October 2023 Episode of Solidarity Is This

Welcome to the Solidarity Is This podcast, an initiative of the Building Movement Project. I am Adaku Utah, one of your co-hosts. And this season we are so thrilled to examine how sites of history and memory can transform ourselves and our communities deep in solidarity amongst us and build towards a more just society. This episode, we are so grateful to have Michelle Browder. Michelle is a native of Denver, Colorado. At the age of seven, Michelle and her family moved to rural Verbena, Alabama in the late 70s. For nearly 35 years, Michelle has used art, history and real talk conversations to mentor marginalized youth through visual arts and spoken word. She's created and branded art diversion programs used by juvenile detention centers in Atlanta, Georgia, and Montgomery, Alabama.

Today, Michelle is the founder and director of I Am More Than, a youth empowerment initiative in Montgomery, Alabama. She owns and operates More Than Tours, a social business providing educational tours for nearly 10,000 underserved students in marginalized communities of color. Enjoy the episode. I hope it fortifies you and sparks your imagination. And some of this episode talks about reproductive violence. So be gentle with you and take care where you can.

Welcome, Michelle. It is such a gift and honor to have you with us. I give thanks for your life and the lineage that you come from. Shout out to the South. Shout out to Alabama. I am so grateful for your precision and tenacity and a lot of generosity in just making sure our legacies are told on our own terms. And for all the ways that you weave our sacred traditions of cultural work to resuscitate our collective memory. Welcome and thank you.

Thank you for having me.

So we often begin inviting folks to tell us about your journey, your points of entry, any catalysts that have shaped how you engage in social change work.

It's through my art and my zeal to want to amplify the conversation regarding Black women and healthcare, or I call sick care and maternal health and different mortality. And I'm trying to do that through using art history and courageous conversations.

So as you know, this season we're focusing on public sites of memory and justice, and I was so honored to get to visit the Mothers of Gynecology sacred site in Alabama that you've been stewarding for many years now. And I got to go with Auburn's Seminaries Sojourner Truth Leadership Circle, which is a cohort of reproductive justice leaders. Shout out to them if they're listening. And over the last 20 years, we've all been organizing to reshape our communities to places where every reproductive decision takes place in thriving spaces that are safer, affordable, and hopefully pleasurable. And given how intertwined our work is with this public site that you're co-creating, it was so meaningful for us to be in Alabama with you and this cohort. So I'd love for you to share a bit more about this sacred site with our folks.

The Mothers of Gynecology is actually on a site that I like to talk about in terms of the legacy of it. It's a legacy of my family. My father being the first Black prison chaplain appointed by George Wallace. When he heard of my vision and what I wanted to do to amplify these voices and to erect this monument, it really started in 2019 when I decided that I would go out and buy me a she shed.

Okay.

Because I don't like paying rent and at the end of the month not own what I'm paying. So I decided to go and buy me a she shed. It was that whole commercial, somebody burned down my she shed. I was like, "You know what? That's what I'm going to do." And so I went and bought this shed and my father said, "Where are you going to put it?" And I was like, "I don't know." And he was like, "Tell you what," he says, "Why don't you call or go by the probate and ask them who owns the property next door and get that property?" So next door to where the organization where we would help the formerly incarcerated and unhoused and homeless people and women and children. So literally there was a lot next door to the office and he said, "Go see." And I did. And guess who owned it? My daddy. And he had no idea.

So he said, "Well, listen, you've got a vision for the space and do it." So I put she shed there. I told the city it was for storage for my art, but when you walk in, it's like an art gallery. And so from there, the ideas grew. Of course, COVID happens the next year. So we're all in shutdown. And I'm like, "How am I going to continue to eat? You don't work, you don't eat." And so decided to open up a horse farm, that wasn't good enough. And then I thought, "It's time to go back to my ideas of erecting this monument to honor Anarcha, Lucy and Betsey." And that's what I did.

