Ayana Young Welcome to For The Wild Podcast I'm Ayana Young.

Juju Angeles I think it's really unfair that we always almost always blame poor folks for everything. You're homeless and you have to catch people looking at you like you're crazy, when reproductive justice or reproductive health is everyone's God given right? It's everyone's, it has nothing to do with whether you have no money, no house, no nothing, no education, no nothing. It is a biological function of the Earth. It is a natural way that things have always been done, and so what's unnatural is wealth hoarding and resource hoarding. That's what's unnatural.

Ayana Young Today, we are speaking with the Roots of Labor Birth Collective, in their own words, "Roots of Labor Birth Collective, or RLBC is committed to providing support and care for birthing members of our community. RLBC consist of birth doulas of color, we strive to reflect the communities we serve while uplifting and caring for ourselves under these guiding principles: decolonizing birth, honoring birth, empowering ourselves and each other, and sustaining doula work. On behalf of Roots of Labor Birth Collective, we are joined by Juju Angeles and Elena Aurora. Juju Angeles is an active doula of RLBC. Currently occupying Ohlone Territory (West Oakland, CA) & serving the Bay Area, Juju is a mother, homeschools, works with plants, and supports people through their pregnancy, labor, birth, and postpartum journey. Founder of Babymamahood, an online platform to dismantle, reimagine, and reclaim solo parenting for women and people of color in the hood. Elena Aurora is the Co-Founder and Education Director of Roots of Labor Birth Collective. It is her honor to organize with the radical and inspirational doulas of the Bay Area, California. She is mixed race, Peruvian and European descent, and has an environmental project called Woke n Wasteless that queers the conversation between the disposability of stuff, and the disposability of people of color. Well, thank you so much for joining me today, Elena and Juju and I really would like to begin this interview by centering the topic of reproductive justice as it relates to healing communities. For our listeners, I'll mention that the term reproductive justice was coined by a caucus of Black feminists at a 1994 pro choice conference in Chicago. And it is intended to extend beyond discourse that solely focuses on the right to have or not have children, but also the right to raise that child in a safe and healthy environment. It forces us to differentiate between legality and accessibility. So I'd love to open up to both of you and ask what does reproductive justice mean to you, in a culture inundated with economic, environmental and racial disparity?

Juju Angeles What does reproductive justice mean for us? Basically, it really, you know, for me as a poverty scholar, someone who really comes from also a class perspective on this, I just feel like there's never going to be no justice until the land is free. So when the land is free, that's when we're going to see a lot of these paradigms that we have a violence and destruction whether it's on a community level as someone who lives in the hood or on a more global level like American US level. We're all this war and extraction on bodies and minds and Earth is like so prevalent. And so freedom, justice, for me is really rooted in all of those things. We really cannot talk about freedom without really thinking about what is free? And nothing is free. People own the land, why do people need more than one house? Globalization is like also killing our planet, but how does this all tap into reproductive justice? I mean, it taps into capitalism too, because capitalism is where or, you know, race came into play, like, the reason why there was slavery, and why native people were also enslaved and their land was taken away, was because of this idea of capitalism and you know all this messed up notions around who gets to have land and who gets to exploit the land, and who benefits from the land. And the same thing is happening to people's bodies who are pregnant and giving birth is that this is big business and so because it's big business, we're doing all the things to tell people who are pregnant, that they don't have the capacity or the power to to give birth on their own term that they need to be numb that they need to have all these, you know, medicines, because why be a martyr? Why, you know, why do this on your own, like, why why right. And so we know that these realities impact women and People of Color the most, because we are the ones that have always been silenced, we are the ones who have always done all the labor without any recognition, the emotional labor, the home labor, the labor of dealing with families who are being broken up by this.  So all this stress has compounded to the way to the point where I forget the scholar, the women's scholar, the Black woman who talks about [inaudible] on the bodies of Black people in particular, but I'm sure it could also extend to Indigenous people of this land, because they have also faced insurmountable, just pain and struggle and, and a lot of silence, but even more so than Black people, because for me, it's easy to find scholarship on on African American people and Black people globally, but it's harder for Indigenous people of this land, I feel like and even of the lands that I represent as a Taino descendant of the Dominican Republic. So I mean, it's all intricately tied and woven, and the impact on our DNA, and in our people has really, really like informed the way that we give birth. And it's, and stress is a killer, and it's killing our people even in the hospital room, which is the majority, that's where overwhelmingly where Black people, even white folks are giving birth at. And so it's really deep, this work is extremely hard. People are like, "Oh, you're a doula" and they think it is glamorous, it is not glamorous work. Like I'm not doing this work, because it's beautiful, and euphoric and I get all these wonderful feelings when people give birth, that's not the crux of it. That's a very small moment, on this journey of parenting. And also, on just hearing the fear, and the struggle that People of Color are birthing their children and is like, I'm trying to give my folks hope, just through Baby Mamahood alone, but it is beautiful, but it's also very, very, very, very hard. And Black mothers, Indigenous mothers are afraid to give, or I should say parents just to be non-binary, but we are afraid to give birth into this society because we know and we actually feel what it's like to be a Person of Color in this world. So there's so many facets and so many ways that this work is connected to everything because everyone has to be born.

