My key question is: What in the world do I have to power to change? (And how do I go about making that change?) It’s been my main mantra in managing this era of The Toddler’s Regime.

Social Impact Insights: Leveraging Soft Power and Embracing Our Own Lanes

This past week, we’ve seen two major examples of people leveraging soft power as they deal with the Toddler-in-Chief: Weijia Jiang, a journalist with CBS News—who likely knows how to handle madness at the office with all the closeness between the higher-ups at CBS News and the Regime—is the current President of the White House Correspondents’ Association. She was the definition of grace under pressure as she hosted pretty much the entire Cabinet and led a banquet room full of journalists through crisis while their annual dinner was taken over by yet another incident of political violence this past weekend.

And England’s King Charles showed another kind of grace under pressure when he gave the speech of his life in front of Congress during his visit to the United States this week. Charles spoke about the crucial nature of our system of checks and balances (invoking the Magna Carta); how important an inter-faith or no-faith approach is to building community; the foundations of democracy; the meaning of NATO and fighting for a safe Ukraine; and why an international approach to fighting wars is necessary, drawing multiple standing ovations from both sides of the aisle, a feat not achieved by any recent American politician.

Both Weijia and Charles no doubt knew that they were dealing with a bully who doesn’t share their values. But they both managed to navigate their positions and slyly bend power to their will through the use of grace, humor, and a sort of winking charm. I found both of them and their approaches extremely admirable and was magnetized by their ability to be themselves and yet to speak their truth in the most diplomatic of ways.

What’s most interesting to me is that in both of these situations, there are people who said neither of these players should engage with the regime, and I honestly don’t know that there is a right or a wrong answer there. That’s part of what fascinates me as I think about how we approach and navigate access, money, and power while we aim to make change in the world.

There is an annual discussion of how tacky it is for the Washington press corps to mingle with the powers that be in any administration at the annual correspondents’ dinner, even as the dinner itself makes the case for the First Amendment and to support journalists. And there were many cries on both sides of the Atlantic that King Charles should not visit the Toddler-in-Chief, given the many strikes against democracy and the overall abuse being perpetrated by his regime. In all of these discussions, I don’t think there’s a definitive right or a wrong. It’s more that we should have a clear strategy for change in what we do, and why we do it.

I’ve spent a lot of time over the last 18 months changing the way I work. Ultimately, at my core, I’m an advocate for social justice and social change, and I’ve known that the way I did my work—along with literally thousands of other changemakers—before 2025 was successful in getting us to a place where we’ve made tremendous progress. But in this intense and drawn-out period of backlash that we’re in, it’s clear a re-adjustment is necessary.

I’ve always thought about approaching change in three different ways, and this framework is still on point, as I firmly believe we need all three of these methods:

1. Navigating Power: Some people, like Weijia and Charles, are masters at navigating power, knowing how to hold it close while still manipulating it to their own ends. This is high-level diplomacy, and a charm offensive of the highest order. It takes a level of patience, self-effacement, and equanimity that I’ve never had in great quantities. I’ve certainly spent time and been able to add value in these rooms, and friends and I have had opportunities to become funders’ darlings if we wanted to pursue it. And yet this type of navigating power takes a level of holding the needs of the most powerful and wealthy in your hand, without judgment or ick, and knowing exactly which levers to push. While I admire this kind of diplomacy and love to study it, I can only do it in small gushes of amiability, as it’s just not something I can sustain as a natural form of advocacy.

2. Confronting Power: This is where I sit most comfortably, it’s always been my sweet spot. It’s about embracing discomfort and conflict, even though we’re absolutely not inviting or instigating it. Confronting power is about naming a clear vision for the change we aim to make in the world, articulating our shared values, and calmly asking, are you in or are you out? (And if you’re not sure, what do you need to get there?) Our approach is extremely civil in discourse, but it draws firm lines and makes clear moral judgments as we slowly magnetize more and more people to our cause. And in this style of advocacy, we’re not afraid to be kicked out of certain rooms because we haven’t played along, or to have spirited arguments that delineate clear lines. I can’t even count how many politician’s or high-level institution’s henchpeople have screamed in my face in fancy rooms over the years, typically resulting in me almost laughing back in their faces, because once they’re screaming like that, they’ve essentially admitted they’ve lost. In this style of advocacy, we’re still a part of polite society, but we’re also always standing right on a razor’s edge.

3. Burning It All Down: This is the one that’s always kind of terrified me. I’m a builder at heart, and I like being in the business of inspiration and persuasion. These are the people who just fundamentally know—and they’re ultimately right—that power, money, and access all create an inherent rot, and there is no point in playing along at all. You have to destroy “it” (whatever that is) from the outside, burn it all down, and keep starting over. This is the mindset that’s slowly and broadly taken hold since the 2008 financial collapse and the subsequent rise of the algorithm, helping to feed the plummeting level of trust in institutions. I always saw this take as a little extreme as a starting point. And yet now, since 2025, as I think about where we are and where we’re headed, I am sort of thinking that if you’re not looking around and thinking it’s time to admit that money, access, and power have metastasized into something that’s eating us all alive, are you even paying attention?

So I’ve found myself admiring the soft power folks, but more and more turning into a Burn It All Down person. And I’ve grappled over the last 18 months with what that looks like, because I like order, and chaos scares me. A few friends have helpfully said that I’m talking about a Controlled Burn, like managing wildfires, which is a metaphor I love.

In light of all this. I’ve been focusing on what a controlled burn looks like for me. Out-of-the-box solutions and strategies. Only working with clients who genuinely want to do their work differently. And most of all, leaning into using tarot as a navigation and advisory tool, and going back to working more with individual leaders rather than entire organizations, so we can lock in more of that burn-it-all-down mentality, but in a build-it-back-up way. And I’m encouraging all of you reading this to do the same.

Current Influences: What’s Inspiring Me Lately

I’ve decided to occasionally switch in a new section into the newsletter, in place of always including Surfing Synthesis. I'm calling it Current Influences (still ocean-themed!), because of the way all these projects impact the ebb and flow of how I’m thinking and feeling. Folks often want to know what I’m reading, watching, or listening to. Here are some of my recent influences:

• It Was Just an Accident: My favorite movie from last year. Nominated for a Best International Feature Oscar, filmed undercover in Iran, by director Jafar Panahi. Surprisingly funny, even though it’s about people who are grappling with the after-effects of being jailed for their political advocacy, and very of the moment, given our global politics;

• : One of my favorite journalists, Tara went independent over a year ago, with a Substack, a podcast, and a YouTube. With a background in political journalism, covering the Epstein story with a focus on the survivors, and an ethos of holding power to account, Tara is my favorite reporter;

• Reuters: The more noise there is in our world, the less commentary I want. I find Reuters to be an extremely “just-the-facts” news source and I love it. In addition to having their app on my phone, I also listen to six (yes, that’s correct, SIX) of their podcasts, including two short daily pods that give me a great understanding of what’s up in the economic and global stages every morning;

• Rockaway: Surfing Headlong into a New Life: A memoir by Diane Cardwell, a former NY Times reporter who discovered surfing as an adult (sound familiar?) and it changed her life; and

• The Christophers: My favorite movie of 2026 so far. Directed by Steven Soderbergh, about art, creativity, legacy, and the pursuit of an artist’s life. I love small and intimate movies that could be a play, and this is a beautiful example of that type of film. Extremely funny, while also poignant.

Tarot Inspiration: The 10 of Swords

I’ve been drawn to the 10s lately. The 10s speak to a completion of a cycle from the vantage of a collective experience. And at the same time, because every ending calls in a new beginning, the 10s also ask us to acknowledge that a new stage is coming.

The swords are the air sign, the symbol of thinking, logic, strategy, and power. They can typically be seen as scary when in a reading, mostly due to the images in the cards. The swords cards often speak of pain, because of the power that words and thoughts have to hurt us when turned against us. And when we ruminate on these thoughts, there is a detrimental impact on our emotional and spiritual well-being.

And yet I see the 10 of Swords as a powerful card of healing. I think of it as the Acupuncture Card, the one that comes when we decide to face our fears and to finally do something to manage all those racing thoughts driving us to complete distraction in our mind. We can be pierced with all these needles/swords that finally release the pain and work to calm us down.

With the litany of problems we see around us in the current political climate, there is no end to our racing thoughts, or to the constant stream of content, news, and noise that we ingest. The 10 of Swords calls on us to surrender to the quiet, to the peace, and to let our minds flow in a more meditative space. It’s literally like acupuncture hitting all the proper points in your body to stimulate healing and flow.

It’s this level of flow that will allow each of us to figure out what our best strategy for change is, and to understand how we can change what’s within our wingspan and our power, and to learn to trust that others are doing their part as well. That’s the collective aspect of this card that will help move us all forward together.

— Juhu Thukral | Founder + Principal, Apsara Projects

ABOUT APSARA PROJECTS: We are a boutique social impact consultancy where culture meets strategy to make impact. We use a unique three-prong approach combining change management, communications strategy, and building an Equity Mindset to guide our clients. We partner with them to strengthen their vision and values as they build resilience and navigate change.

We work with advocacy organizations, nonprofits, and philanthropic ventures.

Over the past few years, we have partnered with clients on restructuring and scaling growth; supporting transitions in organizational leadership; branding and organizational identity; integrating racial equity as a muscle to flex; and strategic planning on mission and value proposition. Visit our website for more information and get in touch by replying to this email or connecting via LinkedIn.

Social Impact Insights: Knowing Your Lane and Committing Fully

One of my key mantras that I’ve had on repeat since even before the 2024 U.S. election was that, regardless of who won that cycle, we were looking at a 50-year re-build of our culture, politics, and economy. There was simply too much of a fracture in our country, with a solid 1/3 that wants to keep going backwards. And the left hasn’t yet articulated a long-term affirmative vision for us to organize around. Since the 2016 election, I have been saying strongly that our job has been to balance articulating a long-term 50-year affirmative vision with minimizing suffering in the immediate moment.

The immediacy of the suffering around us has rightfully had us focusing on doing what we can in the now. But we need to keep pushing ourselves to do more around naming the shared future we want to build for ourselves and rising generations. I do think the conversation on Affordability is an important start, and we need to move our own thinking from Affordability into Abundance and a sense of Infinity (infinite possibility.) We’re a ways away from that right now, but it’s an important goal.

In order to get there, I needed to start with a better understanding of where I myself went wrong, to better grasp how we got to this combustible moment as a country. Here are three key shifts I’ve made in my own thinking, as I processed the new reality of where we are right now and where we need to go:

1. Under-Estimating the Depth and Intensity of the Backlash to Progress: In many ways, we are where we are now because the left did an amazing job over the last 25 years of capturing the public imagination with inspiring values and storylines, pragmatic strategy, and solid policy solutions. We were always going to face this, and having read Susan Faludi’s 1991 book Backlash, I thought I understood the cyclical nature of social change. But I clearly had not understood how ingrained the resistance and revulsion is for people who do not buy into the changes we’ve made as a country on economic progress, racial justice, opportunity for women, and belonging of queer communities. So showing respect for how deep the aversion to change is feels like an important first step in addressing it.

2. Under-Estimating the Loss of Faith in Institutions: I have always had what I think of as a healthy skepticism towards institutions, whether they are in government, the corporate sector, or philanthropy and not-for-profit ventures. I think there is a potential for ego-centrism and corruption to rule the outcomes, but I also believe it’s important to build well-governed institutions that will be the spaces where we all come together to solve problems as a shared community. And I still believe that’s important. But the more I’ve looked at the thread of the last 25 years, I realize how deeply we’ve collectively failed to hold our institutions to account. Some clear examples:

   1. The metastasizing corporate—and now tech—ownership of media that promotes opinion and outrage over investigation and accuracy, prompting us to ask if everything we see is actually just serving the platform’s agenda and self-interest;

   2. The lack of accountability for financial institutions and support for everyday people following the 2008 financial collapse;

   3. Rising income inequality that makes it clear that the ultra-wealthy are not paying their fair share of taxes as the middle class disappears and more people feel like they’re treading water;

   4. The outrageous rise of money in politics, highlighting that wealthy donors will be heard over regular people; and

   5. The lack of clear information from the government during the covid pandemic, making it difficult to know how to respond to changing circumstances and breeding misinformed conspiratorial antagonism among regular folk.

   All of us have a role to play in questioning these institutions in an honest and rigorous way, and working to build them up with strategies that truly hold power to account. And this is a place that has lots of opportunity for all of us to work on creating a more trustworthy environment.

3. Over-Estimating the Shared Humanity of the Billionaire Class: (Now this one is kind of embarrassing.) Having spent my career in social impact advocacy, I have always earned my salary via organizations that are funded by philanthropy. So I’ve benefitted, even as I’ve certainly had a clear eye as to what the agendas and limits of the philanthropy class are. And I’ve seen firsthand how they tend to donate in ways that reflect shine back on them rather than working to achieve deep and shared understanding of complex issues and to listen to a wide range of voices as they support strategy and problem-solving. But I’ll admit to being excited back in the 2000s as I heard about initiatives and speeches coming out of the annual ultra-wealthy and elite hobnobbing that happened at Davos (in Switzerland) every winter. I assumed that at some point, enough money was enough money for these folks. And I failed to understand a common truth about people: That the ultra-wealthy who’ve been good at one thing (making money) assume they are good at everything, including telling all of us what we need. What I see now is that the billionaire class has a strong incentive to keep the rest of us—everyday people—fighting for their scraps amongst ourselves, so we don’t band together and come after them. Whether we do so in the form of taxes that pay for the world we help build, or in the form of an uprising, the ultra-wealthy want to stay happily in their bubble while the rest of us try to stay above water. No amount of money in their pocket or stated philanthropic goodwill will erase this fundamental Scarcity Mindset among the billionaire class.

These are big issues to resolve. We are all asking what can we do in the meantime, as we work longer-term towards a shared future-oriented and collective agenda. I’m reminding us of the people I’m calling our Flames of Light. They know their lane, are committing fully, and doing what they can to speak up, fight back, and lead the way:

• Walk for Peace Monks (Picture above): My social and traditional media were lit up with references to these monks walking from Fort Worth to Washington DC to promote peace, compassion, and loving-kindness.

• U.S. Olympic Athletes answering questions from the media about how they feel representing their country right now. Their answers were courageous, nuanced, and honest.

• Minnesota Communities fighting back against ICE, with many being injured or arrested, and of course a few losing their lives for their bravery.

• Prime Minister of Canada Mark Carney gave a mild-mannered but very clear barn-buster of a speech at Davos, using that platform for good, reminding the U.S. that we’re not the only power in the world.

