In that sense, the resulting displacement of people from their homes and communities is, in essence, a planned disaster. Andrew brings a nuanced perspective to this issue, drawing from his work and experiences in neighborhoods facing rapid economic transformation. 

Gentrification, as he sees it, is not just about rising rents or new developments but about the displacement of people, histories, and cultures that have shaped these communities for generations.

Much like our previous episodes—whether discussing mutual aid in disaster-hit regions or grassroots movements reclaiming public space—this conversation reminds us that collective action is a powerful tool. Andrew shares stories of resistance: how communities are organizing to protect their homes, create alternative housing models, and ensure that development serves the people already rooted in these spaces.

We’re back after an unanticipated summer break. We love making this show, but have a small team at Shareable, and often have to redirect our efforts to other parts of our work. But we’ve got new monthly episodes scheduled for the rest of the year. Please email TheResponse@shareable.net with feedback about the show or if you have suggestions for people you want to hear us interview. 

Resources:

• Defying Displacement by Andrew Lee
• In Struggle substack by Andrew Lee
• Follow Andrew on Instagram and TikTok
• Andrew’s website
• Shareable zoning series
• Free ebook: How racism shaped the housing crisis & what we can do about it today
• Donate to The Response

Episode credits:

• Co-hosted and executive produced by Tom Llewellyn
• Co-hosted, produced, and edited by Paige Kelly
• Theme Music by Cultivate Beats

Follow The Response on Twitter and Instagram for updates, memes, and more. Our entire catalog of documentaries and interviews can be found at theresponsepodcast.org — or wherever you get your podcasts.

The Response is an award-winning podcast series produced by Shareable exploring how communities respond to disaster — from hurricanes to wildfires to reactionary politics and more.

Want to help spread the word? Please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify — it makes a huge difference in reaching new people who may otherwise not hear about this show.

Available anywhere you get your podcasts, including:

The post Resisting gentrification and displacement with Andrew Lee appeared first on Shareable.

His articles, interviews, and essays on everything from the spacesuits of the future to love in the time of visas have appeared in The New York Times, Time Magazine, The Daily Beast, and elsewhere. He was also formerly a columnist at Pacific Standard.

In the following conversation, Arvind illuminates the dire situation in Gaza and the challenges journalists face amid the turmoil. Arvind reports back on his conversations with journalists on the ground in the West Bank and shares the story of the protective equipment library that has been set up by the Palestinian Journalist Syndicate (PJS) to provide journalists with the essential tools they need.

Arvind also highlights how journalists face increasing repression for covering Palestine, both in the US and abroad, and the impact of media censorship and biased narratives on the perception of the Israeli occupation of Palestine, particularly among Western outlets. Join us as we uncover the crucial role of independent journalism in times of crisis and how we can collectively support those documenting the reality of the frontlines.

Resources:

• Life-Saving lending library: Union supplies Palestinian journalists with safety gear amid ongoing Israeli genocide
• If you would like to support journalists in Gaza so that they can continue their work, please make a contribution to the IFJ’s International Safety Fund with the comment “For the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate.”

Episode credits:

• Co-hosted and executive produced by Tom Llewellyn
• Co-hosted, produced, and edited by Paige Kelly
• Theme Music by Cultivate Beats

Follow The Response on Twitter and Instagram for updates, memes, and more. Our entire catalog of documentaries and interviews can be found at theresponsepodcast.org — or wherever you get your podcasts.

The Response is an award-winning podcast series produced by Shareable exploring how communities respond to disaster — from hurricanes to wildfires to reactionary politics and more.

Want to help spread the word? Please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify — it makes a huge difference in reaching new people who may otherwise not hear about this show.

Available anywhere you get your podcasts, including:

The Response is an award-winning podcast series produced by Shareable exploring how communities respond to disaster — from hurricanes to wildfires to reactionary politics and more.

The post Covering Palestine: The impact on journalists on the frontlines and abroad with Arvind Dilawar appeared first on Shareable.

Rafa shares insights into the organization’s holistic approach, emphasizing the critical support they provide through litigation, a helpline for those fearing criminalization, and ensuring clients receive the best possible defense.

Join us as we explore interconnected struggles, the challenges of surveillance, and the power of community in the fight for reproductive justice.

