Heart of The New World

I feel, like so many of us, bone-breaking tired. Lines cracking across my forehead, tired. Slow sighs expelling into guttural groans, tired. Stomp my foot for no particular reason, tired. "I really, really don't know" shaking my head, tired.

Stumbling through this weariness, anger, confusion, and fear, I've been seeing a shadow in my side-eye. To follow this form was, for me, a truth apparent:

Spiritual art is the heart of the new world yet born.

We are creatives that must midwife us into the future's next stage. This means that our loving creation is the response to despairing desperation. Each of us, on this precarious precipice, are reaching toward an inevitable destruction. Spiritual artist-warriors possess the gentle strength to hold along the edge, touch the bright being inside, and enter the hot terror toward home. We made home before, we continue here, and make, make, make all of the way through. Our divine choice: transform, this way or another.

I'm convinced, more than ever, that if transcendent politics were the answer to 20th century moral crisis, the art of justice is our healing for 21st century violence. We need courage, imagination, truth, wisdom, in being, more than ever.

Scarcity & Abundance Scale

Last week a wise friend reminded me that the very definition of our lives is to be in mystery, yet only during certain times are we aware of it.

A blessing coming out of having more flexibility in my life is that I've been given the chance to study the differences among people faced with the utter truth of life's mysteriousness, whether by choice, "accident," or "directioned" stumble. Clearly, my observation is as much of a self-study as anything else.

For reasons beyond me, these times seem harder than most. Almost everyone that I know is dealing with something heavy. I notice that difficulty, challenge, and hardship are collapsing all around us, mostly in the form of grief that hardens over transitional wounds. More tiresome, some of us are holding many tests at the same time, which feels overwhelming at best, and soul-breaking at worst. We rage at divine cruelty, disengage from reality, or find other ways to cope.  

But I'm seeing, time and time again, that those who tend to respond with resiliency maintain equanimity, while those who tend to respond with rigidity simply don't. These patterns are beyond being negative or positive-we can be "positive people" who aren't holding life's challenges healthily or be "negative people" who are entering life's mysteries with tremendous grounded-ness. I think that it's more complex than that.

I'm beginning to observe the stuff that equanimity is made off--the presence to appreciate both of scarcity and abundance in our lives. As we allow ourselves to feel of both sides of the scale, so to speak, the easier it is to accept where we are, and navigate where we're going. We hold what we hold, what we hold, what we hold.

This doesn't mean to me, however, that we have equal amounts of both scarcity and abundance or that we choose to notice the plentiful and ignore the absence. Instead, it means that we recognize that scarcity and abundance scales exist by nature (yin and yang qualities) in which we see less scarcity where there is more abundance, and more scarcity where there is more abundance--as it is. Beyond that though, those who tend toward resilience, because they hold a deep sense of equanimity, are able to see the infinite scales that exist before them--not the few that represent the aspects of our lives on which we choose to focus or over which we obsess. In a sense being more present opens us up to the scales that populate the detailed and miraculous mechanics of our existence.  

I want to be one of those people who tend toward resiliency, so I am choosing to smile at abundance, to nod at scarcity, understand the purpose of both as necessary and complementary elements, and most significantly, visit all of the scales in my life. This way I'm smiling more often (as I see abundance), gain extra clarity (as I see scarcity), lean into impermanence (as I recognize that shapes will readily shift), feel spaciousness (tending to the many scales that exist for me in this dimension and others, and being fully present for each visit).

Please remind me how I'm doing when we speak next!

Jump!

Friends, earlier today I launched my website. It's essentially a freelance website all about me. I didn't expect to feel so exposed when it was live because I've written about extremely vulnerable topics on this blog and elsewhere. It explains the reasons why my subconscious dragged on this project for several weeks. There's the leap, and then, there's the free fall for all to see!

Today, more than ever, I'm grateful that I have a solid meditation practice to ground me--remind me that I am joined to forces which are powerful, hopeful, and purposeful.

But before meditation I was letting the vulnerability sit in the middle of my stomach like a giant floating lead ball. I watched it as minutes passed, then a couple of hours. I saw two three things. First, that I felt more raw about a website with little curating. Unlike a blog entry it isn't a glimpse into a window of my life--it's who I strive to be and what I do to align to my aspiration. I'm more out there than usual. Second, I have a critical community reflex. I love my political leftist comrades and communities but we oftentimes apply our critical facilities too sharply on one another, so in some ways, I'm waiting for the punches in the name of purity. Third, the website is unwittingly part of my self-love practice, because during my meditation, I had to shower myself with reminders that I'm brilliant, talented, and deserved to shape how I spend my time, and create my livelihood.

The latter was especially a new place to be. Only a few days ago was I able to say that I've left almost organization that I was paid to work for because I had either outgrown my role or I grew too weary trying to move the group toward its professed transformative vision.

I'm tired of doing that, painful, difficult, exhausting work. I'm tired of being told that I need another credential. I'm tired of being "realistic." I'm tired of putting "focus" on only one set of my passions. I'm tired of my energy  and abilities being so under-valued that it's assumed that I'd work for free, especially by entities & people with resources. I'm tired of working under less dedicated & less skilled folks who come from money, who are dudes, or who simply made more conventional choices. Enuf!

Now, I know enough to shape my vision, and I've got community behind me. I bare it out on a website but honestly, I've been walkin' this way for a while.

Reveal

I haven't written a blog entry for three months. Often, this means that there's little revelatory insight about which to connect with others. But my recent absence is because there's almost too much. Nearly everyone close to me has felt, has been swept, or is mercifully directing the immense energetic shift that arrived with Venus in Retrograde. Since, there's been no hiding.

I've moved homes, quit my job, forgave a person, contacted my birth-father, published my first essay, and had a change in my romantic relationship in the last three months of 2013.

Some of these changes were foreseen, others weren't--but they each came fast and furiously, without my oh-so careful consultation. The magical quality of these changes were that they didn't happen to me; rather, like so many people, as I felt the strong planetary pull after at November's end, truths made themselves obnoxiously known. And, when the Universe crashes down on you, and laughs at your astonishment that things changed, I recognized the spiritual test as one not about the Universe's audacity, but as one about making choices or, well, not.

So I decided to leave my job. Then, more truths surfaced, and I made other changes. I stumbled onto yet more truths along the way, and I chose to take every risk--choosing the choice that I would "never" make. I continued to follow and choose following the light on the dark footpath. Soon after, I found the capacity to go beyond making negative choices to making positive ones: if there was ever a time to manifest my intentions, it was now. The intuitive rabbit hole was a miraculous gift wrapped in packaging that shed to quickly that I almost doubted that it was given in the first place.

While giving chase, and at times, being chased, I've asked others: what brings you to center?

What gives you the courage to stay acutely present through unpredictability, to just hold heavy uncertainty for your well-being, security, and future, to become your own lover amidst narcissism and ego-trippin', to return to yourself, and all of that which you bring, after checking out for a few days?

The resounding response was that no one knows. Neither do I. But it's been a beautifully graceless, and supremely humbling journey so far.

My transformation is centered around deepening my self-love. Over the last year I gathered that to genuinely love myself that I must end the sabotage and I must collect my power. If I had offered myself as much care, attention, and gentleness as I'd thought, I wouldn't be so estranged from myself that I couldn't recognize my powerful selves--the possibilities that could, but weren't, the places where I was living through my imagination, the worlds in which I aspired and achieved as easily as I breathed. I wanted to say "yes" to every part of myself that this new path revealed but I was reluctant to unleash this power without the wisdom to harness it. It exists but must be excavated.

On my best days I get much closer. I shovel these parts into the outside world with fervor. To reach these parts, I'm called upon to intensely listen to myself in one ear, and listen to the Universe in the other. Deep listening for me, takes the form of total surrender.

