lot of people who might not identify that way, who are really trying to think in new ways about economy, and how resource moves and what is a value. I'm also curious, I'm like, how do we have these conversations in a way that says, what is the value is land? What is a value his life? What is the value of his children? What is the value of his labor? What is the value of creativity, and money is one of the many ways that we move the resources, those resources towards each other. Right? So I'm interested in this.

    Jessica Norwood 21:30

    Black imagination is about joy. It is about celebrating who we are, what we do, how we overcome, and not just overcome life's hardships, I'm really thinking about what it means to overcome the structural inequities that we are facing inside of that particular system that creates those hardships that creates needlessly barriers to entry that so many people face in getting into this economic system. So it's about imagining new ways of being that are celebratory, new rituals that enable us to see ourselves more powerfully and more interestingly, and it's no doubt that this conversation with Adrienne turns when I asked her, put your doula hat on, and tell me what the outcome is that when we are imagining a new theme, what is now birthed what is now possible for us, and the conversation went to love. And I think it was really telling that the conversation went to love. For all of the reasons that I said, I think that there is a contentment when we're designing these systems, or policies or practices that we are beholden to, what does it mean, if Black imagination was the center place where that joy that I just spoke of, or that contentment, where the rituals of those things are actually in place as the policy actually in place? That's the procedures in one of the things this reminds me of that, you know, going into this conversation about love seems maybe slightly unlikely, because you're talking about imagination, but what's possible Love of self, love of others, love of our community. And we need that. And now more than ever, last year, when the pandemic was just beginning, I was on a phone call talking to some folks in finance, and particularly talking to some banking partners. And there was a person on the call who was working with us, and they kept saying, we're going to use some of the things that we've you know, done in the past. And we've got, you know, procedures for for this, and maybe about the second, maybe third time, this person said this, I stopped and I said excuse me, have you been in a global pandemic before? Have you done financing in a global pandemic, and their face just went a little flush. But what I was trying to illustrate is their ideas of using strategies that might have been for hurricanes or earthquakes, or fires that may have damaged a business that was not going to work. There have been record numbers of black and brown businesses that closed and I knew with a weak financial position that most of these firms were already in because they had not been getting access to capital because of the systemic issues that we would have to have Imagine another way, we could not rely on old information with a new set of circumstances in front of us. That night, I went home and I tossed and I turned, and I keep a journal right on the nightstand. And a jumped up in the middle of night cut the light on and I wrote down, what would it look like? If the economy loved black people? What would it look like? If the financing loved black people? What would it look like? If we all loved and cared for each other? These are the core questions that got us into the word love. And we talked about personal love. We talked about romantic love. We talked about community love and broad economic ideas inside of that. And so I'll leave you with this, there is a lovely body of work, a lovely body of work by Natasha Mirren called Black imagination. It's a book, it's an exhibition, fantastic artwork. And something Natasha said that really struck me that I want to leave you with your joy is already a triumph over anyone else's definition of who you are. Your joy is already a triumph over anyone else's definition of who you are. That is the power of imagination, the joy that it accesses, the feeling you have is already more than anything anybody could see or say about you. And that is accessible to all of us. And particularly on the road to repair.

    adrienne maree brown 26:51

    I think I'm going to write a book about love. Eventually, you know, I actually did a post on Valentine's Day around Valentine's Day, I did this post called Looking for love on my Instagram. And it was really just like, an experiment in my mind. But what you were just saying about how when you meet people, you're like, have you read emergent strategy? Okay, then I understand that we will be good. So the looking for love posts was like for people who think of themselves as emergent strategist, pleasure activist, like radical visionary, futuristic people who are looking for love, like, post it here, put your call here. And we got 1000s of comments of people saying I'm looking for love, you know, I'm straight, queer, you know, sis ahead, you know, trans, like, people just posted whatever they needed to post about themselves and what they wanted. And now I'm starting to hear the love stories, right? People have found each other in the comments, and are starting to build relationships about different kinds. So now, about six or seven different people reached out, they're like, We should make this an app or we should make this a thing like that people can actually use regularly. So now that's kind of bubbling and being worked on. And so I'm just like, Okay, I think love is the next big arena, you know, as the ring moves past as the huge engagement ring. That's it so pretty. It's gorgeous. Did

    Jessica Norwood 28:21

    you know it was coming.

    adrienne maree brown 28:22

    So I'll say what I knew what I knew is since the day I met my sweetheart, I knew that she was head over heels in love with me already and wanted to be married. Like that was, I think that was like the first sentence she said to me was literally like I'm in love with at a bookstore in New Orleans. Like she stood up in front of everyone. It was like I'm in love with you. And I was like, Okay, people think that they don't know me. Because people you know, I'm in love with Beyonce. Like, I don't know her real. It's like, if you've read something or seeing something of someone's work, you can project so much from your fantasy against that. But then she was like, Nah, for real, like a bit paying attention. I see you I know, you just give me a chance. And I gave her a chance. And it was like, all the work that I've been doing for the past decade to learn to open my heart to learn to be able to feel what the yes was inside of me. It made it undeniable when she showed up my heart, the feeling of it. I can I can. It's a palpable thing that my heart did a warm opening and forward motion like it was just like yes, that's that's a yes. And so I kept trying to out think it because I'm like a modern woman, you know, like, you know, like, no, no, here's all the reasons and my brain was like, doing all this armoring up, but my heart has been learning to D armor. And so it really was like, What are you so afraid of? Why is it so unbelievable that someone could be this in love with you? What is it in your life that you're trying to protect from love and all of that You know, we just kept staying in, and then you know, going through a global pandemic with someone and being like, I still like you every day when we wake up, I still want to see you, you know, run into you on the way to the bathroom. I still want to build life with you. For those of us who have been blessed enough to survive this, I think we have all come through it with a clear sense of what relationships matter to us.

