City Council - February 1, 2023

When I spoke at City Council about gentrification in my neighborhood years ago, I was speaking to the ongoing history of displacement.

Breaking apart community is necessary for the protection and continuation of capitalism. We see this in the lands taken through colonization, in today’s loneliness epidemic, in the exploitation of our bodies/labor, and in today’s communities struggling to stay in their homes under the threat of eviction and deportation. Colonization is not only part of our dark history, it continues today, as our nation continues to take land from Indigenous peoples both here and abroad, from Oak Flat to Palestine.

Through my spiritual practice, art practice, organizing background, and studies, I’ve learned the difference between mobilizing and organizing. Mobilizing brings people together for a moment, its an event, its flashy and instant. Organizing builds deep relationships, finds shared purpose, and refines structures that sustain us over time, its slow and done with future generations in mind. Organizing requires solidarity, risk, sacrifice, and commitment.

My art and my community work are rooted in that kind of organizing. I’m rooted in work that rebuilds unity, because unity is sacred, and unity is powerful.