The last few weeks have been overwhelming in so many regards. I am not even sure where to really start, but I want all those in continued resistance to know that I am sending you love and the energy of millions of Black folks around the world, politically, and economically-oppressed. Black Power!
It’s been a difficult moment for me, as I’ve spent the last few years learning and growing in my political theory, and two of those years while living abroad. In this particular moment with the coronavirus pandemic racing through the world, I am ‘home’, in Johannesburg, South Africa. But as the streets of the US are in continued overflow with Black folks, yet again, exhausted and angered at the perpetual state of retraumatization, I feel lost with limited action options.
Before this years’ uprising in the US, the coronavirus pandemic was unearthing the vastness of inequality and the depths of insecurity that folks around the world live in. Despite the plunder of a few, the economic decline has been peculiarly felt by the world’s economically-oppressed. In South Africa -- with millions living in informal settlements, a socio-political culture of misogynoir (the hatred of Black women), homophobia, and xenophobia, and a history of unethical mismanagement of resources -- hundreds of thousands who were already under-resourced and systemically impoverished find themselves hungry amid a global pandemic.
But this isn’t a reality particular to the ‘global south’. Many of your, our, my classmates, colleagues, homies, family members have taken pay cuts, lost their jobs, are fighting eviction, or have been subjected to continuing to work in or returning to potential fatal working-conditions because structural racism is violent! These growing feelings of dissent are not new, we simply repress them like volcanic activity … until the next eruption.
What I am now coming to understand is that ‘writing and imagining is doing -- it is action and politically consequential’, and generations of organizers and revolutionaries have written and imagined a reality we’re still fighting to experience. And we need to engage with this theory, with these modes of knowing, because black radicalism is deeply rooted, it ain’t new!
We must also start to address our own internalized habits of oppression. Globally, Black folks are violently murdered in militarized states indoctrinated with white fragility and left neglected by the capitalist system that thrives from the resources stolen from their land or developed by their labor. Then we replicate these systems in our households and communities. When you say, "black lives matter," does that include Black queer folk, Black womn, Black trans womn, Black differently- and disable folk, Black single mothers, Black folk in the hood, incarcerated Black folk, Black fat folks, Black sex-workers, Afro-Latinos, Black Africans, Black folks in colonized lands around the world?
And, remember your phobia does not have to be actively violent to be dangerous. Just as white fragility presents in institutional ways such as murder by police, transphobia has murdered hundreds of Black trans womn, including Brayla Stone, a 17-year old girl. Even amid political unrest demanding action in Minnesota, Iyanna Dior was brutally assaulted. The passive silence and ingrained racism that prevent equally-qualified Black candidates from gaining jobs or buying homes also bequeath trans, differently-abled, and ‘uneducated’ Black folks house-insecure, unemployed, and murdered without public outcry. Tony McDade's story, even in his death, has been significantly untold, largely only Black trans folks have mobilised for the Black trans lives also victim to the prison industrial complex.
We cannot be complicit in our own demise.
We must be vehemently opposed to patriarchy, classism, heteronormativity, and misogynoir, vehemently opposed to transphobia, xenophobia, and ableism. You must be aware of your privileges and biases as well as the lived experiences of others if you are to ever combat violence against Black folks and create safety.
At this moment, we are responsible for becoming more politically-educated, and it is Black radical politics that is driving the devisement in the police, fueling mutual-aid, and reimagining a more equitable world. We must read and know the work of our elders, many of whom are still here and doing the work. Dr. Angela Davis, Assata Shakur, Bell Hooks, Nikki Giovanni, and Sonia Sanchez to name a few.
We are responsible for freeing ourselves from the systems of oppression we reinforce within our communities. Unlearning is ongoing, check your bias daily. Question your positionality in, and why you believe what you believe, specifically about communities with less access -- regardless of ‘where you came from.’ Be aware of your willingness to participate in Black humiliation or to ask Black folks to perform their poverty for you to take action. And, hold 'your' folk accountable.
Continue to evaluate the systems that you don’t want to release, including capitalism.
I am personally committed to divesting from the notion of and drive for ‘generational wealth,’ I desire to live in a world where a generation does not know hunger. I am dedicated to imagining a future where scarcity only has value in the history of socio-politics.
I am personally committed to the institutional divestment from all facets of the prison industrial system: police, prisons, the bail system, ICE, detention centers, juvenile incarceration and tracking, and the public education system as a tool to streamline black bodies into prisons. I advocate for the community-driven reinvestment of funds and resources via land, hunger alleviation, housing, healthcare, and more.
Because Black lives don’t just matter. Black folks and other politically and economically oppressed communities deserve to know freedom, to have access to the land and its resources. And for me, there is absolutely no debate in this, and with this deep conviction, action is demanded!
I want to be held accountable in this and build community for global activism.
In solidarity with those that believe in the complete eradication of all systems and governments that oppress people. In solidarity with Black -- historically looted, excluded, and labeled deviant -- folk at the center of redesigning.
Court