People keepers tend to the well-being of people, communities, and organizations. They work across different domains of expertise, with an intention to shift hearts and minds, redistribute power, and build what's next. The list below provides example vocations that DiSCO LABS sees as people keepers, but it is non-exhaustive:

• Shifting Hearts & Minds: artists, performers, speakers, teachers, facilitators, filmmakers, influencers, and other storytellers

• Redistributing Power: activists, community orgs, WFP and DSA candidates, progressive Democrats and left-of-center independents, care workers, and other movement shapers 

• Building What's Next: social and environmental innovators, co-ops, researchers, and other new economy designers

MINDFooL DiSCO LABS is not a gatekeeper or judge on what does/does not count as disrupting the status quo. The intention behind the disrupting the status quo language is this: 

• The current paradigm is unethical, unsustainable, performative, and primed for collapse. 

• More people need to be engaged in the labor of winding down this paradigm down and ushering in the next one.

• Disruption looks like ending this current paradigm through multiple "attack" points, from harm reduction to reskilling to dismantling to prefigurative design and more.

• There is a constituency of people keepers who intend to disrupt the status quo, but their structures, actions, and interests fall short and do not support disruption.

• MINDFooL DiSCO LABS leads with trust and makes efforts to understand a potential collaborators' philosophy and approach before committing to work together, and move people keepers into more alignment with their intentions from where they are. 

• Disruption and status quo are not fixed, therefore collaborations and the philosophies behind them cannot be fixed either.    

As many Black, Indigenous, and people of color scholars have long pointed out, imperialism and capitalism are the twin evils that frame the shared struggle and perpetuate the present social and environmental "polycrisis." Racist, colorist, ableist, misogynistic, and extraction-based colonial mindsets mean the Global South, BIPOC communities, people with disabilities, the poor and working class, and queer and femme people bear the brunt of disaster, harm, and instability. Wealthy, white, self-annointed elitists are the primary bad actors, and they utilize a conditional cascading economy of power, privilege, policy, culture, and institutional design to advance their delusions of superiority and materialize monetary benefit. No one truly wins with this paradigm.   

MINDFooL DiSCO LABS is first and foremost rooted in mindfulness-based philosphy, which informs its political philosphy. You can read more about what "mindfulness-based" means below.

Beyond this, MINDFooL DiSCO LABS is forever attempting an engaged political praxis (studying, practicing, failing, celebrating, and learning) in line with everything shared above. Practically speaking, this means aspirational alignment with these philosophies, which have direct and indirect political implications:

• Decolonization & reindigenization 

• Abolition & reparations

• Black, queer, and feminist radical thought

• White and wealthy accountability

• Leftist ideologies, including anti-facism and democratic socialism 

• Collapsing U.S.-centrism and new constitutional governance

• DSA, WFP, progressive Democrats, and left-of-center independent candidates and groups

• Taking direction from frontline voices and people with lived experience

• Intercultural spiritual philosophy, tradition, and science 

• Phenomenology, community psychology, autoethnography, performance studies 

• Collectivism, interdependence, and agency 

• Direct action, bold ambitions, experiments, and truth-telling

• Narrative building, relational organizing, and systems-thinking

Mindfulness is used as an common entry point term for MINDFooL DiSCO LABS' work-in-progress interdisciplinary approach called EMRLD. You can read more about EMRLD here.

MINDFooL DiSCO LABS was started by and, at this point in time, run solely by Christopher "Sonnyboy" Finch, a white, mostly cisgender, queer, college-educated man who grew up between working and middle class circumstances. He has benefitted from the labor, words, teaching, mentorship, and calls to accountability from people who experience daily intersecting layers of oppression and harm as a result of wealthy white people's beliefs, choices, and actions. 

Privilege mandates informed action. Christopher works to de-center himself, learn and follow existing guidance, pay for educational resources, attempt informed action, fail in public, repair, re-learn, and reattempt as a way to be accountable in all his efforts. As a part of this, efforts are primarily focused where privilege needs to be wielded the most.

Christopher commits to non-extractive collaborative relationships and pricing models. MINDFooL DiSCO LABS is not yet making profit at all and does not exist for that purpose. Revenue from collaborations are used to cover living expenses, time for rest, relationship building, and reinvestment in MINDFooL's other projects. Should revenue ever exceed $50,000 in a single year, a minimum of 5% will be donated to an aligned, BIPOC-led organization or mutual aid group. And should revenue exceed $80,000 in a single year, a minimum of 10% will be donated.