During COVID, I flew out to San Francisco, learned how to weld from Burning Man artists. I came back home and I had a half head, half pair of legs, skeleton scattered in about 25 different boxes. It literally took me eight months to complete the project, but I did it and erected the Mothers in September '21. And they tell the story of the enslavement and the sex trafficking and what Black bodies and black women were forced to do. They persevered in terms of having babies and the midwives and doulas. And so I wanted to tell that story. And with that story, wanted to create a space for healing and love and comradery. And it's here, right by my she shed.

It is here, it is here. Oh, wow.

Or I should say they are here, right? Because they're throughout the whole process, that line let them be born and handled warmly was the tagline. That was the mission. And so because they weren't handled warmly, we wanted them to be handled warmly. And here we are two years later, literally to the date.

Wow, to the date. Wow, that feels good.

Well, actually the date was September '21.

Okay. I want to just pause and honor Anarcha and Lucy and Betsey and all the Black women, all the folks with wombs whose bodies were forcibly experimented and punished to advance the field of gynecology. Honor that we-

Yes.

Yes, and I want to thank them and you for just continuing this fight for informed consent, dignity, and the right to bodily sovereignty. This violence is centuries old and it's obviously still present today in so many ways from the increasing restrictions on reproductive justice to denying trans folks access to dignified care, to the ways that pregnant folks are still shackled during birth in prisons. And for many of us, we are in the fight of our lives and our futures right now. And what I see in your work and in so many fractals in our communities, we're not settling for the scarcity of white greed, capitalistic forgetfulness, and racialized violence. We are reaching back and forward to garner our tools and strategies that are necessary to build our interdependent relationships and listen humbly to the conditions happening on the ground and through art, through culture work, through organizing, building alternative healthy and healing economies and communities that can mobilize a powerful base of people that can create what our communities need right now.

There's just so much abundance and community. Well, you've been co-creating for some time. Your work is also the work and legacy of your family and just really speaks to the power and safety that we want never comes from the state, it comes from us. It comes from our love, our roots, our values, and our resistance. I'm curious, as communities are working to expose and challenge the history of medical racism across the country from the south to the north, and anywhere where folks are at, how might they engage with public sites? What are some considerations? What are some invitations and how can people also come and engage with your own space as well?

You mentioned birthing folks and trans. I just was with a woman, a gynecologist this past weekend, and she is of the gender, her whole practice was built on administering empathy, dignity, and respect for folks who wanted the surgery, the trans surgery. And so that's what we're talking about. Let's amplify voices and push people to a more humane set of being, and I think that art can do that. And I'm hoping, at least with my monument, the Mothers of Gynecology, is that we're pushing for that. I don't believe in DEI, that pendulum is swinging the other way. I believe in empathy, dignity, and respect, and you wouldn't need DEI. You understand what I'm saying?

And so therefore with the monument, we are talking about empathy, dignity, and respect, but using the history and how Black women were treated and how they were dehumanized and marginalized. And I'm saying this passionately because I'm thinking about my own sister who basically two weeks ago, we almost lost her life because she had a tumor that attached itself to her kidney, to her vagina, and to her bladder. She's had these fibroids and they took her fallopian tubes. She had the hysterectomy. And so it was a medical mystery. But in Montgomery, Alabama, they treated her like dirt. And all I could see was my life flash before my eyes. I have too much to lose. But it was a brown man. It was a brown surgical ER doctor that held her hand and rubbed her head when her white doctor wouldn't touch her. We need monuments that's going to speak to where we are right now.

Yes.

Can I just say that?

Please do, please.

Yeah. And so just an update on my sister. They flew her to UAB, University of Alabama in Birmingham. Thank you, and I hope people hear that because they were just as kind and sweet. And she woke up from her surgery weeping, saying, "Thank you for saving my life." They held her hand, they gave her the empathy and dignity and respect that our sick care does not have. It's not administering to people in need. And so I say that if we're going to build a monument in today's time, it should be one that speaks to the plight of where we are right now and create space for people to talk about it, to heal from it, and/or strategize or organize on how we're going to do better. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to go on a tangent.