Elena Aurora Yeah, thank you, Juju, that hits on the head. I think I'll add that, like you talked about the fear and struggle, and I just as working with our clients as for People of Color, Black folks, Indigenous folks, migrant folks, Native folks, Latino folks, the fear and struggle, the conditions that people are in, that reduce maternal health rates, that reduce fetal birth weights and things like that, those are actually symptoms of climate change, which is a symptom of colonization, which is a symptom of capitalism. So it's like, you know, it's all very interrelated. We're here on the frontlines working with our clients, making sure that they get what they need, facing racism in the hospitals, you know, whatever the case is, and we know that these are all side effects of a larger systemic issue of a sick society.

Ayana Young Thank you both so much for that introduction that really set the stage and I want to go a bit more into these reproductive rights issues. And historically, the state has always intervened on issues of reproductive rights when it comes to women of color, sanctioning this medical control through the guise of concern for health and well being when the true motivation is always forced assimilation and population control. Examples of this vary from the one in four Native women who were sterilized without consent or knowledge in the 60s and 70s, Mexican, Latinx, and Black women who were targeted during the era of eugenics, and then the 1977 Hyde Amendment Act, which withdrew all federal funding for abortions, but still allowed the Department of Health Education and Welfare to federally fund surgical sterilizations inevitably forcing low income women to choose permanent infertility if they wanted to exercise their reproductive rights, or in Canada how, prior to the decriminalization of contraceptives in 1969, the government distributed birth control to First Nations women in an effort to curb birth rates. And then in relationship to Midwifery, the mid 1900s witnessed a wave of government interventions across the country to control and regulate midwives with the goal of long term elimination. In the South and Southwest, governments specifically went after African American, Indigenous, and Hispanic midwives, forcing them to get permission slips from licensed doctors, undergoing cleanliness and medical bag inspections, and forbidding them from carrying herbal remedies. I know there are a lot there, but I really would love it if you could share with us how many are still presently forced to make reproductive choices that are directly influenced by colonialism and white supremacy.

Elena Aurora Yeah, you know, all of the examples that you just laid out, I appreciate you putting that out there because those are our ancestors. Those are the people who direct our work today, like whether they're elders in the community who remember those things who have lived through them, or our grandparents who are no longer with us who remember those things and live through that. So I just want to take a moment to honor them and honor their journeys in reproductive justice, and that they have brought us, both myself and Juju, but us as a greater collective, us as a greater consciousness of society, to this place, you know, I don't think it's a coincidence that reproductive justice is in this sort of wave of resurgence. And a lot of what you said, I want to dial back to specifically the pieces around abortions, especially in the South, both Black women and Indigenous women, as you mentioned, were banned from carrying their herbs, banned from carrying their medicines, and I want to point it out that the reasons why that that happened is because of the misogyny and patriarchy that exists within the medical system. That before Western medicine came from Europe and came to these lands, people were taking care of their own and I just want to point out, especially for Black people who were enslaved they were, they didn't have access to medicine, in the sense that the white folks wouldn't get let them have access to medicine. So they carry their own, which is from their homelands, which is from learning the herbs, learning the land, building relationship, and that the reason why they were able to be so targeted around cleanliness was actually because of abortions, because back then a midwife would take care of any reproductive need that you had, whether you were going through menopause, whether you were having hot flashes, whether you were having a baby, whether you had been raped and needed to get have an abortion or not raped, you just didn't want to have a kid, taking care of the body and having like ownership and control of your own reproductive cycle was handled by midwives because abortions were seen as unorthodox, they were seen as unethical, that they were able to use that rhetoric to then turn the masses against granny midwives and Black midwives. 

So I just want to I think in this time, when people are really worried about abortion access, we really have to remember that the rhetoric for abortion was actually a tool to discredit midwifery, specifically Black and Brown midwives and also the peace around these reproductive bodies, whether however they identify, if you control a reproductive body, you control the people. If you control how a person gives birth, you control the people. And for folks whose bodies were literally bought and sold, that is a tremendous amount of wealth and power that you can hold and manifest, which is why people who have womb spaces or who can create from their womb, whether that's through manifestation or through, like physically birthing a baby, they are threats to our society, our patriarchal and misogynistic society. And so I forgot what your original question was, but I just want to highlight that you control the masses by controlling people's food and land, and you do that by controlling reproductive bodies.

