New York, I Love You But You've Changed

Brittany Owens Micek is the founder and lead organizer of Meditating for Black Lives, a community organization that uses the principles and practices of various meditation traditions to support community efforts to heal oppression. Brittany started Meditating for Black Lives last summer with hopes to create a space for attendees to sit in contemplation together to process our absorbed trauma and breathe for the lives of Black and Brown people, and for all people, throughout the world. On Saturdays and Sundays from June 2020 lasting through the fall, Brittany or other intentionally selected guides led up to 2,000 attendees through 30 minute guided meditations in both Bed Stuy and Brownsville that focused on the privilege and precarity of breath. This is part two of our conversation with Brittany. Topics include, how the wellness industrial complex has co-opted the ancient practice of meditation, leaving it falsely synonymous with whiteness and money… and also how Meditating for Black Lives is an attempt to cou