Contemplative Social History: Cotton and Culture
January 20 to February 26 Tuesdays at 5 pm EST on
(Hybrid: Online and in Person)
Contemplative Social History: Cotton and Culture begins with cultivating greater openness to kindness to self and others. Each class begins with meditation. We will read selections from Sebene Selassie’s book You Belong: A Call for Connection and from Smile at Fear: Awakening the True Heart of Bravery by Chogyam Trungpa. Together we will explore cotton as a catalyst for the emergence of a global textile industry and its inter-generational impact.
By 1865 75% of the worlds cotton was grown and picked by enslaved African labor in the United States. What inter-generational impacts do we inherit from this transformative time in history? How do we reconcile its impact on our own families, communities and the institutions we use today. We will look at tapestries woven in cotton from different parts of the world. Each culture invests the fabric with their own traditional patterns, techniques and stories. Our job will be to uncover the impact of these unique and intriguing cultural imprints for our lives.
Using creative expression, collective group exercises and personal reflection, we envision alternatives to hate, division and ignorance. Our work will serve as a palpable and practical intervention into the hate mongering evident in attacks on Black history and BIPOC peoples.
Course Team
Damita Brown, Heart Light Founder and lead course teacher, is a social justice activist, community based-educator, meditation instructor and Dharma teacher with over 25 years of meditation practice. Brown’s activism began when she was teenager with her participation in a boycott of her junior high at age 13. Since then she has worked in Civil Rights, environmental justice, LGBTQ rights, peace in the middle east, books not bars to end mass incarceration and access to health care movements. She holds a doctorate in History of Consciousness from the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Working within academic, non-profit, collective and co-op arenas, Dr. Brown developed the contemplative social action approach. In 2008 she offered the Born Worthy Workshop with incarcerated youth in California where she taught meditation, leadership and writing skills. In 2018 she developed the Community Lab for Intentional Practice (CLIP) which has been used in Iowa City, Iowa and Madison, Wisconsin. She has applied the CLIP framework to support anti-racism among Climate Change activists and in restorative justice and abolitionist circles. In 2017/18 Brown developed Freedom School 360 which revamped that civil rights tradition invented in the 60s by SNCC.
Damita teaches the 8-week course How to Practice Contemplative Anti-Racism and the 6-week course Contemplative Social History. In 2023 Brown created Heart Light Cards: Contemplation and Activities for Ending Racism in 2024 which provide a way for anyone interested in addressing how racism impacts them and taking responsibility for its impact of Black and Brown people to host anti-racism gatherings in their own homes.
Jules Panagacos (they/she), Heart Light Action teaching team member, took Black History, Our History in Fall 2025 and is delighted to join Dr. Damita Brown in Winter 2026. Jules loves working with others to make beautiful and functional spaces. They express love for the collective by tending to the details, specifically, welcoming people and encouraging belonging. Jules has worked with local and national organizations to promote healing from many the harms of our world, including racism, sexual and gender based violence, militarism, and more.
In their role this winter, they hope to model learning, growing, claiming Black History, and finding connections within our own lineage. Her spirit is best portrayed as a pixie. Jules is white settler living on Coast Salish Land in Seattle, Wa.
Dr. Mar Aziz, Heart Light Action guest presenter is an Assistant Professor of African American Studies and Gender Studies at the University of Washington. Their first book (forthcoming) asks how folks who practiced unarmed self-defense and martial arts contributed to Black Power organizing and shifting ideas about liberation, abolition, and gender norms. In 2022, they received the V.P. Franklin Journal of African American History Award from the Association for the Study of African American Life and History. Their work was also showcased in the 2017-2018 exhibit, “Black Power!,” at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. As a scholar-activist, Aziz regularly teaches radically inclusive self-defense classes in person and virtually. They have also written for the “Made by History” section at the Washington Post.”
Registration
This 6-week course meets on Tuesdays at 5 pm EST on Zoom. The suggested price for the course is $200. Participants are welcome to offer the amount that fits your budget.