Juju Angeles I also want this to say one thing about the granny midwives that I just found out recently, and I wanted to share that there was a conference that happened in the 80s with Black midwives and most of them were, or called the granny midwives and they said that they don't like that name granny midwife, something that they really did not like, it was given to them in a time of slavery and so in that conference, they decided that they, someone in the conference said, "Well, let's call you grand midwives." And they really appreciate that. So again, like how language controls the narrative, because they were just midwives. You know, they weren't granny midwives, the granny midwives identify them as Black, also enslaved folks, and they were doing the work that these providers didn't want to do. Because a lot of these doctors, they're really there to deal with high risk or like, you know, potentially really bad things. And I also wonder, like, where do these OBGYN folks where did they learn about birth? They learned through the midwives and they they had, like a secret collaboration, where the granny midwife of the South, excuse me, grand midwives, and these doctors are working together and it seemed like a good marriage between, you know, medicalized care and traditional care, but then after a while, they just started to phase it out and I think they phased them out because they got everything that they needed to get, they learned all the things they needed to learn.   I also forgot what the question was, but I do think that it is really important that, you know, I appreciate that you took time aside to really ground us in knowing that this is our history and it's a very painful one. And it's for me, there's such a link now, with the infant maternal mortality rate, and the phasing out of these providers. There's a direct link between that and when we talk about sterilization and forced sterilization, population control, yada, yada, yada. You know, that's also a very true, you know, I told you this story before I had this white radical anarchist that I squatted in a house with in West Oakland years ago, and I was trying to find housing and I have a daughter who's 11, her name is Zion and, you know, and at the time, everyone who knows me, knows that I want to have more kids, and I generally want to do it as a sole parent. And he was like, "Why would you have more kids? The world's fucked up." And I was just like, whoa, buddy, I might slow you down. First of all, you are a white man, you cannot tell me, or ask me a question why I want to have kids? I live in a society where I can have kids freely? Why not? You know, that wasn't afforded to us. We were either hands on a field or you know or somehow we have to, like, negotiate with people around when we're gonna have kids or we're gonna not have kids. And you know, I think that like, my right as a person who can give birth is that I should be allowed to birth freely. And it shouldn't be based on any, you know, outside notion. If I don't want to have kids, then I've also had abortions, I should also have that right too.  

So I think that like, it's interesting, this idea of population control, and also with climate change, right? Because we're thinking like, no more kids, because, you know, the Earth is finite and we can't have any, but who is that message for? I've never seen anyone talk to any other person besides Black or Brown folks around who should not have kids. You shouldn't have a kid because you poor? Well, I think I should have a kid because I am poor, because I take up less resources. I reuse every day, you know, my people were already environmentally friendly before this whole green wave or whatever it came up to be, we live that way we live frugally, because that's what life was  and this idea of poverty, like, it never really bothered me, you know, like, I'm my aspiration is not to get rich, so that I can buy more shit. Like my aspiration is to just be free and free of everything else along the way. And so I think that like I believe that forced sterilization and population control was just a racist way to try to basically exterminate Black and Brown folks, because that's what that's what they've been trying to do ever since slavery, and is to start killing us off because no longer could society or white men benefit, or white families benefit from the labor of Black folks in particular. And of course, we want to silence Native American people and have less of those people so they can never have rights to their land, because this is not their land. And in a deeper spiritual sense it's our land, and in a political sense, this ain't your land, you know, it's not. And it's, you know, it's all intricately bound up so tight, that you know, trying to unravel the pieces, everything else is going to kind of spin out. I feel like there's so much, there's so much that we're holding because of this and for me, I understand that forced sterilization for me, it was about exterminating us, but I also think it was about practicing on us to benefit white folks.

Ayana Young While thank you both so much for going so deep and there's so much that you both brought up but I wanted to stay on a very charged topic for a minute longer, this idea of overpopulation and who should be having kids in the Anthropocene, in climate destabilization, in a time when resources like water and soil are depleting rapidly, and I've heard so many different opinions on this, you know, there's the opinion of the Earth has reached its carrying capacity and we just simply shouldn't be, nobody should be having more children, for the most part, doesn't matter what color you are like, the Earth cannot sustain 9 billion people, 10 billion, 11 billion people, people start to show these graphs of I don't remember, but 100 years ago, it was a couple million, and now it's billions like just the rate of human growth has gone so quickly and more humans equal less of everything else, more humans, less orcas, more humans, less beavers, more humans less land for any other creature, whether it's a mammal, or bug or tree or whatever. So there's that train of thought, then there's this also thought that I really get riled up about that people are like, "Oh, well, we should be the ones having children, because we're the educated ones, or we have the resources to provide for the children," which I'm sure you know, you kind of had mentioned it Juju in your last statement a little bit. And then there's another train of thought that, you know, people have, for instance, Indigenous people, like how important it is for them to have children to continue passing down the lineage, the knowledge, the traditional ecological knowledge, the knowledge of the land, reestablishing language connection, Indigenous sovereignty, Indigenous empowerment, so on and so forth. And I mean, I could keep going on and on and on and I know this is such a charged topic for so many people, I've seen it unravel in many group settings and I would love to just kind of give you both an open space to share your thoughts regarding whether you know, things that I had just mentioned, or just your own take on it completely.

