00;00;00;00 - 00;00;42;01
Erica Machulak
What does it mean to be a rebel with a cause? And what does it look like when we do entrepreneurship in community and with accountability for the choices we make? I'm Erica Machulak, founder of Hikma. You are listening to the Hikma Collective podcast, where in this episode we are talking with Brittany Brathwaite, who is an amazing creative serial social entrepreneur and also a scholar.
00;00;42;04 - 00;01;09;18
Erica Machulak
She's a great answerer of both of these questions and more. I learned so much in this conversation and we really hope that you enjoy it. Thank you for listening.
00;01;09;20 - 00;01;36;15
Erica Machulak
Welcome, Brittany. Thanks for joining us. Tell us about yourself.
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Brittany Brathwaite
I'm Brittany. I'm a reproductive justice activist, entrepreneur and community accountable scholar, originally from Brooklyn, New York. But now I'm in Harlem. I love Brooklyn, though. Can't wait to go back. And I'm a current PhD student at the graduate Center studying critical social personality psychology and probably, I think this is my third year.
00;01;36;15 - 00;02;10;28
Brittany Brathwaite
I don't know. I've been on Zoom, in Zoom University, for like two and a half years now, so it's kind of hard to keep track of that. But I am the co-founder of three really beautiful ventures in the world, one is a feminist apparel, and I was like, we're more than apparel, apparel brand called Homegirl HQ. It was formerly called the Homegirl Box and we curate items that are created by women owned and non-binary owned businesses.
00;02;11;01 - 00;02;29;25
Brittany Brathwaite
That's what we've done in the past. But all of our work really centers the life and legacy of revolutionary women of color. And so that was like one of the, that's my most physical product of a business. Like that's the one that I see in other people's houses. And I'm like, Oh, I made that. And I and I've been doing that since 2016.
00;02;29;25 - 00;03;00;08
Brittany Brathwaite
And so that's been really fun. And it's I, most people think that we're like an activist non-profit, though, since we're so like, our values are so front forward. So people are like, and I'm like, no, we really just make shirts and boxes, but I love you think that. And because of who we are, I think that the place where my values really shine through and even in the manufacture, I didn't know anything about, like how things are manufactured and how to make choices around like where to buy products from.
00;03;00;08 - 00;03;18;20
Brittany Brathwaite
I only sourced in the U.S. And I'm really like, you know how much it cost to mail something and try to support the United States Postal Service, but they lose your stuff all the time. And so it's like all of these like where your values come into actions, like sending something in the mail, you know? And so that was like that was my one of my first ventures.
00;03;18;22 - 00;03;28;25
Brittany Brathwaite
And then, and it's also a worker own cooperative. And so while there are only two Homegirl workers now we're incorporated as a worker cooperative.
00;03;32;74 - 00;03;32;33
Erica Machulak
And what does that mean? What does a worker cooperatives look like?
00;03;18;22 - 00;04;18;18
Brittany Brathwaite
So a cooperative, a cooperative model is part of a larger sort of like ideology of cooperative economics in the sense that there is sharing around profit, around decision making. And so anyone who comes to work at Homegirl HQ owns Homegirl HQ, and so they have the ability to have actual you know, it's not like buying stock but you have equity in a company that you work for and that people have decision making power. And so it's not like, you know, I mean, you have most of the time you have decision making power in some form of your job, but you don't kind of get to you don't get to make decisions about the organizational budget or like who you work with and in a worker owned co-operative model you do.
00;04;18;20 - 00;04;38;20
Brittany Brathwaite
And so it's a it's never easy because when you have multiple people making decisions, it takes a lot of time and it like, you know, it's not like, oh yes, we're going to do this thing or I'm going to jump on the call with this person or we're going to invest this in this. You know, I want to make stocks. And my business partner's like we're going to make stocks in three years Brittany.
00;04;38;20 - 00;04;58;02
Brittany Brathwaite
And I'm like, ohh. But I have 50% of the vote here. So that makes sense. And so we actually come to agreement around like what our next thing is going to be. And then my other organization Rebellious Root is also a worker owned cooperative. And so they're, to start off where we originally had five members.
