Sage M Stephanou
@SageStephanou
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🔸Community Worker, Facilitator, Educator🔸Director: @radtherapistnet 🔻work enquiries via link 🔻 #DisabilityJustice #Abolitionist
Nottingham / London
Joined February 2022
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What does it mean to continue our day when children are being beheaded & displaced ppl are being burned alive? What does it say about our society that we can compartmentalize 8 months of monstrous, traumatizing, murderous action but not disrupt our everyday life to make it stop?
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Y'all masking?
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Today, on the day of the queen's funeral, where hospital appointments and treatments have been cancelled, where food banks have been shut, and homeless people removed from public spaces I am reminded of how poor and disabled people are discarded and left to die by the state.
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As therapists we have been trained by white supremacist academies and systems to locate the 'problem' that needs 'healing' within the individual client rather than contextualising the trauma, pain and 'issue' as the consequence of systemic oppression. Our ethical obligation...
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Capitalism has us in a chokehold. Our complicity is tied to our own survival under this system that relies on us grinding in order to make ends meet. Collective action and interdependence has never been more necessary, when our global struggle for liberation is so tightly bound.
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We will never be resourced enough to live liberated lives under conditions that were built only to take, deplete and oppress, until we simultaneously dismantle yt suprem
@cy
and practice new sustainable community led systems of care that reject ableist, capitalist individualism.
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I keep circling back to the fact that we can’t heal rupture without being in relationship, and our work is really doing the work of building relationships from a place of deep respect, trust and care. Transformative and social justice work is a love practice, not a punishment.
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I simply will not sacrifice my health, body and wellbeing for work or "the cause". Working at a pace that makes me sick, makes me more disabled, exhausts me to the point where I have a lower quality of life and no connection to community and nature is a firm no.
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Stay safe if you're protesting today 🇵🇸
- Mask up 😷
- Know your rights ⚖️
- Don't talk to the police 🙅
- Don't post photos of ppls faces 📷
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...as anti-oppressive therapists is to dismantle these racist, violent systems that leads a client into therapy in the first place. We really need to interrogate how we are reproducing colonial practices by economically profiting from the trauma of marginalised clients.
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I'm offering an online seminar exploring the relationship between white saviourism, the white comfort complex and white supremacy in therapy. It will be challenging, and uncomfortable.
📆 6th July, 6:30pm-8:30pm
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If we are not simultaneously disrupting and dismantling white supremacy in every facet of our life and work, to the point in which we relinquish our (economic) power,
then we are a pivotal part of the charity industrial and white saviour complex.
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Leaning into the heartbreak. Into the capacity for our hearts to be filled by people across the sea that we've never met, but feel in our bones that their struggle, is our struggle. That we are deeply connected. To grieve is to know that love exists and from that place lies hope.
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I feel distressed that England is celebrating a monarchy who has built an empire by pillaging & colonising 25% of the world, whilst the cost of living crisis is pushing many of us into early graves bcos we can't afford to eat or heat our homes. We should be rioting and grieving.
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I'm not invested in Diversity & Inclusion in any way, shape, or form. I refuse to engage with any work or people who use colonial, capitalist methods to distract and extract. My approach to community and healing work is abolitionist, collective, and anti white supremacist.
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So many racialised bodies, colonised people and people of the global majority are experiencing visceral embodied symptoms of intergenerational trauma in response to the horror happening to Palestinians and their land right now. 1/7
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Mariame Kaba said "hope is a discipline"; words I come back to constantly. It's a muscle that we exercise by sharing space in community, engaging in our individual healing and creative practices. By building our capacity for hope, imagining change transitions into creating change
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I'm humbled to share that I am now officially the Managing Director of the Radical Therapist Network CIC 🎉
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"An artist's duty is to reflect the times...I choose to reflect the times and the situations I find myself. That to me is my duty. At this crucial time in our lives when everything is so desperate, when everyday is a matter of survival." - Nina Simone
APNews: Arts Council England (
@ace_national
) has updated its policies, warning that "political statements" made by individuals linked to an organisation can cause "reputational risk", breaching funding agreements (1/5)
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It's a real joy to announce that
@suriyaaisha
and I are offering this intimate online series designed by and for LGBT+ disabled people of colour to focus on forging community, creating access intimacy and safer spaces together. Join us & spread the word❤️
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Lots of white women suddenly proclaiming that violence is a necessary response to systemic violence. Weird that, I'm so sure they said it was non-violence when Black people were protesting and fighting for their lives?
