The Body Is Not An Apology: The Impact of Sexism and Sizeism on Our Bodies and Health

Image of Sonya Renee Taylor

Community Leaders in Health Equity (CLHE) and Transformative Alliances LLC are pleased to invite you to attend a virtual talk and question-and-answer session with Sonya Renee Taylor on Wednesday, October 6, 2021 from 6-8 p.m. MST.
 
About our speaker
Sonya Renee Taylor is the Founder and Radical Executive Officer of The Body Is Not An Apology, a digital media and education company with content reaching half a million people each month. As an award-winning performance poet, activist, and transformational leader, Sonya addresses sizeism, sexism, racism, body terrorism, and radical self-love through an intersectional lens. Sonya has mesmerized audiences across the globe with her powerful and deeply human message. Amongst other accomplishments, Sonya is the author of The Body Is Not An Apology: The Power of Radical Self Love, The Ultimate Puberty Book for Girls: Celebrate Your Body (and Its Changes, Too!), the poetry collection A Little Truth on Your Shirt, and she is co-editor of International Handbook of Fat Studies.
 
Format
After an introduction, Sonya Renee Taylor will give a 45- to 60-minute talk. Afterward, there will be 30-45 minutes dedicated to a moderated question-and-answer session with Sonya Renee Taylor and attendees.
 
Registration information
Click here to register on Eventbrite. This online-only event will take place on Zoom. Zoom does not require registrants to set up a user account, but advance registration is required. Registration is free, but space is limited. This event will be recorded.
 
Please indicate during registration if you will need simultaneous interpretation or have other accommodation requests. The deadline for such requests is Tuesday, September 28, 2021. Simultaneous Spanish interpretation will be available. Automatic live-captioning will be available in English.
 
If you have questions about this event, please contact Andy Coco. We look forward to having you join us online the evening of October 6, 2021!

Invitation to Apply and Participate: 18-Month Health Equity Curriculum

Image collage of CLHE program

We invite interested organizations and community groups to apply for the Community Leaders in Health Equity (CLHE) program!  It’s an 18-month intensive, coordinated equity and health equity curriculum that is devised & conducted by Transformative Alliances LLC and funded & organized by The Colorado Trust (a health equity foundation).  The program spans the state of Colorado, focusing on the connection between anti-oppression principles and health (in)equity with a particular concentration on racism, classism, sexism, nationalism, and language oppression.  We think it’s a phenomenal opportunity!  Be sure to apply before or by Friday, February 21, 2020.  More information about CLHE can be found here.

This is the second round of CLHE.  Ultimately, The Colorado Trust will choose seven (7) organizations from across the state, each of whom will be responsible for recruiting and supporting 12-14 participants to join (in addition to 2 organizational representatives).  This 18-month program includes multi-day convenings, workshops, ongoing project work, and more.  The goal is to use the lens of health equity to support the growth of a group of individuals with strong ties in the community and an existing interest in equity to gain a deeper, more meaningful analysis of power, privilege, and oppression as it relates to their communities and themselves.  Additionally, it is intended to give the group of leaders a set of tools to be able to better apply and act upon this knowledge to support and implement health equity changes in their communities.

Applicants do not need to have their group of 12-14 participants identified in order to apply. Grantees will receive specific instruction, guidance, and support in recruiting their group – which should reflect a prioritization of people of color, immigrants/refugees/asylees, people who are living in poverty or have low incomes, women, lesbian/gay/bisexual/queer people, people who are transgender or gender non-conforming, and people with disabilities.  

Applicants may be a single organization or a collaborative group of organizations from the same region of Colorado. Collaborative groups are strongly encouraged to apply and will be given priority consideration. 

If you are interested in applying for the grant, here is a link to the informational webinar recently conducted about CLHE. The Request for Applications (RFA) and all of the subsequent details can be found here.  Again, be sure to apply before or by Friday, February 21, 2020.  We hope you will consider joining us!

The Zombie Apocalypse: Where We Are Right Now

Zombie Photo

Dara Burwell, Coffee Shop

Dara Burwell

I understand why people are afraid of zombies.  I am afraid of zombies.

But, no supernatural/superhuman element or condition need be present for people to be that kind of terrifying.  We, on our own, without the aid of morphing into zombies, vampires, werewolves, or any other altered form, are a truly and remarkably terrifying species.

Just being as we are, mindlessly conducting ourselves, we wreak an engulfing havoc upon one another, and as it is, the entire natural world.  Going about our lives thoughtlessly enough, cruelly enough, frozen and self-involved enough that we are, in our current state of living, indeed zombies.

Profoundly dangerous. Generation after generation after generation.

The only other point of convergence I share with zombie enthusiasts is that we need a cure.  Or, more precisely, we must remedy ourselves. For the spiritual reasons that called us into human existence, I believe we began this way by design.  But for the shot term.  We were always meant to achieve freedom, healing, and transcendence – for ourselves and for the infinite entwinement of All Existence, whose pulse we share.  We are overdue.  And we cannot continue on this way.  There is no need – not the slightest cause – for this suffering.

The solution we seek is here – is now.  Has been here – has been now.  Over the centuries of human existence, through the efforts of our ancestors extending back and back and up and up through and beyond us, we have constructed that solution.  Continue to construct it as we construct this world.  There is a completely different paradigm.  A different, zombieless way of life.  Like a parallel universe.  No mirror image to this one, but real.  And we must learn how to be powerful enough, whole enough, complete enough to step into it, or to bring it spilling into and over our existence.

This does not require being superhuman, though we can be that.  It requires only, so far as I can tell, that we bring our whole and integrated selves.  Be willing to give up the scraps, the anchors, the things we use to squeeze out pleasure and get by for something much larger and more transformative. This is no easy task for a species created and mired in a preoccupation for survival at all costs, even when much more is available to us.  But our sense of powerlessness is so great that we persist on this way.  Surviving.  And our survival mechanisms focus on the immediate – often brilliant for a flash or a momentary stretch – then increasingly deadly as we use them exhaustively for all the wrong occasions and all the wrong reasons.  And instead of protecting us, instead of helping us to survive – they produce the very poison we seek to escape.  Becoming a key source that undermines our survival and wellbeing, personally, familially, globally – impacting All Existence.