• Stonewall Flag in NYC, commemorating the modern U.S. kickoff of the LGBTQ and queer rights movement in 1969: When the federal government took the Pride Flag down last week at the Stonewall site, community members and local government leaders gathered to put it back up, and organizations filed a lawsuit to keep it flying.

All of these recent Flames of Light brought tears to my eyes as I witnessed their bravery. It’s a reminder that our current regime is creating or capitalizing on massive problems, but we the people of the U.S. have the power to keep taking small steps that create ripples towards a long-term affirmative vision of the world we are working to build.

Surf Synthesis: Keeping an Eye on the Long Term Here, Too

It’s been a super-freezing winter almost everywhere in the U.S. this year, with cold and ice in places that don’t usually see extreme winter. I’ve been so cold in my bones the last few months that I haven’t paddled out as much as I’d like. I’ve been glad that I pushed myself this past summer and fall to get out in the ocean as much as I could.

Over the past year, I’ve had a lingering shoulder issue. In the spirit of long-term vision, patience, and working in small steps towards a goal, I’ve spent my time the last few months stretching and working those muscles. I’m almost there, in terms of full mobility. And there is no test like paddling out in the ocean, as that one act is extremely unforgiving on the shoulder, chest, and arms.

And of course, surfing has been the inspiration for my on-land rehabbing and exercise. Building that arm and shoulder strength up so I can have good surf sessions has kept me on track. When I’ve gotten down about the state of the world, it’s been helpful to remind myself that hard work and baby steps are the through-lines between something as intimate as surfing, and something as collectively meaningful like social change.

Tarot Inspiration: The Reversed 10 of Cups

As I think about where we are as a country, there are any number of tarot cards that come to mind, and which speak to our current state. The one that comes to me consistently is the reversed Ten of Cups. Reversed cards reflect a blockage or an imbalance in the card’s energy. Upright, this card represents a triumph of community. It is the sign of cups, which represent water, emotion, connection, and familial happiness. At the ten level, this is maximum collectivity. Reversed, the Ten of Cups speaks to a broken connection, a fracture in communal space. If you look at the card, the cups are upside down and empty of whatever joy and sustenance they offer when upright.

The tarot cards of the four suites (cups, wands, pentacles, and swords) represent emotional cycles that are shorter in duration, so you might wonder why this card has stayed with me for so long as a representation of our country’s emotional and cultural state. This card, especially as one of shorter durations of meaning, speaks to me of the constant cycling of new harms that the current regime perpetuates against our communities. These are 1,000 cuts creating 1,000 deaths of ideals, unity, or literal deaths. This card speaks to where we are because this past year has felt like a constant wave of new harms as a recurring theme.

Knowing where we are is important. Taking a moment to understand that is stressful, but necessary. Re-filling the cups will take time, step by methodical step. The good news is, we can get that energy flowing again, and correct the balance. None of what we aim to do is easy, but it is achievable, especially when we keep in mind the power we have collectively.

— Juhu Thukral | Founder + Principal, Apsara Projects

ABOUT APSARA PROJECTS: We are a boutique social impact consultancy where culture meets strategy to make impact. We use a unique three-prong approach combining change management, communications strategy, and building an Equity Mindset to guide our clients. We partner with them to strengthen their vision and values as they build resilience and navigate change.

We work with advocacy organizations, nonprofits, and philanthropic ventures.

Over the past few years, we have partnered with clients on restructuring and scaling growth; supporting transitions in organizational leadership; branding and organizational identity; integrating racial equity as a muscle to flex; and strategic planning on mission and value proposition. Visit our website for more information and get in touch by replying to this email or connecting via LinkedIn.

Social Impact Insights: Investing in Grassroots Organizing and Local Elections

Folks are rightly energized by the presidential election, and have donated directly to the Harris/Walz campaign to make sure their money is going straight to the source. And while that’s important, I always remind people that it’s just as important to give to organizations that engage in grassroots organizing.

Supporting organizing groups is absolutely vital. Over the long term, we need to build up local civic advocacy infrastructure because these organizations drive engagement on the issues and foster a habit of being politically active. In other words, they develop power for our communities over time. It’s important because these organizations continue to build up influence between election cycles, and that ongoing organizing creates a foundation for policy and cultural wins. This sets up more successful elections in the future.

And it’s also crucial to support state/local candidates whose races make all the difference in our daily lives, and make a big impact on our local political and cultural climate. I’m highlighting some of these groups because state/local races often receive a lot less attention and resources.

(And at a certain point, a well-funded campaign like the presidential one is burning money. As a commentator on one of the political podcasts I listen to essentially said, there are only 24 hours in a day, so there are only so many ads the campaign can run!)

To that end, here’s a list of organizations to have on your radar for donating, following, and volunteering. I’m letting y’all know that I have friends running or involved with these groups so you know that people I trust and have known for a long time are affiliated or in charge, as that kind of question around trustworthiness is one I often get:

• Ohio Voice: Ohio moves in and out of swing state status, and yet it’s a crucial midwestern state that’s a harbinger for what else is going on in this huge swath our country. And this year there’s a super-important US Senate race in Ohio to re-elect Sherrod Brown. My friend Gavin Leonard runs Ohio Voice, which builds power across the state for the long term.

• Movement Voter Project: This organizations, started by another friend, Billy Wimsatt, invests in local organizing across the country, and funds organizations run by people working directly in their communities. They also emphasize investing in groups run by Black/Brown/Asian/immigrant leaders, amplifying the work of diverse groups of stakeholders.

• Greater Than: My friend Marion Parrish introduced me to this group that has women come together to support state and local candidates in largely purple areas, so they focus on locales that have the potential to keep turning into progressive spaces. I’ve also engaged with one of their co-founders, Margot Phillips, and found her to be inspiring and incredibly effective in this work.

• Swing Left: Swing Left’s Immediate Impact Fund funnels money to target campaigns that need a financial boost, according to my friend Michelle Finocchi, who was part of their founding team and is actively involved in election organizing. It was also recommended in a recent podcast by Dan Savage, the LGBTQ+ advocate and sex-advice columnist whose takes on life and politics are always on point.

• Moving the Needle: Speaking of Michelle and Marion above, they coordinate Moving the Needle, which Michelle co-founded. This is a group in which I’ve been involved. It’s a co-designed, peer-led community that connects and supports executive women leaders who are taking action on social and environmental issues. They share information, networks, and resources that will help move the needle in our companies and communities. They’re bringing together organizations, experts, and resources that will help women leaders plug into the 2024 election in the most impactful ways. 

• League of Women Voters: To be honest, I wasn’t always super enthusiastic about their work, as it seemed a bit more conservative than my personal speed. But my friend Archna Bhasin has been involved with them in Texas for quite a long time, and I find her reports on their work in a conservative state to be quite inspiring. The League of Women Voters engages in education on voting/voters guides, the basics of how to vote and get to your polling place, and election security/safety. And I remember my learning from them when I was in my early 20s, so they’re a terrific gateway organization to getting young people aware and involved on the basics of civic engagement.

• Women Execs for Kamala: This group does send donations directly to the main campaign. And yet it’s a good group to have on your radar, as it’s a large collective of women leaders from all kinds of backgrounds who have come together to support this election cycle. They funnel conversations and links/resources towards organizing and to state/local campaigns. I’m a loosely engaged member and my friend Rashmi Rao has taken on a leading organizing role with them.

Hope these help! It’s good to have trusted sources during these times, so please do share with others who are asking you how to broaden their support beyond the main presidential campaign.

Surf Synthesis: End of Summer Salt Water Therapy

I’m a little sad to see the close of summer in the US, with the warmer water coming to an end. This is me after a lovely and long session where the waves weren’t too crowded, the water was the perfect temperature, and there was fun to be had for all, with lots of us smiling and laughing with each other in the water. Fall surfing is my favorite, but there’s a low-key vibe to summer waves that just can’t be replicated.

This is me feeling the post-surf glow in front of the van where I store my board. (If anyone can explain to me why my sunscreen sticks to my face but not my neck, I’d super appreciate it!)

This last session was especially fun because, between working out and surfing, I had managed to jack up one of my shoulders pretty badly, and I’ve been using my surfing both to surf and to act as a salt water soak. Between that and aggressive stretching, I’m back to almost normal, and I could feel that in this most recent surf session. A great way to ease into fall.

Tarot Inspiration: The Moon

In the US, we’ve just experienced the Fall Equinox, and also a lunar eclipse in the last week. There’s been a whole lot of moon energy going around. The Moon is one of tarot’s Major Arcana, meaning that it’s a representation of major moments in our emotional life cycle.

The moon is beautiful and can cast a peaceful light around us, illuminating the darkness. It acts as a necessary guide in the night, and as a marker of time, with 13 lunar cycles in a year. And yet the moon also causes all kinds of fluctuations. The pull of gravity from the moon is deeply integral to surfing, as it controls the tides of the ocean. Personally, I am constantly tuning into what’s going on with the sea levels as I figure out when I can go surfing.

That constant gravitational pull can cause a sense of unease and anxiety, which seem to be a theme these days with a combination of hope mixed in with dread at all the political news and election-related anticipation. This election is going to be so close, and no one really knows how it will turn out. The Moon card typically tells us to tune in more deeply to our intuition, but in our current times, it can feel like our intuition is being drowned out by too much incoming information.

I suggest we all shut our eyes, take a deep breath, channel the moon, and listen to what our intuition is telling us to focus on as we experience a change of season and some kind of shift in our political era. And then take action to make sure the political shift is one that strengthens us as a culture and community.

— Juhu Thukral | Founder + Principal, Apsara Projects

ABOUT APSARA PROJECTS: We are a boutique social impact consultancy where culture meets strategy to make impact. We use a unique three-prong approach combining change management, communications strategy, and building an Equity Mindset to guide our clients. We partner with them to strengthen their vision and values as they build resilience and navigate change.

We work with advocacy organizations, nonprofits, and philanthropic ventures.

Over the past few years, we have partnered with clients on restructuring and scaling growth; supporting transitions in organizational leadership; branding and organizational identity; integrating racial equity as a muscle to flex; and strategic planning on mission and value proposition. Visit our website for more information and get in touch by replying to this email or connecting via LinkedIn.

Social Impact Insights: Falling In and Out of Love in Presidential Politics

I’ve always had a soft spot for Joe Biden, and been a fan of a lot of the things he’s done, with a few major and important disappointments along the way. In fact, I recall having a small crush on him back when he ran for President in 1987 (how sweet is that?). I vaguely remember finding him kind of dashing, whatever that meant to me at the time. Biden fell off my radar until 1991, when he led the Senate Judiciary hearing on Clarence Thomas’s nomination, and we know how badly that went. I still don’t think he’s ever made it up to Anita Hill, whom I’ve had the good fortune to meet a few times, as she selected me to be the first speaker of the Anita Hill Lecture Series on Gender Justice in 2013.

After that, Biden came back into my world when he pushed hard enough to get one of his key pieces of legislation, the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), passed into law in 1994. VAWA’s been an important part of the work I’ve done for decades, and I always saw it as Biden’s way of making up a bit for how badly he handled the 1991 confirmation hearings. We did a lot of advocacy with Biden’s office over the years, and his was one of the more tuned-in offices to advocate with.

I was thrilled when he became Obama’s VP, as they seemed to balance each other out in important ways, and he did a great deal to make sure the Affordable Care Act became law. Now, at the end of his political career, I can only imagine the grief Biden is going through as he accepts that he had to step aside and will be a one-term President by choice. He’s likely still in a bit of a King Lear state, but history will largely treat him well. Biden leaves a legacy on progressive economics and building up desperately-needed infrastructure, healthcare, guiding our economy and national psyche through covid recovery, and of course, hopefully saving democracy by leaving ego behind and stepping aside due to his age.

Devastatingly, Gaza will be a black mark on Biden’s legacy. I have given him the benefit of the doubt, as we know he has to navigate harms against both Israelis and Palestinians, and I believe he did a lot more behind the scenes to try to limit the death and destruction of Palestinians. But the sending of more weapons in service of starvation and devastation will not hold up well as history moves forward.

The truth is, my favorite presidents have been one-term presidents, maybe because they signaled leaning into their bold ideas (including their mistakes), and being authentic enough to their own mission that they were willing to risk losing and putting their priorities on the line. Leaving it all on the floor, avoiding excessive caution, and not focusing on sticking around to the exclusion of everything else definitely speaks to me and it’s an ethos I bring to my own work. It also speaks to knowing when you have momentum and not backing down because you’re eager to hold onto your current position.

My favorite President has been Jimmy Carter, who always held his North Star out front, and developed his roadmap based on his priorities of peace and human rights. This picture below is me recently at The Carter Center, where I’ve had the pleasure to be brought in by my frequent collaborator Ejim Dike on a project. I did tell my clients that the work aside, my favorite part of working with them may have been getting to see this Andy Warhol triptych of President Carter in person! Look at me being as pleased as can be.

With Biden having stepped aside, it’s Kamala’s time. Most folks know I’m not really a fan, although I have of course fallen right into line and want to make sure she is elected President. Years of advocacy on the intersection of criminal justice and racial/gender equity issues has left me cold on her, as has her reputation for not running a good office, since I see that as a key leadership trait. I’ll admit to my own internalized sexism, where I tend to hold female politicians to a higher standard of authenticity and accomplishment, so I always consciously push through to counter for that.

And I don’t say this to yuck anyone’s yum: I’m thrilled with all the momentum that’s swung her way, and I’ve been impressed with the way the Biden/Harris campaign has pivoted into a Harris and now Harris/Walz operation. As the campaign’s leader, Kamala gets credit and my admiration for converting opportunity into a majorly revved-up engine. And the chemistry between Kamala and Tim Walz looks promising and energizing.

I say this because, since it’s been Kamala’s race, I’ve definitely been in conversations that border on toxic positivity, not acknowledging that while we now have a greater chance at the Presidency, we need to have a clear strategic focus on persuading undecideds as well as motivating our base to turn out and vote. This race will be so close, and the revved-up base is important, but it’s not enough to get us to a win. Thanks to the vagaries of the electoral college, we are fighting to convert a small group of undecideds in a few swing states and get them to the polls.

This is very much my concern because in the days following Biden’s stepping aside and Kamala consolidating her position, I engaged with three different young Black/Brown/Biracial men, none of whom was excited about Kamala and really don’t want to vote for her. While they were relieved Biden stepped aside, and they’re not voting for Trump, right now they’re leaning towards staying home. (And Kamala’s identity as a biracial Black/Indian American candidate is not enough for these potential voters.)

