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Alchemy Theory Praxis:

Reproductive Justice and Harm Reduction

From the Book : Healing Justice Lineages - Interpreted by : Delilah Lopez

This reading explains that reproductive justice is our human right. That we are allowed to have agency over our own bodies and that we are often targeted and controlled by practices that challenge us by restricting the ways in which we give birth, or take care of our bodies and families. Women have always been under oppressive systems and so it is no wonder why our reproductive rights are under attack at all times. Reproductive justice aims to dismantle the ways in which women are policed and controlled by the government and other harmful practices. As a women who has five children I related to this reading very much. After each birth I was asked and encouraged by doctors to get my tubes tied. I never want to get my tubes tied and felt I had to fight for my right to not get surgery to stop me from being able to have children. The author explains how reproductive justice is based on its practice to challenge the ways in which our healing traditions have been criminalized and restricted from being practiced. The harmful practices of population control, eugenics, and structural oppression all work against reproductive justice and its goal of bodily autonomy and self-determination. Harm reduction is another way we can work to dismantle these harmful practices. Harm reduction aims to stop the ways we treat other who suffer from substance abuse, and those who are in the sex work industry, etc. We must realize that society creates these issues and its not the fault of the individuals who suffer and participate in these practices. We need to have sympathy and understanding for those who are struggling to make their way out of these practices. We need to care about all people even those that society tells us are not worthy of it.

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Political + Spiritual Imperatives for the Future  

Beautiful Miracles of Resistance: Creating Abolitionist Systems of Care By: Erica Woodland - Interpreted By: Delilah Lopez

This reading was inspirational and broke down the ways in which we as a community can work together towards a society and world that is free from institutions that perpetuate harm and violence such as the prison industrial complex and the medical industrial complex. I personally felt a deep connection to the ways in which this author explains how the medical industrial complex is a system of violence and how it fools us into thinking that it's there to serve and help us. My mother died in the hospital here in Fort Collins, Co, and because she was an alcoholic, I knew she did not get the care she needed to save her life because she was treated as less than and neglected the care she needed and deserved. I have also witnessed the discrimination that homeless people and people of color receive in hospitals and clinics throughout my life. As a mother to five children, I know the worry I have if I miss any of my children’s well child checkups because this can be reported as a sign of child abuse. I remember that with each of my five pregnancies I was screened to see if I had any mental health issues, but the screening felt inauthentic and more of a test to see if they could take my child, as I was also drug tested once I found out I was pregnant and once I gave birth. Overall, this reading solidified the feelings I have always had about the medical industrial complex and its intentions. I know that not all hospitals are bad and not all doctors are bad, but they also must follow guidelines that are discriminatory and harmful to some. I am lucky to have medical insurance through the state, but at times that can also be abused by certain medical practitioners. For instance, I have heard and seen stories about dentists abusing the free medical care insurances by doing unnecessary and extensive dental work on children who receive this funding, and sadly some of these children have died. I agree with the author that we must have more people who believe in abolition within these institutions to infiltrate and disrupt the harmful practices taking place within them.  

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Political + Spiritual Imperatives for the Future  

We By: Tre Vasquez - Interpreted by: Delilah Lopez

This poem called “We” evoked an emotional response from me. There is power in Tre’s words to those of us who are told to assimilate and follow the ways of our oppressors. We sometimes get tired of resisting and eventually break down and lose ourselves because we can never assimilate, we will aways be who we are because it is inherent, it is in our DNA. This poem gives me hope and helps me to remember who I am and what I am here for. I recognize our power that can never be taken from us no matter how much we have endured and continue to endure. I like how the author gives us encouragement and tells us to remember who we are and what our role is to the Earth, each other, and ourselves. We forget how much we can do and how important every living thing is. We must give ourselves the love we deserve, and that love will allow us to take care of the Earth, and all the life within it. This poem reminds us of all the ways we are connected, and our role to fulfill to save the Earth and each other. The author states “remember” to us throughout this poem, and this is like a calling to wake us up and remind us that we are and have always been strong, and that it is never too late to start to live in harmony with the Earth and all that dwells in it. The author tells us to think about the future and the past. To remember our ancestors and their ways. The end of this poem tells us to do aways with the harmful “Beast “that is borders, prisons, wars, monuments of harm, white houses, capital, binaries, colonialism, capitalism, extractivism, and imperialism, and that the death of these practices will be the beginning of our way of live.  