Oh my goodness. Please do not apologize. This is why your work is so necessary because it's not just about the art and it's not just about a monument. It's about breaking open the healing, empathy, and dignity that's necessary to transform our conditions and to keep folks like your sister alive, give thanks that she is alive. And she had folks who saw her body and treated her body with care on her own terms. And for me, it's what your work evokes and as you said, is the sacred responsibility and mandate of public sites that are hoping to transform these histories of harm that they are really speaking to and transforming are now. So I am grateful that you said all of that because it feels like such an invitation. It feels like a reckoning, really, because so many of our folks are dying, our bodies are being sterilized, mutilated, not treated with care and dignity. And so more is necessary. More is needed.

Absolutely.

Yes. And I think also about how it also feels really vital and necessary to acknowledge and listen with Black bodies, with indigenous bodies whose traditional territories that we gather in and the healing of our people, the protecting of our people so intricately connected to the healing and protection of the earth as well. And so I just offer honor and reverence to all of those intersections. So you've worked with so many different communities to address the harms of the medical industrial complex, and you've used so many different strategies from culture work to organizing your communities as well. Your family has as well. And what lessons are you harvesting right now from your work?

It feels important to lift up the stories that we're garnering from women who either had hysterectomies or lost children or didn't have children or families that have been devastated by the lack of care. We received a grant where we could collect these stories of women. When we first opened up the Mothers, there was this woman who came and she just stood in front of Anarcha. Anarcha is 15 feet tall. And she stood there and she's looking at her with tears in her eyes and without me even saying anything, it was just a moment, she began to talk about how she didn't have one miscarriage, she had two and her desire to want to have children but couldn't. I don't even know what that's like. And then to have two and they died because they had fibroid tumors. And the tumors choked them out or killed the fetuses.

So right now we have problems such as my sister, the fibroids and what's killing us, what's happening to these bodies. So I just feel like the mandate and the call is to gather these stories and hopefully put them in some type of space where people can access them and hear that they're not the only ones that's going through this, but then how can I seek help outside of that? Where's the information that I can get to help me through this process? And that's what we're here for, creating space for healing holistic remedies and medicine. I don't care what you say, I believe in a good mentee. And so on the grounds because we don't talk about him healing the natural way. Big pharma has tricked us into thinking that you have to do certain shots to build your immune system and you really don't. You really need to go back to the land.

And I say all of that to say that's what we're trying to amplify. That's what we're trying to hopefully open eyes to folks that just haven't seen it. You mentioned the indigenous, and that's what really got me, because those folks, they know how to take care of the body. They know what remedies you need. They know the holistic remedies that can keep us well and healthy. And so that's also a part of our conversation.

So many indigenous folks, so many Black folks who have been working with the earth to make sure that our people are surviving into the future.

Oh, yes.

Yes, yes. And I know you're growing all kinds of herbs on the campus, and the folks should also know about the reclamation that you're doing of J. Sim's old hospital that you're transforming into a site and a healing space for Black women. Can you share more about that too?

So after September 21 erecting this beautiful monument, it's great. People are coming. They want to look at it, but that's not where it ends. So I wanted to create a conference where we could share the history, talk more about it, expose birth workers, social workers, nurses, doctors, have everyone in the room, the doula, the midwife, the OB/GYN, the obstetrics and gynecologists, bring everyone to the table. And so I called a few folks that I knew Dr. Veronica Pimentel, who's an OB/GYN, that really petitioned ACOG, which is the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecologists, to change the narrative by just having a day to reckon with this history. And I was like, "Oh, that's great. So that needs to happen in Montgomery first because where the Mothers are, right?" And so when I heard about that, she agreed to come.

Deirdre Cooper Owens professor, and educator, historian, she decided to come, along with the woman who just recently worked on the case with Ben Crump, Henrietta Lacks to get the justice that they deserve. Her name is Attorney Deleso Alford. And she came to the first conference and we had about 150 people that said that they would come. So I thought that was pretty good for our first one. And so I called the gentleman that owns the building where these enslaved girls were trafficked and mutilated and raped and tortured.

