Recent posts by Dunbar Creek Collective
An old DCC publication that is still very relevant to the times.
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Slide 1 image description: A sketched picture of a river in white with a black background and the following words positioned in the lower-right in white text: "We need to go upstream" -Desmond Tutu
Slide 2 image description: A black background with the following words in white text: The (so-called) united states of america is a mass death machine; a global tool of mass extraction & destruction. It not only relies on the violent extraction of natural resources from the earth but the violent extraction of natural resources from our own communities. The same capacity we’d normally have to collectively care for one another in largely accessible ways is utilized to keep us constantly producing care networks either for or in response to this global fascist state.
Slide 3 image description: A black background with the following words in white text: One particular example of the exploitation of this capacity can be seen diligently at work in institutions of the state such as the social-work state and the non-profit industrial complex. The fervor (and capacity that we build through this fervor) to intentionally build out systems of unsurveilled care networks are strategically managed......by actors of the state that organize and/or work on behalf of the social-work state and/or the non-profit industrial complex. People are rightfully so, responding to our current state of care with mass despair/hopelessness.
Slide 4 image description: A black background with the following words in white text: Dunbar Creek Collective's reminder to people who are in despair is this: despair is not an end. It is simply an arrival. Despair; when properly organized around, can become a sturdy bridge to mass mobilization. Many social justice movement spaces and revolutionary organizations have disposed of (and continue to dispose of) those whose despair and feelings of powerlessness manifests in taboo and observable ways in their material reality.
Slide 5 image description: A black background with the following words in white text: This can look like chronic depression/anxiety, chronic stigmatized drug use, misdirected anger, deep shame, etc.. Yet; all of these behaviors have become ones that are characterized as “threats” to the security of organizations who do revolutionary work; and instead of swimming upstream to locate why so many of our vulnerable are falling in the river, we keep asking them to pull themselves out; or, we simply let them drown.
Slide 6 Image Description: A black background with the following words in white text: There are growing and visible movements and organizations that not only lack stable infrastructures for revolutionary care but also refuse to view revolutionary care as a primary location of our struggle. Instead; it is simply viewed as supplemental to our collective struggle(s). This must end. People are dying. People are grieving. And people are in despair. No more gaslighting the people. No more demanding that they go on their own to search for hope or “discipline” themselves into it.
Slide 7 Image Description: A black background with the following words in white text: Our job as anti-colonial & anti-fascist revolutionaries is to provide and/or prove that this hope can be attained. To intentionally guide them toward this hope. No more. “Don’t let this lead you to despair”. More “let it, and once you arrive at this bridge, your community will be there to guide you across.”
Slide 8 Image Description: A black background with the following words in white text: We are antifascist death workers. Grief practitioners. Dark workers. Students of sacred endings and destruction, etc. People deserve safety to experience and journey through despair. We know that “the dark” can be a scary place. But we also know that “the dark” is a place where folks can be further politicized.
Are you a colonized person experiencing War & Death Anxiety?
War and armed conflict can exacerbate our collective feelings of death and despair. All around us ecosystems die in mass, state funded genocides occur from nation to nation, nonhuman species are met with mass extinction, heat-related deaths climb, state neglect during a global pandemic disables millions, and racial & gender-based violence plaque our communities. It’s normal to feel uncertain and powerless during what feels like a time of mass destruction and death. It’s very human of you to feel despair and death anxiety. From political echo-chamber to political echo-chamber apocalyptic rhetoric proclaiming this to be the “End of the World” pierces through our algorithmic screens to our wandering hearts as we hope and/or fight for what feels like a nightmare to end.
Generation after generation colonized people have survived many “apocalypses” and have witnessed this white-supremacist anthropocene transform. We’ve seen the way its power adapts. Colonized people in so-called america; particularly descendants of enslaved afrikans and native indigenous folks have had to create a relationship and cosmology to grief, death, and despair that is resistant yet welcoming in nature in response to extreme subjugation and strategic rupture. Many iterations of this empire’s fascist roots have left colonized people with no choice but to make peace with death and to study and medicate the despair that we often feel as a result of the cognitive dissonance it takes to “awaken” to the horrors and terrors of empire.