The good news is, Trump likely has hit his ceiling on whom he can pull in, while Kamala has lots of room to define herself to undecideds in swing states and to win them over. And this is all so new that I don’t read much into any of the current polling. Maybe Kamala doesn’t need to pull in young Black/Brown/Biracial/Asian men or other low-engagement voters, as long as she has a strong turnout of her key constituencies and rides the momentum of everyone who is donating money, writing postcards, and knocking on doors.

But I’d rather be strategic about persuading undecideds than see us roaring into an echo chamber. One of my reminders for undecideds is: I’ve learned that I don’t need to love or even like my electoral candidates. Paraphrasing the great AOC, we don’t have to see our electoral vote as the sole expression of our civic duty. In fact, voting for one of the available candidates should be the least we can do. And as my favorite political podcast, Somebody’s Gotta Win from Tara Palmeri, says in the name of her podcast, we have to pick from the available pool of candidates.

It doesn’t matter if you like or love a candidate, the question is: Do you want a President who will:

• Build an economy that offers opportunity and stability for the vast majority of us not in the top 1%

• Protect our ability to make our own decisions about our bodies

• Work to get affordable health care for us all

• Fight for freedom and democracy, and

• Safeguard America’s good standing in the world?

If so, get out there and vote Kamala!

Surf Synthesis: Steady in the Water

I’m always assessing how I’d doing in the water, and checking out my metrics of success. I’ve had a few moments over the years when I thought I might have to try to rescue someone when I’ve paddled out. And of course, I’ve wondered whether I’d be up to it. Well, the moment finally came a few weeks ago, and I’m happy to say I kept my head about me and did pretty well.

Luckily, the situation wasn’t too dire, but it was alarming enough that I intervened. A group of young siblings were swimming and playing in the surfers area, with the oldest holding his younger sister as he swam them out. She was clearly terrified, freaking out, and gulping in ocean water as she cried out. They weren’t in any real danger yet, especially as the three boys all had strong swimming skills, but the young girl was panicking so much, and there were waves crashing hard around us, and her brothers kept ignoring her cries.

So I paddled up and to them and signaled that it was time to get back to shore because she was clearly freaking out. We even put her on my board for a minute or so to push her back to shore more quickly, but she was so wiggly we fell over, and I had her hold onto the edge of the board for some steadiness. They got safely back to shore, their mom thanked me, and then of course the oldest brother tried to convince me into loaning him my board for a bit! Hmmm, handing my board over to a slightly reckless 12 year-old? I don’t think so! I laughed and turned back to paddle out.

I need to work on my skills of having a second person on my board, but otherwise, I was pretty pleased with my performance, and hopefully that little girl isn’t too traumatized by bad memories of the ocean.

Tarot Inspiration: The Tower

The Tower is one of the cards that can cause the most anxiety when it shows up in a reading. One of the 22 cards representing a major moment in the life cycle, the Tower represents a huge disruption, a shattering, and a breaking down of order. While it typically induces fear, the good news is, the Tower arrives about 2/3 of the way into the cycle, leaving plenty of room for a new beginning. Because ultimately, where there is destruction, there is room for change, growth, and rebuilding.

Most of us had been feeling those Tower vibes since the first minute of Biden’s debate. It felt like a shattering of all that we hoped we knew to be true. It was devastating to see someone we were counting on falter and at the mercy of age. And yet, that devastation gave way to something new, an energetic rallying around a new-but-not-completely-new candidate team in Kamala/Tim.

Here’s to the rebuild and the change. Excited to see what we all build together in the coming months.

— Juhu Thukral | Founder + Principal,Apsara Projects

ABOUT APSARA PROJECTS: We are a boutique social impact consultancy where culture meets strategy to make impact. We use a unique three-prong approach combining change management, communications strategy, and building an Equity Mindset to guide our clients. We partner with them to strengthen their vision and values as they build resilience and navigate change.

We work with advocacy organizations, nonprofits, and philanthropic ventures.

Over the past few years, we have partnered with clients on restructuring and scaling growth; supporting transitions in organizational leadership; branding and organizational identity; integrating racial equity as a muscle to flex; and strategic planning on mission and value proposition. Visit our website for more information and get in touch by replying to this email or connecting via LinkedIn.

Social Impact Insights: Reflecting on the Legacy of the OJ Simpson Trial

This past week, we learned that OJ Simpson had died. If you were consuming media in the early 90s, there’s a good chance this news meant something to you. For me, it took me back to an incredibly formative time in my life. The short story is that OJ was a charismatic former football star who was a mega-celebrity of the 80s and early 90s. I of course knew who he was, but he wasn’t someone I focused on or thought about much.

In June 1994, OJ’s ex-wife Nicole Brown and her friend Ron Goldman were found brutally killed at Nicole’s home in Los Angeles. These were shocking deaths—especially in the context of the glamorous LA milieu in which OJ, Nicole, and Ron lived—and the murders immediately made national headlines.

I remember when I heard the news, I thought there was a very good chance it was OJ who was responsible. I had worked at an organization focused on gender and intimate partner violence, and I followed the view that there is typically reason to investigate a current or former partner in crimes like these. [I won’t regale you with the full story of the murders of Nicole and Ron, the trial, and its aftermath here, as there are more books and shows out there than we can count on this topic. I’ll share some of the resources that most resonate with me at the end of this section.]

I was in law school at the time. And I am telling you, I learned more about being a lawyer from watching and following the trial and the case than I did from actually being in law school. I would watch the pre-trial hearings and the trial itself while getting ready for class and while studying. I remember the pre-trial hearings bringing to life the Hearsay exceptions in criminal procedure, and what I watched on TV helped me understand the concept in real life terms, both for my Evidence class and later when I took the bar exam. And I learned the power of storytelling and directing the narrative from watching the OJ trial and consuming the related media.

I found Marcia Clark, the main prosecutor, riveting. I thought she was so smart and empathetic, and I felt she was treated so unfairly by the media. I didn’t have the sophistication yet to break down the misogyny of the media into a clear analysis, but I felt for her, I was inspired by her, and I wished the media had portrayed her as the compelling and compassionate lawyer whom I saw, rather than a woman doing an extremely difficult job who was hounded and ridiculed about her hairstyle.

My best friend from law school, Sofie, made me take a Moot Court/Trial Practice class with her so we could be partners for the final mock trial. I didn’t want to do it because so much about it was public speaking, but it was the best class for me, in terms of building comfort and confidence. During my mooting and prep for the final trial, I kept Marcia and her physicality in the courtroom in mind. During that final mock trial, I mis-spoke about a piece of evidence, and rather than freaking out as I might have otherwise, my mind immediately went to the times in the OJ trial where Marcia might briefly mis-speak and in a completely unbothered manner, say “Excuse me, [XYZ correction].” I channeled my inner Marcia Clark, and when we got feedback from the mock jury, they commented on my casual confidence in that moment and how it made them trust me in my role. That’s a lesson that’s always stuck with me.

As the trial went on, I remember talking about the case with one of my early legal supervisors/mentors, Arnold Ellis of Bay Area Legal Aid. Arnold and I had different POVs on the case: Arnold actually knew OJ (!!), and had grown up with him in San Francisco, and had even played high school football against OJ. A Black lawyer, Arnold also explained to me the distrust in the Black community for the police and for the criminal justice system and why it existed, especially given that Nicole and Ron were White, and OJ was Black. Arnold has passed away now, but he and I stayed in touch for a long time after I worked for him. He was the first person to teach me how to interview a client, and I learned an incredible amount from him (and from others at Bay Area Legal Aid, including Ariella Hyman and Ken Theisen, who focused specifically on domestic violence.) Arnold’s commentary on the OJ case—coming from a personal place—and his lessons on race, the law, and legal practice, are all foundational for me.

When I met my husband, Jeff, a few years later, we noted with excitement when the trial and case came up in conversation that we had both been obsessed with it. It’s been a shared mutual obsession since then. Jeff is in the world of books and publishing, and you can imagine our fluttering when he actually was working at the publishing house HarperCollins during the controversy over super-editor and ruler of her own imprint Judith Regan doing a deal with OJ for his book If I Did It. The book was almost immediately canceled, so even the new media environment spurred on by the OJ trial had its limits, in terms of what was considered to be palatable for polite society.

On a cultural level, the OJ trial truly did change the media environment and marked the beginning of a new media era. The case heralded the rise of 24/7 news coverage and talking heads who don’t always have a substantive (or even truth-based) analysis to share but who keep on talking. It also began the slow march to closure of most of the daytime soaps (I still watch The Young and the Restless.) And of course it rolled us right into reality TV, with one of Nicole’s best friends, Kris Kardashian Jenner, going on to lead a reality TV empire and building a billion-dollar business brand off that. The trial injected the emotionally immediate and voyeuristic nature of media directly into our collective veins right before the technology of the internet and social media changed everything and made that immediacy actually possible.

On a personal level, the trial shaped my legal career, in terms of the lawyering skills I learned; the analysis I came to understand around race, socio-economic class, and the criminal justice system; and the profound impact of seeing the way the media and the legal system treated the victims, Nicole and Ron, and their families. The trial deeply drove my desire to work on issue of gender-based and sexual violence. And once I was at the stage of my career when I was ready to move away from direct lawyering, the lessons from the defense team and the surrounding media environment were in the DNA of my decision to focus on storytelling and narrative advocacy for gender equity and racial justice issues, and on building up the communications strategy skills of social justice movements and organizations.

So while most people likely think of the white Ford Bronco on the freeway when they think of OJ, I always think of Marcia Clark addressing Judge Ito in a straightforward manner, making her case, and staying calm, cool, and collected. And hopefully we all think about Nicole and Ron, whose lives were so cruelly and violently cut short, and the people who loved them and lost them way too early.

For More on the Trial:

• OJ: Made in America: Ezra Edelman’s ESPN/30 for 30 documentary on the murders of Nicole and Ron, and the subsequent trial.

• Vanity Fair/Dominick Dunne: Dunne was a media bon vivant of the 90s, and he covered the case and the trial for Vanity Fair with flair and an insider’s analysis.

• The People v. O.J. Simpson/American Crime Story: Ryan Murphy’s dramatization of the story. Fictionalized but incredibly true in its emotion and depth.

• You’re Wrong About: This podcast by Sarah Marshall and Michael Hobbes has at least 10 episodes on the murders and trial. They never made it through the entire story, but the existing episodes are riveting.

• Without a Doubt: Marcia Clark’s memoir of her life and the trial. I don’t align with a prosecutor’s perspective all the time, but Marcia has so much insight and she’s an important voice.

Surf Synthesis: Out of the Cold

This is the first winter I did not put on a heavy hooded winter wetsuit at all. The universe was not pushing me into my dreaded hooded suit, as all those opportunities came with either extremely strong winds or no one to hit the surf with. I love surfing alone, but I can’t do that in a heavy winter suit, because I still need help getting in and out of it, even after over a decade of winter surfing.

I’m now coming off about 6 weeks of no surfing, due to those strong winds and that lack of company. I should be able to break this unhappy streak in the next few days. In the meantime, I’ve been plotting and preparing for my return, making sure as usual that all my workouts are geared to maximizing my surf skills. I’ve been focused on my breath endurance, paddle power, and balance, and doing lots of mental visualizations. So I feel prepped and ready. It’s a good reminder that, even when we’re not being offered whatever we consider our preferred scenario, we can be whiling away in prep, getting ourselves ready for the opportunity as it arises. Wish me luck as I paddle out again, hopefully by the time you read this!

Tarot Inspiration: The 7 of Wands

I’ve been thinking about the Wands a lot lately, as I’ve tended to have a few different Wands show up in readings for myself when I’ve had questions on my mind about where I want to put my energy. The Wands are the suite of creativity: creative energy, creative will, and creative desire. They represent the spark you have within your own mind, and how that spark feeds you.

Since the beginning of the year, I’ve been thinking about the Wands that have shown up in some of my most profound readings when I’ve asked about my creative spark. Then in late January, I received a feature on the 7 of Wands from the email newsletter of Biddy Tarot, one of the tarot instructors I’ve learned a lot from over the years. Biddy’s email reminded me of an important reading I received a few years ago that featured three Wands in my 3-card reading. The 7 was one of them, and her email renewed my focus on this particular card.

And then a few weeks ago, on the Spring Equinox, a close friend who also reads tarot reminded a few of us to pull a card, as that’s an auspicious day for readings. Grateful for the reminder, I was happily stunned when I pulled the 7 of Wands. The universe was clearly sending me a message: I need to keep evaluating where I spend my creative energy and to draw lines around protecting my creative spirit. I think of it as reminding me to hold the line on the creative progress I’ve made, and working to draw more creative energy into my mind. Biddy’s take on the 7 of Wands inspired me to think of it as defending your creative position—and the impact you make via leveraging it—from outside distractions.

That’s probably an important reminder for all of us, as the world—especially right now— is constantly sending us messages and drops of information that genuinely require our immediate attention, empathy, and action, but that also drain us, and even scare us. Sending my best to all of you as we hold our energetic boundaries close so we can focus on what’s right and what truly makes an impact.

— | Founder + Principal, Apsara Projects

ABOUT APSARA PROJECTS: We are a boutique social impact consultancy where culture meets strategy to make impact. We use a unique three-prong approach combining change management, communications strategy, and building an Equity Mindset to guide our clients. We partner with them to strengthen their vision and values as they build resilience and navigate change.

We work with advocacy organizations, nonprofits, and philanthropic ventures.

Over the past few years, we have partnered with clients on restructuring and scaling growth; supporting transitions in organizational leadership; branding and organizational identity; integrating racial equity as a muscle to flex; and strategic planning on mission and value proposition. Visit our website for more information and get in touch by replying to this email or connecting via LinkedIn.

Social Impact Insights: A Year of Union Organizing

Given that we’re going into an especially-anxiety-inducing presidential election this fall, starting the year out with good vibes becomes even more important. With so much change, anxiety, and war in our current situation, it means that much more to search for auspicious signs of light.

We are building on 2023, which certainly seemed to be the Year of the Union. The strikes in Hollywood lasted for months, resulting positively in major gains for both writers and actors in pay and in protections tied to technological advancement. As a pop culture and film lover, I followed these strikes closely, and was happy to see beloved actress Fran Drescher flex her muscle as the head of the actors union. She clearly stated that she was bringing her own uniquely feminine energy to leadership, and that she was unapologetic about how she handled negotiations, refusing to back down in the face of disrespect from the group representing the producers and anxiety from members of her union and others who couldn’t work because filming was shut down.

