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Becoming a Black Feminist Explorer Under a Well Known Sun
Field Note No. 0: Epigraph
“I’ve never felt like I was making any of this up — not the name Earthseed, not any of it. I mean, I’ve never felt that it was anything other than real: discovery rather than invention, exploration rather than creation.”
— Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower
Field Note No. 1: Acknowledge What Holds You
Take a breath before you begin. Pause to reflect on your present infancy. No matter your age, you must recognize that in relation to the universe and every idea that shapes you, you’ve only just arrived.
To be an explorer is to be aware of your surroundings and take honest stock of your expertise. But to be a Black feminist explorer is to know your place across timelines—to recognize yourself as a novice in the face of what came before. It’s then that every fallen leaf becomes an elder, every tree trunk an altar, and every theory-thick forest you wander, an inheritance to dwell within.
Folklorist, historian, and Harriet Jacobs Project Director Michelle Lanier teaches us that the land is an archive, holding the truth of what bloomed, what stayed buried, and what awaits remembrance. But in order to cite the land, you must first arrive to it. This is what Michelle Lanier and Curator-at-Large Johnica Rivers modeled in early 2024, when they led nearly 70 Black women scholars, artists, and cultural workers during the Sojourn on a pilgrimage to the land that once held Harriet Jacobs.
It was in Edenton, North Carolina, that this group of Sojourners came to understand the land not as a backdrop, but as a central figure, a witness and keeper of memory, holding testimony in its roots, and carrying the stories of those who once walked its fields, waters, and woods. To properly cite Harriet Jacobs is to cite the land as well.
Field Note No. 2: Go Slow and Dig Deep
Exploration is not a race. While prizes are often awarded to the first and the fastest, Black feminist explorers understand that what’s sacrificed by speed isn’t just the garden trampled beneath your wheels, it’s the people you leave behind, both living and ancestral, who filled the tank ahead of the trip. Citation is a collective practice, one that gathers the living and the dead. Even as you sit alone with your thoughts, it’s worth asking, “Who is in this bed of flowers with me?”
Building right relationship with ideas requires trust—trust that is energetic, ancestral, and communal. As adrienne maree brown reminds us in Emergent Strategy, intentional adaptation and slowness are necessary strategies for sustaining movements, relationships, and ourselves.
Intentional adaptation, in this context, means adjusting your pace and practices in response to what is revealed over time. It means understanding that relationships—with people, land, ideas, and memory—cannot be extracted, consumed, or rushed. It is a refusal of urgency that prioritizes understanding over output.
Slowness invites us to take responsibility for the inheritances we carry and to ask: How might I adapt my approach to honor what is here? What might I need to unlearn to move in better alignment with those who came before and those who will come after?
Field Note No. 3: Reduce. Reuse. Don’t Regurgitate.
The world is a noisy and congested echo chamber, polluted by staleness and redundancy. In a climate of endless repetition and a rush to reinvent, Black feminist citation offers a practice of clarity, intention, and rootedness. It reminds us to reduce the noise, carry forward what endures, and refuse to regurgitate what has not been felt, honored, or understood.
To cite is not merely to name, but to build bridges across the ideas we inherit. As author and lecturer EbonyJanice reminds us, citation is not only an academic tool, but a spiritual, political, and communal practice—a living act of acknowledgment. It honors the lineages of thought that shape us and insists that we move through the world with gratitude and accountability.
In this way, citation becomes a refusal to perform intellectual labor as hollow spectacle, and a refusal to discard what has held and carried us. It is, ultimately, a practice of intentional connectedness.
Field Note No. 4: None of It Is Yours, But All of It Is Ours.
The playground is often our first site of learned sharing. We learn to pass, to take turns, and to hold what we have together. This field note invites us to extend those lessons beyond the monkey bars and into our practices as thinkers, makers, and cultural workers. Ideas, like land, are held in common.
In this spirit, Lauren Olamina—Octavia E. Butler’s prophetic protagonist in Parable of the Sower—teaches us about shared survival. As she gathers the first members of Earthseed while the world around them collapses, Olamina and her community pool their resources, drawing strength in numbers as each person adds something vital to the whole.
Citation is a way of naming the collective. It refuses the myth of the lone genius. It reminds us that nothing we hold is ours alone—everything we build, we build for and with one another.