During an unprecendented global-political moment like this; it’s important that we medicate the sense of hopelessness we may feel in community. It’s important that we mourn and muse about these very taboo topics and refuse the ruse of isolation, over-intellectualization, and avoidance. It’s important that colonized people grappling with the emotional, spiritual, and psychological consequences of this settler-colonial state contend with our own death anxiety, feelings of despair and grief, and be able to locate and access the resources that we need to ease our anxieties as we fight to adapt and survive this colonial capitalist hydra.
Where can we look to for political philosophies concerning death, dying, grief, and despair that is not rooted in western european and settler psychological cosmologies?
A few places DCC has been looking is towards the indigenous third and fourth world and towards the political prisoner struggle. We’ve been gathering literature, letters, interviews and other content from long-time and/or late political prisoners concerning death, hope, grief, and despair and hope to make this resource publicly available soon! Another place DCC has been looking is towards the Zapatista Army of National Liberation or Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN).
EZLN stated in a 2014 communique of Subcomandante Marcos’ last public statement: “We chose rebellion, that is to say, life…We knew and we know that there will continue to be death in order for their to be life. We knew and we know that in order to live, we die.”. In the communique EZLN grapples with what it means to choose life and peace through armed rebellion against the settler-colonial Mexican state.
Wherever you go to ease and medicate your own death anxieties, feelings of hopelessness, and grief and whatever philosophies you use to guide your own personal relationship to death, dying, despair, and grief we hope that DCC can be a lighthouse and budding community for colonized people in our ongoing anticolonial and antifascist fight against a generational death-sentence. The counter-institutions we seek to build must include medicinal spaces for those aching in spirit. We hope to continue to make space to openly speak about death, dying, grief, and despair with no hostility or shame attached and build up the capacity to offer medicine to those in need.
Let resistance become our medicine; let communal rebellion ease our anxieties!
-DCC
Despair often feels like a filthy place to be and a filthy or wasteful way to feel. As politically conscious people seeking to meet colonialism, fascism, and the patriarchy with as much survival as we can muster and resistance as we can give; we are frequently reminded to maintain a sense of hope. “Hope is a discipline” is a term that is popularly utilized in social movement culture and spaces concerned with liberation from oppression. Hope itself holds a deep moral resonance for many of us who seek to resist the fate of helplessness.
We are taught by visible organizers and activists that despair is either a tool of white supremacy or simply defeat; that we “cannot afford despair”. But is despair something we can’t afford or simply something we are afraid to and/or oftentimes don’t have the support and fortitude to FEEL our way through?
Feelings of despair are often signs that we are tuned into and aware of what’s happening around us and the impact of these occurrences. When despair arrives it usually arrives as a secondary emotion. The primary emotion is usually sadness, grief, loneliness, etc. When despair arrives it also shifts our focus onto the terror of things, the tragedy of a moment or moments, and the horrors of the present. This can create anxiety and a deep sense of uncertainty about the future thus leading us to FEEL hopeless.
This is a natural response to extreme colonial and capitalist repression and to ongoing internal and external war. However; on a broader cultural level these feelings of hopelessness are often met with extreme hostility, shame, and unnecessary militancy instead of genuine curiosity and care. Not only can it be a scary and painful thing to feel despair but it can also be a scary and painful thing to witness someone else in their despair.
We cannot collectively cope with what we collectively are afraid to either acknowledge or feel. Usually when despair is acknowledged it is, again, met with aggression and opposition. This is understandable for a society that needs us either blissfully ignorant, blindly optimistic, or apathetic; however it is not an adequate and sustainable response to meeting, witnessing, and guiding people through despair.
When we understand feelings of despair as a direct result of socio-political and material conditions we are able to shift our understanding of despair and begin to search for its meaning. We can begin to understand despair as not simply a fixed destination opposite of joy but a source of it. Maybe joy sits at the core of despair; waiting to be properly nourished and medicated. Our approach to despair as colonized and oppressed people should involve the will to survive and resist the socio-political and material conditions we find ourselves in.
Despair is a multifaceted space we occupy that requires us to come to terms with the reality we find ourselves in and what has been destined by this reality. It is not a one-dimensional and it sure as hell isn't a feeling or manifestation of feelings that a single-issue westernized psychological approach can medicate and not as binary as it is often portrayed. Revolutionary Black Feminist Audre Lorde reminds us that "There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives". Our despair is not a result of a single-issue psychological and emotional struggle.