While the Hollywood strikes bring an innate level of glamour to this conversation, they would not have been as successful if the current mood of workers in the U.S. had not so clearly been about being done with the machinations of the extremely wealthy. After a pandemic, the rise of inflation, and outrageous ever-increasing executive pay, the bottom 99% are simply done with the greed and shortsightedness of our highest-paid corporate leaders. Workers from a wide range of industries/unions went on strike or threatened to in 2023: call center workers; Starbucks workers; Amazon workers; auto workers; actors; Kaiser Permanente (health care) workers; hotel workers; UPS workers; writers; and Lyft/Uber drivers.

While it’s invigorating to see all this union activity, there are still signs of great concern. It’s not clear that even increased wages are truly outpacing costs, and 2023 also brought massive layoffs, especially in tech. And January 2024 saw what appear to be industry-devastating layoffs in media. Within the confines of a Scarcity Mindset, storylines about worker solidarity and layoffs feed each other. The more workers see the extent to which we are all expendable to corporate leaders seeking to show they can continue to increase profits, the more they come together for collective action. And within that Scarcity Mindset, workers making collective gains and increasing in power give corporate leaders cover to say costs need to be cut or companies need to be shut down completely.

2023 was also the year that artificial intelligence (AI) broke though as a mainstream concept. One issue I’ve been thinking about over these last months is, what if we brought an Abundance Mindset to the future of work? If AI truly is going to revolutionize work and take over many existing jobs (I’m not so sure), and if CEOs can’t figure out how to make a profit without cutting workers or pay or benefits, maybe it’s time to accept that our purpose in life is not simply to work. Maybe it’s time to embrace a more spiritual approach, and to recognize that we were put here to care for each other and to be responsible stewards of our planet.

And it’s definitely also time to cut those exorbitant CEO salaries and wealth packages, which have never been justified. They are even less so when CEOs don’t seem to know how to build successful businesses anymore, stating that massive layoffs are the only way to improve their bottom line.

It’s time to actually start thinking and advocating from a place of Abundance, and to have our government provide genuine community infrastructure and foundations, like Universal Basic Income; Universal Health Insurance or expanded Medicare (health insurance that is not tied to employment); and retirement support for workers well before the age of 67. Of course this sounds like a fantasy in the U.S, and yet we have to start somewhere with our collective big dreams. Demanding that the top 1% pay their fair share of taxes would help fund these kinds of foundations of community support. We may live in a capitalist society, but that doesn’t mean we have to give up our shared humanity. And if it does, then it’s time for a new economic system.

This is my dream for an auspicious start to 2024, which is going to be a long and challenging year. I truly hope that we keep dreaming big, and come together for collective advocacy rooted in long-term vision and values that may not lead to wins immediately, but that lay the foundation for the next 50 years, and for future generations of workers.

Surf Synthesis: Working on Positioning

Even though it’s a magical and intuitive experience, surfing is also a lot like other areas of life and work, in that you can set metrics of success for yourself if you focus. It has taken me years to master certain skills, and I’ve learned to set patient and realistic metrics for myself, while keeping the long-term goal in mind and keeping some sense of urgency. Surf skills I’ve learned include handling my board (you wouldn’t know this is something to conquer); getting out of the water without getting pulled back by the current (another who knew type of skill); popping up on the board; anticipating and getting out of tricky situations; knowing when I might be in another surfer’s way and vice versa (probably the most important skill!); and paddle form. Paddle form in particular took me YEARS. It involved proper swim lessons and lots of help from friends watching me in the water to figure out exactly what I was doing wrong and then patiently explaining it to me.

These days, I’m working on positioning. This means knowing exactly where to be in the water to get into the wave at the most opportune spot. You might say it’s about being in an auspicious position to make the most of a wave. In some ways, I feel like I’ve really blossomed in order to even get to this point. In others, it’s one more sign to me that my improvement in surfing is consistently glacial in pace. Kind of like the long arc toward justice. These days, I’m re-reading notes from surf camp, watching video tutorials, watching the surfers who intuitively know exactly where to be and when, and of course practicing in the water.

There’s a nice symmetry to my focus on positioning in the water. Outside of the water, I’ve decided to focus on positioning and amplification for Apsara Projects, my social impact consulting firm. In both surfing and in my work, it feels like I have a great sense of the fundamentals, and now it’s time to push further to make maximum impact. It’s an exciting time, and I’m invigorated to see so much synergy in these two areas of my life.

Tarot Inspiration: The Ace of Pentacles

The Ace of Pentacles is a perfect card for a new year. Aces mark beginnings, often representing an inchoate overflow of potential. Opportunity is there, but you need to give it shape and purpose. This vibes very well with the theme of abundance, auspicious moments, and new beginnings. And Pentacles of course are the Earth sign, and speak to the body, wealth, prosperity, and the comforts in life. Given this, the Ace of Pentacles is spouting with the potential for abundance and prosperity, which we collectively need at this time. In the image above, you can see the lush flowers and garden of growth. It’s all potential for abundance.

Wishing all of you the best for this year! As we settle in, stay centered and stay watching for those signs of an auspicious moment or invitation in your life.

—Juhu Thukral | Apsara Projects

ABOUT APSARA PROJECTS: We are a boutique social impact consultancy where culture meets strategy to make impact. We use a unique three-prong approach combining change management, communications strategy, and building an Equity Mindset to guide our clients. We partner with them to strengthen their vision and values as they embrace and navigate change.

Over the past few years, we have partnered with clients on restructuring and scaling growth; supporting transitions in organizational leadership; branding and organizational identity; integrating racial equity as a muscle to flex; and strategic planning on mission and value proposition. Visit our website for more information and get in touch by replying to this email or connecting via LinkedIn.

Social Impact Insights: Shared Humanity on Israel, Palestine, and Gaza

I consider myself “mid-level literate” on the Israeli/Palestinian issue, and as I’ve thought about what I can do to help over these last weeks since Oct 7th, I’ve seen that sharing my own journey of learning and thinking about this historical and present-day ongoing crisis can be helpful to others who are also learning and unpacking the complexity. So I’m doing my best, knowing that I am still very much on my own learning journey.

The first thing I should say is, it’s clear that both anti-Jewish/anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim sentiment are alive and insidious in our present times. And I’ve seen that I need to say clearly here, both are wrong. Whether they’re blatant or coded or rooted in historical suffering, these anti-humanity and anti-human rights biases are wrong, no matter who they come from and no matter who they are aimed at. From increased posting of anti-Semitic coded language to the horrific killing of a Palestinian-American child, it is all terrifying, and escalating, and wrong. I actually can’t believe I have to say it, but from what I’ve witnessed from both the political right and the political left, this has to be said.

What I also feel compelled to say is that we can hold in our hearts terror and compassion for Jewish people who feel targeted, Israelis and others who were killed on October 7th, who are grieving lost family/friends, and who are either still hostages or who are praying for the safe return of loved ones; AND we can hold in our hearts love and support for the Palestinian people who have endured the suffering of occupation and the violence, cruelty, and apartheid of the hard-right-wing Israeli government for more than decades, and now this cruel escalation in Gaza. Our hearts, our generosity, and our minds’ ability to hold multiple and different ideas at the same time are all vast. The people in Gaza are suffering from a full-scale military attack and are losing their lives and their homes in real time. We owe it to them and to our own humanity to commit to a path forward that builds on our understanding that all people have dignity and deserve compassion and self-determination.

Because I usually talk about pop culture and social impact in this newsletter, I am sharing one of the most moving and inspiring statements on this topic I’ve seen in the past few weeks. It’s from the model Gigi Hadid, who is half-Palestinian (and who reportedly has received death threats due to this statement).

I first learned about the Israel/Palestine issue after September 11th, when my friend Reena and I represented one of the many Brown, South Asian, Middle Eastern, and Latino men who were wrongly and without respect to their rights detained, disappeared, and/or removed by the U.S. government after the horrors of September 11th. We represented a Palestinian man whom we were ultimately able to get released from detention despite the feds’ false claims that he was, as Reena and I put it in case our phones were being surveilled, “a T-word.” 

For me, the history of Israel and Palestine reminded me very much of the history of my own family/culture: of Partition in 1947, and the ongoing enmity between India and Pakistan that continues through today. Both of my parents’ families were forced to leave their homes behind and move from what is now Pakistan and to re-settle into what is now India. I’ve known this at a mid-level/vague sense of what happened, but the current crisis has prompted me and my siblings to dig deeper with our parents and to hone in on maps, to get a greater sense of this piece of our family’s history and the impact it had. My father remembers being on that journey as a child, which I remember him telling us when we were kids and first saw the movie Gandhi, which briefly portrays people having to make the trek of Partition. I was lucky enough many years ago to be in India with my parents when my father reunited with an old family friend who also came from their original town in Pakistan, and the emotion of seeing our family history come alive in that way. My father succinctly summed up global history and politics in a family text chain about this topic in the context of what’s happening now in Israel/Palestine/Gaza: 

“All these ‘Partitions’ were the ill-conceived notions of the then ‘British Empire’!”

In 2014, a close friend arranged a delegation of donors and activists to Israel and the West Bank, through his organization, which worked with Israeli and Palestinian youth to create relationships and a pathway to peace. I of course invited myself along, and I had the privilege of meeting both Israelis and Palestinians who taught me about the oppression and apartheid of the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and I got to see the resilience and beauty of both Israel and the West Bank. And I also saw that, just as many of us Americans would not want to see ourselves confused with the Bush or Trump governments, many Israeli Jews and Jews around the world and here in the United States support the liberation, dignity, and self-determination of the Palestinian people.   

**And I want to thank a few close friends who have religious and cultural ties to this issue who graciously reviewed this newsletter for me, to make sure I addressed this topic with accuracy and sensitivity.**

I’ll leave you with a few pictures from my trip to the border of the West Bank, where there is a dividing wall that artists have covered with murals. I can’t put into words how moving it was to experience this art. And I’ll also say, the cruelty and terror of October 7th are horrific, but in no way do they justify a retaliation that is obliterating so many civilian communities. Again, we can hold both these ideas and feelings in our minds and in our hearts.

Surf Synthesis: Seeking Peace and Clarity Any Way You Can

It feels a little off-note to follow up talk of terror and hate with the surfing section, but people tell me they always enjoy this piece of the newsletter. So I will simply remind everyone to take care of yourselves, to seek joy where you can find it, to check in on friends and family who are heavy of heart, and to do whatever you can to contribute and to call on policymakers to do the right thing in the face of this escalating crisis and laying siege. 

Tarot Inspiration: The 6 of Cups

I recently pulled the 6 of Cups in a reading, and I’ve been thinking about it almost non-stop since then. Sixes are a building moment, and the Cups are the suite of water, emotion, and love. I’ve been reflecting on this card as it keeps coming back to me, and it feels so on point for this global moment. Building connection and community, and providing support to the people we love: This is what we need to do as we collectively advocate against terror and hate in all its forms. 

On a personal level, the 6 of Cups spoke to me because it resonated with an Akashic reading I had recently received from my friend Ryan Migge. A basic description of Akashic readings is that they tap into the collective spiritual experience of the universe, channeled through the person giving the reading. The building of community and connection I see in the 6 of Cups related back to the mantra of “Balance” that came through in Ryan’s reading, which is an amazing experience. You can’t keep veering off so hard to one edge or the other, it becomes unhealthy. Whether it’s working too much, not taking time to exercise or cook healthy food, or whether it’s about the larger culture of moving past the nuances and history involved in a global crisis, Building and Balance are good guideposts for all of us.

Sending my best for peace of mind and for a larger global coming together.

—Juhu Thukral

@juhuthukral | LinkedIn

Social Impact Insights: Making Our Own Pile (Together)

One of our shared obsessions these past few months has been the end of the HBO series Succession. I’ve been watching since Season 1, when my husband Jeff got me hooked in the first few episodes. Like a lot of people, I found all the characters loathsome, but couldn’t look away. I can summarize the bulk of my commentary in this equation:

Generational Wealth x Generational Trauma = Compelling High Art

There was something about seeing a stark portrayal of massive wealth, emotional abuse/neglect, and the striving of a newcomer/immigrant to the United States (Logan) compared to the striving of his entitled and entirely-too-soft-to-succeed adult children (Kendall, Shiv, Roman, and I shall not forget Connor like his family so often does). The line from the photo above about the Roy kids not being “serious people” resonated across the internet.

I realize this makes me sound completely naive, but I was always confused as to why the kids thought their opinions mattered so much, when they were so out of touch and ineffectual. It took me a while to realize that it was their being so out of touch and being cloaked in unimaginable wealth and access to power that was exactly what enabled them to glide in and out of every room as if their ideas mattered.

I always hoped to see some combination of Gerri, Marcia, Frank, Karolina, Hugo, and Karl leading the company at the end. Smart, experienced, and pragmatic survivors who had lived real lives and had taken real risks as they worked actual jobs. But my take on the finale is that Lukas Matsson will sell the company for its parts over the next few years. So no one person actually “succeeded” (not sure that’s a word), even as they all won, given how much money most of the characters made in the sale of the company.

And that to me was the ultimate message of Succession: Money. Always. Wins. Unless the rest of us keep rising together to advocate for ourselves and to be partners in substantial coalition-building that leverages the power of collective organizing. One of the things I always remind myself and others of is the reality that we are all living in the same capitalist hellscape.

Our only solution is what I call “Bet on Yourself | Bet on Us.” At this moment in history, we can’t rely on institutions to take care of us, so we have to bet on ourselves. Of course we all advocate for ourselves individually, day in and day out. And most of us also proactively support others in advocating for themselves. We all need to lean into this muscle more, as it creates a collective mobilization for all of us together that raises the bar and the standard of what we expect for ourselves as a community.

It’s this collective betting on all of us together that makes a meaningful difference. It’s not a new idea, but it’s more urgent than it’s been in a long time. Logan’s exhorting his kids to “Make your own pile” hit me as a sharp reminder that the rest of us need to make our own collective pile. I always say in my work with clients that we are laying the foundation for the next 50 years. We have to come together and find solutions that encourage us to meet across our different interests, and understand that the 99% of us have much more in common with each other, and more to gain by sticking together and investing in each other, than we do in fighting over the scraps that the top 1% throw at us.

And this is where the Supreme Court comes in. This term did hold the line on one aspect of voting rights, which is a relief. But mostly we see a Court that will push as far as it can in the interest of power, even in the face of credible charges on ethics and on intellectual dishonesty. While this is exhausting and scary, I see a spark that can inspire us. At this point, the Supreme Court has absolutely overplayed its hand. Chief Justice Roberts is gnashing his teeth over the public perception that the Court has no legitimate core to lead it in the aftermath of its recent decisions on abortion, gun safety, and corporate power. And now, in the past few weeks, we have seen from this Court even more decisions that undermine our culture, on issues of LGBTQ+ rights, affirmative action, indigenous communities (specifically the Navajo Nation), and student loan relief.

