Ep.16: Monica Samuel | Founder & Executive Director, Black Women in Motion | Returning to Peace and Purpose
This week, host Mungi Ngomane is joined by the Founder and Executive Director of Black Women in Motion, Monica Samuel. Black Women in Motion is a Toronto-based, youth-led organization that empowers and supports the advancement of Black women, gender-non-conforming, and non-binary survivors of gender-based violence. Monica is an educator, community builder, social entrepreneur, and DEI consultant whose work over the last 10 years has focused on anti-oppression, equity, mental health, sex positivity, and consent. She is experienced in creating culturally centered spaces for learning, unlearning, and self-expression, giving individuals a soft place to land. Celebrated in Canada as 2019’s Top 100 Black Women to watch, Monica’s dedication and approach to social justice work have created healing, restorative, and economic opportunities for Black youth across the City of Toronto. Black Women in Motion works within an anti-racist, intersectional feminist, trauma-informed, and survivor-centered framework to create culturally relevant resources, healing spaces, educational, and economic opportunities for survivors.
Listen as the two discuss the programming that Black Women in Motion offers, including its Love Offering Fund to help those experiencing insecurity due to Covid-19, as well as the Black Peer Education Network and Black Youth Employment Assistance Program. Monica also shares how the Black community will always be her priority and the center of her work, the lessons she has learned from the global pandemic, and the consensus that as Black women they should not run themselves ragged in the name of social justice.
To learn more about Monica and Black Women in Motion visit blackwomeninmotion.org
Full Episode Transcript
Mungi Ngomane: Hi, I'm Mungi welcome to the Everyday Ubuntu podcast.
Monica Samuel: When it was all eyes on everything black, it was this period of hypervisibility, which was hard for me because as a black woman, I feel like in a lot of spaces I navigate hypervisibility, and then invisibility, just simultaneously.
Mungi Ngomane: This week, my guest is Monica Samuel, an educator, community builder, social entrepreneur, and DEI consultant. Her work as an educator over the last 10 years has focused on equity, mental health, sex, positivity, and consent. I resonated so deeply with Monica, the word she spoke, and the work that she does with her organization, black women in motion.
The thing that stuck with me the most and that I'm still learning myself is that we as black women are often running ourselves ragged in the name of social justice, and we need to stop. Here's our conversation.
Monica Samuel. Welcome to the Everyday Ubuntu podcast. I'm so excited to have you with me today. I'm
Monica Samuel: so excited to be here. I'm a little nervous, but I'm so excited to be here and sharing space with another amazing black person.
Mungi Ngomane: Thank you. Don't be nervous. So the first thing I wanted to ask you has to do with our resumes and how they're not a full explanation of who we are as a human.
And I'm wondering what's missing from your resume that you think people should know about. You.
Monica Samuel: If it's not clear with my resume, given the history of work that I've done over the course of my career is my priority is and will always be the black community. Their voices are always going to be at the center of my work unapologetically.
So if you're coming with any type of anti-blackness, any type of white supremacist, capitalist energy, Just know that we probably shouldn't be working together also that I will likely be calling you out and dragging your ass to fill.
Mungi Ngomane: I like that. I recently said something like that to someone I'm in London at the moment.
And I had to meet a few people for drinks. And this one woman said, oh I don't know like some of my friends say all lives matter. And so I just don't touch that. And I'm like, if black lives matter is controversial for you, we are just not starting at the same position. That's all I have to say.
And she was like, okay. And I was like, so all lives matter. We're not.
Monica Samuel: That's it. There's nothing else to discuss.
Mungi Ngomane: I'm like, it's simple. I can end the conversation there. So speaking of black lives and black women, could you share about your organization, black women in motion, the origin story, and also the mission that obviously, falls within your sort
Monica Samuel: of purpose work.
I founded black women in motion in January of 2013 after spending, a couple of years working within the Jane and Finch committee. And that's in the more Western part of Toronto, I had the privilege of working with black women girls queer folks under the age of 20 and providing them, with a soft place to land.