Field Note 5: Move with Reverence, Not Conquest
Christopher Columbus taught us nothing aside from violence. Just as there was no “New World,” there are no new ideas. The impulse to move through land and language as though you discovered them is conquest.
To refuse citation is to erase. To unname those who have shaped your thinking is a form of harm. It severs the delicate threads of history, kinship, and accountability that keep our intellectual and creative ecosystems alive.
Black feminist practice teaches us to move with reverence. To speak the names of those who cleared the path, planted the seeds, and held the line. To understand that survival is rarely solitary, and wisdom is rarely self-made.
On Season 14, Episode 1 of the survivalist reality show Naked and Afraid, Shanika Malcolm became not only the first Black woman to survive 21 days in Chiapas, Mexico, she was the first survivalist ever to do so. As many enter the challenge with aims of “making this jungle their bitch,” Malcolm took an approach yet unseen on the show. While her partner sneered at her strategy, Malcolm spoke directly to the land as an ancestor, asking for her presence to be accepted, and to be supported in her efforts. She moved with gratitude, prayed for the souls trapped in the forest, and sat with “grandfather fire” to keep warm. The earth became a living witness to and co-creator of her survival.
Field Note 6: Sometimes, No Notes Are Needed
Before beginning her presentation at the Black Feminist Summer Institute at Duke University in August 2024, distinguished professor emeritus of performance studies Dr. D. Soyini Madison asked participants to put down their pens, close their notebooks, and just listen. What she offered wasn’t meant to be immediately transcribed or summarized. It was meant to be felt.
In a world obsessed with capturing and cataloging, what does it mean to sit with what should not—or perhaps cannot—be written down?
In Toni Morrison’s Beloved, the fictional elder Baby Suggs preaches to her congregation gathered in The Clearing, “a wide-open place cut deep in the woods nobody knew for what, at the end of a path known only to deer and whoever cleared the land in the first place.” Here, Baby Suggs called forth the children, the men, and the women, to laugh, to dance, and to weep. These teachings—this sermon turned song—weren’t written in the margins of any text. They were carried in the bones, hearts, and mouths of those who heard them, becoming gospel in the bodies of their descendants. This, too, is citation.
Allow this field note, and those before it, to serve as a permission slip, an invitation to move differently. To acknowledge those who clear the paths we walk and plant the ideas we inherit. To practice citation as a form of connectedness, not academic obligation. To root our exploration in lineages of care, reverence, and collective memory. To embrace slowness as a strategy and to recall that nothing we build is ours alone.
May we move accordingly.
{
"article":
{
"title" : "Becoming a Black Feminist Explorer Under a Well Known Sun",
"author" : "Alexandra Jane",
"category" : "essays",
"tags" : "",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/becoming-a-black-feminist-explorer-under-a-well-known-sun",
"date" : "2025-05-06 14:26:00 -0400",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/aaron-VNHHxsVEUho-unsplash.jpg",
"excerpt" : "Field Note No. 0: Epigraph",
"content" : "Field Note No. 0: Epigraph “I’ve never felt like I was making any of this up — not the name Earthseed, not any of it. I mean, I’ve never felt that it was anything other than real: discovery rather than invention, exploration rather than creation.”— Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the SowerField Note No. 1: Acknowledge What Holds YouTake a breath before you begin. Pause to reflect on your present infancy. No matter your age, you must recognize that in relation to the universe and every idea that shapes you, you’ve only just arrived.To be an explorer is to be aware of your surroundings and take honest stock of your expertise. But to be a Black feminist explorer is to know your place across timelines—to recognize yourself as a novice in the face of what came before. It’s then that every fallen leaf becomes an elder, every tree trunk an altar, and every theory-thick forest you wander, an inheritance to dwell within.Folklorist, historian, and Harriet Jacobs Project Director Michelle Lanier teaches us that the land is an archive, holding the truth of what bloomed, what stayed buried, and what awaits remembrance. But in order to cite the land, you must first arrive to it. This is what Michelle Lanier and Curator-at-Large Johnica Rivers modeled in early 2024, when they led nearly 70 Black women scholars, artists, and cultural workers during the Sojourn on a pilgrimage to the land that once