In this practice, I have no option but to completely trust myself. Or when I've felt too small, I've entered the warm embrace of the Universe. When I return to center, I can hoard all of the tangible and intangible twists and turns because they are unmatched against my infinite resources. I have every ability and influence that I need or could hope for. I feel the continuity of lifetimes of wisdom, and that of the world, to actively shape my reality in the present moment. These are very good days. I have them sometimes :) for which I am very grateful.

Love as a practice of faith is a strong force.

Weathered Home

Last fall, a person that I love joined me in a writing project with the theme: short poems inspired by lines of the same. This means that one of us wrote a poem, and the other wrote another poem borrowing a line from the previous poem. It recently re-appeared into my life, so I took it as a sign to share. Thanks for reading. 

Weathered soles hold up our
Weathered souls
Wandering steps
Self-possessed
Wondering, whether
This heel marks home for
Weathered souls upon these
Weathered soles

Yet, as leaves turn, weather learns,
Toward which way, or as some say,
An uncertain, whethered way,
For with each foot-fall weary,
Wake pieces of Earth, into
A trail of ancestral secrets
Waxed upon land, many years old,
Wherein healing magic lives,
From weathered souls, standing upon
Weathered soles.

This place, we call home.

Peeling The Onion

I sat down for lunch with a dear friend of mine a couple of weeks ago. We hadn't seen each other for some time, so we were eager to summarily divulge everything about our lives in the span of forty minutes. We each shared our successes and struggles in the same easy tone. "Oh, I changed jobs." "It was the first time that I saw my family in years."

As we traded updates, as children trade their most treasured toys, I confessed a question that was sitting with me over the last several months: if you know what will make you happy, what prevents you pursuing it?

I have been exploring my subconscious about this question for most of the year. My intention was to strive for a greater sense of freedom--releasing myself from my perpetual caregiver role, surrendering any self-definitions or identities in which I casted myself, shedding a structured schedule to follow the way of my own presence. All of this effort is toward loosening the suffocating grip of responsibility, my own "light shadow" which distances me from myself.

Yet, I disclosed to my friend sitting across the small metal table, I wouldn't always let myself get there. What stopped me from embracing what was good for me, what was satisfying, what was fulfilling? Why would we--and I--negotiate with self-sabotage?

She nodded in agreement, and simply replied, "It's like peeling an onion, Baby."

Since that lunch I've peeked at, picked at, and begun peeling layers of habit, comfort, expectation, uncertainty, anger, and pain. For me, the onion analogy is a description of a deeply-inward process of refining my fundamental self; a piece-meal transformation through exuberant trial-and-error. This unglamorous but necessary road has characterized 2013, which I can hardly believe is nearing an end.

Many of these layers are messily mundane. For example, earlier this year, shortly after celebrating twenty-eight years of life, I discovered that through my long-time stomach sickness that I developed a bad gluten-allergy. One which made me disoriented for hours with too much exposure. It took me almost six months to take it seriously! Now, I have a mostly gluten-free, vegan diet, but it took many congested days, yeast reactions, and nights out-of-commission to arrive here.

And some of these layers are leading me to unconventional choices. I'm slowly entering a community of people who have chosen to carefully shape their livelihoods. We aren't climbing mobility ladders, we aren't part of a single "profession," we call upon our ingenuity, creativity, and available resources to get by. We question and challenge the norms around work, what it means to us (and doesn't define us) and creating lifestyles to happily survive. I've long-talked about holding similar values, but only last month realized that while I like organizing and law, I love writing and healing. So, as a former paid organizer and current lawyer, why has it taken so long to make writing and healing work my priorities? I laugh out loud when I think about it--how obvious but not obvious it is.

I still don't have full insight about the hidden parts of myself or relationship to the Universe that immobilize me. After all, the layering of our own self-imposed limitations, and that of our environments, is a thick, useless moldy sheet, which some of us constantly try to pull away.

Admitting my self-sabotage struggle isn't an exercise of self-flagellation. I actually think it's one of the kindest self-inquiries that I have held for years. It's a challenge to do more toward my Purpose. And if anything has come of it, I've become better friends with myself by saying "yes" more often to that which serves me instead of making excuses to ignore parts of myself.  

Recently, I've also come to terms that I'm  most motivated when my lens of the world is reduced to the naked existential reality that our human experience is finite. In the past it was an occasional panic that would befall me every few years, when I would enter a state of hyper-reality for a minute, aware of the preciousness of every millisecond. The fear of not being here was paralyzing yet revelatory.

These days I try to induce the same without the panic everyday: What would it be like, Richael, to feel heart-opening splendor? What would it be like to possess a passionate urgency for the moment in front of me? Peeling this layer, and another layer.

Glow

Around this time, for the past two years, I've experienced trauma. August and September, in many ways, have become months when the worst unexpected came true, bearing open my most vulnerable parts, and demanding courage and resilience that I didn't think was within me.

Trauma, like all things-that-happen, occur some Place--a physical location attached to the feelings.

I was very conscience of this Place, where last year's event happened. Often times, when I'm near this Place, I held my breath while I passed. Other times, I avoided it altogether. No matter what I choose, I am aware of this Place, reminded by the anxiety swimming in my stomach. I remember.

Tonight, as I sometimes do, I decided to pass this Place on my way home. I felt my feet slow from a city gait, to a southern slug, and then, they stopped. I stood in the exact spot that it all happened. Before, I didn't recognize the particular house it was near, or the split in the pavement--I just felt where it was in my heart, as if it was tied to an anchor and suddenly dropped into the center of the earth. I understood that it was here, where I was changed.

I stayed for a moment. I let the tidal wave of feelings wash over me: betrayal, anger, disbelief. The feelings was so palpable that I could taste them, and yet, the experience wasn't overwhelming. A breeze brushed my face. And almost as suddenly as I relived last year, I felt myself in the present. I smiled and I was OK.

While I still held feelings from before,  they were vague shadows of what they once were. I recognized that I had survived it. I thought, "could I be sure that this was the same place?" However, what I was really asking was "whether I was the same person who stood here before?"

And I am. I gave myself permission to recede into my surroundings, and reflect on exactly what allowed me to arrive at this moment feeling so strong. I understood that it was the tremendous quality of love in my life that beat back the haze of deep hurt from the past. Love saved me.

Love allowed me to ask and receive support from close friends for which I never believed brave enough to ask, or even rightfully deserved. Friends who generously offer their cars so that I can visit my parents; friends who run a distance races with me to support my personal goals, and then hike with me to re-visit my sacred, self-retreat spot; friends who apologize for being distant upon realizing that their resentful reaction to your happiness is wrong, and that it was on them to make amends.

Love allowed my family to show up during my hardest moments in surprising and unselfish ways; family who listened to private things of the kind I have never shared or believed that I didn't have the capacity to feel; family members who challenged their own confidence of their abilities to hold more and be more responsible for themselves, in light of witnessing my complete depletion. Family who reminds me that they love me everyday, and always have.

Love that returned me to the queer politics of love. A belief that inspiration and imagination are the only tools in our war arsenal; people who celebrate struggle, honor ancestors, and realize that lost campaigns can't take away laughter; communities who value the Beloved, practice integrity, and reject fear as reflex in which to live.

The promise of Love that inspired me to build the most loving romantic relationship that I've ever had with a partner who genuinely accepts all parts of me; a partner who asks to create trust with me everyday; a partner who possesses the kindest heart, held together by gentle bones, and holds me as carefully; a partner who is committed to transformation, dedicated to learning whether unconditional love exists and what it means, and who treasures working toward the hard parts of love, as much as the easy parts, because the reward of each other is so valuable.

The memory of Love let me surrender to the Ultimate Love. A deep, inevitable Love that gave me insight when I could barely open my eyes; trust when I didn't believe; and instill hope when I was drowning in my own morass. I followed goodness when doing so felt almost foolish.

A year later, there's no doubt that I've arrived and stayed in that Place because of Love. Thank you to all who made that Place more like any other, and a Place of my own power.