I called him and I said, "Hi, I would like to have a convening in the backyard of your building, the site of J. Marion Sims, father of "modern gynecology," claim to fame for experimenting on these women." And his claim was that he cured the vesicovaginal fistula, which was a hole that would take place either in the bladder and/or the rectum from obstructed labor, sometimes rendering these women to go through labor for three, four, five days in this hole. So he claimed that he could fix this hole. And so the space where he did his work where the Negro Women's Hospital is literally six blocks from the Mothers of Gynecology.

So I thought, "Wouldn't it be great if we just stood in the backyard and we learned this history?" And so the gentleman that answered the phone said, "Well, why don't you go down to the site now? It just so happened that the owner is there, he's waiting on some people. Just go down and tell them what you want him to do or what you want to do, and I'm sure he will oblige you."

So I go down to the space, 33 Perry Street, this tall white man with gray hair looked like Mike Pence when he turned around I was a little like, "Oh my God, Mike, what are you doing?" And so he says, "Oh," he says, "Are you here to buy the building?" And I said, "No, I just wanted to know if there was..." I told him what we wanted. And he says, "Oh yeah, you could do that. Would you need access to the building?" I said, "No." And he said, "Well, yeah." He said, "Sure, you could do that." I said, "Well, well, well, well, wait, did you just say you were selling the building?" And he says, "Yeah, I'm waiting on this guy." He's like, "Ms. Browder, we just don't want it anymore. It served his purpose. We've been out of it for four years now because my staff refuses to come back to the building." I said, "Well, what's wrong with it?" And he said, "If you tell anyone, I will deny it." He said, "But there's paranormal activity happening in the building."And I said, "Oh my goodness."

And I started to laugh and he turned beat red and was straight serious. And he says, "So we just don't want it anymore." And I said, "Well, how much are you selling it for?" He said, "$100,000." I was like, "Oh, wow." I said, "Well, I think I need this building." And he was like, "Oh, really?" I said, "Yeah." He said, "What would you do with it?" And I said, "Well, create a space for doulas, midwives, teach the rest of the history." And then I asked him, I said, "Do you know the history?" He said, "Very well, very well." And he said, "And I feel the presence of these people in this building."

That's what he told me. He said, "My staff again refuses to come here. And so, yes, I do know." He said, "Now, I've never seen what some of my staff have seen, but I felt the presence. I have felt their presence in this building." He said, "So the building is $100,000." And I said, "But what's wrong with it? Is it asbestos?" He was like, "Ms. Browder, I'm telling you it has served his time." So I said, "Okay." And then once I told him what I wanted to do with the building, which was to create space for medical students to come, learn the history, stay with us for a couple of days, and nurses and all of these medical professionals should come and be in this building and to learn the history.

And so he says, "Ms. Browder, I really do like this idea." And I'm just this down to earth sister. And I said, "Shut up, Mike." I said, "Shut up, Mike," and called him Mike. He was like, "Wait a minute, my name is Jim." And I said, "I'm so sorry." He said, "Who's Mike?" I said, "Oh, you just remind me of somebody I know." And he said, "I'll let you have this building for $75,000 if you're going to do everything that you said. Nobody better could have this building." So I said, "Okay." And so he says, "So what do you think about that?"

And I said, "Is there asbestos? Is the foundation off? What's going on?" He said, "Ms. Browder, $75,000." And so I said, "Okay." I said, "Well, can I make you an offer?" He said, "Make your offer." I said, "Can I give you $35,000 down and you carry the loan?" Southern Property Law Center had just given us an unrestricted grant for $50,000, so I had the money on hand. And so he says, "I tell you what, let me go talk to my wife." Now at this point in time, I'm thinking, here comes the Daughters of the Confederacy. Okay, you going to put the Daughters of the Confederacy on me because don't judge me, but I judged the book by the cover.

He said, "Call me back on Monday." So I said, "Okay." So I called him back on Monday, she gets on the phone and I just had a flashback to Gone with the Wind, and she says, "Ms. Browder, tell me what you want to do with this building." And so I started telling her the whole passion for it. And she says, "Well, we've just so proud of you. We've been watching you for a long time, and if you don't mind, can you just give us that $35,000 and you can have this building. You went from $100,000 to $35,000." And I'm opening it up. I'm just going to open up next month as a gallery until we can raise the $5.5 million to restore it. But that is the type of energy, the type of spirit that's just been leading us. And it's only been two years. I would've acquired the building in two years, February of next year.

