Ep 19: Transforming Solidarity

This episode explores our current global moment including the Black Lives Matter movement, and the topic of solidarity, relationality, and transformation. How can messy solidarities recalibrate towards more meaningful relations? I reflect on how dilemmas of 'not being heard' can hinder the potential for creating better relationships. I explore alternative ways of thinking about connection and similarity that does not undermine the importance of difference. Exploring the possibilities of holding complex understandings at the same time, what is the transformational possibility of this moment? I conclude by offering a lens to understand individual, communal, and societal transformation through Mayan and Tongan concepts of Zero.

Topics: Solidarity, Relationality, Racism, Black Lives Matter, Tongan Noa and Mayan Waix (Zero). 

Terms: Racism (System of power that produces inequity across racialised constructions of groups of people, which is supported by ideas that assume behaviours or characteristics of people can be determined by arbitrary phenotypically visible differences such as skin colour, hair texture, or eye shape), Mana (potency/honour), Tapu (protections), Noa (balance/neutralization), Waix/Taj (equilibrium/zero).