Talkin’ ‘bout a Revolution

My four year old was playing with our CD player this morning (yes we still have one) and we were suddenly listening to a powerful song by social activist Tracy Chapman that I hadn’t heard in ages called Talkin’ ‘bout a Revolution. It’s such a powerful song, certainly one for our times.  

While the song played, I was instantly transported to my teenhood when my dear auntie Kimberly was driving our family’s red-seated, white Chevy truck and playing Tracy’s song while she drove. I remember having some basic understanding of what Tracy was speaking to but oppression was so baked into the system that I could hardly see past it.

Since I started teaching anti-oppression pedagogy over ten years ago, I’ve worked steadfastly to dismantle my own internalized oppression, and I’ve built my own capacity to come to terms with the degree of delusion and hatred that is institutionalized in our country.

I’ve had the luxury of developing greater awareness of the degree of racism, classism, and sexism over time that Kim has had to endure her entire life. When we listened to Tracy’s song all those years ago, Kim knew deep in her bones what this was. Kim is of Miwok, Mohave, and Chemehuevi ancestry and so she has an embodied experience of the destructive and disturbing forces of oppression in this country. She’s had a multi-generational nightmare to witness the fallout of the tragedy that is capitalism, destructive patriarchy, and white supremacy.

I, on the other hand, have been sheltered from white normativity and I’ve benefited profusely from this dynamic all my life - as all white folks do in this country. At the same time, as a woman being raised in a misogynist culture, I have an embodied experience of the patriarchal gaze, domination, the subjugation and marginalization of women, the gaslighting, manipulation, corruption, greed, and sexism which are all forms of systemic abuse that play out their tune in an infinite number of dysfunctional ways every single day of our lives.

I teach women how to recognize these dynamics, to build skills and practices to keep them grounded in the face of upheaval, and how to be an agent for meaningful change in their own lives and in the world. There are millions of ways to do this work. 

For resources and to connect with my work, set up a free inquiry call at the link below. 

(Photo from 1978, taken on unceded Anasazi, Ute, and Fremont land at the foot of the range of Book Cliff mountains at the junction of the Gunnison and Colorado Rivers.)