We Rise

Join Gloria Lucas of Nalgona Positivity Pride & Luca Yacón of Radically Fit Oakland in this enlightening & heart-to-heart discussion diving deep into the realms of Harm Reduction, Eating Disorders, & Body Movement. This thought-provoking conversation is an exploration of:⁠
 Harm Reduction Strategies
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 Personal Eating Disorder Journey
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 Body Movement and Acceptance
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 Decolonial appro...

Born and raised in the Bay, Iranian-American singer-songwriter Adrienne Shamszad hops on the mic and shares her voice with We Rise listeners, debuting her first full-length album in 15 years: Wash It All Away! Adrienne's music is dedicated to our collective liberation - and is an intimate incantation of her heart. Equal parts silly and heartfelt, Cat and Adrienne get into it on this episode of the...

Somos Semillas, We Are Seeds: A Podcast about Indigenous Sovereignty & Collective Storytelling This creative collaboration with indigenous poet & scholar Erika Murcia invites us to explore inquiries about living with greater purpose, presence & rootedness. EP 5: Sacred Rainbows, Weaving Our Crossroads In this bonus episode Cat, Erika, & nicky gather round on Nahuatl, Ohlone & C...

Somos Semillas, We Are Seeds: A Podcast about Indigenous Sovereignty & Collective Storytelling This creative collaboration with indigenous poet & scholar Erika Murcia invites us to explore inquiries about living with greater purpose, presence & rootedness. EP 4: Sacred Winds, Returning to our Power of Shedding In this episode Erika, nicky & Cat are joined by dancer and creator of h...

Somos Semillas, We Are Seeds: A Podcast about Indigenous Sovereignty & Collective Storytelling This creative collaboration with indigenous poet & scholar Erika Murcia invites us to explore inquiries about living with greater purpose, presence & rootedness. EP 3: Sacred Fires, Returning to our Sexual Creativity In this episode Erika, nicky & Cat are joined by healer, steward, and gu...

From Queer & Well's Earth Day event: A panel with Christina Chase of National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance (NAAFA) & Cat Brooks of Anti Police Terror Project (APTP), moderated by Layel Camargo When we think about communal care it is vital that we talk about the ways in which we take care of each other as queer and trans Black and brown folks. How do we show up for one another in a...

From Queer & Well's Earth Day event: A Conversation with Layel Camargo of Shelterwood Collective & Inés Ixierda of Sogorea Te Land Trust As queer Black and brown folks, what does it look like to be reconnected to land our ancestors stewarded before colonialism & white supremacy? What are the ways we can come back to this land and rebuild not only the land itself, but our relationships...

Somos Semillas, We Are Seeds: A Podcast about Indigenous Sovereignty & Collective Storytelling This creative collaboration with indigenous poet & scholar Erika Murcia invites us to explore inquiries about living with greater purpose, presence & rootedness. In this episode we are reclaiming Earth Mother and the soils as part of who we are, what we're made of. Erika, nicky & Cat open...

Somos Semillas, We Are Seeds: A Podcast about Indigenous Sovereignty & Collective Storytelling This creative collaboration with indigenous poet & scholar Erika Murcia invites us to explore inquiries about living with greater purpose, presence & rootedness. Episode One: Sacred Waters, Returning to Our Natural Flow offers expansive praxis for a calling to calmness, to flowing slowly as w...

Somos Semillas, We Are Seeds: A Podcast about Indigenous Sovereignty & Collective Storytelling This creative collaboration with indigenous poet & scholar Erika Murcia invites us to explore inquiries about living with greater purpose, presence & rootedness. How do we want to be seeds now? In Episode 0, Erika, nicky, & Cat are accompanied by writer & astrologer Karina Falcon to i...

Somos Semillas, We Are Seeds: A Podcast about Indigenous Sovereignty & Collective Storytelling This creative collaboration with indigenous poet & scholar Erika Murcia invites us to explore inquiries about living with greater purpose, presence & rootedness. In this 5-episode series, we’ll deconstruct the ways we connect to each sacred element -Water, Fire, Wind, Earth, and Ether. Togeth...

This is it, right here, this is the final episode. And if you’re here right now, and you’ve been choosing to return to this work again and again, I want to say, thank you. Cuz If we want alternative means to responding to harm other than the systems on offer from the state, we are the ones who have to invest time, energy, labor into learning, healing, imagining, practicing, remembering, and organi...