Resources:

• If/When/How
• Repro Legal Defense Fund
• No Body Criminalized Podcast
• How to Become a Lawyer without Going to Law School

Episode credits:

• Co-hosted and executive produced by Tom Llewellyn
• Co-hosted, produced, and edited by Paige Kelly
• Theme Music by Cultivate Beats

Follow The Response on Twitter and Instagram for updates, memes, and more. Our entire catalog of documentaries and interviews can be found at theresponsepodcast.org — or wherever you get your podcasts.

The Response is an award-winning podcast series produced by Shareable exploring how communities respond to disaster — from hurricanes to wildfires to reactionary politics and more.

Want to help spread the word? Please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify — it makes a huge difference in reaching new people who may otherwise not hear about this show.

Available anywhere you get your podcasts, including:

The Response is an award-winning podcast series produced by Shareable exploring how communities respond to disaster — from hurricanes to wildfires to reactionary politics and more.

Interview

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Tom Llewellyn: Hey, Rafa. Thanks for being on The Response. 

Rafa Kidavi: Hi, Tom. Hi, Paige. It’s so nice to be here. Thank you for having me. 

Tom Llewellyn:Can you start by telling us a bit more about yourself and the work that you do at If/When/How and the Repro Legal Defense Fund? And, with that, what world are you trying to build with that work?

Rafa Kidavi: Such a good question. I’m the director of the Repro Legal Defense Fund, which is an organization that sits within If/When/How. And we are part of a fund that funds bail and what we call strong defenses for people that are criminalized for their pregnancy outcomes. So anything from miscarriage, stillbirth, abortion, you name it.

We try to make sure that people feel supported. And then we work within an organization that litigates criminalization of self-managed abortion. They have active cases in our litigation team. And then we have a helpline which is a really wonderful place to get resources if you’re concerned about being criminalized for accessing reproductive care. 

The RLDF specifically is a bail fund in many ways. We primarily try to make sure that people are free and get out because we know it changes the outcome of a case quite significantly—offers from prosecutors change, et cetera—when someone is out versus when someone is in.

It’s also obviously more humane to not be caged. But not just that, we really try to support litigators nationwide in making sure that they’re providing their clients the best possible defense. So ensuring they have mitigation specialists, social workers, and other experts. And that the clients they’re supporting have the primary resources that they need that would have actually abated the consequences of criminalization quite significantly.

For example, houselessness is a huge part of why people are criminalized, obviously. And so we make sure to provide emergency housing money. Or if there are, Allegations that someone doesn’t have enough resources in their home, that often has implications on their ability to bear their children because the family regulation system steps in. And so we try to provide some of those essential costs for people that we know have really direct impacts on criminalization. 

The world that I’m trying to create is really the definition of reproductive justice. Which is safe and sustainable communities and a world in which we can exercise our bodily autonomy without the state feeling like they have to control us and step in and punish us for doing so. And I think one where we really understand how trauma functions a lot better than I think we currently do.

Paige Kelly: One thing I really appreciate about  If/When/How and the Repro Legal Defense Fund on your social media the organizations are always talking about different movements and connecting them back to repro justice.

How do you see the movement for reproductive justice Free Palestine, prison industrial complex abolition, (including the fight to Stop Cop City and more as connected or part of the same fight?

Rafa Kidavi: Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate the premise of your question because I think it’s pretty clear that these struggles are connected.

Fundamentally, I think if you have a commitment to humanity, you can’t watch people being mistreated, caged, deprived of really the very fundamental things that they need without having, hopefully, some sort of emotional reaction to that. I think we have in many ways the same enemy. We’re fighting harm and control and violence from the state.

I think when it’s outside of our country, unfortunately, the United States is obviously a very active participant in perpetrating harm. And so in many ways it still feels like I’m fighting the United States government you know, and that’s part of, I think, our mandate in reproductive justice in the framework is that we fight the impediments that prevent people from having the families that they want. We fight the state when it decides whether you get to have a child, whether you get to parent your child, whether you don’t want to have a child. I think the idea of reproductive justice is really a safe and sustainable life for us all.

And there’s no way to talk about a safe and sustainable life without talking about our shared fight for liberation. 

Paige Kelly: At If/When/How and the Repro Legal Defense Funds, you often emphasize don’t talk to cops, and why is not talking to cops so important? 

Rafa Kidavi: Because they’re not your friend? Okay, jokes aside, I didn’t grow up here, and I grew up in a country where my mother was constantly fighting the cops.