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Lots of folks don't seem to know that it's illegal to carry out an abortion in the UK unless it is signed off by 2 doctors, and GP's have the right to object if they disagree with abortions. The gatekeeping, paternalism, ableism, classism, racism, and misogyny is very real.
Don't forget, UK folks, what happens over there will find its way over here, in some form or other.
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Capitalism cuts community into pieces to create isolation, to work in silos. Makes us believe deficit is our reality. Interdependence is an infinite resource where healing practices are shared abundantly. Being a therapist is to work in community, not in individualistic systems.
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Therapy without a transformative justice approach is an expansion of the neocolonial project that exploits oppressed peoples for profit.
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@KGuilaine
I'd say that if a white person's anti-racism work is propelled by guilt, then its still centring whiteness & prioritising white feelings. Perhaps a good place for ppl to enter the work, but without ongoing self-reflection, praxis & discernment it reinforces white-comfort complex?
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I've been a therapist for 10 years: worked in pupil referral units, "special" schools, mainstream (primary & secondary), acute mental health units & wpw dementia. I've been a lecturer & now a clinical supervisor. What ultimately stops me from practicing as a therapist is this:🧵
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The disability justice series is kicking off next week where I'll be holding space for intimate and accountable conversations about systemic ableism, classism and racism 12 years into Austerity Britain. Come through, disabled people to the front.
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I'm so excited to share this monthly space which aims to invite deep conversation + reflection on aspects of
#TransformativeJustice
with the hope to strengthen our movements toward healing and social justice. We're kicking off with
#DisabilityJustice
👇
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Individualising trauma, rather than working to collectively heal & prevent relational and systemic abuse, allows capitalist, white supremacist systems to thrive. Therapy as a practice is a powerful healing tool, but only when used in conjunction with wider transformative methods.
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Working on crip time is anti-colonial: Instead of breaking our bodies to meet the rigid boundaries of white supremacist culture, we can forge more sustainable working practices that allow us to bend time to meet our individual and collective needs.
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Resistance, healing and systemic change is built together, slowly, over time. Not colonial time. There is no transformation without community, and there is no community if we are all sick and disabled by colonial practices to work.
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People from the Diaspora have a long entangled relationship with displacement and homelessness. It's always present in my dreams, I live alongside grief. Any loss connects deeply with the profound loss of losing one's home, especially the people whose bodies were our home.
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Happy
#TransDayOfVisibility
Here I am being a badass boy princess in temporary accommodation in South London. This is what a working class trans kid looks like. 🤴Transphobia means too many trans kids don't make it. We must protect and adore trans children, with all of our might.
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Yesterday's vote has reminded us we can never rely on a state who is invested in our oppression and death, for humanity. Abolitionist and community based strategies are our greatest resource to enact change. As Kaba says 'let this radicalise you rather than lead you to despair'.
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The idea of "clean energy" is beyond an oxymoron when Congolese children are forced into child labour to mine cobalt which is known to cause cancer. There is nothing "clean" about renewable energy at the cost of Black lives
#COP28
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D/deaf, disabled and neurodivergent friends, who are the live captioners you rate? Please drop your recommendations 👇👇👇
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It's a joy to share the creation of this
#CollaborationAgreement
alongside
@chippedpale
.
This Agreement is an act of
#AccessIntimacy
created by disabled artists for disabled people, knowing that access is a loving act that benefits everyone. ❤️
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These justifications are not helpful. It feeds a narrative that only specific bodies are deserving of access to healthcare because they're "good". This tips very quickly into eugenics, racism, fatphobia and other forms of oppression that rely on moralising/demonizing identities.
I am an oncologist. I have had patients that needed to get an abortion to allow safe treatment of their cancer. Abortion absolutely is a part of healthcare.