What if despair can be seen and approached as a symptom of colonized life in empire? This approach gives us the ability and insight we need to create a culture of hope that does not rely on liberalized self-care and hyper self-regulation to attain and maintain but the shifting of peoples actual material conditions. This approach also allows despair to become a bridge that guides us into consciousness raising, radicalization, meaningful resistance, popular education, and the will to organize in the midst of political repression and war. Often a part of a journey towards radicalization politicized consciousness requires despair because it usually arrives with the gift of disillusionment about the world we live in and/or the idealistic ideologies we cling to about the world. While awareness is important as politically conscious people; the attempt to over intellectualize despair and suffering can create a sense of hyper-awareness of the world around us and thus strips us of our ability to build resilience and organize for resistance. Despair has utility and that utility will require us to meet those in despair where they are with curiosity, support, patience, and understanding.
Below are two beginning tips for those experiencing despair in the midst of this ongoing anti-colonial, anti-capitalist, and anti-fascist era of resistance:
1.) Limit (Social) Media-Exposure:
Hyper-awareness can be a symptom of ongoing and excessive social-media use. This hyper-awareness of wars happening around the world can exacerbate already existing feelings of uncertainty and helplessness. If you are an avid social media user; try to limit your (social) media exposure to a set schedule. Maybe you get on social media one or twice a week for a specific set of hours. Try to find a trusted source/publication you enjoy and sign-up to receive newsletters, updates, etc about particular political issues that interest you. When you find a particular political struggle that interests you try to commit to doing deep research on the struggle including finding areas of resistance to oppression and colonization that is taking place despite ongoing oppression and colonization in said struggle. Remember, where there is oppression there is ALWAYS resistance. Also remember that it is impossible for you to know every single detail about every single political struggle taking place across the globe; ground and involve yourself in local struggles that are happening around you if you're able. If you desire to know and or are thrusted into knowing the details of multiple political struggles taking place across the globe at the same time give yourself time to know. This looks like genuinely processing how the news of colonial, imperialist, capitalist and/or patriarchal violence makes you feel. Remember that while our technological ability to process information has grown rapidly throughput the decades it doesn't mean that our emotional and mental capacity to process information has. Computers can process 20,000 characters per second; on average humans can only process about 300 words per minute. There exists an obvious gap in capacity. Resist the ruse of shock value and remember that shock value doesn't not inherently lead to heightened politicization and resistance.
2.) Feel
Feeling is sometimes a choice. We are socialized to believe that some feelings are "positive" while others are "negative". Unfortunately feelings like sadness, anger, grief, despair, jealousy, etc are categorized as "negative". Instructing someone to feel these "negative" emotions is easier said than done, especially when feeling these emotions require feeling the bodily pain and sensations that come with them. A heightened sense of information about political oppression and colonization and fear of feeling can lead to emotional numbness and apathy. We have to make the choice to feel what arises in us and for some of us that will begin by acknowledging first how we avoid feeling these emotions that arise.
a.) Try to make a list of ways you've avoided "negative" emotions in the past. Then, try to put a name to an avoided emotion that arises. The "Feeling Wheel" (attached below) is a great place to start in identifying the emotions that you feel.
b.) Next, allow the emotion you feel to manifest in your body. As stated before; "negative" emotions require feeling bodily sensations and sometimes those sensations are painful and/or overwhelming. This is where a witness comes in; try to find a safe person you trust to witness you in your feeling. This witness should be able to meet your emotions with no judgement or conviction even if you're not able to. They are simply there as a resource; not a guide. If you are having a hard time having someone witness on your behalf; consult the Land as your witness.
c.) After-care: The ability to feel often requires resources These resources include access to after-care, nourishment, and emotional first aid. After-care allows us to meet the experience of feeling with intention and helps us creates resilience and courage for when we need to feel what we feel again.
d.) If you desire to go to the root of a feeling (this is not a necessary step in order to feel an emotion) seek guidance from practitioners skilled in safely accompanying you to the root of an emotion you feel. This may be a licensed therapist, a trusted elder, a grief doula, or your ancestors.
