We Choose Each Other with Dean Spade, Weyam Ghadbian and René Rivera

At a time when violence, division, and disconnection feel ever-present, The East Bay Meditation Center invites you to join us for a timely and heart-centered conversation, We Choose Each Other: Showing Up in Harrowing Times.

Beloved movement folks Dean Spade, Weyam Ghadbian, and René Rivera will explore how we take action that is rooted in love, stay in relationship amid rupture, and engage conflict without reproducing harm. Grounded in EBMC’s commitment to liberation, belonging, and socially-engaged Buddhist practice, this conversation will weave together decades of movement work, conflict transformation, and trauma-informed meditation to ask: What does it mean to choose each other—again and again—when so much that is happening in the world pulls us toward isolation? This gathering will offer both practical tools and spiritual nourishment for building resilient, accountable, and loving communities that can meet this dumpster-fire moment and create the world we want and need.

This timely event is also a fundraiser for the crucial work of the East Bay Meditation Center (EBMC) and we invite you to give generously to support this important community institutions.

Dean Spade has been working in movements for queer and trans liberation, and against war, police, prisons and borders for the past 25 years. He’s the author of, and the director of the documentary “Pinkwashing Exposed: Seattle Fights Back!.” His new book is Love in a Fucked Up World: How to Build Relationships, Hook Up and Raise Hell Together, and he is the host of a new podcast with the same name.

Weyam Ghadbian is a facilitator, trainer, organizational consultant, and mediator who has been working with grassroots and social justice organizations for over a decade. Weyam is Syrian and was politicized at a young age by parents who were exiled from Syria for dissent. They co-created the Turning Towards Each Other Conflict Workbook with Jovida Ross and have spent the last five years translating it into a customizable curriculum for groups and organizations to build healthier cultures. They are a Gemini, an eldest child, and moonlight as a comedian.

René Rivera is a meditation teacher and restorative justice facilitator working and learning in all the spaces in-between race, gender, and other perceived binaries, as a queer Latinx trans man. René teaches heart-centered, trauma-informed meditation, as a core teacher at the East Bay Meditation Center. He loves to share his own daily life practice of bringing awareness to how he shows up in all kinds of relationships, with self, beloveds, friends, family, community and with the land. René is a facilitator in training for the School of Consent and a restorative justice facilitator, working to heal sexual and gender based violence.

EBMC has been a refuge, a spiritual home, and a mindfulness and meditation training center in downtown Oakland serving people of color, members of the LGBTQIA+ community, people living with disabilities, social justice activists and the general community for almost 20 years. Founded in a celebration of diversity and equity, EBMC has been described as a beacon of light around the world for organizations committed to radical inclusivity and the intersections of activism and contemplative practice.

At EBMC we rely on a generosity-based model of financial sustainability called Gift Economics. This means that there is no set fee for any of our offerings, and everyone is invited to give at the highest level they can for the benefit of all. Through this practice we are encouraged to shift our relationship to money and to capitalism and to invite equity and radical inclusivity into our process of healing and spiritual liberation.

For a list of our offerings and more information please visit our website at www.eastbaymeditation.org.

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