Life is a Festival #117: Matthew Duffy (SPORE)

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Psychedelic decriminalization is on the move throughout the United States and Colorado is at its epicenter. Today on Life is a Festival Matthew Duffy (Duffy), co-founder of the reform and education platform SPORE, explains Colorado’s upcoming legislation in poetic mushroom metaphors. 

We begin with Duffy’s initial experiences with permaculture and how a fungi’s mycelial network is the ideal model for organizing political change. We discuss psychedelic decriminalization vs legalization and why the two must happen simultaneously. We review the issue of psychedelic exceptionalism and how to re-perspectivize identity politics. Finally we discuss SPORE’s upcoming Right to Heal campaign and how you can get involved with Colorado’s legislation. 

Duffy is an ecofuturist organizer, myco-poet, and Co-Ecosystem Director at SPORE, The Society for Psychedelic Outreach Reform and Education. After teaming up with Decriminalize Denver in 2018 for the Denver Psilocybin Initiative, Duffy went on to co-found SPORE and enroll in the Resilient Leadership MA at Naropa University where he completed his master's degree in May 2021. Duffy and SPORE are currently focused on the Right to Heal campaign to prioritize marginalized community empowerment, access, equity, leadership, and stewardship within the psychedelic movement.

Generational healing will happen in beloved community so let’s make like mushrooms and get into some radical collaboration!

Links

• SPORE

• Right to Heal Campaign

• My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies by Resmaa Menakem

• Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds by adrienne maree brown

• Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson

• The Ancestors Project

• Decriminalize Nature

• Chacruna

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Timestamps

• :08 - Sparkle ponies and spiritual bypassing

• :12 - Social Permaculture applied to the psychedelic movement

• :21 - Mycelial networks as an organizing principle for political change

• :25 - Psychedelic decriminalization vs legalization

• :32 - Psychedelic exceptionalism

• :37 - Identity politics and queering psychedelics to heal our identity crisis

• :47 - Right to Heal Campaign

• :57 - Colorado is the epicenter and what to do about it

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Graphics Designed by Andy McErlean

Audio Engineering by Trevor Coulter

Theme song ““Peculiar Colors” [Manjumasi]“ by dj atish