We stand with Breeshia Wade
Categories: General
In the lead-up to the release of a film attacking antiracism efforts, NAB author Breeshia Wade, a Queer Black woman, has been targeted by an onslaught of online harassment, intimidation, and vitriol. We condemn misogynoir, anti-queer hate, online abuse, and the targeting of authors and creators. We also see this for what it is: an attempt to suppress Breeshia’s voice, discredit her work, and distract us all from engaging in the necessary work of racial justice and collective liberation.
As her publisher, North Atlantic Books stands with Breeshia. Her work is essential, it’s groundbreaking and above all, it heals. Breeshia embodies the word in its deepest etymology: her work helps make us whole. Attempts to project divisiveness and rancor onto Breeshia’s work—which is grounded in compassion, care, and her experience as a chaplain and end-of-life caregiver—will fail. And they won’t divert us from the work ahead.
Campaigns of online harassment and intimidation have key commonalities, whether they come about organically or through well-organized channels:
- They’re designed to intimidate and overwhelm. Mockery, threats, base insults, and bad-faith arguments serve the same goal: to interrupt, distract from, and silence someone’s voice…because their voice has power.
- The target isn’t the point. When online harassers direct their time, attention, and emotional resources at a target, they’re displacing their own discomfort and disempowerment. They’re not creating conditions for healing, understanding, or meaningful discourse, nor are they interrogating actual systems or structures of power. None of this is actually about the person being harassed.
- Acts of intimidation are rooted in fear. Authors and artists are harassed when they speak truths that shake up dominant worldviews or challenge hegemonic power structures. When people don’t have the tools to sit with these truths—or listen to others’ lived experience—they lash out.
North Atlantic Books is committed to uplifting Breeshia and all writers and creators who work fiercely to dismantle systems of white supremacy, oppression, and inequity. We believe fully in the vision of care, healing, and radical tending that Breeshia puts forth in her book. And neither we nor Breeshia will allow intimidation tactics to divert our attention from where it belongs: as ever, on the work of building collective liberation and beloved community.
If you want to support or learn more about Breeshia’s work, please visit breeshiawade.com.
We invite you to share and/or sign this statement. If you’d like to add your name, please fill out this form.
In solidarity,
North Atlantic Books
About the Author
North Atlantic Books
North Atlantic Books (NAB) is an independent nonprofit publisher committed to a bold exploration of the relationships between mind, body, spirit, culture, and nature. Founded in Vermont in 1974 and operating in Berkeley since 1977, NAB has been at the forefront of publishing a diverse range of original books in bodywork and somatics, ecology and sustainability, health and healing, Indigenous cultures and anthropology, psychology and personal growth, social justice and engaged activism, and spirituality and liminality. NAB’s Blue Snake Books imprint is one of the largest sources of internal and historical martial-arts books in the world.
