Looking Beyond Survival, with Ejeris Dixon

[00:00:00] Sound on Tape: This podcast is presented by Convergence, a magazine for radical insights. 

[00:00:07] Ejeris Dixon: Part of my politicization as a black person was when I realized what I read about democracy in my history books wasn’t what I was experiencing. And so there was this piece of anger and grief and just the U. S. is a lie, like all of that type of stuff that so to go from there to the point of being like, yes, I’m a I’m a member of the pro democracy coalition, but my goodness, is it complicated, right?

[00:00:37] And it’s a long journey. And it’s a long journey where we have to acknowledge Grief and disempowerment and pain and the thing that we are talking about is different than what the u. s. Has claimed to 

[00:00:48] Sound on Tape: be 

[00:01:06] Scot Nakagawa: Welcome to the anti authoritarian podcast a project of the 22nd century initiative I’m Scott Nakagawa, one of your hosts.

[00:01:13] Sue Hyde: Hello friends, I’m co host Sue Hyde. Scott and I first joined forces about 30 years ago to help defeat anti LGBTQ ballot measures proposed by Christian authoritarian groups. 

[00:01:26] Scot Nakagawa: It was as true then as it is now that those of us who believe in democracy make up a supermajority of people in this country. The challenge is, How do we go from being the majority to acting like the majority?

[00:01:38] Sue Hyde: We dig into strategy questions like these and prescriptions for change. We talk with expert guests and commentators whose scholarship, political activism, and organizing define the cutting edge of anti authoritarian resistance. Thank you for joining us. After the 

[00:01:58] Scot Nakagawa: Revolution Idris Dixon, who goes by they, she.

[00:02:04] is an organizer and political strategist with 25 years of experience working in racial justice, LGBTQ, anti violence, and economic justice movements. They are the principal of Ejiri Labs and were the founding executive director of Vision Change Win Consulting. Ejiri’s current focus is working with movement leaders and organizations around movement strategy, political education, fighting fascism, and building abolitionist futures.

[00:02:32] And we’re really happy she’s in that work because it jurors is brilliant. She’s, they are also the coordinator and host of the upcoming fascism barometer podcast and learning hub, who fun, a space to discuss and learn more about fascism’s rise in the United States and how we organize against it.

[00:02:51] It jurors is also the co editor of beyond survival strategies and stories from the transformative justice movement. Welcome. 

[00:03:01] Sue Hyde: From 2010 to 2013, EJERA served as Deputy Director in charge of the Community Organizing Department at the New York City Anti Violence Project, where they directed national, statewide, and local organizing and advocacy initiatives on hate violence, domestic violence, police violence, and sexual violence.

[00:03:25] From 2005 to 2010, Iris worked as the founding program coordinator of the Safe Outside the System Collective. At the Audrey Lorde project, they worked on creating transformative justice strategies to address hate and police violence. Over the past 20 years, Iris has directly worked on thousands of incidents of violence.

[00:03:49] And directly organized around more than a hundred murders of queer and trans people of color. 

[00:03:56] Scot Nakagawa: Welcome, Ejeris. We’re really glad to have you. 

[00:03:59] Ejeris Dixon: Thank you. Thank you so much. 

[00:04:01] Scot Nakagawa: My first question for you is given your long experience working in social justice movements, how do you assess this moment as maybe different from what you have seen in the past?

[00:04:12] Ejeris Dixon: When I find it interesting and funny, because you all have also been in movements much longer than me, but recognizing that and giving space and deference to folks who’ve also paved the ways that I walk I think there’s there are similarities, and then there are some differences, right?

[00:04:29] So fascist and authoritarian rises within the United States history, that’s not new, right? We’ve seen, fascist like there were fascist moments or fascist rhetoric within the Confederacy. European governments took inspiration from a lot of the like anti Black laws here in the United States.

[00:04:50] And I’ve also been geeking a bit on Rachel Maddow’s Ultra podcast and prequel book that talks about like fascism’s rise. In the lead up and during World War Two so that there’s like new parts and then there’s parts that are not new. I would say that we have an acute and specific display of fascist politics and a narrative connected to an authoritarian coalition and that the right wing has been Developing and implementing racist, misogynist, anti woman, pro life, anti queer, and anti trans policies, and really attacks on so many of our communities, and in collaboration with that, either directly, or indirectly.

[00:05:37] Promoting identity based or what we can call political violence against marginalized communities sanctioning it sometimes participating in it all to create this environment where so many of us, like those of us right here on this podcast and our loved ones are in an acute form of both like danger like actual like bodily harm, and also a reduction in our ability to live our lives with dignity.

