And even when we have moments of moving ahead, or succeeding, we get reminded regularly: “You’re still not free,” in the sense that you can just walk anywhere with that skin and feel safe. We are facing this trauma that is so vast and is so complex, and it’s been our only experience on this land. There’s so much trauma that we’re holding being Black in this country. I needed something in my community, and you treated me like a number.” Because they’re like, “I showed up, and you treated me like a number. I think the numbers dissipate because get dissatisfied. And so, everything becomes a trending space for these numbers to move to a kind of groupthink. Why is that more important?Īdrienne maree brown: We keep trying to get these massive numbers of people to sign a petition, or to show up to a march, or to show up to vote, but we’re not building connectivity between those numbers, authentic relationships between those people.

But you talk about needing critical connections, instead. Zenobia Jeffries: In movement-building, organizing we often hear the idea of needing a critical mass. This interview has been edited for length. It is necessary groundwork, she says, to enable another important idea-put forth by her friend and mentor, the late Detroit activist Grace Lee Boggs-that of transforming yourself to transform the world.Īnd since the release of “emergent strategy,” brown has been facilitating trainings at the Emergent Strategy Ideation Institute in Detroit.īrown spoke about movement-building and the opportunities she sees to include racial justice in conversations around not just Black Lives Matter, but Parkland and #neveragain, and #metoo. She describes the concept as “the way complex plans for action and complex systems for being together arise out of relatively simple interactions.”Īpplied to social justice work, it’s a way of being, a way of approaching facilitation and movement-building that helps us to allow action to organically happen.

And after a year of back and forth scheduling, we were finally able to sit down and talk about what it means to see the world through an emergent strategy lens.

It’s the first anniversary of her book, “emergent strategy”-inspired by Octavia Butler’s ideas of the human relationship to change.

Brown is also a poet, social justice facilitator, science fiction scholar who is co-editor of Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction from Social Justice Movements, and a doula. This must have to do with the way she sees possibility for change absolutely everywhere, which came about through her many roles. You’re inspired by her hope, belief, and commitment just enough to muster your own. When you talk to author and activist adrienne maree brown, you feel everything is going to be all right.

Adrienne maree brown holding change