held Harriet Jacobs.It was in Edenton, North Carolina, that this group of Sojourners came to understand the land not as a backdrop, but as a central figure, a witness and keeper of memory, holding testimony in its roots, and carrying the stories of those who once walked its fields, waters, and woods. To properly cite Harriet Jacobs is to cite the land as well.Field Note No. 2: Go Slow and Dig DeepExploration is not a race. While prizes are often awarded to the first and the fastest, Black feminist explorers understand that what’s sacrificed by speed isn’t just the garden trampled beneath your wheels, it’s the people you leave behind, both living and ancestral, who filled the tank ahead of the trip. Citation is a collective practice, one that gathers the living and the dead. Even as you sit alone with your thoughts, it’s worth asking, “Who is in this bed of flowers with me?”Building right relationship with ideas requires trust—trust that is energetic, ancestral, and communal. As adrienne maree brown reminds us in Emergent Strategy, intentional adaptation and slowness are necessary strategies for sustaining movements, relationships, and ourselves.Intentional adaptation, in this context, means adjusting your pace and practices in response to what is revealed over time. It means understanding that relationships—with people, land, ideas, and memory—cannot be extracted, consumed, or rushed. It is a refusal of urgency that prioritizes understanding over output.Slowness invites us to take responsibility for the inheritances we carry and to ask: How might I adapt my approach to honor what is here? What might I need to unlearn to move in better alignment with those who came before and those who will come after?Field Note No. 3: Reduce. Reuse. Don’t Regurgitate.The world is a noisy and congested echo chamber, polluted by staleness and redundancy. In a climate of endless repetition and a rush to reinvent, Black feminist citation offers a practice of clarity, intention, and rootedness. It reminds us to reduce the noise, carry forward what endures, and refuse to regurgitate what has not been felt, honored, or understood.To cite is not merely to name, but to build bridges across the ideas we inherit. As author and lecturer EbonyJanice reminds us, citation is not only an academic tool, but a spiritual, political, and communal practice—a living act of acknowledgment. It honors the lineages of thought that shape us and insists that we move through the world with gratitude and accountability.In this way, citation becomes a refusal to perform intellectual labor as hollow spectacle, and a refusal to discard what has held and carried us. It is, ultimately, a practice of intentional connectedness.Field Note No. 4: None of It Is Yours, But All of It Is Ours.The playground is often our first site of learned sharing. We learn to pass, to take turns, and to hold what we have together. This field note invites us to extend those lessons beyond the monkey bars and into our practices as thinkers, makers, and cultural workers. Ideas, like land, are held in common.In this spirit, Lauren Olamina—Octavia E. Butler’s prophetic protagonist in Parable of the Sower—teaches us about shared survival. As she gathers the first members of Earthseed while the world around them collapses, Olamina and her community pool their resources, drawing strength in numbers as each person adds something vital to the whole.Citation is a way of naming the collective. It refuses the myth of the lone genius. It reminds us that nothing we hold is ours alone—everything we build, we build for and with one another.Field Note 5: Move with Reverence, Not ConquestChristopher Columbus taught us nothing aside from violence. Just as there was no “New World,” there are no new ideas. The impulse to move through land and language as though you discovered them is conquest.To refuse citation is to erase. To unname those who have shaped your thinking is a form of harm. It severs the delicate threads of history, kinship, and accountability that keep our intellectual and creative ecosystems alive.Black feminist practice teaches us to move with reverence. To speak the names of those who cleared the path, planted the seeds, and held the line. To understand that survival is rarely solitary, and wisdom is rarely self-made.On Season 14, Episode 1 of the survivalist reality show Naked and Afraid, Shanika Malcolm became not only the first Black woman to survive 21 days in Chiapas, Mexico, she was the first survivalist ever to do so. As many enter the challenge with aims of “making this jungle their bitch,” Malcolm took an approach yet unseen on the show. While her partner sneered at her strategy, Malcolm spoke directly to the land as an ancestor, asking for her presence to be accepted, and to be supported in her efforts. She moved with gratitude, prayed for the souls