An introduction...

Happy Scorpio Season. I write this under a new moon, and I’d like to take this auspicious time to introduce myself to you. My name is Alysa Morgan Wilson, but you can call me AlchemAlysa Adwoah Turner-Hanks Ransom Raspberry Glover Morgan Wilson. Sis works too, if you honor the same revolutionary lineages I do.

I am named after my Mother, and her mother that birthed her. My Grandmother’s name was Moline Morgan and after she gave birth for the 3rd time she died like so many black mothers still do- in labor. I am mighty ambassador of my Bloodline: A descendent of cotton pickers, and Spelman Women, opera singers and carpenter pastors, darkskinned girls too pretty to be permitted the fullest extent of their girlhood, and lightskinned boys too smart to be allowed the cultivation of their own personhood.

 My mother’s father was named Seaborn Thomas Glover and lovingly called brother by his siblings. He grew up in Georgia and was a college graduate and Veteran of the US Air Force. It is a result of his audacious vision and will, that I was raised black middle class. My mother was too, although that was not her experience when she was the sole provider for our household for some time. 

With the help of legacy desegregation programs and need based scholarships I attended one of the most prestigious prep schools in the Bay Area, and have traveled the world since I was 14 years old. I recognize the luxuries I was blessed to live in from a young age, and yet both my nephews fathers have mourned children they were meant to outlive. They have both been terrorized and locked in cages by a carceral state that criminalizes their existence- polices the way they emote. And so I reconcile my simultaneous proximity to overwhelming excess and oppression embodied by making choices as audacious as my Papa’s.

I choose to live a life of creative refusal inspired by the dreams of Collective Freedom that Harriet Tubman, Josephine Baker, Alexis Pauline Gumbs and Nina Simone speak of. 

"Black Women live, create and build with the future in mind because the present has no place for us. In order to stay alive, we have to imagine ourselves in a future where we not only survive but thrive. A place where we are understood. A place where we still exist. This is a tall order in the world but this is the way we make the present work for us, every day and it's the reason I'm most proud of us." - Shayla Lawson

When I was 15 years old, an internal battle began between the experience I get to have on this planet, and the epigenetic information in my bone and blood, inherited from the generations of unnamed ancestors that lived and survived the horrors of the transatlantic slave trade so that I might exist. In the hallway that separated my bedroom from my the double doors of my parents bedroom I had my very first panic attack. My parents didn’t know how to hold me and keep me safe from my own dysregulated nervous system and the illusion of imminent danger that sent my body temperature off like a rocket and sat like an elephant on my chest. They were however, open minded and supportive and allowed me to access to counseling through school and even medical attention- which I came to realize was an anomaly for black adolescents. I was diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder and Panic Disorder and put on medication. 

I’ll skip over my twenties, cuz whew chile, but to make a decade long story short, I started college at the beginning of the housing crisis, and I spent most of the next 10 years self-medicating and in relationships with abusive people while I coped with the shame of not fulfilling the talented tenth expectations that are bestowed upon the young gifted and black.

The shadow work I had to do to get sober and heal from those relationships is where I acquired the tools to identify the work environments of the VC backed tech companies I made it to when I finally “got my shit together” as toxic. The radical self love that I built in order to deploy those tools is what  lead me to the declaration I made in the first post I wrote here. 

Since writing that post, I've been busy becoming a new version of myself, in a new place, working on a really impactful project that brings me joy, pride, and hope for a future- which is saying a lot these days. 

Last year, I met, became friends with and partnered with Ro (are0h of Play Vicious, and roiskinda.cool). He is more than kinda cool. He's brilliant. And he's been building more than cool, impactful digital things for longer than some of y'all have been on this planet. 

Starting in August of 2023, I witnessed him experience a hate based harassment campaign on the decentralized social media platform, Mastadon. The projects he'd been working on ruffled the feathers of more than a few bigots. This wasn't just the usual trolling, dehumanization, undermining of credibility, “sealioning”, and uninvited entitled non fact based opinions.  The Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) defines what he experienced as tech facilitated violence. But my experience at “high growth startups” gave me the lens to recognize this response from folks threatened by the tools he was building in service of community and the safety of the most marginalized, as market validation. 

By September, I’d convinced Ro that we should turn his personal projects into an official THING. I reassured hime that despite the violent nature of the harassment and the DDoS attacks to all of his sites, the anti-black vitriol and verbal abuse was a signal that he had built something that challenged the status quo in a way that shook people with power so much- that they were compelled to try to take him down, and then write press releases to save face. That’s the type of impact that no amount social media campaigning can manufacture. 

In October, we’d decided, for a number of reasons, to move to Mexico in order to build the foundations of what we knew would be a transformational technology think tank. One of those reasons was because it was my idea, and it was a good one, but it was rooted in my own need for self preservation and actualization. Having been born, raised, and STILL in the bay area, silicon valley adjacent, and burnt thee fuck out by a lifetime of witnessing the state sponsored displacement of community (aka gentrification), I’d been ready to leave Oakland since January of 2020. But a Pandemic, four funerals, multiple Layoffs, years of crippling cognitive dissonance oozing from the mandatory performative activism of the zeitgeist followed by disabling panic attacks, a late ADHD diagnosis and self harm caused by generalized depressive disorder kept me sheltered in place. But this opportunity to use my labor, my gifts, and my vision in collaboration with someone whose values, skills, experience and worldview not only matched but complimented mine- this was the catalyst I’d been praying for.

I told my family and friends about my plans to leave, and was subsequently faced with all the fear, guilt, disappointment, envy, and grief that they’d been swallowing (instead of processing in therapy or community-bombastic sideeye) regurgitated in my direction. Nonetheless, On October 23rd 2023, I packed my dog, my belongings, my conviction and my new co-founder in my car and we drove from Oakland, CA to Mexico City to sustainably build the tools required for what Octavia E. Butler would call a world that does not yet exist, but must. 

Saul Williams, in the keynote he delivered at UCSB titled The End of Empire And The Future of Freedom, says “Over my bead body loses its force, when clearly there are too many dead bodies under the rubble, under prisons, under our skyscrapers, under our houses and residential schools. These are the fossils that fuel a system that entirely depends on us. Not just here in the empirical core, but in the countries whose resources the ruling class depends on. Maybe it should no longer be a question of our dead bodies, but the discipline we impose on our living ones to withhold our labor.” 

I have been withholding my labor from empire for 18 months now. Because of the disabling nature of extractive corporate work environments-especially because the first couple of diagnosis I got 20 years ago ARE NOT the only mental illnesses I’ve got riding shotgun in my brain- I’ve been able to survive off of state disability insurance. But that ran out a month ago, and shit ain't been easy since.

So now, the wold building work I have devoted myself to, is solely propelled by the resources provided by my community. h.i. is currently on the hunt for a fiscal sponsor so that we may continue to focus on building the digital infrastructure for collective care and liberation, in fact, RO just launched Fipamo beta3 TODAY! The plan is to soon be able to take tax deductible donations (with the help of a fiscal sponsor) and host an event in collaboration with an organization soon to be announced before the end of the year. In the meantime, please continue to support us here.