Newsletter #19

These offerings and musings are currently taking place on the ancestral, traditional, and stolen lands of the Seminole, Miccosukee, and Tequesta First Nations. These lands known as Miami.

These are stolen lands built by stolen people

“Your Job is Not Your Political Home and That is a Good Thing”

Confession: I am an elder millennial and an introvert who once not so secretly hated the idea of co-working spaces. Gasp! Co-working spaces sounded like a feeding ground for vampires, aka extroverts. I could not understand how actual work got done without one having a door, partition, or some kind of barrier that could protect you from all the distractions that are abundant and built into office culture. Co-working spaces sounded like a nightmare for those of us who relish and create in quiet and whose brains are not normative. I no longer feel this way about co-working spaces since visiting a few and realizing that offices still actually exist within them. I now understand their utility and have come to appreciate them (shoutout to CIC in Miami and the site director Maria Dominguez #thehomie). I see all that co-working spaces offer to its largely millennial customer base. And I think these work sites have lots to teach us about the dangers of bringing the co-working space model into our social justice jobs. 

Is there anything more millennial than a co-working space? Co-working spaces are the personification of an industry that many millennials across race and ethnicity can quickly get behind. There is nothing novel about renting office space, but in true millennial fashion, if you add a little tech and pair it with minimalist decor and open-air designs, you officially have a thing. Millennials, as a generational cohort, have more student loan debt than our parents, and less access to wealth and social safety net programs. We are a cohort that is deferring marriage and childbearing due to our economic status—having already survived a recession and currently living through another financial crisis all before the age of forty. All of this and more has allowed work to have outsized meaning in our lives. Millennials will be working for a very long time unless we cancel student loan debts and create other life-saving programs with real economic teeth. Therefore, where work gets done has become crucially important. Office spaces have become almost like places of worship or recreational centers. The physical space has to be cool, purposeful,  and offer a vibe because we will be spending more time at work. (The pandemic will change this, but not as much as we think. Working from home is not for every personality type, brain, job, or team. Many people currently resent having their home taken over by work because anyone who successfully worked from home before the pandemic will tell you your space must be able to accommodate being both a home and an office). And maybe if the office is pretty enough and offers enough bougie snacks we can all be coerced into forgetting about all the ways racial capitalism, the loss of social safety nets, and union-busting is making us more financially precarious. 

Co-working spaces are beautiful and specialize in making things convenient and making it all available so that you can focus on simply producing. Did you forget to eat breakfast before leaving home no worries, there are plenty of free and nutritious food options that you can just grab. You need to impress some folks; book a fancy conference room with a view, and suddenly whatever idea you are pitching looks and sounds better.  It is also a great place to meet people. Many ambitious people who also practice overworking like you are roaming the halls, making finding a mate, a new friend, or engaging in an extramarital tryst more convenient #efficiency.

Work has taken on new meaning and plays a different role in our lives, happiness, sense of self, and personal development. In this work era, we are working more hours while giving and bringing much more of the self to work. Esther Perel talks extensively about this in her scholarship on work. We now expect much more fulfillment and alignment from our jobs because we bring our desires and longing to this space. Spaces once filled up by spirituality, books, philosophy, family, hobbies, and other life pursuits are occupied by work and capitalism.  Therefore, co-working spaces are a physical representation of what the neo-liberal millennial and elder Gen-Z subject expects from work which is now EVERYTHING.

In 2019, I went to San Francisco for a conference, and while I was there, I did a presentation at the We Work offices in the Salesforce building. I was there to facilitate lunch and learn about unconscious bias. Even your anti-racism learning is part of the concierge service. There is nothing revolutionary about leasing office space. However,  if I put everything you potentially need in this space, the office becomes your actual home. Once the office becomes your home, the place where you pay rent, mortgage, or where your dog that you neglect lives ceases being home. Therefore, to assuage this guilt, the workplace now has to be more and mean more. If even your anti-racism can be curated by the landlord who rents office space to your organization, work is not just work. The co-working space model makes sense and fits the reality of our time, but what happens when we start to embody this model?

