Autumn Brown and adrienne maree brown are sisters and cohosts of the podcast How to Survive the End of the World. Based in Avon, Minnesota, Autumn is a mother, organizer, theologian, artist, facilitator, and worker/owner at the Anti-Oppression Resource & Training Alliance (AORTA), “a cooperative devoted to strengthening movements for social justice and a solidarity economy.” Adrienne is a Detroit-based writer, doula, and social justice facilitator, perhaps best known as the author of Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds (AK Press, 2017) and co-editor of the 2015 anthology Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction from Social Justice Movements (AK Press, 2015). The sisters share many identities, as writers, activists, facilitators, and inheritors of multiracial diasporic lineages, as well as a particular interest in the question of survival. Their podcast explores the practices we need as a community, to move through endings and to come out whole on the other side, whatever that might be.
At the end of a year that can only accurately be described as “a fucking year,” we reflect on 10 of the most amazing moments that made this year one worth surviving.
1.
ALEXIS PAULINE GUMBS’S M ARCHIVE
The publication of M Archive: After the End of the World, by Sista Docta Alexis Pauline Gumbs, a series of poetic artifacts that speculatively documents the persistence of Black life following a worldwide cataclysm.
2.
SORRY TO BOTHER YOU
The release of Sorry to Bother You, most likely the best film ever made about late-stage racial capitalism.
3.
PATRICIA OKOUMOU
The climb of Therese Patricia Okoumou, who bravely scaled the Statue of Liberty to protest ICE’s dehumanization of immigrant families.
4.
THE READ
The righteous anger of fellow podcasters Kid Fury and Crissle on their amazing show, The Read. Specifically, we are surviving for every time Kid Fury gets so mad about asinine homophobia and/or racism that he says, “I’m tired!”
5.
DIRECT ACTION FOR SAMUEL OLIVER-BRUNO
The compelling, grounded, and heart-centered direct action that took place on November 23 in Durham, North Carolina, where activists linked arms around an ICE detention van in an effort to protect Samuel Oliver-Bruno from deportation.
6.
TUNDE OLANIRAN
The rising star of black queer musician/director/artist/fantasmagorist Tunde Olaniran and the release of his new album Stranger.
7.
BLACK FEMME EXCELLENCE
The black femme excellence of 2018: from the prolific benevolence of Beyoncè, who ignores those who scam in her likeness (roseivwho?) to Solange’s STILL unreleased album,to the fact that Mariah Carey is more committed to rhyming than range and yet gives us so many rhyming bops, we bow down.
8.
GIRL’S ROCK CAMP ALLIANCE
The transformative power of the Girls Rock Camp Alliance. Autumn’s daughter Siobhán attended the Twin Cities She Rock She Rock Camp, open to girls and transgender kids. On the first day of camp, Siobhán learned about pronouns and self-defense! Nuff said.
9.
PRINCE’S PIANO & A MICROPHONE 1983
The release of Piano & A Microphone 1983, and specifically Prince’s precise moaning on the aching and mysterious, “Why the Butterflies.”
10.
SISTERHOOD
The power of sistership, sistering, sibling-ing, and other acts of making and being family.
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