the monday good news is back

heeeeeey y'all. the monday good news is back and i am excited about it. here's what i've gathered for us this week. feel free to pass along good news you find for next week's email!

talking about real life shit doesn't have to be hard

i'm living for the resources i've recently been introduced to that give us ways to talk to the ultimate freedom dreamers among us, our children, about abolition, race, queerness, and more. woke kindergarten is a global, abolitionist early childhood ecosystem & visionary creative portal that focuses on supporting children, families, educators and organizations in their commitment to abolitionist early education and pro-black and queer and trans liberation. they offer 30 second texts, woke wonderings, woke read aloud, a woke word of the day, and more

there's also Queenie's Crew from Project NIA.

Queenie’s Crew engages children in learning about building communities of care without prisons or policing. Every month, members receive an email with an activity that kids can complete to learn more about abolition: We’ll share activities like coloring pages, word searches, word scrambles, mazes, and reflection exercises. Using readings and art projects, we support children in imagining a collective future where we are all free.

this show gets it right

turns out, it's not that hard to cast and hire people whose life experiences aline with the content of the media you're making. As We See It is a show on Prime (it's obviously still fuck Amazon) that follows three autistic roommates and their aid as they navigate an ableist world. i'm obsessed with this show because it's a good ass show, but also because it is thoughtfully and politically made. these two things are linked.

“In our show, all the neurodiverse characters are played by neurodiverse actors. We actually also have a couple of neurotypical roles that are played by actors who identify as being on the spectrum,” Katims explains. “It's important to me because I wanted to get it as right as we could. As authentic as we possibly could… It was also really important, for the same reason, to have people on both sides of the camera who identify as on the spectrum. We had people in the writer's room, the editing room, on set and in the production office, as well. They brought so much to the show.”

The care that Katims had in having neurodiversity represented on set helped the production of the show innumerably, especially when it came to supporting the actors. “There were so many [neurodiverse] actors and people who had family members who were on the spectrum... There was an intuitive sense of how to behave around somebody who may have sensory issues or sensitivities or just how to speak in a way so somebody on the spectrum could follow and not take things personally,” Pien says. “It was like there were a lot less landmines on set, so to speak.”

nature is queer af

y'all i looooove the atmos newsletter. as legislators all over the country try to use their positions of power to further marginalize queer and especially trans people, this reminder that queerness, transness, and life outside the binary have always existed and are innately natural is beautiful and necessary.

"Nature has long been weaponized against queer people, but homosexuality is common in the animal kingdom—from primates and dolphins to lions and giraffes to starfish and snakes. This behavior is not limited to sex alone, either; it can also include cuddling, singing, mating, and courtship. Penguins have been known to form monogamous same-sex relationships; one such couple recently became fathers at the Rosamond Gifford Zoo in Syracuse, New York.

Transness and gender nonconformity are plentiful in nature as well. The water is not the only aspect of the ocean that is fluid; deep beneath the waves, a number of species change sex as part of their lifecycle. All clownfish are born male, but the dominant males in a school turn female in order to lay eggs and reproduce. Hawkfish exhibit even more fluidity; mature females often become male, but switch back and forth. Examples of drag exist too, with male cuttlefish known to take on the coloration of females."

an offering

i don't know about y'all, but i'm looking for routines and rituals to keep myself grounded as the world seems to spin faster and faster. this one appealed to me:

be the good news

if you're looking to be the good news on this fine monday, my students are fundraising to go to Japan for their senior trip. you can contribute at this link.

as always, i hope this was useful.

if it was and you've got five bucks a month to spare, click here.

with hope,

katie wills evans