Revolutionary Healers Sanctuary

Why would one need a Revolutionary Healers Sanctuary?

One of the hardest parts about being a community organizer is not having access to the deep rest we need in order to continue our resistance efforts against these systems and protest injustices. We spend a lot of time isolating ourselves to lick our wounds alone and trying to regroup and then return back to resistance, but this method is not sustainable nor is it allowing our community to show up for us and contribute to our larger goal of collective healing. 

The African diasporic community is expansive and transformative. We are creative and medicinal. We are radically diverse and communal. These are things that we are taught have no value and are often discounted when developing our long-term organizing strategies for liberation. But when we do this, we are sidelining the very real ways that we as a community can heal and replenish  each other for resistance.

Dismantling the Interlocking Systems of Oppression which we’ve identified as the Imperialist White Supremacist Capitalist Cissexist Heterosexist Patriarchy is the ultimate end goal, but we battle the symptoms of these systems daily via anti-Blackness, misogynoir, poverty,  Pushout, Workplace injustices, etc. Practically every injustice and attack waged against us can be tied to one of the aforementioned systems, so I consider these the “root causes” which provides language to describe this “root work”-the uprooting of the causes/systems of oppression we must do in order to not need sanctuary. We deserve to be in a society that wants us, supports us, cares about us, treats us well and does not oppress, harm or hinder us; so we must create it.

In the book Collective Courage: A History of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice, Dr. Jessica Gordon writes about the successes of WEB Dubois' development of Black Mutual Aid societies, which pooled together neighbors' resources to help those experiencing big life transitions (i.e. death/funerals, weddings/divorce, fleeing an abuser or the system, lost jobs, etc). This offering, if practiced in community amongst other Black folx can also be a mutual aid effort to re-weave our national community network(s) throughout the diaspora. Providing a sanctuary, wellness & sustenance for the people doing this often dangerous, heavy lifting  work is Collective Care. In this way, we are redistributing and mobilizing the resources we have access to in order to support our people tangibly. And as a practice of Collective Care, we’re also ensuring that we give from our excess and not our only.

Before my year-long sabbatical where I sold all my belongings and moved cross-country to finally breathe, I constantly found myself in episodes of Burnout, routinely spiritually-exhausted, physically-drained, depressed, overworked, under-appreciated, feeling hopelessness and trapped in isolation. I know first-hand how easily Burnout may come to organizers experiencing the very systems we’re fighting daily. We spend a lot of time “talking each other off the ledge”, wiping each other's tears, performing spiritual and emotional triage on one another even at limited capacity ourselves. We are not our best nor highest selves while working under these conditions. Our quality of life is diminished when we can’t access consistent care. 

An analogy I like to use when talking about practicing self-care is to think of yourself as a vehicle. You need regular tune-ups, oil changes and gas to make sure you’re well-maintained and can operate as you need to. Well, if you don’t have access to a tune-up, oil change or even gas then you’re going to breakdown on the side of the road. Many organizers are operating at just ¼ of tank of gas and don’t have regular access to tune-ups and oil changes. However, with the support from the sponsors of this project and our community partners, we can co-create a maintenance garage for our organizers to get taken care of at our Revolutionary Healers Sanctuary.