The Cypher
The Weekly Roundup + Allow Us to Re-Introduce Ourselves
Hey fam!
Below, we’re sharing what we’re watching, listening to and reading! Plus, every week for the next 4 weeks, one of the CFs will be re-introducing herself.
Watch:
Our IG Live from this week with Chanel, Eesha, Brittney and Susana talking shit and politics.
Check out Raoul Peck’s searing four-part documentary series on white supremacy’s colonialist legacy in Exterminate All the Brutes on HBO Max. Trigger warning: you will want to bust heads open after watching.
Thunder Force on Netflix features two forty-something BFF superheroes (played by real-life besties Melissa McCarthy and Octavia Spencer) saving the world from creepy politicians. Lighthearted and action-packed.
Kyoko Takenaka made a video to document the immigrant challenge to find home, in which she shares all covert audio recordings of all the racist and sexist things men have said to her in bars.
Sonya Renee Taylor’s IG sermon in response to white supremacist attacks on Black women activists.
Lena Waithe is executive producer for Them on (the whack employer who shall not be named) Prime and it explores internalized and systemic racism in the horror genre and I am all the way here for this.
Listen:
In this season of anniversaries (CFC year 11, CF Eesha’s Center for Advancing Innovative Policy, CAIP, where she is co-founder and managing partner, year 4), beginnings (The Remix by CFC) and pending endings (good riddance corona), we are reminiscing on the 10 year anniversary of Issa Rae’s webseries, Awkward Black Girl and the upcoming fifth and final season of Insecure. Listen to her recent interview with Jemele Hill is Unbothered, “Success Shit.”
Podcast Therapy for Black Girls is a perennial fave. Check out their recent episode on rejecting the superwoman syndrome.
Read:
A beautiful essay from Min Jin Lee about her Uncle John and what he taught her about the solace and solutions we find in books. Sort of a map of her life, in books.
Anyone else a sucker for some schadenfreude when it comes to criminal bazillionaires? Just picked up a new book called The Empire of Pain, about the Sackler family, and how they orchestrated the opioid crisis and made billions.
Serious about breaking cycles and being very intentional with your parenting, especially for girls? Check out Parent Like It Matters by Dr. Janice Johnson Dias.
Look:
The Rumpus is sharing poems every day through April, as it’s National Poetry Month. Here are a coupleof stunners.
The work of the incomparable Faith Ringgold will be available at the Monographic Exhibition opening at Glenstone Museum just outside of Washington, DC this Spring.
Now…..Allow Me To Reintroduce Myself
How it Started….
How it’s Going
I’m Eesha. I’m the CFC’s resident policy wonk. When we started the CFC in 2010 I was living in New York, working on health care reform at a women’s health non-profit. Now, I live in Houston, where my family is, and just celebrated the 4 year anniversary of The Center for Advancing Innovative Policy, which I co-founded in 2017 with my beloved friend and comrade Verónica Bayetti Flores. We build policy agendas with grassroots organizations -- policy for the people, if you will.
11 years ago I would not have imagined that I would have hustled my way into a life in which I get to do meaningful work every day with people I love, respect, and trust. The CFC taught me the power of having a crew which is equal parts political home and people who hold you down — by your side through the rough patches and there to celebrate each and every one of your wins.
I make playlists with one of two conceptual frames, the season or the feeling. My springtime 2021 playlist is full of some coming-out-of-the-pandemic-winter vibes (Alabama Shakes, Raveena, Daniel Caesar, Xenia Rubinos, Khalid, and all the Normani). Trying to maintain a mellow spring vibe in late-stage capitalism is no easy feat, but the playlists can help. ;)
I’m thrilled to be writing with this brilliant group again, and am looking forward to thinking, learning, and engaging with you all in this digital space.
Love and solidarity,
Eesha