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Mapping Context & Conditions (Based on place/geographical location how are you engaging with COVID individually, communally and institutionally)
Deeply shaping our work and vision of the Healing Histories Project is Healing Justice (HJ). HJ is a political strategy conceived in 2005, and launched in 2006 by the Kindred Southern Healing Justice Collective (aka Kindred Collective). Kindred Collective is a southern-rooted, Black feminist-led, multi-racial, intergenerational network of health and healing practitioners, birth workers, social workers and organizers seeking to intervene and respond to generational trauma and systemic oppression by building community/survivor led responses to sustain our emotional, physical, spiritual, psychic and environmental well-being. Kindred Collective is grounded, specifically, in the southeastern region of the US and their strategies come out of the traditions of that region. Kindred Collective has also built national alliances with other transformative healing/health practitioners and movement organizers who want to use the healing justice framework towards building power and transformation through collective care and safety within our communities and movements. With this national work, Kindred Collective continues to call for and lift up the importance of grounding work in the local conditions of the communities where that work is taking place. Critical to healing justice is valuing the cultural, political and spiritual traditions of where we live, and our lived experiences of the places we are working and building, deeply shapes our resiliency and healing strategies. We believe our collective healing and safety strategies are deeply impacted by the environments that shape us.
As organizers and curators of this timeline, we feel it is important for anyone who engages with the timeline to reflect on the experiences you have encountered over this past year based on the geographic place and the conditions of the communities you live within. This pandemic has had a very different impact in different regions within the United States as well as globally. Variations in the experience of, and response to COVID-19, has varied county by county and sometimes neighborhood by neighborhood, block by block. The COVID-19 response has been one of profound inequities in how care is provided based on geography, race, gender, ability, sexuality, age, migrant status. The inequities have included whether or not someone lives on federally-recognized tribal lands, in nursing homes, or in zip codes with high numbers of political donors. The COVID-19 pandemic lays itself on top of the current housing crisis and alongside ongoing business, school and hospital closures. What were the conditions of where you are living before the pandemic emerged? How have those pre-existing conditions impacted what you are experiencing individually, communally and institutionally? What is the story that you would have told about your neighborhood or community before the pandemic and how has the pandemic changed that story, if it has at all?
PLACE
How does your geographic location impact the ways that you engage with or have been impacted by COVID-19?
How are your communities accessing care, healing justice and safety based on geography?
INDIVIDUAL
How would you describe the different identities you represent?
How have your people been impacted by COVID? Is this something you have experienced personally?
How are you finding care and safety during this moment?
What are the gaps/barriers for you individually?
Where are the opportunities?
COMMUNAL
Who are the communities where you live?
How are your communities working/organizing/ building care & safety during COVID?
What are the gaps/barriers within communities?
What are the opportunities to build within communities in this moment of COVID?
INSTITUTIONAL
What are the institutions deeply impacting your experience with COVID? (eg. public health, education, prisons, public utilities, etc.) How do they define/understand healing justice, care, and safety?
How are they providing care for you in COVID times? Or how are they not?
What are the gaps/barriers within these systems in this moment?
What are the opportunities to work with and/or transform these systems in this moment?
Map the Answers in a Chart (like the one below) or in three large circles putting the answers inside of each circle to see similarities and differences and how they related to one another.
| INDIVIDUAL | COMMUNAL | INSTITUTIONAL |
| How would you describe the different identities you represent? | Who are the communities represented where you live? | What are the institutions deeply impacting your experience with COVID? (eg. public health, education, prisons, public utilities, etc.) How do they define/understand healing justice, care, and safety? |
| How are you finding care and safety during this moment? | How are your communities working/organizing/ building care & safety during COVID? | How are they providing care for you in COVID times? Or how are they not? |
| What are the gaps/barriers for you individually? | What are the gaps/barriers within communities? | What are the gaps/barriers within these systems in this moment? |
| Where are the opportunities? | What are the opportunities to build within communities in this moment of COVID? | What are the opportunities to work with and/or transform these systems in this moment? |
To return to the main curriculum page to explore the rest of the curriculum and sections, click here, or in the menu above.