Time Travel as a Tool for Social Change and Self-Care

OFF-KILTER with Rebecca Vallas

This week, Off-Kilter returns to our ongoing series of conversations with social justice leaders digging into why, in the famous words of Audre Lorde, self-care is political warfare—and the role radical self-care plays in their own lives to sustain them in this work. As a lawyer and policy advocate who’s also a lifelong student of the magical and mystical, Rebecca thinks a lot about social justice advocacy and activism as their own forms of magic—magic that starts with a vision of a new reality and works backwards to manifest it through intentional individual and collective action. So for this week’s episode, Rebecca decided to take a deep dive into a particular magical practice that’s often relegated to the realm of fantasy and science fiction—and that’s time travel.

And to do just that, she sat down with two expert time travelers who are also no strangers to Off-Kilter’s listeners—Jeremie Greer and Solana Rice. They are the cofounders and co-executive directors of a movement support organization called Liberation in a Generation, whose theory of change focuses on dismantling what they call the “oppression economy” to make way for a liberation economy where people of color belong—a vision that Jeremie and Solana describe as itself science fiction.

They had a far-ranging conversation about time travel as a strategy for social change as well as self-care; what it looks like to think across generations in the midst of a global paradigm shift, by connecting with one’s ancestors as well as future leaders, in recognition that the work of social liberation will never be completed in a single lifetime; and how they fuse urgency with sustainability to stay in right relationship to the work.

For more:

• Learn more about Liberation in a Generation at liberationinageneration.org

• Follow Solana and Jeremie on Twitter @solanarice and @jeremiegreer

• And here’s the conversation with Jeremie and Solana from last fall that comes up in the this podcast