Because there was no way to be an activism about anything without fighting the cops.There was a baseline understanding—and I’m not trying to make this sound utopic in any way, I’m not trying to say things are better outside here. That’s a lie. They’re terrible everywhere. But, I think I grew up with this very clear sense that cops were there to harm you.

Nobody questioned if the state was representative of you or cared about you. And then I came here and I watched young people genuinely contend with whether they should trust the cops. And in the culture, you are told that you should. It’s very hard to unlearn that culture. And so part of saying it over and over again, I think people are often like, “But what if?”

And I think the biggest what if actually comes around survivors. And I just want to be really clear, survivors are my people. Those are who I do this work for. Trauma is why we do this work. Trauma is why I did public defense work. Nobody is ever going to tell me that my love for survivors and protecting those that are being harmed by the state is somehow different from those that are being harmed by individuals.

It’s the same kind of violence. It’s all about power and control. We know this. Prosecutors and cops have done a really good job of convincing us that they are doing this for our safety and they are not. And so I came to public defense because I used to work with survivors and everyone at the office that I worked at worked closely with the prosecutor’s office, but it was like a given that they were going to fail us.

The given conversation was the cops are going to fail you and the prosecutors are going to fail you, but you must call them, but you must trust them. And so I think that there’s this way in which everyone’s a little bit confused because of this training that we think, “Maybe it’s a radical progressive position,” or “The left is just saying this to be on the left because they like to be left.” And I’m not lying about who I am, I’m by no means anywhere, even close to the middle, I get it. And I don’t come to it from that place. I really come to it from a really practical place: When there is harm and you call the cops, do they show up and protect you and care for? They fucking shoot you in your own kitchen.

And still, the culture says, “Oh, but try again.” And the reason people try again is sometimes not because of the culture. They try again because there’s a lack of other resources. And so enter abolition: Let’s try to build up other resources so that people have other places to genuinely make decisions from, as opposed to choosing between failing and failing. Dying and dying. Is my abuser gonna kill me or is the cop gonna kill me? How is that a real choice in the world?

It’s really about saying, “Hello, you are people we care about. You are our community. You are suffering.” And I can see why you would probably want to consider calling the cops because there is a lack of resources in the world and you need protection and safety. Let’s interrupt and tell you right now, “No.” Because it might not be the answer that you want and the answer that you desperately need.

And the other pieces: Expanding who a cop is. We talk about prosecutors are cops, judges are cops, [Administration for Children’s Services] workers/social workers from “Child Protective Services” in big quotations, those are cops. They take your words, they use them against you, and they punish you with them, even if you’re declaring that you are innocent. They can take anything and flip it.

I think that’s why it’s it’s a minefield. Cops engage in manipulation and gaslighting. Sll the tools we hear about in intimate partner violence, they’re just doing with the weight of the state on a national/institutional level.

And so you shouldn’t trust them, despite what you’re being told in the culture.

Paige Kelly: What threats does surveillance pose to reproductive justice?

Rafa Kidavi: I think about surveillance a lot because of many reasons, but one of them is I came to the United States from Pakistan right after 9/11. I was one of the first round of international students that came. It was not a fun time to apply for a visa.

I had a relatively privileged experience because I was coming as an international student and yet the onslaught of surveillance the moment you land here was actually, especially at the time, was just pretty shocking to me as a young person. I’m saying this not because I think I’m unique. In fact, I always think it’s much more useful to name how not unique our shared experiences are. That actually feels much more painful to me. One person stories are compelling. 

But the fact that we’re in a sea of surveillance, I think is actually much more devastating because I think it shapes how you move just somatically,  how you navigate spaces, and how tense you are, and how tight you are. You feel this sense that your body is not your own. The second you land here, or at least I remember feeling that way. 

And then moving to New York from the “see something, say something” on the subway is something that I talk about. We have this culture of watching your communities. Don’t see them, watch them. Watching each other has become the government’s best surveillance tool.

And then I think in criminal cases, there’s a lot of conversation about shifting technologies. I’m a former public defender, I understand the interest in shifting technology. It’s scary when the government develops more complex tools to further control and surveil us. And they don’t really need all that. They’ve been doing that with totally non-functional systems. All of the family court system is a bunch of Luddites and somehow they managed to be right in your kitchen controlling you deeply. So I think similarly about the surveillance.