By now, I am sure many of you must be wondering where am I going with this entire diatribe about co-working spaces? Well, here is my point: I want to invite us all to think about the perils and danger that is present when we approach our social justice non-profit job with a co-working space mentality and model. To put it more plainly,  I do not believe that your job must or should fulfill your every social-emotional needs or where you should house your liberatory political dreams. More importantly, just because you work somewhere that is heavily politically aligned with many of your values does not mean that your job is your political home. I do not think it's possible or wise to make the place where you earn your income to live within this violent capitalist society with a non-profit tax designation your sociopolitical home. 

Here’s why: 

1. I strongly recommend that we have a polyamorous view and approach to our jobs-  Your job cannot be your everything. Sometimes a job is just a job. It allows you to care for yourself, have health insurance, or care for your family. If you are privileged enough to be doing work you are passionate about and it is in line with your purpose, that is great, but that still does not mean your job is your everything. In making our jobs our everything, it skews our expectations of work. A big part of adulting hinges on learning to manage expectations well and practicing non-attachment (thank you, Buddhism). Many people expect a level of happiness, validation, alignment, and purpose with their jobs which ultimately leads to suffering. Our work environment, our bosses, colleagues, and our managers cannot create fulfillment for us. A significant source of job dissatisfaction and team upheaval that I repeatedly see which is also barely visible, involves people demanding that their job nurture them. People are expecting nurturance from their job. A task your manager, supervisor, and Executive Director, should not be trusted to perform or asked to perform such sacred work. We should expect professional development from our workplaces not spiritual or personal development work.  

2. Just because your job is politically aligned with your values, it does not make it your political home-   I do not think that a job, no matter how beautiful the mission and vision, can be the container that can hold our revolutionary and liberatory dreams. Because as INCITE has already taught us, the revolution will not be grant-funded. Our non-profit jobs that exist to ameliorate harm and seek to slow down the killing and marginalizing of our people SHOULD NOT feel like an Amazon fulfillment center. Full stop. The harm and abuse that many of us have or will experience at work must cease. Work as we know it and engage with it must be transformed, and I still do not think it is wise to make your job your political home. If our job becomes our political home, then what? Does this mean that your job will enter into a transformative ethic with you and promise never to fire or stop investing in you? What will be the metrics of success then if this job is now my political home? Can these kinds of conditions exist at work? If my job is my political home, what demands should I be making, and what should my job expect of me? These are questions that cannot be answered in performance reviews, employee handbooks,  or work evaluations. These kinds of political calculations do not seem prudent or strategic. Don’t do it, fam. Don’t play yourself. 

3. It is a privilege to work somewhere that aligns with you politically, and it is not a right. Low-wage workers have revolutionary dreams too, but must work for Wal-Mart, Dollar Tree, and pick our foods. It is possible to be a political being and work at a place that is not your exact political match. I will offer a caveat to this statement: Capitalism requires that I work; it does not mean that I will do any job. Jobs that put me in a position to betray my values and ethics are jobs I will not do, and I say this knowing that there is an immense privilege in this statement. In a just world, we would not have to work IMO. As a descendant of enslaved folks, WORK IS OVERRATED. Being that I need money to survive in this society, society does have the duty to ensure that those who can work and must work can find work. I am not sure if society must grant us jobs that are also politically aligned with our values. I do not believe society owes us this right. Society owes us justice which would make non-profits obsolete.  

As I meditate on these words, I am clear that the bulk of how I make money is attempting to help organizations transform work and operationalize their anti-racism values. I want where people work primarily, our social justice jobs, to be sites of creativity, inclusion, innovation, and psychological safety. I do believe that we do not have to be harmed, abused, and exploited at work. I no longer accept this being part of work. With that said, I do not care how fantastic your day job is. I still highly recommend that people organize and join organizations that do the work to undermine their day jobs. Your freedom will not come from work, especially not in a society built on post-genocide, chattel slavery, and racial capitalism. 