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Political + Spiritual Imperatives for the Future  

Our Land as Kin By: Cara Page - Interpreted by: Delilah Lopez

This reading discusses how Healing Justice aims to address generational trauma for humans and the Earth. We must understand that groups of people have endured generational trauma from violence, and other forms of harm, but so then has the Earth. When harm is done to people of color such as Indigenous peoples it causes harm to the Earth, because that land is then stripped of its resources and used for capital gain by the oppressor. Also, when environmental injustices happen to Black and Brown communities it is not only harming them but the Earth by means of pollution, extraction, toxic waste, etc. Therefore, we can understand that Healing Justice is not only healing the communities affected by injustices, violence, and harm, but also the land/Earth that they live on. This reading goes into detail of the effects of climate change and how it is caused by colonization, slavery, imperialism, war, and capitalism. Climate change is often seen in mainstream media as devastating for the land and wildlife, and the movements that aim to address climate change often forget to center the human life that is also affected, and this is extremely problematic. The author talks about the elements of Earth, Air, Water and Fire and how they are key factors for us to consider when we are addressing these injustices because they teach us lessons and skills to work together. There are three parts within this reading that are highlighted: 1. Lessons from the elements, 2. Naming what we have lost, 3. “What can we imagine for our futures that brings forth wisdom from our past?” This reading opens our eyes to show us the real effects of colonization and all that it encompasses from human life to the Earth and all that dwell in it. Healing Justice challenges mainstream ideas and allows us to deepen our understanding about ourselves and our connection to the Earth.   

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Alchemy: Theory+Praxis

We Move in Relationship: Sites of Practice in the Midwest By: Susan Raffo- Interpreted by = Delilah Lopez

This reading discusses organizations and groups that have worked to practice and promote the Healing Justice framework, and how they have continued to work together as a collective to improve their practices. Over time, these individuals have created and maintained meaningful and impactful relationships with one another, meaning their work is more effective. Because of these trailblazers' new organizations and better practices were created. It is important to understand that building and maintaining relationships with one another to work towards a common goal has value. These individuals prove that when we work together as a collective to solve issues in our communities, we have a better chance at succeeding. Not only can we gain better understandings and new ideas as a collective, but we can support and be present for one another while we fight for the injustices inflicted on marginalized communities. One part of this reading that really stuck with me is when it states that Healing Justice aims to reconnect us with the part of us that was taken or broken into pieces by injustices inflicted upon us. It states to always go back to the “I am” so that we find strength in our identity and ancestors. This reading reminds me that we are all connected and that we must therefore work together to find solutions to the problems we face. The author of this reading also states that we must acknowledge the reality of generational trauma, and root ourselves to the land, body, and spirit. This understanding of generational trauma is something that I am starting to learn about and understand so that I can better understand my mother, grandmother and family who suffer from substance abuse, violence, and grief. I also believe I am experiencing this generational trauma and want to find a way to address it and stop it from being passed down to my children.  

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Alchemy: Theory+Praxis interpreted by : Delilah L

This reading explains how Healing Justice frameworks works to disrupt intergenerational trauma and to build collective power and resistance. Two of the main factors of Healing justice is abolition and anti-capitalism. Healing Justice works to fight for transformative justice, disability justice, reproductive justice, environmental justice, and harm reduction. Political and spiritual practices inform and shape healing justice. The author also explains how sites of practice are important because they help us address the needs of the people who live there while giving them the right to self-represent. Communities need to be the leaders of Healing Justice because it will disrupt, transform, and address individual and collective trauma. This reading also explains why it is important to learn about our ancestral and spiritual frameworks to help us heal and care for one another. Overall, this reading explains how and why Transformative Justice centers survivors and is led by the community. TJ is against the prison industrial system because it aims to have collective inventions to address harm to transform it. This process of TJ forces us to understand the true nature of violence and works to create accountability, healing, and safety for everyone. I understand from this reading that the solution to violence is not best suited for caceral solutions which promote punishment, retaliation, policing, surveillance and prisons which all work against people of color and only deepen acts of violence.