In the case of prosecutions, it’s not just about the individual tools that were used in a particular case, but the culture that we have of surveillance of how comfortable we feel telling on each other and telling on ourselves. I think that the idea that some people shouldn’t have bodily autonomy really allows anti-abortion stigma to fester and grow. It convinces us that we have the right to tell other people what they can do with their bodies and when they can do things with their bodies. I think state violence thrives on everyday people being willing to downplay the power of the state and instilling fear and harm in their communities.

And then that, in essence, drives people to make choices that are not based on what they know to be best for themselves and their loved ones, but really a fear of incarceration and punishment.

Paige Kelly: How is the repro movement responding to reproductive surveillance and criminalization that you’ve seen?

Rafa Kidavi: I imagine you remember the period tracker app fears. And I don’t mean to invalidate the fear. Asolutely note that the primary technology in front of you is your phone, and it is constantly tracking and controlling you. That reminder is welcome. And like I said before, it’s not really about the period tracker app for me. I think those things end up getting a lot of attention, but actually it’s that there’s an infrastructure around us constantly that doesn’t need fancy technology. And so people are almost distracted by what they’re focusing on. 

I understand it. I say this with zero judgment. I think what we need to be working on is how do we make ourselves safer? I think this is often a project of self-reflection. Asking, am I safe to the people around me? Am I truly caring for them by holding their secrets that could jeopardize their lives? Do I understand the stakes of the violence that is potentially coming forward?

I think there’s a lot of self-training that we have to do. I think similarly the “don’t talk to cops,” right? We say don’t talk to cops and I know this as someone who’s done a billion [know your right’s] trainings and I’m a public defender, but you bang on my door hard enough with enough of an arsenal and enough people behind you and God damn, maybe I’ll let you in my house and tell you all my secrets.

The power of the state is so epic. And so it’s really a process of training yourself deeply about your own dignity and self-worth and what you’re entitled to as a person. Because the government really has you feeling otherwise.

I think in our organization, we talk a lot about the family policing system in a way that I think a lot of people don’t talk about how the family policing and regulation system is really about reproductive justice.

I think the movement’s been pretty siloed. So people think about abortion and very traditional ideas of the trope of the cis white woman who goes to college and gets pregnant and needs to access an abortion. And fundamentally, that’s not the bulk of who needs reproductive care and who is unable to access it.

I think similarly, we don’t think about the family regulation system. If you’re not thinking about marginalization broadly enough, you’re not thinking about people of color. You’re not thinking about poor people, et cetera. And so the way that we see it is that if RJ is really about being able to have the relationships and the families you want and criminalization is really about severing the systems of support and communities, then taking away children temporarily, permanently, because they can’t provide the basics for their family. That kind of surveillance from the social worker who comes to your house and tries to convince you that she’s not a cop, that’s the kind of thing that I think we need to be really worried about in the RJ movement.

I think we need to broaden our understanding of who a cop is.

Tom Llewellyn:I feel like that broadens the discourse. And I definitely agree with you on getting lost at looking at the shiny thing right in front of you where there are these embedded systems of oppression, which are a lot harder to see. And because they’re harder to see, they’re harder to organize against.

How do you communicate about those kinds of underlying systems and make them more visible in a way that they can be addressed? 

Rafa Kidavi: That’s a really big question, partly because I think all of our work together is what makes that communication possible. Organizing around Stop Cop City impacts my life in the repro movement in a good way. Because yes, we’re talking about bail. And yes, we’re talking about mutual aid. And yes, we’re talking about some of the same things quite logistically and technically, because I work at a fund.

I think more than that, though, is it questions the state’s power, and that’s why they’re so mad. It feels audacious. And that level of audacity in all of our movements really helps the repro movement.

And so I’m excited about everyone’s conversations. I just want to make] sure that everyone’s having those conversations with each other in mind. I think some of the work that’s happening around making sure that we’re thinking about gender performing care and reproductive care in the same breath is really important.

We know it’s about exercising bodily autonomy and that this country has been founded on multiple mechanisms of doing that from genocide to enslavement to the immigration system, et cetera. It’s constantly doing this. And so I want that conversation to be happening everywhere.

