Season 1
07 Anti-racist collaboration and the collective
In the seventh episode, Sujatha Jesudason talks with Monica and Fabiola about the difference between collaborating and working collectively, and the skills we need to develop in order not to give up when collective work becomes difficult.
About the episode
In this episode we talk with Sujatha Jesudason about the challenges and possibilities of working together for social justice. Drawing on her experience of more than 30 years in social movements, Sujatha distinguishes between the collective—where we all learn, decide, and move forward together—and collaboration, which involves trusting others to do their part even if we don't share the whole process.
We reflect on the capabilities we need to develop to sustain these collaborations: apologizing, acknowledging mistakes, staying in difficult conversations, and not losing sight of the bigger picture. We also talked about the role of structures – internal and external – that help us stay at work, even when conflict, discomfort or pain arise. This episode is an invitation to cultivate ways of being together that allow us to collaborate without getting lost, without giving up, and without ceasing to imagine fairer futures.
Mentioned in this episode:
To the root (Hasta la Raíz) - Natalia Lafourcade (Youtube, Spotify)
About the speakers
Sujatha Jesudason
Sujatha Jesudason has worked as an activist, organizer, and scholar for over 30 years in diverse social justice movements, including those against domestic violence, migration, and reproductive rights. Her work has focused on developing new practices for social movement building, social design and equity, the ethics of reproductive genetics, and racial and gender inclusion.
Currently, Sujatha is a professor of leadership at The New School, where her work focuses on innovative approaches to social justice, as well as organizational leadership and management. Her mission is to understand and create the conditions that enable leaders to experiment with new ways of advancing social justice.
WebsiteAbout the hosts
Mónica Moreno Figueroa
Mónica G. Moreno Figueroa is a Black, mixed-race Mexican woman who has lived in the United Kingdom for over 25 years. She is currently a Professor of Sociology at the University of Cambridge. In 2010, she co-founded the COPERA Collective, an initiative dedicated to making racism in Mexico visible and transforming it from a collective, emotional, and structural perspective. Through COPERA, she promotes public campaigns, media interventions, training programs, and consulting services to advance an anti-racist agenda.
Her research explores the lived and intersectional experience of race and racism in Mexico and Latin America, with a particular interest in anti-racism and its impact within and beyond academia. She also works on feminist theory, intersectionality, and the emotional effects of oppression. She is an expert in qualitative methods and visual methodologies and is known for fostering interdisciplinary collaborations that link critical thinking with social action.
She is currently leading the creation of the Global Racisms Institute for Social Transformation (GRIST), a space for research, collaboration, and action aimed at imagining and building anti-racist futures from a global perspective.
Website
Fabiola Fernández Guerra Carrillo
Fabiola Fernández Guerra Carrillo is a Mexican, mestizo and white woman, researcher and lecturer on issues of gender, racism, and discrimination, and social communicator. She is the founder and director of the communication agency 11.11 Cambio Social, founding partner of Comparte una Ola A.C., member of the COPERA collective and the REIR Network.
She works on issues of anti-racist communication, gender and discrimination, strategies and new anti-oppressive and anti-racist narratives, and family trees, ancestors and processes of collective healing. She is currently doing a postdoctoral degree at the Center for Transdisciplinary Research in Psychology at the UAEM.
WebsiteThe Structure Within podcast was conceived by Mónica Moreno Figueroa and produced by Fabiola Fernández Guerra Carrillo and Arfaxad Ortiz. The opening credits are voiced by Gabriela García.