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Every white therapist wants to be seen as doing "the work" until it's time to be held accountable for the ways in which their work is racist and propelled by the image of being seen as "good". Centring your image, over authentically practicing anti-racism, is racist and harmful.
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So today, I am returning to the work of my crip mentors and elders who remind me that we can organise ourselves to take care of eachother. Learning to heal from state violence and ableist societal neglect as an ongoing act of resistance.
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The nature of community work asks us to constantly re-orientate. With need, risk, and urgency being so high and individual capacity being so low we must continue to build coalitions of care that do not rely on individual reactions, but fluid community responses that are adaptive.
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I'm reflecting on how much grief disabled people hold, not for being disabled, but for being discarded and excluded by friends, community & society at large in order to soothe a harmful phantasy that life must go back to "normal". My heart & solidarity is with crip bodies today.
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There is no anti-oppressive therapy without abolishing the police, prisons, medical incarceration, exclusion in schools and the criminalisation of distress.
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Through the mist of grief & anger witnessing the neo-imperial, colonial violence and ethnic cleansing, I'm also profoundly heartened to continue to see my peers and colleagues collectively organise in the most caring & spirit-led way. It is the true embodiment of decolonisation🍉
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@Inadarkwood
Really, really feeling this. I feel so sad that so many creative, nurturing, intelligent work is happening but it's not accessible to disabled people. The opposite of liberation work.
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@DEC0L0NIZE
Every time I hear how people are continuing to practice community care in this way, my body settles. It reminds me that there are people who are part of a wider movement, who know in their spirit how to move with love. ❤️
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Today, in the midst of an ongoing pandemic where the rest of the world has moved on we can reach across screens, past borders, behind face masks and with hopeful hearts to be in solidarity with one another. We organise to forge spaces of care, toward disability justice.
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It's interesting to notice that I've lost loads of followers on Twitter and Instagram for being anti-colonial and anti-monarchy. What did people expect when all I tweet about is anti-oppression and abolishing white supremacy?
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I'm reflecting on all the people who've died from covid, especially care workers disabled, elder and sick people and wondering where our days of mourning are for them?
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✨ Community care request to support me in funding my surgery for a long-term health condition(s) ✨
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Solidarity to all the women, trans men and non-binary people in the US right now who need and deserve the right to safe, affordable and legal abortions.
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Also locating how disability and sickness is a direct consequence of racial capitalism, a history of colonisation and imperialism that broke bodies and stole lands for profit. The monarchs wealth is built on disabling Black, brown, Indiginous and poor people.
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Modelling anything different to slowness, interdependence, attunement to my body's needs upholds capitalist, white supremacist culture. I will not die for the cause; I won't model this as a community worker. There are alternative practices that don't rely on grind culture.
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I'm going to be holding an anti-colonial community space next Tuesday at 6:30pm to come together in solidarity to share stories, grieve, express our rage and be held. Open to all racialised and oppressed peoples impacted by empire, monarchy and colonialism.
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Cultural competence means discerning the fact that sometimes, just because it's cultural, doesn't mean it's healthy. Ending cycles of generational trauma within family systems often requires understanding the root of racial & cultural trauma, namely, colonial, imperial violence.
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"Abolition is not absence, it is presence. What the world will become already exists in fragments and pieces, experiments and possibilities. Abolition is building the future from the present, in all of the ways we can."
- Ruth Wilson Gilmore
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I won't perform my grief over the death of predominantly trans people of colour for the white cis gaze on
#TransDayOfRemembrance
The lives of trans sex workers, and Black, Indigenous and brown trans feminine people are not a public spectacle to perform your allyship.
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I think of Breonna Taylor who was murdered by the police 4 years ago yesterday. Yesterday, a beautiful 15 year old autistic Black boy, Ryan Gainer, was also murdered by cops. I think of Samaria Ayanle and Gboyega Odubanjo, hear the threats to Diane Abbott's life, and wonder...