trapped in the forest, and sat with “grandfather fire” to keep warm. The earth became a living witness to and co-creator of her survival.Field Note 6: Sometimes, No Notes Are NeededBefore beginning her presentation at the Black Feminist Summer Institute at Duke University in August 2024, distinguished professor emeritus of performance studies Dr. D. Soyini Madison asked participants to put down their pens, close their notebooks, and just listen. What she offered wasn’t meant to be immediately transcribed or summarized. It was meant to be felt.In a world obsessed with capturing and cataloging, what does it mean to sit with what should not—or perhaps cannot—be written down?In Toni Morrison’s Beloved, the fictional elder Baby Suggs preaches to her congregation gathered in The Clearing, “a wide-open place cut deep in the woods nobody knew for what, at the end of a path known only to deer and whoever cleared the land in the first place.” Here, Baby Suggs called forth the children, the men, and the women, to laugh, to dance, and to weep. These teachings—this sermon turned song—weren’t written in the margins of any text. They were carried in the bones, hearts, and mouths of those who heard them, becoming gospel in the bodies of their descendants. This, too, is citation.Allow this field note, and those before it, to serve as a permission slip, an invitation to move differently. To acknowledge those who clear the paths we walk and plant the ideas we inherit. To practice citation as a form of connectedness, not academic obligation. To root our exploration in lineages of care, reverence, and collective memory. To embrace slowness as a strategy and to recall that nothing we build is ours alone.May we move accordingly."
}
,
"relatedposts": [
{
"title" : "Culture Must Be the Moral Compass That Geopolitics and Economics Will Never Be",
"author" : "EIP Editors",
"category" : "essays",
"tags" : "",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/culture-must-be-the-moral-compass-that-geopolitics-and-economics-will-never-be",
"date" : "2025-07-15 16:14:00 -0400",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/2025_7_Opposing_Nazism_1.png",
"excerpt" : "The widespread cultural rejection of Nazism in the West did not emerge spontaneously from humanity’s innate sense of right and wrong. It was not simply that people around the world, and especially in the West, were naturally alert and to the moral horror of fascism.",
"content" : "The widespread cultural rejection of Nazism in the West did not emerge spontaneously from humanity’s innate sense of right and wrong. It was not simply that people around the world, and especially in the West, were naturally alert and to the moral horror of fascism.Rather, the transformation of Nazism from a nationalist ideology admired by many Western elites into the universal symbol of evil was a story of narrative engineering and the deliberate construction of collective memory. It is a story that reveals a larger truth: culture has always been the moral compass that geopolitics and economics cannot, and will not, provide on their own.And at this moment, it is crucial to understand and use the power of culture to shift geopolitics, and not the other way around.Understanding this history matters today more than ever. Because if it was possible to turn Nazism into the ultimate taboo, it is equally possible to reposition other violent ideologies and state projects—such as Israel’s ongoing system of apartheid and settler colonialism—as morally indefensible. But to do so requires acknowledging that cultural reckonings don’t simply arrive; they are made.Pre-War Ambivalence: When Fascism Was FashionableContrary to the comforting myth that the world naturally recoiled from Nazism, in the 1920s and 1930s many influential Americans and Europeans viewed Hitler’s Germany with admiration. American industrialists like Henry Ford openly praised Hitler’s economic management and fierce opposition to communism. Ford even funded antisemitic propaganda through his publication, The Dearborn Independent. British aristocrats, including the Duke of Windsor, flirted with Nazi sympathies, seeing Germany as a model of discipline and order.It was only when Hitler’s ambitions clashed with the strategic interests of other nations that fascism became intolerable. And even then, many major US and UK companies maintained their business interests with the Nazis, including Ford, IBM, GM (Opel), Standard Oil (now ExxonMobil), Chase Bank, and of course Coca-Cola, who famously created the brand Fanta so that it could break the boycott and do business with Nazi Germany.This distinction is critical: condemnation of Nazism began not as a moral imperative, but as a political necessity. Germany’s aggression threatened the European balance of power, British imperial security, and eventually, American