Hello, dear listeners, and welcome to a new year, a new reality, really. Yes, yet another new

reality. I wanted to share this episode with you again, because when it came out in 2022,

many people reached out to tell us how affecting it was and how inspiring our unparalleled guest was,

reproductive rights activist Loretta J. Ross, who's been involved in many political movements

since the 1970s. In this episode, she imparts some of the most vital wisdom I've ever heard on moving forward together as a multi-dimensional and imperfect movement.

I hope that you enjoy listening to this episode in a new context or for the first time.

So here's to a 2025 of continued and expanded solidarity as we

keep our focus on who our true adversaries are, no longer distracted by the culture wars,

manufactured to keep us all fighting each other, while the most powerful people in the world

continue to take everything from us that they can. We have far more in common with each other

than they would like us to believe. Happy New Year, my friends, and thank you so much for everything.

You can have a fight or you can have a conversation, and you get to decide which one

works better to fit your strategic goal, because if your goal is to have a fight, there's a lot

of ways to do that.

But if your goal is to build a human rights There's a lot of ways to do that. But if your goal is to build the

human rights movement, you have to change how you weaponize your trauma and your language in the

movement. Loretta J. Ross has been active in the movement for reproductive justice since the

1970s. In fact, she and her colleagues actually

coined the term in 1994, creating a new framework for activists that went far beyond the pro-choice

and pro-life debate. She is one of the founders of Sister Song, a nonprofit that supports the reproductive

human rights of people of color. Her prolific career is difficult to summarize, but I'll try.

She was the director of the Women of Color program for the National Organization for Women,

...