Once again, people are feeling unmoored by all of this. Cultural moments like this are deeply painful and exhausting, and yet they offer us new openings. Building on innovative solutions, throwing out what hasn’t been working, organizing together, creating new and stronger coalitions, and demanding accountability are powerful collective forces. Especially when these institutions overplay their hand and we say enough is enough. The more we recognize our own humanity in each other, and coalesce around our shared needs and hopes, the more we will sideline the institutions that offer only a baseline of protection and refuse to offer any kind of affirmative protection of our shared future.

Surf Synthesis: Laughing in the Water

One of these days, I’ll learn to remember that there is a huge difference between super-cold and mildly-cold water. It’ll give me hope. Summer in Rockaway has offered chilly but not cold water, and you can see the difference in my smile above. Over the course of the winter, I lose sight of the fact that conditions are much more difficult. I forget that this is not my baseline. As the water has warmed even a tiny bit, I’ve found myself going after and catching bigger waves. Not always nailing the landing, but being in the wave in a meaningful way. My most recent paddle-outs have found me laughing in the water, giggling with other surfers in the water, and just getting lost in the joy of being out there in that salty ocean goodness. The main message here is to revel in the determination to keep coming back to the thing you love, because as much as it might disappoint or scare you, eventually it will reward you too, and that is more than enough.

Tarot Inspiration: The 5 of Swords

Any of the 5s could have worked for this one. The 5s are the cards of conflict, of a break in the relationship, of everything falling apart, and of a deep need for renewal and a re-set. Jeremy Strong, the actor who portrays Kendall Roy in Succession, called the final vote (and the sibling fight in which it played out) “an extinction-level event” for his character. I felt it for him. That night after watching the series finale, I literally had bad dreams about Kendall all night. That’s how much I felt for his character in his grief and loss, as much as I believed that the vote freed him to move into a new chapter of his life: I want to imagine Kendall the Philanthropist. Kendall the Music Mogul, and Kendall the Champion of the New New Media, in all his messy glory.

The Swords are the suite of logic, intellect, the courts, and the rule of law. I always think of the swords, at their worst, as speaking to the invisible powers of authority that rule us without us even knowing who they are. The Supreme Court and its wave of rulings is very much reflected here.

And yet the good news is, the 5s are the mid-way point. They leave us so much room to be creative and iterative in our next steps. At some point, all of us have to learn when it’s time to put the individual sword down, and move on from a fight that’s personal to us, to something that’s bigger and more meaningful.

So as much as the recent wave of Supreme Court rulings have you feeling unbalanced, let’s focus on our collective organizing power and our ability to support each other during these times. (As with Kendall of Succession) let’s remember, we’ve got lots more game to play.

—Juhu Thukral

@juhuthukral | LinkedIn

Social Impact Insights: Asian (In)Visibility

The pop culture centrifugal force of the Oscars lured me in once again, even though last year I swore I was done with the ceremony of it all. I knew I couldn’t quit awards season entirely. I’m too much of a film fanatic. And this last year of film heralded a compelling Oscar-forward Asian Invasion, if not exactly the one I was expecting.

I was quite irritated when two of my favorite and anticipated films of 2022, Park Chan-wook’s Decision to Leave (from South Korea), and Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Broker (from Japan) were not a bigger part of the Oscars conversation. The pleasant surprise, of course, was the dominance of the Asian American Everything Everywhere All at Once. I’ll confess that I actually was not as drawn to this film as so many were. In fact, if there hadn’t been a noisy multiverse context, and it had been a quiet, meditative look at an immigrant family, a mother/daughter relationship, and a marriage on the brink, I probably would have loved it. For my sensibility, the multiverse action took me out of the emotions of the moment. And yet I could certainly appreciate its fascinating bizarreness, adventurousness, and original artistry.

And I was very much captivated by Michelle Yeoh. I have loved her since 2000’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, directed by my favorite of all, Ang Lee (Taiwanese American director). Crouching Tiger was nominated for and won a number of Oscars, and I remember at the time—over two decades ago—thinking how wonderful Yeoh was, but I’m embarrassed to say, it was totally outside the realm of possibility back then for me to even hope she’d be nominated for Best Actress, as she deserved. So her win this year was both a long time coming and a sign of all the good ways our culture has developed, despite how painfully long it takes to actually see real change.

Everything Everywhere’s Oscar run and big wins reinvigorated a lot of discourse about Asians in America, the ever-present model minority stereotype, and representation. For Brown/Asian/South Asian people here in the U.S., cultural invisibility is a throughline in our lives. The impact of course is wide-ranging, whether it’s from the pressure to over-perform, model minority-style; to assimilate and fit in via the mandates of mainstream American culture; or to feel that no matter what you do, no one will ever really see you or see your value as a person in our deeply capitalist world. Often it’s all three.

I know for myself, I’ve had those times when I’ve felt invisible and unseen, whether it was in a personal or professional context. And yet I’ve also always been able to use my invisibility as a superpower and flip it to use as a veil for my own purpose. It’s a skill I’ve learned, to stealth my way through lots of situations, giving just enough to make my audience happy, but keeping the rest of my energy and focus for myself. That said, while this approach has worked for me and for countless others, private negotiation of public-facing identity is not a systemic solution.

This leads us to the Asian rage part. The flip side of this invisibility is the rage underneath of being unseen. The production company behind Everything Everywhere, A24, is also the producer of Netflix’s series Beef. Beef is about two Asian Americans of different backgrounds, in terms of socioeconomic class, gender, countries of family origin, and even their experience of Asian Southern California culture. Both feel invisible and unseen in the ways I’ve described above, and have a low-simmering rage inside. And various characters show us the emotional impact of rage turned inward. It’s both super compelling and super cringe to watch, and a rare depiction of multiple Asian American characters living in their absolutely ugliest emotional depths.

Unfortunately, there is now a real-life enraging aspect to the show. It’s emerged that one of the actors who is also a visual (and performance?) artist has had a history of (he says) engaging in horrifying commentary on what I will call fantasy/ideations about sexual assault under the guise of creating art. Or he has actually engaged in sexual assault and publicly told the story with enthusiasm. I’m paraphrasing here because I don’t want to give him more airtime. There are too many men like him out there, who either casually engage in assault or feel entitled to make ugly comments about it under the cloak of art/comedy/provocation. I’m linking here to these important pieces on the topic that offer in-depth analysis.

I want to amplify a point that the pieces I’ve linked to make, because it relates to invisibility. This information was out there and known. It is unfathomable to me that the producers and creators who brought Beef to life would endanger their project by including someone with this background, regardless of how talented they thought he was. It’s almost as if these collective feelings of invisibility led them to believe his past and their positioning of him would go unseen. And there are so many talented actors from Asian backgrounds, known and unknown, who deserve an opportunity to be a part of this project. So why keep giving opportunities to a person who brings so much potential to poison the entire enterprise and to horrify the very audience you seek to reach?

This is a question we’ve been asking about people and organizations from all kinds of racial/ethnic/cultural backgrounds, and we’ve certainly asked it in the context of Whiteness. But there is something so self-sabotaging and rooted in having lived life unseen and invisible about this unfortunate mess. And from a crisis communications perspective, the silence of the producers and creators so far/as of the moment I am sending this out is another piece of the mess and the poison that stems from feelings of invisibility.

Speaking up, using your voice, and adding to the conversation: These are the tools that lead to liberation and to finding your own authentic way. It’s also what allows us to build collective power. This is why I have devoted so much of my own work to the art and science of communications in social movements and harnessing our communal voice.

Surf Synthesis: Getting into Rhythm

Thanks to the soothing power of only chilly—as opposed to freezing—water, I’ve been getting into a good rhythm with my surfing again. It’s starting to feel natural and expected, and more like I’m bringing concentrated focus rather than an undisciplined and chaotic effort that I hope lands me somewhere.

As with work, it’s all about setting realistic goals that have an edge of being “push” goals, but have enough possibility to them that I can gain confidence. And it truly is a daily practice that builds towards progress. And the more I am preparing, working out at home and doing exercises that support my endurance, balance, and power, the more confident I feel in my surfing.

Here on the East Coast, spring is definitely in the air, and that’s giving me that extra boost of energy, both physical and mental. Hope the same is true for y’all as well.

Tarot Inspiration: The Page of Swords

I was having a little trouble focusing on the exact card for this month. I felt for sure it was in the suite of Swords, the air sign indicating an analytic approach, mental sharpness, and “thinking energy,” for lack of a better term. I’ve been in heavy thinking and analysis mode these past few months. As I’ve been wrapping up existing clients, exploring new partnerships, and updating my website and info deck, I’m definitely in that mode of evaluation, setting frameworks, and analysis of our methodologies and approaches at Apsara Projects.

So I knew I had a lot of Sword energy swirling around me, and because the Swords can go in so many different directions, I wasn’t drilling down enough on the specifics of which card. So as I started working on this newsletter, I decided to let one of my tarot apps guide me. It could have picked any of the 78 cards in the deck, and I held my breath out of nervousness for a second before I hit the button.

And then up popped the Page of Swords! Yes! Exactly what I was thinking, but I hadn’t yet been able to grasp onto it with clarity. Pages are the young people of the tarot Court Cards. They have a sound foundation, a grounded sense of possibility, and an eagerness to go out in the world and explore. The Page of Swords is extremely curious and seeks to channel their mental energy in positive ways. This is exactly the mental spirit I’ve been cultivating as we leave winter behind and as my Apsara partners and I think about our lessons learned over the last few years of work.

And having the Page of Swords pop up for me when I was having my own mental block was a reminder to trust the universe to offer signs when you need them. Hope your Page of Swords energy is driving you to new places of intellectual curiosity and energy as the spring sun breaks through.

—Juhu Thukral

@juhuthukral | LinkedIn

Social Impact Insights: Family Trees, Modernity, and Lots of Chai

Somehow I blinked and it had been a decade since my last trip to India. A cousin’s wedding provided the perfect inspiration for me, my mother, and one of my brothers and his wife and kids to head to Delhi in December. (My father decided to stay back out of a sense of covid precaution, but he was essentially on the trip via WhatsApp.)

Going to India is always an emotional experience. We see lots of extended family, and we get to see those family similarities up close and build more emotional intimacy. Yet still with a reminder that there is also a lot of distance, given that we’ve grown up in different countries and cultures than our Indian-from-India family. My sister and I were born in India, but our parents left with us when we were quite young, so the culture gap is real. And so is my garish American accent and my real-time lapse in language fluidity. Even though our mother spent hours upon hours teaching all four of us Hindi when we were growing up (reading and writing as well!), which paid off in us speaking/understanding Hindi in slow motion/theory, but sounding like stilted American tourists in reality. One nice side effect of this is that I spend a lot more time listening and being in a reflective zone on these trips, rather than talking so much.

Always fascinating for me is hearing my parents’ reactions to being back to the place where they grew up, but where now they are tourists too. If my siblings and I experienced the “being part of two cultures at the same time while we didn’t quite belong in either” as we were growing up, my parents experience a version of that as adults who have now spent more of their lives in the U.S. than they have in India. It’s always funny for me when I hear my mom boldly express herself in a way that’s uniquely American or see my dad try to pass himself off as a local. And seeing my brother’s kids experience India for the first time was hilarious and a thrill. We can call their short take on India Confusion and Delight.

One dynamic that is always in play: As Indian-Americans, we have to do a lot more excavating to understand people’s true desires and intentions than we’re used to, as our American straightforwardness simply does not resonate in Indian culture. And for the lawyer and strategist in me, it’s even more of a communications challenge, as I can get frustrated. So I deal with it by seeing all this as an exercise in developing my sense of quiet, patience, and equanimity. And in stretching the boundaries of my own powers of persuasion and leaning on etiquette.

Another way that I’m different when I’m in India is my extremely strong purpose in being on the hunt for beautiful objects. While I’m not known as an overly acquisitive person in my usual life, my family in India knows me for my major shop-til-you-drop vibes. I basically want to bring back as much of India with me as I can in my overstuffed suitcase. Whether it’s shawls, jewelry, or asking about cooking techniques, it feels like bringing all these back home are ways to keep the legacy alive and to be immersed in momentos that are constant and familiar. And to stay connected to a heritage that is deeply comforting and gives a sense of “home,” even though it’s technically not. Something universal: It can feel in Indian/Indian-American families like the way we express love is never by saying it aloud but by worrying about each other, and by passing on jewelry, shawls, and artwork/statues.

One of the most amazing parts of these trips is always seeing the many ways India continues to modernize and roar forward since my last visit. The upside of seeing women being more independent than ever; smartphones everywhere and the connection they bring to the world at large; and the signs of a global economy zooming forward all fascinate in the best way. Also interesting was that it felt like I was seeing fewer unhoused people in the streets than I’d ever seen before, and frankly, I’ve seen more in our major American cities recently. I always ask what this means for human rights/where do all the people go, and there is certainly a great deal more pollution with less focus on sustainability.

So in many ways these economic and cultural developments mirror the way so much of social change happens: three steps forward, two steps back, and do it all over again. It’s invigorating to see up close and from an insider/outsider’s perspective what’s changing and what’s not. And it always gives me more insight on how we make long-standing change and move forward in cultures and communities, to see what sticks, and to see how many different groups we need to persuade to have buy-in on the change/see the benefits as we decide where to zoom into our shared future and where to hold onto tradition. One thing is for sure: Every time I go to India, it provokes a better understanding of who I am, my family’s history, and our evolving place in the world.

Surf Synthesis: Building Back Muscle Memory

Ay yi yi, I was so out of shape by the time I got back to the U.S. Between the super delicious food everywhere and the different communications style (see above) in which my protestations that I’m stuffed only lead to more food on my plate (and I hate wasting food so you know I down all of it!), I needed to re-set, food-wise, upon my return home. Factor in the lack of any consistent exercise regimen while I was away, and the cold air/water temps (despite this being a warm winter), and it has been a sloooow return to the surf for me. So far, I am not even thinking about catching waves, literally just focusing on “getting salty and wet,” as I like to put it. And suiting up in (and getting out of) the winter wetsuit and booties/gloves is a workout in itself.