economic and military interests. The moral narrative would only come later, after the fighting was over.It is important to learn from the past and see that only culture can shift perception, and to use culture to shift the economic realities that would otherwise wait to be shaped by politics.Wartime Shifts: From Enemy State to Symbol of EvilWorld War II did not instantly transform public opinion. For many Americans, the war in Europe remained remote until the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941. Even then, the decision to fight Nazi Germany was entangled with power politics: Hitler declared war on the United States first, effectively forcing Roosevelt’s hand.Nevertheless, the war provided fertile ground for a reframing of Nazism. Wartime propaganda efforts by the Allies recast the Nazi regime as a brutal, alien threat to civilization itself. Hollywood joined in: The Great Dictator (1940) ridiculed Hitler’s delusions of grandeur, while Casablanca (1942) romanticized resistance. Images of goose-stepping soldiers, swastika flags, and shattered cities circulated widely.As the Allies advanced, they encountered the first concrete evidence of the Holocaust: ghettos, mass graves, and emaciated survivors. Yet even then, much of this evidence remained unknown to the general public. It was only after liberation that the full horror became impossible to ignore.Post-War Revelation: The Holocaust and the Cultural BreakThe turning point came in 1945, with the liberation of the camps and the Nuremberg Trials. The images and testimonies from Auschwitz, Dachau, and Bergen-Belsen revealed the industrial scale of genocide. Millions murdered with chilling efficiency. A systematic attempt to erase an entire people. For the first time, the abstract notion of “Nazi evil” was grounded in visceral, visual evidence.Sociologist Jeffrey Alexander describes this phenomenon as the cultural construction of trauma. Atrocities do not automatically generate collective memory; they must be narrated, documented, and ritualized until they become an inescapable moral reference point. The Nuremberg Trials played this role by broadcasting confessions and evidence to a global audience. Schools, museums, and the press reinforced the narrative: Nazism was not simply defeated; it was unmasked as pure, irredeemable evil.Cold War Myth-Making: The Free World Versus FascismThe Cold War further cemented this narrative. To build legitimacy against the Soviet Union, the United States and its allies positioned themselves as the moral victors of World War II, the saviors of Europe from fascism. In reality, many of the same powers—Britain, France, and the United States—continued their own brutal colonial projects and enforced systems of racial hierarchy at home.But the cultural story was powerful: the West stood for freedom; the Nazis had embodied totalitarian darkness. School textbooks, popular films, and Holocaust memorialization institutionalized this story, forging a shared moral identity that could be contrasted against communist “evil.”This process was neither accidental nor purely altruistic. It was a strategic use of culture to consolidate power, project moral authority, and deflect scrutiny of the West’s own violence. The lesson is clear: collective memory is not a neutral mirror of reality. It is built, contested, and leveraged.The Sociological Core: Why Public Opinion ShiftsTo understand how an ideology once admired by many became the universal emblem of inhumanity, we must look beyond military defeat. Several mechanisms combined:Symbolic Association: Nazism transformed from a nationalist experiment into a symbol of mechanized genocide and racial supremacy.Cultural Trauma: The Holocaust became a shared wound that redefined moral frameworks across the West.Visual Storytelling: Images and films, rather than mere text, anchored the horror in the public imagination.State Rebranding: The Allies used anti-Nazism to build a postwar myth of moral superiority, even as they pursued imperial ambitions elsewhere.These insights are not simply historical trivia. They are a roadmap for how cultural shifts happen—and how they can be deliberately engineered.Israel, Palestine, and the Next Cultural ReckoningToday, Israel’s treatment of Palestinians—systematic dispossession, apartheid laws, and repeated military assaults—remains largely protected in Western discourse. Politicians insist on Israel’s right to defend itself. Media narratives default to framing the violence as a “conflict” rather than an occupation. Solidarity with Palestinians is often smeared as antisemitism.Yet history shows that moral consensus is not fixed. With enough sustained exposure, narrative work, and cultural pressure, the global imagination can be reshaped. Just as Nazism’s legitimacy eroded, so too can the idea of Israel as an unassailable “victim-state.”This