Repro TLC reposted this
Birth Justice Advocate, ED of Repro TLC (formerly Midwest Access Project), Cofounder of Birthmark Doula Collective & the New Orleans Breastfeeding Center
Guess what!? My first ever book chapter has been published! Written in 2023 about 12 years of co-founding and cooperative organizing at Birthmark, my chapter in “Information, Power, and Reproductive Health” was published by Library Juice Press this month! You can order the book & Invite folks to hear from the authors and editors at our Virtual Book Launch Party– Oct 28th at 12pm EST (Registration link in this post) In “Liberating Our Labor: Cooperative Organizing Among Birth Workers and Beyond,” I describe the process of cooperatizing Birthmark Doula Collective and the resulting impacts to power and information dynamics in the workplace, to our reproductive justice mission, and to our labor. This chapter provides a potential model for how reproductive health and justice workers can self-organize to truly embody the tenants of our movement, “not just for our clients and communities, but also, for ourselves.” I believe this conversation is urgently relevant to our movement today— in the context of growing attacks on reproductive health: “As the birth and reproductive justice movements grow and evolve, now is a pivotal moment to shift power dynamics within our internal community – amongst our workers and workplace structures – in order to sustainably create change in the wider movement, and to extend those effects outward into health and justice fields and into our communities as a whole.” After 12 years, I transitioned from Birthmark Doula Collective to become Executive Director of Repro TLC widening my focus to training the next generation of SRH care workers nationwide. But I am forever a doula, and forever a champion of community birth/ health workers, and how we can transform the violence of the US reproductive health system into our visions of liberation for clients, workers, and communities. Gratitudes: I share in the chapter that we benefited greatly from the support of social justice and cooperative training organizations - @cooperation New Orleans, Round Sky Solutions Coop , Groundswell Fund Birth Justice Fund, VISIONS, Inc, as well as other #cooperatives. Thank you to the member owners of Birthmark who continue to inspire me in the pursuit of birth justice. And thank you @libraryjuicepress, and to my editors- Gina Schlesselman-Tarango (so fun to work with a Grinnell College librarian as a Grinnell alum!), Alanna Aiko Moore & Renée A. Rau Finally, I am trying to figure out how to open source post this chapter for easy access, so when I do that, I will share again!