[00:06:04] The rights and needs and our abilities to take care of our families and all of that. Um, when I came into movements, I came into movements in the late 90s. And so I came in, it was the Bush era. I came in and there it was war on terror. I was organizing in New York City post 9 11 New York City.

[00:06:24] So there was also a similar kind of resurgence of movement. patriotic violence and fervor at that time, that anti Muslim, anti immigrant, anti Black moment. But the movements that I was in at that time were smaller level, smaller organizations, smaller infrastructure. But because of the smallness, there was sometimes an ability to be more strategic together, right?

[00:06:48] There was ability to collaborate in ways, build longer term strategy. And so This moment, we have this opportunity. There is more funding, more infrastructure in left organizations than I’ve ever seen. But sometimes we’ve translated that into, and I, I can own it too, like into more bureaucracy, but not quite more power.

[00:07:13] And that’s what I’m hungry for, right? How does this increase in the size of the organizations, increase in the amount of organizations that are Black led, people of color led, immigrant led, queer and trans led, lead to bigger bases, lead to more wins, lead to the ability for us to defend our communities stronger?

[00:07:31] I think this moment we have this incredible activation around the genocide against Gaza, but we’re also really reckoning with the fact that was not able, as of yet, to either curtail the amount of weapons that have come to Israel or to To lead into the political arena around the ceasefire.

[00:07:53] And there’s always been this both separation and connection between protest movements and, a representative government. But I am noticing, and I think we are feeling, whether we’re talking about it or not, what that means in terms of our power I do think though, we’re at a moment where so many of us, you all I left my old organization to just focus on strategy because there’s, there was a gap and there was a need for so many of us to say, I really feel like we are living in the strategic plan of the right wing.

[00:08:26] They have been planning what is happening for so long and rolling out. And we need to stop seeing it as Oh, this just happened. Dobbs just happened. These, no, this, these are, this is a strategic plan. These are strategic moves. And the left also needs our own, not only our ability to create like a cohesive and coherent strategy, but how do we implement it together?

[00:08:48] And how do we define what our collaborators will look like for those efforts.

[00:08:57] Our marching order is cut out for us. I would say that we know what’s needed, which I think is really important. And I think that’s a little different than even two to three years ago, right? I think we know what is strategically needed, but can we execute what we need to execute in time to be safe?

[00:09:14] Because there’s a kind of tipping point, especially like I’m a black queer disabled person, right? Yeah. In terms of what the Make America Great again, coalition is building, I’m like, I’m in team like early on trying to, to not to neutralize, to not be around. So there’s a point where all of us who are targeted and acutely targeted need to think about the interplay between Public and above ground organizing and then when do threats rise to the point where we can’t do that anymore.

[00:09:44] And I think that’s what we’re actually grappling with is how much time we have to build what we need to defeat what’s coming against us. And how do we also build the connections amongst our communities to be able to stay safe and build power. 

[00:10:01] Sue Hyde: E. J. Eris, that is such a powerful image of living in the authoritarian.

[00:10:09] 50 year strategy plan, really powerful and something we all should really think more about. You have done a lot of coaching with organizational leaders. How has it been for you to advise them and encourage them to incorporate anti authoritarianism, anti fascism? Work within their ongoing community work.

[00:10:38] Ejeris Dixon: Some of it. I connect to like my own journey So I think there’s a crew of folks who’ve been working on anti authoritarianism And anti fascism for much longer than I have because I really started around 2016 and it was not a job thing It was a deep collaboration with a dear activist friend to discern.

[00:10:58] What does this word fascism mean? And what does it mean for people like us, right? And what I noticed at that time is that there’s a lot of information that’s out there. And I’m really excited about your podcast and all the work that you all have been doing. But there’s not as much information that is discernible to everyday people and to organizers.

[00:11:19] Just like simple, bite sized. Here’s what I do next. Here’s what it means. Here’s what it looks like. So that’s where I like to hang out in the realm of like simple and memorable. And so some of my work has been workshops with organized, with organizers in their local context. And my first part is to not presume that they’re not doing this work.

[00:11:40] I don’t think doing anti authoritarian or anti fascist work means a complete overhaul of anyone’s work. It usually is a shift of focus And local communities usually have a sense of what their local right wing threats are, right? So first I like to learn about context, like who are your local opponents?

