Pleasure Activism & Story-based Strategy: A Conversation with Jess St. Louis & Lawrence Barriner
To kick this off, let’s share our names, how we relate to CSS, where we live, and what led us to pick up Pleasure Activism.
Hi! My name is Lawrence Barriner II and I’m on staff with CSS as the Network Engagement Manager. I went to the 2015 Advanced Training (shoutout 2015s!) and also had a summer 2018 Fellowship working under the inimitable Felicia Perez before coming on as a staff person in Oct 2018. I live on occupied Massachusett and Wampanoag territory and grew up in the US South. I picked up Pleasure Activism because I think adrienne is a full on prophet. I won Octavia’s Brood, a sci-fi anthology adrienne maree brown co-edited with Walidah Imarisha, at the 2015 Advanced Training but gave it away (what was I THINKING!??!). I picked up another copy in 2017 and have been hooked on everything adrienne writes, says, and does ever since. I pre-ordered Pleasure Activism the first day that was possible.
The authors, Lawrence and Jess, modeling some of the latest CSS swag.
Hey y’all! I’m Jess St. Louis, and I went to the 2016 Advanced Training and have been involved with CSS since 2017 as a practitioner-trainer and as a network associate. I live in Greensboro, NC, on historic Cheraw and Siouan land and current landbase of the Ocanneechi Band of the Saponi Nation. I picked up Pleasure Activism because I’ve long been a fan of and been a learner from adrienne’s writing — and was really curious about the book because so many people were talking about it, especially at this past year’s Advanced Training. I was also drawn to it because I’ve long been interested in how we stay in movement work for the long haul given the enormous and intensifying political conditions we live in.
In the book, adrienne shares the phrase “we are what we practice”, from her learnings with somatics. If moving towards pleasure-full lives is a practice, what are your regular (daily/weekly/monthly) pleasure practices? What brings you joy?
“Pleasure Activism” by adrienne maree brown
Lawrence: This response is definitely at one of my edges, but I'm going to lean into radical transparency, knowing that silencing and controlling pleasure are two of settler colonial capitalism’s best weapons. At adrienne's recommendation, I try to have an orgasm every day. I do this in honor of my queer ancestors who were denied expression of their truest pleasures. I think of it as "catching up,” heh. I block off one night per week, minimum three hours, as a solo date night. I either take myself out to dinner ($13-25) with a book, my journal, and my thoughts (and, let’s be honest, a cocktail), or I make myself a quick dinner at home, head to a local coffee shop and write. I also go on a one hour walk on Saturday mornings in the arboretum near my house and try to spend at least ten minutes at the bonsai collection. They remind me to learn and be humble. Some of those tiny trees are 10 human generations old; how much wisdom is there in a being that has lived for 10 of my lifetimes?! One of my teachers, Gibrán Rivera, introduced me to the magic of floating (aka sensory deprivation tanks) and now I float at least monthly. Finally, I find tons of pleasure in spending time with my nibblings (an endearing term I learned from adrienne for nieces, nephews, and nonbinary children of my siblings and friends). At the time of our first draft of this piece, I count 13 of them. They are between the ages of one week and 15 years and they give me so much joy and hope for the future. As a queer human who will likely never have biokids, there is nothing in the world like the first time a young human remembers your name or when they ask for you when you're not around.
Jess: For daily practice, I do a centering a couple of times a day, which is a way for me to get more present to what is, open towards what is to come, and connected to myself and the people who help me thrive as well as to what matters most to me. I feel really energized when I am connected to that sense of purpose. I try to listen to music or play guitar at least once a day as a resilience and joy practice. A couple times a week or more, depending on my energy, choosing and picking out jewelry and cute clothes to wear or intentionally choosing is a joyful practice. There’s something in taking on a queered femininity or soft butch masculinity that feels like a sexy and playful armor, with lineages of resistance and resilience in a world that hates on explicit queerness and desire through gender expression. On a weekly basis, I spend time with friends — I make sure I get social time in with my people. On a monthly basis, I try to travel to see loved ones in other cities or spend time with my nibblings in the place I am. I also try to make myself and another person a cocktail monthly — there’s something so special about trying to create something they would enjoy and the deep pleasure that comes from succeeding there. And whenever I can, I work hard to take in sunshine and relish in it, particularly in these short winter days, and slow down to sunset.