I feel like, at that time, there were not a lot of spaces for us to gather for us to be seen and affirmed, and validated. So it was really important that we created that, that safe space for them. And, over the course of my three years in that community, it was hearing their stories of, experiencing things like human trafficking of intimate partner violence of being homeless, living in poverty, and various intersections.
And I felt deeply inclined to, create a space, to create an organization designed specifically for them specifically for their intersectional and layered lived experiences. So black women and queer. Are at the center of the work that black woman in motion does because of institutionalized anti-blackness and message noir sexism that we see that say that their lives are substantial of lesser value, which is incorrect.
From 2015, till now, we pivoted our focus to be yes, a soft place to land, always, yes, a place to build, your leadership skills and life skills, and all of those things. Given how gender-based violence, disproportionately impacts black communities, specifically black women, nonbinary and genderqueer survivors.
We were like, we have to talk about this because it is really rendered. I feel like gender-based violence experienced by black folks is really rendered invisible here in Canada. The voices of black survivors are often not believed they're often erased. So it was really important for us to do this work and continue to do this.
Mungi Ngomane: understand. I love that. What do the sort of the services and the programming look like, but black women in motion provide besides, I think the largest part is being a safe place to land is the starting point for most things.
Monica Samuel: Yeah. In our work survivor autonomy and self-determination is really.
So we do a lot of consults with the community to ensure that we are creating and being responsive to the emerging needs, the shifting needs that survivors need in the community, and ensuring that the services and programs that we do implement our courts coming from an intersectional place, a trauma-informed survivor-centered place.
So we have four major programs that we offer to the community right now. So we have our love offering fund which is just emergency relief. Those survivors may need it at any given time. That was piloted last year in 2020 May of 2020. Pardon me? Just given the way COVID was running rampant in communities,
specifically the survivor community.
So giving folks, access to food and income relief to deal with those levels of insecurity and any other supports that need to be deployed on a needs basis. Then we have our black peer education network, which is this amazing training and capacity-building initiative. That higher survivors and community, to learn to unlearn and relearn together space.
That is just all about challenging how rape culture shows up in the community and how gender-based violence shows up in the community, specifically in the black community. And then, survivors have a chance to go and mobilize and further conversations on what we need to do to better show up and be allies’ accomplices.
And co-conspirators. We have our black youth employment assistance program. This one is really dear to my heart because recognizing how you know, work environments are traditionally colonial traditionally capitalist. It's so important that we support survivors in developing wellness strategies for job retention.
So at the core of this initiative is about, yes, these are the systems and structures that exist. How, if you are an aspiring small business owner and things like that, how do you recreate new systems and ways of working that are from a more decolonial space? But until then, We are still very much so working and living and being in the systems as they are.
So how do we survive them? How do we navigate them? How do we ensure that we prioritize our wellness and our care? So a huge part of that is ensuring that survivors have access to culturally relevant support. So, for anyone that comes in as a participant, we cover the cost for several months to have one-on-one sessions with a black therapist, healer practitioner, which is really important because.
Mental health is still very taboo in the black community. But also, so they're so hard to
Mungi Ngomane: find a black therapist as well.
Monica Samuel: Listen, and also there's an access piece there too, right? Not everyone has access to the financials that are required to be able to tap into that particular. So we want to ensure that we can alleviate as many barriers to access as possible.
So we have a bit of a network of mental health practitioners and giving survivors the autonomy to choose. When we think about therapy and wellness, it's almost. You're dating someone, right? You have to understand what's their values their practices, their beliefs because that's going to inform how they're able to provide care from your care for you.
In an intersectional and decolonial place. So if you're over here denying the humanity of black people, I definitely don't want you to be a therapist providing me, providing me grief counseling and trauma supports and things like that. That's definitely one of the initiatives that I definitely favor within the organization.
And then more recently, our crystals and Sage wellness initiative that we piloted this year is specifically for black trans non-binary and gender diverse folks to be able to practice wellness, from a black intersectional feminist and trauma-informed space, and to be able to take up space when we look.
The wellness sector. When we look at things like yoga, mindfulness practitioners are very white-centered, with lots of white bodies, so it's hard for us to sometimes see ourselves being able to tap into those spaces, being able to be educators and practitioners in those spaces because representation isn't there.