[00:12:00] What does power look like in the place that you’re at? And then I start to talk about what their kind of coalition building opportunities are what their kind of multi issue coalition building opportunities look like. I then like to dig into their political education work and to see to what extent are they talking about the right, especially if they’re a local group in their own history.

[00:12:23] If they’re not, maybe they’re an identity based group and you want to talk about how the right has targeted Black communities or trans communities or queer communities. But always in the sense of, I think, Alright, folks. will understand best and what’s in their best interest is not just authoritarianism is coming and that means a reduction in democracy, but really, what does it mean for me?

[00:12:46] What does it mean for my family? What does it mean for my group? What does it mean for my community? So I like to try to stick in that realm with people and help them build that out. And so is it a segment in their political education curriculum around the right wing their organizational opponents, what it means, their strategic gains, and what type of power they have.

[00:13:09] So that’s like where I start. I’ve spent a lot of time in the transformative justice and abolitionist movement. So I do a lot of work around because, and I love my abolitionists, but sometimes there’s a way of just spending like dreaming about the world we want so bad that we’re not in the here and now.

[00:13:27] And I always like to say, okay, so between here and now and what we’re building, what’s happening? What’s, what are the kind of political pieces of context? What are the policies? What can disrupt your wins, right? What can disrupt what you’re trying to build? So I think those are the types of ways I just, I think of it as weaving into, as opposed to weaving and adding, As opposed to disrupting or making major, also, we know like in the realm of shifting organizations, major shifts don’t tend to stick, but small like pieces that people can add on to what they’re already doing tend to be easier to hold on to.

[00:14:08] Scot Nakagawa: So I like it that you talk about making these questions personal to people. I remember in the early part of the Reagan administration, when regulations on business were being dropped, were being, taken away, and business was unleashed. We would try to convince people of the importance of those regulations by talking to them about things that affect them in their daily lives.

[00:14:32] And one of the big ones was elevators. I we would tell people about how it used to be that elevators were often a bit faulty and being delayed in an elevator wasn’t that unusual informing the sense of fear and kind of uncertainty about what it means to be stepping into an elevator.

[00:14:47] But we now take that for granted. And the reason for it is government regulations, right? Elevators have been licensed and get inspected since the 1920s and that made a really big difference. But that way of making it. Be about something immediate in your life. Like how does this democratic freedom or this particular right actually affect your ability to execute what you need to do in your day to day life?

[00:15:11] Be secure. Be safe. Have a stable home life. All of those things seem Not as much a part of the conversation, right? We tend to talk about democracy in the abstract speaking of democracy though many of us dream about and will welcome a multiracial feminist democracy So it’s a really big question.

[00:15:30] But what do you think are the challenges and considerations? In the path to that multiracial feminist future. 

[00:15:39] Ejeris Dixon: Yeah, I definitely also Would welcome a multiracial feminist democracy You because that’s not what we have right now. And and I see it as a step towards or a pathway through to my big dreams are I was at a conference years ago, and they started to talk about liberatory governance.

[00:15:58] What does it mean to create liberatory governance? This idea that there are these intersecting and interconnected forms of how we organize ourselves. That’s where it. communities have control and sovereignty over land and bodies and where people can make the direct decisions they need so that they can thrive and have the resources that they need and that they can address and contend with violence in transformative ways.

[00:16:21] So I think the True democracy in the actual definition of the term is that pathway. And what our hardest pieces is that the way that the U has bent and misused and really the definition of democracy that people have here is not the definition of true democracy. And for some people, there is tremendous anger or even just tremendous grief around.

[00:16:48] I was told I have a voice and I don’t feel like I do. I don’t feel like that people make decisions that take my life into account. I don’t think I have the ability to make decisions around my own life. Or if I did, this is not how I would construct either what our government looks like or what policies would be there.

[00:17:08] And so recognizing that U. S. democracy is built off of like settler colonialism and white supremacy and misogyny, where so many of us were actually written out of the definition I think we have to be really careful to delineate what we’re talking about to people, because because when we don’t when there are spaces where people casually throw around the concept of defending democracy, it’s very relevant for I don’t know, Black people, trans, for who?

[00:17:38] What are you talking about? The thing that I was never supposed to have? And it’s because the U. S. has done this great job of branding a term and branding a form of democracy that has so many aspects that are exclusionary. And granted, so many of us have worked for years to make it less exclusionary.

[00:17:54] But I think That’s the challenge, right? Building the language that we need that brings people in, building the vision that people are excited to join. And then at the same time, we still have to defend the pieces of democracy we do have, right? We still have to because fascists and authoritarians, It’s aim to discredit, discredit and remove and disempower the the access to like elections, voting rights, electoral power that marginalized communities have.

