Silver Threads
Episode 26: Inside Change — Dani Burlison
Transcript
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, lives, eleanor, working, community, happening, folks, trauma, class, farmworkers, fires, grew, carla, world, kids, big, talking, direct action, fucking, pandemic
SPEAKERS
Eleanor, carla, Dani. Maroon Cast podcast.
carla 00:24
Hello and welcome to our Halloween special. Just kidding. Welcome to Silver Threads where we are still walking, still waking. I'm carla.
Eleanor 00:36
And I'm Eleanor. And this is the show, where we trace our present path through the people and stories of the past as we ourselves long term radicals learn about each other from each other and continue to walk. Continue to Walk This week, we are speaking with Danny burlison, is a mom, writer, teacher, activist and witch. You're welcome Halloween listeners. She is the creator/editor of “All of Me: Stories of Love, Anger and the Female Body” (PM Press, 2019), and the author of “Some Places Worth Leaving” (Tolsun Books, 2020) and “Dendrophilia and Other Social Taboos: True Stories,” a collection of essays which first appeared in her McSweeney's Internet Tendency column of the same name. She’s been a staff writer at a Bay Area alt-weekly and a regular contributor at Yes! Magazine, Chicago Tribune, KQED, and elsewhere. Her journalism, fiction and personal essays can also be found at Ms. Magazine, WIRED, Earth Island Journal, The Rumpus, Portland Review, Hip Mama Magazine, and in various anthologies and zines. She studied Activism & Social Change as well as Culture, Ecology & Sustainable Community at New College of California and lives on unceded Southern Pomo and Wappo land in Sonoma County, California. You can find out more at daniburlison.com Thanks so much for being here. Dani
Dani 01:59
Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited about being here for the Halloween special.
carla 02:07
Or Samhain. So I like the So-in part, that we're going to do a ‘sow-in” together. I get pretty excited about that. Yeah. So welcome to our show. And I think we met at. when you came through the thistle and gave a very cool reading of your awesome anthology. Gosh,must have been six, seven years ago?
Dani 02:30
Yeah, I think it was actually the essay collection. It was in 2012. I think 2013... It was a while ago.
carla 02:39
Okay, cool. I'm so glad you came. And it's lovely to have you here. I'm gonna do a little bit different with our first question. Just because I have some insight, we would love to hear a couple of your historical watershed moments. But I'm wondering if you'd be willing to share maybe a more current watershed moment because I know you've done something massive this past year that I think our listeners would really love to hear about. And it's cool playing with time, too, because watershed moments are always happening. Yeah, I'm wondering if you'd be willing to try to weave that story together for us in any order you want?
Dani 03:18
Yeah, let's see, the most recent, I'll just start with probably gosh, several years ago, after just being really involved with a lot of direct action and protesting and dragging my kids around to everything, I started dealing with some major burnouts and got to this point where I realized a: I couldn't do everything in a sustainable way. And b: I didn't have to do every single thing. I didn't have to be involved with every single movement. And every. I didn't have to be at everything. So during that time, I kind of started shifting into writing more writing about social justice issues for publications doing zines doing more of the communication piece, because that felt like something I was good at. And it felt like something that was more sustainable for me physically, I got ill from how much I was involved with so many different movements and programs and all of that stuff. So fast forward to more recently, I did start going back out into the streets because I was able to I wasn't working my teaching job I had this time. I have kids that are now both in their early 20s that one of them especially really wanted to be a part of a lot of the protests that were happening after George Floyd was murdered. And so that piece, my so little backstory on my daughter who's going to be 21 in 10 days, which is crazy right before Halloween, and she was turning 13 a classmate of hers was killed by the local sheriff. In here in Santa Rosa where we live, and she was in seventh grade school had just started. It's actually the anniversary is on the 22nd, the day of police accountability, right? It's insane. He was a 13 year old kid. So fast forward, my daughter was wanting to get out and go to some of the protests. And because she knew all those kids that were friends with Andy Lopez, her classmate who was killed, we're going to be there. And so we went out, went to the protests of into hundreds of protests here in Sonoma County, been arrested, never had anything super violent happen. And we were tear gassed multiple times we saw people being severely injured by the police. Basically, they were totally out of control. They seem to not have any idea what they were doing no plan, it was very chaotic and very scary. Ultimately, a lot of people ended up getting injured some people pretty severely, and I was part of a lawsuit against the local police department. Because of what happened with the protesters and the injuries that they caused. It was a really intense process, something that as an activist for the last Gosh, 25 or 30 years, I never expected to hold the police accountable in that way. Like it was empowering and also totally degrading, and very stressful and traumatic to have to go up against the police department. Ultimately, we won a pretty decent sized settlement, for the five people that were involved in different people got different amounts, based on what their injuries were. But it was crazy. It was a really stressful and like I said traumatic experience for multiple reasons. But I do feel, I feel pretty good about the fact that the police department has started making some policy changes and actually training their police department on how to do crowd control and training them on using less lethal weapons, and withholding less lethal weapons from protest situations like that. So that was a crazy experience. And I never thought I would be in as an activist for sure.
