Susan Raffo - Part one

Fortification

We're back and we are so excited to be bringing you this juicy conversation to launch our third season between Caitlin Breedlove and Susan Raffo.

More about Susan: I am a queer woman on the other side of menopause who was raised white and uses she/her pronouns. My ancestral lineages represent the colonizer and the colonized. I am descended from southern and western european people and from people native to this land. I have experienced early and deep grief and loss and I have experienced different kinds of violence directed towards my body as well as the people around me. I am also loved really, really well. These are some of the things that inform how I do my work. I have almost always lived in midwestern spaces. I come from a mixed class background. I am currently able-bodied but have been in family with and continue to be in family with people living with disabilities. As a bodyworker, I feel pretty fiercely (and oh how many mistakes I make) about constantly uprooting ableism in this work. I am a mother, oh how I love being a mother. And I love the butch Brazilian woman I’ve lived with for a quarter of a century. I believe that identity is not an individual thing but a collective thing, meaning, my identities are as much about the people I share them with as it is about the things I name here. I work as a bodyworker, a cultural worker and a writer. You can find my blog and other things here: www.susanraffo.com.

referenced in this episode

Heteropatriarchy & the Three Pillars of White Supremacy by Andrea Smith

The Peoples Movement Center

Beloved Child: A Dakota Way of Life by Diane Wilson

Emergent Strategy by adrienne maree brown

Southerners on New Ground

Revolutionary Mothering and the work of Alexis Pauline Gumbs

tell us your thoughts about fortification in this short survey. thank you!

intro music by Abhimanyu Janamanchi. production by Nora Rasman.