58. Disrupting Racism Using Deep Connection with Aaron Johnson, Porsha Beed and Jennie Pearl of Holistic Resistance

What this episode covers

When your neighbor comes to you in a panic and tells you that her house is burning — how will you respond? For episode 58 of the Good Life Revival Podcast, I ventured up to Oakland, CA to meet with Aaron Johnson, Porsha Beed, and Jennie Pearl, three of the individuals who form the core of a group called Holistic Resistance, which aims to combat racism by fostering deep personal connections. Their work is at once profound and subversive, both in its goals and in the methods they employ in their efforts to meaningfully reach out to people. Though they are of African heritage, Aaron and Porsha make it a point to specifically focus much of their efforts with HR on reaching white folks, and helping white people come together to hash out some of the more difficult and painful questions they might have about race in an atmosphere of mutual honesty, vulnerability, and trust — where you don't have to be afraid of saying the wrong thing or making the wrong move in your genuine efforts to better understand your place in the world relative to the lived experiences of people of color. This is of course extremely exhausting work, involving an enormous amount of emotional labor, but all three of them shine with a level of confidence and satisfaction that makes it clear that there's nothing else they'd rather invest their energy in. I feel very fortunate to have had the opportunity to sit down with these three in person for an immensely insightful discussion about: how and why they do what they do; the power of intimacy to combat racism; the need to replace internet conversations with direct action; and how nature connection plays into the broader struggle for compassion, trust, and understanding across (perceived) divisions of race, class, gender, and all the rest. This serves as an excellent followup, I think, to the conversation that Ev'Yan Whitney and I had last time around about sexuality and sexual liberation as a means of dismantling oppression. In this case the question is not about sex, but about intimacy in all its forms: how do we foster deep connections and build trust with individuals whose life experiences might dramatically differ from our own? And why is not okay to simply "opt out" of the struggle by deciding that "we" (you) have moved "beyond" race, or by concluding that focusing on issues of race only serves to perpetuate racism? Ultimately, as you'll hear Aaron describe, we will *all* (yes, white people included) continue to suffer as long as white folks don't put in the work on themselves to examine these questions. I hope this conversation encourages you to do just that, and I hope that the example set by the folks here at Holistic Resistance will empower you not to shy away from whatever painful, shameful, or otherwise difficult answers that arise as you venture down the path of dismantling all of the racism you inherited from the dominant Culture of No-Place — whether you wanted to or not. And stick around after our conversation where I take some time to examine my own whiteness and how it relates to my heritage as the great-grandchild of Sicilian immigrants in the United States. Don’t miss Reaching For Blackness, the three-day workshop hosted by Holistic Resistance in Chico, CA, taking place from May 18 - 20, 2019.