Rooted Resistance logo, a fist through a kettlebell with the text 'Rooted Resistance' on the bell. Below the hand are roots reaching down.
A rootcamp participant on a yoga mat on bright grass, extending an arm and opposite leg and looking forward
Black people sitting on the grass at a RootCamp between exercises in Tampa, Florida. This event was hosted by the University of South Florida through their Department of Residential Life and Education.
Maliq, Roc and Sam smile for a photo after participating in a rootcamp in Tampa, Florida.

Movement, but make it Rooted.

Rooted Resistance is a grassroots practice that reimagines physical movement for Black/African diasporic queer, trans, nonbinary and intersex people in the United States.

Movement outdoors provides an alternative and intergenerational healing space for our community and is our form of refusal to commercialized notions of “the body.”

Maliq, a rootcamp participant in a red Rooted Resistance shirt slamming a medicine ball outdoors.

Here’s how:

Enlivening movement sessions hosted in Portland, Oregon

RootCamps are small group training sessions for queer, trans, and nonbinary people. Participations can expect 1-hour of body-centered movement outdoors (e.g. in a public park). RootCamps are no-cost to participants. 

A mutual aid fund for massage, coming back soon!

Logo for the Rooted Resistance Revive Fund, the same as Rooted Resistance's main logo, a fist holding a kettelbell with roots, with a hand receiving and the text 'Revive Fund' beneath.

Rooted Resistance and Trauma Touch Seattle Massage and Bodywork operate the Rooted Resistance Revive Fund, a massage mutual aid fund created by Roc Rochon, PhD and Zest Schumacher, LMT/TTT giving queer, trans, and non binary people of the global majority access to massage therapy at no cost.

Both Roc and Zest know the direct correlation between the nervous system and tension in the body. This fund aims to build alleviate some access barriers for people of the global majority to receive bodywork.

Ideas to reclaim movement

Support local booksellers and pick up the book co-edited by Roc of Rooted Resistance:

Deconstructing the Fitness-Industrial Complex: How to Resist, Disrupt, and Reclaim What It Means to Be Fit in American Culture

Speaking directly to sick, queer, trans, disabled, and BIPOC readers, Deconstructing the Fitness Industrial Complex is part urgent inquiry, part radical deconstruction, and part call to action: to build spaces that welcome and work for all; to reclaim movement as a vital and liberatory practice; and to embody a model of joy and community care outside the mainstream fitness culture.

Book cover of Deconstructing the Fitness Industrial Complex, edited by Justice Roe Williams, Roc Rochon, and Lawrence Koval

Research from inside and outside the university

Rochon, R. & Chen,C. (2026). Rupturing the Sport Management Classroom: Zine Making for World Making. Sport Management Education Journal. Advance online publication.

Rochon, R., & Dickerson, N. (2026). Can we live? Our moving bodies cultivating and nourishing a “home” in and through the Wake. Journal of Emerging Sport Studies, 12.

Baeth, A., Posbergh, A., Bekker, S., & Rochon, R. (2025). Sports and the Limits of the Binary: The Contested Terrains of Trans and Nonbinary Athlete Inclusion. Sociology of Sport Journal, 42(3), 245-252.

Posbergh, A., Baeth, A., Bekker, S., & Rochon, R. (2024). Sports and the limits of the binary: An Introduction. Sociology of Sport Journal, 1, 1-7.

Bell, D., Rahman, S., & Rochon, R. (2023). (Trans) forming fitness: Intersectionality as a framework for resistance and collective action. Frontiers in Sports and Active Living, 5, 944782.

Johnson, A.H., Bowen, A., C. Henn, Rochon, R., and Hill, I, 2022. Disproportionate Disadvantage: The Impact of COVID19 on Trans + Non-Binary Southerners. Gender Benders: Piedmont, SC.

Coming soon!

A photo of Roc Rochon in an N95 mask pushing themselves up on a tricep dip bar.

Meet Roc 👋🏾

Roc Rochon, Ph. D. is an interdisciplinary scholar, educator, and the founder of Rooted Resistance: a grassroots project that reimagines physical activity for Black/African diasporic queer and trans people in the United States. Rochon’s orientation toward Black queer and trans liberatory bodywork is borne out of the necessity to tend to Black life. They are a co-editor and author of the anthology Deconstructing the Fitness Industrial Complex: How to Resist, Disrupt, and Reclaim What It Means to be Fit in American Culture (2023). Roc is certified in Inclusive Kettlebell Foundations. Their cultural and scholarly work has received grants from the Trans Justice Funding Project, the Campaign for Southern Equality, the Spencer Foundation and the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council (SSRHC).

Roc’s elders migrated from Louisiana to Connecticut, where they grew up. As a visitor to the Pacific Northwest, they maintain a day job as an Assistant Professor and Program Coordinator of the Sport Leadership & Management undergraduate studies program at Pacific University.