So there's a teacher's training scholarship that we provide for folks who are interested. Cause again, we talk about barriers to access. If you're trying to do to be a yoga instructor, for example, there's this big ass, like 3000 plus dollar teacher's training course that you have to do. That again is accessible to everyone.
So what we want to try to do in our programs and services is, meeting people where they're at providing that representation, providing a chance for folks to dream, what is possible. And to do that learning and unlearning, as I mentioned before, as well, Connecting survivors to the tools and resources they need to thrive, not just survive, but to thrive is really about what the organization is about.
Mungi Ngomane: There were two things you said that sort of, I wanted to highlight on the whole yoga thing about it's a sort of a white industry, so interesting because they took it from a brown country. So that is always like in my head we didn't create yoga, but okay. And the other thing is all of these programs warm my heart because I don't know.
Black children were always told that it's important to invest in themselves and that there are always people around who want to invest in us and all of this is investing in the person and in their whole self. And I think that's amazing. So thank you for doing that\.
Monica Samuel: for black trans non-binary and our best out here for a small but mighty team.
Mungi Ngomane: So if, if some random person in the US was like I can't come help with programs. Maybe I can help with funding or something, but they really wanted to know how they could protect black women. What would you say to them? And I'm sure people have asked you this before and you're like, wow, this is a simple question.
Monica Samuel: Wow I'm going to talk about, black women, aren't a monolith. There are just so many layers and intersectionalities within the community. When I think about supporting survivors specifically as that's the mandate of the organization recognizing again, as I mentioned earlier, the anti-blackness the erasure,
the minimization, the victim-blaming, and shaming that is so omnipresent within the community, especially when it comes to black survivors coming forward. There's a level, or there's a lack of, I should say believability when a black survivor says, this is what I've experienced. And a lot of that is rooted of course, and things like, the hypersexualization of black women and fems that we've seen since the times of chattel slavery and all of those pieces.
But it starts with just like shutting up and listening, right? This isn't a moment for you to interrogate for you to victim blame and shame it's for you to listen really empathetically and actively to the things that we're saying of our experiences because, for many of us, it's everywhere we go.
Every institution, every space. It's a question. It is, It's being dismissed. It's being erased. It's not being believed. And that has such, detrimental impacts on our mental health wellness on our livelihoods when we are chronically interacting with spaces and institutions that are questioning our believability.
Being quiet, listen first listen more is what I would say, and speak less and then really, practicing consent when it comes to identifying ways that you can leverage your personal power and privilege that you carry to support. So oftentimes when we listen to respond, we don't actually listen to listen and understand.
So we're already thinking okay, this is what this person needs. This is what the brain starts turning. It's okay, this is what I need to go and mobilize, et cetera. But when we're like listening to understand. We're going to be able to hear the pieces of actually what this person needs, and then we ask them, so what is it that I can do, within my capacity to support you?
So that might look like amplifying my story with my consent that might look like if you are a white or non-black POC ally using your privilege, right? Because you don't experience anti-black. In this particular way to Be on the front lines, we see that we saw that a lot in 2020 with the black lives matter resurgence with, white and non-black POC folks on the front lines.
Not necessarily to take up space, but just being there from a sense of safety, right? Because we know that black folks when we interact with the state, there's a level of brutality and violence that follows. So it might be looked like it might look like you're doing a lot of work on the front lines in terms of visibility and solidarity, but not necessarily coming in there and trying to take over the narrative and center yourself, that's a little bit of a tricky slope.
Yeah. It absolutely would involve you giving up your power privilege access. So if you are certain decision-making tables, when it comes to survivor supports and resources that are needed, right? It may look like, Hey, there's a segment of the population that we have historically excluded, right?
This is deliberate. How are we going to ensure we redirect supports to ensure black trans women, black nonbinary folks who experienced gender-based violence, disproportionately high rates to have what they need can have access to transformative justice. There's a little bit of self-work that's involved in this piece, right?
Like understanding the biases, understanding the things that I carry that negatively impact this movement. And then assessing here's where I stand here is my, the things I have access to here is the power and privilege that I have access to. And it means giving up power. So be ready to give up. Or get out of the way, and my experiences, people that I've interacted with that are like, how do I help?