00;04;58;05 - 00;05;35;10
Brittany Brathwaite
Now we have three active members and we are a facilitation co-op. And so we facilitate for organizations, we do strategic planning, company retreats. We do a lot of diversity, equity, inclusion, justice work, we call it JEDI work. And we have a lot of fun doing that. And then we also put on a retreat for youth workers. The US doesn't really have a youth worker force, so like you'll never hear like a basketball coach and a teacher and a sex educator and I don't know, someone who teaches kids gardening feel like they all belong to the same group.
00;05;35;10 - 00;06;06;15
Brittany Brathwaite
But in other countries, that is a thing like people identify as youth workers. And as long as they work and develop young people, they see themselves as part of the same sort of cohort. And so we're working to put folks together here in the US who have that a mindset about how we think about youth development, not as separate things, but as like one, you know, one group of people who are charged with developing young people and what might it look like to have the same kind of like manifesto and working and engaging with young people?
00;06;06;18 - 00;06;24;71
Erica Machulak
That's interesting. So when you think about youth workers and trying to create sort of a critical mass or a magnet or an organizational framework, is it kind of like reframing the most, foregrounding a certain dimension of what they do to reimagine a community of practice? Is that what it is?
00;06;24;92 - 00;06;32;16
Brittany Brathwaite
Yeah. So it's a community practice. So folks can feel like they are in like a learning community and a community practice together.
00;06;32;16 - 00;06;52;14
Brittany Brathwaite
So like a basketball coach and an after school teacher find themselves in the same place. Obviously at different times. But they are both people who see young people out of school time, right? And so they're responsible for things like sometimes meals and like feeding young people. And there could be more sharing of their strategies and how they support young people.
00;06;52;14 - 00;07;11;22
Brittany Brathwaite
But these are such, these are so divided. And we noticed, like while they are trainings for a lot of people, like managers have a training, you can go to the management center. Or you go to some, if you're a social worker, you can get continuing education units, but there is no training for youth workers specifically like here's how to be a youth worker.
00;07;11;29 - 00;07;35;07
Brittany Brathwaite
Like is like, here's how to be a basketball coach, but not here's how to work with young people in this way, unless you're formally educated in and you go to education or teacher route. And so we wanted to provide a space for folks to really get that and get that together in community. And so that's our youth worker force retreat model and we're working on building out sort of a program so that we can have that.
00;07;35;13 - 00;07;56;17
Brittany Brathwaite
And we pulled from places like Canada, the U.K., lots of folks already have those materials. It's not new and we're not inventing it, but we're also doing it in the U.S. in the context of the U.S. and our specific policies that are so different for young people here than they are in other places. And so that's that's like our main work at Rebellious Route.
00;07;56;17 - 00;08;24;14
Brittany Brathwaite
And then I have Kimbritive, which is a company that works on sexual wellness for black women, specifically. And we are currently working on a digital learning platform for black women as a virtual companion to talk about everything from birth control to self-managed reproductive health care, the whole spectrum. And that was my first ever business.
00;08;24;14 - 00;08;50;22
Brittany Brathwaite
I started that like 2015. I was like the first, I was in grad school, very poor, and working on that. And so yeah, lots of things going on. And then and then I consult in other ways all the time for other people.
00;08;39;86 - 00;08;42;35
Erica Machulak
Can I ask how you define rebellion?
00;08;43;14 - 00;09;25;25
Brittany Brathwaite
Yeah, I think it's. That's a good question. What's what is rebellion without using another word that's like rebellion. For me it's, it's a sort of willingness to break the rules for the purpose of creating something completely different that will change, like, the world, our society, or ourselves as we know it, for the better. And so it's yeah, it's a it's a risk taking. And something must be like not always broken open, but sometimes, I mean, with Rebellious Route we think about, like plants growing in places they're not supposed to grow or blooming in places they're not supposed to bloom, but they do, right.
00;09;25;26 - 00;09;44;16
Brittany Brathwaite
And they like one of my favorite flowers is the bird of paradise. And a very interesting like you can't miss it when you see it, but like when they grow and like people talk about like a rose who grow up on concrete. But when when birds of paradise grow, their roots are so strong that they can break like anything that's on top of it.
