We welcome Jody Chan and Corina Fadel as they join Denise Shanté Brown in designing and dreaming liberatory cultures of care with Design Justice Network members.

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Care & Healing Justice at DJN

In the Design Justice Network, our roots include a commitment to care, disability justice, and healing justice, stemming from our origins in the Allied Media Projects Network; these frameworks have informed us since our beginnings.

More recently, with the formation of Care Circles, our network has begun to increase our focus on care. We believe in equitable access to systems and structures of care, and have realized a deep need to support care work, to meet everyone's access needs, and to foster interdependence, reciprocity, and rest within our own membership, local nodes, working groups, staff and contractors, and steering committee.

As we develop this work, we also want to create and circulate concrete resources to help other movement organizations and networks fully commit to cultures of care.

The Care Pod Team

Meet Jody Chan

On a blue-to-yellow pastel gradient background, this slide shares Jody Chan’s pronouns as they/them, their DJN role as a Care Pod Collaborator and location as Toronto/Tkaronto. Their sun/moon/rising signs are listed as Libra/Capricon/Sagittarius, then the things that nurture and nourish them (poetry, puppies, sweet treats, caring check-ins, meandering conversations, primary colours, soft textures, sick/disabled queer spaces, homemade food, picnics, potlucks, oceans and mountains.) A photo of Jody shows them sitting in front of a desk as they gaze up thoughtfully.

Bio Share

Jody Chan (they/them) is a writer, drummer, organizer, and therapist based in Toronto/Tkaronto. They are also a performing member and instructor with RAW Taiko Drummers. Their political work focuses on care, healing, and transformative justice, and they have organized with groups such as the Disability Justice Network of Ontario, Tkaronto/Toronto Mutual Aid, BIPOC Grief Circles, and the Toronto Street Medics Collective.

Jody feels most whole and aligned when creating and holding spaces for sick/disabled queer kin to be nourished and cherished; spaces where the dualities of fierceness and care, nurturance and resistance, can co-exist. They can be found online at https://www.jodychan.com/, and offline in libraries and dog parks.

Three questions I'm holding for this Care Pod work and journey:

What practices, rituals, containers, and principles will we design and embody together as we nurture cultures of care on a collective scale?
How will we dream new dreams of collective care and liberation, while honouring the Black, Indigenous, sick, Mad, disabled, queer, trans lineages of healing justice that have led us here?
How will we engage in the messy, vulnerable work of experimenting with new structures and practices (knowing that plans will change, knowing we will make mistakes) while holding ourselves and each other with the utmost care?

Meet Denise Shanté Brown

On a blue-to-yellow pastel gradient background, this slide shares Denise Shanté’s pronouns as she/her, her DJN role as a Care Pod Lead and locations as Baltimore, México and Colombia. Their sun/moon/rising signs are listed as Leo/Libra/Scorpio, then the things that nurture and nourish them (Plant medicine, tiny objects, nature, grief work, Black feminist texts, Morning Pages, poetry, well-curated playlists, low-carb snacks, deep check-ins, ceramics, ancestral connection and travel, dancing, therapy.) A photo of Denise Shanté shows her smiling broadly as she looks directly at the camera.

Bio Share

Denise Shanté Brown (she/her) is a queer, sober and disabled holistic design strategist, creative co-conspirator and intuitive writer. As the daughter and grand daughter of poets, teachers, sacred space builders and caregivers, her heartwork lies in designing communal spaces and experiences where communities can nurture their dreams for care, healing and justice into existence. Known for being a facilitator of the magical and meaningful, Denise Shanté is also a published writer of words, previous Steering Committee Member and current Care Pod Lead with the Design Justice Network, Weaver at the Center for Liberatory Practice & Poetry, and the Founding Director of Black Womxn Flourish.

She takes delight in channeling her gifts to guide the process of transformation with groups focused on collaborative creativity and collective liberation. That pleasure is rooted in over 10 years of expanding her perspective of design and bridging design’s relationship to healing, body knowledge, ritual, and radical imagination. Denise Shanté approaches her multi-passionate practice with an unapologetic dedication to designing futures with the tender power of care and (re)imagining how we can collectively gather to rest, dream, build, and write new worlds. You can uncover more about her practice at deniseshantebrown.com.

Three questions I'm holding for this Care Pod work and journey:

What multiple definitions of care will we generate and choose to embody as we build nurturing relationships within and beyond Design Justice Network?
What shape will Design Justice take while in relationship and study with the Black, Southern, Indigenous, Queer, and Disabled Feminists who've dreamed up Healing Justice and the many multiple-identity holding visionaries who continue reimagining collective care?
What ways of being will we leave behind and what/who will we bring with us in order to create more portals of possibility?

Meet Corina Fadel

On a blue-to-yellow pastel gradient background, this slide shares Corina Fadel’s pronouns as she/they, her role as a Care Pod Collaborator and location as Detroit & Boston. Their sun/moon/rising signs are listed as Pisces/Leo/Virgo, then the things that nurture and nourish them (Water in all the ways. House Music. Dancing. Plants and greeting them in their wild, and being blessed by their magic and medicine. Teas and broths. Prayers from before and beyond and from the depths within me. Writing. Reading.) A photo of Corina shows her looking directly at the camera, styled in a light tan shawl against a dark blue background.

Bio Share

Corina Fadel (she/her/they) is an herbalist, a bodyworker, consultant, seamstress growing in craft; a writer, artist dancer and designer. Corina comes from a deep community of healers, artists, organizers, dreamers, designers, and folks unafraid to live their truth. As a consultant, Corina seeks to carve out space of deep connection and ways of moving through brave and bold questions.

Corina has spent 16 years in grassroots organizing work as well as over 15 years (and a lifetime of growing up in a local restaurant/club), both of which have been teachers in listening and care.

Three questions I'm holding for this Care Pod work and journey:

How do we honor the legacies of care that have carried us to this point? What practices and ways can we gather from our past as both needle and thread as we mend and make our way through this world and this work?
How does care invite spirit into spaces it is not usually called or named?
How can the question of care gain value when it becomes inherent in our practice, rather than integrated? What happens when we move through life where care is inherent, and not integrated in our practice of living?*

*this is in conversation with Nu Goteh's words at opening of deem symposium, MCA Chicago, 03/04/23