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Origins of Healing Justice: Spiritual Conditions: Mapping the Origins of Healing Justice by: Cara Page - Interpreted by Delilah Lopez

This reading really hit home for me. I personally have tried to unravel my own experiences and challenges with intergenerational trauma. The author of this reading explains how burnout happens within social justice movements and why it happens and how it can be dealt with. Due to the constant battle against oppression within social justice movements, its leaders and members tend to experience burnout. Burnout does not mean that these movements are failing, rather it means deeper understanding of why this is happening needs to be explored and faced so that we can have the right responses and tools to move forward and not give up. Resilience has always been an integral part of social justice movements, but it is because we have no choice but to move forward and keep fighting. We sometimes forget our own traumas and the injustices our ancestors went through and how that affects us today by way of intergenerational trauma. Therefore, we must acknowledge that the leaders and members of social justice movements have already been carrying a large load of intergenerational trauma from our ancestors and those traumas have yet to be dealt with because we are never given the time or allowance to grieve and heal from that. In fact, many of the injustices done to people of color and other oppressed populations is invisible and hidden and never talked about. This is why we must pull from our cultural practices and things our ancestors did to survive and cope to help us heal and overcome these things that try to kill us and keep us down. I personally struggle to allow myself time to heal from the things in my own life and this reading shows me that I am not alone in this. The author also mentions that people like me who carry around intergenerational trauma do not know how to replenish themselves because we are constantly having to fight and survive.  

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Origins of Healing Justice

The Current That Carries Us By: Eesha Pandit - Interpreted by: Delilah Lopez

This reading pays homage to the beginnings of social justice movements, and it explains why it's important to understand the reasons for these movements and what shaped them. The author explains how social justice movements are like rivers because rivers flow and when they are moving, they alter the environment and the environment alters the river, but no matter what the river continues and eventually reaches the sea. Rivers are powerful and so are social justice movements. Rivers are also a source of life just like the social justice movements. The author then explains that the Healing Justice framework is a strong current within this river, and it is the source of its strength. It's important to understand how the government has used its own power and influence to attack and oppress others to maintain its status. For instance, social justice movements for racial justice, reproductive justice, disability justice, queer and trans liberation, and environmental justice all came to be because of the way the government treated and harmed them through unjust laws, policies, and actions. So, then we must understand that because of the government's mistreatment it played a part in the ways in which these movements and the Healing Justice framework were established. The author explains how the government under the Bush administration systematically worked to legally oppressed reproductive autonomy, Black and Brown people through its War on Drugs and carceral need to fill taxpayer prisons and satisfy the religious right to not lose votes. These movements that came out as a response to these attacks are evidence that our society can work together against injustices and save lives and each other from injustices by powerful political forces if we have the right framework, tools, and community.  

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Past Reckoning with Roots and Lineage:

"Building the World We Want and Deserve: Sites of Practice in California" By: Erica Woodland - My reading response

This reading discusses the ways in which Indigenous communities and peoples have challenged and created spaces/organizations to combat the effects of colonization and capitalism on their communities and peoples. The author explains why capitalism is the major tool for colonization and therefore Healing Justice is the solution for the damage they have caused because it calls for the dismantling of our society to create a new one that is based on positive and reciprocal relationships with one another, the land, and all forms of life. Using Indigenous practices and knowledges can be used as a guide as the author suggests liberating us from exploitation and violence. For us to be able to heal ourselves and the earth we must practice caretaking which promotes all life. If we continue to support and live life by the values of capitalism, then we are doing the exact opposite as the reading reveals. Colonial violence has been practiced on Indigenous peoples for many years and despite the efforts for assimilation Indigenous peoples have resisted and found ways to keep their ways of life alive by adapting to the changes in their lives and continuing their traditions. For instance, the reading talks about the Tewa women and how they were able to combat the many harms that were brought upon their people such as alcoholism, suicide, domestic/sexual/environmental violence. These women recognized the need for their people to have a space to heal and build community with one another, and to have a relationship with the land by caring for it.  