[00:18:25] And that’s just really hard and because it’s such a broad need, I actually feel that like all of us who are building towards this like liberatory governance and this multiracial feminist democracy, there are so many places where people can fit in. Depending on what resonates, right? And what works.

[00:18:44] And there’s a piece of it that I really think that when we get to practice building democracy, and sometimes I think that there’s so many of organizers who get to do that, because it’s about building bases. Or it’s about building and existing in democratic institutions, or when you’re able to increase the democratic processes that are happening within your own communities.

[00:19:05] And then to really think about them in a liberated way. So the hardest part is. The broad fronts, the United Fronts that we need to defeat authoritarianism and rising fascism have a lot of people in them who don’t necessarily understand, recognize, or who might disagree that U. S. democracy has not been for everyone.

[00:19:26] So then how do we keep the most marginalized in those configurations when we need a very broad configuration? When we also recognize that we have. a term that has two different definitions, one that’s very exclusionary and one that’s incredibly inclusive. And and we’re using the same word, and that’s, that I think is a challenge.

[00:19:49] And I tend not to hang on to rhetorical challenges. I tend not to be like, Oh, this piece of language is an issue because I’m such a doer. But it’s been hard. And it’s been hard, particularly like part of my politicization as a Black person was when I realized what I read about democracy in my history books wasn’t what I was experiencing.

[00:20:11] And so there was this piece of anger and grief and just the US is a lie, like all of that type of stuff that so to go from there to the point of being like, yes, I’m a I’m a member of the pro democracy coalition, but my goodness, is it complicated, right? And it’s a long journey and it’s a long journey where we have to acknowledge Grief and disempowerment and pain and the thing that we are talking about is different than what the US has claimed to be 

[00:20:45] Sue Hyde: word

[00:20:54] Sound on Tape: Hello I’m Marcy Ryan, and I’m the print editor for Convergence. If you’re enjoying this show like I am, I hope you’ll consider subscribing to Convergence. We’re a small, independent operation and rely heavily on our readers and listeners, like you, to support our work. You can become a subscriber at convergencemag.

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[00:21:47] Sue Hyde: EJ is, I think, one of the aspects of Engaging in, I will use the word, the D word, engaging in democracy is co governance, which is being practiced particularly at local levels, but also county and state and to a much lesser extent at the federal level. But our colleague James Mumm says government is not the enemy.

[00:22:19] It’s the prize. In the sense that’s our money. Yes. These are our streets. Yes I’m glad my trash gets picked up every week, but frankly i’d like more i’d like more from this democracy. So i’m gonna Let’s switch the topic a little bit. You have done a lot of work in the anti violence space, and you’ve done quite a bit of work with organizations that are thinking about their organizational security, whether that is physical, whether that is tech, whether that’s, whether that’s You know, all kinds of things.

[00:22:59] We’re living in a pretty fraught time where political violence is happening. And the threats of political violence are in some ways as debilitating as actual political violence. What would you advise folks who are thinking about that now in terms of their organizational health and safety?

[00:23:23] Ejeris Dixon: Absolutely. So I never intended to be a security head at all, like anti violence work. Absolutely. But security, it was because I was at the Audre Lorde project and I was in a role that the previous person had been coordinating security for the organization. So it’s Oh, I got to learn. But the reason that security was connected and in part of the way that the Audrey Lloyd project did their work is because they were in a multiracial coalition of organizations that have been doing a lot of police brutality work and were repeatedly targeted by the NYPD.

[00:23:53] And through that they were mentored by other organizers who had been targeted by COINTELPRO, right? And so that’s the lineage I come from, that we can trace it directly back to Young Lords and Black Panthers. And so I think that organizational security needs to be woven within the way we think of the work, right?

[00:24:14] And so any program, any action, anything that we are creating needs to have a security component. Because some of the work that we’re doing is Yeah, it’s repressed, right? It’s anti there is, there are opponents who are trying to make sure that this work does not happen. And I always say the purpose of security is to protect the political project, right?

[00:24:38] It’s to protect the political project and the people. So I would say the first step is what is the political project, right? And developing and cohering a strategy that is logical and needed and, um, and pushing for more than we have now. And then I think the next piece was like at Vision Change, when we developed a security program and I proposed it mostly because I was seeing organizations really, especially in the rise of the movement for black lives, taking on some really amazing stances and radical stances without planning, and then and whether it was like putting all your protocols on a Google doc or not using safe text channels or not having a plan for arrest that your action. So I really think that the number one thing I can boil this down. It’s pretty simple. You need a point person for security who has time to be a point person for security.