Last episode, we focused on the accountability part of community accountability. We explored how changing our behavior to live accountably is lifelong work, is violence prevention, takes building skills until they become muscle memory. Fortunately for us, Mia gave us many opportunities to practice. In this episode, we learn from this practice – and – we focus on the community part of community acc...

Thank you for listening to our podcasts over the years, or months – or if you're new to our work, welcome! After 6 years of groundwork, we’re celebrating how far we’ve come & asking you – our community – for support. Donate to our first ever fundraiser! Your contribution supports queer, femme, Black Indigenous and People Of Color-centered multimedia productions. Our collaborations uplift liberator...

As the cohort continued, we learned that building the capacity to practice transformative justice takes immense and consistent personal work. We’re talking the basics of being human, like self reflection, and how to communicate. These personal inquiries into how we live our values, and how we respond to our inevitable mistakes, were like portals into the heart of TJ. Into what it would take to sup...

Our facilitator, Mia Mingus, used the metaphor of a fist to explain how, unlike our current severely punitive carceral system, TJ creates conditions that support folks to step up and take accountability when they’ve caused harm. In this episode, we explore how these systems have shaped us, and ask, how else can we respond to violence, harm, & abuse? Episode transcript: bit.ly/TheRealWork-Episo...

On episode one, we got up to speed about the conditions that brought theater makers in the Bay Area to organize around TJ. This episode is dedicated to unpacking, at its core, what is TJ? Episode transcript: bit.ly/TheRealWork-Episode-2 Sogorea Te’ Land Trust: sogoreate-landtrust.org Save the West Berkeley Shellmound: shellmound.org BATJC Pods & Pod Mapping Worksheet Instructions: batjc.wordpr...

How did The Real Work come to be? What were the conditions that set the stage (pun intended) for theater workers to come together to study & practice transformative justice? Let's find out... Episode transcript: bit.ly/TheRealWork-EP1 Sogorea Te’ Land Trust: sogoreate-landtrust.org Save the West Berkeley Shellmound: shellmound.org Anti Police-Terror Project: www. AntiPoliceTerrorProject.org Th...

We are proud to present The Real Work: a podcast about theater culture & transformative justice! This collaboration has been in the works since 2018, and we are thrilled to share it with you now. Join us for our free online premiere of this series with a community dialogue August 22nd 7PM-9PM PST. Register at the link below. Let’s gather, witness episode 1, and dialogue about how transformativ...

CONTENT NOTE: Racist police murder. On Saturday, June 18, 24-year-old Derrick Clark was shot and killed by 30 members of the Oregon State Troopers and Clackamas County Sherriff’s Office for a DUI. Derrick’s loved ones are in deep mourning, and organizing to get answers about Derrick’s murder, and obtain justice in some way in the face of this white supremacist, racist, colonial, militarized so-cal...

As with all specially designated months, we get to celebrate being queer year round. That said, happy pride friends! And happy belated summer solstice in the Northern Hemisphere. In December of 2021, just before the Winter Solstice, cat & nicky got to sit down (virtually) with KPFA Radio’s First Voice Apprentice & Full Circle producer Sentient Shiloh AKA DJ Loh to reflect on lessons received in th...

As we approach the 74th anniversary of the Nakba (catastrophe) in Palestine, Layla Kanaan joins Cat for an in-depth discussion of the history of Zionism, the founding of the settler state of Israel, the ongoing impacts of violence on the Palestinian people, how this struggle is all our struggle, and how we can get involved and act in solidarity for a free Palestine. We learn, too, about local orga...

Mayra, Tierra, Cat, and Nicky are interviewed by a beloved comrade and filmmaker, speaking to our experience in Akiing alongside water protectors resisting Enbridge Corporation’s Line 3 pipeline. Akiing is the Anishnaabe name for the land we were on. It means “the land to which we belong.” Following the interview, we share updates on the Stop Line 3 movement, other calls for land and water defense...

On the heels of ‘Strike-tober’, more than 100,000 workers in the so called “United States” either participated in or prepared for strikes in one of the largest increases of organized labor in the twenty-first century. Striketober began amidst the Great Resignation, when people started to quit jobs due to low wages and oppressive working conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic, which some economist...

Here is our complete interview with Jaike Spotted Wolf, who we met on Anishnaabe land, and who you heard snippets of on our episode called The People are a River. Jaike discusses the significance of Line 3 across Turtle Island - from the summer heat domes of the Pacific Northwest to polar cap ice melting in Alaska - the need for indigenous leadership and land stewardship, strengthening cross-movem...