When I was doing my clinical training…

the only official mention of systemic oppression was isolated to one course at the very end of the program, complete with trauma-porn and overly conceptual, intellectualized conversations of structural violence. The one and only representation of me and my people was in this one course - and the only story being told was one of massive exploitation within a global context. 

Struggling to understand the emotional impact I was experiencing from this, my body recontextualized my experiences and began to language what I didn’t know I knew.

For the next almost decade, I poured over activists’ blogs, books, and trainings - so much so that I started teaching at clinical graduate programs. Determined not to replicate my experience for my students, I spent 100s of hours every year to curate and revamp my syllabus, the learning materials, and the conditions for exploring these complex and often confronting realities of our work… 

…For the next almost decade, I poured over activists’ blogs, books, and trainings - so much so that I started teaching at clinical graduate programs. Determined not to replicate my experience for my students, I spent 100s of hours every year to curate and revamp my syllabus, the learning materials, and the conditions for exploring these complex and often confronting realities of our work. 

But even then, I couldn’t shake the limitations that came with teaching institutionally. Limitations that made generative conversation outside the threat of academia impossible. Limitations that restricted the safety of the space required to have fiercely transformative and lovingly challenging conversations.

Through solidarity + dreaming, Bhupie and I connected to co-conspire a more radical way to resist the colonialism and capitalism of our profession, a more radical way to teach that actually works.

There were just too many of us experiencing the same thing. So, we got together and made the program we needed.