🌱 World-Building from the Roots Up AND why urgency isn’t the only tactic

May 1, 2025 | RIKA IINO

I’ve been thinking a lot about how to stay tender without losing momentum. Not quick fixes. Not flashy campaigns. But work that nourishes, connects, and builds toward something durable…

Several weeks ago, I sat in a full house at the Paramount Theatre for the Oakland Symphony premiere of Forgiveness: Suite for Spoken Word and Orchestra, created by SOZO changemakers Daniel Bernard Roumain and Marc Bamuthi Joseph. It wasn’t just a performance—it was a civic ritual. A permission to feel. Maybe even a glimpse of what repair could look like.

We’ve also been quietly reviewing hundreds of applications for the SOZO Fellowship—each one a testament to artists reframing labor, sustainability, entrepreneurship, and building lives with integrity.

This work of nurturing and deploying artists as animators of compassion and imagination is urgent, particularly in a society that is normalizing fear, overwhelm, and numbness —and yet, it can feel ephemeral…fleeting…

But maybe urgency isn’t the only tactic. What if what matters most is the intention and the care—not just for what is seen, but for the roots we are cultivating?

For our anniversary this year, I gave my husband a Japanese maple bonsai. (He’s the true greenthumb in our family!) A bonsai isn’t just a small tree—it’s a living world. Its roots and branches are sculpted over years of deliberate attention. The roots are “trained” to anchor and reveal nebari—the visible memory of what’s been endured and nurtured. Caring for it requires sharp tools and constant awareness.

And within the limits of a small tray, the roots keep pushing, intertwining, reaching beyond their container. Their strength and beauty aren’t measured by size, speed, or efficiency—but by the gradual revelation of something whole.

That’s what this work of cultural production—or more precisely, empathy production—feels like to me: Building intentional worlds of care and imagination that grow to their optimum size, while pushing toward a future that’s inevitable, harmonious, and beautiful.

...A future we can love! That genuinely excites me.

Right now, that care and imagination are showing up most clearly in our work for land, body, and future generations:

⛰️ HAVE YOU CONSIDERED | An Intersectional Environmental Short Film
This summer, we’re headed to the Eastern Sierra to begin filming Have You Considered, a cinematic collaboration with the incomparable Pattie Gonia—drag queen, environmentalist, and fierce advocate for joy as a climate strategy (watch Pattie's TED Talk). We’ll be joined by sound visionary Imogen Heap and vertical dance pioneers BANDALOOP (see NYT feature) as we co-create an audio-visual journey that honors the resilience and imaginative power of LGBTQIA+ and climate justice communities.

🌎 EARTH.SPEAKS | A Multi-Year National Initiative at the Intersection of Land, Body, Indigeneity, and Technology
Working alongside the brilliant brooke smiley (𐓷𐓘𐓻𐓘𐓻𐓟, Wah-Zha-Zhe, Osage), we’re co-creating earth markers—sustainable and functional earth sculptures—while also prototyping an interactive app rooted in Native knowledge and  co-creation. Right now, we’re piloting this work on Southern Ute and Chumash lands, working with young people, listening deeply, and building tools that honor embodied wisdom and ancestral technology.

💧 ALPHABET ROCKERS | Water, Climate, and Youth Leadership
I’ve been so inspired by the GRAMMY-winning Alphabet Rockers and their new collaboration with EBMUD (East Bay Municipal Utility District), amplifying youth voices around clean water. This work is part of a much bigger vision—an album of climate liberation, shaped by storytelling, partnerships, and the power of young people already leading us into a future where community health and environmental health are one and the same.

Across all of this, SOZO continues to grow and evolve as an empathy machine, not only responding to crisis, but creating space for repair, for imagination, for what’s next.