Warm greetings to each of you in these heavy times, so full of pain and potential,

We are all deeply and differently impacted by the pandemic quietly infiltrating bodies and families around the world, by the global movement rising up against anti-black racism demanding that we finally wake up and rise up, by the extreme environmental dysregulation causing excessive and destructive wind, fire, flood, and freeze in our communities, and by the devastating economic fallout from it all.

During this rigorous time on the planet, our Golden Bridge community continues to grow our roots of resilience and our arms of alliance, in both inner and outward practical ways. Our hearts are broken open with yours. Our feet are on the ground tending to what is relevant now. Every step.

Our work aims to support and help sustain the day-to-day needs of our beloved community members and to create safer spaces for witnessing and processing our experiences right now as peoples from diverse social locations.

In that spirit, we want to share a few things we have been doing to actualize these intentions. We hope that these small windows into our community’s soul work will inspire you as you innovate in your world work. We also hope to inspire you to continue in dance and dialogue with our Golden Bridge global community.

In the past five and a half months:

1. We collaboratively created this seminal document, Social and Environmental Justice on the Dance Floor. It is inspiring conscious dance teachers and movement leaders around the world. May it serve your learning and leading. We keep learning through it too! 
2. We have been consistently resourcing funds for many families and small movement communities around the world who lost all means for income. Every one of these mighty friends is now moving into new or renovated entrepreneurial activities. For now, here are some of the stories of resilience and innovation. More current ones will continue to be shared on social media. We continue to welcome and thank you for your donations. Our monthly outreach is extensive and expensive. The pay-back is the sustainability and dignity of epic community leaders working around the clock to stay safe and to creatively serve their extended families and communities. 
3. We continue to refine our social justice teamwork within Golden Bridge. In that spirit, we have begun to study and incorporate Sociocratic principles and practices into how we run and organize our not for profit. This is part of our ongoing critical process of shifting our culture from top-down leadership to ever more collaborative leadership. 
4. This past season, we also gathered for the first time in separate race caucus groups to deepen our alliances and our awareness as BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) and as white folk. This work is foundational to our individual wellbeing and to the work of coming together in ever stronger alliance. We will continue this practice forward both within Golden Bridge and within kindred community spaces. Please consider bringing this portal to your healing, humbling, and empowerment work within your community.
    
   “Caucusing can lead to more authentic and powerful integrated groups. Both people of color and white people are needed to work collectively for racial equity, but they have different work to do – precisely because of their different experiences with and location relative to white culture and privilege. Working only in integrated groups puts an undue burden on people of color to be the teachers and obscures the responsibility of white people to do their own work. The value of caucusing is so both white people and people of color have intentional space and time to focus on their respective work to dismantle racism and advance racial equity.”

   (Text excerpted from Western States Center. 2003. Dismantling Racism: A Resource Book for Social Change Organizations. Portland, OR.; Gita Gulati-Partee and Maggie Potapchuk. 2014. “Paying Attention to WhiteCulture and Privilege: A Missing Link to Advancing Racial Equity. The Foundation Review: 6:1.)

   What is a Caucus and Why Show Up?
   If you are not familiar with the value of caucus space, please consider some of these resources. This is a concise list of what white and black (BIPOC) people gain from Racial Affinity Groups/WCGs. This is an excellent and brief overview of how White Caucus Groups contribute to racial justice. This is an excellent list of what white people stand to gain from doing White Caucus/Racial Identity group-work (pg. 4 is an excellent resource, the whole four pages are quite good). 

5. We have continued to study with epic leaders in the field of social and environmental justice. Please meet some of the master educators working with our community. Please see some of their literature, films, and websites, along with those of other inspired thought leaders in the field of social and environmental justice. 
6. We have launched the next group of SomaSource Leaders. We are honored and delighted to deepen into colleagueship with these mighty souls. They are each here to help build bridges from this world in breakdown into whatever is emerging. They are allies along the path. Reach out to them as moved. 
7. And of course, we have continued to dance weekly. Movement Mass has consistently been a space where diverse peoples can gather and simply move. This easily accessible hour of dancing has become a cherished space for many of us who need a strong and swift way to re-regulate through the dance. There will be no dance on September 20th. Going forward, we will be on Zoom on all other Sunday for the foreseeable future. Thank you for joining us. 

Our work within Golden Bridge began as a place for dance, for unwinding trauma, opening our hearts, and awakening to the unique nature of our own souls. We have changed and matured through our time together. From somatics, we journeyed deeply into the landscape of human development and rites of passage processes. We know something about growing healthy humans in community. For decades we have been dancing into the deep and delicate terrain of social and environmental justice, leaning in and learning together. We are now embedding our years of liberatory research and practice into the fabric of our work at every level. We continue to incorporate the teachings grown from our collective center as we navigate along these unprecedented social and environmental edges in these unfathomable times.

Looking ahead:

Our next creative offering into the world will be the launching of Golden Girls Global! Saturday, October 10th at 9am MST, online. Please save the date. Our hour of gathering together online will invoke the feminine in as a force of healing and love in uniquely creative and beautiful ways. New Films about the work around the world. Global Live Music. Community Contemplation.

At 9 years old, I began gathering groups of girls together to have meaningful conversations. I have never stopped doing that work. Along with 25+ other exquisite womxn, we are so excited to share with you how we have grown this simple way of being into a global movement uplifting the lives of thousands of girls and women around the world!!!

Thank you for staying close to the conversation with us. We invite you all to show up, speak up, and/or listen.

