Hey! I'm Emily Eley.
I'm a facilitator, speaker, anti-capitalist business coach, caregiver, and small-scale carpenter.
My mission is to support womxn-owned businesses, BIPOC-owned businesses, queer-owned businesses and other folks from marginalized communities to generate social and ecological value, with and without financial return.
I believe we all have needs and we all deserve to have those needs met. I believe in prioritizing people and planet over profits. I also believe in a just, post-capitalist world.
Good business isn't just about making money. It's about supporting our collective liberation. It's about meeting all of our needs, not just some.
"Earning a living" plays a huge role in our lives and unless you were born independently wealthy, you have to find a way to pay your mortgage, for food, possibly childcare, and so much more. And I think I can speak for the vast majority of us when I say we hope to be able to do this, to "earn this living", doing something at least moderately enjoyable. Right?
Yet, too often, we get stuck. Stuck working for someone we don't respect. Stuck doing work we don't believe in or care about. Stuck still not making enough money to meet our needs or the needs of the folks who depend on us.
We get sucked up and absorbed into the omnipresent system that is capitalism. I want to help you shift that awareness, to learn how to resist, and to start to build a post-capitalist world where we are all respected, loved, and cared for.
I strive to help folks identify their needs, the needs of their families, and the needs of our communities at large.
I've always been interested in power. Who gets some. Who doesn't. How it can feel so implicit, so intangible, and yet so clearly there, so very real.
I've also always had a strong sense for justice and fairness and struggled deeply when I was young to reconcile feelings of unfairness or being controlled. I was rebellious, fueled with a somewhat destructive fire for awhile. And I was always pushing. Pushing boundaries, limits, and trying to figure out where I fit in.
I was a rule follower (gosh do I love rules and boundaries and strategic ways of doing things!) but only if they made sense and felt fair.
In my teens and early twenties I struggled to channel my passion and found myself in whole heaps of trouble. Trouble with drugs, the police, my family, really all my relationships. It wasn't until I packed up my tiny car and drove cross country for 4 weeks until I finally started to find some semblance of control over my passion.
When it came time to write this page on my website I thought a lot about which stories made the most sense to tell. At this stage in business, and in my life as an activist, I'm thinking a lot about the specific moments in time that have radicalized me. The moments that inspire us to take up collective action, to confront power, and to reconstitute in ways that truly serve us all.
Below you will find an abridged timeline of what has radicalized me over the last 39 years of my life. I of course don't include every moment, and sometimes those tiny moments are the most powerful.
I did this timeline because I think if we can each identify the moments in our own life of radicalization and revolution then we can help stimulate and manufacture those moments for those coming after us. I think this is what is meant by the term "collective revolutionary action".
So please, read on if it's interesting and I strongly encourage you to consider documenting your own journey to radicalism and sending it to me should that feel fun.
I'm grateful you're here, comrade. Here's to deep, radical, earth-expanding love. 💕
"A revolution on a world scale will take a very long time. But it is also possible to recognize that it is already starting to happen. The easiest way to get our minds around it is to stop thinking about revolution as a thing-- "the" revolution, the great cataclysmic break-- and instead ask "what is revolutionary action?" We could then suggest:
Revolutionary action is any collective action which rejects, and therefor confronts, some form of power or domination and in doing so, reconstitutes social relations-- even within the collectivity-- in that light."
-- David Graeber, Fragments from an Anarchist Anthropology
what radicalized me?
(rad·i·cal) /ˈradək(ə)l/ : of, relating to, or proceeding from a root
Radical comes from a Latin word meaning "root," and in its earliest uses it referred to roots of various kinds, first literal and then figurative. Because roots are the deepest part of a plant, radical came to describe things understood as fundamental or essential. The following is also inspired by the podcast: What Radicalized You?
my honors thesis in college
I took a few years off between my sophomore and junior years in college and ended up returning to school in my late twenties. I chose to switch to an honors track and spent my last 2 years in college taking masters-level classes and working with 2 thesis advisors: a Pakistani man named Najeeb who was researching the effects of torture in the US and Pakistani military, and a trans man named Sam, who was studying, among many things, the role of gender in power dynamics. The day of my defense the head of the Geography department told my advisors I shouldn't receive summa cum laude because I was "too emotional" during my defense. The topic was Neoliberalism and the Economization of Academia. I received magna cum laude instead.
the 2016 election
I graduated during the 2016 election of Donald Trump. I remember laying in bed crying when the results came in. This was the beginning of my political education journey. As a result of that election I enrolled in Colorado Emerge to train to run for office. I thought I wanted to run for County Commissioner in Boulder and then work my way up to a Senator seat. I realized pretty quickly through that 6 month training that I didn't love arguing. I've since gotten better at being in places where folks are yelling at me - ha!
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