Weaving Liberation of All Beings
Aurora Commons works in partnership with other changemakers towards a more liberated, more just, and more interconnected future. We are creating a more equitable home for human and non-human kin alike from available and yet-to-be-recognized resources and practices. We reject fragility and embrace generativity, understanding that we can be in transformative community together even with irresolvable differences.
Weaving Liberation of All Beings is an anti-supremacist and pro-liberation framework in which the planet, humans, and other-than-human kin (animals, plants, and biota) are treated as belonging to one whole system to realize the liberation of all beings in interdependent and interconnected ways.
At the roots of interlocking oppressions are different iterations of supremacy: the intentional and systemic "othering" and "lessening" of certain human groups, kinds of other-than-human life, and land/water. Supremacy — including white supremacy, imperialism, colonialism, patriarchy, and ecocide— is the root of all injustice, racism, misogyny, and environmental destruction. Weaving Liberation of All Beings is part of a rising longstanding global effort to shift understanding towards collective accountability for mutual liberation and to get at the roots of the human tendency towards supremacy.
The current interwoven needs of people and the planet to repair, heal, and thrive go beyond a surface acceptance of our existence within one ecosystem. Liberation for all requires a shift in our collective worldview. It requires changing institutions, social norms, and relationships in ways that enable all of us to be both different and whole together—free of supremacy and oppression.
Many different communities — with ancient and new wisdom — embrace versions of the worldview that the planet, humans, and living beings are kin within one system. These communities model and embody liberated futures in the present, providing maps for others to learn from and connect with so that our collective conception of anti-supremacist liberation of all beings can become a ground from which power-building groups act.
A Framework for Culture Change
We can no longer deny that people's lives across the globe are intersectional and interdependent, and our movements for change must be as well. This stance is increasingly important as climate change, public health threats, and populism accelerate in the U.S. and globally.
To achieve real, widespread, sustained progress, changemakers and liberation movements need a framework that doesn't lead to piecemeal progress. The old, dominant terms of engagement and capitalist cost/benefit analyses are killing us, our non-human kin, and the planet. We must rewrite these terms of engagement by embracing a multi-species, borderless, large-scale shift in the conception of what it means to live and thrive. We need to build a framework for Weaving Liberation of All Beings that disrupts false borders and boundaries, mends false separations of the natural world from the human, and gets to the roots of oppressions faced by communities and ecosystems across the globe.
When we collectively see wholeness and interdependence as foundational principles for the planet, humans, and living beings, we shift our vision for a liberated future.
True justice and liberation will require many more people to hold these beliefs and act through them, embedding them in norms, policies, and practices that shift the ecological, political, social, and economic relations among humans, the planet, and living beings.
We don't have all the answers and aren't the first to ask these questions. Weaving liberation for all beings is a work in progress, a lens for culture change, as a foundation for widespread progress, and as an emergent approach that honors ancient global lineages to solve persistent problems rooted in oppressive hegemonies.
Community Offerings with Partners
Any long-term vision of liberation must be realized with many partners. Aurora Commons works in partnership with other social change organizations, networks, and philanthropists, and we are grateful for past and future opportunities to germinate the seeds of Weaving Liberation of All Beings with consultants, coaches, artists, and frontline leaders. Below are a few examples of our offerings to weave liberation of all beings.
Weaving Liberation of All Beings Pilot
We collaborated with bug carlson, a white, trans artist-researcher in Tiwa Territory, working in the entangled territories of ecology, liberation, play, and multispecies justice. On an in-depth virtual conversations between an invited group of academics, artists, and activists dedicated to the work of liberation and anti-supremacy. This learning community met to share worldviews, identify questions to explore, and envision possibilities for conceptualizing, building, and disseminating our creative research.
Race + Ocean Transformational Leadership
We collaborated with Chad Jones and Dara Silverman on a leadership development program to support a racially equitable ocean movement. We convened and facilitated a BIPOC caucus focused on supporting BIPOC leadership in a white-dominant field, advancing racial equity in the ocean conservation field, building and exercising power in organizations and coalitions, and tending to our well-being and sustainability. We also facilitated a white caucus on bringing a racial equity lens into their work, co-leading racial equity processes in their organizations, sharing resources and power with BIPOC groups, and reducing the burdens on BIPOC leaders. Both caucuses explored writings on kinship, non-human sensory experiences, and the relationship between oceanic ecosystems and liberation.
“The Race + Ocean series was fundamental in shaping how I see myself and approach my work on ocean advocacy. Their holistic approach opened my mind, centered me, and helped me see the positive traits I had about myself that I had forgotten about. Living with ourselves every day we sometimes forget about how resourceful and resilient we are. The team at Aurora Commons brought that back into focus and helped me connect to others walking this same path.”
Andrea Sanchez Davidson (she/her)
Program Manager – Ocean, Coast, and Fisheries
Conviviendo: Living with Each Other
We are partnering with base-building and policy advocacy organizations to host an in-person gathering to explore what it means to weave liberation for all beings. We will build a collective ceremony by sharing practices we are using to create narratives and campaigns grounded in interconnectedness, design organizations based on ecological principles, develop rituals that reinforce inter-mutuality with all living beings, and nurture communities across differences. Through this ceremony, we will embody and deepen our praxis in weaving liberation for all beings.
Climate Justice & Food Justice Strategy
We support a global funder to reimagine how they nurture grassroots power-building and community self-determination towards an equitable, decolonized future that liberates humans and nature. We guide the strategic planning process, facilitate leadership meetings to explore questions and make decisions, and coach staff on grantee engagement. Together, we are refining the foundation's vision and values while exploring new configurations of guiding stars that work across multi-national regions based on place, issue, and change strategy. We are also developing ways to operationalize new strategies into the ways the foundation is governed, how the foundation makes grants in alignment with trust-based philanthropy, and the types of financial and non-financial support the foundation can provide.
Resources
Resources on Weaving Liberation of All Beings
Organizing Liberatory Networks: An Invitation. Susan Misra, Trish Tchume, Robin Katcher, Natalie Bamdad, and Natasha Winegar. July 28, 2021.
Imagining our Future Interconnected Communities: A multi-racial democracy based on love, equity, regeneration, & interdependence. Marcela Torres. May 5, 2023.
Resources That Have Inspired Us
Qualities Of Regenerative & Liberatory Culture. Daniel Lim. July 2020.
Transforming the Transition. Cultural Hack Labs. 2021.
Just Transition. Movement Generation. 2017.
Unsettling marine conservation: Disrupting manifest destiny-based conservation practices through the operationalization of Indigenous value systems. Lara A. Jacobs, Coral B. Avery, Rhode Salonen, and Kathryn D. 2022.
Connect with Us
We recognize that many people are doing work aligned with Weaving Liberation of All Beings in many different existing contexts. We're always eager to bring folx with deep wisdom together to see what emerges from connecting across communities, issues, and sectors.
We invite you to join us in curiosity, play, deepening commitment, and practice. If you are interested in learning more, staying in touch, or getting involved, please connect with us.