July 2019 WNC Dialogue: Reproduction and Nurturing Life

Dialogue Description: In this time of intensified attacks on reproductive rights, safety and sovereignty, we invite you to join us for our July dialogue that will explore the theme of reproduction and care for life from diverse perspectives. What is the relationship between reproductive rights and reproductive justice? In the face of the abortion bans and attacks on trans and gender variant access to reproductive health care, what forms of solidarity and care exist to defend (and expand) access and choice? For those who are not parents of biological humans in this lifetime, what does reproduction of conditions of life mean? As climate destabilization increasingly makes areas less habitable for humans and beyond-humans, how do we expand our understandings of relationships of care and kin-making to include diverse life forms?

Dialogue Notes:

These are rough, uncut, unfiltered, and anonymous notes taken at the dialogue. We get that these may not be very readable to those who were not in attendance at the dialogue, and, honestly, sometimes even to those of us who were. We still feel it is important to keep them available as part of our accountability process and for archiving and reference purposes. Some of these notes have been digested/transformed into blogs.

Blog post from 2012 could have been written yesterday – rage about that.
Long term right wing strategy since roe v. wade was passed, to get conservative supreme court, which makes it feel likely that Roe V. wade was overturned, hard to imagine, at least for myself not having access to abortion
Angry that it seems we don’t have a long term strategy on the left, just barely trying to get by.
Fear and grief about the climate apocalypse in the here and now, extreme judgement about friends who are going to reproduce, close minded.
People will say the future is unpredictable and we need bad ass people to help, but their time as parents is going to sucked up raising these humans.
Also over-population. What to do with my fear and anger about these thoughts.
Don’t feel like someone is explicitly trying to control my body, but even when Im feeling assertive people shut down and doesn’t listen and then I get in a rage spiral. In private life, not so much as work.
RJ – constant background in the expectations around kids, and my mom died a few years ago so Im thinking what is it to be a mom, who she is, can I separate the mom from the person. I want her legacy to live on in me, expectations out there.
Doesn’t seem real that abortion wouldn’t be accessible. Just talk to my aunt in florida who was denied an abortion and is really ambivalent about that happening. Thinking about moms lately.
Overwhelmed, commitment to come again.
On abortion ban in so many states, mistake thing I said was saying at least people can go to a neighboring state, but of course these laws affect poor people who cant afford to take that trip.
This is so fucked up, what the hell, but what are we going to do now.
The accountability of women and men in a one night stand and will never have accountability that a women has.
What about the guilt of abortion, why we need to have guilt.
When you have a child you are tied to a person for life, and then I said that’s why I had my abortion. Such a strong reaction because people don’t talk about their abortions.
When I think about my own early politicization it was connected to growing up next to the only planned parenthood in the US who offered late stage abortion. Harassed a lot as a person in girl clothes.
Then I worked as an escort for a number of years.
Most of the people who were protesting were right wing Christians, mostly white but not all.
Such shame about sex and considering my own body and something I learned and about controlling my body. I also knew I wasn’t gonna have biological children in a traditional way. And the betraying of the idea of womanhood and it being connected to fertility.
And as a trans person how hard it is to access reproduction medical care, especially for trans people who are having sex with people with penises.
I have a cool mom and dad who used to be leftists. My mom used to organize in the RJ movement, and when I was in middle school, I said I was pro-life and she was shocked, and the dissonance between us because we haven’t talked about it.
Long struggle across decades. And also, not a sense of strategy seemingly, though I’m not connected to the movements anymore.
I also feel overwhelmed, usually watch the news a lot but right now I take nights where I can’t handle it.
Feeling like I want to do something, struggling with physical fatigue, so haven’t been able to physically go out and protest.
Was an abortion provider, as a gynecologist, and now advise women about selective reproduction.
Someone reached out to write a story, and I wasn’t sure how out to be as an abortion provider since I have been threatened before. But now is the time to be out there.
Should we have kids, fear of planet and what is going to happen.