Emotional Memory

*Trigger alert: This post contains racially offensive language.*

Recently I had a very precious moment when how I related to myself no longer made sense. This moment didn't surface from a crisis, like a sudden spring of distress that rushed from underneath some deep, subterranean layers of myself. Rather, it was a quick, simple shift, which occurred like a switch turned on in a dim room. I had seen the collection of my experiences in one way, and now, here, I see them differently. The "this" became "that," with a snap of my fingers, and the most terrifying part is that it maybe the "that" was always so.

Several months ago I re-started therapy as part of my deep healing process. I originally began talk-therapy during college, once I had left home, but let it go as I discovered a "Sisters of the Yam" support group and meditation "spiritual community of friends" after graduation. I insisted, when I began to forge this new relationship with my current therapist, that my goal was to remember. I claimed that I couldn't recall significant events in my early life, and the fragments that I was able to unearth were the same traumatic stories that spooled on repeat from my mental library. I asked, "what happened to everything else?" I was certain that the anger that I discovered last year was a mask for a heap of repressed feelings, clawing through my memory cells to escape into reality. My mission was to re-construct my life by infusing it with new meaning. What was I missing?

Last month our time to call back my inner-child had finally arrived. I brought a college scrapbook to session, and prepared to talk about my Life. We began speaking about my family's brief time in Billings, Montana, when I was about four. We left after a year and a half, unwilling to tolerate the racially hostile town longer than necessary. I related how my parents advocated for me when another little girl of color called me a "nigger," when explaining why she refused to sit next to me during story-time, and how my parents became a kind of peace activists in their own struggle against racism for our family, and the few other families of color that resided there in the late 80s. I conveyed these memories with a passionate pride that I usually reserve for topics other than my childhood.

As the hour went on I had traced through grade school my mother's fierce support as I wrangled against racial stereotypes, chauvinistic boys, and other mistreatment levied on young, queer girls of color, which validated my intuitive sense of fairness. I remembered my father's commitment to public service, embodied by over thirty years in the federal government, and love of history, which imbued my sense of collective responsibility and the intellectual necessity for context. Most powerfully, as I conveyed much of my early life, I shared how both of my parents, unlike so many, offered me freedom to define myself and my world. I was told "yes" most of the time, and was better off for it.

At the end, my therapist made three observations. The first was that I shared happier memories--ones that made me sit-up and smile as I remembered them, and from which revealed seeds of myself that I like the most. Happy memories were a balance to the difficult times about which I relived during past sessions. Nodding. The second observation was that I actually remembered a lot. I had, in fact, shared a number of specific events, despite my claim that I had spanning gaps in my memory. Interesting. The last observation was that although I didn't remember many details about what happened to me--I mostly remembered how I'd felt at the time. Whoa. 

Within an instant, I was a repressed, intellectual who put in years of work to harvest my emotions into a revealed, feeler-of-a-person who had always had a strong, emotional antenna, but simply didn't know it. Such things beg the near-overwhelming, existential question: Who is this person?

I'm sure that there is a lot more to dissect from our little exercise, which I have not even begun to truly understand. I can say, however, that it was a great lesson about the ways in which how I relate to myself really creates my past, present, and future. It reminds me that I must be less of a finite being with history--a story filled with static paragraphs and punctuation--and more like a continuation of selves shaped by quirky moments--a living musical score with a vast divine orchestra playing "I" and "me."

It's sobering reality to sit in, for now.

You/Me

we draw lines, here and there

with our mind's eye, far and wide

your fingers feel warm

your hands are soft

but I don't notice these things

when we reach and touch

each other

continue into the surface, the seconds and the stars

as seamless as the universe

intended us to be

here and there

far and wide

this hand that you held

is the seed of other seeds

ones that ripened tens of years ago

yes, it may be that

my seed was never sown

into the earth, as intended

yet this once brittle seed of mine

survived wintertime

bracing and holding

lying still, here and there

patient passing, far and wide

a truth: I never understood

how to draw lines, of the real kind

jagged, sharp, thick

across to break, form negatives

collapse throbs, an echo through

when love must dry from the well

that we built with these bare hands

together

an end that was made

because this no-more

I could stand longer

scarcely more, than the other no-mores

a distant flickering light

you and me

here and there

far and wide

some days I wish for

solitude's escape

from the burden of the cold

as I inherit spring

remaining on the ground

a choice: should I loosen

to bear

piercing sun overhead? or

to receive

food from the watershed?

these cracks branched on my shell

are lines that belong, drawn

here and there, far and wide

now I see, you and me

continue in the wisdom

of choosing to exist

forever

The Gentlest Gentleman

The Gentlest Gentleman*

When I lift your hand to meet my lips

It’s a reflex to your smile

We stroll outside with our arms linked

You might feel my heart’s hospitality

Welcome home

No need for a knight in shining armor

Descendin’ from a high horse

Please have me, a boi with a dirty apron

Preparin’ your favorite side of comfort

When I ask permission to touch your face

It’s a desire to know you whole

We let our fingers saunter, sway in our breath

I might feel your spirit’s revival

Testify, amen

Leave behind the poor ol’ damsel

Her distress as stale as her rescue

Pick me, far afield, the shape of a dandy-lion

Spoilin’ this dry tale with a loud, lurid roar

Here are pretty words for the prettiest girl

When plain words just won’t do:

I want to be your gentlest gentleman

With my first rule of tenderness

There is no show, no passed time

Because of a secret, you should know

‘Course, I’m polite as I was raised

Respect curdles in my blood

But I’ve been hurt—heartbrok’n hard

And I just want a little kindness

So that with this gamble, I’ll deal the right card

*This title is from My Brightest Diamond’s song of the same name, on the album, A Thousand Shark’s Teeth. 

This poem is dedicated to a very special woman in my life--Alicia Virani.

New Beginnings

...and I am no longer afraid of the fall of my own footsteps.

A Letter to A Young Public Interest Lawyer

I wrote this letter at the request of an insanely creative law student friend of mine. Letters to a Young Public Interest Lawyer is an event inspired by a series published in a law review. I could not be in Boston but wrote this. Event organizers - thank you for your vision, which inspired me.

LETTER TO A YOUNG PUBLIC INTEREST LAWYER

From Richael Faithful – February 2, 2013

I never wanted to be a lawyer, and you shouldn’t assume that you want to be one either.

If your early years resembled mine, I long-struggled to define my own identity. I was a competitive athlete that didn’t want to grow up to become a basketball or soccer player; I was a political geek that didn’t want to eventually find myself on Capitol Hill; and I was an opinionated Black girl that most certainly didn’t want to become a lawyer.

I resisted the idea for a long time, even saying as much during my Administrative Law class introductions during my 2L year second semester...

Now, I’m a lawyer. And I am beginning to understand why. It is not my primary identity—rather it’s probably fourth, rivaling writer, healer, and organizer. Yet it’s there, and I’m happy that it is.

I attended law school after a disenchanting spell as a full-time organizer. I was trained through college by a great state-level organization but found professional organizing to be morally confusing, as my relationship changed with the work once my livelihood depended on it. I vaguely considered law school as a next step if I felt ambivalent at the end of my year-long contract. The idea of law school merely sounded less uncomfortable during my last year of college after I had thoroughly defined myself as an organizer. I wasn’t, after all, being relentlessly teased that I should become a lawyer because I was an opinionated Black girl.

Naturally, I took applying to law school very seriously. I prepared for the LSAT by reading every Agatha Christie Hercule Poirot novel ever published. (That’s over 40 books.) Poirot’s “little grey cells” got me paying attention to detail, and brushed up my “logical” thinking that apparently went somewhat unpolished when studying sociology.

Next, I applied to three law schools. Totally safe choice…I can’t remember the topic of my essay but it was probably as clever as my college admissions essay on my founding of my high school’s “Dead Philosopher’s Society.”