Remember that feeling despair is no indication of something that is inherently wrong with you but may be an indication of something wrong happening around you that is oftentimes out of your control. Moving beyond despair requires us to sometimes move with it. Moving with despair requires us to be curious about its arrival. DCC hopes that you are able to be met with medicinal warmth in your feelings of despair.
Resources:
Feeling Wheel:
The following is a guided meditative practice with one of DCC's members @CareWithKat. To access this Audio Visualization/Mediation please click on the following LINK and or copy and paste the link below in your web browser.
https://carewithkat.substack.com/p/audio-visualizationmeditation-rooting
-DCC
WELCOME: IT IS ENCOURAGED THAT YOU READ THIS IN ITS ENTIRETY BEFORE SIGNING UP
INTRO: Dunbar Creek Collective is a budding collective of multiracial and multiethnic death doulas, workers, and weavers who work with death and grief in varying capacities. From virtual grief spaces to in person physical, spiritual, logistical, and political support to those dying, grieving, and in despair; we are practitioners who believe in autonomy in death and dying. We also believe in and seek to prioritize revolutionary access to spiritual, logistical, and political resources to support those dying, grieving, and in despair. We desire to build an interdependent ecosystem of antifascist death and grief practitioners who are sensitive to the needs of ourselves and comunties in times of repression and death.
The Culture/Values We Seek to Embody and Display:
intentionality, slowness, anbd curiosity
anti-colonialism, anti-authoritarianism, and anti-capitalism
non-carceral care
anti-colonial spiritualities/mysticisms,
confidentiality, consent, & after-care
non-carceral care
relationship-building
pleasure, softness, silliness and warmth
What is a virtual death circle?
Virtual Death Circles are DCC's spin on "Death Cafe's". A Death Cafe is a group directed discussion of death with no agenda, objectives or themes. It is a discussion group rather than a grief support or counseling session. Death Cafe's are free, confidential, and offered with no intention of leading people to any conclusion, product or course of action. DCC's use of the word "circle" instead of cafe reflects our desire to build circular and cyclical structures of sharing, witnessing, and space-holding.
When: Every Last Thursday of the Month from 8:00 PM - 9:30 PM EST.
Where: Virtual (link revealed once sign-up is complete).
DCC's Death Circles offer the following:
-1 hour and 30 minute virtual space to talk about and/or co-process death, dying, and despair for folks of the African diaspora
-A trained witness and/or facilitator of the space who is a death practitioner
-Confidentiality
-Aftercare tips, suggestions, and 1on1 offerings following the space for participants who desire and consent
DCC's Death Circles DO NOT offer the following:
-professional talk-therapy and/or counseling
-Inherent Community: Community is a word that is often thrown around like a rag doll in virtual radical space, however, DCC believe that community is not inherent based on shared interests; it is intentionally built overtime. DCC's Death Circles are a new initiative that has the potential to build genuine community. When you enter this space you will be entering this space with strangers on the internet who may share your interests, wounds, desires; who you may feel an affinity to. Our intention is to co-create the potential and interest for community to gradually bloom by being gentle with that sense of affinity. We seek to do this through slow intimacy and trust building.
-Nourishment: Nourishment during this hour is highly encouraged. While DCC desires to offer stipends for participants to nourish themselves that is a short-term goal we have not reached yet. Until then, we highly encourage participants to keep water and/or food by their side throughout the duration of the death circle.
Suggestions for participants during this space: (these are ONLY suggestions; not requirements)
-if you are deeply uncomfortable and/or triggered talking about death and grief in the presence of strangers we highly encourage you to reach out for 1on1 offerings with one of our practitioners before attending our collective offerings. you are also welcomed to simply show up as a witness and/or listening ear.
-if you have a stim toy bring it!
-find an uninterruptible place to participate in this virtual gathering. A place you feel safe, relaxed, and held.
-prepare beforehand for the virtual death circle. try to transition from whatever you're doing beforehand and intentionally into the space
-take breaks if you feel your body, mind, and spirit need it. and freely leave the space. you are not required to be in attendance throughout the duration of this gathering.
DCC Virtual Death Circle Structure
There is no structure except to both enter into and exit the space.
1.) Brief intro to the space/offering and brief intro for those who would like to name and be known.
2.) Closing of the space (collective breath and release)
Who is this bi-weekly space for:
-folks of the african diaspora who are grieving, suicidal, in despair, dying or those who simply want to exist in a container where death is being openly talked about, witnessed, and/or expressed.