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I want to organise through love, and play, and the telling of stories. Grieving our different, but interconnected experiences of exploitation. I want to be in space where my heart is touched deeply by people who I might never meet in person, but still be seen and known, truly. ❤️
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Really disappointed to hear that
@southbankcentre
pulled Priya Mistry's work but not the white artists in response to the queen's death. Please do not attend the rest of the event.
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So chuffed to have received funding for this. Tickets sold out for the first session but you can join the waiting list. Still a few tix for the February and March sessions 🙌
Centring Community Care as LGBT+ Disabled People of Colour
Awarded £3,150
An online series by and for LGBT+ Black people and people of colour who self-identify as D/deaf, disabled, sick, and/or neurodivergent.
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What this genocide is bringing to the surface, once again, is that therapy and therapists can and actively do maintain white supremacy within the systems and communities they work in, and are not only complicit with systemic violence but actively harm racialised clients.
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Unless therapy is abolitionist across theory and in practice, therapists will act as agents of the state to cause further harm. Prisons and healing are mutually exclusive.
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The first Radical Reflections session is Wednesday 5th October, 6.30pm. We're discussing Mia Mingus' article on Abled Supremacy, COVID, and Interdependence. All welcome 💫
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That is why healing & disability justice work is intrinsically embedded into land and social justice, and the freedom of all colonised people. When I hear of the olive groves destroyed in Palestine, I think of our groves the land taken and dessimated by British colonisers. 4/7
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Can you imagine the world we could build together if we were not oppressed by relentless systematic violence that works to exhaust, disable and traumatize us into compliance?
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We provide therapy to these marginalised individuals because systems expect clients to change their behaviour, which is responding to oppression and state violence. Rather than working to address the root causes of acute ill health, poverty, "anti-social" behaviour etc we are...
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Trying to remain human, and hold each other with grace & softness right now feels more important than ever. I'm noticing at every turn how we're all out here just trying to survive. It's so easy to lose sight of our humanity in that. It's hard, but essential work to stay tender.
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The healing and liberation of colonised and oppressed people globally is collective action and history in the making right now 🫒
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White supremacy has fooled us into believing that the gender binary is real, that our right to body autonomy is dictated by our genitals, and that any body - Black, disabled, trans, old - that falls outside of that WS construct is not human.
#AbortionBan
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The memories and wounds that our ancestors and families experienced at the hands of (British) colonial occupation and colonialism across generations are locked into our genetics and passed down, and take the form of chronic ill health across the years. 2/7
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Aaron Bushnell's words are echoing through the mechanics of the US imperial machine, "I will no longer be complicit in genocide". These empires are falling, and it is the people who are dismantling them.
LISTEN: American pilots are protesting in front of the Israeli Embassy.
This is the Aaron Bushnell Movement and its growing 🔥
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Every system fundamentally hates poor, working class, Black, brown, racialised, migrant, trans & disabled people, and is providing harmful and neglectful services. Most individuals working within these services are overworked, under-resourced & working against systemic failings.
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This week there has been a family emergency and I'm flying out to Cyprus. Everything that could have gone wrong has, and now I'm on the train to the airport and my evil eye necklace which I've had since childhood has just broken. Please say a prayer for my family's protection 🙏
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Without community there is no liberation. - Audre Lorde
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Feeling and expressing anger isn't bad. Anger that can be motabilized into action can be the catalyst of so much change that we didn't previously feel resourced to undertake. The key is to be surrounded by trusted people who can nurture us and the work after the anger has passed.
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'Anti-oppressive' has become the new 'diversity and inclusion'. The co-opting of language to dilute its radical meaning are subtle ways in which whiteness maintains power, even if well intentioned.
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This is why abolition is integral to anti-colonial therapy work; b/c working in any system e.g. school or hospital using colonial therapy theories & practices will bolster policing & surveillance of racialised clients leading to state violence e.g. police violence & deportation.
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As part of my
#DisabilityJustice
series I'm looking forward to holding a reflective space focused on
@DeathsByWelfare
1st podcast episode 'Resisting DWP Violence' hosted by the wonderful
@chinatmills
& produced by
@HJusticeLdn
2nd November 2022, 6:30pm
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Regular reminder: liberation cannot be achieved solely through non-violence bcos white supremacy has dictated the terms for rules of engagement. Violence & terrorism have been crafted into racialised terms; a strategy to immobilize us from resisting the oppressors acts of terror.