I have been thinking about the small minority of folks who are in unique positions. Such as elected officials, and people who work for their political party. To those folks who are indeed drawing their paychecks from their political party, I hope you have an accountability pod and that you are creating a space in your life to nurture your liberatory fire. I make it a point not to conflate my political party with my political home. For example, I am a registered Democrat, but The Democratic Party is NOT my political home. The Democratic party does not have the range to occupy such a space in my psyche or politics; my voting with them is purely strategic. We spend so much time at work, and it makes sense to want more and different from this thing that takes up so much real estate in our lives. I want to caution us not to expose our deepest and most beautiful social justice dreams to our jobs. Protect the most precious parts of you by not bringing them to work. The revolution is not at your job, trust me.

VIEWINGS AND READINGS:

We Do This ‘Til We Free Us by Mariame Kaba- This book is about the prison-industrial complex and abolition. If you are new to the idea of prison abolition, then read this book, and if you are not new to prison abolition but need to sharpen your analysis read this book. Mariame’s thinking and intellectual clarity, and commitment is what I endeavor to emulate in my life. 

Bevelations Lessons From a Mutha, Auntie, Bestie by Bevy Smith- Part memoir, part self-help. I appreciate reading books written by women who changed their lives well past the age of thirty-five and are still radically committed to choosing again and starting over. 

Misogynoir Transformed Black Women’s Digital Resistance by Moya Bailey [LINK]- Moya is the Black woman scholar who coined the term misogynoir, and she wrote a book about it. You can purchase the forthcoming book and read excerpts in the link above. 

New Money by Tressie McMillian Cottom [LINK]- “The rules of life are passed down to us like the rules for being white or Argentinian or Midwestern or Black or whatever we stake our emotions on and call an identity. I come from people where money is a private matter, even when business is conducted in public. You always count your change in the store because white cashiers would cheat you and then claim you were stealing if you returned later to complain. You folded your money into hidden compartments so men and ne’er-do-wells could not make you for a mark. And, you always kept the money organized so that you knew at all times just how much money you had to spend.”

Anti-Asian Violence and Black Solidarity Today [LINK]- This is a talk given by Tamara Nopper, the editor of Mariame’s book. In this presentation, Nopper lays out the rich history between Black and East Asian folks. She also invites us to think critically about the hashtag #stopAsianhate, a hashtag I have avoided for many of the same reasons Nopper cites in her talk. It is a critically important conversation as we seek to be in solidarity with our Asian kin. How do we not collude with the carceral state?

King of Reads: Responsibility, HIV Stigma, and Disclosure [LINK]- HIV stigma does not keep anyone safe and, this video by a very popular Youtuber talks about this and his HIV status and what is needed to truly break the stigma. I appreciated this commentary. 

Black Femme Genders Panel by Black Feminist Futures [LINK]- This was such a delicious conversation. The word femme is being grossly misused and co-opted by heterosexual women; this conversation is a great reset. Fun nerdy fact: Kai M. Green's work has been pivotal in my theorizing Black genders and sexuality in my doctoral work. Prioritize watching this at least twice. 

Misogynoir Nearly Killed Meghan Markle [LINK]- “What makes Meghan’s near-death by suicide a particularly damning case of misogynoir is the degree of privilege she has as a light-skinned, class-privileged Black woman. In response to my tweet calling out the misogynoir she experienced, some people countered that it wasn’t misogynoir because Meghan has self-identified as mixed race and as a ‘woman of color.’ I emphatically disagree. Whether Meghan calls herself a Black woman is irrelevant, as the animus she experiences has everything to do with her being read as a Black woman.”

