Power-With Through Peer Exchange

I began 2025 co-creating Peer Exchanges with Fivestar (Filthy Studios) and Ian O'Brien (PASS Certified), Crystal Mason (Tree of Change and Culture Tending Commons). Vanessa Rodriguez Minero and Wendy Martinez Morroquin (Culture Tending Commons), and Beth Stephens (EARTH Lab SF and 465 Collective.) Each focused on gathering together people from specific communities in circle to engage in conversation around a line of inquiry.

One result was nine different culturally-specific iterations of a single concept (Peer Exchange) that gathered over 100 people in three different settings (six physical and three virtual). This includes nine tailored agendas, notes / notetaking methods, and data collected (e.g. ephemera, surveys, attendance, etc.) All used similar opening and closing practices / process, which were initially designed in conversation between Crystal, Vanessa, Wendy, and me through the Culture Tending Commons. These practices were then adapted to the specific communities, contexts, and cultures being gathered with people in / from / amongst those communities.

Each Peer Exchange also resulted in some sort of co-created "products". These included:

• (with Beth) creative ephemera from trans, non-binary, and queer artists collected and shared on posts on The QC, a journal,

• (with Crystal) a report and mural (by Rtystk / Kiss My Black Arts) creatively interpreting who the African American Art & Culture Complex serves (mission), what Black Artists, Creatives, Entrepreneurs, and Community Members want to leave future generations (vision), and love letters for Black Trans / Queer Descendents (values),

• (with Fivestar & Ian) a Visionary Solidarity Statement & Guiding Principles guiding Sex Workers, Erotic Professionals, and Adult Industry Workers organizing.

While all of the Peer Exchanges are unique, they are also in conversation with one another. The cultural application of Peer Exchange praxis offers ways of gathering that foster brave / safe (enough) space for Us All (thanks Tyson Yunkaporta for that reference) to lay down our guard, breathe, and be. They work within numerous configurations because they are guides (not hard fast rules) that help Us All orient our beings in time and space and with one another. They give Us All language to reference, so we can better make meaning personally and collectively.

In Fall 2025, I am co-creating more Peer Exchanges with similar, intersecting, and expanded communities with more co-creators. Growing from the Sex Workers, Erotic Professionals, and Adult Industry Workers Peer Exchanges are two events organized by a planning committee of Fivestar, Polly Bombshell, and Amanda "Dusty" Wallace (Filthy Studios), Savannah Sly and Sasha Bee (New Moon Network and Erotic Professionals and Allies United), Ian O'Brien (PASS Certified), and me. The first one will focus on the question, "What tactics, tools, practices, and theories do we have or do we draw from to address, manage, and ultimately transform conflict within our sex workers, erotic professionals, and adult industry workers communities?"

The central question was chosen because addressing, managing, and transforming conflict is essential to liberate Us All from the systems, beliefs, and behaviors oppressing Us All, and especially Sex Workers, Erotic Professionals, and Adult Industry Workers. The format of our Peer Exchange seeks to harness our unique positions and collective wisdom towards co-creating a resource list of tactics, tools, practices, and theories that will be shared with all who attended, and more broadly through The QC (this journal right here) and Culture Tending Commons. We are generating our own solutions to the contradictions We All are facing here and now.

Another Peer Exchange I am co-creating is in collaboration with the Leather and LGBTQIA Cultural District in SOMA. Inspired by Trans March's Safety Cohort Training that queered the premise of the statement, "We Keep Us Safe," these peer exchanges will gather members of our Leather, Kink, and LGBTQIA communities to question and queer the meaning of We / Us and Safe. Our goal is witness where our incredibly diverse and pluralistic communities intersect, diverge, and contradict with one another.

When I reflect on these experiences, I see and remember what's possible when We All harness Power-With not Power-Over (thanks Paolo Friere for a Pedagogy when I was a teen and Starhawk for language in my twenties and check out Crystal Mason's reflection on Power Together on the Culture Tending Commons.) It's the crux of my co-creative praxis, and it's at the center of the Art of Relating to One's Self, Each Other, and the Cosmic Mysteries.

The motto of the Youth Development Peer Network (see my last journal entry for more) was "Power through a Network of Peers," and over two decades later, the network, the power, and my peers are stronger than ever.

AND STAY TUNED! Coming in Early 2026 is a VIRTUAL CONVENING ON POWER-WITH & PEER EXCHANGE. It will be an opportunity for Us All to share what we're discovering about how we tend to a culture where Power-With (not Power-Over) powers Us All.