Feel Everything to Fight Strategically: Erica Woodland on Emotions, Trauma, Healing, and Resistance
Episode Description
In this profound episode, Ejeris Dixon sits down with healing justice visionary Erica Woodland to explore how fascism is impacting our mental health and our capacity to organize. With a background in psychotherapy and decades of movement work, Erica discusses the emotional toll of surviving and resisting while fascism rises overwhelmingly. Ejeris and Erica grapple with what it really means to fight fascism without abandoning ourselves or each other.
About Erica
Erica Woodland (he/him), LCSW is a Black queer, trans masculine facilitator, consultant, psychotherapist and healing justice practitioner who has worked at the intersections of movements for racial, gender, economic, trans and queer justice and liberation for more than 20 years. He has extensive experience working with youth, people of color, LGBTQ people, and people with disabilities across the United States. Erica is the Founding Director of the National Queer and Trans Therapists of Color Network (NQTTCN), a healing justice organization that actively works to transform mental health for Queer and Trans Black, Indigenous and People of Color. Under his leadership, NQTTCN has trained and mobilized hundreds of mental health practitioners committed to intervening on the legacy of harm and violence of the medical industrial complex while building liberatory models of care rooted in abolition. Erica is co-editor of Healing Justice Lineages: Dreaming at the Crossroads of Liberation, Collective Care and Safety, with Cara Page (North Atlantic Books, 2023).
About Ejeris
Ejeris is a political strategist passionate about strengthening liberation movements and building community safety. Ejeris serves as the Fascism Barometer's "movement meteorologist," exploring the impact of fascist movements on communities of color, queer and trans communities, and all marginalized people. Having worked for the past twenty-five years at the intersections of racial justice, LGBTQ liberation, anti-violence, transformative justice, and economic justice movements, Ejeris focuses on creating political and strategic experiments to strengthen social justice movements through the organization Ejerie Labs.
Resources
Reading
Healing Justice Lineages: Dreaming at the Crossroads of Liberation, Collective Care, and Safety by Cara Page and Erica Woodland
Check out the Healing Justice Lineages website and Digital Archive
“To Heal Traumatized Communities, Fight Oppression,” Erica Woodland, Truthout
“Resisting Fascism: Lessons from South Asia And Its Diaspora,” Maya Bhardwaj, The Forge
Learn more about the Medical Industrial Complex at the Healing Histories Project
“The Hippocratic Underground” Eric Reinhart, The Nation
“The Fine Print of Trump Fascism: The Trump regime is taking over every major institution in America. Here's how.” Robert Reich, Substack
“Trump administration moves to repeal EPA rule that allows climate regulation” Matthew Daly, PBS News
“Texas Republicans Approve Arrest Warrants for Democrats Who Fled State to Halt Gerrymandering” Democracy Now!
“Trump Admin Plans to Burn Around $10M Worth of Contraceptives Meant for Aid” Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg, Truthout
Listening
Watching
Erica Woodland Interview, Healing Justice Lineages Website and Digital Archive
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