New York, I Love You But You've Changed Haut Takes Media

Melissa Saenz Gordon is a cultural worker, photographer, artist, cultural producer, writer, San Francisco native and self described “CivicArt BAE” with a background in geography and urban planning. She is also the co-founder of Soft Power Vote, a voting initiative in New York City that produces voter guides and content that illuminates the connectivity between art, pop-culture, and local politics. Soft Power Vote produces voter guides and online resources for New Yorkers to level up on voting in NYC by demystifying local politics, decoding voting information, and providing the resources necessary to make everyone’s voice heard. SVP was born out of Melissa’s and her co-founders’ frustration with the lack of transparency and resources available to NYC residents to make voting accessible and informed. In this episode, Melissa shares the genesis of Soft Power Vote, Soft Power Vote’s ethos and its criteria for endorsement and what people can expect to find in their Voter Guide. Melissa also shares SVP’s endorsements and recommendations for each race and who they recommend NOT RANKING in this June’s primaries. She also informs us about what other races are on the ballot and import info like what a comptroller actually does. She also shares information about voter rights and accessibility, essential election day info and how the heck Ranked Choice Voting works. Alexis and Melissa also get into conversations about how the media perpetuates the Yang narrative, Beyonce, Lebron James, Cardi B, Tony Soprano’s frustration with Dr. Melfi’s painting and East vs West Coast hip hop.
This is one of two conversations with Melissa, look out for part II later this week!4 In the other part, you will hear Melissa discuss her relationship with New York, what brought her here after 31 years in the Bay Area, what it means to be a cultural worker and how she manages to sustain it, defining our careers for ourselves and the essential connection between art and politics.
Places on the Internet to Learn More:
 


Soft Power Vote (https://softpower.vote/about/)website and Instagram and their June 2021 Primary Voter Guide and their Candidate Criteria


Ranked Choice Voting Info and where to find your poll site and sample ballot


Dianne Morales’ Campaign Woes


Rebecca Traister on Maya Wiley and New York Magazine’s feature on Andrew Yang


New York Nico interviews the Mayoral Candidates

Kelsey Jones and Gabriela Tejedor, are the founders and Co-Heads of School and the respective Math and ELA teachers at Brooklyn Independent, a private middle school with a sliding scale tuition model located in Fort Greene. BKI names diversity and inclusion as keys to effective learning, and the school’s goal is to cultivate a community that sincerely reflects the racial and socioeconomic diversity of Brooklyn. Gaby and Kelsey started BKI as a response to the stark segregation and inequity that plagues New York City’s school system, two things they witnessed and felt in their decade-long careers as educators. Gaby and Kelsey opened the doors of BKI to their first class of 6th graders in the fall of 2019 after years of intense, and at times, disheartening, planning. BKI is now in its second year of operation, serving 6th and 7th graders, with plans to expand in the coming years.
This conversation is rigorous (to borrow an overused word from the ed world) and emotionally rich and thought provoking and very very honest. In this episode, Gaby and Kelsey discuss their protective, stubborn relationships with New York City, how to fundraise and recruit for a school with a social justice mission and different tuition tiers, the ugly truth about remote learning, and running a school during a pandemic and last summer’s uprising. They also reflect on the email they sent out last June in support of Black Lives Matter and the many iterations the school’s systems have gone through to most accurately actualize their mission and to better serve all of the students and families in their community. Alexis, Kelsey and Gaby also all share details about their own uncomfortable reckonings with how they have shown up (and not shown up) as educators in the past, and how to do it with more awareness.

Places on the Internet to Learn More:


Brooklyn Independent’s Website (https://www.bkindependent.org/)and Instagram


Initiate Equity


Teaching Tolerance’s Social Justice Standards


MCOD: Multicultural Organization Development Framework

Brittany Owens Micek is the founder and lead organizer of Meditating for Black Lives, a community organization that uses the principles and practices of various meditation traditions to support community efforts to heal oppression. Brittany started Meditating for Black Lives last summer with hopes to create a space for attendees to sit in contemplation together to process our absorbed trauma and breathe for the lives of Black and Brown people, and for all people, throughout the world. On Saturdays and Sundays from June 2020 lasting through the fall, Brittany or other intentionally selected guides led up to 2,000 attendees through 30 minute guided meditations in both Bed Stuy and Brownsville that focused on the privilege and precarity of breath.
This is part two of our conversation with Brittany. Topics include, how the wellness industrial complex has co-opted the ancient practice of meditation, leaving it falsely synonymous with whiteness and money… and also how Meditating for Black Lives is an attempt to counteract that. Brittany explains why she chose to move the meditations to Lincoln Terrace Park from a park in a gentrifying Bed Stuy, how she intentionally chose the meditation leaders and how the local NYPD precincts chose to behave when she applied for a park permit with “Meditating for Black Lives” in the title. We also talk about the psychology of whiteness and why nobody ever talks about it, Alexis’ honest journey with yoga and we somehow manage to stumble on conversations about Jay-Z, NoName, Atlanta, Robin D’Angelo, Solange, DMX and the Goonies.
Meditating for Black Lives is also back for its second season! They will hold three meditations every Saturday and Sunday in May at Swivel Gallery in Bed Stuy. Visit the links for MFBL and Swivel Gallery below to check the times and sign up in advance.
Places on the Internet to Learn More:
 