And I knew that my application packet was complete with my college President’s recommendation letter, only that he was my college’s former President due to his irreverence for authority. I was an ideal law school candidate—obviously.

The ways in which I shrugged off the rat race known as law school admissions, I did take seriously my preparation for attending law school.

I knew that I would enter an elite institution and profession that offered a narrow and rigid education of “the law.” I understood that my presence and abilities would be subtly questioned by other students, faculty, and myself at times, in light that there would be few queer students of color. I realized that I would fight every day to stay grounded in my core values, which honored community, ancestry, and love, within a culture that promoted individual ambition, future success, and profit-making. Playing the role, and even becoming, a law student was not a naïve choice.

I sought advice from friends, and friends’ friends; I read all the critical race theorist books about being a law student of color that I could get my hands on; I reached out to female faculty of color for mentorship; and importantly, I asked whether I should attend law school every day for months. By the time I entered into American University Washington College of Law, I was beginning to entertain the possibility that I could become a lawyer.

Law school, as it turned out, ended up being a formative experience that conjures up positive feelings. It wasn’t terrible, at all. I found powerful role models in experienced attorneys and peers, stretched my intellectual capacity through independent work, learned how to build community under restrained conditions, and met remarkable people with whom, despite appearances, I share a great deal in common and since call close friends.

I’ve been a lawyer for a year and a half now. The verdict is that it fits me in a lot of ways. I am fortunate in that I have had the freedom to shape my practice through a post-graduate fellowship, which allows me to provide direct services, co-organize a statewide campaign, and prepare impact litigation. On one hand, this freedom is likely temporary because to embody all these levels of work in a single job is unusual, which speaks to the law profession’s limitations and value it places on public interest work. On the other hand, I’m consistently amazed by some public interest lawyers’ creativity to arrange their lives to do sustainable, necessary work. I hope to always count myself among this group of lawyers, in one way or another.

I decided to attend law school for a purpose. I rationalized law school because I believed that it would give me powerful access and tools for my Beloved Community, which radical people and marginalized communities deserve to share—a Rawlsian kind of analysis I suppose. I finally appreciate, as I take risks, seek new skills, and have new experiences as a young public interest lawyer, that I should be here, at least for a time. I don’t envision myself being a full-time lawyer forever (and will be challenged to find innovative ways to manage my debt and pursue my heart’s work interests). But the value of being able to engage with law, as a person with a formal legal education, and in my case, an active law license, is enormous to those with whom I’m struggling every day. 

Ultimately, I may be like you or I may not. You may have always had wanted to be an attorney or meticulously planned for law school or chose the attractive detour of working for a large firm until you pay off your law school debt. Nonetheless, I recommend a daily examination – a gentle ask – “why am I doing this?” Should an answer become lost on you – or unpleasantly arrive in your gut – I wish you the courage and conviction to re-make your practice, however you define it, even if you have to leave it behind. This choice is your lifeline and that of the “cause.”

Let me share one last recommendation because it has served me well. Carry with you a robust imagination and rooted spirituality. A robust imagination offers a vision for the present and future that allows you to see the edges of reality as you work toward transformation, and a rooted spirituality (distinct from religiosity) offers the grounded-ness necessary to have your heart blown-open and broken-apart day-in and day-out by your work. I am easily inspired with a stake in the ground and a beautiful view of the sky.

Thank you for reading my letter. I look forward to reading yours in the not-so-distant future. 

Life's Return

Every day we greet a lurid world,
Surrounded by zig-zag noises,
Pointed, jagged, and sharp,
In rare moments, tiny little gifts,
Sift into, and readily,
Cut through, a breath's pause,
These ambients melt into,
Smooth escape.

Awaiting me is a precious place,
Glowing with a secret silence,
Sharp as before, but called to be,
A sacred still,
Tiny chill, I peek close,
Against the standing air,
At my nose's tip--drip,
A damp smoke shower appears,
Into my ears, I imagine,
Burning ahead.

With a swallow of abandon,
I squint to view the obscure,
Sight unseen, further I lean,
Yet right there! bestowed at my feet,
Lives the most stoic rays of light,
Brilliant beams fiercely fight, to shine,
From me to the sky,
While I wildly wonder,
All of those curious questions "why?"
Remember, remember,
It says, as we seek, and,
As we pine,
Our home is always,
The beauty of sunshine.

I may arrive too soon, or,
I may arrive too late,
But there is love eternal,
Within my own fate,
Busy or blind, you are there,
Easy as the light,
And here to share.

Breath of Fire

In the last month I've embraced fire is my kindred element. Earlier in the fall, when I felt my heart on fire, it kept re-appearing in my life--a burning release ritual with my spiritual friends, re-painting my studio a rich "Earth Henna," a late night bonfire, my creation of an enso-fire tattoo design, and most recently, this piece of autonomic artwork representing my heart-stomach.

My current relationship toward fire is more than a metaphor, it is fueling a deep healing process. It is a passionate, simmering energy that is affording me intensity and patience. Importantly, it is the force that is allowing me to easily burn away many long-held patterns, cravings, people and ways of being that don't serve, don't resonate, and don't support this process.

There's a certain violence that comes with holding fire, with which I'm not incredibly comfortable. I am doing my best to let it travel freely. I am, though, more comfortable with the sight which its light offers. I'm seeing and observing new dimensions of the old, and being introduced to the newly discovered (but not "new" by any means). This is my poetic description of a very exciting yet extremely frightening day-to-day unfolding.

Engulfed in a devastating break-up from my partner of three years, and an overall difficult emotional year, I went on a three-day self-retreat at a beautiful, local park in Northern Virginia. There, I meditated and journaled on a cliff each morning, and hiked trails each afternoon. I had amazing friends check-in with me by phone at designated times to rely where I was, and to hear their feedback, and encouragement. At the end, I left more peaceful, but less grounded. I confronted some of my repressed pain of the past year, and fed elaborate delusions about where I was and the future, at the same time.

Weeks later I felt more grounded than before. I suffered the shattering of my mountain-top delusions almost immediately after I returned. I shed a lot of responsibilities that felt non-essential to create space for myself. I began to take my chronic stomach pain more seriously. I re-committed to regular acupuncture with wise, knowledgeable dear friend and counselor. I felt particularly fragile, tender-hearted, and self-assured.

Acupuncture opened the door to the truth that my gut pain was connected to earlier childhood fears, which manifested through my relationships with my mother and ex. I had never taken the "inner child" seriously before then. The first step was permitting this trauma to speak for itself through my body because my conscious mind had repressed feelings for so long that it no longer recognized pain as pain. More recently, acupuncture has brought to surface various aches and irritations that were my coping mechanisms -- comfort eating, intellectual escape, etc. Acupuncture, for some, is their main method for healing deep trauma; in my case, it is the practice that tells the truth for me so that I can continue the healing.

Around the same time my acupuncture practice was deepening, I read an important book that reinforced my acupuncture work, and spontaneous inner-child experience, called "When the Body Says No: Exploring the Stress-Disease Connection." I read a whole chapter about myself, in the class of Irritable Bowel Syndrome sufferers, who suppress anger and other feelings as addictive care-takers.

I understood this observation because whenever I had a hard relationship conversation with my former partner I had intense stomach pain, and frequented the bathroom. (Let me also add that much of our relationship was very healing in that I had been much, much more vulnerable and intimate with her than I ever thought possible in a relationship.)

Nonetheless, this book gifted me with a way to explain the connection between my emotional triggers and physiological response, of which my conventional medical doctors either didn't know or under-estimated.