Gathering Agreements (LIVING):
Be thoughtful about Individual and Collective care.
Be mindful of folks’ pronouns, identities, boundaries, experiences, and access needs
listen with intent, respond with curiosity, welcome in silence.
offer empathy instead of sympathy. sympathy prioritizes pity while empathy is concerned with understanding.
Ask for Clarification; always avoid assumptions.
Be Aware of individual, interpersonal, and communal power dynamics: Prioritize perspectives that are rooted in marginalization as a result of power dynamics
Confidentiality (external and internal): Try to be responsible with the information we are creating as a collective + being mindful of potential threats.
homophobia, fatphobia, transphobia, colorism, classism, first world nationalism, and/or ableism are not welcomed. Though we all posses some internalized and/or taught form of the -isms mentioned above we intend to be aware of these -isms and co-create a space for correction and accountability to unfold when they do show up.
These agreements are living meaning that they have the ability to adapt and evolve according to the context of the space. If you'd like to suggest living gathering agreements please reach out to DCC at dunbarcreekcollective@tuta.com. We are a growing collective and welcome constructive feedback.
Security: This is a Code Green event
DCC Gatherings Carry Three Levels of Visibility and Security. These are the DCC Metrics Based on Levels of Visibility and Security for Organized Gatherings:
Code Green: Organized event with low-level security and low-level security measures in place outside of encrypted meeting spaces on Jitsi. Code Green gatherings are hosted on Zoom and/or Jitsi and usually are generalized virtual gatherings like DCC Death Circles. You can end up in this space with strangers on the internet you don't know. It is discouraged that you share any sensitive information in a Code Green Space. For instance; if you are a doula or careworker who specializes in ab0rt!0n or simply want to talk about sensitive information regarding an abortion it is not wise and/or recommended that you attend this space and do that. If you'd like someone in the DCC virtual community to witness you and/or your stories about ab0rt!0n and death hit us up for a 1on1!
Code Yellow: Organized gatherings hosted for those internal to the DCC squad. Both virtual and in-person. mid-level security measures are taken.
Code Black: organized and/or spontaneous gatherings that happen offline and require non-visible support and publicity.
SIGN UP FOR THE DCC VIRTUAL DEATH CIRCLE HERE:
OR COPY AND PASTE THE FOLLOWING INTO YOUR WEB BROWSER: https://bit.ly/DCCdeathcircle
DCC Witness:
My name is omi and I am a 28 year old recently trained death "doula". I do not utilize the language of doulaship to describe what I do. I prefer to call myself a "death weaver". I've been a practicing death weaver for the past three years and have offered virtual and in-person support to those grieving, dying, or in despair in both my immediate family and those in close community with me. I am also a practitioner of southern folk religions and am a growing herbalist interested in medicinal approaches to grief and despair that incorporate somatic healing, the Land, inner-child, and ancestry work. I am interested in keeping the southern folk tradition of mourning, grieving, and death-care alive. I am intentionally working on being a more aware listener and gentle witness to the grief and pain of those I exist in community with. I exist in community with houseless and housing transient folks, modern maroons, undocumented migrants, single mothers, lumpen queer and trans folks, and formerly incarcerated folks. I seek to offer support to colonized and oppressed folks of the african diaspora. My people are from the rural coastal plains and swamps of Georgia and Alabama. I muse about grief, death, and uncertainty alot and enjoy doing deep lineage work, roller skating, foraging, and diggin through archives. I am only a witness to the processes that take place in the DCC Virtual Death Circles. I am here to gently and lightly facilitate as well; encouraging an intentional and slow arrival and pace between participants.
Rest in Power Lluvia
We open this acknowledgment up with deep reverence for the life of fellow death worker Lluvia/Bastet. Our deepest condolences to those who knew and loved him. Lluvia was integral in the fabric of what Dunbar Creek Collective would like to evolve into as a collective. Lluvia was a gentle warrior and so passionately involved in care, protection, healing, and justice. Rest in Power & Vengeance Lluvia.