How do I help? And I'm like, are you ready to give up the power that you have been given? Are you ready? Cause that's what it's gonna,
Mungi Ngomane: And are you trying to help, or do you want some sort of, benefit days or acknowledgment for this help or is it just really, you
Monica Samuel: do want to help? And we saw this has been, we've seen this, but it has been the last 18 months just pile of performance like performative allyship is at a record high, we had a couple, months of just concentrated.
Action mobilization and then everything dissipated. And now it's I feel for us as an organization, we're starting from scratch people now, black lives don't matter anymore. Black lives matter for about five months. And then now it's so how do we continue to drive the conversations forward?
Drive the change forward when now people are disinterested again. And that's the thing people are just like, yeah, I posted my black square and that was it. Or, I shared these resources and that was it. And I'm like, no, this is lifelong work. This is a continuous process. We cannot dismantle systems in five months systems that have been here for hundreds of years.
I get really annoyed at this part. No, it's just
Mungi Ngomane: so exhausting. I understand. And just like the pandemic is still here. Its anti-black racism is still here. It's not going to go away because a few of us marched and gave some money here and there. And a few policemen may have been fired if even a few are fired.
Speaking of how did the pandemic affect black women in motion? Were there some things that you learned about Canada and the world more globally from 2020?
Monica Samuel: How did it impact black women in motion? So for us as an organization, we have been doing this work for seven years. Black woman in motion turned eight in January of this year.
So we celebrated seven years of just doing the work, putting our head down, doing the work. I'm one of those people in leadership positions where I like to lead from the back. So I'm not very front-facing, but last year, when it was all eyes on everything black, it was this period of hypervisibility, which was hard for me because as a black woman I feel like in a lot of spaces, I navigate hypervisibility and then invisibility, just simultaneously, so going from, black women in motion\, yeah.
I heard of them, they do great work. Hey, your phone, your emails, everything's popping off all hours of the day morning. People from, across North America, across the world, just wanting to reach out to support was a lot for us to manage as a team of six folks, six people support upwards of 600 survivors in the city of Toronto or in greater Toronto areas, which is a lot, which is not sustainable.
It was tricky because we absolutely knew this was rooted in performance. And I think that was the painful part, it was okay. Folks are interested but there's an expiry date attached to this. So how do we encourage dialogue to ensure that we get the resources and support to support the community, to support survivors, it was reconciling that.
And then also reconciling a lot of the visibility. A lot of the attention, a lot of the resources that were being redistributed to black women emotions were coming from black death. That was a lot. And that way, a lot on me for a couple of months as well. That this is what it requires for us to have the bare minimum to support ourselves, violence brutality, so that was just a really interesting time. And then, in regards to the question about. Canada as a whole. I always knew Canada was an abomination. I have always said this to my circle just around whoever does Canada's PR is actually quite brilliant. Cause you guys are so
Mungi Ngomane: nice. That's how we see you.
Monica Samuel: The world is just like Canada. It's just fantastic. It's multicultural. It's just so wonderful. And I'm like really? Because 60 plus communities, indigenous communities don't have clean drinking water. The RCMP is running rampant in indigenous communities, like what are you talking about?
So for me, it was a lot of awkward uncomfortable conversations. I also had to just tap out of I'm not going to try to justify why Canada is not perfect, why Canada is just as trash as the United States, like many other countries across the world. But I will say. Some of these things as, as painful as it sounds, some of these things were supposed to happen for folks to take off the rose-colored glasses and see Canada for what it is.
It's the same. It's the colonial state. It's an anti-black state. It's a racist state. It's right. It's done so much plundering, so much brutality to indigenous communities for so many years. Anti-blackness is absolutely here. It just sometimes takes a different form. I think where we see in the United States, there's a lot of it's blatant and of yeah.
Recordings. There's a lot of instances. It's so blatant. Whereas Canada is very covert in its operations when it comes to anti-blackness anti-indigenous racism. There's a lot of systemic, institutionalized things that have existed that are meant to marginalize black and indigenous communities that are meant to prevent access to basic needs.
