Vital Matters

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    • TPW and Rasaboxes
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  • More
    • Home
    • About
    • Events and Gatherings
      • Why and How We Gather
      • Mutual Aid Mondays
    • Artistic Projects
      • Our Artistic Vision
      • Climate Change Theatre
      • Global Water Dances
      • Queer Climate Cabaret
      • House Calls
    • Education
      • Learning is Vital
      • The Vital Body
      • Vital Matters for KIDS!
      • Residencies and Workshops
      • Books for the Future
      • TPW and Rasaboxes
    • Resources
    • Donate
    • Join us!
      • Calendar
      • Get Involved
      • Contact

Vital Matters

Vital MattersVital MattersVital Matters
  • Home
  • About
  • Events and Gatherings
    • Why and How We Gather
    • Mutual Aid Mondays
  • Artistic Projects
    • Our Artistic Vision
    • Climate Change Theatre
    • Global Water Dances
    • Queer Climate Cabaret
    • House Calls
  • Education
    • Learning is Vital
    • The Vital Body
    • Vital Matters for KIDS!
    • Residencies and Workshops
    • Books for the Future
    • TPW and Rasaboxes
  • Resources
  • Donate
  • Join us!
    • Calendar
    • Get Involved
    • Contact

Who we are reading, listening to, learning with

adrienne-maree brown and emergent strategy

adrienne-maree brown and emergent strategy

adrienne-maree brown and emergent strategy

Emergent Strategy is a nature-based set of collaborative tactics for living in a complex world. www.adriennemareebrown.com

Also check out adrienne and her sister's podcast: 

https://endoftheworldshow.org/

Water

adrienne-maree brown and emergent strategy

adrienne-maree brown and emergent strategy

Find your fluid being by connecting with water, with the Moon, with the inner fluids of the body. When adversity strikes, practice taking the path of least resistance. We learn from water that grief is a passage from one form to another... 

Octavia Butler

adrienne-maree brown and emergent strategy

Resmaa Menakem and Somatic Abolitionism

Revolutionary Speculative Fiction writer Octavia Butler, inspiration for the work of adrienne maree brown and others, made the claim in her journals that "All Good Things Must Begin!" She theorized about the nature of change and our relationship to it in her Parable Books. Her work continues to be an inspiration and a handbook for change shapers. www.octaviabutler.com

Resmaa Menakem and Somatic Abolitionism

Leah Thomas: Intersectional Environmentalism

Resmaa Menakem and Somatic Abolitionism

With his book My Grandmother's Hands, Menakem launched a movement and a practice known as Somatic Abolitionism, to build new, anti-racist culture communally, one body at a time. Vital Matters Founder Michele Minnick has been participating in an online community with Resmaa, his team, and a cohort of White Bodied folks for the past coiuple of years. The work has deeply influenced everything that Vital Matters does. Go here to learn more: https://educationforracialequity.com/

Leah Thomas: Intersectional Environmentalism

Leah Thomas: Intersectional Environmentalism

Leah Thomas: Intersectional Environmentalism

This book is  useful for understanding the history of the environmental movement and some of its current manifestations as a necessarily intersectional endeavor. How do race, sexuality, and other aspects of identity, community, positionality, and the movements that represent them interact with climate?

https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2021/11/10/a-conversation-with-leah-thomas-intersectional-environmentalist/

https://www.intersectionalenvironmentalist.com/


Vanessa Machado de Oliveira

Leah Thomas: Intersectional Environmentalism

Leah Thomas: Intersectional Environmentalism

In her book, Hospicing Modernity, Brazilian scholar and activist Vanessa Machado de Oliveira, interim director of the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies at the University of British Columbia, and the Dean of the Faculty of Education at the University of Victoria, Canada takes us on a journey through our own modernist assumptions, showing us ways that we might let go of the structures that bind us to histories and legacies of white supremacy, extractivism, patriarchy. Check out this conversation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZgq3h6pPxU

Bayo Akomolafe

Listen to the world around you

Dr. Lawrence Brown

Bayo Akomolafe is a Nigerian-born psychologist, philosopher, and public intellectual, who has been shaping conversations alongside other thinkers, healers, about our world. The themes of "fugitivity," "post-activsim," figure strongly in his work. He has been leading an online group of visioning for the future called We Will Dance With Mountains. https://www.bayoakomolafe.net/

Dr. Lawrence Brown

Listen to the world around you

Dr. Lawrence Brown

Dr. Brown has been a conversation partner with us, dicussing environmental racism, and the Parable Books of Octavia Butler. The research for his book, The Black Butterfly, which examines the "harmful politics of race and space" led to the creation of The Black Butterfly Lab, an educational board game, Urban Cipher, that enables people to experience redlining and spatial inequities first hand. https://theblackbutterflyproject.com/

Listen to the world around you

Listen to the world around you

Listen to the world around you

trees, oysters, ants, squirrels, whatever is alive and a part of the biome where you live, play and

trees, oysters, ants, squirrels, whatever and whoever is alive and a part of the biome where you live, play and work is a teacher. Spend time outside, whether on a mountain or in an urban park, you can deepen your connection to self and world by being with the more-than-human beings that surround you.

REMEMBER TO support local small businesses

SOME OF OUR FAVORITE BOOKSELLERS IN BALTIMORE:

IVY BOOKSHOP https://www.theivybookshop.com/

BIRD IN HAND https://www.birdinhandcafe.com/

GREEDY READS https://greedyreads.com/

CHARM CITY BOOKS https://www.charmcitybooks.com/

RED EMMA'S https://redemmas.org/

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