Eleanor 07:47
Well, I'm glad to hear that going up against the cops actually garnered some wins for y'all. I'm so also curious kind of like about your journey. I mean, you've been doing this, like you said for 25/30 years. And one of the things that we like to ask folks on the podcast is to be a little bit vulnerable and open up some of those dark dusty boxes that might have some embarrassing shit in them. So like, what do you look back on and in your in your journey in your past and go or like you know, kind of do a smiling face palm over. And you know, like a moment that you realize that oh, , I need to do some growing in some evolving. And did you initially embrace that? Or did you fight back?
Dani 08:42
First thing I want to say is probably the most embarrassing thing is listening to Manarchists. Like, dating manarchist, so my 20s no... So just kind of going back to give a little bit of context of like, where I come from, and how that has kind of led me into the type of social justice work I've been a part of. I grew up real, real rural, really, really tiny little farming community of about 175 people, and one of 10 kids. We were not even working class. We were pretty working poor. My grandparents came to California from the dustbowl, right? They were farm laborers. And the nearest town to where I grew up was about 10 or 12 miles away and about seven or 8000 people at the time, right? So my worldview was like, really, really tiny. I don't think I even traveled more than three hours away from where I grew up until I was probably in my late teens maybe once or twice I think we went to like San Diego to the zoo to visit my sister something. So I really had no idea what the world was like other than thank God for my mom, like subscribing to a National Geographic magazine that was like my only and like taking us to the library. That was my only kind of glimpse into what was outside of this tiny little farm town. So, a couple things happened, that kind of shifted things for me in a big way. I dropped out of high school a couple times, when I was finishing home city, my senior year I got pregnant and had an abortion in a nearby town. And there were some really violent protests happening the day that I was at the clinic. And the clinic actually got firebombed that night after I left it was the second time in like four years of that clinic had been burned down by the same person as a serial arsonist, right? So around that same time, I was getting ready to leave the boyfriend, got me pregnant, and moved to LA during the Rodney King riots. So I had both of these big life changing things, one clearly directly impacted me and this other thing that I was like, What is this about? So I wasn't super aware of it at the time. But both of those things, when I eventually got involved in activism, both of those things really, really important to me, looking at the way that different people are treated differently, the violence that comes with being different, right. So eventually, I ended up in Santa Rosa where I am now. And I was like, I'm gonna try going to college, I'm a first generation college students, my mom didn't even get her high school diploma until she was probably in her 50s when I was finishing high school. And through the Community College, where I now teach, I took some history classes and kind of got involved with some environmental activism. So, you know, the new activists, you know, are pretty gung ho, we're like, I'm doing this, I'm doing everything, it's this way or the highway or like that really black and white thinking, which I definitely had when I was, you know, in my early 20s. And one of the things especially because of how I grew up in where I grew up, and the shame that came with living in poverty, living with a lot of domestic violence, a lot of substance abuse, and just the community, knowing what was happening in my life, all of that shame, I felt like, Oh, I'm going to intellectualize my way out of it. If I really study and, you know, really understand all this political theory and all of these other things, I'm going to somehow separate myself out of that shame in that community, right. which I think was my first biggest mistake, especially being involved with environmental activism, right? We're like, we gotta save the trees at any price. Well, what about the fucking loggers like, I have loggers in my family? What about the working class community where that is the only way that they can make a living and support their families, right? So I didn't initially think about that. And then I started, you know, going to rallies where Judy Berry was speaking, right. And she was really working with the people that worked at Pacific lumber, trying to unionize folks, and really coming at it from more than just the environmental angle. And I was like, Oh, I like her. She's working class. She's my people too. And both things can be true at the same time, right? We can work on protecting those old growth redwood trees, and work with those working class communities, too. So that was probably my first big kind of aha moment. Kind of learning that both things are important, the direct action piece, the kind of militancy the like, no fucking compromise, and understanding the systems and understanding the political theory behind things too... ramble.
