Christy Tennery-Spalding: Building Political Homes and Redefining Self-Care Beyond Capitalism

Christy Tennery-Spalding, activist and organizer, shares how growing up near Washington D.C. shaped her oppositional stance to power structures and led her to find a “political home” in San Francisco’s activist community. She introduces the concept of informed consent in organizing—ensuring participants feel safe, informed, and empowered rather than treated as bodies in the street. Tennery-Spalding challenges the wellness industrial complex’s version of self-care, revealing how she fell into the trap of “capitalist self-care”—overloading herself with yoga classes, meditation, and clean eating until she burned out from her own self-care routine. Drawing from her experience with severe scoliosis, depression, and PTSD, she advocates for anti-capitalist self-care that questions productivity culture and challenges the belief that our worth is tied to usefulness. She explores how childhood conditioning around pleasing others, performing, and being palatable shapes our relationship with rest, and why sometimes the most radical act of self-care is simply lying down and being intentionally “not useful.”

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