Nobody’s Savior, Jay-Z Can’t Be Our Messiah [LINK]- Jay-Z upset Hampton’s family when he rapped ‘I arrived on the day Fred Hampton died/ Uh, real niggas just multiply’ on ‘Murder to Excellence,’ a song from 2011’s Watch the Throne. Apparently, Jay-Z believed that his contributions to the world were as revolutionary as those of the Marxist-Leninist activists. Really, Hampton and Jay-Z are worlds apart in both motivation and action. With a new chance to prove himself the Black messiah on ‘What It Feels Like,’ Jay-Z offers anecdotes about black diamonds, hoarding money, IRS-related anxieties, and acquiring a luxury weed line. ‘You know they hate when you become more than they expect,’ he raps, implying that accumulating wealth as a Black man is as equally revolutionary as organizing rallies, unifying Chicago’s gangs in the name of anti-policing solidarity, creating free meal programs for children and more.”

God Save Us From The “Bad Days’ of White Men by Mona Eltahawy [LINK]- “I guarded my hymen like a good virgin until I was 29 years old. And yet, not once during my sexually-frustrated 20s did my guilt over masturbation drive me to kill anyone. Not once after watching porn, did I commit mass murder. And once I finally began to have sex with someone other than myself, I did not go on a shooting rampage to “eliminate my temptation” or to quell my guilt. I fucked the guilt out of my system--with other consenting adults, of course.”

Decolonizing Politics [LINK]- “Mamdani offers both plentiful evidence of the depth of the problem of permanent minorities and, as a self-described “incorrigible optimist,” an alternative to this state of affairs—namely, ‘decolonizing the political.’ He writes: ‘That distributional choices are made by reference to cultural, ethnic, and racial identities reflects the politicization of these identities. Only when the political system is decolonized—that is, when identities are uncoupled from permanent majority and minority status—will it be able to secure equity.’ In Neither Settler nor Native, Mamdani draws on the details of his case studies to formulate some broad lessons for decolonizing politics today—most importantly, disaggregating the nation from the state and creating more inclusive forms of democratic politics in the wake of identity-based strife.”

In The Direction of Freedom [LINK]- “We Do This ’Til We Free Us reminds me of another stellar set of essays that I recently read, The Black Woman: An Anthology, which was edited by Toni Cade Bambara and first published in 1970. While pondering the prospects of Black revolution, Bambara issues what we might consider a clarion call to abolitionists: ‘Perhaps we need to face the terrifying and overwhelming possibility that there are no models, that we shall have to create from scratch.’ Her instructive insight reveals that the danger is not that we don’t have a map for freedom but that we keep looking for one. By entertaining, as I did, the question of ‘what will we do in the case of [some really awful thing]’ we are seduced into searching for a map instead of following the direction. The direction is freedom, and any map that purports to point us there isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.”

Outkast Was Almost a Casualty of the East Coast - West Coast Rap Battle [LINK]- “Christopher ‘Kid’ Reid and Salt-N-Pepa presented OutKast their award. Upbeat and playful, Kid said, ‘Ladies help me out,’ to announce the winner, but there is a distinctive drop in their enthusiasm when they name OutKast the winner of the category. The inflection in their voices signifies shock and even disappointment, as Kid quickly tries to be diplomatic by shouting out OutKast’s frequent collaborators and label mates Goodie Mob. The negative reaction from the crowd was immediate, sharp, and continuous booing.”

LUTZE SIGHTINGS:

The Nea Onnim Podcast- Episode 7 [LINK]- “For those of us who are serious about social justice, anti-racism, and freedom that far exceeds liberal notions and electoral politics, we already know that we have lots of work. The conditions of our work have changed, but our demands have not.”

LISTENING:

The Professor Is In Podcast: Ep. 2:27 Where Do I Start? Finding Your Map? [LINK] - If you are a grad student, you may appreciate this episode. Two senior scholars are in conversation about how to start academic writing. They do a good job of giving practical advice and teasing out the different stages of idea creation. 

Unlocking Us Podcast: One Drop: Shifting The Lens on Race [LINK]- Brene Brown’s podcast is officially only on Spotify (momma is fancy). In this episode featuring Dr. Yaba Blay, who wrote the book One Drop and this conversation does a great job showing us how Blackness is not monolithic and how corrosive colorism is to Black people.  