All I am about is actually making it into the water, being proud of myself for withstanding the cold, and handling my board with a modicum of grace and surf etiquette. And even with these minimal goals in mind, I can still feel my surf endeavors in my body after. It’s a good sign, because it means I’m re-building my muscles and endurance, and paving the way for my muscle memory to kick in. Sometimes, with surfing as with making social impact and with so much of life, you just have to set realistic and reachable goals. We can’t always be reaching for the moonshot or the ambitious win. In recovery times like these, I leave that for future planning, and take the incremental wins as signs that I’m at least holding steady ground.

Tarot Inspiration: The Chariot

When I first started reading tarot, I focused on learning “the correct” interpretations of the cards. It wasn’t until I really committed that I became comfortable going with my intuition and using the official card meanings as loose guides that are open enough that my reading is based on what the card is giving me.

The Chariot is the card that changed it for me most clearly. The official meaning you see in decks is about control, willpower, and harnessing your energy towards success. None of this is particularly off from what comes to me when I see the Chariot, but my interpretation is very much based on my own cultural heritage. In the Mahabharat, one of Hinduism’s sacred epics, there is a looming war that represents the fight between good and evil. Krishna offers both sides a decision: They can have his many troops or they can have him on their team, as a non-fighting member. Arjun picks Krishna and asks him to be his Charioteer, recognizing that having Krishna on his side is what matters, regardless of the size of troops or fighting power.

You can see the meaning from a spiritual and intuitive perspective. Choosing a moral/spiritual/ethical pillar is more important than chasing after outside or physical markers of strength. How you guide your chariot and on whom you count to guide you or to be on your team/the ride with you is crucial. None of this is in conflict with the official meaning, but my interpretation is certainly personal to me, and I can’t see anything other than Krishna when I see this card.

Let’s take this Chariot energy into this year and focus on that energy of doing what’s right, choosing guides who keep us focused on a moral path, and being strong in whatever ethical battles are coming, whether personally or in the work.

—Juhu Thukral

@juhuthukral | LinkedIn

Social Impact Insights: Legacy and Accountability

A version of this picture is on the cover of the Charles and Diana book my parents bought for me and my siblings at the time of the big royal wedding in 1981. I remember both my parents talking to us about the engagement, and we all watched the wedding with excitement. At the time, I read the book often and VORACIOUSLY. I can still remember the glamour and charm of Diana, and the conversations about Charles as a forward thinker and environmentalist. I always liked them both. And once Camilla’s role made its way into the headlines years later, it seemed kind of sad to me that Charles hadn’t been able to marry his original girlfriend because she wasn’t deemed royal material. So I actually liked all three of the people in that particular marriage. And as is typical of my social justice lens on the world, my general vibe was that all three had been trapped by and into a system not of their own making.

And of course, like many Indian families around the world, the interest my parents shared with us had a very deep and dark duality to it, as they also taught us about British colonialism in India and around the world, and the lasting impact it had on countries and families like ours.

So—like many of us—I watch The Crown, with a combination of sympathy and fascination for the soapy family drama, and a deep desire for accountability as we examine the legacy of empire and colonial institutions this family represents. My feelings toward these people and the institution have always been complicated: Diana inspired me in more ways than I can articulate when it comes to my social justice work, and I have been super obsessed with her for as long as I can remember. Even as I recognized that she was likely a very difficult person to engage with, someone who was always wrestling with her demons right in your face and demanding that full attention be paid to her trauma. Those traumas are real and deserve a voice and an accounting and a healing. But as an adult and a long-time advocate and leader, I very much recognize in her story an exhausting and unproductive dynamic that’s an unfortunate foundation for a lot of social justice leadership.

I didn’t have any feelings at all about the Queen’s recent passing, except for an interest in how Charles will modernize the monarchy: I would love to see Charles and William do away with the monarchy entirely, as that would be the most modern move of all. On the personal soapy drama level of it, I do hope Charles does well in the role, having waited his whole life for it. It helps him that The Crown and other reporting have depicted his life as a child/young person as being largely devoid of parental love, so I’ll always see him as a sympathetic figure. It will be interesting to see if he respects the moves by a number of countries to end their relationship with the monarchy, and if he cuts the amount of public funds the family receives. Again, these acts would all be in service of a modern future, and how invigorating it would be if Charles worked to wind down a creepy institution that elevates one family over the rest of a country due to a long-irrelevant historical legacy.

All this focus on monarchy and empire is hyper-relevant at this very moment, as the World Cup is in full gear. The World Cup always shines a spotlight not just on excellence in sport but also on human rights (very much this time around, given Qatar’s well-documented abuse of migrant workers), corruption, and the legacy of colonialism. It’s always a thrill to watch and root for countries that have either lacked investment or had it stolen from them via colonization go head-to-head with countries that still benefit from their colonial pasts. History and geopolitics are always at play during this tournament.

I’ll admit to feeling torn myself during the US-Iran match. As much as I wanted the US to win so we could advance to the next round, I couldn’t help but feel that the people of Iran—and the players themselves—needed this win more. They’re engaging in protests and facing government crackdowns as the Woman, Life, Freedom movement continues in the aftermath of the death in police custody of Jina Mahsa Amini.

These matches also cause a great deal of reflection on the countries that have heavily Black and Brown squads but white-focused cultures. It’s always amazing to see mainstream sportscasters and commentators dig into these questions during World Cup time, and I love to see the unusual and unexpected conversations that the tournament sparks.

Surf Synthesis: Embracing the Liminal and Unambitious

I finally made it back into the water, and yup, was I out of shape! Luckily I have a good plan for my efforts to get back into the water after too much time away. I remind myself that it’s all about enjoying being in a liminal space: Just being in transition. The whole point for me when I get back into a surf session after a long time is to enjoy the feel of the water, to try to catch some inside waves (waves that have already broken), and to get my paddling form and endurance back. It’s all about being as unambitious as I possibly can.

This is a good model for other aspects of life. We all feel so much pressure to perform and to be constantly at our best. It’s exhausting to be striving all the time. This is the mindset that pushes us out of the present moment and into more of a grasping and chaotic state. There’s something about facing nature head on and saying, “I’m just going to try and show it some respect, and if that’s all I can do, it’s good enough.” I felt a little tense as I waded out with my board, but once I felt the ocean washing over me, it was easy to remember that I don’t actually have to do any of this well, I just have to enjoy it and be present for it. And you can see from my smile above, I was thrilled by the time I came back in to shore.

Tarot Inspiration: The 5 of Cups

The Cups are the suit of water, and of emotions and intuition. Feelings run through us like water, and at the mark of five (halfway through a 1-10 cycle), things can feel a little upside down. You see in the card a desire for forward motion, but also cups that have been knocked over or inverted, emptying their contents. This is the card that came to me as I was writing about the Charles and Diana marriage, something that started with the dreams of a whole world watching, and ended as one of the most famously disastrous marriages on record, with everything kind of kicked and spilled over by the time it was done. And in the larger scheme of world events, this card speaks to grief, to what’s been taken from us, and to opportunities lost.

This card resonates for me when I think of the long arc of what’s lost in colonial legacy. Maybe not the immediate pain and suffering we see in other cards, but something more mournful and wistful, as we look to rebuild a future and capture what’s ours. After all, a few cups are still upright, and in this card, the wounded bird is still moving forward, speaking to hope and possibility, despite injuries of the past. It’s a helpful way to look at the end of one year and the beginning of another.

Have a wonderful and restful holiday season, and a thoughtful and resonant end to 2022. Looking forward to more insights, growth, and connection in 2023!

—Juhu Thukral

@juhuthukral | LinkedIn

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These related feelings of inspiration and stress have me thinking about creativity, who gets to be creative, and how that relates to power.

Social Impact Insights: Aren’t We All Geniuses?

One of my biggest critiques of social change institutions is their constant search for and anointing of specific people as saviors of the movement or as visionary leaders—”geniuses”—who have the answer. We all know that social impact work takes thousands of leaders doing the work, playing different roles and bringing inter-disciplinary skills and ideas, in order to make change that creates any kind of impact. Data evaluations, common sense, and intuition all tell us that it’s the strategic leveraging of a wide range of stakeholders and strategies towards a shared vision that brings about change. But still there is this overarching need and cultural mindset that urges people in power to seek and follow that one brilliant person who can guide us all.

One thing that makes me feel like we can overcome this penchant is the reality that it’s not just the social justice sector that does this. It’s everywhere, in every field, this hunger we all have to find that one “genius” who can lead us all to higher ground. And of course the danger is, once a person is anointed with this title, a certain level of power gets handed to that person. And the more power handed to one person, the less we see of accountability for decisions they make. We see this dynamic in politics, in tech, in academia, and in the arts, and we all bear the burden.

I was reminded of this recently because my husband Jeff and I just listened to the podcast, Death of an Artist, about the Cuban-American artist Ana Mendieta, who focused on performance art and art embedded in the landscape, shaped with a feminist lens. She was married to a more established and well-connected artist, Carl Andre, who was a renowned “genius” in the art world for his work on minimalism. Mendieta died in 1985, allegedly at the hand of Andre, who was later acquitted in a bench trial and continued to have major exhibitions of his work.

Jeff and I have always felt a fascination with this case because, as much as we love art and go to museums and galleries, we had never heard of Mendieta or Andre’s alleged actions until we went to Dia Beacon in 2014, and saw an exhibit of Andre’s there. We didn’t know much about Andre at all and were asking lots of questions of the gallery docent, who was quite knowledgeable and happy to chat with us. I’ll never forget, as we kept talking, she said very casually, “Oh, and people think he killed his wife, she was also an artist.” We of course were stunned and made her repeat herself and asked all kinds of questions. I asked a few times why there wasn’t any notice or inclusion of this alleged fact in the materials, given that it is relevant to the story of the artist and therefore his art. She gave us a rundown of how powerful arts institutions and individuals lined up to protect Andre and his legacy as a “genius” over the years, despite the allegations, while groups of feminist artists and activists kept the flame of Mendieta’s work alive.

It came back to me a few years later when I was in Marfa, a West Texas art town that artist Donald Judd took over to create a temple to minimalism. During the tour of the Chinati Foundation, we encountered a permanent installation of Andre’s. I of course asked our guide if he knew that Andre had allegedly killed his artist wife, and was he/the tour guide planning to mention this, or was there any documentation or information on this for visitors. Of course the poor guy just seemed confused and I didn’t want to embarrass him, but I made sure to tell the rest of the group and the front desk what I knew. (Honestly, no one cared. I’m still kind of shocked, even though I shouldn’t be.)

Apparently the art world was quite divided about it all, but power and money and ego flow toward the path of least resistance. And in this case, Mendieta’s supporters also, understandably, don’t want her legacy to be about her final moments. But it’s kind of horrific that art institutions can’t be bothered to put up a placard near a piece of art sharing this kind of information, so we as the public can better understand the full scope of what an artist’s legacy and story have to say about the culture we live in and whose work we celebrate.

This is all fresh on my mind because I am also 48 hours out of seeing the movie Tár, about a fictional world-famous composer who abuses her power with hopeful young musicians, maintains power through the quiet acquiescence of those around her who don’t want to rock the boat and want whatever she can provide, and by tending closely to her own mythology. It’s a terrific movie which focuses not just on how she hoards and wields power, but also on the way everyone around her feeds off her power to accrue just a tiny bit of glow and access for themselves. Everyone around her is complicit in some way, as is often the case in real life. Tár on Tár indeed. (Go see the movie ASAP please, so we can talk about it.)

For me, this is all a reminder that, if we want to make change, we have to resist the charm of the chosen and often self-anointed few who make themselves available for powerful institutions to support. We have to do the hard work of naming a shared vision and strategizing together for the long haul. I see my work as ultimately being about the redistribution of power and resources, from the few to the many. In many ways, resisting the mythology of so-called “geniuses” is one small step all of us can take.

Surf Synthesis: Mermaid On Dry Land

Sadly, I’ve barely been surfing lately. It’s never good for my state of mind or my physical well-being. But, it’s been for a happy reason. I finally got my mermaid tattoo that I’ve been planning for the last few years. My tattoo artist, Anil of Inkline Studio, and his wife, Angie—good friends who have tattooed me and all my siblings—made me promise not to head back into the water until she was all healed. As much as I didn’t like it, she is very much worth it. Planning this tattoo kept me sane during some of the dark days of the pandemic, so my mermaid means a lot to me, as she kept me company mentally and creatively when I often felt isolated and alone. I’m hoping to paddle back out this week, knowing that I need to have extremely low expectations, given how out of shape/paddling form I will be. Wish me luck!

Tarot Inspiration: The King of Wands

This month’s card feels very obvious to me, the King of Wands. Wands are the suit of fire, that wild creative energy that supports bold vision and traditional ideas of leadership. It is in many ways the card of the established artist, visionary, or “genius.” I’m not particularly drawn to any of the Kings, and I find myself wary of the traditional leadership role they convey in the tarot. And yet, I do think all of the cards have something to teach us.

In talking with Jeff about my conundrum with the Kings, he has inspired me to see the King of Wands not as a representation of an all-powerful and commanding figure. Instead, I now see him more through the lens of all the people, traditions, and institutions that come together to create this power in a shared and creative way. The King of Wands is a shared burning vision that calls us together and asks each of us to bring our own skills and ideas to bear. So the King is all of us, and we are all the King.

More to come! Let me know what you want more of in these newsletters, subscribe, and please do share with others who you think will be interested.

—Juhu Thukral

@juhuthukral | LinkedIn

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Social Impact Insights: We All Need Some Inspiration

I spent the last six weeks of summer getting myself into serious inspiration mode. After the heavy hits of Supreme Court rulings, mass gun killings/racist attacks, and extreme heat across so much of the world, I felt like I needed to focus on the things that bring me joy, and allow that to inspire me in my daily life and in my work with my clients. I absolutely believe that doing social justice work over the long haul requires breaks, fun, and creative inspiration.

I talk a lot in this newsletter about the power of Female Rage. And yet I am also a big believer in the power of Female Joy. To me that means seeking out fun, gratitude, and wisdom in the company of other women, or in things that are traditionally considered “women’s interests.” So in addition to surfing as much as I can (more on that below), I also sought out pop culture focused on women, from the serious to the frothy.

I was excited to see that as a late summer series, Film at Lincoln Center was showing the Three Colors trilogy in the theater. It’s a three-part meditation on Chance, Grief, Creativity, Ennui, and Reclaiming Joy in the context of a newly-unifying Europe, from 1993-94.

The films are Blue, White, and Red, named for the colors of the French flag, with themes that echo from the French motto of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. As much as I'm a major film addict, I am constantly amazed at how many great films I actually haven’t seen. These films are such a Gen X staple, so it’s a little shocking I’d never seen them, but then I remembered, I was starting law school when they came out. I think I missed a lot of major international cinema during those years! They’ve always been on my list, but I never properly planned out seeing them.