Elena Aurora Yeah, it's an interesting question. I like how you framed it. I'm gonna be wearing multiple hats as I answer it, both my Roots of Labor hat, and me as a mixed race person, both part white and Person of Color. And I guess I want to start off by saying that this idea of, you know, overpopulation, or what is the threshold that the planet can hold is so controversial, because these scientists, and different studies, from what I've seen, are mostly run by white folks, specifically, white men and so their numbers and data are kind of all over the map and aren't really, aren't really representative of what's happening globally. Although they try to in an unbiased way. And so they, you know, what is the carrying capacity of the planet? I'll just name that we don't really know. And there's so much controversy around it, which I think you alluded to, and also that, how could somebody say, the planet is overpopulated we, meaning all of the people on the planet, need to stop having children, when we, everyone who lives on this planet, knows that people have been dished disproportionately affected by genocide, disproportionately affected by climate related things factory farming, living by industrial waste sites like this is, that is a form of population control, because it is reducing People of Colors ability to give birth, because their bodies are being exposed to toxins. So all of those things are already in effect and then you have populations of people who are able to be fertile and continue to give birth and I think that it's a tricky question, because you did name something like "we as educated people should be able to reproduce." I'm not saying that that was your opinion, but that, you know, you quoted that, and who are the educated people, right, they're usually white middle class or upper class, folks, we are seeing a resurgence of like Black, Brown and Indigenous folks in colleges, in schools, and I really want to honor them in their journey of doing that because it's hard work and it's extremely oppressive. So what does it mean for people who have achieved economic and educational privilege to then be the ones to give birth, when the reality is that babies are going to happen, people keep having sex, condoms break, you know, birth control doesn't work. Stuff happens and also, you know, as as a mixed race person, for me personally, I don't want to give birth because I don't think that the privilege that my father's family has ridden on in the United States for the last couple 100 years, they've been able to have their kids and they've been able to, like, have their kids and comfort and in all of those things. And I don't think I need to carry on that legacy. Will I ever raise children? I don't know, I don't know if that's something that I want. But I don't need to birth them. Because I know that that generation, those generations of my family have had that privilege and that's not something that I need to do. 

However, my partner is mixed race and Indigenous and I do believe that we need to carry on more Indigenous folks with their ancestral DNA's and their understandings of what has happened in their lifetimes and continue those legacies. So those are the hats that I wear.  I will say that there's this documentary, I believe it's on Netflix, called A Plastic Ocean. I think that's the right one, where they talk about some islands in maybe Samoa, I'm not I can't quite remember now, but they're talking about how there's so much trash that's washing up on their shores, it's affecting their fertility rates, there's no scientists telling them that "Oh, this is what's happening." But they're like, "Hello, we're swimming in trash. We're like literally living in trash and all of our people cannot get pregnant." When someone gets pregnant. It's a big deal and so the communities that are most affected by climate change, and the climate devastation are often the communities that are closest to industrial wastes, and all of those things, which are always placed in communities of color. I used to say, oh, communities of color and or people in poverty, because I wanted to include that like sometimes white communities are in those areas, too. I recently found out that that's actually not true. I'm sure some, but that statistically speaking, they are way more disproportionately placed, toxic waste sites are way more disproportionately placed in Black and Brown communities. So yeah, that's all that's all I'll say for now around carrying capacity.

Juju Angeles Yeah, something came up, but I kind of forgot it. I think it was along the lines around who gets to decide who has kids, but also just let's be real, like, why do we always blame the people? Like why did the people have to stop having kids? Right, like, and when I say that people I mean, like people on the ground, people who are not in positions of power, like why is it the onus on us? Why would I go into a store? Why is the option that I buy something in plastic? Why aren't the people who are so called educated and have all the land and all the know-how and can have all the kids while we're not forcing them to do something about it? Why haven't we gone to them and said no, we need to stop doing this, we need to find an alternative way to do this, or whatever, because it's actually killing the planet. But why is it that me and you have to think about whether or not we should have kids or not? Because if y'all like the mamas and the daddies of the world and y'all control everything right? And we are in this analogy, your children, why are the children the one to blame? In the household and the child is emotionally messed up or physically messed up, we're never blaming the kid, we would blame the people who are their parents, right? The people who are the ones that have control over their livelihood and the culture, whatever, you know, so it's always to blame us, always. We always are the one to blame. It's never them, it's not the people who actually have the power and the capacity to actually change their mind and actually make a lasting impact. And so, you're right, who decides what is the carrying capacity of the Earth? I ain't hear my mother Earth tell me that that, you know, that was it, you know? 