Under The Influence Podcast [LINK]- this podcast series is currently the podcast series that I cannot stop thinking about. The thesis of the podcast is about mom influencers. Did you know that the majority of mom influencers are Mormoms or ex mormons? And that the influencer space grew during the global pandemic? I have my issues with some of the narrative arcs, but it is a well done series and I am learning so much about how mothers do the internet, and how women are monetizing motherhood. 

On Being Podcast 930. Alain de Botton, The True Hard Work of Love and Relationships [LINK]- Alain de Botton is a philosopher whose musings on love and relationships I truly appreciate. This episode was taped in 2017 and it is evergreen. I  revisit at least once a year. It is a must-listen if you are in dire need of a more sobering and grounding way to approach love and relationships. 

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

I am currently raising money for #BlackGirlsMatterMia, which is a coalition housed at S.O.U.L Sisters Leadership Collective.  I am a founding member, and currently, I am on the advisory board. Please help me raise money for  Black girls, femmes, and gender-expansive young people to ensure they have what they need to live and survive white supremacy. Dig deep folks and let’s give. Here is the link: https://soulsistersleadership.networkforgood.com/projects/125657-lutze-s-black-girls-matter-coalition-fundraiser

Newsletter #18

These offerings and musings are currently taking place on the ancestral, traditional, and stolen lands of the Seminole, Miccosukee, and Tequesta First Nations. These lands known as Miami.

These are stolen lands built by stolen people

“Anti-racist Check-in”

On January 28th, 2021, I offered a free Anti-racist Check-in Session. Below are the musings that I shared with the group as a love offering. 

Anti-racism has become wildly popular and mainstream; this is a good thing, and this presents issues. I hope that these questions will poke and provoke you into deeper awareness, practice, and ethics. Please take only that which makes sense to you and leave the rest. 

1. Is your anti-racism a practice or an identity? 

   I firmly believe that being an ally, an accomplice, or co-conspirator is a process and not an identity. It is not enough for us to be against racism. What are we for, and what are we willing to do to make it happen? There is no passive way to be a neo-Nazi, nationalist, or white supremacists. There is no passive middle of the road ethical practicing anti-racist. People who envision the rise of a white ethnostate build a practice around making this vision come true. They do not merely wish. If you are anti-racist, what are the practices that you are engaged in that help to ensure this world comes to fruition?

2. What roles does the land play in your anti-racism? 

   As humans living on this planet, we are experiencing an existential threat—the threat of an impending climate disaster. The doom is so scary and overwhelming that two of the richest men Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, are putting all of their energy and resources into colonizing space. The rich and powerful are abandoning Earth. We either save the planet, or there will be no future(s). These are our choices. If the planet is not freed or liberated, if lands are not given back to the Indigenous peoples across the globe, then we are screwed. We can no longer afford to drill and mismanage the Earth the way we are doing, nor can we afford to keep telling ourselves the lie that we have time. Denialism is a habit of white supremacy. Telling the truth and confronting the crisis is the antidote. All of our social justice fights must be rooted in the land. We must know the names of the people whose lands we are on, and we must align ourselves with their demands.

3. What is the moral center of your anti-racism?

   If the moral center of your anti-racism is purely books, podcasts, and a well-curated Instagram feed, then I don’t trust it or you, fam. What holds your anti-racism together and makes it sticky? What is the gorilla glue that keeps your values and ethics fixed? Racism, premature Black Death, and engineered vulnerabilities are moral crises that require people with great moral fortitude and courage to do the hard work of divesting, dismantling, and disrupting white supremacy.

4. What is your anti-racism backed by?

   My anti-racism is backed by therapy, tarot, astrology, Jesus, Vodou, the ancestors, my guides, Buddhism, Black feminist thought, Indigenous feminisms, woman of color femininisms, queer abolition feminism, Black anarchism, Black joy, creativity, imagination, The Haitian Revolution, and all that I cannot yet name. And yours?

