Black Future Month

Kathleen Newman-Bremang
May 28, 2021

Resting your body and mind will give you the strength to persevere in the fight for social justice.
By Janice Rhoshalle Littlejohn
December 8, 2020

By Mikeisha Dache Vaughn
May 20, 2021

Dom Chatterjee
December 28, 2017

The Nap Ministry was founded in 2016 by Tricia Hersey and is an organization that examines the liberating power of naps. Our “REST IS RESISTANCE” framework and practice engages with the power of performance art, site-specific installations, and community organizing to install sacred and safe spaces for the community to rest together. We facilitate immersive workshops and curate performance art that examines rest as a radical tool for community healing. We believe rest is a form of resistance and name sleep deprivation as a racial and social justice issue.

Black Power Naps is a sculptural installation, vibrational device and curatorial initiative that reclaims laziness and idleness as power. As Afro Latinx artists, we believe that reparation must come from the institution under many shapes, one of them being the redistribution of rest, relaxation, and down times.

With a historical analysis of slavery and plantation labor, this week’s episode prompts us, at this critical time, to consider what is stolen from those among us who cannot rest under white supremacy and capitalism.

Freakonomics Radio is known for finding intriguing takes on the economics of sometimes common aspects of modern life. In this two-part episode, we get a closer look at the financial implications of sleep…or lack thereof. How does our sleep quality reflect in our health, weight gain, and even wages? Can sleep disparities cause an income gap? Are certain social classes, races, or genders more likely to have poorer sleep, and therefore a poorer economic status? You’ll hear from economists, sleep researchers, and psychologists about the potential ties between sleep and the economy (hint: better sleep might be the key to better financial health).

Documentary film follows Black Power Naps through rehearsals for a show that is ultimately cancelled because of COVID. It tells a story we must come to understand parallels the story that the artists (of color) are telling through the work: the story of how artists (of color) are structured into working. Sosa and Navild are established in the FRONTLINES narrative, practically chipper as we follow them behind the scenes of their upcoming project until the annulment.

24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep explores some of the ruinous consequences of the expanding non-stop processes of twenty-first-century capitalism. The marketplace now operates through every hour of the clock, pushing us into constant activity and eroding forms of community and political expression, damaging the fabric of everyday life. At the same time, he shows that human sleep, as a restorative withdrawal that is intrinsically incompatible with 24/7 capitalism, points to other more formidable and collective refusals of world-destroying patterns of growth and accumulation.