So that's what's happening. But we couldn't wait. We can't wait. We've learned how philanthropy works. I'm an entrepreneur, so I believe in going to get it. I can get it. It may take me a long time, but I'll get it. But decided to purchase a camper. I was driving to speak in Huntsville, Alabama, because right now, the ACLU, they're suing the Alabama Department of Public Health because they are not allowing midwives to have birthing centers. They're harassing midwives in a maternal healthcare desert. There's 43 counties in Alabama that does not have paternal healthcare. And even the counties that do have them, they're not administering the empathy, dignity, and respect to the patient such as Selma.

That's right.

So I'm driving to Huntsville, and this is before the ACLU decided to launch this website. And I had done my research. I said, "Until we can get the money that we need to renovate the building, why not just have a mobile clinic, right?" $131,000 is what they want for it. I said, "Absolutely not." Did my research. I was like, "It doesn't make sense to put that kind of money when you have a building." So I'm driving, and I just keep seeing these campers, and I said, "Wait a minute. How come you just can't take a camper and convert it over to a mobile clinic?" Sis, I pulled over and I bought a camper out of my savings.

We launched it in September in Selma, Alabama. We had 45 women that beat us there. Women and girls that either were pregnant or recently had a baby. They're in that one year, in that one year timeframe is still very touch and go. You just never know postpartum and everything is happening. So bought the camper, talked to my team, hired an administrator who knows the whole jargon, got a doula, an OB, and a midwife that run the clinic, and a nurse. I have a nurse as well. And 45 women showed up and girls and one told us a story about how she had her baby. She was too afraid to go to the hospital. So she had her baby at home in Selma, carried the placenta, drove 45 miles to Montgomery, Alabama to meet with her OB/GYN, was too afraid to have her baby in the hospital. This is what we're hearing.

One mother was walking to the store in 110 degree weather. It was hot, had the baby in the stroller, a new baby contemplating do we buy Pampers or do we buy food? The child had not eaten in 24 hours. This is what we're doing. So the building is there, it's there, but we can't wait. It's going to take some money to do this. So we're hitting those 43 counties that don't have the maternal healthcare and where the infant mortality rate is astonishing. So I hope I'm not talking too much, but I'm just telling you.

This is it, yes.

God is leading us.

The ancestors are palpable through and through with you, just the doors that are opening, the pathways that are being cleared, the agitation in the buildings, letting folks know that they're still up in there, making sure that Black women have the spaces that they need, and you are clearly answering the call. So you are such a reflection of the courage and also the creativity needed to turn and face the conditions that our state and our institutions are constantly betraying us. And you're saying, "No, actually y'all are doing all of this over here. We're going to be here with our people." Yes, so thank you, thank you, thank you. And I'm grateful that you're sharing the full expanse of all of these different projects that you're working on because I think in times of chaos and contradiction and crisis, it can impact our collective memory and our capacity to imagine what else is possible.

And every single thing that you're talking about is an antidote of possibility that you are shaping and bringing the right folks together. So I'm so grateful that you shared every single piece of your heart's work, of your love and your labor.

Thank you.

Yes. And I hope your body is also being nourished too in this as a Black woman who is doing a lot of things in the world that your body is being cared for too, with empathy and dignity. How is your body being cared for with empathy and dignity, actually? Let me turn that back around and ask you.

What I'm learning is to give myself grace.

Okay, yes.

Because we're trying to raise money, but you got to be in it. You got to know somebody, it looks like, to get what you really need. But I started looking at everything that we've accomplished over this time. And when I say we, I do have a grassroots team who handles my books and does all that, but when I say we, I mean the Mothers of Gynecology.

Yes.