What do you think is the connection between story-based strategy & CSS’s work and Pleasure Activism? Do you think we practice pleasure activism in our individual and collective work?
“...one of the biggest connections between story-based strategy and pleasure activism is the way that both are an offering and a set of practices that help us expand the political imagination for what could be possible in our own lives...”
Jess: For me, one of the biggest connections between story-based strategy and pleasure activism is the way that both are an offering and a set of practices that help us expand the political imagination for what could be possible in our own lives, in our relationships with each other, in our movements, and what could be possible in our world. They offer a set of tools, to be used with other tools in the movement building toolbox, that can bring that imagination into material reality through practices, creative and strategic interventions, and testing things out while we stay connected to a set of politics and values. They’re also able to be powerful approaches to change and transformation that we can do individually and collectively, as story-based strategy is designed to be used as a participatory approach to generating strategy. Also, in the years I’ve been involved with CSS and story-based strategy — as a participant in a training, in collaborating with people outside of trainings on story-based strategy and movement work, and as a practitioner-trainer currently — I can’t think of a time where joy, playfulness, and pleasure wasn’t present at some point or multiple points in the process. Sometimes those moments arise organically out of relationships and conversations, and others they are more intentionally generated, like in the Extreme Roshambo tool, the campaign lab presentations at the Advanced Training, and the creativity and play that emerged in the Oakland Sandbox I participated in. Some of the other areas where I see CSS practicing a form of pleasure activism is in the Practitioner Fellowships — where people who are skilled up in the methodology get to run with what they long for and get support in using story-based strategy to bring it out into the world. The fellows make space for play and experimentation alongside a commitment to strategy and rigor to change the story and the conditions of our lives.
Where I think we can grow our collective pleasure activism practice is to deepen our relationships outside of the immediate projects we’re working on. It’s to remember that our relationships are based on more than just what we produce and work for inside of the organizations we work for. I do see us moving towards that internally a little bit more — including this book club and reading group!
Lawrence: WOW, Jess. Thanks for pulling out those links (I feel grateful for having me and Felicia's fellowship work be seen by you in that way!) and thanks for the loving push. ;)
Speaking from within the organization, the biggest link I feel between our work and pleasure activism is play. One of the ways I know we’re playing well is pure, unadulterated laughter. We laugh... a lot. Some of that is because our check-in culture (which is part of our active work to undermine the white supremacist tendency towards urgency) gives us the space to laugh. Some of the laughter is present because this work is too damn hard to be serious all the time. "Let the hard shit be hard and find the pleasure, find the joy” is the title of a recent interview adrienne did on Living in This Queer Body and that resonates deeply. Play and laughter allow us to work in ways that generate pleasure for ourselves and folks with whom we work. Plus, we know that people’s imaginations tend to stretch farther and bigger when they’re having fun versus when they feel stressed.
“...we know that people’s imaginations tend to stretch farther and bigger when they’re having fun versus when they feel stressed.”
Another way we practice pleasure activism is in our deepening culture of rest and regeneration. We encourage each other, verbally and structurally, to take breaks and make space for slowing down, especially when things "outside of work" (personal, community, environmental, societal, global) are hard or heavy. One of my favorite tiny/massive examples of this happens during our monthly team calendar review. Whenever we get to an event on the calendar that indicates someone taking PTO, Shana, one of our co-directors, says “Thanks for taking time off!” It reminds me of the pleasure activism principles “You deserve to feel good” and “Moderation is key.”
How can we “make justice and liberation the most pleasurable experiences we can have on this planet?”