And I think many of us are adept at having that conversation. And I think we live in such fear and forced scarcity. So it’s understandable. Again, I say this without judgment, there’s a lot of pressure on marginalized communities to fight for very few resources. I actually want more of is, that it’s not surprising to someone that the family court system is impeding on someone’s reproductive health or bodily autonomy.

Tom Llewellyn: And you bringing up just that overlap with CopCcity and this pretty significant inflection point, right? When it comes to organizing for abolition and against the policing of our communities and the militarization of our civilian peace officers.

And there’s the classic trope, first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, and then you win. And right now I feel like they’re very much fighting. The state is fighting this organizing. And so we’re seeing this the criminalization of mutual aid and bail funds.

There’s the bill making its way through the Georgia legislature that would outlaw charitable bail funds completely. We’ve seen the impact of surveillance on organizing with the Atlanta solidarity fund being raided and organizers arrested and the surveillance of private financial debt data and the criminalization of mutual aid. Can talk specifically about any of the impacts of financial surveillance used to criminalize abortion care in a similar way that it’s being used around Stop Cop City. 

Rafa Kidavi: I think we have a lot to learn from the repro movement around mutual aid and financial support. Folks have been doing this under heavy surveillance and control from the state for a long time. I think some of the really careful, thoughtful relationship-building work, building trusting and safe relationships for high-stakes situations is something that repro is doing a really good job of, and that’s not new and it’s continuing to happen.

I think there’s a very active conversation in the repro movement about resourcing reproductive care and support for people. There’s always the fear of, “If I support somebody in getting an abortion, what will the legal implications to me?” have been part of the conversation from the beginning.

I feel for people organizing around that because it’s almost like a procedural kind of violence that the state engages in. They’re just like always like throwing this shit out there to make it sound like it’s innocuous, but it’s just deeply about controlling and criminalizing.

I feel for that kind of surveillance. And it’s also unprecedented in a kind of way I think of Cop City. As someone who like doesn’t conceive of myself as naive at all, I have to say it did still have an impact on me. I still felt jolted by the audaciousness of the state TBH, even though they do whatever they want and clearly have no boundaries or limits and there’s no level of violence they’re not willing to enact as we are seeing globally. But still, it is a kind of particular moment. That’s shocking, I think.

Tom Llewellyn: Yeah, and partially, I think, is because it’s so visible, right? Like a lot of this, a lot of this repression and violent repression was not visible.

I feel like there was something in the United States that a bit of a shift happened between 2004 and 2008. During the Democrat and Republican national conventions in 2004, there were mass arrests. And there was massive class action lawsuits. And there was millions of dollars paid out that were often seen as cost of doing business They knew that was gonna happen. They didn’t give a fuck, but they did it anyways. But you fast forward to 2008 and I was there at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul in Minneapolis and there was something like a hundred and fifty arrests that entire time. Instead of arresting people, they just brutalized people. They were breaking bones. They were shooting canisters. And the switch in the militarization from 2004 to 2008 was really quite noticeable.

And I think that has continued. As we’ve seen Black Lives Matter, as we’ve seen all these other inflection points, through Occupy at times. At these different inflection points, it’s been a little bit more brutal. And it’s not just the United States. I was meeting with some organizers in France during an uprising there a few years ago, and they said that they’d never experienced the type of militarized policing and brutalization of the police back at their protests in the history of France as they were experiencing a few, a handful of years ago now. And so I feel like this is something that’s on the rise and as there’s bigger pushes for significant change.

There’s also this equal clamping down that’s happening as well. And it’s some of it’s criminalization, but a lot of it’s just brutalization. And again a lot of that is physical, right? There’s mental anguish that comes with feeling that and the fear of people not wanting to go out to protest because they’re afraid they might get brutalized.

But I feel like there’s similar tactics happening in a very different way in the repro zone as well, where it’s more of like the thought police, right? It’s like this undercurrent underhanded approach at brutalizing people that are trying to seek basic health care. 

It’s always happened. And this isn’t with Dobbs, it just is lifting things up to the surface, but it does feel like it’s becoming heavier-handed as well. And I’m not sure if you have experienced that in the space as well, or if there’s that general feeling across the space. 

Rafa Kidavi: I absolutely feel like the general feeling of fascism is just constantly on the uptick.

So yes, everything that you’re saying I absolutely hear. And I think we feel it honestly, even if we don’t always know it. 

