On this page, you will find a list of activists and organizations whose work has been central to the thought behind the Critical Restoration Geographies project thus far. Each name is hyperlinked to a site where you can send funds. Below each name is a brief description of their work. We highly encourage those participating in the group and are financially able to contribute funds. This is the least to be done for their labor, knowledge, and commitments to creating just, livable futures. Thank you!
People
Alice Wong / The Disability Visibility Project
"Alice Wong (she/her) is a disabled activist, media maker, and consultant. She is the Founder and Director of the Disability Visibility Project, a community partnership with StoryCorps and an online community dedicated to creating, sharing and amplifying disability media and culture created in 2014." Her interview with indigenous disabled activist Kera Sherwood-O'Regan based in Aotearoa NZ, who you can support here, is featured in the first meander.
"Mingus is a writer, educator and trainer for transformative justice and disability justice. She is a queer physically disabled korean transracial and transnational adoptee raised in the Caribbean...Mia has been involved in transformative justice work for over 15 years. She is a prison abolitionist and a survivor who believes that we must move beyond punishment, revenge and criminalization if we are ever to effectively break generational cycles of violence and create the world our hearts long for."
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha: Venmo @Leah-ps
"Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarsinha (she/they) is a queer disabled autistic nonbinary femme writer, educator and disability/transformative justice worker." They have authored and co-edited nine books and has been a "lead artist with the disability justice performance collective Sins Invalid since 2009."
"I'm a writer, an artist, a historian, a teacher and mentor. I'm a also an activist, a healer, a revolutionary. I tell stories with medicinal powers. Herbalists who collect wild plants to make medicine call it wildcrafting. I wildcraft the details of the world, of history, of people's lives, and concentrate them through art in order to shift consciousness, to change how we think about ourselves, each other and the world."
"adrienne maree brown is:
– a writer
– a pleasure activist
– a sci-fi/Octavia Butler scholar
– a facilitator (non active)
– a speaker/singer (including wedding singer) and
– a doula
living in Detroit."
Organizations and Collectives
"Climate Justice Alliance (CJA) formed in 2013 to create a new center of gravity in the climate movement by uniting frontline communities and organizations into a formidable force. Our translocal organizing strategy and mobilizing capacity is building a Just Transition away from extractive systems of production, consumption and political oppression, and towards resilient, regenerative and equitable economies. "
"Movement Generation Justice & Ecology Project inspires and engages in transformative action towards the liberation and restoration of land, labor, and culture. We are rooted in vibrant social movements led by low-income communities and communities of color committed to a Just Transition away from profit and pollution and towards healthy, resilient and life-affirming local economies."
"KFTC is a grassroots organization of thousands of members across Kentucky. We have local chapters and at-large members in many counties. We use a set of core strategies, from leadership development to communications and voter empowerment, to impact a broad range of issues, including coal and water, new energy and transition, economic justice and voting rights."
"Sins Invalid is a disability justice based performance project that incubates and celebrates artists with disabilities, centralizing artists of color and LGBTQ / gender-variant artists as communities who have been historically marginalized." An episode of the project's podcast, "Cripping the Anthropocene" is featured in the first meander.
Native Youth Sexual Health Network
“The Native Youth Sexual Health Network (NYSHN) is an organization by and for Indigenous youth that works across issues of sexual and reproductive health, rights and justice throughout the United States and Canada.” NYSHN and alter-embodiments are discussed in one of our meander readings by Michelle Murphy, “What Can’t a Body Do?”.
Aamjiwnaang Solidarity Against Chemical Valley
“Stand with the community of Aamjiwnaang First Nation in their fight against environmental racism in Canada's toxic Chemical Valley”
“Welcome to the Aamjiwnaang Solidarity website. The purpose of this site is to create a forum for communication and action around the toxic reality of living in Chemical Valley. Through this forum, Aamjiwnaang First Nation community members can share their experiences, and we can increase wider public awareness of this unacceptable situation of environmental racism.”
“This project is an Indigenous-led study of one of the world's oldest refineries. We hope this project will be of service to the Aamjiwnaang community, on whose land this refinery is located. It may also be of interest to educators, the general public and other land protectors. We have created this project with consultation from the Aamjiwanaang Environmental Committee, and have used an ongoing community review process to share and receive feedback about the project and its contents from interested community members. This project is nothing without the direction and contribution of community members, and we invite anyone interested to connect, correct, and contribute in ways big and small.”
"Whenever we try to envision a world without war, without violence, without prisons, without capitalism, we are engaging in an exercise of speculative fiction. Organizers and activists struggle tirelessly to create and envision another world, or many other worlds, just as science fiction does... so what better venue for organizers to explore their work than through writing original science fiction stories? Co-editors adrienne maree brown and Walidah Imarisha offer us Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements, as a way to uncover the truths buried in the fantastical – and to inject a healthy dose of the fantastical into our search for truth."
"Ask An Amazon is the brainchild of Dr. Chelsea Mikael Frazier, PhD (click here for Dr. Frazier’s full bio and professional portfolio). The initiative developed out of her work as a Black Feminist Eco-critic and her desire to share that work with curious and questioning folks within and outside the academy.
It’s no secret that our physical environments are sustaining more and more stress everyday. Many of us want to do our part in our professional and personal lives to help create more sustainable worlds, but aren’t sure where to start. In her years of researching, writing about, and teaching the OGs of cultural commentary—Black feminist writers, activists, and artists—Dr. Frazier has found that in order to understand how to change our environments, we must first do A LOT of (un)learning in order to change ourselves. Join our E-Learning community to support and be supported by Ask An Amazon’s creative and intellectual offerings."