carla 14:13
No, that's beautiful. I love that example. It kind of makes me think about how Hollywood has really backed up that narrative. I just wanted to, I think you probably know this now, but reflect that back to you that it's not just because you came from rural...Hollywood. I mean through the Coen Brothers especially like they replicate that notion that rural people are Hicks and don't know much. And then you can go live in the liberal more liberal, progressive smart cities like San Francisco and LA and New York and get educated and become like the thinker and the brilliant one and yeah, so I just wanted to push... because I come from like a more like military, rural, working poor background like it That's what's reflected in the media. So yeah, and that's amazing that you figured it out pretty quickly. And, yeah.
Dani 15:07
It took me a lot. It took me a long time, I think to get to the place where I could be really honest and open about what my background was like, I noticed these things, and I was paying attention. And I was, you know, working with organizations, like I did food not bombs at my house for 10 years. And it wasn't just because I was a school college kid, it was like, I got free food for me and my kids. And I knew what it was like to be hungry. And I experienced homelessness as an adult when my kids were really small. But it took me a long time, probably honestly, in the last like, maybe six or seven years, like into my 40s. For me to really be comfortable and like, letting go of some of that shame around growing up in poverty and saying, hey, like, those are my people. honestly think a lot of the fires in California have kind of really launched me into being more vocal about my upbringing, because every place I went when I was a kid has been burning down in the last like five or six years. And there's this, like, protective, like mama bear, gut feeling I get when somebody from New York Times comes to rural California and reports on folks, a lot of them are doing a good job. But I also get so pissed about it. I'm like, you don't fucking know these people. These are my community. These are my people, like literally, my family lives in these places, right? And trying to have a little bit more confidence when I talk about my background, because that shame is deep, that poverty, shame is like something else. And as much as I, you know, tried to educate myself and, you know, get involved in the literary world and get to get involved in all of these different academic scenes. I'm such an outsider, still, there's that imposter syndrome. And I don't know if people don't see it's shifting a little bit, I think because of the pandemic, and because so many people are suffering financially. But in my experience, a lot of people don't get the class stuff. And it is so so so important. It's such a big issue. There's a lot of like throwing money places, but not really taking the time to really understand.
Eleanor 17:31
Yeah I mean, fuck yeah, to everything that you said, I think, no, because I I can relate to that a lot. I grew up partially in North Carolina and partially in Sweden, which are different, one might say. And I very much, I grasped on to my Swedish background, for several reasons. One being that I'm not actually like, part of, you know, North Carolina, like, I can't trace my history back there. My dad's a Russian Jew, and my mom's Swedish. So it's like, it's not my place. But I still grew up there, so that culture is in me, and I completely avoided using terms like y'all for years, because I was like, that's not cultured, it's not intellectual, to say that, and it took me and I've lived in LA for 10 years where you also don't say, y'all , but it took me a long time to really like embrace like, dude, you fucking grew up in the south, there's nothing you can do about that. And you are who you are, you give a shit about the things you give a shit about, partially because of the time that you spent around other poor white folks. And of course, you know, Black folks and brown folks and Indigenous folks as well. But one of the key things that I've started to do in my work is to highlight like the importance of white organizers in particular on environmental frontlines reaching out to poor, white rural communities, especially in the south, because it's either you who contact them, and sit with them on their fucking porches, or it's the KKK. Like, those are the two people doing outreach. And to be perfectly honest, we're not doing nearly enough. And so it's like, instead of pretending that it's a foregone conclusion that all of these people are hillbillies, and throwaways. It's like we, you know, as a friend of mine, who's unfortunately died, who was a former Black Panther pointed out like, I hate to say it, but we need white folks like, so like this outreach has to happen. And like not talking down to people as if they're just fucking idiot hillbillies. But like actually connecting with them and understanding like you said that like, if your choice is between surviving and working in a coal mine, no one would make the choice of watching their kids starve. So like understanding this paradigm and not just fighting against it, because it's a part of the shitty capitalist colonial system that we all live under and varying degrees. But
Dani 20:05
yeah, it's complicated like I was recently looking at. So Walmart moved into Red Bluff, California is like the big big city near where I grew up, I grew up in a tiny little place called Derry Ville, but in Red Bluff, the Walmart came to town in like the early 90s. Right? Before that, your job choice was to work at the mill, or work at a restaurant, you know, like a lot of just working class, which is fine work in the orchards. Those types of jobs, Walmart is now the biggest employer there by far. So like, fuck Walmart, and like my mom shops at Walmart, because she's in her 80s. And she lives on Social Security. And that's where she can afford to like buy stuff, and she doesn't have a car. Where's she gonna go? So they're employing a couple 1000 people in my hometown. So it's so complicated. And you know, there is this piece, I hate the term coastal elite, so much. And, you know, like, there's a lot of white lefty liberals that totally alienated working class working poor folks. Yeah, I could rant about this for the whole conversation.