I gained more insight into my emotional trigger through a book that I finished on Christmas Day, called "Shadows on the Path" by Abdi Assadi, a hella-grounded ex-junkie, body worker and therapist based in NYC. I was always moved by his recorded workshops, many of which I listened to while on my mini-retreat, including a very memorable "dying practice" exercise. His book culminates his warnings against gurus, and observations from studying a wide range of spiritual/emotional practices, from martial arts to shamanism. A helpful passage:

"Robert Bly wrote my favorite book on the topic [of human shadows] called A Little Book On The Human Shadow. In it he pictures the shadow as a big, invisible bag that we each drag behind us. As children, we unconsciously put the parts of ourselves our parents didn't like into that bag. Due to our desperaate want and need of our parents' love an disapproval we felt compelled to disown and bury the parts of ourselves that might threaten that love...

By the time we reach adulthood, our bag is overflowing with suppressed material such as anger, wildness, greed, rudeness, silliness, spontaneity, selfishness or sexuality. Any part that is not acknowledged or that we are shamed by gets dumped in. This unconscious act of hiding our socially unaccepted pieces can lead to a huge loss of vitality. Repressing an aspect of oursevles takes energy on two levels: it takes effort to keep the material repressed and the repression denies us access to the natural viality contained in that part of oursevles.

What's inside that bag is as much who we are as the 'nice' or socially accepted aspects. It's like somebody teaching us to be ashamed of our left arm, so we always keep it out of sight under our clothes. We act as if we have only one arm, which in itself takes energy, and at the same time we end up using only one half of our upper body strength." pp. 48 - 49.

The page goes on to discuss the shadow of anger. I'm beginning to uncover that although I am very loving parents, there was a long stretch of time where they were consumed by their own addictions and demons, so that I had to take on responsibility for my emotional well-being and that of my brother. I did this while living a  dissociative life where I was barely surviving at home, but thriving at school, on sports teams, etc. I developed a deep fear of abandonment, and the coping mechanism of care-taking.

The compulsive care-taking denies my own vulnerability with family, friends, and notably partners. If I'm taking care of someone else, I'm distanced from my own emotional and psychic needs. As Abdi shares, this pattern is the ultimate ego-trip. My long-time investment into the fiction that I'm needed is all about me in an undermining sense.

I've been able to stay on the care-taking wheel because I've told myself that true vulnerability, in which those around me can witness and be a part of all of the mess, and beauty that is "Richael" is really too much to ask any person to hold. (Only recently have I begun letting close friends in the same way that I've at least mimicked with partners.) The way to help myself isn't to just identifying and undoing the pattern--the cure is self-love. As I learn to love my shadow, I anticipate that the rest will undo with little effort.

Of course, this deepening is supported by a lot of smaller practices like daily meditation, regular yoga, an audio diary, poetry-writing/art-making, reiki, whole foods and naturopathy, and new adventures with friends. I have a few healing partners whom I playing critical roles in my practice in vulnerability & accountability. I am also seeking out other supports as they make sense to do.

For example, I am doing zero-balancing as a complement to acupuncture, to facilitate some of the deep-healing body work that I need, along with therapeutic massage to help with the pains that surface, as my old coping mechanisms go away. I am also planning to see a shaman later in January for a soul retrieval, to uncover sacral and solar plexus charka damage from past lives, which are contributing to my stomach pain, and which I uncovered through reiki, zero-balancing, and acupuncture.

I hope to be intentional about the practices and people that I'm inviting in, not seeing anyone that I could see because I need "healing." I'm also taking my time because this is literally a life-long process.

So I'm entering 2013 with a dramatic shift in how I am experiencing and moving through the world. Interestingly a lot of close friends and new friends are making similar choices, and thriving; others are struggling to find a way forward.

Integration is my theme for the New Year, the Age of Aquarius. I know that many of you are on the same healing path, which we are doing for our loved ones past and present, and really, all beings.

Many blessings, stay encouraged, and please let me know if I can support your journey.

Cheers,
R.

PS - Some of y'all know that the Breath of Fire is a kundalini yoga breathing technique. It's my favorite yoga practice and I find it extremely challenging to do properly.

(Re) Embodied

I didn't begin listening to myself until my body almost failed...

A year and a half ago I had sharp stomach pain that grew into a near-ulcer. I managed the condition for a while as I sought medical opinions about its cause. There were disappointingly little insight, and, in fact, for the most part, doctors didn't show much concern or urgency about an extremely healthy 27-year old developing a seemingly spontaneous chronic stomach disease.

I got particularly sick a week ago once I started an antibiotic course for a bacterial infection, related to, but not the source, of my stomach problems--including a mysterious allergic reaction that closed my throat, and required a short visit to the ER. Over the next few days I had "differential" symptoms that pointed toward another infection, or a serious ovary issue, or something else. Admittedly some things got really weird...I'll leave it at that.

I'm better, for now. I couldn't be more grateful for access to excellent healthcare, an attentive and affirming primary care doctor, a deeply knowledgeable acupuncturist/healer, an understanding boss, very reliable friends, concerned parents, among others.

I found myself in a transformative moment during this latest episode...

I've accepted that the source of my physical suffering is the manifestation of neglected parts of my emotional self. A friend on a similar health and healing journey turned me on to a beautifully insightful book, "When the Body Says No: Exploring the Stress-Disease Connection," by Gabor Mate, M.D. There, I learned that irritable bowel issues is a classic constellation of symptoms stemming from repressed anger and other deep, persistent healing needs. This Western medicine perspective is not too different from my Eastern acupuncturist's observations that if I released not only my present, but past feelings, more easily that my chronic stomach and lung conditions (I spontaneously developed asthma during the end of college) may dissipate. In other words my body is saying "NO" to continuing to hold layers of micro-stresses to which I've grown accustomed to overtime.

Stress so integrated into my life that I take its presence, and my responsibility for it, for granted. This is a fact that I had to own last week, when while relating a chaotic night during high school involving (step)parents' fighting, alcohol, wondering alone late at night, and almost being run over by a car that a parent was driving, to a close friend, she replied "[t]hat sounds traumatic." To which I said, "Oh. I guess it was." There were so many events in my early life like that I had just described it "another crazy thing that actually happened."

This link itself is not new information to me. The important part that I'm yet to fully understand is to soothe the stress that has taken residence in my body, and is integrated in my emotional life, I must reach into my past (again) to release old trauma and welcome new ways of being into my present.

I can offer a powerful example that occurred a few weeks ago. I was having an unusually depressed evening (largely onset by my hormones), finding myself restless in my sleep. I moved from my bed to my futon in the dark. I started to reflect on why my recent, abrupt breakup with my ex-partner of three years felt so traumatic. What did those events trigger? During this meditation, I curled up and transported to my 8-year old self. Suddenly I was experiencing the feelings--the edge of fear and exposed vulnerability--of myself, aware that my environment didn't feel stable, a degree of unsafety, and an enormous weight of responsibility to ignore these feelings, take care of my family, and meet outsiders' expectations of being an overachieving child. I spoke to her for the first time in twenty years. I assured her that her feelings were valid but she would leave the other end of this experience safe and well, that she was cared for in some ways even though she did not know this, and with so much instability around her, and that she ultimately met her and everyone's expectations, which was totally unnecessary for her to do as a child, yet an absolutely incredible feat. It was significant for me to visit her that evening. And most of all, if I want to truly root out my stomach pain I'll have to visit her, and many other versions of her younger and older selves, more regularly.

So, I'm re-claiming this time and space as "re-embodied." I want to live in my stomach and entire mid-section part of my body from which I had dissociated for almost a year. Core exercises will help. Cutting back on "comfort" eating is essential. Self-massages to give my ailing abdomen love (and stimulate digestion) is an imperative. But carefully re-visiting the emotional under-layers that have been under consistent, micro-stress for so long--constant and under-returned care-taking and all of the sacrifice that way of being entails--is where the healing lies. And fortunately I have enough support to identify which wholistic healing methods will help the most at this moment in my life. I need to push through nagging parts of my conscious mind that naively assumed that I had identified most of my childhood trauma during my 2 and a half years of therapy in college, and the week's routine that can lull me out of any sense of urgency to do this intentional work. Otherwise, the Universe will remind me every time--through my body and otherwise--that past says to the future, "there's no full life without a more whole self."

