The Firecracker Foundation

It’s time to lay this beautiful body of work to rest. I hope to see some of you at our final gathering in January!

At the end of December, The Firecracker Foundation will sunset after 11 years of fierce advocacy. Read the full update below:

Children of color make up 31% of Michigan’s population according to Michigan’s Child Welfare Improvement Task Force, yet they make up 51% of the state foster care population. “When we separate families, we don’t give anyone a pathway to doing it better,” said Tashmica Torok, [Founding] Codirector of The Firecracker Foundation in Lansing. https://lnkd.in/gaJEWNXR #HealingJustice #RacialDisparities #FosterCare #TransformativeJustice #MandatoryReportingisNotNeutral #EndChildSexualAbuse

Tonight! ?? ??????

Whoever decided to combine Sexual Assault Awareness and Child Abuse Prevention Month wasn’t thinking about my nervous system. I’ve spent the past 5 years moving from a wild pace of attending everything to offering spaces of rest to very low participation. This year I spent a big portion of April in my joy at the Capital City Film Festival. Of course I think months of recognition are incredibly important. And also, so is my body/mind. Year after year, I watch survivors of various lived experience, myself included, end April exhausted, triggered, and hurting after sharing personal stories, holding space for others, and organizing impactful events for community healing and justice. I don’t think it needs to be this way. As a survivor of child sexual abuse and incest, April is now a month set aside for our rest and joy. If the event isn’t about that - FOR SURVIVORS - I’m not coming. I want survivors to be able to rest instead of finding more places to convince people that sexual violence and all of the harms caused by it are real and deserve your attention. I want them to be handed plates of food overflowing, offered soft places to lay down ‘the work’, and invited to play and do things that inspire their joy. How would you plan a #SAAM centered on rest and joy for yourself and others? What if it was designed to build our collective resilience for the battleground that is this work? PS - This isn’t all or nothing. We can do hard things while also treating ourselves with care. #SAAM2024 #CAPM2024 #survivorcentered #healingjustice #sexualviolence #mentalhealth #communitycare #joy #restisresistance #restoration #healing #childsexualabuse #liberatoryleadership #reimagine

On Monday, we dropped a bonus episode of The Popaganda Podcast about the HBO original documentary, Great Photo, Lovely Life that came with a trigger warning and an encouragement to listen with care. So instead of breaking down our working definitions of the transformative justice terms that we use throughout the podcast episodes, we’re going to explore the practice of box breathing. April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month and Child Abuse Prevention Month so it can be pretty hard on survivors. It can feel like we are supposed to do a lot of things. Let’s be sure that we are protecting our own autonomous choice - even if that means skipping the next event because our body/minds need a rest. Click the link to access Lingo Plinko! Box Breathing and a YouTube playlist of other tools to help us get through this month and beyond. ?? For more information about this pop culture and transformative justice podcast, visit www.popagandapod.com. #transformativejustice #popculture #prisonabolition #healingjustice #saam2024 #capm2024 #meditation #copingskills #mentalhealth #healingjustice #podcast #sexualviolence #domesticeviolence #childsexualabuse #intimatepartnerviolence