carla 21:19
I was like, let's just pivot to working c;ass the intersection of it. Yeah, I appreciate your work so much. First of all, you should check out I'm going to be a plug for Eleanor's movie, Hard Road Of Hope. I think you'd really dig it because it's this whole conversation about West Virginia. So anyways, and yeah, I'm really glad that you are writing about these issues and where you live and your piece about the fires. And you can just see, it was this, it was kinetic , it was relational. And it was this, it held this nuance, and there's conflicting truths. And so I'm just really grateful that you're doing that work. Because like, and I rant about this on the show a lot. A lot of people who write about the working class are not working class. I guess what I'm saying is, I'm just really grateful for you both for doing that work.
Dani 22:12
Yeah, I feel like just to go off of what you're saying, too. I feel like there's a lot of examining like, oh, let's research these working class people and see what they do. And then tell our friends about it. It's like, Fuck, you are not an extinct species. Like we're still here. There's so many of us here. Like, I'd rather hear from other people like me about what their experience was in a different part of the country or a different part of the world, right? I don't want to hear about somebody like critiquing and tearing it apart. And the biggest thing, and then I will stop the biggest thing that makes me so just my blood boil, and I'm working on a piece about this is the classism around fire survivors here in California, right? Like, why don't they just move? Why don't they just move? I don't understand. Well, first of all the places that the fires are hitting are working class communities, a lot of low income folks. They can't afford to just up and leave. So there's a lot of that kind of stuff that makes me crazy.
carla 23:18
Totally. Totally. I'm glad you're writing about it. And yeah, just the pickup and move. Yeah. Thanks.
Dani 23:31
All right. Yeah.
carla 23:33
So just sort of trying to thread this all together. In our sort of framework of the show. I'm curious, like, what continues to scare you. And I don't know, makes you feel unsure about this moment. And sort of bring it all to this moment right now. And connecting maybe those threads.
Dani 23:58
I feel like we feel like this is said like every couple of years that we're at this amazing turning point, we're in this amazing moment where we could go really far this way, or really far this way. And I keep feeling like, you know, we keep having these opportunities to really change things really change the world, really, you know, engage with mutual aid more in our communities, and you know, combat, climate change, and all these things, but we keep having these opportunities. We keep having these moments, but I am not 100% confident that this is going to be the moment where things change. I felt like the pandemic with the last election with you know, the uprising around George Floyd, all of these things happening all at once I thought like this, is it. We're going to catapult into this amazing revolutionary future that I've just been like dying for for all of these years, and I feel like I know it doesn't happen overnight. And I don't know if it's happening or not, I don't, I don't know, I have really mixed feelings about things I feel like people really want to get back to the way things were. The way things were wasn't great for a lot of people. But a lot of folks don't want to give up that comfort, you know, middle class, upper class, you know, comfort that comes with financial stability and all of those different privileges. So, I guess that's where my fear is that things aren't going to get better. I have hope though, that people have, I have hope that people are becoming more resilient, that we are starting to address problems in more creative ways. I don't know if it's enough, especially in regards to climate change and the fires here you know, I don't think that the fires are going to stop anytime soon. But I do believe that people are adapting and finding creative ways to learn how to live with it. Yeah, what's my fear? Things aren't going to get much better. I fear getting older, a fear that you know, I haven't done enough to make the world safer and better for my kids and the other people of their generation.
Eleanor 26:37
Yeah, thank you for that. I think there's I see myself in a lot of those fears. And I think almost every radical like, one of my favorite moments was I was literally up a tree talking to a tree sitter, who had been living there for like two months, and they were like, I just don't feel like I'm doing enough. I was like, Are you fucking kidding me? You're 200 feet off the ground in a tree making sure it doesn't get clear cut. You're not doing enough? Fuck, then I'm useless. It's always the people who are doing really radical work are like, I just don't feel like I'm doing enough... so yeah, it's never like the liberals with a, you know, if Hillary won, I'd be at brunch sign. who feel like they're not doing enough. It's never those people
Dani 27:28
I know, they're like, I gave $500 to Biden.
