Phoenix Moment

Phoenix Moment is a creative duo comprised of Nastassja Schmiedt and A. Lea Roth. Raised in Miami and Minnesota, Nastassja and Lea come from very different backgrounds, but hit it off immediately when they met at a national LGBT organizing conference in 2012. Both students at Dartmouth College, the two began dating, and started to interweave their organizing, academic interests, and personal lives. In the spring of 2013, Nastassja and Lea took part in the controversial #realtalkdartmouth protests, which highlighted the systemic underreporting of violence against marginalized students on campus and led to widespread online threats and harassment from peer students. Nastassja and Lea were the lead complainants on an intersectional Clery Act complaint against Dartmouth College to the Office of Civil Rights later that spring alleging systematic underreporting of sexual violence and hate crimes on campus. After leaving school as a result of harassment, Nastassja and Lea were inspired to create their own social enterprise to imagine alternatives to the current state of higher education and co-founded Spring Up, a multimedia activist collective creating a space for learning and healing. They traveled around the United States on a four-month road trip, giving workshops about campus violence and intersectional coalitional organizing at conferences and campuses and speaking to students from over 40 institutions of higher education. Together, Nastassja and Lea co-authored MILLENNIAL SEX, a collection of short stories exploring themes desire, consent, and millennial sexuality, and co-host the Phoenix Moment Podcast. Join us on our journey to freedom as we imagine and create the world we want to live in at : https://www.patreon.com/PhoenixMoment

Posts Written by