05 Block, Build, Be: Wisdom & Activism -- Katie Loncke
Published November 28, 2017
In this fifth episode of Healing Justice Podcast, Katie Loncke of Buddhist Peace Fellowship joins host Kate Werning for a conversation about wisdom, activism, organizing, meditation, striving and non-striving, Buddhism, direct action, the role of spirituality in working for change, movement ecology and multiple strategies, and her own origin story as a changemaker.
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Read the Transcript
Note: This episode was published under Irresistible’s previous name, Healing Justice Podcast.
About our guest
Katie Loncke (they/them or she/her) has served as a Co-Director of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship since 2012 and is honored to advance the brilliant anti-oppression work of Buddhists and friends.
Katie’s movement education merges many streams — from cybermillennials to old-school Luddite bibliophiles, shop-floor organizers, politicized healers, and oral historians. Her learning and training owe a great and still-accruing debt to multiple, sometimes overlapping communities — including the revolutionary theory and action of sick and disabled, queer and trans feminists of color; Black nationalism and post-nationalism; indigenous protectors of the land, life, and culture; as well as working-class socialists, ecosocialists and anarchists inside and outside the U.S.
In recent years, Katie’s social justice journey has included helping to win a million-dollar lawsuit against a police department; fighting wage theft, jail expansion, and gentrification; assisting climbers in physically blockading a Shell Oil ship to increase the costs of Arctic drilling; pushing to drop racist charges against the Black Friday 14; sending care packages in feminist solidarity; supporting indigenous-led decolonization efforts from Standing Rock to Sogorea Te’, and continuously asking how to lead a life of service that can lovingly overturn the status quo.
After a childhood of “arrogant atheism,” Katie was fortunate to get over herself enough to begin investigating Buddhist practice and start learning how to be free from suffering. Soon this inquiry led to chopping lots of pears and cucumbers while serving lay students at a residential dharma retreat center outside of Barcelona. Katie has since studied and practiced for nearly 10 years in a Theravada / Vipassana / Insight lineage, orbiting among S.N. Goenka centers, Spirit Rock Meditation Center, and the East Bay Meditation Center, seeking affordable, multicultural, progressive and accessible practice.
Katie has more questions than answers, but that’s okay since they love questions.
Resources
Practice: Meditation on Non-Striving for Activists
Check out the next episode for a non-striving meditation practice that helps us balance the striving we are doing to change the world. You will need a sitting, standing, or lying down position and 20 minutes to do this practice. You can try it alone or in a group.
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