Dean Spade

And then, of course, in that, it's going to be so hard to come in to the room with a patient who's dysregulated and meet that with presence and grounding.

So Dean Spade, who... talks about this idea of being de-skilled.

Like we've been de-skilled as a society from this.

So I think I just say that because I have so much compassion and empathy for myself and for other clinicians.

Look to those living lives of daily faithfulness, not flashy faith.

Dean Spade, in his revolutionary little handbook called Mutual Aid, says this, When we get our sense of self from status, we are in trouble.

Instead, we have to cultivate a desire to be beautifully, exquisitely ordinary, just like everybody else.

This means practicing to be nobody special.

Before we close, I want to say a little more about why I've been thinking so much about preparedness lately.

My friend Dean Spade and I have been working on some disaster prep resources that could help people organize preparedness events in their own communities.

Preparedness, as I understand it, is a form of community defense.

Much of the built world we are living in was not designed for the conditions we are beginning to face.

But, you know, I haven't thought about certain guests.

You know, I've thought about people like Dean Spade, Jessica Fern, you know, these authors who have like fundamentally altered the way I show up in my life, the way I show up in my relationships.

A very recent episode, Elder Larry Grant, you know, what a magic hour that was to meet him and to speak with him.

So, yeah, you know, it's one of those things where I try really hard not to, like, pick favorites because it's not really about that and and my adhd brain is so often it's like the most recent thing is like well that was the best episode i've ever done

We'll start with AD.

This is Dean Spade from Seattle University.

Care and accountability circles work better than punishing people who have engaged in sexual harm to make them stop.

Care and accountability circles work better than punishing people who have engaged in sexual violence to make them stop.

That's what I do.

I paint pictures with words.

Anyway, back to the mustachioed, uh, Dean Spade.

It's like abolitionism is so pragmatic, and yet ironically we are always accused of being utopic, like we're accused of being utopians.

The practice was already everywhere.

Dean Spade, who has written the clearest account of mutual aid as political practice, argues that it is dangerous to the existing order precisely because it is not asking the state to do better.

It is doing the thing the state claims to do, but in a way that builds community power rather than state dependency.

When the Black Panther Party fed 20,000 children a day, they were not running a charity.

Does that make

sense? Yeah, I think that's a little, I think that's some Dean Spade rising up in you right now.

Also a previous guest of ours.

We'll invoke a tad bit of Dean.