[00:25:28] right? Because even if you get all the training in the world, if you do not have a person whose role it is to think about security for the organization, then it’s going to be very hard to implement. Similarly, if that person does not have time to do it, then they will have a list of things that they wished they had gotten to because too many of our groups are building security in the midst of threat.

[00:25:52] And any of us know it doesn’t, we could talk about security, we could talk about any form of harm we’ve experienced. And the ways that our brains work under acute trauma and trauma that is unfolding versus when we have time to be spacious, right? Because there are some things you need to talk about what about when will we need emergency services?

[00:26:10] Do we ever call 9 1 1 or not? Or there are these conversations that are much better had when you can be calm and when you can think about all the implications. I think the next is really just making sure that everyone who is within the organization gets some basic level of security training and that’s physical and that’s digital security training.

[00:26:33] And I think the third step is really an organization needs to analyze their threats, right? So even one of my stages for the podcast that I’m working on is going to be like, okay, I’m going to be saying the word fascism a whole lot publicly, and what does that mean? What does that mean for my own safety?

[00:26:51] What does that mean for the safety of like guests and collaborators, right? What are the types of threats that people face when they are more like on the radar and recognizing what we think, what we know to be happening and what we know happens around the world? And authoritarian. governments and movements, fascist regimes and the types of threats that can happen.

[00:27:12] What are the types of threats that we would like, we have the ability and the capacity to prepare ourselves for? Security is always hard because there’s always a thing that you know is an issue that you are building the resources to address, but you may not have. And so there’s a part of it that’s like inherently challenging or inherently even heartbreaking, frustrating, but.

[00:27:35] It’s really important because some of our folks actively do not think about security because of the fear, right? And it’s always, It’s worth thinking about it in the aftermath. And I will say that the leftist security folks, it’s not like those folks don’t have fear and it’s not like those folks don’t have trauma.

[00:27:55] And that team of people is really stretched pretty thin. So the more of us that skill up and learned and build these practices and build the resources to actually hold on to the training. Because security should be an everyday practice and a role for everyone 

[00:28:13] Scot Nakagawa: so My next question is how can transformative justice strategies and tactics change a community’s relationships with cops and courts?

[00:28:24] And I realize this is potentially controversial right because many people don’t want cops in court but I think of this as a kind of necessity in the moment when we are facing the Rise of a movement that has an armed paramilitary 

[00:28:42] Ejeris Dixon: wing 

[00:28:44] Scot Nakagawa: that is specifically looking at us as targets. It seems to me that in this context, it’s very important for us to think about that.

[00:28:52] Relationships with these institutions and accountability from those institutions. How do we do that? How do we, create the kind of criminal legal system that we can count on and be able to know that, for example, if we were successful enough to be able to take over school board and.

[00:29:10] armed paramilitary showed up, we wouldn’t have to resort to hand combat in order to secure the power we had won, but that we could actually call accountable police officers to the scene to actually protect our ability to do business. 

[00:29:26] Ejeris Dixon: I think it’s, I think it’s hard because the actual thing you named around, like how there’s an armed paramilitary wing is why the transformative justice movement exists, right?

[00:29:35] And it’s also why There is so much violence and harm that, that people do not call authorities for. And particularly when we’re looking at violence against queer folks, violence against trans folks, and sexual violence. And so a lot of The need for like transformative justice, which is just like addressing harm and violence without relying on prison and police and courts is because there’s a whole need to heal, to prevent, to intervene outside of these systems.

[00:30:05] I think it’s I think if things don’t go the way we want and if authoritarians and fascists build more power, we will need to build more ways of addressing harm within our own communities. However, If things do go the way that we want and we are able to build more power, I do think there are ways that we can figure out whether it’s like community tribunals or ways that, that we can figure out ways that we take care of ourselves without the kind of inherent racism and sexism that happens within prisons and courts and policing.

[00:30:39] And the other challenge is that very people who end up in jail do not come back transformed. People who end up in prison do not come back like healed, right? And so we’re not actually addressing the issue, right? There are reasons. And there’s a whole way that the criminal legal system has sucked up so many resources from the state that the actual ability to study, understand what transforms violence, like the amount of money that actually goes to that, the amount of people who actually understand, okay, what makes somebody harm repetitively.