is not a call to equate the Holocaust with the Nakba—each is historically distinct. It is, however, an argument that the techniques which made Nazism morally intolerable—trauma visualization, reframing language, relentless storytelling—are tools available to any liberation movement.Here is how such a transformation could unfold:1. Narrative InversionIsrael’s founding story must be contextualized: a state born from the trauma of European antisemitism that, in turn, created the dispossession of another people. Exposing this contradiction—survivors becoming occupiers—breaks the simplistic binary of oppressor and victim.2. Visual Culture and TestimonyJust as photographs of emaciated bodies in camps forced an awakening, so too can images of bombed Gazan neighborhoods, amputee children, and anguished families. Digital archives and survivor testimonies can anchor these experiences in collective memory.3. Linguistic ReframingTerms like “apartheid,” “settler colonialism,” and “ethnic cleansing” shift perception from tragic conflict to structural violence. Legal frameworks—UN reports, ICC filings—can fortify these terms with institutional legitimacy.4. Media SaturationBypassing corporate media gatekeepers requires a multi-platform strategy: TikTok clips, Substack essays, livestreamed trials of Israeli policy, viral documentaries. Saturation is what makes denial unsustainable.5. Global RealignmentPositioning Palestine within global struggles—Black liberation, Indigenous sovereignty, anti-colonial movements—expands solidarity. When the Global South embraces Palestinian liberation as part of its own decolonization, moral isolation will deepen.6. Cultural Institutions and EducationJust as Holocaust education became standard in Western curricula, Nakba education can be mainstreamed. Museums, memorials, and fellowships can institutionalize remembrance and scholarship.7. Policy Pressure and Legal ActionPublic consensus is the soil in which policy change grows. Boycotts, divestment, and sanctions, coupled with legal prosecutions of war crimes, transform moral clarity into material consequences.8. Making Occupation a LiabilityWhen supporting Israel becomes politically and financially risky—akin to defending apartheid South Africa—corporate and governmental alliances will fracture. Reputational risk can be a powerful motivator.Conclusion: Cultural Reckonings Are EngineeredIt was not “natural” for the West to reject Nazism. It took defeat, trauma exposure, and decades of cultural labor to enshrine anti-Nazism as a foundational moral principle. Similarly, it is not inevitable that the world will recognize Israel’s oppression of Palestinians as an urgent moral crisis. It will require strategic, sustained, and courageous cultural work.Culture—more than geopolitics or economics—sets the terms of what is morally acceptable. It is the compass that can point humanity toward justice. But only if we are willing to pick it up and use it."
}
,
{
"title" : "Neptune Frost",
"author" : "Saul Williams, Anisia Uzeyman",
"category" : "screenings",
"tags" : "",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/eip-screening-neptune-frost",
"date" : "2025-07-12 16:00:00 -0400",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/netune-frost-movie-poster.jpg",
"excerpt" : "Thank you for all who joined the special screening of Neptune Frost, with exclusive introduction from writer/director Saul Williams. Stay tuned and become a member for our next edition of our EIP monthly screening series.",
"content" : "Thank you for all who joined the special screening of Neptune Frost, with exclusive introduction from writer/director Saul Williams. Stay tuned and become a member for our next edition of our EIP monthly screening series.Multi-hyphenate, multidisciplinary artist Saul Williams brings his unique dynamism to this Afrofuturist vision, a sci-fi punk musical that’s a visually wondrous amalgamation of themes, ideas, and songs that Williams has explored in his work, notably his 2016 album MartyrLoserKing. Co-directed with the Rwandan-born artist and cinematographer Anisia Uzeyman, the film takes place in the hilltops of Burundi, where a group of escaped coltan miners form an anti-colonialist computer hacker collective. From their camp in an otherworldly e-waste dump, they attempt a takeover of the authoritarian regime exploiting the region’s natural resources – and its people. When an intersex runaway and an escaped coltan miner find each other through cosmic forces, their connection sparks glitches within the greater divine circuitry. Set between states of being – past and present, dream and waking life, colonized and free, male and female, memory and prescience – Neptune Frost is an invigorating and empowering direct download to the cerebral cortex and a call to reclaim technology for progressive political ends."