00;09;44;16 - 00;10;05;22
Brittany Brathwaite
And so I really think about that's the kind of rebelliousness that I try to harness when I'm doing work or when I'm living in general.
00;09;54;55 - 00;10;34;28
Erica Machulak
Hmm, I love that. It's such a nice counterbalance to this language of disruption and that you hear in the tech startup world so much of the time where it's, you know, let's break things. And there seems to be this idea that you're, you know, innovation means disrupting things just for the sake of of breaking stuff and seeing what happens. And trying to spin things out as quickly as possible. But it really feels like the way that you think about growth and the way that you think about building contributions in the world is more I mean, as you say, community based and responsive and really thoughtful in terms of the values that you bring to the work.
00;10;35;01 - 00;10;54;07
Brittany Brathwaite
Yeah, Yeah. I don't think we should just be breaking. Like every time I look at somebody like pitch application or thesis, they always talk about like, we want rule breakers and we want people that like break stuff. And I'm like, sure. But like, I also I operate from the place that I, you know, I don't break things without consequence.
00;10;54;07 - 00;11;11;00
Brittany Brathwaite
I think that that kind of sort of it's a very liberal notion to be like, oh, just break it and we'll see what happens. And I'm like, who is that afforded to. Like who can just break stuff and they'll be and they'll be okay. And so like, I also operate under that understanding that, you know, folks break things all the time.
00;11;11;00 - 00;11;37;77
Brittany Brathwaite
And then they some people that receive serious punishment and some people are celebrated for that. And so yeah, I have I think I move with the lens of that. And like and for what reason, like if it's not connected to a purpose or value and sometimes you don't need to break stuff, sometimes I mean, innovation isn't always breaking it, sometimes it's just looking at it another way or turning it around or, you know, like fixing it a little bit. Like we don't need to break everything.
00;11;38;20 - 00;11;48;35
Erica Machulak
Yeah, that's a really nice way to put it. So can you tell us a little bit more about the story of Kinbritive and why you built it and how it's changed over time?
00;11;48;62 - 00;12;09;04
Brittany Brathwaite
Oh yeah, it's such a story. So Kimbritive, so me and my best friend Kimberly and so Kimbritive has our names in it. And some people, like people have known this for years and they were like one day when they see it, like they're like, Oh, I get these weird messages on LinkedIn in the middle of the night like, Oh my God, it's you and Kim's names together.
00;12;09;04 - 00;12;35;19
Brittany Brathwaite
It's like, Wow, yikes. So we we both were we worked together when we were, we met in college, we went to Syracuse university and we ran a club essentially that was focused on sex education for black and Latino students. And when we started running that club, we had no budget because it's not like something like, we weren't putting on a concert so they weren't giving us any money.
00;12;35;22 - 00;12;58;00
Brittany Brathwaite
And so we had to learn how to. I think that's like where I got some of my entrepreneurship skills, like when people are talking about being lean I'm like ever in a student group for 14 thousand undergraduates with $0. No. So we figured out how to, like, create events and spaces and things like that with no money and no budget and no anything.
00;12;58;02 - 00;13;20;24
Brittany Brathwaite
And we really, it was really important for us to do that work at that time, when we entered college, HIV and AIDS was one of the leading causes of death for black women in the United States. And so our work was fun, but also urgent and necessary. And so we did everything. And talk about breaking the rules. Like we invited test the New York State Testing Center to campus to do HIV testing.
00;13;20;24 - 00;13;36;27
Brittany Brathwaite
But we didn't ask anybody. We kind of just like rented the rooms like. And looking back and like that probably like broke like 18 like rules of what you were supposed to do. But we were like, we can get testing here. We're just going to bring them. We're going to bring them here, and they're going to do it on behalf of sex symbols.
00;13;37;00 - 00;14;00;10
Brittany Brathwaite
And so we started working together in that capacity. And then we both graduated and went on to grad school and Kim was working on her MPH and I was working on, I think the first part of my MSW. And we really, we also had jobs. I was organizing, I was community organizer for six years and Kim was also doing like health education or adolescent health education.