Lots moving.
Let’s keep moving.
💫
In solidarity and LOVE!
Melissa

Image: The Unbound. Gifted to Golden Bridge By Faith XLVII (https://faith47.com)

“Never forget that justice is what love looks like in public.”

~ Cornel West

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Mighty Friends,

Please pause to bathe in these images.

We have taken in so many images of violence and death as of late. Deep breath. Let’s also wash our hearts with other facets of our collective story, the miraculous and hard-earned moments when love triumphs and bodies and souls find safety in the presence of one another.

Let’s remember the love and the leadership.

We remain committed to keeping our feet in the beat, on the ground, in the real life of our beloved community members around the world. This work is rigorous. And, we are blessed to be together on these front lines. Movement truly deepens and uplifts the hard conversations.

Through it all, we will continue to dance. Please watch for the Movement Mass sign-up email on Sunday mornings. It is best to register in advance. That will help you avoid showing up late to our very short weekly event. The first few minutes are always devoted to setting a very specific tone for the day’s dance. So come on time!

Thank you to all of you who are donating to support these practical needs for many; food, sanitary products, medical care, internet, and even shelter. We feel your support behind us and all around us.

In addition to moving the life force together through the dance, in the next couple of weeks, we will share more about our generations of work dedicated to dismantling oppression with both a very intimate and an expansive perspective on systems. Thank you for your patience as we all deepen our learning and expand our loving.

This is the time love warriors.

Kneeling ~
In respect.
Melissa

P.S. Please keep studying friends!

(All photos from Golden Bridge programs & performances)

“Never forget that justice is what love looks like in public.”

~ Cornel West

Originally sent to our MailChimp list ~ please join us to keep in the loop and get notices like this in your inbox.

Dear Moving Community,

With heaviness in our hearts, fire in our bellies, and focus on the essential work at this time of challenge, we are being called to courageously channel every breath, every dollar, every creative deed to creating a more just, equitable, inclusive, and safe world.

Together we listen, we learn, we mobilize, and we pray as we push up our sleeves to meet this rugged time of initiation. Our work together continues to orient towards the potentials available at this turning point. We respectfully remember that we were made for these times, with the clear understanding that no one should ever have to face the oppressive realities that marginalized people around the world live with every day, realities that far too many of us are just waking up to see and feel.

As we navigate our way through this global rite of passage, we recognize that the threshold ordeal is unfolding in the spaces between us. Doing the daily work of seeing what is so, in order to move towards healing, reconciliation, and reparations is critical to the sustainability of all life.

Every step counts.

Below are some of the small steps we can be taking as we open our eyes, our hearts, our minds, and our hands in this critically transformational time.

• Protesting safely. Remember that we are still in the COVID pandemic. Masks do help.

• Working to change policy at every level where systemic oppression exists, which is at every level. (Ideologically, institutionally, interpersonally, and internally: See Youth On Fire: pp. 268-271.)

• Learning about one another’s socio-cultural locations. Humbly opening to our blind spots.

• Recognizing how our privileges impact the oppressive realities of our beloved community members near and far is an ongoing responsibility.

• Creating safe spaces for the essential work of repair to unfold between us is also key. Lean into the hard conversations, every day.

• Communicating our genuine sorrow for the ways we have hurt and dishonored the people of color in our lives. Moving beyond words into action.

• Sharing resources generously and consistently is also essential. This includes respectfully paying people of color for their expertise and time.

• Redistributing our resources is essential so that others can simply eat, get on-line, have access to clean water, medical care, meaningful work, well-being at every level.

• Providing access to opportunities for learning and leading to the endless number of under-resourced people in our lives.

• Moving the energy within to mobilize effectively without.

• Humbly sitting in the seat of student every step of the way, as the Way.

We may know this. But this is not only the work of now. This is the work of every day, every day that we are blessed with more breath, essentially, for the rest of our lives.

In solidarity and love, we begin to share some of the principles and practices that the Golden Bridge community has been dancing with as a diverse community for decades. We hope that this will help to inspire our collective call to action. Each week, we will share different resources.

? Our Golden Bridge Social Justice Bibliography developed over years, including books, films, and critical organizations doing the work on the social justice front lines.

? Recently received, powerful resources sent by Elder Paul Hill.

• Anti-racism resources for white folks
• Using your privilege and unlearning racism
• Learn more about the Black/White wealth gap
• Support research-based solutions to stop police violence

? Race Forward is one of the great teaching organizations. They are offering online trainings on racial justice.

? Golden Bridge’s ever-evolving Social Justice community statement.

This Sunday during Movement Mass, we will dance to unwind the traumas living in our bodies while continuing to liberate the creative courage to take action NOW and for the long haul. We will create a moving space for the exploration and expression of our anger, our grief, and our ever-deepening love. We honor life by deepening into our vulnerability and power through every blessed breath.

Please know that your tax-deductible donations, including your sliding scale Movement Mass contributions, are all supporting people of color in our global community including: six individuals together serving thousands of diverse young people; the work in three community centers serving children and Elders; educational trainings and degree programs for 12+ emerging leaders; a number of families moving into entrepreneurship; and medical care for some of our soul friends around the world. You likely have danced with most of these beloved beings.

We are supporting our colleagues’ basic needs during this crisis so that these leaders can reorient their daily work in order to do the soul work they came to do, moving out of COVID vulnerable factories into the actualization of their visions serving the world. Your financial support is greatly appreciated and needed.

“It is not upon you to finish the work.
Neither are you free to desist from it.”

~ Rabbi Tarfon

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