}
,
{
"title" : "Uranus & The Cycle of Liberation",
"author" : "Céline Semaan",
"category" : "",
"tags" : "",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/uranus-and-the-cycle-of-liberation",
"date" : "2025-07-11 16:25:00 -0400",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/EIP_Uranus.jpg",
"excerpt" : "I’m definitely not an astrologer. I don’t even know where Uranus is in my chart. But I do know how to read systems and translate them to the public. What I’ve learned, through years of designing for social and environmental justice, is that history doesn’t just unfold. It cycles upwards. And if we learn to pay attention to those cycles, we can prepare—not just to resist collapse, but to shape what comes after.",
"content" : "I’m definitely not an astrologer. I don’t even know where Uranus is in my chart. But I do know how to read systems and translate them to the public. What I’ve learned, through years of designing for social and environmental justice, is that history doesn’t just unfold. It cycles upwards. And if we learn to pay attention to those cycles, we can prepare—not just to resist collapse, but to shape what comes after.Even if you don’t care about astrology, the timing of these celestial movements provides us a way to examine macro trends that we can learn from. History may not exactly repeat itself, but it does echo.Uranus—the planet astrologers associated with upheaval, rebellion, and technological transformation—entered Aries in May 2010 and stayed there until 2018. That cycle coincided with a surge in political uprisings, many of which redefined our understanding of mass resistance in the 21st century.The Arab Spring began in late 2010, starting in Tunisia and erupting across the Middle East. It wasn’t just about corrupt regimes—it was about reclaiming voice, land, and dignity after decades of foreign interference, neoliberal decay, and post-colonial repression. From Tahrir Square to Pearl Roundabout, these movements were leaderless, fast, and media-savvy.Occupy Wall Street followed in 2011, challenging the violent inequality embedded in late capitalism. In 2013, Black Lives Matter emerged after the murder of Trayvon Martin, later exploding into a global uprising in 2014 and again in 2020. Standing Rock (2016) reminded the world that Indigenous resistance was not only alive but visionary. #MeToo (2017) became an international reckoning with patriarchy and sexual violence, a reminder that personal testimony is political terrain.Across these years, protests were decentralized, digitized, and visual. Social media moved from a personal tool to a frontline of collective witnessing. Livestreams replaced press conferences. Memes became political language. Design itself became a protest, and Slow Factory built the visual language for it.This was not coincidental but archetypal, because Uranus in Aries, even symbolically, tells the story of radical ignition, collective fire, visionary unrest.And yet, none of it was sustained. What followed was a backlash: fascist resurgence, climate denial, propaganda wars, and intensified state surveillance. We saw mass demobilization, media fatigue, and widespread disinformation. Many of the movements that sparked global hope were either crushed, co-opted, or burned out.So now, as Uranus moves through Taurus (2018–2026), the terrain has shifted. Taurus is about materiality, land, value, and stability. It demands we not only rise up, which is crucial, but to build. We are asked to not only critique systems, but replace them. Not just “burn it all down”, but radically imagine what’s next.This is the political and spiritual context I hold as I continue my work.At Slow Factory, we spent the past decade offering free education, cultural strategy, and ecological design rooted in climate justice and human rights. And with Everything is Political, we’re building an independent media platform not beholden to corporate donors or foundation filters—a place where movement memory, critical analysis, and cultural clarity live. If we don’t design the next phase of liberation, someone else will design it for us.This work isn’t about virality. It’s about continuity. We are here to hold political memory. To protect the intellectual commons. To ensure that the next generation doesn’t forget who stood for truth—and who profited from silence.The ask is to build the very systems we are all looking for, and for that we deserve the time, energy and support to imagine, design and co-create as a community. We can’t delegate our liberation to politicians, and we certainly won’t see startups capitalizing on the changes our society needs. Perhaps we will witness the hyper privatization of every single service our communities need, but we must strategize for during and after collapse. Funding structures will have to be challenged, as they are designed to sustain themselves and uphold status quo. However, we are witnessing the collapse of every industry: media, education, banking, all industries we rely on, will be challenged. We are going to need to rely on our creative skills and our ability to build true solidarity across our communities towards a common goal outside of dogma and division. It’s a cultural moment, and we are here for it.Resistance isn’t just about protest. It’s about imagination. And imagination requires discipline, community, and space.We are creating that space right here. And together we can co-create together if everybody puts in effort and care. For now, we are imagining what systems of mitigation amidst systems collapse will look like. Will we outsource our infrastructure to highly funded Silicon Valley funded platforms feeding off of public data feeding ads markets and Ai learning in real time from our work? Or are we truly invested in building sovereign media? I personally invest in the latter, and hope you all join us. Because we are the majority, and truly if we align we are unstoppable."
}
]
}