Eleanor 27:32
Check.
Dani 27:34
I watched a documentary about social justice on Netflix. What else do I need to do? Right? I'm good.
carla 27:40
I knitted and wore the hat. I am good.
Eleanor 27:43
Yeah, exactly. You're listening to Silver Threads, part of the Grounded Futures multimedia platform. For more information and to donate to our totally ad free show. Check out Grounded futures.com you can reach out to us with thoughts and suggestions at Silver Threads show at protonmail.com You can find out more about our host Eleanor via art killing apathy.com, and our host carla via joyful threads productions.com
Maroon Cast podcast 28:15
One Two One two, tune in for another episode of Marooncast, marooncast t is a Down to Earth Black radical podcast for the people with our hosts hip hop, Sime Lee, the RBG and sex educator and crochet artists KLC share their reflections on the runes, rebellion womanism life, culture, community trap liberation, everyday ratchedness They deliver fresh commentary with the queer, transgender, non conforming, fierce, funny Southern girls anti imperialist anti oppression approach, poly ad and bullshit, check out episodes of Maroon cast on Channel zero, buzzsprout, SoundCloud, apple, and Spotify. All power to the people, or pleasure to the people. peace.
Eleanor 29:01
And now back to the show. So and I feel like you also touched upon, you know, a couple of other questions that we had. But I kind of want to draw out a little bit more. When you said that you do have hope. I'm curious, like if you could talk a little bit more about like, what that hope looks like and what kind of, what kind of hope that you have and how that maybe changes day to day or, you know, time to time?
Dani 29:29
Oh, let's see. I think that for me, I feel hopeful. One of the projects I've been working on since the beginning of the pandemic, I do a lot of writing for a local nonprofit that helps other nonprofits get funding right. So my job since the pandemic started is to interview changemakers in the community interview folks that are doing mutual aid in the community, and to you know, write about it. Write about these organizations and these people For the blog of this other nonprofit. So within that, I'm seeing a lot of really big shifts. I used to work in the nonprofit world, I was a case manager for homeless veterans. For years, I was on the board of this peace and justice center for years and years. And I know how toxic that like nonprofit work, the whole nonprofit industrial complex, like that's a whole, that's a whole thing. But the individuals, and the way that I'm seeing changes in community outreach and mutual aid is, makes me feel hopeful, because it's not. Because they're actually utilizing the leadership of the people that they want to help instead of coming at it from the outside saying, okay, fill out all these papers, and maybe we'll give you some money. There's that like, exhausting, you know, chain of paperwork exchange that you have to do a lot of times if you're low income, or needing any kind of social services. What is shifting, especially here, we have a lot of people working with migrant farmworkers in the wine industry. And the leadership is coming from within the communities of farmworkers themselves. Like, hey, we know kind of goes back to what we were talking about with like the working class communities. It's like, Hey, I'm right here. I know what's best for me. Why don't you let me leave? Why don't you listen to what I have to say. So I'm seeing that a lot in the unhoused community here in the migrant farm worker community here that's making me feel more hopeful on like a regional level. Also young people right now are fucking awesome. OMG! they don't give a fuck like just the just the empowerment I see with young people with like, gender expression, and their activism and their ally ship and their drive. It's hard to not feel hopeful when I see like this next generations coming up and having these new ideas about how to take care of each other, and how to take care of their communities. So, I still felt like I haven't done enough for my kids and their generations. And I see them doing so much. Which I also feel kind of guilty about, like, Oh, my generation Gen X should have done this for you. Yeah, that. That makes me feel hopeful. Like these kids are gonna be okay. They're smart as fuck, they're cool. They love hard. It's, it's going to be okay.
