Join Felicia Savage Friedman and Amanda K Gross at the University of Pittsburgh’s Race + IP 2025 Conference.

In 2017, we (Felicia Savage Friedman and Amanda K Gross) debuted a workshop titled the Wicked Webs of Racism, Patriarchy, and Capitalism at the Pittsburgh Summit Against Racism. As anti-racist practitioners in deep transracial organizing relationship, this co-created body of work became a foundational piece in our shared and independently-led workspaces. As our work began to expand, we realized that we needed to clarify expectations of use, attribution, and compensation, and do so in ways that aligned with our shared intersectional anti-racist principles, maintained ongoing and evolving relationality, and did not uncritically rely on status quo legalistic models. We offer a conversation between us that considers our experience in seeking legal counsel (eventually leading to a legal IP agreement), the years of organizing that followed, and the tensions between power, intellectual property, and Abolitionist Ethics within the context of anti-racist organizing and healing justice work.

BIOS

Felicia has been transforming lives for over 30 years through her trauma-informed practice and teaching of Raja Yoga as an embodied pathway to collective liberation. As a Black, queer, cisgender woman, Felicia nurtures healthy reciprocal relationships through unconditional love, authenticity, and accountability. As the Founder and CEO of YogaRoots on Location, Felicia has taught liberatory frameworks and modalities to thousands of students through AntiRacist Raja Yoga Teacher Trainings,  Youth AntiRacist Raja Yoga Trainings, Continuing Education, and Professional Development programs. She is the Community Co-lead of The Pittsburgh Study (TPS) and was integral to the success of earning both the W.K. Kellogg Foundation Community Engagement Scholarship Award and the C. Peter Magrath Awards. Felicia is the first community member, who doesn’t have a PhD or an MD, a faculty appointment in UPitt’s School of Medicine, the director of the course Antiracism and Health Equity Solutions with second and first year medical students.

Amanda is an intersectional anti-racist organizer, weaver of people, ideas, and threads, and author of White Women, Get Ready: How Healing Post-Traumatic Mistress Syndrome Leads to Anti-Racist Change. As an artist and trained yoga instructor, she integrates creative embodied practices throughout her anti-racist organizing. Amanda is certified at the 200 hour RYT level by YogaRoots On Location’s Anti-Racist Raja Yoga School. She has an MA in Conflict Transformation and a PhD in Expressive Arts where her research investigates how arts and culture can support white settlers in sustaining long-term anti-racist and decolonization efforts.