[00:31:15] And there’s broad based like resources or not learning, but like actual tactics, right? Tried and true studies and tactics. We have not built up that knowledge. So there’s a part where because violence is something that people don’t want to talk about, navigate and want to just say violence is bad.

[00:31:40] Yeah. You call these people, they get rid of the violenters, and then we, then the violence is gone, right? But recognizing that in some way, shape or form, all of us on this podcast fit a definition like every, like most oppressed people are also criminalized in some way, shape or form.

[00:32:00] And seen as inherently violent, inherently unable to address and resolve conflict in transformative and healing ways. So I think there’s this a survivor myself, and as a survivor of childhood violence that was not attended to by, by the state or well, It was like, like my connection to this movement is both personal and political in that sense because I know so many of us from just like being a young person, I remember the first time, like one of my friends divulged that she was facing violence at home.

[00:32:36] And we were just like, Okay, what can we do? So these movements help us all figure out, how do we listen and recognize survivorship? How do we heal? And they also allow us to have a lens on ourselves. Because when you are working with someone to transform harm, you inherently think about the times you’ve been harmful.

[00:32:58] Because that’s the other piece that the system we have says the good people and the bad people. And so then it almost seems I’m not a bad person. I can never harm people and I never have to think about it. But the world that we want, the feminist multiracial democracy, the liberatory governance means that we’re going to be held to much higher forms of accountability and we’ll be in the practice of holding each other accountable.

[00:33:22] So I actually think. that the place that we’re going deeply intersects with the practices of transformative justice. And we are just practicing the ways we want to be in relationship with each other now as a way to build that world. 

[00:33:40] Scot Nakagawa: Thank you.

[00:33:47] This podcast is presented by the 22nd Century Initiative, a hub for strategy and action for frontline activists. national leaders, and people like you. 

[00:33:57] Sue Hyde: At 22ci. org, you can sign up for our newsletter. You can learn from our anti authoritarian playbook, which includes resources on how to block rising authoritarianism, bridge across the multiracial majority, and build an inclusive pro democracy movement in your community.

[00:34:21] Ejeris, we want to invite you to give us a gift or two. We call them eism,

[00:34:35] things things that come to your mind, things that you say, things that you send into the world to lift people’s spirits, to make ’em hang, help ’em hang in. 

[00:34:49] Ejeris Dixon: What do you got? Yeah, that was so it’s so because there’s a part of me that’s oh, I love ejericisms Oh, let’s and then there’s a but then I remember I was thinking about this question and I felt very stuck about The one thing I’m thinking about because people have been asking me like, okay your focus is abolition and fighting fascism like how far from like Such disparate things and disparate communities.

[00:35:16] And I and the way I see it is really like we play to win, right? We play to win. We play to get true democracy and liberatory governance, but we also have to prepare in case we lose. Like through the relationships we build and our safety and security practices. So I feel like the, our marching orders right now are nuanced and complex, right?

[00:35:41] There are so many different things that we need to do simultaneously, which means that we need to actually figure out how to have people in a multiplicity of roles. So this piece is like that for years I keep saying there’s more of us than them, right? There’s more of us than the authoritarians.

[00:35:59] There’s more of us than the fascists. There are more, there’s if it’s just a game of numbers, right? We have won. We have won just in the game of numbers. There are more of us that believe. And healed and transformed communities and liberatory governance and feminist multiracial democracy, but we have to move in that way we have to play like a team that knows that we have, I don’t know that moral and ethical imperative to win.

[00:36:30] And I think that’s part of it, like every time we move back because we assume that there is more power on their side than ours, we are, we actually giving up some of our own power, like we are incredibly powerful and resilient communities. And if we continue to dig into that.

[00:36:49] I believe that we all would. We believe that we will 

[00:36:53] Sound on Tape: win. 

[00:36:56] Ejeris Dixon: Thank you. That was great. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for everything you’re doing and for this project.

[00:37:13] Sue Hyde: Hey, thanks again for listening.

[00:37:21] and also at 22ci. org and convergencemag. org. Direct links to these and other resources referenced in this episode are in the show notes.

[00:37:39] Sound on Tape: The Antiauthoritarian Podcast is created by the 22nd Century Initiative and published by Conversions Magazine. Our theme music is After the Revolution by Carsey Blanton and is licensed under Creative Commons. The show is hosted by Scott Nakagawa and Sue Hyde. Executive producers are James, mom and Tony Esberg.

[00:37:57] Our producer is Josh Stro and Yong Chan Miller is our production assistant.