Episode 30: What’s Love Got to Do with It? With Pregs Govender and Srilatha Batliwala

In our second episode on exploring love as a basis for organizing and solidarity, we interview Pregs Govender (South Africa) and Srilatha Batliwala (India) – both globally well-known feminist activists and authors. Pregs aligns love with the inherent dignity of human beings and speaks eloquently of how oppressive systems, from apartheid in South Africa to Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people, use power to eradicate our humanity. What can we do about it? Srilatha offers brilliant insights about how we need to reconstruct our narratives to build inclusive societies and intentional alliances across movements.  Both agree that our greatest defeat is when we are made to feel hopeless and helpless. They encourage each one of us to nurture our own sense of love, keep enacting it, build collective power with love and replenish ourselves through the earth’s energy.

 

As Pregs says,  “Lie on the ground, look at the sky, get into water and see ourselves as part of nature. We are not separate. Find pathways from apathy to empathy, how to break and end silences about the oppressive forces, systems, narratives, how to recenter every single moment, every single day when you are being shattered.”

 

Join us in this moving and inspiring conversation.