00;14;00;17 - 00;14;23;12
Brittany Brathwaite
And we were very unfulfilled in the ways that we were doing the work we were doing, specifically around having done this work in college. And we had added our own spin to it. And it just wasn't that way or playing out that way in our work. And so we got together, we made one workshop, we presented at a conference, we got invited to do it at another conference and we didn't have an organization.
00;14;23;12 - 00;14;42;21
Brittany Brathwaite
We were like, Oh, I work here. And she was like, I work there. And we just do this workshop together. And they were like, Why? We don't know? And so we decided to name ourselves. I was actually working in Guyana at the time, so I was in South America. We were on G-chat, she was in New York, and we were like going back and forth.
00;14;42;21 - 00;15;07;24
Brittany Brathwaite
And we landed on Kimbritive, mostly because everything that we had done up to that point had been collaborative. Like I didn't see work without her. She didn't see work without me. Our stories were meshed. Our individual stories were meshed in the work. I was led to sex education from my own experience of being deprived of sex education as a young person and having to sort of find out what the consequences were in a very harsh way.
00;15;07;24 - 00;15;32;21
Brittany Brathwaite
And so we both were driven to that work and decided to give ourselves a name. And then after that, we became like a real thing, I guess, in the world. We got ourselves a little, our first website. It was so interesting, but it was like, I mean, it was great for the time. And then looking back it was like, Look at us when we were just beginning, when we had 1000 words, too much copy on the website, you know, very academic-y.
00;15;32;23 - 00;16;01;12
Brittany Brathwaite
But we we really wanted to put forth the sort of the sex education we did not have as young black girls growing up in Brooklyn, New York. And so we were leading workshops around the city. We were doing I mean, COVID has us pivot to virtual workshops, but we were really tried to get the sex education that we saw that was LGBTQ inclusive, that was had a racial justice analysis, that had all these pieces in it out there in the world.
00;16;01;15 - 00;16;19;16
Brittany Brathwaite
And what was really hard is when you don't have the policy that matches the thing that you're trying to do. So as long as the United States doesn't have a comprehensive sex education policy or even here in New York state where I live, doesn't have a comprehensive sex education policy. The work you're trying to do is like, you piece it together and whoever wants it gets it.
00;16;19;16 - 00;16;48;15
Brittany Brathwaite
But it's not like a high demand situation. And since we were a business, it wasn't like we were pulling in like large grants. And we were also competing with larger organizations like your Planned Parenthood Federation of America, right. And and we were also noticing at the same time that our peers, even though we wanted them to, you know, we wanted to grow another generation of folks that had the information about their bodies and their health that our peers still didn't have that information.
00;16;48;18 - 00;17;10;09
Brittany Brathwaite
And so we started developing workshops for adult women and we started doing those workshops. And those were really good. And then we hit a space where we were giving people lots of access to resources and information. And then the health care piece came in and it was like, so where do we go to the doctor? We were like, We don't know. We don't have this part, right.
00;17;10;11 - 00;18;20;19
Brittany Brathwaite
And so we we we started to look into sort of, there's this entire field of health tech or women's health tech or femtech that is meeting the needs of lots of folks. And I think about like great organizations like Maven and Tia Clinic and lots of folks that are doing that. And at the same time, black and brown folks are still struggling to like, we haven't eliminated the health disparities that are really clear and huge in our own communities with like, you know, a maternal death, maternal mortality rate for black women that's 2 to 4 times that of white women in the U.S. right. And so we, and that's just like one. There's like, every single like reproductive health or sexual health issue, black women fare worse with every single issue that exists. And so we are like thinking about how do we build in a space that is definitely addressing a need in one way and missing an entire population another, especially as many of non-profits focused on black women and girls, are actively pushing against regressive policies.
00;18;20;19 - 00;18;46;20
Brittany Brathwaite
So much of the money is going into addressing the necessary structural changes on the policy level. And that's where my life was, because I'm an organizer. But now I'm like, well, in the meantime, how do I build a product or build something that helps that? And if it forces, sometimes tech does push policy, we see that happen all the time, like turn, policies drop out of nowhere because tech says it has to.