Blackbird

Blackbird, stalking in the sky,
In a world so open, you must encircle why?
Nature is, and humans be,
Is it time or is it me?

Father Rock's jagged edges cleave and cut,
Mother Sun's glowing light forces eyes to shut,
Sister Wind's gusts whip hard and sharp,
Brother River's stream runs faster than the heart.

I say, "I do not move, I am here,"
I feel "breath is fleeting, you are near."
Blackbird, with flight so easy and slow,
In a world so open, where must you go?

Today I untangle your ugly, your dark and your wrath,
This moment I see all, even the shadow of your path,
You do not come, and as I wait, the air grows clear,
I proudly say, it is because, "I am here."

Underlying Control

Last night I observed that recently I was not "living in my body." This morning I decided to walk in Rock Creek Park with a dharma podcast instead of sleeping-in, which as of late has become many of the subtle ways that I indulged in my mind's directions for my body rather than listening to my body directly. I chose to listen to Abdi Assadi's Open New York Center Workshop.

Abdi Assadi's Q&A's are always honest, challenging, and insightful. In the first half of this Q&A the discussion turned toward control. Here, Assadi observed that many of us condemn "control freaks" without extending compassion to its source--the feeling of unsafety. Similarly, ultra-responsible people tend to operate from the same sort of subconscious motivation. I put myself in the latter category, and have before made the connection between safety and ultra-responsibility but only as an explanation for my habit energy from my childhood, not as a "live" relationship between my conscious and subconscious.

This past weekend I had shared with those whom I practice I have had felt lighter these several months because I was shrugging responsibility. I often play that role so letting it go in aspects of my life has felt like a relief. Its given me the energy and space to be more attentive in the parts of my life where I would like to be more healthily present and sometimes responsible, just not anxiously, all of the time. I believe that I've arrived here because, more than ever, I do feel genuine safety: I've re-shaped previously harmful family relationships; I have a beautifully trusting romantic relationship with a kind person who treats me gently and honestly; I have deep friendships that have withstood joyful and difficult times; and I've learned to trust in my own inner-resourcefulness and resilience to deal with, and be present with, most things.

So this is where I am, for however long, with some awareness and lots of gratitude. May all beings feel safe.

15 Questions

Lately I've become very aware of the absence of my intentional (Buddhist) practice these past several months.

The reasons are probably varied: other meditative practices in my life at the moment; a subconscious aversion to things that I'll uncover by making myself vulnerable in that way; changes in my past practice supports; general  post-school life re-calibrations. Whatever the sources, I have at least a vague intention to assess whether my mind's story that my focus is "embodying the practice" is more of a truth or more of a lie.

I created a 15-question "self-interview" to examine this further, using the Eightfold Path as my guiding principles. My intention is to ask each question--inspired by conscious areas of my practice for sometime--& "sit" with it to notice my immediate impulse.

Hope to share more on the outcome soon.

Right View
When I am suffering, do I feel myself suffering? When my suffering is absent, do I feel its absence? When I am comfortable, do I feel comfort?

Am I holding on to anything, at the moment, for the sole reason that it feels safe?


Right Intention
Am I aware of any experiences that I have avoided recently?

Today, am I attached to the idea that life will get better than it is?

Right Speech
Am I regularly using harsh speech  in my head toward myself or others?

Have I neglected to say something that was necessary to share?

Right Action
Am I avoiding the destruction of all life?

Am I cultivating compassion toward a person to whom I felt neutral or hostile toward a year ago?

Right Livelihood
Is the amount of overall working time in my life allow myself sufficient balance to sustain me?

Am I dedicating enough mindfulness in my interactions and relationships with my co-workers?

Right Effort
Am I bringing intentionality to my dharma practice on a daily basis?

Am I dedicating time each week to cultivate aspects or experiences that make me feel whole?

Right Mindfulness
Am I able to stay immersed in a meditative state for a longer time than I could six months ago?

How have I treated my body today?

Right Concentration
As I engage in mindfulness practice to still my mind, what do I experience when I observe at its window's edge?

"Toward the Heart of Justice" Speech Part 3

Yesterday, on March 24, I had the honor of serving as keynote speaker for the Women's Diversity Conference (note: my bio info isn't updated) at Adrian College. This conference is a rarity in a conservative, rural Michigan town, spearheaded by a few courageous female staff and faculty members whose roles at the institution and community are to inform, enlighten, and challenge. There was a subversive quality to this conference--it was cool to be connected to it. Enjoy!  

Part Three – Three Values

In January of this year, I joined 125 people to attend an event hosted by Project South and Southerners On New Ground called the Queer Peoples Movement Assembly. Here, a working definition for queer liberation was presented:

Queer liberation seeks liberation for all peoples through working for the recognition of our whole selves; the integrity of the relationships and families we embrace; self-determination in choices for our bodies in sexuality, gender, eroticism, disability, safety, and privacy; the dignity of our spiritual practices; fairness in our economic systems, our work and its compensation; full access to participating in and benefiting from society's institutions; human rights for all; and justice as a birthright for all.

This statement is powerful to me because it relates an affirmation—what a free world for queer and all people would feel like. Importantly, this definition is powerful alone because it was communicated at the Assembly. Even if you and I will never experience liberation, as defined here, we will know that this possibility exists, which I suggest to you is enough. Imaginative politics is the seed for our inspiration, and a roadmap for our work.

But, if we have opportunities to embody our visions then we should be courageous to do so. Queer Liberation, along with Hip Hop and Buddhism has yet again transformed my relationship with power in recent years. Queer leftists have shown me that it is possible to build a community based on the politics around love. Hip Hop introduced me the politicized poetry of critique and possibility. And Buddhism gave me a pathway through which to practice healing and shattering conditioned myths in my life. I am certain that each of you has or will bond with a freedom tradition, whether political, spiritual, artistic, or most likely the fusion of all of these things. In it you may discover that the power that you and we already possess is tremendous, and that the unification of our collective power is but a multiplier.

I briefly want to touch on three specific values from these traditions that have sustained me over time: embracing vulnerability, experiencing wholeness, and cultivating radical imagination.

Embracing vulnerability to me is living freely to recognize your and others unrealized power. The politics of control and domination are interrupted when we embrace our own fears and anxieties to transcend them. It requires intention, honesty, support, and above all, gentleness. In the VRRP work, this means that I openly explain to every group that I train that there is a great deal that I don’t know, but through sharing information I hope not only to learn, I want to serve as a repository so that I can share with others with whom I come in contact. I try not to worry about being perceived as inexperienced, lacking confidence, or ceding “authority.” In the end, I think that I am striving toward justice when I can shed my ego for the benefit of the work.

By identifying my fears and routinely practicing to overcome them, I find that I am creating an opening for experiencing wholeness. I try to be aware in my life when I am internally separated—when I am feeling “small” because parts of me are ignored, repressed or neglected. In the day-to-day grind that means remembering to live in my body, as I can get stuck living in my head as an intellectual person. With political work this often means avoiding spaces where all of my identities or experiences—happy or sad, neat or messy, known or unknown—are not welcomed. Whether I am in Black Baptist Church in the state capital, Richmond, Virginia or at rural county fair at the far southwestern tip of Galax, Virginia, I will have on gender ambiguous clothing and will publicly name Golden Girls as my favorite TV show of all-time, if I’m ever asked.  Experiencing wholeness is a barometer of the balance of power around me. The more free I feel, the closer I am to the heart of justice. 