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I'm introducing new radical possibilities into how I choose to work under the constraints of capitalism as a disabled person. I'll now be prioritising joy, rest & creativity as a necessary practice to support the longevity of building the community healing infrastructures we need
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As our bodies continue to navigate ongoing states of disregulation in response to: social action, exposure to graphic imagery & reporting of violence, distress & death,
it's worth unpacking the dynamics of privilege that comes with emotional distress and movement sustainability.
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I don't usually respond to comments like this, but I will here because I am a therapist & from the Middle East, and alluding to ter ror*sm through this language is exactly how therapists uphold systems of violence through the Prevent duty. I was reported as an extr-mi-st whilst..
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This is cemented by the ongoing systemic harm that comes with forced migration, the hostile environment, economic deprivation and sustained state violence towards the working class, PoGM. 3/7
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Don't want to hear shit from therapists or therapy organisations chatting about "decolonising" therapy practice but have barely even acknowledged the current colonial violence happening in Palestine right now.
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It is not coincidental how oppressors will systematically destroy all sources of our own knowledge & histories, told through artworks, books, oral storytelling, stories stitched into fabric, arms weaved over shoulders, legs kicking over music, dialects lost to nationalist logic.
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Just dropping in to say hello and I'm so happy to have spent the summer connecting with some of the people I love across the UK ❤️😌
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Therapists are not ready to comprehend that as a profession we benefit from the incarceration of people who experience distress and mental illness as a consequence of state and systemic violence. Incarceration does not necessarily mean prisons.
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These systems purport to care for marginalised ppl whilst simultaneously systematically oppressing them through calculated methods using law, policy, conditions for care, hostile environment & practice. The state is financially profiting from oppressing whilst maintaining power.
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It's been 2 years since I resigned from the academy as a lecturer, and it's been 1 year since incorporating
@RadTherapistNet
as a CIC. I'm still working at a snails pace which feels excruciating, but completely necessary if we're to lay a strong foundation for change.
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Who's afforded praise when naming inequality, violence and harm? Who is afforded credit and respect by diluting and regurgitating the words of marginalised ppl? Whose reflections are palatable, communicated calmly & 'compassionately'? Respectability politics is white supremacist.
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...enabling state violence by sticking plasters on deep wounds. Intergenerational impacts of colonialism, the hostile environment, racial trauma, austerity and marginalisation are violent conditions in which people cannot heal alone. The conditions must change, not the individual
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Are you all going to make as much noise when it's not a white trans person? Honestly. What are you doing for trans people who are alive right now?
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Practicing love and hope are tangible actions in liberation work. To first be able to imagine that freedom is possible, is to step into creating the reality that Palestine, Sudan and DRC will be free. As bell hooks wrote "what we cannot imagine cannot come into being".
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Ramadan Mubarak to all those who are observing. May this be the last time that the Palestinian and Sudanese people observe Ramadan under occupation and war.
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The dominant drive of western therapy is driven by a colonial saviour complex founded on racism, anti-Blackness and building & hoarding power. Any role we play within these systems that does not actively work to dismantle systems of violence, ultimately benefits white supremacy.
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As we continue to resist, we must honour, rest, and tend to our pain, so that it does not overshadow the work that needs to be done, or conflate the nuances and differences of our oppression. This is why we practice collective care as healing justice. We get free together. 7/7
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Respectability politics will not liberate us, and neither will that EDI policy.
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“Disability justice cannot exist under settler colonialism, military occupation, imprisonment, and apartheid. We write this in support of the Palestinian struggle for freedom, dignity, and self-determination.” - Abolition and Disability Justice Collective
To paraphrase James Baldwin, to be a writer is to witness. I wrote this on why Palestinian liberation is
#DisabilityJustice
Please read and share
#FreeGaza
#FreePalestine
#CripTheVote
#AltTextPalestine
#DisabilityRights
#IDPwD
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