Lawrence: My definition of liberation is “joy untouched by fear”. It's Nina Simone's definition of freedom, "No fear,” extended to include joy. I included joy because when I think about what I actually want for myself and all beings, it's unhindered joy! And defining things in terms of an absence will only take us so far. The word "untouched" is a pointer to an important part of this whole conversation for me: liberation is an experience, in the body, in this present moment, and it is mine to get. It isn’t “somewhere over there” or “in the future.” My liberation is dependent on me finding it, choosing it, and working for it every👏🏾 single👏🏾 time👏🏾. I can't remember where I heard this idea first but I love it so much: "Liberation is an inside job." It is the process of me looking squarely at the conditions of my reality and choosing to move towards life and joy, regardless of how much fear or danger I see is possible.
Jess: I agree! We build that embodied knowing through practice, risk-taking, and practicing again. And I think the way we get to deeply knowing justice and freedom as the most pleasurable experiences on the planet at the scale we need to is by finding ways to invite people to practice moving towards that future, take risks together to get us a little closer, bring even more people in, and practice again and again.
Lawrence: And that's where the inside job starts to impact the world around me. Here I am deeply inspired by Harriet Tubman. She said “My people are free,” and worked to bring the world around her into alignment with that imagination. I believe that work of hers was two-fold: she worked to literally sneak people over boundaries from slavery into freedom... AND she baked delicious pies (sounds strikingly similar to the oracle and her cookies in the Matrix, eh?) This brings me back to that line from adrienne: “Let the hard shit be hard and find the pleasure, find the joy.”"
“...we have to declare the future we long for as if it were truth.”
Jess: One of the lessons I take from General Tubman’s declaration of “my people are free”, is that we have to declare the future we long for as if it were truth. I don’t think we’ll get to justice and freedom being the most pleasurable experiences we can have on the planet without boldly intervening in the political imagination with compelling declarations like hers was and continues to be. I think there needs to be a similar declaration for my fellow white women, that this is the time to fight for the freedom that racialized and gendered capitalism tells us is impossible — and that even though there’s conflict there, there’s also so much opportunity for joy, freedom, and pleasure in the process. That said, to experience the pleasure to the fullest, we have to be willing to consistently choose to take risks rather than stick with an unsatisfying privilege that is, as the late Southern revolutionary Anne Braden said, “a device through which we are kept under control.”
“Interpersonal conflict, when handled well, can lead to new clarity which creates room for new levels of connection. I think that sentiment is equally true at a societal scale: conflict isn’t a barrier to justice; it’s the pathway.”
Lawrence: That brings me to my definition of justice, which is Cornell West's: “Never forget that justice is what love looks like in public.” When I think about love in private, especially between me and my loved ones, I know that it isn't always pretty or easy. In reality the paradox is that the hard/unpleasant parts make the pleasant parts so much more excellent. Interpersonal conflict, when handled well, can lead to new clarity which creates room for new levels of connection. I think that sentiment is equally true at a societal scale: conflict isn't a barrier to justice; it's the pathway.
Jess: There’s so much we could say here — I think that’s a whole zine or a book or something. When I was finishing college at 22, my final project was a zine based off of research and interviews I had been doing with members of Southerners on New Ground (SONG). It was on what I was calling ‘desire-based organizing’, inspired by theories of transformative and visionary organizing and SONG’s stated belief in doing the work from desire and longing rather than anger or fear. Like Pleasure Activism, one of the first texts I looked at was Audre Lorde’s essay on the Erotic as Power. One of the lessons I learned is that queers are dangerous to the State because we have embodied knowing that longing can be powerful enough to cross over the lines of internalized oppression. And what if we could deepen that knowing and expand it outside the private spaces of our bedrooms? I think queer folks have such an offering to bring to our movements here.
Lawrence: Yes! Shoutout to queers who have forever worked to bring the inner experience of liberation into the outer world. In practice, I think that means building our collective muscles for conflict as well as learning how to collectively be in joy and pleasure. It means learning how to disagree, take risk, find resolution, and celebrate all at scale. Building power (protesting, organizing, creating alignment) in movements helps us move towards more effective conflict; engaging in shared practices (rituals, celebrations, festivals, etc.) helps us move towards joy and pleasure. So at personal, community, societal, and even global scale, "let the hard shit be hard and find the pleasure, find the joy."