We are now living in an era of multiple apocalypses. For those of us who are literally post-apocalyptic people, people whose ancestors lived through the apocalypse of colonization, genocide, we know that there will be an after. Yet our response to the now, to the current gut- wrenching reality of worlds ending, shapes that after. We can respond to the present moment either by capitulating to the hurt and scared voices in our head telling us to use strategies of domination to get our needs met or we can listen to healing and sacred voices inviting us to plant seeds of liberation. 

I know, somewhere deep in my bones where logic has no use and words start to dissipate, that I was born for this specific moment. According to Malidoma Patrice Some (author of Of Water and the Spirit)  the Dagara tribe in Ghana and Burkina Faso, there is a belief that infants choose the time, place and family they wish to be born in. This belief has always resonated with me because I know I am supposed to be here, in this moment. The question for me has always been what seeds of Liberation is this season right for and what conditions would best allow that seed to grow. 

For years, I have tried watering the seeds of Liberation within the left wing of conventional structures: nonprofits and fee-for-service justice work. Yet it is more clear now that ever before, that these conventional structures are inadequate to attend to the problems that they themselves create and arise from. I need something new. We need something new. 

The work I’m most proud of, and that achieved the greatest impact, has been the work I have gifted to communities that welcomed and loved me. I have rarely received money for this work which often made it unsustainable. This unsustainability sets me up for burn out which leads me to lash out at the people I’m working with. When money enters the picture how everyone involved thinks about the work shifts. Suddenly, putting a project on hold because life happened is unacceptable. Everything needs to happen now and I have to prove I’m worth the money. Eventually you end up doing things because your contract or job description said you should even if it’s not the right thing or the community doesn’t have the capacity to receive it.

So I am asking you to do something a little unconventional, though I know I am joining others who have taken this path even earlier than me. I’m asking you to take a leap of faith and support me moving through the world as a semi-nomadic dream gardener who is exiting the existing economic structures. I am asking you to support me being one of the people who will seed the world that comes after the apocalypse. 

I’m not making a case that I deserve your money. Or that I’m special. Or that I’m more worthy of support than anyone else. Rather, I am suggesting something far more universal and controversial. I think we all chose this moment to be here, in one way or another and that the only way out of these coming crises is through, together. We all need to come together to support one another. Every human being has the right to unconditional support. If what I am asking is for makes you ask, “well what about me? “ Then I would love to invite you to take this walk with me, through these apocalypses together. The best support I could receive in this moment, is the gift of fellowship and fellow travelers. 

I want to offer my skill, vision, knowledge and heart to projects that might bear fruit towards my ultimate goal: a world where everyone can get their needs met with dignity. I want to work to plant seeds of love and rigor based on the framework I helped develop called Liberation Logic and help move as many projects into alignment with Liberation as possible. I want to be able to do this from a place of deep generosity of spirit and abundance. Eventually, I’d love to gather enough resources to support other Dream Gardeners around the way until we become a network of revolutionaries tending to the most promising seeds of liberation. 

I am not sure where this journey will take me and I can’t promise what the outcome will be. I know that I will continue to make meaningful interventions in movement formations that align them with liberation. I will seek to plant seeds  we can later harvest as our political situation worsens as well as develop networks that can be the basis for what comes next.

My goal is to find people who want to nurture radical dreams with me and use my network to help support them financially as well.  I have been busy planning, reading, writing and supporting movements these last few months and I have some exciting plans for what’s next. But I don’t want this to be about what I might do. I don’t want money in some sort of transactional exchange for what I’m planning to do. My hope is that enough people have already found my paid work, my movement work, workshops and writing useful enough to have sufficient faith that supporting my work with money will benefit not only me!

If you are down, here are four ways to support me and my work.

1. You can become a monthly sustaining donor to my Patreon!
2. You can send me a one time donation to my paypal!
3. You can share this post with people you know who might be down to support!

Also, a lot of people are struggling right now with this pandemic. If you are blessed to be a stable financial situation, please consider supporting someone on this list. I did not create it but I found it on facebook. It has people who are struggling and asking for short term financial support. Also, check out the Movement for Black Lives D.C money pool which is collecting money to give to activists and organizers who are playing a major role running the mutual aid network in D.C. The only way out of this is through, together.