The housing crisis that we're seeing here in the city of Toronto, there are just so many things where I'm just like, we are so trashed, you know, Canada is just so wonderful. It's so multicultural. It's fantastic. It's been a lot to process. It's been a lot to process, but yeah COVID the social justice resurgence.
We saw it allowed black women in motion to be seen in a way that has allowed us to be more sustainable as an organization. So I. I can't ignore how all of this chaos, how all of this sadness, this violence has also brought abundance to the organization. And for me, as I said before, about reconciling the painfulness of that.
Is just giving that back to the community. We've been able to expand our love offering fund, it wasn't just the initial launch was to support a hundred survivors. We supported 500 survivors last year through that program and are able now in 2021 to provide consistent support, we get to circle back and be like, Hey, what else do you need?
Okay. So folks were asking for mental health support. Here's some peer, healing circles that we're doing here is, five sessions paid for, with a black therapist of your choice. Like here are extra fresh food boxes. Here is support for childcare here support for gender-affirming care.
It's just it's allowed us to support the community in ways that we honestly did not have access to because a lot of organizations like black women in motion that are grassroots-based Experience a lot of barriers when trying to access that, funding resources. So being able to think outside of the box of grants and thinking about fundraising strategies and strategic partnerships with organizations that you know, are not trying to do performative work.
To help our, cause. It
Mungi Ngomane: It makes me think of the British author, Rennie Etto lodge who wrote why I'm no longer talking to white people about race. And, she said the same thing about how all of these people suddenly were reading her book. And while that is great, because it was a great book about white people, we're not having this conversation, if this is where you're starting from.
Look at the racism. Look at slavery. Slavery did exist in the UK. You are not above the US or anybody. But then she was like, but it's horrible that men have to be killed and black bodies have to be killed for you all to be reading this book now. And as you said, giving the money and putting the resources back into the community, she said, whatever money came from, that statement would go towards these different organizations.
But it's. It's the fact that yes you have to reconcile those two as these horrible things happen. So this can happen. And this is what it took all of us to acknowledge. Yeah. Like how much longer can we keep going through horrible things before we just acknowledge
Monica Samuel: it? Yep. Yep.
I don't know how I got through this year.
Mungi Ngomane: That's what I was about to ask you. I was going to say, what do you do for self-care? Joy?
Monica Samuel: Oh, It's so interesting when folks ask me this question because I think, and to talk about how COVID was really important in my self-care journey, I think is really important.
I think some things that COVID taught me about myself about self-care was I really needed to return to my childlike self, that period of isolation. Allowed me to tap back into how do I actually want to live authentically and unapologetically? What does that look like? How do I reclaim my joy? My liberation, my freedom, my parts.
So I started, doing things and reconnecting to passions that I had as a child, as a teenager, painting, sculpting our tree hiking. There was this returning to piece and there was a quote that I had said last year in another speaking engagement, where I was like returning to pieces, like returning to purpose, I think when we deeply connect to ourselves and that involves listening to that childlike self, I think things become clearer.
That stillness really allowed me to focus my energy and attention on returning to the body because I had neglected so many parts. So I was paying attention to things I had, no, I had ignored. I had lived, from a space of my self-worth. Attached to my productivity is attached to my output is attached to my work, that, and if you know that feeling those moments where I wasn't working at that pace, I was like, what the hell?
What am I supposed to do with myself? What am I, who am I so many existential questions? I probably had 90 existential crises over the last couple of months. What is my purpose? But it just allowed me to sit with myself. I realized I had. Buried myself in work for so much of my life that I didn't really know who I was.
I didn't really know what I liked, I was ignoring the things that brought me joy because I was so consumed about giving to the community that I forgot myself. I was moving too fast, and I needed to slow down. So there, there is some gratitude that I can give to this whole pandemic. And again, it's reconciling how that pandemic has also, run rampant in the black community.
And that's of course, because of different systems at play, but. We've been disproportionately impacted by this, but I still have to give gratitude for the slow pace. And what that brought to this entity that is here before you. Now I had to take care of my heart. I had to spend a lot of time reconnecting with healing tools like therapy, meditation, my partner, and I had, a ritual where.