So it felt like a sign from the universe that they were going to be on the big screen, rolled out in order. A main reason I’ve always wanted to see them is that two of my favorite French actresses star in two of the films, Juliette Binoche and Julie Delpy. Binoche has a special place in my heart because she starred in one of the first international films I ever saw in a theater—The Unbearable Lightness of Being — making me feel very sophisticated at the time. And Delpy of course also stars in the Before trilogy, another classic of Gen X cinema.

Of the three films, White resonated for me the least, mostly because it was focused on the main male character’s POV, rather than Delpy’s. I wanted to know more about her character, her motivations, and her desires. But I found myself pretty obsessed with Blue and with Red, which stars another icon of French cinema, Iréne Jacob. Together, the films offer a chance to think deeply about what it means to have Europe coming together, and how coming together and falling apart are often moments punctuated by chance and the rule of fate.

And as a lawyer, I was fascinated by how much the law and the court system is almost its own character in the films. This all felt particularly poignant to think that 30 years after these films came out, the world is both more connected than it’s ever been, and yet that sense of community, shared humanity, and a shared set of rules that we all seek and are hungry for is more at risk than it’s been in decades.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, I had ignored all the mania about Emily in Paris when it premiered on Netflix during the especially dark days of the pre-vax pandemic. You might think that kind of frothy fun was just what I needed, but I’ll confess to having been a bit snobby about it. I decided it would be a fun summer watch, and it more than exceeded my expectations.

Yes, Emily is a little annoying with her can-do American ways, but the fashion, the Parisian setting, and the other characters (the cynical French and her best friend, a more worldly American in Paris) are all just so entertaining. And then, as I watched the second episode, I kept wondering why I was so drawn to Emily, and I realized how much she reminded me of my best friend from law school, Sofie Wonderly Hosford.

The actress playing Emily, Lily Collins, has a face and hair and a way of talking (at least in character) that is very similar to Sofie. And Sofie always had that go-hard, can-do spirit that often defines us to the rest of the world as Americans. Sofie died a decade ago, and she is someone I think of and refer to in my own mind often, so it was a special treat to watch a fun and frothy series that gave me a fleeting sense of what it was like to be around her.

Rounding out my summer pop culture Female Joy inspirations are the rap duo of Rap Sh!t, Issa Rae’s new fictional series. Filmed and set in Miami, it is loosely inspired by one of my favorite teams of female rappers, the City Girls, who are from Miami and are also Executive Producers. Watching these artists feed their creativity, hustle their way into gigs and opportunities, and deal with creative frustration, sexism, and racism, is all I needed to maintain my own sense of hustle and creative energy.

Surf Synthesis: Mind and Body Flow

I’ve been surfing as much as I can, and have been paddling out once a week solidly. On occasion, I’ve been able to squeeze in two surf sessions a week. Summer is always tricky, I actually try to work on weekends so I can have a day during the week to head out and surf. My goal and that of my friends is to avoid the congested summer weekend crowds in the lineup. Luckily I’m a pro at working off my phone to and from the beach, even taking a few client calls from the trailer where we store our boards (my friend joked that our landlord could put a desk and some wifi in, and we’d be set!). And of course, it’s extremely clutch that I have the flexibility to work weekends when everything outside is crowded and I can focus at home on mapping out client strategy, creating documents, and managing communication flow.

As always, the combination of warmer water and a steady state of good vibes in the water has improved my surfing and my confidence. I’ve been in such a good groove all summer, feeling my body surf rather than overthinking things mentally. And in the spirit of sharing pop culture/media that is frothy and fun, I’ve been reading Diane Cardwell’s Rockaway: Surfing Headlong into a New Life. It’s her memoir of learning how to surf as an adult as she came out of her rough post-divorce years. As someone who had to fully commit and overcome surfing’s intimidation factor as an adult, knowing the joy was worth engaging with the fear, I can relate to so much of her story of Female Joy.

Tarot Inspiration: The Star

This month’s card vibes nicely with the theme of Female Joy. She is the Star. The Star comes after a cycle that ends in great and heart-wrenching change, a total reset. The Star offers us hope in the form of compassion, the heart’s response to suffering. She asks us to take a quiet moment, breathe deep, look around, and express gratitude for all the blessings we have in life. In many ways, she is the meditation card for me. After hustle and bustle, when it’s time to take stock, to acknowledge how difficult things can seem and can actually be, it’s important to have compassion for ourselves and for others, as we work up the inner strength to get back out there again. I think that’s been the theme of late summer for me, stocking up on as much Female Joy as I can, as we rush into a busy fall. Enjoy the change of seasons!

More to come! Let me know what you want more of in these newsletters, subscribe, and share with others who you think will be interested.

—Juhu Thukral

@juhuthukral | LinkedIn

Quick Reminder: I divide the newsletter into 3 sections:

• Social Impact Insights

• Surf Synthesis

• Tarot Inspiration

Social Impact Insights: Dobbs/Roe and the Next 50 Years

I have said a few times that an ongoing theme of this newsletter is Female Rage. Both because in any given cultural moment, there are abundant reasons to feel a collective Female Rage, and because there is great power in harnessing, channeling, and leveraging it. It is truly a fire that cannot and will not be contained. In fact, fear of this very power is what has fed the impulse to control women and girls and people who step outside of traditional gender norms—our desires, our bodies, and our destinies—for thousands of years across cultures and regions.

Almost everyone I encounter is feeling so devastated and heavy over the Dobbs/Roe ruling, and with good reason. I don’t usually remember my dreams past the first bit of waking up, but I had a dream a month ago about being at DC’s Union Station, getting on a train, and a young girl nearby—surrounded by her family—needed an abortion, but couldn’t get one. I was unable to help, kept away by an invisible wall and instead drifted onto my own train headed in the opposite direction, knowing her parents couldn’t help her either. I feel sick every time that dream comes back to me. People talk a lot about the unsafe abortions that are to come. And of course that’s horrible. And yet for me, as a woman who has never wanted children, the thought of all those forced pregnancies just stops me in my tracks.

I’m generally not a fan of body horror as a film genre (in fact, I don’t like horror at all), but one of the films that most made an impression on me last year was Titane, the 2021 Cannes Palme d’Or winner by French director Julia Ducournau. It’s about a dangerous young woman—a serial killer—who is drawn to have sex with cars, and becomes pregnant. I watched most of it through splayed fingers over my eyes, but I’ve thought about it a lot over the last year and especially since the leak of the draft decision. (See, leak? The draft decision leaked and so do car engines! Welcome to my gallows humor.) If you can tolerate it, check out this film as a foreshadowing and a commentary on our current times.

Here are my Diagnostics on how we ended up here. Warning: I am usually a positive and optimistic person, but these next few paragraphs are blistering:

We have known this was coming for 30 years, since the Casey decision in 1992. While Casey affirmed the overall principle of Roe, it changed the legal standard, and opened the door to a tidal wave of restrictive state and local laws that have made abortion more and more difficult to obtain over the last 15-20 years. With 30 years of notice, you might think our progressive movements and the Democratic Party would have taken the lead on a long-term vision and solutions. And there have been elements in play. A federal bill called the Freedom of Choice Act, as it was called in the 90s, and these days another version of it, the Women’s Health Protection Act. Unfortunately, mainstream feminist groups have never partnered with the women’s health, racial justice, criminal justice, reproductive justice, democracy, and abortion access fields to organize and prioritize these bills with a long-term inclusive strategy to leverage power and get them passed/signed into law.

Even as these large national abortion rights organizations have brought in millions more dollars over the last few decades as the Casey restrictions have mounted, they have narrowed their strategy to focus on inside-the-Beltway tactics, relying on cozy relationships with elected officials and policymakers to hold the line and do the least. They’ve also focused on defensive litigation strategies that attacked each incremental limitation on access to abortion and pregnancy prevention. So they gave their power away in failing to set a bold affirmative long-term vision that could build political will and power with a wide and cross-cutting base of supporters.

In fact, Big Feminism has on occasion supported and given traction to policies that further criminalized survivors of violence, LGBTQ+ youth, and communities of color in order to stay in good position with their stalwart elected officials. This closed mindset and limited set of tactics, ever divorced from a vision that forged links to grassroots organizing and established power at the state and local level, has played a huge part in our current moment. 

Many of us in cross-cutting areas of work called for a mindset and a strategy that connects abortion care and rights to the other issues that affect all of us: health care, criminal justice, racial justice, local infrastructure/community development, economic opportunity, and democracy/civic engagement. As a law student in the mid-90s, I was writing about fetal personhood laws, racial justice, and the criminal justice system. And I was by no means a sophisticated person connected to anyone with special insight. These ideas and solutions and advocacy around women’s dignity and self-determination, and our place in the world, have been in play for a long time and across so many venues. In fact, I focused early in my career on the abortion rights field—it was all I wanted to work on at one point—and left because the strategies were so disconnected from anything I, as a Brown girl from an immigrant family, could connect to. I wanted to work on issues that integrated the needs of immigrant women, and got pulled into advocacy in the criminal justice system and the intersection of gender/sexuality and racial justice, and never looked back. The silos I encountered in my own career trajectory inform my understanding of the challenges—and the solutions—ahead.

On the communications strategy side of this question, the mainstream feminist movement has focused on “Choice” or “Who Decides,” which definitely speaks to me and many in my circles. But that’s the issue: The Choice framework speaks to certain audiences in specific contexts, but it’s not the centerpiece of a values-based brand or narrative framework. As you can see from the image that accompanies this section, a successful set of values-focused brand pillars on abortion includes Dignity + Self-Determination, but also centers the role of women as Leaders/Agents of Change in Families and Communities, and as Economic Leaders. The bottom line on abortion is, it’s making these kinds of decisions that is a crucial piece of our ability to be the ones who lead and act as the hubs of community life. And we are almost always the ones who lead, whether we get that credit and visibility, or not. Our ability to make these decisions is what allows us to do the important work of being women in the world. Making abortion a piece of the broader role women play in society and what we need in order to play that role is key. And there is so much communications research, as well as advocacy models from other countries, that supports this. 

It’s well beyond time for a reset on abortion from a gender and racial equity perspective, and in moving into an affirmative long-term position. This is our collective moment to wake up and follow the work of activists in the field who have been fighting with scarce resources for the last three decades. And to invest in state and local elections and political appointments. And to follow the work of global activists who have used more compelling messaging and brand frameworks to make change on these issues. 

A bright light in all this bleakness: All the women I’ve been in touch with—especially those who are not in the day-to-day of social justice/progressive work—are super angry and super fired up. Folks are reeling from that devastated feeling, but also ready to organize; to get involved in state and local elections and organizing; to use new brand pillars and frameworks; to push for widespread availability of abortion pills; and to hold our politicians accountable. 

I have been saying since 2016 that it is our job to lay the foundation for the next 50 years, while minimizing suffering along the way. There’s definitely a lot of action-oriented energy out there. Let’s get to it!

Surf Synthesis: Being in a State of Flow

I’ve not been surfing as much as I’d like lately, probably once every two weeks, which is the bare minimum I need to stay sane. I actually start having bad dreams about surfing once I hit the 3-week mark. But in good news, my sessions have been fairly solid. I’ve largely been able to throw out my thinking mind (although I do have to remind myself to do that even while in the water), and focused on a state of flow and muscle memory as much as possible. I actually went surfing the day the Dobbs/Roe decision came down, and all the women surfers I encountered were devastated and distracted and angry. And really needing the soothing wash of the ocean. It reminded me that surfing is not the only place where we need to be in a mind-body connection. It’s the case with advocacy too. When your Strategy for Change and your Vision/Values flow seamlessly together, that’s where the winning usually happens. When it feels easy, even though it’s not.

Tarot Inspiration: The Empress

This one came to me very easily, given the topic. She’s almost too on the nose, and I considered going in a different direction. But she feels just right for our current moment of heaviness. The Empress is one of the first of the Major Arcana that The Child encounters on their journey. She symbolizes fertility, but not just in the traditional sense. She’s also exuding the fertility of nature, the fertility of creativity, and an abundance of love and nurturing that has nothing to do with specific gender roles or a desire for engaging in parenting. The Empress can guide us as we nurture ideas, nature such as a garden or a field or the ocean, or a nascent project.

As we lay a foundation for the next 50 years of building the kind of world we want to see, she’s the right guide to nurture our collective imagination and creative solutions, and to remind us to nurture ourselves and each other, as the road is long and the work will be hard.

Take care, folks, we all need a bit of nurturing.

More to come! Let me know what you want more of in these newsletters, subscribe, and share with others who you think will be interested.

—Juhu Thukral

@juhuthukral | LinkedIn

I divide the newsletter into 3 sections:

• Social Impact Insights

• Surf Synthesis

• Tarot Inspiration

First, Sending Hugs During This Heavy Time

We’ve all had a tough month. Before digging into the Amber Heard story, I want to acknowledge the heavy feeling folks are having about the Roe draft, and of course all of our devastation around the mass gun murders/attacks over the last few weeks and months: NYC Subway; Dallas Hair Salon (Clear Racist Motive); Buffalo (Clear Racist Motive); and Uvalde. And even in the last 48 hours, there have been more gun attacks, in Tennessee and Oklahoma, and in other places as well.

I’ll talk about Roe and about gun safety in upcoming newsletters, so I can give each of these issues their proper attention/analysis. But I wanted to nod to the heaviness and the collective feeling of “un-safe-ness” that we’re all feeling these days as a result of so much bad news. And to remind us all that we do have the answers and the solutions, and that we can build the political will needed to make substantial change.

It’s always important to remember that the dark times we’re experiencing now are a direct backlash to the last 50-60 years of immense progress we’ve made on racial justice and gender equity. Change is slow, difficult, and painful, and yet committing to making positive change is always the right and uplifting way to go. We have to keep in mind that we’re setting ourselves up for the next 20-50 years of organizing for change.

Social Impact Insights: Amber Heard

I was in law school during the O.J. Simpson trial for the murders of Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman. I’ve often said, watching that trial—and all the pre-trial motions—was the best legal education I could have gotten. I was riveted, and I learned so much about how to be a lawyer, especially from prosecutor Marcia Clark. Plus I was working on issues of domestic and sexual violence, so I was fascinated to see how this would all play out in such a super-charged case.

I’ve followed the Heard/Depp case for years, but tried to avoid the defamation trial initially, given the outsized nature of social media fandom around Depp. But of course, I read one article a few days in, and then I was hooked.