I think what’s hard about the individual cases, and because I do direct services work and I’m formerly a public defender, I think the amount of brutality that the state is willing to put an individual through has always been, and will always be, at the extremest of levels.

I think when we come together and there’s a movement and there’s a group of us, there’s something different. There’s a different dynamic. And so it does feel really intense to watch the cops come and brutalize masses of people in public like that. Especially in 2024. I am constantly like, “How much more violence are we just going to watch happen?” And I understand that some of it is that we couldn’t watch the violence before, which is not a comfort. It’s just to say damn, how much happened that we couldn’t see. And now that we’re all seeing it, how unable are we to respond to it and stop it? And, I think all of that is absolutely true.

I think when it comes to individual cases, though, part of what moves me about repro is that I’m not some cis straight girl. That’s not the vibe I’m coming from. I’m coming from someone who actually knows that chosen family has kept me alive. What is more cruel and violent than severing your connections with the people you love most? And that’s just the basis of the criminalization that’s inherent in in the state from stealing the children of indigenous people, to now stealing people’s children using the family court system.

It’s hard for me to ever compare the violence because it has been happening. The fact that we ever had solitary confinement. The fact that we talked about the death penalty for young people. Name a limit to the violence. There is not one. And I think in the repro space, you’re talking about the most marginalized, traumatized of people in a really vulnerable position, and then it’s, “Oh, cool. Let’s punish you.” That part is shocking. And in the repro space, in what world do you see someone who’s had a significant pregnancy loss and the desire is to punish them? It is just absolutely so cruel and backward.

Tom Llewellyn: And, this is something that you have talked about quite a bit on your podcast. No Body Criminalized, which I’ve really enjoyed listening to. One of the things that you talked about on the podcast, the idea of abortion being the testing ground for other actions.

And, as we’re talking about how it’s related to a lot of this other criminalization, what aspects do you feel like are being tested in the abortion reproductive justice space that may find their way out into other rights as well? 

Rafa Kidavi: I think it’s quite fundamentally about bodily autonomy. It’s about your own personhood and your own ability to make decisions about yourself. And I think the state constantly tests how much they can control and decide for you, how much you’re willing to put up with, and how much they can get away with. And rewriting of trauma and oppression completely from the right around abortion permeates the culture.

I’ll give you an example. We were trying to find a defense attorney for somebody on a case who had been alleged to self-manage their abortion. We find somebody in the place that they’re in and through an organization that we work with. That’s wonderful. And they send us an attorney who does capital defense work.

And we’re like, “Okay, we need someone who’s really highly skilled capital defense work. Fits the bill.” Aand he writes back and he’s like,” I don’t support the killing of fetuses.” And it was like, you do capital defense work! I’m with you. I’m a public defender. I’m not saying don’t do capital defense work. Absolutely. I too would like to defend somebody that was accused of killing someone. That’s not my boundary. It’s that somehow abortion is the exception to that? The idea that someone took control over their own body is more abhorrent to you than somebody that doesn’t exist in this realm? That’s more violent to you? It’s ass backwards constantly. 

Even the framing of families. It’s my pet peeve when the right talks about families. Your families are a hot mess, first of all, and second of all let everybody else have their non-oppressive relationships. Because that’s really the goal here, right?

We are trying to create families. Most people who have abortions are trying to do right by their families, by the people they love most. There’s this constant pushing of the definition of things. It’s like a national gaslighting of us all.

And the part that I didn’t say is, part of the project of the state is to confuse us and where people might genuinely have questions to manipulate our minds into thinking that us trying to survive is somehow wrong. How do we not see that having a complete chilling effect on all of us? I think that’s what the criminalization of abortion is about. It discombobulates you. 

The fact that most people don’t even know abortion is healthcare is bonkers. Check your medical bill when your provider decided that you needed to get reproductive care. I bet you’ll see that more things are called abortion than you realize.

Paige Kelly: One quote I revisit often by abolitionist Mariame Kaba is “hope is a discipline.” And how do you keep hopeful or what gives you hope?

Rafa Kidavi: Yeah, it’s a really good question. I feel like I’m always in a fight with Mariame Kaba in my head about hope as a discipline. It’s like, “Really do I have to keep doing this?” I will tell you that my toddler when they first started speaking, their party trick would be to walk into a room and say “Mariame Kaba,” because they just knew it elicited the reaction. They had no idea what the words meant That just told you who their chosen family was.