And the ways in which we are able to shake away from our own ego-driven desires, burdensome expectations, pernicious myths, and senseless conventions, inside and outside of ourselves, the easier it is to live in the world that we imagine, the world that we are striving toward. Some dismiss radical imagination as the stuff idealistic kids chase vainly after. On the contrary, iconic feminist thinker, and progressive Buddhist, bell hooks, explained in a 1996 interview:

"...my mother in Kentucky always used to say, 'Life is not promised," in the sense that boredom is a luxury in this world. Where life is always fleeting, each moment has to be seized. For us children, that was a lesson in imagination, because she was always urging us to think of the imagination as that which allows you to crack through that space of ennui and get back going." 

bell hooks’ memory is not about childhood naivety or escapism. Rather, it is recalling a survival strategy against complacency, a way to remain steeped in realities that are exhausting and harsh. Possibility can be the present if we willing to call upon our hope to thrive as people. After all, in a traditional place like Virginia, there will be no reason to do the work for a freer democracy, absent a daring—audacious—imagination. For without the unthinkable there is no thought, and without the unattainable there is no spirit to endeavor.

Conclusion

In this room some of us will become public servants who will make decisions, big and small, that will affect our collective well-being in a political environment. Others will similarly make decisions affecting our collective well-being though perhaps in less formal and less public ways. Regardless of how we engage with powerful institutions, we maintain capacities to interact with people who make up these institutions, and to re-shape our relationships to their power and therefore, its power. For all of us, fleeting moments of choice, feeling, and imagination will define our course toward or away from the heart of justice.

Fully experiencing the “in between-ness” of living within but striving toward the heart of justice resonates with our present struggles and our manifested dreams. Power drapes our everyday outlooks, is sensed in our bodies, and resides in the recesses of our mind, which, upon acknowledgment is an opportunity to transform. We are much more than parts of a whole, we are power, and choose to either share it generously or hoard it selfishly.  I hope by sharing my own formative experiences with power, explaining the ways in which my current work engages with law and electoral politics, and offering values that have sustained me to live more freely so that I can resist and build, that you too can envision and embody a world where we practice supreme bigheartedness and love. Because while there is an infinite supply of power, our experiences as humans during our lifetimes are remarkably finite.

"Toward the Heart of Justice" Speech Part 2

Yesterday, on March 24, I had the honor of serving as keynote speaker for the Women's Diversity Conference (note: my bio info isn't updated) at Adrian College. This conference is a rarity in a conservative, rural Michigan town, spearheaded by a few courageous female staff and faculty members whose roles at the institution and community are to inform, enlighten, and challenge. There was a subversive quality to this conference--it was cool to be connected to it. Enjoy!  

Part 2 – Engaging Law & Politics  

So, what is it like to be a young, queer, Black, southern female lawyer working in Virginia on felon disenfranchisement (which I’ll explain more about shortly)? Well, it’s slow-moving, stressful, and humbling. It requires me to constantly adapt to my environment, navigate internal and external politics, and take well-calculated risks. Most of all, it forces me to deal with broader questions like whether and how engaging with power helps the people with whom I work, and systems which we need to collectively dismantle and re-build?

I want to address this fundamental question about strategically approaching powerful institutions in two parts to provide context to my current work. The first part is dissecting a myth prevalent in social justice circles. Often, it is posed this way—is it better to work on the “inside” or “outside” the system. I don’t think that this framing is complete.  The reality is that each of us exists within powerful institutions—we buy food within a capitalist economy, we make consumer decisions manipulated by the advertisement industry, we receive news generated by corporate media sources, and most important, we know and love people who not only wholeheartedly embrace these institutions, but we are closely connected to other humans who are integral to the perpetuation of these institutions—whom I call decision-makers and power-brokers.

Many of us are influenced, and exist within, powerful institutions even if we are actively resisting their forces. Some of us are re-shaping our relationships to these institutions by making intentionally choices that tip the balance of power. Therefore, the real issues that we encounter are not whether to work “within” or “outside” the “system.” Instead, the real issues are how we should we exist “inside” powerful institutions. To which degree should these institutions affect us? In my view, the existential problem for those who want to strive toward the heart of justice is how to engage with powerful institutions without being crushed.

The second part is how we can positively build alternative institutions, commonly described as “working outside the system.” Often this part is posed this way, lodged as a grenade against those seeking justice—“if you don’t like the current system and don’t have ideas about how to change it, shut up.” First, this rationale is nothing more than a silencing tactic that is designed to stifle critique and is no more productive in addressing problems that we face. Second, I want to defend speaking out, because expressing rage, sadness, grief, and excitement is important in itself, as serving as a mirror into the institutions that we create, and being healing to those who are airing their reactions.   

It is, nonetheless, critical that we work to build alternative institutions that more responsibly deal with power. And we have to remember that these alternatives are inspired by, and informed by existing institutions of power. Here, is where the most creative, fun, imaginative, and powerful work lives. We see people in the US doing this work all of the time—the Highlander Folk School that taught literacy and provided civil disobedience training during the popular Civil Rights Movement; the South Central Farm of the late 1990s, which was at a time the largest community garden and urban farm in the country, promoting greater and better food access; the explosion of Ithaca Hours and other local currencies in the last twenty years created to encourage neighborhood economies; and even the Occupy Wall Street Movement, which put democratic consensus  governance, an alternative to majority-rule governance, on the national map. This form of resistance is the site of many interesting cultural, social, economic and political experiments, equal in importance to resisting powerful institutions.

One of my favorite radical thinkers, Robin D.G. Kelley, Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California, writes extensively about transformative possibility. In a 2010 interview, his interviewer asked why he has so much optimism about the future. 

Robin says, "It doesn't come from any abstract sense of hope. Nor does it come from any sense of denial about the political realities that confront us and the extent of power and how it works. It comes out of being a historian. There are so many historical examples of seemingly impossible circumstances in which we had these revolutionary transformations." 

Without vivid imagination, no positive future would ever exist.

I outline these frameworks because, like many other people, I try to work on both levels—intentionally engaging with powerful institutions, and affirmatively building alternative institutions that maintain healthier relationships with power. Likewise, my fellowship project tries to engage and build on these levels, creating possibilities beyond the law and electoral politics.

 Virginia is one of four states that forever strips citizens’ civil rights, including their right to vote, upon a felony conviction. This type of law is commonly referred to as “felon disenfranchisement.”In 2004, at least 377,000 people were estimated to be disenfranchised, or in other words, alienated from their natural civic and political rights borne from their status as US citizens. Most notably, disenfranchisement permanently carves out a fraction of the electorate, which is disproportionately people of color, working-class and poor, disabled, and likely queer/transgender-identified.  For example, about 55% of disenfranchised citizens in Virginia are African-American, which make up less than 20% of the state population.

In Virginia, the only way for disenfranchised citizens to restore their civil rights is through individual Governor petition. Only 1,000 people each year restore their rights, on average. There are ten eligibility criteria that eliminate or discourage many people from accessing the system. In the end, after jumping every hoop and climbing every ladder, the Governor may deny an application for any reason and no reason at all, with no appeal process.

Some criticize the system as being fundamentally broken, unfair, and inhumane. Others, like brilliant legal scholar, Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, argue that systems such as these are relics of bygone eras that expressly intended to deny full Black citizenship. I go even further to say that Virginia’s disenfranchisement system remains because powerful interests (cut across race and class lines) cannot maintain their democratic stranglehold if it is changed. I think that it is designed to silently kill the democratic dream.

My Equal Justice Works fellowship, the Virginia Rights Restoration Project, which I’ll call VRRP, is an initiative aimed at building long-term infrastructure to dismantle the existing system. VRRP’s specific goal is to engineer new, creative strategies toward the alternative of automatic restoration upon sentence completion, which was necessary after two hard-fought but lost campaigns to pressure previous Governors into changing the law.

The overarching strategy of the project is to “open the system up.” The prediction is the more it is forced to function the way it is purported to work, the harder it is to sustain, because as the system must accommodate to provide greater access, and more people can access it, the sooner its insidious discriminatory purpose becomes clear. It will transform—the uncertainty is merely when and how.