00;18;46;22 - 00;19;07;28
Brittany Brathwaite
And so how do we sort of build, and this is all experimentation, I don't know what the solution is yet. But like how do we build in that market given, and there's not, and you know, there's not there's there are folks building in it right now, but there's not it's not like a flooded group of everyone's at the table because people are trying different ways, a lot of them being policy and legislative.
00;19;08;00 - 00;19;28;28
Brittany Brathwaite
And I've done that work. It was very cool. I'm doing something different now and I'm and I'm interested in innovating in a different way because if June tells you anything about, like what the policy landscape is for reproductive health and rights in this country, then you know, there's something else that we have to try and so that's that's sort of an evolution.
00;19;28;28 - 00;19;45;90
Brittany Brathwaite
So Kimbritive is in the space where we're thinking about how do we put sort of a product or tool in the market that folks can use to really be autonomous and supported in their sexual reproductive health. Black women specifically, feel seen, heard, and celebrated when it comes to their sexual reproductive health care.
00;19;46;19 - 00;19;54;12
Erica Machulak
Hmm. So what advice do you have for businesses that want to want to build in more humanity? What's, where do you think they should start?
00;19;56;43 - 00;20;23;02
Brittany Brathwaite
Um, where should they start? The job description. I think when we, I feel like my rule, I don't share job descriptions that don't have salaries at all. I don't. Or I'll follow up if someone's like hey share a job I'll follow up and be like what's the salary it's not listed. They're like, I don't know. I'm like, okay, well, when you figure out the salary, like, share it.
00;20;23;05 - 00;20;47;17
Brittany Brathwaite
I think we're in a space where we we've seen what it looks like for folks to be unemployed at huge levels, for folks to for working parents and moms to leave the workforce, folks who work in the wage economy, I mean in the gig economy, in a wage economy, and how that changes and shifts how people are able to make a livelihood and sustain their families.
00;20;47;19 - 00;21;10;05
Brittany Brathwaite
And so the job description feels like a good entry point for me that tells me exactly who you are, about your values without ever having to list them. And so, like I look at how people talk about time off, I look at how people talk about their benefits, how they talk about healthcare, knowing that health care expenses put a lot of families close to poverty or in poverty.
00;21;10;07 - 00;21;30;29
Brittany Brathwaite
And even if you have a high paying salary but no health care, then you're not really doing anything. If you have paid family leave, any of those things. Like I think how you are, and again, like I'm not at a place to hire yet, but that's something I'm always thinking about when I'm ready to do it. And like, you know, even for contractors, I think a lot about that.
00;21;31;01 - 00;21;46;09
Brittany Brathwaite
They don't get benefits or things like that, but like, how do we do this in a way that feels fair and just. And so I think that, yeah, it starts in a job description so you can list your values and be all bubbly and shit but like if you don't, if your values don't translate to your actual like company sort of structure.
00;21;46;09 - 00;22;12;22
Brittany Brathwaite
And time off is a really big thing. If you don't think that folks can, you know, be productive and, you know, take two, three, four weeks of vacation or something like that, then I think there's the chance to check in with your values around productivity and things like that. I think onboarding - how you welcome folks into your organization and how much time you take to plan for people to come.
00;22;12;25 - 00;22;27;23
Brittany Brathwaite
I don't think you would ever have a dinner party and then just like be in the backyard and be like, let yourself in all the way from the backyard and then like have them go away and be like, water will be here in an hour, but you can take a fee. Like, you wouldn't do that. So why would you do that for your staff?
00;22;27;25 - 00;22;46;09
Brittany Brathwaite
You should never onboard folks like that. No one wants to come into an organization and feel like you didn't want them there to begin with. And so I think that that kind of like warm sort of landing for folks. I'm a little like, you know, when people are like, oh, we're all family. I think that's kind of weird. Cause it's like we're actually not we're all different.