Visit Meditating for Black Lives’ Website and Instagram to sign up for a meditation and donate if you are able


You can also sign up for a meditation on Swivel Gallery’s website


“Corporate Mindfulness Programs Are an Abomination”, Thom James Carter for Current Affairs


Yoga is Dead Podcast

Brittany Owens Micek is the founder and lead organizer of Meditating for Black Lives, a community organization that uses the principles and practices of various meditation traditions to support community efforts to heal oppression. Brittany started Meditating for Black Lives last summer with hopes to create a space for attendees to sit in contemplation together to process our absorbed trauma and breathe for the lives of Black and Brown people, and for all people, throughout the world. On Saturdays and Sundays from June 2020 lasting through the fall, Brittany or other intentionally selected guides led up to 2,000 attendees through 30 minute guided meditations in both Bed Stuy and Brownsville that focused on the privilege and precarity of breath.
You will hear our conversation with Brittany in two parts. And they are both damn good, if we do say so ourselves.
This is part one. In this episode, Brittany and Alexis talk about their spiritual relationships with New York City and its often overlooked natural beauty, how an image  of three of her selves in a red convertible in the wake of a pandemic related lay off led Brittany to start Meditating for Black Lives, and how listening to music can be both comforting and also emotionally manipulative (word to Brandy on that one). Brittany also tells us some foundational things to know about meditation and about her experience at a silent retreat at a Buddhist monastery and its impact on her- including altering her relationship to New York’s infamous and indomitable cockroach population. You will hear the beginnings of the genesis of Meditating for Black Lives, but we leave you on an intentional cliff hanger. So tune in to part two!
Meditating for Black Lives is also back for its second season! They will hold three meditations every Saturday and Sunday in May at Swivel Gallery in Bed Stuy. Visit the links for MFBL and Swivel Gallery below to check the times and sign up in advance.
Places on the Internet to Learn More:


Visit Meditating for Black Lives’ Website and Instagram to sign up for a meditation and donate if you are able


You can also sign up for a meditation on Swivel Gallery’s website


Stella Bugbee on hyperlocal NYC fashion for New York Magazine


Empty Cloud Monastery

Today, we bring you part II of Alexis’ conversation with Rev. Amanda Hambrick Ashcraft. In part II, Alexis and Amanda discuss: the tension of being a white person in the anti-racist movement and how they wrestle with that tension, how anti-racism needs to show up in day to day life beyond Instagram, the complicated relationship between the Black Lives Matter movement and capitalist institutions like the Grammys, the danger of white feminism and the off base assumptions progressive white people make. Alexis also explains why this moment in time feels, to her, like one long episode of Atlanta. Amanda shares the story behind her controversial decision to appear on Fox News, twice, the relationship between spirituality and protest, and her own decision to go to seminary. She also discusses the history of Middle Church as a progressive spiritual haven and it’s future after a devastating fire burnt it’s Second Avenue sanctuary to the ground last December.
If you missed Part I, Amanda Hambrick Ashcraft is a white mother raising three white kids, a 5 year old daughter and 7 year old twin boys, in the East Village of NYC. She was born and raised in a small town in Kentucky, went to college in Birmingham, AL and to seminary in Richmond, VA. She has lived in NYC for 13 years. Amanda is a movement builder and leader who writes, speaks and studies at the intersection of race, faith, politics, feminism, and parenting. Amanda is also the Executive Minister for Justice, Education & Movement Building at Middle Church, a historic, multicultural inclusive church in the East Village.
You can find the episode in our feed to hear Amanda and Alexis discuss our perceptions of the REAL differences between the American South and NYC, early conversations we had (or didn’t have) about race in our childhood homes, and our definitions of activism. Amanda shares why she brings her own kids to protests, what anti-racist parenting looks and feels like in everyday life (including breaking down the importance of J.Lo and Shakira’s 2019 superbowl halftime performance and discussing the wonders of Dolly Parton with her children), why it is the responsibility of all white parents to talk to their kids about race and why parenting is inherently political.
Places on The Internet to Learn More:


Middle Church and the fire that destroyed it’s sanctuary


“Anti-Racist Reading Lists, What Are They For?”, Lauren Michele Jackson for Vulture


Minor Feelings, Cathy Park Hong


The atrocities of Peter Stuyvesant


Amanda on Fox News


Tamika Mallory on the Grammys

Do we hate the player, but love the game? Ball is Business is an investigation into the complex world of amateur basketball, from the players who love the game to the systems that break their hearts.
In September 2020, Alexis' original pitch for “Ball is Business” was chosen as one of 10 finalists (out of 1,800 entries) in iHeartRadio’s Next Great Podcast competition. She had three weeks to create a pilot of an narrative documentary podcast investigating the exploitative nature of the high school basketball recruitment circuit. The pilot features interviews with ESPN’s Baxter Holmes, The Last Shot’s Corey Johnson, top NYC youth basketball recruit Jermel Thomas and Dr. Akuoma Nwadike discussing the effects being a star athlete as a kid has on your mind, body and identity.
Alexis is currently pitching the series to outlets who are interested in producing Ball is Business into a full series with care, passion and a relentless pursuit for truth! Take a listen to the pilot and hit us up if you know anybody who fits that description!