And you know, I think it's really unfair that we always almost always blame poor folks for everything. You're homeless, and you have people looking at you like you're crazy, when reproductive justice or reproductive health is everyone's God given right? It's everyone's, it has nothing to do whether you have no money, no house, no nothing, no education, no nothing. It is a biological function of the Earth, it is a natural way that things have always been done. And so what's unnatural is wealth hoarding, and resource hoarding, that's what's unnatural, what is unnatural are these toxic waste dumps, what's unnatural are these factories that are being built in communities that's messing up our asthma, all these trucks, all this production, that's what's unnatural, is not whether or not people are should have kids, because that's going to happen. And so we constantly, I feel like me, as a person who likes to work with plants and herbs and who is in this work, I'm always trying to convince people to consider to go back to natural because we are slowly and with also with technology, we're slowly becoming so disconnected from the Earth and one another, that what we see as natural is hard, it's too hard. You plant your own stuff, you make your own medicine. It's too hard, you know, I could just pop a pill, you know, I could just, you know, get a C section, I could just, you know, whatever. And I'm not trying to say that those things are bad, and we shouldn't have them. That's not what I'm trying to say, what I'm trying to say is that the way that we the way that we always blame poor folks, and in general, for every ailment in society, all these studies against single parents, your child is 80% more likely to go to jail, if there's only a mom in the household, I'm like, really, that's what we're gonna blame, we're not going to, we're not really going to look at the structural things that are happening that are in play that you know, the rent, how the rent is so astronomus that people have to have like 3-4 jobs just even have a home over their head. You know, I live with housemates, because I have to, I love who I live with, but I also have to live in community because if I don't live in the community, I'm not going to be a good person. And um, hence I'm not gonna be a good parent.  

And so you know, it is always these scientist, these people who have the power and the knowledge or whatever, the wherewithal, they're always blaming the people on the ground when they are the ones creating these systems and these societies in such a way that we have to conform and exist in a certain way. So having fewer babies is going to change anything. No, we have to change the adults, right? The mama and the daddies of the world not, you know, we have to change them to change their mind so they could change their behaviors so that we can actually live in this abundant overflow that the Earth has given us for billions of years. Why is this a problem now and not then? Were people having less kids then? No, they weren't. My mom comes from a household of six kids. My father's side of her, she had ten kids. I don't have ten kids. We're not having more babies. We're actually having fewer kids. The folks who are having more babies are the non-melanated folks. They're the ones who are having the most babies now, if we look at the trends now. So you know, for me, it's just it's all very interesting to just say the least.

Elena Aurora Yeah, Juju I like what you said around well, everything but also, like this idea that you're talking about, like in the grocery store, giving us options, plastic free options, I'm thinking about, like consumerism and how like, especially, you know, I hear this term a lot with greenwashing around how, you know, even when you go to Target or something, which Target is one of the three of the most harmful, it's Target, Amazon, Walmart, the most harmful like environmental destructors in California, because of their warehousing and because of the logistics industry and what they're causing, they're causing asthma rates, birth defects, and things like that, because of their diesel trucks in the Inland Valley, in Southern California. And so but you walk into Target and they have so many advertisements, especially to new parents, you know, how many of my clients have gone into Target to get their registries, you know, their birth, their baby shower registries, or whatever. And, you know, you want to get green diapers and you know, all of these things, you know, the word is called greenwashing, but the idea that we can buy our way into being a good green parent, or you know, like an environmental parent, especially, we live in the Bay Area, it's everywhere. And we have to be careful with that and because marketing is tricky, and it makes my clients feel good to know they can get environmental things and I'm sitting here being like, "Oh my god, it's not really environmental. It's just marketing." 

You know, and of course, I have those conversations carefully with my clients, but on a bigger scale, of course, a parent is going to want to try to get the more environmental friendly thing, but marketing and capitalism is so clever that it jumbles us up, it does it to me all the time, you know, I live my life zero waste, but also, it's hard because their systems aren't set up like that. And so what I love about Roots of Labor Birth Collective is we constantly have these conversations, and we as a collective, like we do different, like we do, baby showers of upcycled goods because, you know, babies grow out of their onesies in like, two days, you know, and but somebody else needs them, or their car seats, or whatever. And so we try to have an upcycle economy within Roots of Labor, and clients can come and get their stuff for free. And it's really just used things that are still in good condition that can be, you know, used by someone else, and all kinds of things. But that's a way that Roots of Labor, and the community here has really tried to move away from like the consumption patterns, because it's literally killing our people.