00;22;46;12 - 00;23;03;25
Brittany Brathwaite
We're we're we're very different. But I do think creating sort of equity and parity from the very start, like, you know, I don't, salary negotiation I don't really believe in. And some of us have to negotiate our livelihood every single day with our right to exist on this planet. Me as a black woman, I have do that every single day.
00;23;03;27 - 00;23;21;06
Brittany Brathwaite
I don't ever want to go to a job where they're like you should have negotiated. I'm like, I negotiate to be here. So I don't want to ever think about that. If you just say with the salary is and make it fair and livable and of the job experience. And you say that across the board for your team, then I don't think that we should have to have those conversations.
00;23;21;09 - 00;23;51;00
Brittany Brathwaite
And I think that companies, yeah, when they're explicit by their values, not just like list them but talk about, go in and operationalize how you live them. Like what is the thing that you do to live them. I know once in the work, when I was first starting out with a Homegirl box and we were making tote bags for one of our, we were celebrating the life and legacy of black feminist lesbian poet Audre Lorde, and it was the first tote bag we had ever made.
00;23;51;00 - 00;24;14;11
Brittany Brathwaite
And I was very like, Oh, this is cool. So we had the designer and we got the graphics and we got all the stuff and it was time to produce the tote bag and we were just starting. We had no money Erica. We had we were so broke. We didn't have like money that we have now in the bank, but we really wanted to create this tote bag anyway.
00;24;14;11 - 00;24;39;23
Brittany Brathwaite
We were looking at vendors, and it was strange cause like some of them were like ten to create them or whatever. And our supplier called back and was like, Well, do you want it to like be produced like with prison labor or should we go like this kind of labor? And I was like, prison labor? Prison labor? She said well they produce them.
00;24;39;25 - 00;24;57;21
Brittany Brathwaite
Lead with that. But like, you know, $6 a tote or something like that. And I was like, Wow, that's a lot of money. And then I was like, Oh, well, maybe I've always just had a tote bag produced in a prison that I didn't know about, of course, like, that's why I could get this high volume. But it was a question around like,
00;24;57;23 - 00;25;43;10
Brittany Brathwaite
To say like we donate to bail funds and we do this other stuff. And when it came down to the production of our tote bag like what are we going to do? And obviously we we had to fix the budget, we had to let go of some stuff. We had our dreams sort of boxed in. It couldn't be that thing if we wanted this tote bag, but that wasn't living into our values, which of course meant we had to make sacrifices, but also we couldn't be like, you know, no prisons, prisons aren't feminist. And then like tote bags produced in a prison. So those were like, you know, I think actually talking about how you operate, operationalize the values that you list, because that feels like a thing that everybody wants to do or does.
00;25;43;10 - 00;26;06;19
Brittany Brathwaite
Like, here are our values. How do you live then? How are you showing your team? I think like I'm like, I'm really into this question because I love it. But like, I think I think also like a lot of organizations externally show how they live their values and everyone is like, Oh yeah, Tomms you get one shoe and you send one to Africa or whatever, but like that's how you externally live your values.
00;26;06;19 - 00;26;25;01
Brittany Brathwaite
How do you live your values inside? Because that matters for your team. And I work with lots of teams that do really good work and the world loves them and they really hate where they work because the values that they offer and the things that they offer to the people, their clients, is great on the outside, on the inside is like a hellfire.
00;26;25;03 - 00;26;53;30
Brittany Brathwaite
Like, you know, they like it just doesn't it doesn't make sense. And so, yeah, that's what I would offer for a company. And I think that's the hardest work to do, the internal stuff. And if you're like me and your aim was not to build a company and like not have people work there, that feels like, Oh, I don't, I didn't plan for that. I just want to work on my idea. But also like that's what the world is asking of you. So I kinda got to do it.
00;26;54;03 - 00;27;00;17
Erica Machulak
Mm hmm. What is the problem that you're in love with? If you had to pick one.
00;27;01;78 - 00;27;25;17
Brittany Brathwaite
What is the problem that I'm in love with. I have so many problems. I mean, my work is really in interrupting health and equity and, like, that's that's the like, you know, why are there different health outcomes for different folks and how do we go about changing that?