In this present political and social moment; there is an obvious and rising interest in our collective desire to transform our relationship to, understanding of, and response to death. Whether that be the death of loved ones and those we share a deep affinity with; the death of traditional ways of life that have sustained us, the death of access to information, Land, and/or one another, or the death of legal freedoms and rights; the death of the world and our shared experience of this reality as we’ve known it is in a continuous unfolding motion as the global empire that is America tightens its authoritarian militaristic grip around our necks. The past decade of resistance has ushered in a rapid and drastic reactionary rise in social, racial, and economic repression. If it is true that “oppression breeds resistance” it must also be true that oppression breeds death; mass death.
This mass death has occurred overtime in many forms; public assassinations by far right nationalists, climate related deaths, mass femicide and ecocide, mass death by abandonment from local and federal public “health” infrastructure, mass death at the U.S.-Mexico border, in the homes of kids surveilled by the social-work state, mass death via settlerist displacement and genocide, etc. Prior to the pandemic and this unfolding political moment, extremely vulnerable communities on the margins were left to tragically die in mass. However, the start of the global pandemic in 2020 and the “post-pandemic” era opened up a broader and what feels like a more public conversation on death. Death became more easily observable on a collective scale.
We turned to popular news outlets, tuned into radio stations, or conducted our own independent research in order to keep up with the rapid acceleration of the national and global death toll. Virtual political echo chambers began an ongoing battle over interpretations of what this mass death event meant, who or what was to blame, or if there even was one taking place. Misinformation spewed and spread about the actual number of deaths. The validity of local and federal measurements were challenged while morgues in major cities became evidently overwhelmed with bodies. We may never truly know the overall data and consequence of deep abandonment by the local and federal state as it relates to the pandemic and other major death-inducing events like climate destruction and police brutality. However, excess death as a rising and common theme persists in the lives of those who live in the imperial core; especially those who exist inside its many prisons, concentration camps, reservations, and gentrifying and hyper-militarized cities & neighborhoods.
It’s much more convenient to look outwards and into other “underdeveloped” nations to make assessments about mass death events that occur as a result of colonialism and imperialism instead of looking inwards to make assessments about mass death events that continue to occur in our own backyards. A persistent reality in this empire is that our collective life-expectancy continues to lower; especially for those of us who live on the fringe of this political and economic social order or exist at a lower status of “being”. There are vulnerable communities that are desperately attempting adaptation to this new level of authoritarian rule as an attempt to survive, yet adaptation to this authoritarian rule is not always successfully carried out when the goal of the fascist authoritarian, no matter the milieu, is outright extermination of those who are in the way, those who do not belong, and those who refuse to.
While liberal fascist milieus have become well at either hiding, obscuring, or half-addressing alarming death tolls as a result of their “progressive” rule, many of us have become traumatized by, desensitized to, and/or paralyzed by deaths that occur in domestic colonies. Death and despair are unrelenting themes that haunt us in ways that may feel more present than usual as this political, social, and economic moment unfolds. Mortality trends are shifting, an interest in death-care careers is on the rise as the industry evolves, and more folks are intrigued by the “positive death” movement.
This empire’s fundamentalist christian majority has faced a steep decline since the 90’s as local and federal clerical leaders and christo-fascists struggle for power and “order”. This has somewhat created what seems like a sharp and sudden return to the christian nationalist way. The christofascist milieu have succeeded in many ways in their desire to gain control of the local and federal courts. While the doors to the fundamentalist church seem to be wide open with folks clawing their way out; a disturbing rise in liberal new age practices and beliefs abound where death, sickness, grief, and despair have become overwhemingy associated with personal moral/spiritual failure. Neo-fascist eugenics creeps its way into the hearts and minds of those seeking answers and guidance and those offering it. Many healers, careworkers, doulas, and educators who proclaim to have answers and who seek to offer guidance are simply exploiting a valid desperation that is steadily manifesting in mass. This exploitation also occurs in the forms of paywalls and the capture of ancestral/traditional information and healing techniques and modalities by internet influencers and personalities. A disgusting and troubling trend.