Ayana Young Oh, my goodness, you both brought up so many important perspectives, and I'm like, "Oh, I want to talk more about that. I want to talk more about that. I want to talk more about that." But I'll just start with wanting to talk more about the toxicity, especially for People of Color, because, like both of you are talking about how, whether it's the landfills, the toxic runoff, the power plants, the refineries, you know, where are they located. They're located in communities of color. And that's by design. And I want to read a quote by Katsi Cook who is a Mohawk midwife, environmentalist, Native American Rights activist, and women's health advocate, and she has said, "Women are the first environment. In pregnancy, our body sustains life, at the breast of women, the generations are nourished. In this way, we as women are Earth." But, of course, learning about the high levels of contaminants we harbor in our bodies, women harbor in their bodies, specifically, but honestly, all people, but women, those contaminants can only be flushed out through pregnancy as they cross through the placenta, or through lactation, Cook added that women can unfortunately be landfills too. I was also speaking with somebody who had mentioned something like something like 90% of a woman's toxic load comes out with her first child through breast milk. So this is such an emotional topic, but I'm interested to hear from both of you how you see climate change, or more specifically, pollution, toxicity and even nuclear fallout, as a threat to fertility and the ability to bear healthy children. And then furthermore, how can we live inside of our bodies and care for them knowing they're contaminated? And we risk spreading this contamination to our children?

Elena Aurora Oh yeah. I mean, you know, with the breastfeeding thing that you just mentioned, I always steer clear of that with my clients, specifically, because depending on what demographic and what race my client is, the benefits of breastfeeding will outweigh the toxicity that the baby is getting, because the baby is going to, like we live in toxicity when the fires happened here in the Bay Area, or in Northern California, and the Bay Area was unbreathable and unlivable. You know, kids couldn't go outside, we couldn't go outside, people were having stress, really like mental and physiological stress, physical stress of not working out being outdoors at all. And the reality is, like, you know, lots of people got air purifiers and those things, which is great. But the reality is, it's toxic all the time. It just was really heightened during the fires. So we live in a toxic environment, like the apocalypse is here, like we've been living in it. So how do we manage it? And for me, it's about educating folks that like, you should get an air purifier, because yes, they're expensive, yes, they're an investment, but it could increase your lung capacity and your asthma rates and things like that. So the benefits of breastfeeding definitely outweigh, but if I'm talking to a Black client, I know that potentially this client has had a ton of stigma around breastfeeding, going back to slavery. If I'm talking to Native clients, the same. If I'm talking to Latina clients, you know, especially young folks, I'm really trying to think about how they feel? Does it feel uncomfortable? Does it feel too sexual, like there's so many other emotions and feelings that most of the time with my clients, I never get to the pollution aspects or I never get to those unless they're a client who's already like we're very like minded and they already know that that's the work that I do, but for the most part, we really like have to balance it. 

And I guess the reality is like, People of Color, we've been living this way for generations, right? These toxic sites have been around us for a long time. I think about in, you know, a friend just reminded me of the story that in Japan when the nuclear waste was happening, it was the elder folks who knew that their lifespan, their lifespan was coming to an end, who volunteered themselves to go clean up that nuclear toxic waste and to me, I'm like that is reproductive justice, those are people, elders who have lived out their lives who know they're going to die, who are going to like clean up this toxicity and I was at the grocery store the other day, some hippie Berkeley place, which is like for the most part, pretty hippie, white mostly, shoppers, grocery store in the Bay Area, and there was this Asian woman who had a baby and I could tell they were pretty early, like, you know, she was only a few weeks out, maybe six or seven weeks out. And she was doing okay, you know, but like, of course, I'm a doula. I was like, "Hey, what's up?" Yeah, and we were chatting and she needed help, like moving something from her basket to the conveyor belt, and no one around me was going to help her. And I turned around, I looked at the woman and asked if she needed help and she was "Yeah, please, thank you. I didn't know what to do," you know. And it's remembering moments like that, where like, people who are parents need support, right? Like, we need to step in and fulfill their roles, whether it's a sacrifice or not, I mean, that's obviously not a sacrifice me moving something from a cart to a table. But we really need to think of our pregnant people as part of our society and valuable in our society. She's tired, you could tell she was tired. I don't know why she was at the grocery store. But she was tired. And so when I think about the reality that we live in pollution, that we live in these environments, and we have for generations, how do we as a society come together to support our clients, right? Roots of Labor does it in a very particular way around serving our clients and making sure that we have support, but on a larger environmental issue,  it can get really overwhelming and I really do believe that if we stick together, if we continue to be innovative, and creative, we'll hopefully find solutions. And to that end, you know, around the solution, really listening to Native folks, there are some brilliant ideas that folks are creating to combat climate change, and to like bring back salmon, the salmon run is happening, the Sogorea Te Land Trust, you know, there's  of course Standing Rock and things that are going on in Nola. Like all of these things are being led by Indigenous communities, and they aren't separate from reproductive justice. They are, what I would love to see is more and more white folks understanding and listening to Indigenous people, to Black people, to Latino people, to migrant folks around their experiences-