Humanist podcast – walking around with my headphones and feeling comfort of having truth mirrored in talking about privilege.
Tending the Threshold unconference. Coming to the acceptance that the human race will go extinct soon. Not about saving ourselves, more about how do we want to go done. How do we do that in a way that is kind. Affirming of the various lifeforms on the planet, including the various populations of humans.
Reactivity- humans just auto respond
Urgent slow down. What does it mean to not react to everything that happens? In activism. Does it help us to react in the ways we are reacting? In light of abortion bans.
My friend is a midwife, and so my question to the group. How do we midwife ourselves through the threshold?
So much that we can’t control but that we have infinite choices, what choices do we have that we get to make.
Pro not bringing people into the world. And also, am ok if people want to make that choice given where we are in the world
Mother of four children and feel more and more troubled by there.
Tremendous amount of guilt about having brought children in this world who have to deal with this world.
When we made that choice, I didn’t think about having to explain
Not enough of the right people in the world.
I’ve also had four abortions and feel similarly good about that.
I love to be a mom, but have also felt that it is not good to give life to a particular person
Grew up in Germany in Berlin in the 60s but when I was in the country it was very hard to get an abortion. Division in the south, which is catholic, harder to get an abortion.
So, full, so layered.
Abortion bans here feels like we are back in the 1800s, hard to comprehend that these are people who live at the same time as me. Where does this mindset have these roots?
Feeling so ashamed, that we as “leftists” that we didn’t have a 30-year plan. That we didn’t carry through with all the substantial considerations. Feels like we just fell apart.
So, good to be here and talk about these questions.
Listened to the podcasts and blown away that I had never heard about her.
Remarried here in the states, and also have two step daughters who are both involved in the RJ question and especially the intersection with the ecological questions. I can do nothing else but support them from the bottom of my heart.
I feel guilty and have no way to justify my decisions. I thought I was being a good educator of my children in being a critical thinker and practitioner about social justice and environmental moment, yet they are all going toward a conventional way.
Questions about children are big; do intend to have a child, good to be in a space of questioning and thinking about it, but there is also something really personal to the closest core of my human self that isn’t really up for debate and questioning
Interview with Silvia Federici and talking about reproduction of life more broadly than the birthing of a human; how that is in such huge crisis, if it is all going down in ways that we don’t know exactly when and it will be hard to predict who is going to survive and evolve into future millennia – how do we want to be?
Commoning: what does it look like to share reproductive labor and the labor to nurture life, it feels like hope and connected to the question of how will we be as the ship is going down, can we keep it from crashing at all?
Just Transition framework of Movement Generation: transition is inevitable, justice is not – what will it look like as we transition?
Before their framework was more like “oh if we fight within the transition that is happening we might come out the other side with something a bit more just”; now it is an understanding that crisis is happening, before it was a transition to avoid crisis
How do we take care of each other as it is going down, if some ability to prolong our existence and other animals’ existence on this earth, what is possible there?