Honestly, my kid. My personal relationships. I think about my world in two ways. There’s my small circle and there’s my big circle. And my big circle is large and I want good things for everyone and I want to try hard to do that. And sometimes when the circle is too wide, it comes with a kind of depletion. It comes with a kind of betrayal. We are all but people trying to navigate all the violence that we’ve experienced and the world is constantly bestowing upon us. And so that will happen. 

And so the thing that actually keeps me hopeful is my small circle, where I can come back and remember “Okay, this community of people that I’ve kept around me practices love on the daily and helps me stay alive.”

And that is a really hopeful place. 

Tom Llewellyn: Just as we close out, is there some piece of advice that you would give to people that are maybe on the outside of the reproductive justice world. Is there something that you would want people to know, or is there a way for people to plug in and support and contribute to the work that’s being done? 

Rafa Kidavi: That’s a good question. And my advice is based on all the people that have come before me and told me how to think. So I just want to name that. 

We’re thinking a lot at If/When/How about how much more people need to be involved around fighting the family surveillance and policing systems. And so I think people often think about reproductive justice as traditional abortion work, which, of course those are our people But I really want people to start seeing that more broadly.

And, if you’re in law school and you want to become an attorney— I’m sorry in advance and my apologies to the planet for bringing more of us—and do family defense work. And I want to be really clear that you can do family defense work without being a lawyer at all. Get in there, fight that system. 

Paige Kelly: Thank you so much, Rafa, for taking the time to come on today and sharing your work and wisdom. So grateful.

Rafa Kidavi: I really appreciate you, Paige. Thanks, Tom. 

Tom Llewellyn: We look forward to following your work and the new season of No Body Criminalized, which will be coming out soon.

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In addition to publishing our stories and podcasts this year, Shareable launched SolidarityWorks, our new organizing program to meet the challenges our communities face. Be sure to check out the new Emergency Battery Network Toolkit, an open-source guide designed for folks to create their own community-owned backup power supply. 

Another world is not only possible – it’s already being realized in communities across the globe. Here’s a glimpse in 10 stories:

1. From Bayanihan to Talkoot: Communal work practices from around the world

“For all of human history, societies have depended on communal work to sustain themselves into the (often unpredictable) future. However, at a certain point, that all changed. Market forces took over, and communal projects ceased to have the same significance. The individual took precedence over the community, and large public works became the purview of burgeoning states.” This story explores the key elements that differentiate communal work from other collective activities and several examples of what it has looked like in practice.

2. Mutual Aid and the movement to Stop Cop City

Writer, organizer, and teacher Dean Spade (‘Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (And The Next)”) wrote a feature story about the critical role mutual aid has played in the ongoing movement to stop the construction of Cop City—and the deconstruction of parts of the Weelaunee Forest—in Atlanta.

3. How to grow your own toilet paper

Robin Greenfield is a writer, researcher, and activist who makes a strong case for growing your own toilet paper. Greenfield argues that ‘Toilet Paper Plants’ are not only easy to grow but are a way to opt out of consumerism and contribute less to the harmful environmental impacts of the toilet paper industry. Check out this How-To Guide, to start growing your own toilet paper in the new year.

4. The Response: Forced labor and immigrant dreams — Saket Soni in conversation with Rebecca Solnit

This episode of The Response podcast is the recording of a live conversation between Saket Soni and Rebecca Solnit on Saket Soni’s recent book, The Great Escape: A True Story of Forced Labor and Immigrant Dreams in America.

The Great Escape is the harrowing story of how 500 disaster relief workers from India were trafficked to the United States under false pretenses and exposed to inhumane conditions while rebuilding New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

5. Black radical imagination helps us transform our relationships to energy, land & economy

“For those of us interested in exploring alternative visions for the future of land, economy, and energy, the answers on how best to achieve collective liberation may come in lessons hard-learned from the past. Two places to start are Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination, which spans centuries from continental Africa to colonial America and the United States, and the “Black Freedom Struggle”, which offers transformative and regenerative possibilities for imagining and building a world without white supremacy.”