In light of these moments; our social and cultural relationship to death, grief, and despair is one that deserves a deep interrogation. It deserves genuine curiosity if we seek to sincerely and collectively survive these times so that we can sincerely and collectively resist authoritarian rule and confront and ease our fears and anxieties. Death is a disabling and traumatic phenomena for many communities on the margins of this rule; for prisoners, political prisoners, “junkies'' & “addicts”, sex workers, estranged queer and “mad” folks, for the undocumented, the displaced, for the formerly incarcerated and the refugees, the poor single mothers and black trans folks, for houseless folks, for those on the run from capture by mental health institutions, for those of us who are punished for simply being. Therefore, confronting the growing shadows of colonialism, capitalism, and the cisheteronormative patriarchy is the business of any “radical” death, grief, and abortion doula or worker.
In service to the ongoing antifascist revolution,
-Dunbar Creek Collective
Referenced Readings:
The pandemic’s impact on prisons and jails
The Death Positive Movement Explained
Mortality Trends Raise Underwriting Questions For Life Insurers
The U.S. 'Battles' Coronavirus, But Is It Fair To Compare Pandemic To A War?
Below is a message from one of our members who is a hudu death practitioner in the collective. This short essay is about the historic & growing cultures of capitalism & commercialization in what is the death work/doula industry. We ask that you engage with intention. Make sure you’re comfortable as you read. Try to release the tenseness in all parts of your body if you can; your jaw, pelvic floor, the temple of your forehead, etc.
Trigger Warning//
*mentions of slavery
Part 1: Against the Commercialization of Hoodoo & Death Work Traditions
As a hudu “hoodoo”, it has been a well known fact that the rise of hoodoo traditions, culture, and practices have been under ongoing attack by vast commercialization, appropriation, and erasure for generations. The history of hoodoo began as an underground syncretic botanical mysticism and science that was mostly practiced in secret as a survival technique in the midst of racial and economic terror descendants of slaves in the deep south were experiencing. It was birthed in hideaway places, such as sheds and basements, of its practitioners and was given its name by outsiders who belonged to the white and/or capitalist gaze. People of all racial backgrounds and ethnicities have grown an interest in the mystic traditions of the Black South and want to dip their feet in the sacredness of its long traditions. Hoodoo is a religion and spiritual practice of survival, and during this era of heightened economic decline, political-racialized terror, and mass environmental decay; it is no surprise that folks in mass are returning to an animistic religion and practice to find belonging and answers.
As a hudu (hoodoo) who has recently ventured into death work as a “death doula” in a more “formal” manner, it is also frightening to witness the same thing happen to the “field” of death work. A deep and individual commercialization of death work, its knowledge, and its sacredness is on the rise. But that is no surprise, since the beginning of this ongoing pandemic we have all collectively experienced and continue to experience mass death. Death permeates every facet of our social, personal, and political lives. The precipice of a new world and new way of being sit at our doorsteps as authoritarian and reactionary politics manifest on a federal, local, and communal level. Liberal fascism abounds. During such a “dark” time; those who do “dark” work are being called upon to make sense of this ongoing political and societal transformation.
With this ongoing rise and interest in hoodoo and death work comes with it opportunists who seek financial and/or social and political gain. In my spiritual, political, and social opinion as a lumpen black practitioner of hoodoo and death work who works in a communal and familial capacity; I believe that its is the role of the “hudu” to remain steadfast in the fight against individual commercialization of death work and practices, gatekept knowledge, professionalization, appropriation, and erasure. Being a member of the Dunbar Creek Collective has provided insight into the ways in which (neo)capitalist tendencies ravage the inherently communal practices of both hoodoo and death work.
Part 2: Why “hudu” and not “Hoodoo”
I came across the use of the word “hudu” in virtual community with other lower-class, lumpen, queer, neurodivergent, and/or mostly dark skinned anarchic black radicals. I did not coin the term but however find home in the spelling and usage of the term. A turn away from Hoodoo towards “hudu” is a representation of the push against identifying with the heightened erasure, commercialization, and appropriation of the practice of Hoodoo. Time and time again in the growing visibility of organizations, businesses, and collectives that practice and/or sell Hoodoo back to their customers and followers one can examine a prioritization of colorist, classist, and capitalist tendencies and practitioners. It is appalling. Lighter-skinned racially ambiguous hoodoos are made more visible and (neo)capitalist and classist practices abound. The racial and economic caste that penetrate the work of hoodoos is deeply disappointing. “hudu” was birthed in resistance to this ever evolving capitalist complex entrenched in desirability according to the white gaze and should remain that way. Resistance to capture by the aristocratic plantation owning capitalist class is intrinsic to the practice of hoodoo. One cannot be a capitalist and be a hoodoo. “hudu” challenges and pushes away from the constant evolution of Hoodoo that betrays its original roots and seeks to maintain its original tradition of resistance to the colonial-fascist social order.