Juju Angeles As a doula I've done things like get people's WIC checks, you know, so it's like, I'm gonna sit in the chair all week now. I don't know if I'm gonna see her, you know, two, three years from now, but if you ever need somebody to pick up some milk, I could go get it for her. But it's just like, I think that like, we really need to listen and act on the knowledge that Indigenous people all over the world have already because we've been surviving under the most gruesome, horrific, fear-based shit, right? And that's not the totality of who we are. That's not as I don't like saying I'm a single parent, I'm not singular, you know, I'm a baby mom, I have a baby, I had a baby, I'm a mom, and the people in my community really hold me up to you know, I wouldn't be where I am today, if it wasn't for Black women and Brown women, like I just wouldn't, I wouldn't be who I am today, and neither would Zion. And so I just feel like, I just wanted to, like pull that out, or what you said, Elena, because we really, really, really need to support parents in particular. But we also really, really, really, like really need to listen to us, because we are the ones that have the solution. We know what we need. And we really need to stop moving away from this top-down, approach around who is the expert.  And also believe in us, because in "AKKKademia", right, in so-called academia, people who are educated, went to college and whatever got a PhD or Masters, they don't want to believe you, unless you have scientific data to prove it. And it's like scientific data ain't helping, like look at the world is, um, is lean over under fire, whether it's wonderful, roughly speaking, or for real, and it's just like, it's just like, believe us, and then do the things that we're asking you to do. Because that is consent. And what often happens is that these anthropologists, right, they come into our communities, they dig up all this shit, they find this stuff, and then they create a study around it and they say, "These people are downtrodden and they don't know what to do." We have our own scholarship, that's why I started the podcast saying, I'm a poverty scholar. And I know, you know, I know my life. I know the real ins and outs, I can look at the world and create a sentence and formulate it. 

But folks don't want to believe us. They're just like, "Oh, it's all in their head." It happens to Black women in the hospital all the time and that's why we're dying. Most Black women die in postpartum, and they're like, something is wrong. No, you know, it feels terrible. It's supposed to they're like,. Now they're becoming cliches, we know that Serena Williams, we know like, what happened to her and this is someone who knows five languages and, you know, was homeschooled by two really strong, awesome, like parents, she had parents in her life. She's a top, you know, tennis player in the world, and they still ain't believe her. So it's like, you know, it's this constant battle for white folks, mostly to listen to us. And I think what's dope about being in a Woman of Color collective, to bring it back to Roots, is that we're trying to create our own community solution, because you're not gonna believe us, like, you know, you know, and it's not us versus them. It's more like, who are our allies in this world? Because we do have allies. We do have white folks who are allies. I have, you know, white folks have supported me financially, but I just feel like, you have to listen and you have to also do the things that we asked you to do. And if that's a sacrifice, if that's a stretch, you got to come on to your comfort zone and just trust us, listen to us, trust us, believe us. Because I really feel like, especially from a class perspective, if we get rid of homelessness, that means that the land is somewhat free, right? If we get rid of homelessness, and we really stop hoarding wealth, and people aren't allowed to buy 8,9, 25, 3000 properties, houses, whatever, then we can really come from a solution based perspective. But right now, like Elena alluded to earlier, we're trying to get our basic survival needs met for a lot of our clients.  

You know, I always appreciate those moments or those broke people that I work with, who the doctor says yada, yada, yada, and they're like, "No, I'm gonna do it this way." Right? And I'm just like, thank you. This is what I've been trying to instill in people who can birth babies is like you have everything that you need inside of you. You have it all. And yes, there's toxins through people and to the environment outside of us, but you have, you are the resource that you need. You are the natural resource and tap into that. And having people support that is only going to make that person much brighter and fuller in the world. And listening to what that person needs. It was actually going to create change, it's not going to be from some scientists, it's not going to be from some Yale study, those things are not going to happen. Those things have been happening and we have not really seen any systemic change. Only thing that poor people have seen is more materialistic shit. We have not seen any change around who owns the land, who gets to steward that land. And what do we have a decision around where factories get built, where things get dumped? We don't have agency, we have more shit, but not agency.