Those women, Anarcha, Lucy and Betsey, because I was 18 years old when I was introduced to them in the postcard done by Robert Tom, those 45 great moments in medicine, and that is when I first heard their names called from the Shrine of the Black Madonna that taught me everything about the objectification of Black bodies and how Black women were forced to give birth to commodity, chattel, the commerce. And so they've been walking with me for 34 years.

And so I just feel that I needed to give myself grace because trying to raise the money, it's a $10.5 million project because we do have a place for students and for people to stay. So there's more buildings on the campus that need renovations and care along with the clinic. So I said, "Geez, we've accomplished this in two years. Give yourself grace." And I think that I was starting to apply pressure to myself to get it done in record time. So that's the way I'm caring for myself, is to give myself grace and enjoy the journey and to say-

Enjoy the journey.

Absolutely. And the people that I meet such as yourself and many other folks who are coming and taking part and being a part of this journey, your podcast. And I have to shout out a couple of people because when I got back to Montgomery, I had to travel that week. I bought the camper, went and picked it up. When I got back to Montgomery, Alabama, I received a phone call from a rich white woman out of Seattle, and she called me up and she said, "Michelle, I've been thinking a lot about your work. I sent you $25,000 in the mail." Guess how much I bought the camper for? 25,000.

Okay.

You see what I'm talking about?

I see what you're saying.

It's the type of things that are happening.

Yeah. Alignment, alignment.

Yes. So grace, I'm giving myself grace. I'm enjoying the journey and connecting with people that can take it further. Yes, ma'am.

Absolutely. Well, I'm grateful to be a part of the village, and thanks for bringing us all together to just pour into this vision, this collective vision that makes more of our bodily sovereignty more possible. I'm so grateful for your life, and may you receive all the grace that you need to continue on the journey, which I know is long-term, and to keep holding on this mandate and this mantle that you've taken on so generously. Thank you for being on. We're definitely going to be sending folks to you. Folks, if you're listening, please support. Please share on this sacred work so that it can continue to live on and sustain this necessary legacy of freedom. Thank you so much, Michelle.

We do have a conference. Don't forget the conference coming up.

Come on, talk about the conference.

Conference is coming up, Anarcha, Lucy, Betsey Day of Reckoning Part Three, none other than Dr. Sharon Malone, OB/GYN, world renowned. Actually on the 28th, we're going to have Anarcha, Lucy, Betsey Day in Montgomery, and then I'm going to take folks to Mobile, Alabama. We're charting buses. We're going down to Mobile, Alabama to learn about the midwifery history, to Clotilda, the last slave ship that was found there. And then Dr. Malone will speak because that's where she's from. She's also a gynecologist, but she's married to Eric Holder. She's a part of that drive to really talk about menopause and what's happening with our bodies. So wonderful people and speakers.

Deirdre Cooper Owens, Dr. Veronica Pimentel is coming back. Dr. Aletha Maybank of the AMA, the American Medical Association. A lot of these people... We have some surprises for folks, some of the people that are coming. Absolutely. So go to the website and anarchalucybetsey.org and you can get more information and purchase your ticket. It's going to be amazing. Charles from 4 Kira 4 Moms, he's coming back. This is my core group that have been here with us from the beginning, but there are other speakers that are going to be coming through to talk more candidly about what we can do.

Yes, y'all heard that. Y'all know where you need to be. We're going to drop the link into the show notes so folks can check it out and also share it with your conrads as well. Thank you so much, Michelle. You've given us so much. I appreciate deeply.

Thank you.

Thank you, thank you.

Appreciate your time.

Appreciate you. What a gift to have Michelle with us sharing about her lineage of reclamation and freedom work. Please check out her work at www.A-N-A-R-C-H-A-L-U-C-Y-B-E-T-S-E-Y.org. We're also going to put the website and the resources in the show notes. We would love to hear from you about your own projects, projects that preserve history and memory. How are you reclaiming public sites to deepen solidarity, interdependence and healing? Connect with us and share your stories via www.solidarityis.org, where you'll find past episodes of this podcast, as well as information about how to cultivate transformative solidarity principles and stories. Please make sure to subscribe so that you know when the next episode comes out. Remember we keep us safe. Be gentle and courageous with you and each other. Until next time.