Part 3: On Commercialization
Death work driven by individual profit has become one of the most defining characteristics of its contemporary rise. Commercialization is obsessed with exploitation for profit. The harms of the commercialization of death work has left death work in a state of deep inaccessibility where a few organizations, collectives, and practitioners become the “owners” of sacred knowledge that can only be accessed behind a paywall. What a disgusting manifestation. Commercialization has encouraged death workers from all walks of life and all cultures and ethnicities to gatekeep knowledge and resources in capitalist driven manners. It has created a universe and sub-culture within the world of death work where there exists an unnecessary hierarchy. It opts for rigidity and rushed timelines instead of slowness and intentionality. It crushes and minimizes sacred knowledge into 3 day conferences and 3 month training sessions that remain accessible to those who exist in a certain class bracket. It has taken sacred communal knowledge from the margins and feeds that knowledge to those caught up in the white/western and/or liberal capitalist gaze. It has removed death work from its highly political and cultural origins and sells a watered down and pacified version of death work that encourages its trainees to also pursue a practice of death work that prioritizes individual commercialization for individual profit over communal accessibility and horizontal leadership/practice. All death workers; no matter the cultural, racial, ethnic, and/or class background, must fight against commercialization of death work. This means also being radically honest about the role of the non-profit industrial complex and how its philosophies and practices show up in the “field”. It is our duty (given the current political atmosphere we find ourselves in as liberal fascism continues to engulf all that we know and restrict the communal work that we do) to be as principled as possible in the work that we do and to examine our principles over and over and over again.
Part 4: On Gatekept Knowledge:
Gatekept knowledge is not inherently condemnable and dishonorable. In fact early hoodoos were keen on gatekeeping hoodoo from the white/western gaze and from prying eyes even within their own communities. This was vital to their syncretic mysticism for many reasons. One of those reasons can be attributed to the fact that hoodoo was utilized to help slaves escape during the plantation era of the confederacy. It was also used in the deep south during the reconstruction era to treat and heal folks in the community and for other protective purposes because access to care infrastructures were not available to many poor black folks in mass. Even in death work, hoodoo death practices and rituals remained a gatekept phenomena and were practiced in the privacy of people's own hearts, homes, and communities. However, contemporary practices of gatekeeping knowledge in the death work tradition revolve around gatekeeping for profit. Organizations and collectives that offer death work trainings, conferences, and courses will offer very few and often competitive scholarships to those interested in gaining knowledge as a writeoff for their diversity and financial accessibility points. This is deeply disturbing considering the fact that most marginalized low income colonized folks interested in funding their intentional study of death work are faced with the ongoing economic decline at a much higher rate than those who are economically well-off or privileged. The (neo)capitalist gatekeeping of death work knowledge and resources for capitalist profit in the midst of ongoing mass death events is unethical and the pinnacle of deep commercialization.
Part 5: On Professionalization and Erasure:
Professionalization has deep roots in hierarchical, bureaucratic and managerial controls of industrial and commercial industries and organizations. Death work, especially death work traditions that belong to marginalized and colonized communities, should fight against its heightened professionalization. To professionalize death work is to take part in the erasure of “informal” death practices and traditions that are not palatable and observable to the white, classed, and/or colonial gaze. Professionalism has historically been defined by its patriarchal white supremacist tendencies and continues to be. To professionalize the death work traditions of hoodoo is to render it useless and impractical for many communities on the margins and to erase practitioners who have been “experts” of its secrets and sacredness from generation to generation.
My hope is that as death workers of the contemporary hudu tradition we continue to fight against the ever evolving symptoms of the capitalist, western, and industrial gaze that occupy the growing interest in the practice of both hoodoo and death work.
To all my hudu death workers; remain steadfast, communal, and defiant to the white supremacist capitalist order. Ashe.
We invite thoughtful and considerate responses to our work; especially from those in solidarity with the anticapitalist and antifascist revolution(s). To respond to this essay and/or reach out to the collective please comment below or email dunbarcreekcollective@skiff.com
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