Take reproductive labor out of the isolation of the nuclear family
The way eugenics gets tied into controlling bodies for reproduction; hierarchy of bodies
Lot of grief coming through me in response to our earth crisis in the last couple of years; have been feeling really drawn with a vision of networking rural farmers that I know in an attempt to somewhat revive the underground railroad; what would it take very soon to access food in certain places and get certain bodies to safe places
Fires are getting worse and worse and will continue to, differential impact of wildfire smoke on farm laborers; sense of impending multi-level crisis
Recently read Parable of the Sower, need to be in spaces like this having conversations like this – Parable of the Sower is an Octavia Butler science fiction book set in near future in California with a climate induced crisis that has led to humans having to respond; lot of violence
Request of the group: when talking about pregnancy, please say “pregnant people” rather than women
Sogorea Te Land Trust – alternative and creative ways to share resources with one another; raise money to purchase land, create around house and sacred ceremonial space; reproduction of connection to land that someone holds lineage to
Donna Harraway “Make Kin Not Babies” – very strong reaction from the left because of the history of reproductive control weaponized as a tool of white supremacy
Cross-generational transfer of stories and struggle: our ancestors have survived in order for you to be here
De-commoning land and bodies of people who can reproduce as a tool of transition from feudalism to capitalism (from Silvia Federici)
Not just about my body but about creating people to be exploited
Have the privilege that if I were ever pregnant I could cross a state line to have control over what my body does; thinking a lot about forced sterilization; how early on in the pro-choice movement how strong the voices of people of color were looking at forced sterilization
Issue of culture and coming back to creating family and reproductive life and the very real labor that it takes to actually do that; takes so much time
Trying to move out of this way in which my life is just for resistance, for what are we fighting, this sense of doom and crisis that we are grappling with psychologically and emotionally; I fear the loss of my loved ones, the things that I love at the deepest level; for me that is what I want to fight for, there is attachment there, I have attachment to the human race, and to many things that are currently in existence
Separation of children at the border right now
We struggle to nurture life; these are the battles we fight
What is the right scale of collective reproduction? Where is that level of basic ways of existing, basic dignity, basic beauty in our lives?
What are we fighting for, knowing that it is not nothing?
I wonder how many people would, if given the opportunity to make that choice consciously, would actually choose to fight for basic subsistence, or would question whether that is a viable fight
We are taught at a very young age to individuate, especially being raised with white privilege and economic privilege, cis privilege; was raised to succeed in an individuated sense, not in a collective, collaborative sense
We live so alone; I wonder how much that is actually killing us; not reproducing a culture but reproducing a lack of culture
Killing the Black Body, recommended resource
Socialism – way to help all of us help each other
Individualism is killing us; it’s very hard to convince myself to take care of me on my own, but not hard to convince myself to take care of other people; I always think it is easy to take care of other people; it is so much work to take care of just one person
Sci fi novel references: not feeling that attached to whether humans continue or not, makes them think of the Exogenesis Series of Octavia Butler, post-human life where aliens come to save humans that are left. Inherent flaws of humans. We are deeply flawed, not sure how much faith I have to work this out.
Individualism makes me think of The Dispossessed by Ursula LeGuin. I love reading about visions of other ways worlds can be. In that book, there is another world where people live in dorms. No one has their own rooms. Everyone lives collectively. We are in this tech capital where people are moving into dorms in a capitalist way, and there is also something different and non-individualistic about it.
Not being attached to whether humans continue in the long term, that is ok. It is eventually going to happen, and I’m going to fight for it while I am here. What is that process for you?
I want to be an ancestor I can be proud of. So I am going to fight. In whatever reality there are descendants, they may still be there. I want them to know that we fought.
The process of organizing the grad student union at Yale. A friend fought and didn’t win because the Trump admin elected someone to the NRLB. She said there are times that I was so angry and the act of fighting made me more of the person I want to be in the world. The most grounding thing we can do is be in community with people who understand me and know where I’m at, what I fear. Almost all of my friends are organizers now, and I try to make extra effort to hang with people that don’t share these politics and I don’t feel as connected. I am not seen and met in that part of myself, it doesn’t feel as nourishing. I don’t fill out in my body. I do it to be the most alive I am capable of being.
How do we have enough stamina to bring people who have not crossed the threshold there and keep them there?
It would be easier and more comfortable to be with people with shared politics. I don’t know how to bring more people into the conversation who are different from me. Conviction to being the gateway to being alone. Creates an identity of isolation.
When you don’t love what I love and the willingness to sacrifice for what you love. Pain comes with struggle. Fear of loss and sense of powerlessness. I can connect to love and resource and be reminded.
I have yet been someone who can organize based on love. I haven’t had that with someone who doesn’t share my politics. As someone who is not a mother, but heard about people who have nurtured creatures, there is a deep love that can come and sacrifice there. How harness the power of sacrifice that comes from nurturance towards movement. How much more would I fight if I had that kind of power.