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Past Reckoning with Roots and Lineage:

"Generational Memories of Care: Sites of Practice in New Mexico"By: Francisca Porchas Coronado

This reading discusses the ways in which Indigenous communities and peoples have challenged and created spaces/organizations to combat the effects of colonization and capitalism on their communities and peoples. The author explains why capitalism is the major tool for colonization and therefore Healing Justice is the solution for the damage they have caused because it calls for the dismantling of our society to create a new one that is based on positive and reciprocal relationships with one another, the land, and all forms of life. Using Indigenous practices and knowledges can be used as a guide as the author suggests liberating us from exploitation and violence. For us to be able to heal ourselves and the earth we must practice caretaking which promotes all life. If we continue to support and live life by the values of capitalism, then we are doing the exact opposite as the reading reveals. Colonial violence has been practiced on Indigenous peoples for many years and despite the efforts for assimilation Indigenous peoples have resisted and found ways to keep their ways of life alive by adapting to the changes in their lives and continuing their traditions. For instance, the reading talks about the Tewa women and how they were able to combat the many harms that were brought upon their people such as alcoholism, suicide, domestic/sexual/environmental violence. These women recognized the need for their people to have a space to heal and build community with one another, and to have a relationship with the land by caring for it.  

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Past Reckoning with Roots and Lineage:

Don't Give Up and Don't Make the Same Mistake

Interview with Marshall "Eddie" Conway

(image: https://www.vice.com/en/article/g5pgmq/self-care-tips-for-black-people-struggling-from-painful-week)

This interview reveals how and why Eddie Conway, a former Army medic, chose to join the Black Panther Party after his time in the military. Eddie is now a political prisoner, and he is part of an organization called “Friend of a Friend,” and this program works to uplift men in confinement to help them create an antiviolence environment. Eddie explains the ways in which Black communities were being treated during the late 60’s. There were riots taking place due to the political unrest from the Black community. Black communities were experiencing food insecurity that led to hunger, lack of health care, and overall poverty. He mentions that Black community member had manual labor jobs and not jobs in professional areas such as management, etc. One part of the interview that I found to be shocking was that large organizations that were supposed to be helping the Black community failed them by not addressing how capitalism and other areas in our society target and abuse Black communities. I found this reading to be powerful because it shows how Black communities organized their own movements to help themselves out of challenging situations, but it also show how that work is dangerous because it challenges the government and its injustices towards Blacks and other people of color.  

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Past: Reckoning w/Roots and Lineage

By: Cara Page

Page explains how revolutionary organizations started in communities that are oppressed. Due to the lack of visibility, power, violence towards, and health inequalities among communities that are oppressed such as queer, trans, women, people of color, etc. This reading reveals how these communities took care of themselves and form alliances to create their own care and spaces to foster their identities, and how those relationships shaped the way in which they responded to crisis such as the AIDS epidemic. The author explains the harsh truth that when a health crisis happens communities that oppressed are never centered or cared for in the same manner as others who are more privileged in our society. There is also a lack of protection for these communities against hate and violence. The author pays homage to the founder of organizations that aimed to center and hold safe spaces for these communities to be themselves without fear of judgement, hate, or violence. Due to these inequalities in the health sector and spaces of our society plans were made between revolutionaries such as Miss Major and Barbara Smith. Such revolutionaries fought to bring organized resistance against systemic oppression, and this created the foundation for our movements today that aim to destabilize our current systems that uphold injustices, and build new ones that will help us heal, grow, and take care of our future generations.