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Mia Birdsong

Mia Birdsong is a family activist who advocates for strengthened communities and the determination of everyday people. Birdsong is co-director of Family Story alongside Nicole Rodgers and was vice president of Family Independence Initiative (FII).

Mia Birdsong

Background

Birdsong was raised in a diverse family that consisted of writers, artists, and passionate individuals who want to do good and better their world. This immensely influenced Birdsong's practice while she went on to becoming an activist for equality and acceptance among our communities and individuals. Birdsong also grew up being a child of poverty which also influenced her profession as she became Vice President of Family Independence Initiative (FII). This organization strives in supporting the hardworking and low-income people and communities so they can become strong economically and gain social mobility.

As a child, Birdsong noticed how she didn't see herself in the world, specifically in literary childhood memories. There was no one of color in the school books that was provided to here and she was reading. This made it difficult to connect with the characters stories or imagine being in their shoes, which cuts the reader off from relating to the book. There were books like Nancy Drew and Judy Blume that drew on gender invisibility, but not race or color. It wasn't before Birdsong was a senior in high school that she read a book by a black author, Richard Wright's Black Boy. Though the book wasn't assigned to students to read, Birdsong chose it for her AP English class. Another powerful book that widened Birdsongs understanding was Public Enemy's It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back by Christopher R. Weingarten. She grasped more inside into the history of color, race, and its future, far more than schooling had introduced.

With the birth of her first born child in 2005 and a new found understanding of her people and herself, Birdsong wanted to expose her child to a wide range of diversity among peoples. She wanted her daughter to have her first experience of reading books to represent a world that is filled with different colors, races, and ethnicities so she could imagine being in that character's shoes. The goal was to allow her daughter to grow up being comfortable in her own skin and see herself in this world. Birdsong didn't intend to cut her daughter off from books with white characters in it, she knew it was inevitable that she would be exposed to them through others and schooling.

The impact books of color had on Birdsong's daughter was inspirational and her daughter was able to see herself in this world in a way that Birdsong couldn't at her age. Her daughter loves who she is and embraces the present and fantasizes about the future. Birdsong made it one of her life missions to bring this awareness to families and their communities so every child can see themselves for who they are in this world which lead to the creation of Family Story.

Birdsong is married to Nino Moschella who works as a musician while also running a recording studio called Bird and Egg. They share two children and reside in Oakland, CA. She continues working as a member on the Board of Directors of the Tannery World Dance and Culture Center while also being a member of the North Oakland Community Charter School.

Education

Birdsong is a graduate of Oberlin College and an Ascend Fellow of the Aspen Institute. She sits on the Board of Directors of the Tannery World Dance & Cultural Center and the North Oakland Community Charter School. She attended college to major in Black studies not with the focus that it would lead her on a certain career path, but she saw it as her duty to learn and educate herself further on her people and to learn more about herself. She spent four years in Black studies and it had an extreme effect on her life by reshaping her sense of self and opened up new ideas and windows of opportunity.

Work

Mia Birdsong-is Vice President of the Family Independence Initiative (FII), an organization dedicated to supporting the self-determination of low-income people and communities. At FII, she created and curated the Torchlight Prize, an award for groups of regular people working together to strengthen their own communities. She brings to her work at FII a wide-range of experiences from her time in the publishing world, her on-going practice in prenatal health and folk medicine, and a decade as a volunteer and organizer for the prison abolition movement builder Critical Resistance. Birdsong also co-founded Canerow , a resource for people dedicated to raising children of color in a world that reflects the spectrum of who they are. Through her work at the Family Independence Initiative and the Family Story Project, she advocates for strong families and communities, and the self-determination of everyday people. She is an inaugural Ascend Fellow of the Aspen Institute. She sits on the Board of Directors for the Tannery World Dance & Cultural Center and is Board Co-Chair of the North Oakland Community Charter School. 

Mia Birdsong has spent more than 30 years fighting and loving for social justice and liberation. She is the Co-Director of Family Story, an organization working to expand our understanding of what makes a "good" family to include a diversity of arrangements.  Meanwhile, she spent time in the publishing industry and worked as a trainer and educator in the youth development and heather education field. Her experience also includes apprenticing as a midwife while also studying and practicing herbal medicine, building houses, and performing her passion of country music. She can also be seen as a frequent speaker and writer on low-income families and communities, social capital, and collective self-organizing, Mia has been published in the Stanford Innovation Review, the Huffington Post, On Being and The Good Men Project. She has also guest lectured at UC Berkeley.Mia is also a modern Renaissance woman. She has spent time organizing to abolish prisons, teaching teenagers about sex and drugs, interviewing literary luminaries like David Foster Wallace, John Irving, and Edwidge Danticat, and attending births as a midwifery apprentice.These are some of the many reasons that Mia was recognized as one of Colorlines‘ “15 Remarkable Women of Color Who Rocked 2015.”

References

1.T. (2015). Mia Birdsong. Retrieved March 23, 2016, from http://www.ted.com/speakers/mia_birdsong

2. R. (n.d.). FRESH Speakers. Retrieved March 26, 2016, from http://www.freshspeakers.com/speakers/mia-birdsong/

4. O. (n.d.). Santa Fe. Retrieved March 23, 2016, from http://www.oaklandphoto.org/santa-fe

5. Ruiz, R. (2016, February 18). How to talk about race with your kids. Retrieved March 23, 2016, from http://mashable.com/2016/02/18/how-to-talk-about-race-kids/#cbQP49zyjZqP

6. Tippett, K. (2015, May). Two Rules for My Daughter's Library. Retrieved March 23, 2016, from http://www.onbeing.org/blog/two-rules-for-my-daughters-library/7619

A. (n.d.). Mia Birdsong. Retrieved March 28, 2016, from http://ascend.aspeninstitute.org/fellows/entry/mia-birdsong7. Mia Birdsong- family visionary. (n.d.). Retrieved March 27, 2016.

7. Mia Birdsong- family visionary. (n.d.). Retrieved March 27, 2016.