We just need to be still for a second. I'm going to play some meditation music and let's just sit here together and be still, and I didn't know how to do that before. It was so uncomfortable for me. It was so uncomfortable for me. I'm so glad I had that opportunity to, now that I had that opportunity to take care of my heart, to do that self-work.
And now it's just an ongoing practice. You need to shut down at this time, the weekends need to be yours like yours, as well as your husband's And do you need to do what makes you feel good? And for so many years, I wasn't, I was just going, I was going and my direction was I have to abolish gender-based violence.
That was my focus and nothing else mattered including myself. So it was beautiful as well in terms of my self-care. I started dating my husband again we had created, yeah, we had co-created such, a beautiful, magical, flawed relationship over the last 16 years, but we were not tending to the garden.
And I specifically was not tending to the garden consistently because I was so consumed with working. I was so consumed with, I have to do for the community than anything else, whatever I had left, I would give to the other things. And those other things were like, yeah, my relationship, it still didn't really include myself.
But over these last couple of months had a chance to like, Date again. I learned a lot about my partner and that window of time, I am still learning a lot and that wouldn't have happened if the world didn't shut down. If the world didn't shut my ass down, you know what I'm saying?
Yeah. Like our love languages had changed so much over the 16 years we've been together. Oh, really? We had to start asking. Yeah, every time I say that to someone they're just
Mungi Ngomane: do I need to be aware of love languages changing. Oh, no, I'm just figuring this one out. This. Oh, Jesus.
Monica Samuel: Yeah. We have been together for a very long time.
And there have been so many micro evolutions in both of our existences that have happened, which means. The love languages will shift, I think before. Yeah. Like I want gifts and this and now it's I want like tender moments. I don't want things. I don't want tangibles. I want quality time and quality time also looks like I want to feel seen and how I feel seen is like, when I'm having, I live with depression, anxiety.
When you see me on the cusp of an anxiety attack. It's handing me my fidget cube. It's coming to sit next to me and holding my hand and he's done that so much, during the pandemic that I'm so grateful for, but we had to ask ourselves those questions, like actually, what do you need at this juncture in this relationship?
How do you want to feel loved and seen, but also outside of this, what do you need to feel fulfilled? Because there's this idea sometimes that you complete me, I complete you. We're complete people already and we're coming together, yeah. And a relationship. I think can't bring you everything or give you everything.
And then it comes to what is it that you need outside of what we can do through this reciprocal relationship? And maybe I need to start a business, I need to tap into my childlike self, which means exploring being a coach or basketball or whatever, but that's what I need to like really feel fulfilled.
And those were important questions. So yeah, I'm grateful for that time because we did a lot of talking, a lot of listening, a lot of healing and forgiving and building together and create new rituals and traditions to do together that were a part of our individual and self-care practices, and I think the last thing. When it came to self-care was just, I need to give a fuck about myself
Mungi Ngomane: please. Please
Monica Samuel: don't run yourself ragged in the name of social justice. And I feel like I was being a martyr to this work for so long. You're
Mungi Ngomane: just asking me to gasp over here.
Cause I feel like I'm talking to my therapist where she's you can't come from this place of like fear and scarcity. You have to come from a place of love. Otherwise, you're not helping the people you think you're helping. And I'm like, okay, but still, I'm scared.
Monica Samuel: Oh no, no therapists be dragging me to fill honey.
Mungi Ngomane: I know, but are you sure I can't just continue on this path because it's been, I think it's working pretty fine and they're like, no, it's clearly not because we're here talking about these patterns for a reason.
Monica Samuel: Yeah. And I know, I think one of the things I had to reconcile was I have to support the community in ways that are accessible and safer for me and not destructive to me.
And when we think about community work and community development, I am a part of that community. I am not separate from it. And therefore need to be prioritized. I need to prioritize myself and do things from a place of prevention and maintenance and not okay, the system has crashed.
I'm fully depleted. Let's go do a spa day. Let's go do your nails. And those are things I love to do, but I do them to reward myself for depleting myself. It doesn't make sense. So trying to be a lot more proactive in my approach. So there are times where I'm. There's a headache that is just really debilitating right now.
