Self-Care
May 6, 2017
Self-Care for Artists with Sarita Doughterty
Take Care of Your Amazing Creative Self! Everyone in attendance first practiced breathing exercises for relaxation. Then they were guided into a dreamy meditation and ended the workshop with a simple and effective mapping technique to imagine, visualize, and draw their ideal life. Sarita refers to this process as creating a Cosmology or plan for the life one deeply desires. Everyone drew the ideal scene they wanted to live in to open up its potential to actually happen. People brought their sketchbooks or journals, writing utensils, and their radical imagination.
Know Your (Tenants) Rights! with L.A. Tenants Union & Pasadena Tenants Union
The Los Angeles Tenants Union, a diverse group of tenants who work together to affect policy and strengthen tenants’ rights through outreach and education, worked on a linear platform to encourage tenants to advocate for themselves. They also teamed up with EDN, the Eviction Defense Network, a group of tenants rights lawyers dedicated to protecting tenants when they can and strengthening laws state-wide. During the workshop, they facilitated the local dialogue about why tenants’ rights are so important and what the people can do to be a part of the movement.
Pasadena Tenants Union formed in November 2016 by tenants and homeowners concerned about rental housing insecurity in the City of Pasadena. They advocate for renter rights and tenant protections from displacement caused by gentrification. They believe housing is a human right and renters have an inalienable right to safe, decent, stable, and affordable housing. Pasadena Tenants Union is a membership body of volunteers and doesn’t have paid staff.
BIO
Sarita Dougherty draws maps to see and re-see the world for personal and collective transformation. She generates habitats and paints them as research for her DIY Ph.D. in Pachamama Consciousness, or earth-based aesthetics, ecology and education. She has taught art for over 15 years as a way to locate identity and healing. Sarita is a 2017 Artist in Residency with the Women’s Center for Creative Work at The Huntington Gardens and teaches at The University of Redlands and Cypress College. She lives and works on a mountain with her partner and baby in Yangna (Los Angeles).
L.A. Tenants Union is a diverse membership-based tenant-centered movement fighting for the human right to housing for all. We demand truly affordable and safe housing. We oppose the dismantling of rent-stabilized apartments. We organize against landlord harassment, mass evictions, and displacement. And we mobilize for the repeal of the Ellis Act and Costa-Hawkins Act. Our mission is to strengthen tenants’ political power through education, advocacy, and direct action.