Our living as social beings is inherently embodied. Many projects and practices of the grove are rooted in an ethic and practice of racial justice and collective liberation. While the grove offers a space for nourishing life, it is important to express the severe challenges of Supremacy, colonialism, and structural racism that are fundamental to the foundations of contemporary society and cultural life. This takes a toll on the lives of many marginalized people, particularly black, brown, indigenous, and immigrant. Liberatory and coalition-based work requires a cosnciousness of intersectionality and of the interconnections of violence and care. Over the years, the greatest growing and deepest challenges in the vivid grove arise through work that directly addresses the challenges of racialized living and colonial supremacist structures. While consciounesses are rising, the work takes time. In one part, it requires people such as myself, with relative privilege, with white privilege, with access to education and resources, to commit to this liberation work longterm. Racial justice work lays bare where one is holding on to learned and internalized patterns of inequity. This is embodied and enacted, and it is through embodied action and cooperation that windows can open that can produce the kinds of imagination that allow for practical and visionary change.
