Tricia Hersey
speaker
156 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Mar 2025
last heard Mar 2025
Tricia Hersey’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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But what is really doing to us is disconnecting us from our bodies. We don't have no connection between what's going on in our bodies, in our hearts, in our minds, in our spirits. We can't connect with each other or ourselves. And so when we begin to rest, when we begin to take root and connect with ourselves and dream and imagine, things begin to make sense, connections begin to happen.
And so, yes, I'm so glad you raised that about reproductive justice and what's happening. I see it all the time when I think about all the labor unions right now that are protesting. I am so excited about it. My father was a union organizer growing up, and so I grew up under that idea of power to the people, power to the workers. And I'm glad that people are now...
Coming up out of the veil and being the great resignation and seeing connections between, oh my goodness, I'm working five jobs and I still can't afford rent. Why is that? You know, like, why is that? And so, yeah, the capitalism and white supremacy.
Exactly.
Yes, exactly. The connections are rich. And so I talk about that in the book and I encourage people to take a slow deprogramming. It's no rush to this. Like, be grateful for the time that we have left. to begin to gain ourselves back, to begin to step into the miracle of our bodies, to slow down. There are no quick tips. There are no quick answers. There are no, what do I do to rest?
Man, we got to come together and see this as a full-on experience.
decolonizing movement a movement of reclaiming ourselves and each other because the systems want us all dead in many different ways the systems want us all working 24 hours a day in different ways so this work comes from a black liberation lens i'm a black woman i am a womanist i am a person who understands that no one is free until we're all free and i see the interconnectedness
But this work sits rooted in a human rights global ideal. Everyone is suffering, including the planet. The planet itself is suffering from the way that we are working it and not taking care of it. Climate change is so real. The planet is tired. It's exhausted. It's abused. It won't stop. And so there needs to be a pause. There needs to be a pause. And we're going to have to take it.
No one is going to give it to us, though.
It's very dangerous.
Very dangerous. We're easier to manipulate when you're like exhausted and don't have time to think. If we rested, I think the systems know that it will be over for them. Yeah. That so many people will wake up and be like, wait a minute. You know, so to me, this work is really about awareness and pulling back veils. I see prayer to be a veil buster. Just saying where I see rest to be a veil buster.
It bust up a veil. It pulls back one from that eye and maybe you can see a little. And if you can see a little and understand who you are and whose you are and what your right is as a human being, none of this terror of being capitalism, white supremacy of racism, ableism, transphobia, all the things that are like gripping and degrading our divinity would not take place.
And so Bell Hooks, who was one of my favorites, speaks about imagination being the greatest tool for oppressed people. It is one of the greatest tools for oppressed people, for marginalized people is imagination. And so when I think about a manifesto, that's why I wrote this to be a manifesto, the history of a manifesto,
They're written from the point of view of being disillusioned, but bringing us back to hope. They're written to be almost like to challenge and provoke us to say to us, there is a new way. And these are what I'm saying. The new ways is what I believe. And it's not that. And so that's really the history and beauty of a manifesto is it asks the question, what do you believe? What do you feel?
What can be real? What can we imagine? And I believe we can freedom dream. We can imagine ourselves free. Imagination is our greatest tool because the world that we live in now was imagined and thought up by people. Some folks sat down, mostly white men, sat down and was like, What are we going to do? You know, what are we going to make? How are we going to create it? What could it look like?
What would it be? They sat down and invented and created this. And so we can imagine a new way. We can imagine a way, a new world and a new opportunity for us to be rooted in that liberation. It is a political tool. It is a social justice tool. People think imagination is just frivolous. It's a thing of children and you're daydreaming, you're wasting time. They want us to always be free.
locked up and focused on work, focused on production, focused on labor, but to be able to imagine and wonder, that's where the ideas for liberation come. And I keep telling people that we'll never be able to get to this world that we all want to see. A lot of people are now wanting to see a world filled with justice, wanting to see a world that's liberating.
How will we get there from an exhausted state? How will we get there from our minds being exhausted? Because the neurology and the biology of that tells me Our brains aren't even thinking in full capacity. Our brains aren't able to download new information. And what happens when we are exhausted? Sleep deprivation is a public health issue. We are not working in a way that our bodies could work.
And so to be exhausted is not going to be generative. It's not going to allow us to get to these imaginative, inventive, subversive, true things that we will need to move this culture towards one of freedom for all people. Mm-hmm. We just can't get there. You're not going to get there from being exhausted.
So to continue to be on the grind and to be working yourself like this and not giving space to rest will get us just more of the same.
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