Ayana Young Yeah, there's more stuff and that stuff is just shit. It's like slave labor, plastic, meaningless stuff and a lot of it's totally toxic and unhealthy. And no, there hasn't been systemic change and we're gonna have to or I hope that we can schedule a follow up call because there's so much more that I would love to spend time discussing with you both. This has already been such an incredibly deep and meaningful interview. And as you were talking about support, I would really love for you both to share with the audience how Roots of Labor can be supported this Collective that you both are so deeply intertwined with and put so much of your life force into, you know, where can people find you? Is their ability for people to donate to your work and help sustain so much meaning like you both sustain so much, how can the community help sustain you both and the other people in this Collective?

Elena Aurora Yeah, thanks for asking, you know, Roots of Labor Birth Collective, our website is www.rootsoflaborbc.com. There is a donate page that you can donate directly to the organization. If you follow our Instagram, which is @rootsoflaborbc, we often are posting like what Juju said, we're posting folks in the collective and or friends of the collective who are raising money always Black or Brown or Indigenous who are raising money for their midwifery education or their doula work or to study in another country that is related to like Black and Brown midwives in another place. So there's always opportunities through our Instagram you can donate directly to the organization. I like to think of Roots of Labor as casting a wide net, we have a pretty wide range of doulas we have about anywhere from 30 to 50 at any time of members in the collective, and we serve the East Bay Area, San Francisco Bay Area in California. We are really creative. We really agree and love systems outside of capitalism. So we do trades, we do barters, we've had folks who just like made a zine and sent the proceeds to Roots of Labor. We've had folks who want to do doula trainings in their neighborhoods. So they've paid for us to come down there and do doula trainings and all kinds of innovative ways. We've had people who said I want to offer a scholarship to your doula training, because our doula trainings are really unique there for days, we do them once a year. And it's all people of color. And we bring in all kinds of other healers to come and do really a four day intensive reproductive justice orientation that brings you into the collective, we've had folks be like, I want to sponsor a person to be able to be here. And so we're able to offer scholarships because of that, so, or we've had several podcasts requests of like, let's spread your word. So if you have a podcast, if you have any sort of platform or anything like that, shout us out, give us money, if you don't have money to give, send us prayers and love, you know, tell your ancestors to just stand with our ancestors in the work that we're doing.

Juju Angeles Yeah, and also just sharing the work with others. Sharing is such a powerful way to combat capitalism, in so many ways. Like, I literally have a car because of GoFundMe, someone stole my car, I was not going to call the police. I'm not trying to get folks into that whole thing. And I was like, it's literally a car worth, like, $500, and they stole it. And I was just like, how am I going to get to this birth that I'm on call for. And in a week, I raised $3,000, and bought another car. So I think that sharing is a powerful way, and sharing our work. You know, also I believe in monthly contributions, maybe you can only give 5000 a month, that shit adds up in three years. I think that sustainability is always about flow and, you know, prayer increases that flow, sharing the word donating to the word. And just you know, and that's, you know, it's all part of the flow. I think that's what helps with anything. So we always, you know, we always I always appreciate when folks lift me up and lift the roof up that I do, and that's how, you know, for me, that's how I've been sustainable. And people who you know, just to be real, like I live in, I live in a home that I share, and me and my daughter occupy half the bedrooms, I don't pay for her bedroom. My community actually subsidizes my daughter's rent, my rent so that my daughter can have her own bedroom. And so that's like a yearly thing, right? So we'll revisit this in a year, but it's a way I really believe in monthly contributions. So it can be a powerful way to help us to say okay, we know this is coming in every month. So yeah, just something to introduce. You know, another way to give as well.

Elena Aurora Yeah, convince your local grocery store to accept WIC or accept food stamps. Yeah. You know, there's all kinds of things that help, not just our clients that help everyone.

Ayana Young Oh, my goodness. Thank you both so much. This has probably been one of my favorite conversations on the podcast and like I said, I would really love to, at some point, have another conversation. I want to respect both of your times, or both of your time. I know it's so valuable and you're both on call for births and so thank you again and I really look forward to For The Wild supporting you and this broader community that's tuning in to do something tangible and take action with these issues.

Elena Aurora Yeah, thank you so much for having us it's been really a pleasure because we we are so you know, as Juju said, we we can go down a rabbit hole of midwifery care or doula care, we're talking about placentas or you know, there's so many different avenues and it's really refreshing to also speak about environmentalism and the way that RJ and EJ intersect. So thank you for inviting us and having us here for that.

Ayana Young I'd like to thank the For The Wild Podcast team. Co-Producer and Editor Andrew Storrs, Co-Producer and Writer Francesca Glaspell, Music Coordinator Carter Lou McElroy, our Communications Director Eryn Wise, and our Co-Managing Directors, Mara Joy and Melanie Younger. The musical guests you heard today were Jason Marsalis, Irving Mayfield and Climbing Poetree. If you haven't already, please rate us on iTunes as it really helps build our community. Also sign up for our newsletter at Forthewild.world.