In this episode of The Porch, we sat down with kai lumumba barrow and Serena Sebring, two forever SONG members and community organizers, to discuss ways to create safer environments for our people as authoritarianism ramps up in the United States. With years of activism championing prison abolition and Black freedom movements, these two brilliant organizers discussed what security looks like when it is rooted in Black feminist praxis, queer liberation and collaborative practice. Kai and Serena remind us of the ways our communities have always worked to keep each other safer like making sure our kids are home before the streetlights turn on, to secret codes to warn of danger, or simply crewing up for Souls to Polls. This episode invites us all to make safety plans, build relationships with our neighbors and be aware of the ways technology has become a surveillance tool for our enemies.

Bios

kai lumumba barrow 

For over 40 years kai lumumba barrow has worked with numerous organizations on campaigns and projects to stop jail expansion; confront police violence; free political prisoners, and experiment with abolitionist models for shrinking carceral logics. A self-taught artist, barrow is interested in the praxis of radical imagination, experimenting with abolition as an aesthetic vernacular. Her sprawling paintings, multimedia collages, environmental installations, and found object sculptures incorporate images, materials, sites and ideas that perform queer, Black feminist theory.

portfolio: www.kailbarrow.com
website: www.galleryofthestreets.org

Serena Sebring 

Serena Sebring, Executive Director, is a queer Black feminist, mother, organizer, and educator. She brings leadership and vision to the coalition, builds the capacity of a growing statewide progressive ecosystem, and coordinates resources and staff capacity in their service. Since 2005, she has woven and nurtured relationships across the state with organizers, artists, policy-makers, workers, parents, and caregivers on front porches, in church basements and city council rooms, at the statehouse, and in the streets.

www.blueprintnc.org

Resources

Slam Hunter College

Mumia Abu-Jamal

Assata Shakur

Critical Resistance

Duke Lacrosse Rape Case.

https://www.byp100.org/

Souls to the Polls 

Equality NC, 

COINTELPRO

Phone tree 

Maroonage

Cuss and Discuss

Study Questions

1. From Safety to “Being Safer”

How does adopting a “being safer” mindset change the way you design campaigns, actions, and organizational structures?

2. Strategic Risk Assessment

What are the highest-priority risks in your current organizing context—and what concrete protocols do you have (or need) to address them?

3. Demilitarizing Movement Security

What would it look like to “queer” or demilitarize our security culture while still taking threats seriously?

4. Surveillance & Communication

What communication practices should we shift to reduce vulnerability?

5. Relationship as Infrastructure

How are you investing in relationship-building (neighbors, families, cross-movement allies), and how could those relationships function as real safety infrastructure in a crisis?