July 9, 2020
Three of our members participated in the Oversight Committee meeting today. You can watch the meeting on the City of Norman’s YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/wcmGmkKdbvg
Thank you to all Norman residents who wrote to the City Clerk and to Kate Bierman with comments and ideas!
If you only have time to watch a few minutes of the video, watch the final 3 minutes when our member Ashley gives some beautiful final words starting at the 2:09:00 mark:
"I would like to offer a closing statement on behalf of NC4RJ… I want to read a passage from Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good written and gathered by @adriennemareebrown , and for this passage I would like everyone to think of pleasure in terms of freedom from fear, security, accessibility:"
“Part of the reason so few of us have a healthy relationship with pleasure is because the small minority of our species hoards the excess of resources, creating a false scarcity and trying to sell us joy, sell us back to ourselves. Pleasure is not one of the spoils of capitalism. It is what our bodies, our human systems are structured for. It is the aliveness and awakening, the gratitude and humility, the joy and celebration of being miraculous.”*
Thank you to all Norman residents who wrote to the City Clerk and to Kate Bierman with comments and ideas!
If you only have time to watch a few minutes of the video, watch the final 3 minutes when our member Ashley gives some beautiful final words starting at the 2:09:00 mark:
"I would like to offer a closing statement on behalf of NC4RJ… I want to read a passage from Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good written and gathered by @adriennemareebrown , and for this passage I would like everyone to think of pleasure in terms of freedom from fear, security, accessibility:"
“Part of the reason so few of us have a healthy relationship with pleasure is because the small minority of our species hoards the excess of resources, creating a false scarcity and trying to sell us joy, sell us back to ourselves. Pleasure is not one of the spoils of capitalism. It is what our bodies, our human systems are structured for. It is the aliveness and awakening, the gratitude and humility, the joy and celebration of being miraculous.”*
“I want to reemphasize that Norman Citizens for Racial Justice, we are not like some instagram ghost writers, we are professionals, professors, historians, I myself am an equity and diversity consultant, we’re very professional and well informed, we have our own research team. In these processes, while we want to undo the ego that is attached to some of these harmful infrastructures, we don’t have time for those issues of ego to be mitigated so in the mean while it’s going to be incredibly paramount that people like NC4RJ and professionals are invited to this table to continue contributing to the conversation while those who are mostly in power and mostly privileged are learning to understand and mitigate their own white privilege. I just want to thank everyone again, I know a lot of our NC4RJ members, we come from marginalized communities, we have issues of accessibility, I know myself I’ve received an eviction notice more than once during quarantine so, a lot of us are dealing with these very issues that we’re advocating for so I just really want to reemphasize my gratitude for my colleagues at NC4RJ and what they contribute here, and that we are ready, we are always ready to help with these issues, so please continue to reach out to us. Thank you.”