Often I am picking up on things going on in other people’s bodies and intuiting them. Maybe other people are not living into their own bodies.
Uses of the Erotic by Audre Lorde – joy and feeling deeply
Scale and weird abstraction about the human species and the human race. We are all on a finite planet together in great difference. The labor we in certain countries pull from around the globe to support certain lifestyles. The labor of reproducing ourselves, social embodied reproduction. Relational, about food, water and land. We are becoming what we practice. What are practices that allow for experiences of commoning? How can we have daily practices towards commoning, that also have daily practices that are in the service of dismantling privilege that is also reproduced daily? Queer family making as a practice. Socialism could be cool, and how do we dismantle heteronormativity and all axis of power, while searching for a just world that is joyful. There is beauty in the imagination, and so much potency. The mushroom and the end of the world book – a mushroom that thrives in conditions of human deforestation. How can life flourish in the wake of devastation?
Is there beauty at the end of the world? I grew up in the Bay Area, and this is the slice of the world I get to inhabit. I imagine being here if I live for another 60 years. How much beauty can there be in the pockets amidst everything?
Grief and praise as two sides of the same entity. Our first grief song is when we are birthed into the world and it is also our cry of life, a praise that we are here. Truly grieving and expressing grief, moving it through our bodies leads us to access these pockets of hope. We become our practices. I think a lot about wanting to harness towards the future generations. When I put myself near the front lines in movement work, I have had many response – I have run away, and I have also linked arms and fought. In my body when I was standing alone, the fear took over and I ran. Curiosity about the love generated when someone at times gives birth. What is that connection like? What practices can I be in in my body that connect me to that sense of deep connection of love and I will stand here and die for this?
I want resistance to oppression to exist as long as oppression exists. Getting people to question as a way to help get people to resist. And to understand systems of oppression. What do we tell our members when we are not seeing results clearly? And also, oppression always is going to try to hide that and why to give up. Fighting futility. And what does winning mean?
Bringing people into the movement means helping them define what winning means? Framing things as invitations as opposed to demands.
Making friends with death as a way of harnessing that power. Death doulas. Doulas into movement work.
I don’t know if I believe in the future I think we just fold into the past. What do I want that fold to look like? How to make the revolution irresistible.
Rachel Rice artist, makes art for and out of a dying planet.
Numinous Podcast

Close Out

How to practice needing people, practice belonging, practice trust, connection to spirit
Not alone in my discomfort. It has been good to sit and hear. A lot of us are thinking about this but not talking about it. Saying pregnant people rather than women. A lot of resources to look into.
Grateful for this space. Grateful how many people voiced their conflicting experiences and their somatic experiences. Clenching as a normal reaction. Good to in a space to physically feel uncomfortable. How to not experience grief or pain around it in a while would not feel normal. How to we find hope, learn how to common. I have been really connected to my body recently, but not my body in contact with other bodies. How do I access being alive with others in that way in my own life? My commitment to myself and the world is to be in more physical contact with both humans and a range of elements of being. And to read more science fiction.
I am grateful for everyone here. I am almost ready to smash hope. If I was able to really face our shortcomings as a species and our brutality, all the things I try to avoid when I think about the power of loving a child, I would be really able to allow this possibility of death. I might be able to find the power to really fight and not hold back on ideas that could be nice and comforting, with those things being a refuge. I agree with the ideas of socialism, etc., and it feels too late to really try that. There are somethings that are fighting inside me in two extreme levels. That is the most obvious when I look at my kids, and it makes me a bottomless sad. I am thankful for all the people younger than me here that make me hopeful.
I am feeling way more alive than when we started. Grateful usually happens in the close out. Zara is a loved one, founder of WNC, her little dog Lulu has died. She was going to facilitate this session and came up with those questions, and has not chosen to have biological children. She has a deep connection with her dog, Lulu. Wanting to have a practice of reconnecting to the things that I love as a way of recreating energy I can live on through my days in the fighting and in the making beauty. I really want to live a life that is deeply rooted and continues to create beauty and life and also fights. There are so many ways to do that and a lot of litmus tests to not doing that. I need to be in a better relationship with my plants.