6. Legal tools for Land Return 

Janelle Orsi, an Oakland-based “sharing lawyer” and a director of the national nonprofit Sustainable Economies Law Center, offers her thoughts on tools that could be useful to land justice movements as they work towards and realize #LandBack, land return, and reparations. In the piece, Orsi explains, “I’m writing this for the people – especially those who own land – who are feeling animated toward repair, healing, and return of land to Indigenous and Black people. I’m also writing it for myself. As a land justice lawyer, I have tinkered with the nuts and bolts for 15 years, and I’ve found them increasingly hard to stomach. Now, I’m attuning to the ways law and legal tools have disrupted the flow of inspiration that motivates land return.”

7. Andrea Roberts: Countering displacement through collective memory

This Cities@Tufts recording tracks the history of displacement and dispossession that has led to the destruction, neglect, or dismantling of communities initially designed to protect African Americans from structural racism.

Dr. Andrea Roberts explains how these communities’ unique challenges require new planning and design tools to detect the interplay of historical and contemporary conditions contributing to the cultural erasure of African American placemaking.

8. The Spanish Civil War: Lessons in economic democracy

“The Spanish Civil War and Revolution of 1936 was arguably the 20th century’s greatest experiment in economic democracy. Seizing the opportunity opened by the conflict between the Spanish Republic and right-wing Nationalists, Spain’s workers and peasants built a new economy in the midst of the chaos.” 

9. Artisans Cooperative: An Etsy alternative, owned and run by artists and makers

Etsy, the online arts and crafts seller, raked in record profits in 2021, yet still increased artist transaction fees by 30%. Etsy’s business model relies on artists, yet the company continues to exploit and take advantage of them. Enter Artisan’s Cooperative, an online cooperative owned and run by artists and makers, not a greedy corporation. 

10. Emergency Battery Network Toolkit

This past summer, Shareable piloted the first new program of SolidarityWorks, the Emergency Battery Co-Lab, to aid organizers in building their own community back-up power supply. The Emergency Battery Network Toolkit is centered around the recordings of the pilot and includes all trainings and ‘office hours’ (edited into bite-sized chapters), summaries of each lesson (including key takeaways), graphic recordings, customizable templates, and other resources.
Learn more about the project and our partners in the project, People Power Battery Collective (a project of People Power Solar Cooperative) by checking out this episode of The Response Podcast: The Response: People Power Battery Collective with Kansas, Crystal, and Yasir.

Bonus: Everything you wanted to know about SolidarityWorks

If you can’t tell, we’re excited about the new direction we’re taking our work with SolidarityWorks. Since 2009, Shareable has been instrumental in radical transformative cultures — we’ve published more than 4,500 stories and 300 how-to guides, distributed 50+ seed grants, and advised hundreds of organizers, policymakers, and social innovators. We are utilizing our history of storytelling, our role in the solidarity economy ecosystem, and our convening experience to help local communities move from inspiration to action through Co-Labs, trainings, and comprehensive toolkits.

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In the wake of blackouts, natural disasters, and catastrophes, we need solidarity more than ever. Vibrant and organized communities are the foundation of people-centered responses to the climate crisis. Backup power sources such as batteries, solar panels, and generators are expensive—and individualistic solutions aren’t very helpful in addressing our collective needs, especially in times of crisis. 

That’s why Shareable partnered with People Power Battery Collective to create the Emergency Battery Toolkit to help organizers build strong and effective backup power supplies owned by local communities. 

The toolkit is based on the work being done by People Power Battery Collective (a project of People Power Solar Cooperative), a self-organized mutual-aid collective in the San Francisco Bay Area, whose purpose is to provide backup electricity to support people who are facing power emergencies. Their project is a successful model of what an emergency battery network can look like.

Members of an emergency battery network safely keep backup batteries until there is a need for power in the community. In response to power emergencies, the person in need connects with the battery holder and arranges delivery. When the emergency passes, the person who received power will recharge the battery to share with the next person experiencing a power emergency, creating an ebb and flow of resourcing within the community.

This Toolkit, which is centered around the recordings of the 2023 SolidarityWorks Emergency Battery Co-Lab, includes all trainings and ‘office hours’ (edited into bite-sized chapters), summaries of each lesson (including key takeaways), graphic recordings, customizable templates, and other resources. In addition to the web version of the toolkit, there’s also an interactive PDF version.

Free Download: “Emergency Battery Network Toolkit”

We hope you’ll use this information to build an emergency battery network in your community. When you’re ready to launch, contact us (info@shareable.net) to get added to the (inter)national map!

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