In solidarity with Whitney Spencer’s “An Open Letter & A Call for True Healing Justice”

Kindred Southern Healing Justice Collective (conceived in 2005) is a Black feminist led, multiracial, intergenerational southern based collective of healers, health practitioners, birth workers, therapists, social workers and organizers seeking to transform generational trauma by building practices of safety and wellness that sustain our collective emotional/spiritual/physical/psychic and environmental well being.

We would like to show gratitude to Whitney Spencer for standing in courage and truth in her open letter to Irresistible Movements (formerly Healing Justice Podcast). Our collective has tried privately to make interventions when KW and the Irresistible Podcast moved in problematic ways in the past. The email that Whitney refers to in her open letter was written and signed by our collective as an attempt to make clear the ways in which KW’s actions were inappropriate, including sending an email to colleagues and members of our community stating that Kindred and our members were involved in their work in ways that were blatantly false. We can only assume that the “mean girl” referenced in the open letter is also a Black woman member of our collective; yet another act that is demeaning and racist towards Black women. We also attempted to intervene on the use of Toni Cade Bambara’s quote to rename the podcast in ways that felt unprincipled and ungrounded, and quite frankly, appropriative.

We stand with Whitney in naming KW’s disrespect of Black women, and the erasure and co-optation of our work as unacceptable, and in conflict with the foundational principles of healing justice, which holds racial justice, disability justice, transformative justice and reproductive justice at its core. Kindred Collective calls on KW to remove herself from leadership in Irresistible Movements, and for an accountability process with all the Black women and other people of color who have been harmed, yet have remained silent. We ask for any reference to our name and the podcast featuring Cara Page and Susan Raffo be removed from the website immediately. We also challenge you to change the name of the podcast based on its appropriation, or give full credit to Toni Cade Bambara and do your due diligence by asking permission from her estate as referenced in Whitney’s article. Thank you Whitney for leading the way.

In deep appreciation, Kindred Southern Healing Justice Collective Core Leadership:

Tamika Middleton

Cara Page

Sokari Brown

Kate Shapiro

Rita Valenti

Sonali Sadequee

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