I have a dog that I am very close to, and I have seen how close Lu and Zara are. It feels good to access that feeling. As soon as I start to talk about it the tears are welling back. It also feels good to cry. This conversation has reminded me of the power of grief and the alchemy of grieving. I had a practice for a year that I would wake up and have a grief song, I would wail and cry. It was all rooted in accessing what was happening, opening myself to what I knew was happening in the world. This circle has reminded me of that. I feel also like I reminded myself that with the grief comes the praise. We are referencing Sci Fi about survival and saving seeds and about bringing others along with us on the journey, and busting the streets up and planting gardens. That is so needed. The song and the vision. I feel shook by Jay’s your appreciations. How am I practicing trust and connection? How am I opening myself?
I am feeling the visceral feeling of the depth of our conversation as well as the height of it. Deeply personal as well as big picture personal, philosophical. Feeling my heart. Feeling myself craving practical things. People who know how to do abortions how are we going to learn those skills. My mind is a little bit excited. Language – how much our own understanding of gendered language has shifted. Continuing to figure out new language. That is a part of shifting. I recently went to witch camp. We talked about Star hawk. Magic as about shifting consciousness.
What are our daily practices – for me the two that I hold most dear in these times. I think I am someone who feels bottomless grief. I am trying to move away from feeling grief. Is it a trauma response because it is so endless? I think it makes sense that it would be given my history and the grief that I inherited from my mom who didn’t grieve. I take a lot solace that hope is not a belief that the future will be different, it is that the future is unknown. I cannot convince myself what is going to happen. I have many lived experiences in which that is true. Therefore, it does matter on some level how we are in this present moment. It is our duty to fight to our freedom / it is our duty to win / we must love each other and support each other / we have nothing to those but our chains. When I am not loving someone, I often am not able to related to sadness and rejection. I think about if the world ends soon, and I spent any amount of time not loving them when I could have, if I was sad or angry. I would wish only for the possibility for loving them as much as I can. I feel that for people whose politics are not aligned with mine. People are complex, doing the best they can, honor that effort. Trying to let myself love even though it is painful. Knowing that the world is going to be shorter than it should be. Nature might do better without us as a colonized framework. Through trauma and suffering, we are not in right relationship with other beings, and constantly trying to notice where that colonized framework is rising in me. For indigenous people, the apocalypse has been present for hundreds of years. We have already survived the end of the world. And also does feel different.
Announcement: City of Oakland developing climate action plans. There is a meeting at city hall for people to attend. Meeting on July 31.
Feeling a lot of grief. It is such an uncapitalist feeling. It is scary to look down into that well. It is uncomfortable, and also am feeling resistance to plunged into it and then there is a lot of theory. Hard to do both.
It has been lovely being with you all. Not knowing how to participate. What parts of myself do I bring forward? I brought a lot of my intellectualizing parts forward. I can acknowledge how limited those parts feel for being in the world and in relationship. And I value some of the theory for how it can help us see and feel things. The question of the human species – are we innately just bad? I don’t know if I believe that we are innately bad, even this notion of a species. There is so much difference, and our shared humanity, and so much difference. A lot of our badness has been produced by different projects about power and domination that are not inherent to us necessarily. I have hope for transformation. I don’t think what it is to be human is stagnant. We are not the same as humans as we were. What is means to be humans is not stable. I find hopefulness in that. And a lot of grief, and overwhelming hopelessness that makes me want to wiggle around and shake it off, especially talking about climate change.
I feel really grateful to be in a room where people are sharing openly and passionately, and deeply. And we are discussing difficult and uncomfortable topics. To not avoid, distract or spiritually bypass. I feel inspired to be around people care deeply. It is like a took a bath in passion and caring about stuff.
Tagline idea: “Take a bath about caring about stuff” !!!!!