carla 32:43
Yeah, that's lovely. I just had a friend emailed me the other day saying they're doing, they're revisiting the Zappatista’s writings about slowness. And it makes me think about what you're talking about not doing enough. Like, I mean, like you are doing so much. I know, I know your story. I know your kids. I mean, if you can impact two people's lives, the way you've impacted their lives in such a generative, beautiful way you've done so much. And I think that it comes back to the working class thing. What you both are saying and about Eleanor are saying about we need to reach out and go sit on the porch with the working class in the south, it's the same with kids. And my kids like to point this out to me all the time, that when you're a young person, and you're online, like the amount of people who are right wing and fascists that are reaching out to youth. And the amount of youth who are showing up in universities speaking about fascist ideas, and it's actually quite high. So there's, you know, like, we did do a lot of generate as a fellow Generation X. I was want to say that we have a habit of rewriting a bit, and not thinking whereas good and are did as much and the thing that a lot of the youth are picking up on now is the Trailblazer work of the generations before, who were brave who came did all that work in public, often losing their lives or going to jail for it. So I think that there is a lineage and you're very, very much in it. And this is my cause and I just want to say it every time. But you know, the youth in the 60s were rad. The Black youth in the 60s were rad and yeah, and there's also where my hope is to love the narratives. I think there's a way that youth are talking more openly but it's because you are you look at how you talked both of you, all of us. that's like Lady parts book was groundbreaking when they came out like no one was really talking about that you were talking about abortions before most people were and yeah, no errasing other women's voices. And you know, my work is grounded in youth liberation. So this is coming from me to say like we were all rad.
Dani 35:04
I think a lot of that too is, you know, the kind of trauma, background, upbringing and stuff like, Oh, I'm not doing enough. I'm not doing enough feeling like, well, what is enough, right? I don't really? Yeah, just being like extra self critical trying to get over it.
carla 35:20
I know that your kids reflect, shine some light and it gets to my next question. I read a quote from bell hooks the other day that said, imagination begins with delight. And, you know, this is what I'm hearing here. I see that in your work, I see it in the way you are. And I'm curious, you know, like, What does imagination mean to you? And, and how, how can, what is its role in creating and building new worlds?
Dani 35:46
So important, especially that fun piece like the delight piece, right? Of course you know, I also love Emma Goldman, I can't dance. It's not my revolution, or actually got, just a side note when I was in... Remember I was it was my graduate, I think it was my graduate program, I actually got an Emma Goldman scholarship called the, if I can't dance, it's not my revolution scholarship. It's only $500. But that was huge for me, because I got to like, pay my bills that month. I try to think about that a lot. Because this is kind of ties into that earlier question about like the facepalm moments of like, taking myself so seriously, taking my activist like, we have got to do this now like no room for fun, it was just like, we've got to do this. Now we've got to end the war, we've got to do this, we got to stop the police, blah, blah, blah. And I got burnt out real quick. And I've realized, I need to make a lot more space in my life for my creative pursuits, finding joy, finding humor in things has been so helpful, and so restorative for my mental health. And for my work as a writer, as an activist. You know, I've been doing all of these trauma informed yoga trainings, and is taking trauma classes, right. And I took a class A couple weeks ago with Bessel Vander kolk, who's amazing. And he's the author of The Body keeps the Score, right. And one of the things that he was talking about is how important imagination is to healing from trauma. And he was mostly talking about art therapy, and improv, which I had never really thought about, like, creating a different persona for yourself to realize what it feels like in your body to not be in your trauma, or not be in, you know, your pain all of the time. And it just really, really stuck with me how important it is to remind ourselves like, Oh, this is what joy feels like, this is what you know, lightness feels like, this is what, you know, this pride feels like all of all of those different things. We're just working ourselves to the bone to try to change the world. Like that's not sustainable. It's not sustainable. And there's something about making connections with people only based on that, like trauma stuff, right? That trauma bonding kind of thing that's also not healthy. There needs to be room, I think, for both things equally, using your creativity for you know, your own healing, your own empowerment. And there are ways to use creativity to make a change in the world too, that's one of the big things I did when I shifted away from a lot of direct action. I was like, how can I physically take care of myself and be involved, like, Oh, I'm going to my journalism is going to focus on these things, and I can be creative. And I can get this message out there. So I think it's so important, so important.,
Eleanor 38:54
Yeah. I mean, so many, so many powerful and beautiful things there. Um, I think the whole trauma bonding thing is so important, because I think a lot of these spaces come together through trauma bonding, and if that's how you come together, you'll always circle back to that. And that's a really, really fragile foundation to build something on. And it also isn't good for building new worlds because you don't want to build a new world on trauma. That sounds shady as hell. But it also reminds me as I went to theater school, and one of my, one of the coaches, we didn't call them teachers, one of the coaches there said that acting can either be a release or it can be a prison that's really up to you. People can get lost in roles and really dark ways, you know, Heath Ledger, Philip Seymour Hoffman. But it can also be a way like you said to, to kind of explore what it feels like to be a different person in your, in the space that you inhabit, and it's really difficult to sometimes to keep that differentiation, especially if it's your job to act. But yeah, I think I, I personally dealt with a lot of shit in my life through acting without even realizing that I was using it as like a therapeutic tool. And I learned how to spin plates. So that's kind of cool.