The image I’m using in this section is the decades-old Power and Control Wheel, which is how I and many others trained on domestic and intimate partner violence learned about the issue. The Wheel is not perfect (I would change “Male Privilege” to “Identifying with the Patriarchy,” which people of all genders are at risk of doing, and use more gender-neutral language overall), but it does center the three prongs I think of as crucial when looking at domestic and intimate partner violence: Power, Control, and Isolation.

I worked for a long time on criminal justice cases involving allegations of “mutual abuse,” and I can say, the abuse is rarely mutual. Yes, there are incredibly toxic relationships with cruelty and volatility on all sides, and this appears to be one of them. But typically, one partner has more Power and Control than the other. So the partner with less Power and Control acts out in Reactive Abuse. Kicking, hitting, punching, verbal cruelty, which are all bad, but they rarely result in lasting damage at an emotional, financial, or social level. And the physical damage is typically in the context of a larger fight where self-defense or at least creating a distraction come into play.

We’ve all said it: No one knows what really happened between these two, and neither comes off as a particularly likable person. But when I look at who had the Power and Control, and who engaged in substantial Isolation tactics like trying to control clothing, jobs, and other relationships, I see Depp as being the Power Center of the relationship. Even his keeping Heard’s sister and friends around can be an isolation tactic, so she doesn’t have relationships that belong only to her. (This was a common tactic that O.J. used with Nicole.) And Depp’s issues with substance abuse have been legendary for decades. That affects a person’s functioning and emotional state as well.

And of course, younger people can engage in elder abuse and manipulation, but the 22-year age difference and his standing in Hollywood, along with his substantial net worth, gave Depp much more Power and Control and ability to Isolate in the relationship. And I don’t recall testimony or evidence of Heard trying to access Depp’s legal and financial instruments. She did engage in a huge fight with him over a potential post-nuptial agreement, so I won’t claim to understand their financial dynamics. But I don’t see a lot of elder abuse-style red flags in the reporting on this case.

In the last week, I was eager to talk to a group of Younger Millenial/Older Gen Z women about the case. And I assumed I was going to come off as extremely Gen X because I have a lot of critiques of Heard: I think it was a really bad idea to write the op-ed with little context of the volatility in the relationship, and to essentially violate the NDA on her divorce settlement. And the story that drew me into this defamation trial was that of an assistant’s testimony, where she stated that Heard had regularly screamed at and underpaid her. That made me deeply dislike Heard.

And I think Heard should have disclosed up front, years ago, her level of Reactive Abuse. It’s not a good dynamic, even if it’s an understandable coping mechanism to abuse. And it’s a really bad look in the context of the legal system. You have to roll out a clear and visible strategy to explain that kind of volatility in any legal or media case. I also think Heard’s currently un-funded charitable pledges were poorly managed and are a sign of bad judgment.

So I expected to be told I was being too harsh. Instead, I was shocked to see that I was the most sympathetic to Heard. These young women were angry at Heard for not disclosing her level of Reactive Abuse and for bringing into the public sphere such a complicated case of a toxic and volatile relationship under the headline of “abuse victim.” They are extremely concerned, as are many commenters, that Heard has made it all the more difficult for other survivors of violence to come forward.

And I don’t disagree. But with my optimistic take on social change, here is one win I do see: We’ve lowered the bar on likability for victims and survivors of abuse. For decades now, I and many others have pushed for victims not to have to be “perfect.” We’re operating well below that standard in this case. Now we are asking a different question: Does a victim/survivor need to be “likable” to be believed? Unfortunately, that appears to be true, as in all legal and media cases. But likable as the standard for victims/survivors is a huge jump forward from perfect, and for now, I’ll take that as a win.

Surf Synthesis + Tarot Inspiration: Nine of Swords

My last surf session was not great. I was having trouble with my positioning, which meant I had to paddle a lot just to keep in the vicinity of waves I could catch. So I was getting tired, not catching waves, and getting annoyed with myself. I had to stop and remind myself that I was in a joyful and happy place because I was in the ocean. And with some surf sessions, that has to be good enough.

In fact, this card, the Nine of Swords, is the one I think of the most when it comes to me and my surfing. With all those swords, the Air sign, signifying too many thoughts piercing a person seeking rest or peace, it is the card of thinking too much and not being in your body enough.

My husband, Jeff, and I saw Top Gun: Maverick this weekend, and one of its themes is, “Don’t Think, Just Do.” And I smiled, because that is very much the message of this card, as well as my constant mantra to myself when I’m surfing. Getting caught in my head never leads to good things.

And it feels like a message for these dark and heavy times we’re in right now. Following our communal human instinct is going to get us further than tripping up over too many loud cross-currents of thoughts in our collective mental space.

More to come! Let me know what you want more of in these newsletters, subscribe, and share with others who you think will be interested.

—Juhu Thukral

@juhuthukral | LinkedIn

I divide the newsletter into 3 sections:

• Social Impact Insights

• Surf Synthesis

• Tarot Inspiration

Social Impact Insights: The Oscars

The topic that makes most of my clients lean in and brighten their eyes is the concept of building an Equity Mindset, the term I use to describe so much of what I work on. I’m always talking about it as a framework for building a thriving organizational culture, rooted in authentic trust; equity as an action; and a shared sense of belonging. Our goal is always to build an Equity Mindset as a lens for decision-making, so folks are using it as a muscle they’re flexing across their organization.

As a movie and Oscars fanatic, I’ve been thinking over the past month about how the Academy is doing when it comes to Equity Mindset. The Academy has done a lot of work on representation since the #OscarsSoWhite campaign of 2015, adding a far more diverse group of members, resulting in more nominees/winners who bring diversity of race, ethnicity, LGBTQ identity, and disability (including this year) and a greater focus on international cinema. So they’ve done the right things, in terms of assessment and recruiting with an eye to diversity.

And yet as with most organizations, that’s a great start, but nowhere near enough. We saw in real time that the Academy’s leadership felt out of touch and removed, and small decisions had ramifications that did the opposite of reflecting a culture of trust, equity, and belonging amongst movie-lovers. A number of moments jumped out at me, even as the Will Smith Effect took the entire night off the rails, but I’ll focus on one.

After Chris Rock got (wrongly, obviously) smacked after his tasteless and unnecessary joke, he said that the winner of the Best Documentary (Feature) was essentially “Questlove and four white guys.” So the other producers didn’t get to have their named called, and one of the “white guys” was actually a South Asian producer, a Brown man (named Joseph Patel, in the photo above with two other South Asian winners that night, Aneil Karia and Riz Ahmed), who spoke on a Twitter thread about how much that comment stung, in what should have been a moment of pure joy.

I generally think Chris Rock is a pretty astute comic, but something is wrong when presenters aren’t given the message from the very top that bringing down the vibe of nominees/winners with punching-down quips is not the culture the Academy is trying to create. It’s especially uncomfortable to have presenters literally erase the identities of winners as they come up on stage, pretty much the definition of low-key racist. And I don’t have faith that the Academy’s leadership has made it clear that if you go off-script and are disrespectful in this very specific way, you won’t get invited back.

Combined with the appearance that no one was in charge to manage the debacle with Will Smith, this moment took away from what should have been a celebration of so much diversity in terms of the night’s winners. Three South Asians winning at an awards ceremony I’ve been watching since I was a kid was a pretty big deal to me. My first Oscar memory is of Persis Khambatta presenting an award in 1980, and I distinctly remember my mind being blown that an Indian lady was up on that stage, looking super glamorous and fitting right in. Respectful representation matters.

This is a great lesson for leaders of all kinds of organizations: Being present, being aware of and forward-thinking about the ripple effects of your decisions, and considering impact on feelings of trust, equity, and belonging of your stakeholders are key. And it’s almost always in the smaller decisions. For me, the Academy’s leadership left a bad taste in my mouth, and this movie-goer likely will not be watching along next year. Let’s see if they can get me back!

Surf Synthesis: Killing Eve

Something I can’t stop thinking about as I’ve been splashing around in the water is the series finale of Killing Eve, a show that’s about Female Rage in all its beautiful glory. I was completely obsessed with the scene in which someone reads tarot for Villanelle and Eve, drawing out what was to come for them and putting them even more on edge. Their derision over the idea that the cards might be relevant at all, coupled with their not-at-all-disguised desire and angling for a reading with positive outcomes, was a vibe familiar to any tarot reader. I found it simultaneously hilarious and heartbreaking, such a combination of cynicism and hope that has stuck with me.

Tarot Inspiration: The Hierophant

This past month, I’ve been thinking about a card I’ve always had trouble relating to: the Hierophant. The Hierophant represents formal religion, and I’ve always thought of them as representing False Gods, and the way so much organized religion gets caught up in concerns of money and conformity.

And yet as the card has shown up as I give readings, it’s challenged me to focus on the most positive aspect of organized religious groups, which is community, especially a community that comes together to support you when you need help. In my readings, it has also called to a sense of finding new paths to explore a person’s spirituality, or another modern form of healing, in seeking therapy or coaching, as well as community support. It’s been fun to see new layers in a card I used to dread seeing, another sign of growing and learning.

More to come! Let me know what you want more of in these newsletters, subscribe, and share with others who you think will be interested.

—Juhu Thukral

@juhuthukral | LinkedIn

I’m going to focus on social impact insights, often based on issues and questions I hear from clients, colleagues, and friends in social justice work.

And I’m dividing the newsletter into 3 sections:

• Social Impact Insights

• Surf Synthesis

• Tarot Inspiration

Social Impact Insights

[Image by Lorissa Shepstone/Being Wicked LLC]

We’re starting with a difficult topic. This March 16th was the one-year anniversary of the killing of eight people at Atlanta-area Asian spas: Xiaojie “Emily” Tan; Daoyou Feng; Delaina Yaun; Paul Michels; Suncha Kim; Soon Chung Park; Hyun Jung Grant; and Yong Ae Yue. As we all learned immediately, six of the victims were Asian women, and the killings happened in the context of rising awareness of anti-Asian bias and violence.

We all know this bias and violence is ever-present, and the sense of invisibility many Asian women are forced to carry is perpetuated at work, in our legal systems, and in so many aspects of our broader culture.

But what many Americans don’t know is how deeply our legal history plays a role in this culture of bias and invisibility. The 1875 Page Act—our country’s first federal immigration law—treated women from Asian backgrounds as sex workers, as the stranger at the gate, and as a sexual power to be feared and denigrated, rather than as assets and leaders in our communities. The Page Act literally refers to “lewd and immoral purposes,” and specifically names prostitution as a concern several times, focused on women from China, Japan, or as the law states: “any Oriental country.”

As our immigration laws have developed and gotten more intricate over the past 150 years, this directive has remained as a baseline. Our immigration laws operate in ways that focus on subtle aspects of race, gender, and socioeconomic class as the bases for a roadmap to legal entry and citizenship. We even have specific bars to legally entering the United States, and grounds for removal, based on the possibility of a person having been involved in prostitution. And so we see that law and culture wash each other’s hands to codify and maintain these “othering” mindsets and policies that set the stage for tragedy.

We all say that representation matters, and representation in the law as “the other” absolutely resonates in life and culture as an idea that Asian women are acceptable targets. In the last year since the Atlanta-area shootings, more violence against Asian women has made the headlines, including the January 2022 subway killing of Michelle Go in New York City. Devastating.

But the good news is, Asian women from all backgrounds are rising up together; raising money; speaking out on social media and at rallies; and advocating with government and the private sector to do more to include, protect, and champion Asian women. The last seven years, and especially the last two years of pandemic + racial reckoning have been exhausting for everyone. And yet Asian women are going against stereotype big time and using our collective strength and anger to organize and advocate, and 2022 is looking to be a banner year for flexing that kind of political muscle.

Surf Synthesis

[Photo by Jeffrey Yamaguchi]

I always say, I do my best thinking when I’m sleeping and when I’m surfing, two of my favorite activities. I’m going to use this section to share stuff that synthesizes for me without any effort when I’m out in the water. Usually about life, social justice, and pop culture.

Given what’s been in the air around us RE Asian women, bias, and violence, I’ve been thinking a lot about Female Rage, which is something I tend to focus on a lot anyway. Added to this is the anger so many women have felt during the pandemic as they juggled work, family, home-schooling, isolation, and care of all kinds with very little support.

And I definitely did a deep dive on Female Rage as I caught up on Showtime’s Yellowjackets, which aired this winter. If you haven’t watched yet, definitely catch up on it. A 10-episode series, renewed for a second season, with amazing writing and acting, about a high school girls’ soccer team that gets stranded in the wilderness, where we meet both their teenage selves and the women some of the survivors grow into 25 years later. I’m officially an obsessed member of the Yellowjackets #Bloodhive. It’s about what it takes to survive, what it takes out of you to survive, and just the roles of anger and resilience in modern girlhood and womanhood. I love stories about angry women, and this show is all about the ways anger and shame feed the traumas, memories, and relationships between the characters. Endlessly fascinating. It’s also got a witchy vibe with references to some of the girls channeling spirits and the other side while trapped out in the wilderness, another thing I’m passionate about.

Tarot Inspiration

[Deck = Golden Thread Tarot/Labyrinthos Academy]

And that leads to tarot. One of the things I focused on during the pandemic was setting up a proper Zoom approach to my tarot reading. Many thanks to y’all who played along as I experimented with different options and gave me great feedback/suggested workable tech options for me. I am now in a rhythm and loving it, getting great feedback from my tarot clients.

I learned tarot after I graduated from law school, and then let it lie untouched for a long time as I became consumed by my social justice career. I turned back to it about seven years ago and haven’t stopped since. I started with offering free sessions to friends and family, and last year friends for whom I did readings started insisting to me that it was time to charge for my services. I’m excited to say I’ve started doing paid sessions, and it is so gratifying to me to see how much folks value my readings.

Every month, I’ll focus on a different card for the month. I decided to start with the card I identify with the most, the Queen of Pentacles. She’s all about being a decisionmaker and caretaker, both at home and out in the world. She nurtures on both an emotional and financial level, and I feel like that’s a relationship I’ve always had at home and at work, whether it’s friends, family, or clients. Pentacles are the Earth sign of tarot, guiding finances, family, and building towards a future. And the Queens are a Water symbol, meaning they rule over emotions and love. That combination has always been a guide to me intuitively, so she’s the card to whom I’m most drawn. My husband Jeff even had a Queen of Pentacles necklace made for me a few years ago.

More to come! Let me know what you want more of in these newsletters, subscribe, and share with others who you think will be interested.

—Juhu Thukral

@juhuthukral | LinkedIn

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