Specifically, VRRP has a three “micro-strategies” designed to add pressure to the system. They consist of direct service and direct-action strategies, disabling strategies, and dismantling strategies, though, in actuality, it is only the accumulation of these approaches that can lead to change. At nearly the six-month mark, community members and I have distributed over a 1000 rights restoration guides, setup rights restoration clinics and clinic programs across the state including at five colleges,  begun building a grassroots strategy with state organizers, forced the state government to surrender data revealing the law’s significant impact, facilitated greater access through document translation, and challenged long-standing beliefs through legal research that the only avenues to change is by Governor executive order or constitutional amendment. There is much more to do, particularly as we are in the midst of forming a litigation strategy to better position grassroots forces. Nevertheless, VRRP’s intention is to form a praxis, on which to aggressively engage the law and politics in our favor.

In a more concrete sense these strategies mean that I receive a lot of phone calls from people who need help, which I happily answer. I end up in various law libraries throughout the Commonwealth, digging through microfiche, which is fascinating.  I find myself facilitating webinar trainings on Saturdays, which I gladly do. And I come up with a dozen ideas about things to try each week, of which one might be worth looking into.

Sometimes I find myself doing unexpected things. For example, I’ve been assisting a person named Tony Suggs with a pardon application for several months. A pardon is a request to the Governor to officially “forgive” a person for a crime or criminal history. Tony had his rights restored in 2006, and helped my organization during our previous campaign. Now he hopes to work in the local school system as a coach to fulfill his passion to mentor young people headed toward the criminal system. Though a pardon far from guarantees that he can overcome the school system’s rigid rules about hiring people with felony convictions, it will greatly increase his chances.

Tony’s story is unique and the kind that receive “official forgiveness” from the state. He suffered from severe physical and sexual abuse as a young child. At age 10, his parents abandoned him and his younger brother in the family home, forcing them to go hungry. His father eventually put him to work packaging his dope, and soon he founded himself in the street life. But rather than being an anonymous addict, he evidently was a boxing prodigy. He became the top ranked boxer in the world (in his weight class) and favored to win Gold at the 1988 Seoul Olympics.

Throughout his ascent, he struggled to fight his addiction, and lost control upon losing his first child to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). He was a qualifying match away when he was re-arrested for probation violation, after he failed the mandatory drug test. In Tony’s mind, he lost everything. He voluntarily entered rehab after his jail stint, got clean, addressed his emotional pain with support groups and therapy, and lives very differently. For over twenty years he has been a devoted father of Little Anthony, surrogate father to his brother’s six children, an active church member, and community mentor. It has been important for me to learn Tony’s story, and work with him on his petition. Although I never intended to complete pardon petitions through VRRP, its personal meaning to Tony is a radically political act.     

But let’s take a step back for a moment to examine law as a powerful institution. Can the law really help disenfranchised citizens? [Why?] An underlying assumption of my fellowship project is that it can, yet it is an assumption that I question every day. Ultimately I believe, as many radical lawyers do, that the law can only play a limited role in its own self-correction.

Law, as an institution, is a difficult place to engage with power for numerous reasons. As legal scholar and activist, Dean Spade, Assistant Professor at Seattle University School of Law, explains how social movements are affected by their over-reliance on legal institutions, his essay, “For Those Considering LawSchool”:

“Most legal work maintains systems of maldistribution, it does not transform

them…Very often, legal change that emerges in these moments heavily compromises the demands of grassroots movements in ways that end up providing symbolic victory and possibly a small amount of material change to the least vulnerable of the group who the demands were about, but leave most people the same or worse off. US law is fundamentally structured to establish and uphold settler colonialism, white supremacy and capitalism---the legal system will not dismantle these things. The idea that people who want to make change will make the biggest impact by becoming lawyers and bringing precedent-setting lawsuits needs to be released in the face of what movement history reveals.  Once you let go of that idea, you can start to think about what role lawyers should or could have in social movements and evaluate whether you see yourself in those roles.”

Dean Spade is largely responding to decades of landmark civil right victories for LGBT people. For example, even as laws like the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009 are enacted, LGBT and queer violence continues to be as ruthless as ever, particularly for queer/trans, working-class and poor people of color who are already systemic targets of institutional abuse by police, courts, and prisons. Law doesn’t solve these problems but can bolster the positions of broad-based movements that, as Dean Spade believes is historically effective, of making demands that exceed the law. His advice to understand our roles as people engaging with law-making institutions extends not only to prospective law students but to any person wishing to enter electoral politics.

Within the institution of law lies perhaps the most controversial institution at the moment: electoral politics.  The optics of electoral politics may seem counterintuitive to justice-seekers because it is about maintaining power with, and over others, without full acknowledgement that it is the very purpose of electoral politics. It can also be among the more challenging institutions to engage with as a person committed to collective justice because it is about individual, self-preservation of that power. It can prove difficult to align collective values with a desire to maintain a powerful position, from which a person can wield influence on the local, state, or national levels. I admire women and anyone else carefully trying to achieve this balance.

These tensions come up in VRRP. This year, for the first time, a white Republican lawmaker introduced an automatic rights restoration bill. I was excited because his interest in the issue changed the politics around a proposal that historically starts each year dead in the water. This lawmaker introduced a narrow proposal that would automatically restore voting rights for so-called non-violent offenders because, based on his calculations, it was the most politically palpable.  Before I learned about his bill I had “shopped” around the idea to other lawmakers about separating the two civil rights stripped by state law into separate bills. My rationale is if voting rights in the hot-button issue that stalled proposals year after year, then, why not sever the issues disenfranchised people could at least restore some of their rights, if passed. Sound reasonable? This was apparently an exceptionally bad idea. I was told that separating the issues would exhaust the limited political capital that existed for lawmakers to consider this issue. In other words, lawmakers would grow tired of making laws. The worst part was it was good advice, even though the bill died in subcommittee.

As a long-time legislative observer and one-time state lobbyist, I’ve seen legislators wishing to maintain a delicate balance between their self-preservation to maintain power and forceful advocacy to represent their beliefs. The entrenched political challenge of our time may be this: how do you peacefully and effectively govern diverse communities, states, and nations with others who hold fundamentally different values?

On one hand, there is the Barack Obama philosophy, which consists of forging consensus by finding common ground. On the other hand, there is Tea Party philosophy, which consists of abandoning all sense of self-preservation to govern according to rigid but sincerely-held principles. These philosophies are not left versus right—they are not even purely are purely ideological. I think that neither philosophy reflects the true nature of the problem because it is distorted by choices within a “winner-take-all” two-party system.

I believe that the main source of our present-day political tensions is between those who want to invest and nurture public institutions and those who want to demolish and undermine them. Developing a political agenda around protecting public institutions and organizing electoral support around this guiding principle has the potential to disrupt the prevailing status quo.   

My only other insight comes from popular education teacher and theorist, Paulo Freire, explained in his leftist classic, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, that the cure to oppression is our own humanity. The heart of justice resides within our institutions: people. If we humanize our politics, we have hope for better government. Let me be clear. Humanizing politics is more than civil discourse. We see, after all, how collegial lawmakers respectfully cooperate to pass devastating laws that hurt other people and our natural environment, often in the name of economic prosperity. These politics are a false choice. The choice to humanize politics, in my mind, means measuring your actions against your values to sustain our collective well-being. These are moral struggles, which are entirely burdensome to take on for public scrutiny, but are utmost essential.

People who not only engage with, but enter into, electoral politics must be vigilant in noticing to the degree which they are being changed by the politics and politics are changing them. What are my values? Do these values promote collective well-being? Do I feel as if I have some control? Is this the most meaningful contribution to the world that I can make? These are questions that I ordinarily ask as a lawyer and political player, working in one of the most conservative states in the country. I think any person intentionally engaging in law and politics must worry about the direction in which she is moving—toward her heart of justice, or more distant.