Dani 40:18
That's amazing,
Eleanor 40:23
I mean, not that that's like a skill that I use on a daily basis, but it's fun, you know, at parties
Dani 40:27
it will come in when you least expect it, you'll have the right. It's like life changing...
Eleanor 40:32
Create a diversion for the cops, I don't know.
Dani 40:35
Totally.
Eleanor 40:36
You never know. So with this sort of, you know, creativity conversation, we also like asking folks if there's a book or a song, or even like a creative action, that was a spark for you, and then a couple of books that you'd recommend to listeners to read?
Dani 40:56
Right. Oh, gosh. So as far as creativity within social justice movements, I will never forget this first direct action training I took in my 20s. And I'm still friends with this guy. He's amazing. He really emphasized the importance of silliness and creativity and direct action. It's like, what are the cops gonna do if there's like five people on stilts dancing around them? Or on unicycles in tutus juggling, like, they don't know what the fuck to do with that. It's just something that like, is it's fun to do. And you're fucking with the cops. So like, win win. AS far as books that were sparks for me, definitely back when I first started going to community college, and I was like, I don't know what I'm doing. I took a history class. And these are, I still have the books. This is when I was like 21 or 22. Howard Zinn's People's History was, like what that? Like, again, just a reminder where I came from and where I had been, I was just like, holy shit. Angela Davis Women, Race ,and Class was one. The other one was the Illoni way by Malcolm Margolin about the Indigenous folks from the San Francisco Bay Area. That was the other one I can't remember, but Howard Zinn was one, it was, I still have it and I got the youth version of the book, too. It was like a series of like two or three books. I got this for my kids, and they were like, can we just read something funny? Stop doing this to us. That was a huge moment for me, that class and Community College. As far as books that I would recommend, definitely recommend those but I also really love the Fifth Sacred Thing, but it's Starhawk and Parable of the Sower, of course, by Octavia Butler, I love a good dystopian slash utopian novel. That's like my favorite fiction genre. I've read so many apocalyptic books. But those, because again, it's kind of that creative processing, problem solving. like what if? and this is possible, this is possible, which is not great. But then there are these other, these other worlds that are possible if we use our imagination.
carla 43:26
What a great list , I love all those books too. In order to kind of amplify our friends and people we've worked with and who inspire us. We ask our guests to name it can be an individual or it can be collective or movement. Somebody who I don't know was like a spark for you, but or mentor directly, and then maybe shout out to somebody who's new, a new organization, a new movement, a new individual who's just like you're just delighting in
Dani 44:03
Definitely back in the day, Judy Berry was probably like the first person that I was just like, Oh, she looks like my people, like she, you know, is this working class person and cares about the environment. And is this really outspoken.., I never thought of myself in that way as being outspoken. I've come a long way. But when I was young, I was just like, oh my god, she's really powerful and amazing. Of course, Emma Goldman, just around the board across the board for every reason. Newer. Let's see. Actually, there's a couple other people: Vandana Shiva, I really love the work that she has done in India with farmworkers and farmers there. Wangari Maathai from Kenya who is amazing, I got to see them both speak at the World Social Forum in 2007. And it was just like I want to be you when I grow up. As far as Newer folks, there's an organization here in Sonoma County called UndockU fund that is amazing. They're a mutual aid organization. They're kind of an offshoot of North Bay organizing project, which works with farmworker community, low income students, they work on tenant rights, they're doing all of this stuff. And really, again, these different programs they have are led by people directly impacted. So UndocuFund, which is my, one of my favorites, or I've always like send money to them. They started during our 2017 fires, because huge population of migrant farmworkers there were impacted by the fires here, but because many of them were undocumented, they were left out of FEMA and other government emergency funds, right. So folks at North Bay organizing project and at North Bay jobs justice is also awesome. They kind of came together with a couple other organizations are like, we just need to get money and like give money to people. None of this fucking paperwork, none of this red tape, we just need to get money to these people that are impacted that don't have other resources. So they raised a lot of money. And in fact, last year, when people were getting those stimulus checks, a lot of people here were just like donating those directly to Undocu Fund. Started with the fires, but they have also continued through the pandemic, because a lot of people lost jobs. And if you're undocumented, you're not getting unemployment, you're not getting that big boost, you know, like 400 extra bucks a week that everybody got for the first year. So, they're, they're great. And they're really again, they have all these listening sessions, like what do you need? This is for your community? What do you need? What can what can we do for you? And they listened, and they did it. And they did it quick. Fires weren't even out. And they were like, giving money to people?
