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— Sounds True Presents —
10 Days to Activate Revolutionary Love
January 22–31, 2021
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Day 3
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Days
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Daily sessions will unlock as they become available, and will be accessible for the duration of the free 10-day event.
Fight
Teaching and practice with Valarie Kaur
Today’s teaching and guided inquiry turn us toward our own sense of agency. We’ll learn to harness the fight impulse so that our love becomes a force for justice.
Home Practice
1. Summon the voice of wisdom inside you and explore these questions:
What is my sword? What is my shield? Who is my sacred community?
2. In your wisdom journal, write what you have identified as your tools for the fight.
Interview and live Q&A
with Ai-jen Poo, Caitlin Breedlove, and Isa Noyola: “Fight”
To fight is to choose to protect those in harm’s way; to fight with revolutionary love is to fight against injustice alongside those most impacted by harm. In this session, Ai-jen Poo, Caitlin Breedlove, and Isa Noyola join Valarie to discuss how when we fight with and for one another, we begin to build the solidarity needed for collective liberation and transformation—a solidarity rooted in love.
Moderated by: Melissa Ann Canlas, EdD
Session Highlights:
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Recognizing the fight impulse in our bodies, and channeling that impulse into something that gives life
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Developing metaphorical “swords and shields”
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Exploring the roles we play in a social change ecosystem
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Becoming a strong “accomplice” for vulnerable communities
Ai-jen Poo
Ai-jen Poo is an award-winning organizer, social innovator, author, and a leading voice in the women’s movement. She is executive director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, director of Caring Across Generations, cofounder of Supermajority, and trustee of the Ford Foundation. Ai-jen is a nationally recognized expert on elder and family care, the future of work, gender equality, immigration, narrative change, and grassroots organizing. She is the author of the celebrated book The Age of Dignity: Preparing for the Elder Boom in a Changing America.
Caitlin Breedlove
Caitlin Breedlove is the deputy executive director of organizational advancement at the Women’s March, and serves as the vice president of movement leadership at Auburn Seminary. Since 2003, Caitlin has been organizing and building movements in red states, working across race, class, culture, gender, sexuality, and faith. She is a current board member and the former codirector of Southerners on New Ground (SONG), where she co-led intersectional movement building in the LGBTQ sector. Caitlin is also the former campaign director of Standing on the Side of Love at the Unitarian Universalist Association. She hosts the Fortification podcast, where she interviews movement leaders and organizers about their spiritual lives.
Isa Noyola
Isa Noyola (she/her/hers) is deputy director at Mijente, a political, digital, and grassroots hub for Latinx and Chicanx organizing and movement building that seeks to strengthen the participation of Latinx people in the broader movements for racial, economic, climate, and gender justice. Isa also works extensively for the release of transgender women from ICE detention and to end all deportations and mass incarceration. She is part of the advisory boards of Familia:TQLM, BreakOUT, El/La para Translatinas, and the International Trans Fund. Isa identifies as a translatina activist and cultural organizer, and is passionate about abolishing oppressive systems that criminalize trans and queer immigrant communities of color.
Melissa Ann Canlas, EdD (Moderator)
Melissa Ann Canlas, EdD, is the director of education at the Revolutionary Love Project and a full-time faculty member in the School of Education at the University of San Francisco. Dr. Canlas’s research and teaching focus on issues of educational equity and human rights. As a lifelong educator, Dr. Canlas believes that education should be directed toward learning to love and care for one another as we build systems where every person can live in wellness and dignity.
People’s Inauguration Symbol © Obey Giant Art Inc.
© 2021 SOUNDS TRUE · ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
© 2021 SOUNDS TRUE · ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
A few years ago I stared making art, fabric art to be exact. I used the art as a way of expressing my emotions. My first piece was about divorce and the lose of my marriage. I recently completed a peice called “Women on Fire”. It was conceived a year and a half or two ago. But as I look at the work and explore the life of the peice, I realize that I am a women on fire and I have been for a very long time. I don’t know when the fire begun, maybe it was MLK dealth, maybe before that. A little girl living in poverity, within a single parent home even though my parents were married. Maybe it was being seperated hundreds of miles from my extended family as a child, because my mother kept hoping her marriage would last, so we moved to that end. Or maybe it was the images of the Civl Rights Movement, I really don’t know. I also realize that the fire keeps me moving forward in my personal and professional life. That fire had me register to vote on my 18th birthday and has kept me voting ever since. I don’t know when I becasue an activist, when I particpated in my first march, made my first phone call, donated my first dollar to a cause I believe in. I have been in the fight a long time, my life time and I can’t stop now. I feel determined, not adequate, not well trained but determined to do what I can, my part whatever that is.
I am an artist, and I too made a sculpture of what you described as “Woman on Fire”. I called my sculpture “Madame Pele” for the Fire Goddess, or the Volcano Goddess. I made that sculpture to represent the inner strength and power that We Women have, after the 2016 election, when I marched in WA, DC with hundreds of thousands of Women of every color, age, size, religion, nationality, and a few very good men too. 😉
My art is my sword. I’ve been an artist my entire life, but after the past 4 years, I’ve decided to devote my art career solely to Social Justice. I’ve been working on a body of work about the Childhood separation policy, Border Babies, for the past year. I had hoped to finish it by Sept/Oct, but I was too busy canvassing on line all summer and fall. We “won” but the fight has only begun. I continue to build my sculptural body of work with the hopes of calling attention to the millions of Americans who turned a blind eye to criminally cruel Human Rights violations.
Rock on sister Valari J!
Amazing Wisdom within–and such a beutiful presentation!
Thank you, Valerie
Valarie is so compelling and moving in the way she shares her wisdom and encourages growth and inquiry. I’ve ben moved to real tears all three days during her powerful guided inquiries. Grateful to be part of this sangha of accomplices. Onward.
thank you so much, this has been so empowering
FIGHT.. A very inspired talk Valarie. At the turn of the century I felt I had to give back to the world the advantages that I had been given. I worked for the UN as a peacekeeper in South East Asia, Afghanistan and Liberia. In Afghanistan I was attacked twice by Al Qaeda. I hold no hate for these people, I realize these people are fighting for what they believe in, that attack and working for communities in war zones living desperate lives opened up my heart to realize that we are all the same, all 7 billion of us living on a fragile planet. Back in my own country I worked for an organization fighting the stigma of AIDS and helping drug users. My selfless colleagues taught me so much more about myself, they gave me back to myself. The wonder and magic of this life. Blessing to you Valarie and everyone of us.
I am grateful for the work you have done and are doing
David, I applaud your brave work & your discernment to recognize with empathy .. what we 7 billion have together on this Fragile Planet. My hope is that we Build this discernment into our passionate “fight” & re-name it Choice! Nurallah