Happy 2024 + Top 10 Social Change Favorites
Happy New Year,
Every December/January I like to send an update to friends, connections, and clients to express appreciation and reflect on the year. In 2023, I had the pleasure of supporting clients to advance Native economic justice, affordable housing, child-centered education, addiction recovery, gender justice, and more.
I wanted to share some of my social change favorites—podcasts, essays, research, books, newsletters, etc. This year, I spent a lot of time thinking about freedom, land, healing, and solidarity. You’ll see this throughout the favorites.
Looking forward to collaborating in 2024,
Trina
2023 Top 10: Social Change Favorites
The below were either published or new to me in the last year:
The Politics of Trauma: Somatics, Healing, and Social Justice (book) - Staci Haines, on the interdependence of trauma healing and social change, and the power of somatics. Somatics is an intentional change process by which we can embody transformation—individually and collectively—that sustains over time and under pressure. Guided by the wisdom that change happens in the body, somatics asks: what are you practicing? And is what you are practicing aligned with what you most care about?
Land Back to Right Relations (narrative briefing) - Culture Hack Labs, exploring how land is at the center of the global polycrisis, and changing our relationship to land is a pathway to justice—culminating in an exquisite Manifesto for Right Relations: a set of principles, co-created by Indigenous peoples, outlining what “right relationship” means.
Freedom’s Revival: Research from the Headwaters of Liberation - (remarks) Mia Birdsong & (field guide) Next River. An inquiry into interconnected freedom (rather than the freedom of #7, below) and its possibilities. “Freedom is collective. Freedom is a practice. Freedom is here for us right now. To be free is to be in a connected, caring community.”
Building Belonging’s Design Principles and Member Key Capacities (webpage; I co-wrote these!) - Five design principles that any effort—big or small—can follow to bring us closer to a future where everyone belongs. “Build for the 100%: We believe humanity can create an ‘us’ without a ‘them’—an ‘us’ that affirms all life, including non-human life. Othering, oppositionality, coercion, domination, and oppression are incompatible with belonging.”
What Does “From the River to the Sea” Really Mean? (article) - Yousef Munayyer, on the decades-old inclusive and unifying framework calling for a state in which Palestinians can live in their homeland as free and equal citizens, neither dominated by others nor dominating them—and how the slogan has been mischaracterized.
The Narratives We Need: Strengthening the Stories That Unite Us (article) - Public Interest Research Centre. Lessons on how to talk about five key areas—what people are like, who is in our sphere of concern, who is responsible for the problems we face, how the system works, and whether (and how) change happens—to activate core values/beliefs that advance social change, rather than antisocial or fatalistic ones that hinder it.
Tie: The Myth of Freedom Under Capitalism and Everyday Utopia And Radical Imagination With Kristen Ghodsee (podcasts) - Upstream. A discussion on our lack of agency over the choices that shape our lives—and a journey around the world and through time, exploring some of the most fascinating, inspiring, and sometimes quirky experiments in alternative ways of living.
The Future is Disabled (podcast) - The Laura Flanders Show, an interview with Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha. Given that some 30% of people are disabled, and in the near future the majority will be, Leah imagines futures where disabled people are thriving, are in leadership, and are sharing the tools that everyone’s going to need to survive the coming wildfires, pandemics, and other crises.
Understanding the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: An Exploration of Root Causes and Geopolitical Dynamics (podcast) - Voices of War. A primer on what’s happening in Palestine, via an interview with Professor Rashid Khalidi, distinguished scholar and the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University.
Nonviolence News (newsletter) - Rivera Sun. A weekly dose of hope in the form of a curated list of news stories illuminating the scale and scope of how nonviolence—rallies, protests, vigils, direct actions, and more—is actively shaping our world. Spotlighting acts of bravery and kindness, and how ordinary people are making extraordinary change.
There is so much out there. What were your favorites?