2022 Offerings
Black Healing: Unapologetically Black-n-Bipolar
Thursday, July 28th @ 12-1:30 PM PT / 3-4:30 PM ET [Duration: 90 minutes]
Join us as we discuss the pains and gains of being Black-n-Bipolar at the intersection of other identities. Together we will cultivate relationships of trust, and build a safe space to be our authentic self. We invite you to share your stories and lived experience being Black-n-Bipolar with each other in order to feel seen, heard, and witnessed. Participants will also have an opportunity to choose a medium or mix mediums (theater, dance, song, poem, etc.) in groups to write a collective narrative that has a healing element.
Note for participation: Workshop for Black folx who identify along the bipolar spectrum
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About The FacilitatorKelly ‘Kel’ George (she/her/ella) is an international public speaker, facilitator, and emotional wellness coach speaking loud and proud about mental health, emotional intelligence, and bipolar neurodiversity. Brooklyn, NY – Lenape land is her stomping grounds. As a Black-Latinx queer, bipolar neurodivergent, with roots in Panama and Trinidad salsa, calypso, and soca music are the language of her hips. Kel is risk positive and lives for blood-pumping, heart-pounding, daring activities from skydiving to kickboxing. Learn more here.
Food, Access Intimacy, and Community Care. Click here to register
Presented by Lydia X. Z. Brown
May 24th 4-6 PM PST / 7-9 PM EST
Sick, mad, neurodivergent, and disabled people often struggle with food. Making good, safe food can be difficult or impossible with limited time, spoons, space, money, and knowledge. Many in our communities have precarious work and money, and many are impoverished. Grocery stores, delivery services, and meal kits are often expensive and inadequate for meeting disability-specific and culturally appropriate dietary needs. In this workshop, we’ll talk about making/sharing food as access intimacy and community care, and ways sick, mad, neurodivergent, and disabled people can share strategies and spoons for delicious food as care and resistance.
Lydia X. Z. Brown is an abolitionist advocate, organizer, attorney, strategist, and writer whose work focuses on interpersonal and state violence against disabled people at the intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality, faith, language, and nation. Their other interests include carcerality and institutional violence, asexuality as queerness, algorithmic harm as an accelerating force of systemic injustice, and the ableism-racism nexus of transracial and transnational adoption. Lydia is an adjunct lecturer in the Women’s and Gender Studies Program and the Disability Studies Program at Georgetown University. They are also an adjunct professorial lecturer in American Studies in the Department of Critical Race, Gender, and Culture Studies at American University. Lydia founded the Fund for Community Reparations for Autistic People of Color’s Interdependence, Survival, and Empowerment, a project of collective care, redistributive justice, and mutual aid, and they are currently creating Disability Justice Wisdom Tarot. Often, their most important work has no title, job description, or funding, and probably never will.
Resourcing our (DJ) Movements
Presented by Kiyomi Fujikawa, Co-Director of Third Wave Fund
May 5th 5-7 PM PST / 8-10 PM EST
What would it look like to have our movements fully resourced? How much money is out there and how can we break down the barriers that prevent money from flowing to the places where it’s most needed and best positioned to make change? Join Kiyomi Fujikawa, Co-Director of Third Wave Fund, for an overview of philanthropy. Kiyomi will talk through the current landscape of philanthropy, discuss the state of Disability Justice funding, and offer some insights on what this funding may look like in the future. She will also share her perspective on some key questions when thinking about engaging with philanthropy. Please note: this will not be a space to prospect any individual funders, but more talk about the funding landscape.
Kiyomi Fujikawa (she/her) is a Seattle-based, mixed-race queer trans femme who has been involved with movements to end gender- and state-based violence since 2001. Her political home is with queer and trans communities of color and organizing to prevent and respond to intimate partner violence.
Kiyomi is currently on the board of Groundswell Fund and is a Grantmakers United for Trans Communities (GUTC) Leadership Development Fellow. She was most recently a Senior Program Associate at the Fund for Trans Generations at Borealis Philanthropy, and the Queer Network Program Coordinator at API Chaya.
She is also an avid lover of speculative fiction, noodles, astrology (Sag Sun, Cancer Rising, Libra Moon), feelings, and do-it-yourself scavenger hunts.
Click here to learn more about Kiyomi and Third Wave Fund
Workshops
Anti-Oppressive Mental Health 101
Join Fireweed Collective for an overview of the foundations of the mental health system and the Disability Justice and Healing Justice movements. We will take a look at the histories and core beliefs of each approach, and how they manifest in the delivery and outcomes of mental health care.
*Open Workshop – March 4th, 1-3 PM PST / 4-6 PM EST
*Workshop for BIPOC Folks – March 11th, 1-3 PM PST / 4-6 PM EST
*Workshop for Mental Health/Healing Justice workers and providers – March 30th, 4 -7 PM PST / 7-10 PM EST
Disability Justice 101
For folks that completed Anti-Oppressive Mental Health 101
*Open Space – April 1st – 1 PM PST – 4 PM EST
*BIPOC Space – April 5th – 1 PM PST – 4 PM EST
*Workshop for Mental Health/Healing Justice workers and providers –April 27 4 PM PST / 7 PM EST
IMPORTANT!
All workshops are Mutual Education Spaces, interaction and participation are required.
Groups
Earthseed: Healing thru African Traditional Religions
This is a Black folks only space facilitated by Thia. Thursday, April 28th; 4p (PST) / 7p (EST) Register
- QTBIPOC Support Space. Mondays at 5 PM PST / 8 PM EST
- Live To Tell. A group for survivors of sexual violence. Fridays 5 PM PST / 8 PM EST
- Healing Verses: A Healing Justice Approach To Collective Poetry Crafting For BIPOC & Latinx Folks. Inspired By Trelani Michelle – Tuesdays 10 AM PST / 1 PM EST
- Last Night a DJ Saved My Life. Black people leaning into media and creativity to vision a better world – Wednesdays 3 PM PST / 6 PM EST
- Spooned Out & Plugged In – A Group For Disabled/Chronically Ill/Neurodivergent Folks – Saturdays 1 PM PST / 4 PM EST
- Spooned Out & Plugged In – A Group For BIPOC Disabled/Chronically Ill/Neurodivergent Folks – Saturdays 11 AM PST / 2 PM EST
Webinars
Click here to read the presenter’s bios
TF Is A Safety Team? Presented by Elliott Fukui
January 27th @ 5-7 PM PST / 8-10 PM EST
A safety team is a network of people that come together to support someone/each other in wellness and in crisis. Safety teams are a community-based creation of mad/neurodivergent/disabled/chronically ill folks that center people’s agency and self-determination and divest from police and psych wards. Through safety teams, we keep us safe and alive. Join Elliott Fukui to learn the basics and the logistics of assembling and running a safety team.
Dismantling The Cycle Of Romance. Presented by Dean Spade
February 16th @ 5-7 PM PST / 8-10 PM EST
In a previous Fireweed Collective webinar, Dean Spade joined us to unpack the Romance Myth, what toxic lies it tells us, and how it impacts our lives, relationships, and social movements. This session will explore the common cycle of romance, which can occur in sexual relationships as well as friendships or relationships with organizations. How do the cycle of selection, positive projection, and growing attachment, disappointment, and conflict happen? What does it have to do with our early experiences in life and our drives to heal them as we grow? How can awareness of the common features of this cycle help us take care of ourselves and each other when it is playing out and find more capacity to align our actions with our values? Join us for a conversation about the cycle of romance and how we can navigate it with skill and care.