READINGS (ON CARE, LANGUAGE, and JUSTICE) with all readings, don’t just absorb, be reflective and critical

Mapping Our Social Change Roles in Times of Crisis + a reflection guide
Identifying the right actions in times of crisis requires reflection, and it’s in that spirit that I’m offering a new version of a mapping exercise that helps us identify our roles in a social change ecosystem.

The Audre Lorde Questionnaire to Oneself  by Audre Lorde

What is/isn’t transformative justice essay by adrienne maree brown

The End of the World Show podcast by the Brown Sisters
Learning from the apocalypse with grace, rigor, and curiosity

black revolutionary texts beautifully offered and organized by Alijah Webb
”i am trying to make black revolutionary texts more available. i know not everyone has access and i wanted to try to help bridge that gap. i know not everyone has access and i wanted to try to help bridge that gap. if you are feeling outraged/overwhelmed/hopeless, lean into black art & look toward those that fought before us.”

Movement Memos
An ongoing call to action for movement work and mutual aid efforts around the country. Kelly Hayes connects with activists, journalists and others on the front lines to break down what’s happening in various struggles and what listeners can do to help. Listen to Annas 2019 Resident Maggie Wong’s choice of episode, “We Need A Riot of Empathy.”

13th directed by Ava DuVernay
In this thought-provoking documentary, scholars, activists and politicians analyze the criminalization of African Americans and the U.S. prison boom.

After the Trial by City Bureau Fellows
The judicial system is a complicated maze. It has its own rules and its own special language that the rest of us don’t speak. If you haven’t been to law school, navigating the judicial maze can seem impossible. But your life, or the life of someone you love, might depend on it. That’s why we made this zine. Shared by Annas 2020 Resident Gabriel Chaflin-Piney.

Freedom Time: The Poetics and Politics of Black Experimental Writing by Anthony Reed
Through extended analyses of works by African American and Afro-Caribbean writers—including N. H. Pritchard, Suzan-Lori Parks, NourbeSe Philip, Kamau Brathwaite, Claudia Rankine, Douglas Kearney, Harryette Mullen, and Nathaniel Mackey—Reed develops a new sense of the literary politics of formally innovative writing and the connections between literature and politics since the 1960s.

In the Wake by Christina Sharpe
Initiating and describing a theory and method of reading the metaphors and materiality of "the wake," "the ship," "the hold," and "the weather," Sharpe shows how the sign of the slave ship marks and haunts contemporary Black life in the diaspora and how the specter of the hold produces conditions of containment, regulation, and punishment, but also something in excess of them.

Shaping Grief with Language with Krista Tippet and Gregory Orr
We often explore on this show the places in the human experience where ordinary language falls short. The poet Gregory Orr has wrested gentle, healing, life-giving words from extreme grief and trauma. And right now we are all carrying some magnitude of grief in our bodies.

Thick: And Other Essays by Tressie McMillan Cottom
…Unapologetically “thick”: deemed “thick where I should have been thin, more where I should have been less,” McMillan Cottom refuses to shy away from blending the personal with the political, from bringing her full self and voice to the fore of her analytical work. Thick “transforms narrative moments into analyses of whiteness, black misogyny, and status-signaling as means of survival for black women”

Somatics, Trauma, Healing and Social Change Staci K. Haines, the founder of “Generative Somatics,” has integrated her extensive experience in both transforming individual and social trauma and in grassroots movements into uniquely powerful work that has proven to be incredibly helpful to a wide range of social justice activists, many of whom have been deeply hurt by oppression or violence. In this panel, leaders from a range of cutting-edge groups, including Prentis Hemphill of Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity (BOLD), and Raquel Lavina from the National Domestic Workers Alliance, share how they have been able to successfully integrate embodied transformation into their social change work. Conversation moderated by adrienne marie brown.

Healing Justice Is How We Can Sustain Black Lives by Prentis Hemphill
”As this new political and material reality is unfolding, many of us are struggling with our own well being and witnessing the same struggles with wellness in our communities and in our organizations.  It’s trauma, both historical and present, that grips us and impacts our ability to be present, grounded, connected in this moment, when it’s so crucial…We are literally – not figuratively – in a fight for our lives, and we need all of ourselves for that fight. Yet healing in the midst of ongoing trauma to ourselves and our communities is no small task.”

Healing in Action: A Toolkit for Black Lives Matter Healing Justice & Direct Action