    Jessica Norwood 30:23

    That's the real currency, what really matters in those relationships. That's the That's the work. Like all the things that we sort of transpose on the identity of, of capital and money really still come back to this love and relationship. And I noticed so much during this past year with Coronavirus, that the things that we really cared about was really to be together. Yes, it will to us, like we've longed for it for just a moment of just like to be held, I have a modern woman, if you want to wrap your arms around me, I would lay in and just get all of it. And I never craved it in this way. And it took me to what really mattered the most at the end of the day, right? Like, trying to do the work for was this very core thing. And also watching everybody work, work, work, work, work and could not could not sag by the the level of safety and protection that were promised, right? Like this sort of social covenant. Right, like to be in capitalism and this level of productivity. Yes. Everybody that if you work like this, when the times get really bad, right? It should be

    adrienne maree brown 31:43

    good. It should be good, you'll be good, you'll be okay. And so not like that. I had planned a sabbatical. You were there right before it, we were in Puerto Rico together. And I went on this sabbatical, my sweetheart, you know, was super supportive of it. But then, as the pandemic played out, I ended up three months by my self, which I'm always like, I need to be by myself. I just need to be by myself. I'm a grown woman, you know, like I was so about this narrative of being alone. And I didn't even realize that I had been entrenching myself even in the face of love entrenching myself in a story that only alone, could I be successful, could I be safe? Could I have what I wanted. And then those three months really just put me in my place that was like, I need to be held any foot rubs, I need to share the the work of home, I want my parents, I want my lover. Like no matter what else unfolds, as I'm changing, and she's changing, and everyone's changing. I want to be loved as I am in the changes. All of that felt so crystal clear to me, by the end of those three months that I was just like, I'm not meant to be alone, because I'm a human and humans are not meant to be alone, even those of us who are more introverted, and that's what really matters. And I think now I'm really like, how do we structure our economy? You know, if you think of economy as the management of home, which movement generation teaches us, right? How do we structure our economy so that everyone has a safe home, a home where they can feel belonging, whatever that looks like, you know, for some people, it may be big, romantic love isn't the thing. But that doesn't mean I don't want to be held. That doesn't mean I don't need care when I get sick. And like how do we structure our society that does that? How do we structure society where in a pandemic children the responsibility of children is shared, poor parents, so many parents through this past year are devastated emotionally, mentally, physically, by having to carry the load of childbearing alone, when that's not our nature? Right. Before the pandemic, I had multiple kids, that I have a huge role in their lives. And it's like, how do I structure my life and the economy of my life, such that that is possible even in these conditions.

    Jessica Norwood 34:07

    This was an incredibly powerful session about imagination, and accessing in particular, blackness and black imagination, the joy, the contentment, the ritual, the love, and what we learn of that in overcoming hardships brought on by this massive failure of these particular systems that we are all wrapped inside of. So role to repair is essentially asking all of us to imagine a new way forward to imagine to maybe our bodies are meant to do something else. Maybe our hearts are meant to do something else. Maybe our hands are meant to hold something else. And I think about aging And when I do this, Adrienne is a fantastic writer. And over the past year or so maybe I think she did a series of writing prompts that were really beautiful. And so I leave you with this, if you'd like to think and imagine with us this road to repair, the invitation is here first, definitely check out all the other episodes that my other team members, colleagues, and host are doing. And if you want to take out a piece of paper, a little pad, we're going to do what if prompt? And so what if, what if it was possible? What if and I want you to imagine in particular, those people who have been most harmed inside of the practices and policies and procedures, and systems around us? Who's been exploited? Who's been wronged? Where is that justice? And when you think of it, what if think of the worker? What will be possible for them? If things were made, right? What if of the body if we were able to move and participate in the world? What of the body? What if the land could be something more magical, much more inviting, and loving and restorative? What if, and I invite you to take those prompts, and let your mind wander? Maybe write it on a piece of paper. But get yourself into practice of thinking about a new way, because that's what the world is calling for.

    Show Outro 36:46

    Thank you for joining us on the road to repair. Our greatest hope is that this show will have a transformative impact for those of you tuning in the road to repair podcast is produced by Andrew X. Nikishka. Iyengar and Jessica Norwood with amazing post production support from frequency media music for the show was produced by Andrew x in close collaboration with artists and sound designer Zachary, South Korea and the luscious vocals and original poetics of nine appendant. Shout out to sofa hood for all of the amazing artwork. You can check out more of all of their great work on their website, which you can find links to at the road to repair.com always love the social media shout outs and you can help this message reply to those who might really benefit from it by rating the show and leaving a review on Apple podcasts. And if you feel called to you can make a donation to support the show at WWW dot the road to repair.com Thanks again for tuning in and stay tuned for our next episode.

    Road to Repair Theme Song 37:45

    We stand with the land. We are far more than a commodity we join with the water bodies are not property. We're reclaiming our shared sovereignty and shaping an economy based on reciprocity, cooperative, accountable ground and justice and ecology. The Empire is toppling who want to be about this prophecy. We've been summoned to the summit trust we here for something what is now possible Who are we becoming

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