00;27;25;20 - 00;27;51;22
Brittany Brathwaite
And also like bringing it to the like not normalizing deep health inequity. Because I think that there's like a normalization of that. And like that stems from like my life. Both of my parents died when they were very young, they were both 30 years old, of chronic health conditions that I believe today someone would have questioned their care, their treatment, their diagnosis.
00;27;51;25 - 00;28;13;20
Brittany Brathwaite
And it was almost unquestioned. Like no one in my family talks about it. It was like, oh, well, you know, cancer was different back then. I was like, Yeah, but not that different. Some people live beyond 30 and I do think, you know, facets of their class, the fact that they were black, they were young, they had a you know, my mom was not, I was one years old when she died.
00;28;13;20 - 00;28;50;18
Brittany Brathwaite
She had a one year old child. I felt like there needed to be more questioning around that, like this was an injustice that deserved to be like - and this happens every single day to people - that deserves to be like on the front page of the newspaper or on the TV screen. Like, why is this happening? You know? But I think that she's probably in somebody like, you know, Maternity Mortality Review Board report after, you know, she she died within the context what considered a maternal mortality sort of death at this point even though it wasn't directly related to her giving birth. And her name just like probably sits there right 30 years ago.
00;28;50;21 - 00;29;15;00
Brittany Brathwaite
And so I feel very unsettled by that. And I think that that's a question that we need to be like actively asking questions around preventable death and and not just like the science side of it or the biomedical side of it, but sort of the social conditions and cultural conditions that lead to those things and that make it normalized.
00;29;15;00 - 00;30;10;11
Brittany Brathwaite
And like an everyday happenstance sort of situation. And so that that's sort of what my work I think it's the gate like this is not normal, that there there's like a historical sort of arc that has this happened to certain people in certain places in certain ways. And we need to do something to disrupt that and change that because there, it will only continue to replay in the future, literally will continue to be shaped by that if we don't ask those questions.
00;29;46;54 - 00;29;50;09
Erica Machulak
That's really well put. And I'm sorry for your loss, Brittany.
00;29;50;15 - 00;29;51;119
Brittany Brathwaite
Oh Thank you.
00;29;52;71 - 00;29;55;10
Erica Machulak
So is there anything we can do to support your work?
00;29;56;74 - 00;30;07;27
Brittany Brathwaite
Anything you could do to support my work? I mean, I would love for people to just, you know, check it out in all of its places. And I can list all of those.
00;30;07;27 - 00;30;22;02
Erica Machulak
We will include we will include all of those in the show notes.
00;30;22;02 - 00;30;31;27
Brittany Brathwaite
Yeah, I love it. It's a long list. Yeah. People just to check out things. You can buy things at the Homegirl Box or Homegirl HQ. Kimbritive has a cool newsletter and Rebellious Route stay tuned for updates on, or reach out to us for, you know like if you have a youth worker thing that you want to do, we're here for that.
00;30;32;00 - 00;30;36;87
Erica Machulak
That's great. Thank you. Brittany, This was really a pleasure. Just so lovely to have you.
00;30;37;40 - 00;30;40;25
Brittany Brathwaite
Thank you. I really enjoyed being here.
00;30;58;15 - 00;31;25;02
Erica Machulak
We hope you've enjoyed this episode of the Hikma Collective Podcast. I'm your host, Erica Machulak, founder of Hikma. The production this episode was led by Sophia van Hees, in collaboration with Simangele Mabena, Eufemia Baldassarre, Ai Mizuta, Nicole Markland and Dashara Green. Matthew Tomkinson composed the original music you hear now in his capacity as the 2022 Hikma artist in residence. This podcast has been made possible with generous support from Innovate BC, Tech Nation, the Information and Communications Technology Council, the Canada Digital Adoption Program and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
00;31;25;04 - 00;31;51;70
Erica Machulak
You can find show notes, links and transcripts at www.hikma.studio/podcast. Hikma is situated on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the ən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ speaking Musqueam people. We are grateful to be here and to share this space with you. Our speakers, team members and listeners are based all over the world and wherever you're listening, we encourage you to learn more about whose land you're on.