But I have so many deadlines, so many meetings commitments, and I'll just cancel everything. Sorry, canceled. And I will do that from such an unapologetic place now and before it was coming from a place of fear from a place of guilt. Anxiety. I'm like, I can't like, I can't. I'm like, but why can't you, but why can't you prioritize yourself?
Why can't you say no? And what
Mungi Ngomane: good are you to people? If you're gone? My mom has said, when you push yourself, if you were to pass, we would mourn you, and then you would be replaced. Yes. And your workspace, so why are you going to kill yourself?
Monica Samuel: Ooh, mama's on it?
Mungi Ngomane: I'm like, okay, mom.
All right. I know. I'm like, all right I guess I'll take a
Monica Samuel: nap then mama said,
Mungi Ngomane: can we talk about the gold series and your hair
Monica Samuel: story? Oh my God, can you share about that place? Yeah. Gold series. Yeah, they had reached out last year again in all of the Black hype and said that they wanted to partner with Blackwood motion, mind you, this person, her name was Renee.
I love her to death. This is a black woman that was just like, I believe in you, I believe in your work, and while yes. The circumstances as to why I'm here having this conversation, of course, they're coming initially from a place of performance like we have to support black organizations right now because of what has transpired.
This can be the catalyst to really create some inner shifts within the organization. So Renee had called me like three times, three times, like an upset. I can count three, but I'm pretty sure she called me more times than not to reach out about this partnership with black women in motion and gold series that was launching here in Canada or relaunching here in Canada.
But it was so I was so overwhelmed, my phone was blowing up at 7:00 AM. I would be lying down and then woken up by a call from Alberta or PEI of someone wanting to support or an organization wanted to support. So it was so hard. Again, keep in mind a team of six. It was so hard for me to juggle everything.
That, of course, there were things that were on the back burner or the things that I couldn't keep up with. And the gold series actually was one of those things. So then I was like, who is this person? I know you're not trying to call this organization and bring your scamming ass energy. I was upset. And then I answer, so I answered the call.
Finally, this is maybe the third or fifth call at this point. And they had also, Renee had also emailed me countless times, but bombardments of emails during that time were wild. And when Renee was like, Hey, I'm calling from here and. There's this partnership that I feel would really align with black women in motion and what you represent and the voices that you try to amplify.
And I'm like, okay. Yeah, sure. Run me the money. I was just like, I don't want, I want resources to redistribute to the community. I don't want to do a blog. I would want to set up it just got such, it was such an exhausting period of interview after interview. Didn't equate to financial resources, which is what the organization need.
This was, you're getting
Mungi Ngomane: exposure. Do this for free, right? Yeah.
Monica Samuel: Give us the money, give me your money and leave me alone. Like it was my energy for a couple of months because. Yes, we should be further in conversations and discourse about anti-black racism about gender-based violence. Yes. I get that.
But we have a grassroots organization that's here providing supports to the community the government fails to do, and we need resources to continue to do that. Especially in a global health pandemic where we're folks are, in need in a crisis. So I was like, yeah, okay. This is not a priority. And then she's yeah.
So we would like to do a donation of $50,000. I'm like, oh, okay, this is a priority. All right. But everything was going so quickly signing contracts and things like that. And then she'd call me back and she's we actually want to do hundred thousand dollars donation to black women in motion and work on this campaign together.
So I think it was also so exciting for us to be able to create something that would center on black folks. In an industry that we know has been just so historically, damaging to our self-worth and sense of self-concept where it's like the black hair conversations, like we know right.
It's uncapped. It's just unmanageable. It's ugly because it's not Eurocentric, et cetera, et cetera. So the chance to be unapologetically black, to have unapologetically black hair, the way that it grows, the way that we want to wear it, I thought it was so important. And it was so beautiful. We had a chance to, of course, work with content creators and TV, media personalities, and things like that.
but it started a lot of conversation around. How do we live love authentically? And that starts with us. So being able to see a representation of locks, to see a representation of Afros, of braids, of a nice wavy weave, whatever, right? Because our hair has been so policed for so many years. So I was really excited and grateful to have that opportunity.