Eleanor 47:01
Rad ,yeah, well, kind of in line with that. The last, the last question that we ask is, we like to, to, to engage in solidarity funds. So we always put a link for folks listening to donate to a group, a collective, a cause, or a project that you'd like to, to send people to for raising funds?
Dani 47:26
Undocu Fund for sure, fires aren't going away. pandemics not over, this community is so vulnerable. And they do so much not just here in Sonoma County, but all over California agricultural workers. And they deserve support. So that's my pick.
carla 47:45
A great one. Thanks for being on our show. Is there any anything else that you've missed that you'd like to
Dani 47:52
I don't think so I'm sorry, if I get so random
carla 47:54
No, I love this conversation. There was a lot of sowing. And Happy New Year to you and to us Witches.
Dani 48:08
Yeah, thank you so much. It's really good to talk about these things like I don't have these conversations that often so I get really excited. Like, I want to say all of the things... it's been a rough couple of years, where am I at with all this stuff right now, you know, especially after the lawsuit with the police, and just how that made me want to just honestly maybe want to hide out. My name was in the paper, the place that I work was in the paper, there's a lot of cop apologists here, I felt very scared and vulnerable and was like, I need to shift how I'm involved in the community again, you know, and I think that's a big thing that I would say last is, you know, I've evolved and changed and shifted so much since I first started being in involved in social justice action back in the 90s. And I don't imagine that I'm going to stay where I'm at forever, right? expect to kind of continue shifting my focus and the way that I'm involved with things so
Eleanor 49:09
still walking,
carla 49:11
still waking.
Eleanor 49:14
I mean, I think you kind of just highlighted why we do this show because nobody like we don't talk. We talk about this, like around like a fire pit. But nobody talks about this publicly. And it's like, but I feel like we should Yes.
carla 49:28
Yeah, yeah, we were crying and fighting for change. And then we don't talk about our own internal changes and our interpersonal changes which are, just changes all there is, as Octavia Butler says.
Dani 49:41
Yeah, and I feel like it's complicated. I'm just really kind of examining that, like how activism itself can be traumatic, especially if you're dealing with police, especially if you're a poor person, and you're dealing with these power structures. Capitalism, like being poor in this world, is very traumatic. There's all of these different things and I I don't think that that's discussed enough. I really don't think it's really addressed. That's definitely something that's come up for me over the last couple years is watching people be so traumatized. People's lives are in danger if they speak out all the time. And because I was always kind of living in such a trauma place just because of my own background, I didn't realize how much it was impacting me until I got injured and then had to get questioned. Do a deposition for six hours with the police . who subpoenaed my mental health records, by the way,
carla 50:40
oh my gosh
Dani 50:40
Can you use it all against me? So anyway.
Eleanor 50:44
yeah, well, that's the US Justice System for you.... Silver Threads is recorded in different places across borders. carla is located in Canada on Squamish, Musqueam and Tsleil-Waututh lands. Eleanor is located here and there, usually either in Sweden or on piscataway land now known as Washington DC, and our guests join us from around the world. You can find out more about the show and our guests at Grounded futures.com. To learn more about Eleanor's work, visit art killing apathy.com and follow her on Twitter and Instagram at radicaleleanor. For Carla. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram at joyfulcarla. You can also reach out to us at Silver Threads show@protonmail.com. And lastly, if you want to support the making of the show, you can donate over at Grounded futures.com Thank you to the Grounded Futures team for supporting us with promotion. All of the snazzy graphics that you see are created by Jamie-Leigh Gonzales. Grounded Futures is a multimedia platform and is produced by carla bergman, Jamie-Leigh Gonzales and Melissa Roach. Post production audio for our show is done by Eleanor Goldfield; the intro and outro music for our show is a song called Floodlight by Eleanor's former band Rooftop Revolutionaries. Thanks for listening and now let's go rattle thrones and topple empires.
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Oct 21, 2021: Transcript auto-generated by Otter.ai and edited by the Grounded Futures team.