And then also set the stage of like, how do we want to continue to work with brands going forward? I think that was such a learning opportunity because, as we reflected we need to set the pace of how organizations need to come and roll up to the organization. Right? Folks come with them, this is what we need to do.
And I'm like, actually take a seat. This is how we do partnership. We want to be able to be creative and have. Representation and intersectionality, I oftentimes, reflect on the campaign and I'm like, if things didn't move so quickly, if we weren't such a small team, like I would have probably done this a little bit differently.
I would have wanted to ensure that not just behind the scenes, there was black queer, differently able-bodied representation, but I would want that on the camera as well because there, there is a lack of consistent visibility of black queer folks in media. And yeah, there was a lot of learnings from that.
I thought it was yes. Beautiful. But I thought there's always room for growth there's and this is what came up for me a lot this year in 2021 was how do we continue to do this work in ways that don't compromise the integrity of the organization? And I think it's scary because again, you mentioned it right.
We operate from a place of the scarcity of fear. Sometimes we settle, right? Sometimes we don't push back. Sometimes we don't challenge because we've never had these resources before. That was absolutely real for us as an organization. And now having done the campaign and learn from it and have these great conversations.
Yes. But now it's these are our absolutes. These are the things we are not willing to compromise. So if you're trying to work with an organization, a black-led serving organization, This is how we are going to do it, right? These are the voices that need to be prioritized. This is the creative freedom that we're going to need to have.
And I think the tricky part here too, was like, we're an organization that really strives to work from a de-colonial place. The thing about everything is urgent is not how I operate. So when P and G and gold series coming here with like deadlines that are absolutely unrealistic for a team of our size, it puts the team in a place of distress.
And the wellness of my team, the wellness of myself will always be prioritized before the service of the community before the service of a white capitalist institution, like Procter and gamble. So there was a lot of learning. A lot of learnings, take the good, the bad.
Mungi Ngomane: And then finally, I want to ask you, what is your greatest fear for humanity?
You
Monica Samuel: know, I think a fear that I have is that we continue to see value in whiteness and whiteness only that we continue to be complacent in these white supremacists capitalist systems. I think what I would like to see when it comes to how humanity can shift is that we build a system rebuild systems, rebuild a world where we are all seen.
I think my biggest thing for me as a black person has, can you see my humanity? Can you see it?
Mungi Ngomane: I can't believe you just said that. Oh my God. I literally said to someone the other day, like the bare minimum for me is that you appreciate my humanity. Otherwise, we can't. I feel like you're in my brain,
Monica Samuel: but this is, it's a collective experience.
We both carry different intersectionalities and things like that. But I feel like a common thought process for us is just I want people to see our humanity, I want to exist in this world where I am valued, where I, have what I need to thrive, have what I need to live a purposeful, joyful life.
Absolutely. I want that for everybody else, really. And truly, but if we continue to center whiteness, if we continue to center capitalism, if we continue to center patriarchy and all the other bullshit that white supremacy has created, then I don't know. I don't know, but I will say that seeing black people right now, holding on to the joy and finding joy, Finding the ability to create in all of this bullshit and all of this chaos continues to give me hope.
Yeah. Cause it's important that we still
Mungi Ngomane: have that. And I was going to ask what your greatest hope is, but I think you answered it. Yeah. So thank you so much for speaking with me.
Monica Samuel: Thank you for having me. Oh my God. I just love sharing space with us. It's so important. Thank you for allowing me to be seen
and thank you for seeing me. And I'm happy. I had a chance to see you in this way. Thank
Mungi Ngomane: you so much, Monica. It was lovely to
Monica Samuel: speak with you. It was lovely. I want us to have all the things, take all the money, and just thrive.
Mungi Ngomane: I hope you enjoyed this conversation today and don't forget to hit subscribe and give the show a rating and review wherever you enjoy your podcasts. Follow me at Mungi dot ngomane on Instagram. I'd love to hear from you and get your feedback on the show. I'll be back in a week with a new episode. Thank you for listening to Everyday Ubuntu. .