5. Do you have an anti-racist safety plan? What will you do if/when the Nazi’s come for you? [link to the previous post]

6. Forgive yourself.

   Have you done the work to reckon with the person you were before you got serious about practicing anti-racism? Have you forgiven yourself for being homophobic, transphobic, classist, a patriarchal terrorist, evading your whiteness, lying about your race, being a practitioner of respectability politics, a former Nazi, or whatever else? Are you in a constant practice of forgiving yourself for not being perfect? I do not think we can engage with transformative change while hating ourselves, the bodies we are in, and not being kind and ethical with ourselves. The world we are fighting for must make room for healing. Healing cannot be a luxury; it must be the prerequisite of our freedom-dreams and liberation struggles.

7. What are the growing edges of your sociopolitical ethic? 

   My current growing edge is DRUGS and how it plays into one's pursuit of pleasure and liberation.  I have always believed in decriminalizing drugs and using harm reduction approaches. However, lately, I have been engaging Dr. Carl Hart’s ideas about drugs and liberty. In his new book, Drug Use for Grown-Ups (a book I have not read yet, but I have listened to him discuss), Dr. Hart introduces me/us to the radical idea that people have the right to use drugs because drugs are pleasurable. Equating drugs with pleasure in this way broke my brain. I am used to the pleasure associated with drugs wrapped up in debauchery and danger.  He talks about our myths around addiction and what actually causes addiction. He talks openly about his use of heroin and how it makes him more forgiving and magnanimous. As a person who grew up in the shadows of the crack epidemic as a 90s kid, these ideas are forcing me to rethink my notions of drugs, sovereignty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is unsettling the ideas that I once thought were settled.  Our politics must make us grow in ways we never even calculated. 

   8. Do you have strategies and tools for different kinds of situations and people?

   There is no one-size-fits-all approach to inviting people to go deeper in their anti-racist analysis or attempting to bring a Qanon believer back from the brink. Disinformation is a severe issue in all of our families and communities. We must be practiced in how to talk to different people. We must become better anti-racist organizers. 

   9. Who are your people? Who do you organize with? Who keeps you accountable?

   Anti-racism cannot be practiced alone. Accountability is a communal love language, learn it and seek to be proficient in it. 

   10. What are your freedom dreams? How often do you engage in rest, play, and your imagination? 

   Free individuals create free worlds. We must visit with our freedom often and somatically pick it up and practice making decisions from a free place. We also must ask ourselves, are we afraid to be free? Are we afraid of freedom? 

   11. Does your anti-racism live only between your ears, or is it somatic? 

   I want somatic allies, co-conspirators, and accomplices. I want to be with comrades whose bodies know how to humanize and be with my body. A somatic practitioner of anti-racism knows how to be human with other humans no matter their bodies.  

   12. How deep does Black Lives Matter go in you? 

   Are there Black bodies, identities, and intersections that you struggle to be in solidarity with or see the fullness of their humanity? No matter your race or ethnicity, this is a question that must be answered over and over again.

   13. Does your life bear fruit of your politics?

   If your life were a silent movie, could I, by watching you surmise that you are a person who is deeply committed to racial justice? 

   14. When was the last time you took a walk through your mind and visited with your inner colonizer and your problematic thoughts? 

   If you are afraid to confront your ugly, problematic, unpopular thoughts, you will be unable to engage them outside of yourself. It is through becoming intimately aware of the ideas within me that were formed by white supremacy that I can  do the work of uprooting its roots.  People who are aware of their racist, homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic, classist thoughts, etc., are better able to ensure that their  unconscious biases do not leak into their human interactions. 

   15. Where are you stuck?

   To be anti-racist is to be engaged in a constant state of undoing and learning. It's a dynamic practice and way of life. If you are stagnant and if you are stuck, you are both vulnerable and potentially dangerous. 

   16. Are you engaging in the healing of your ancestors?

   How has white supremacy, colonialism, or anti-Blackness harmed your family? Who in your family tree needs healing? How are you engaging them or this information in your anti-racist process and practice?

   17. When it comes to your anti-racist practice and praxis, resist easy answers and the books and people that push them.

VIEWINGS AND READINGS:

Police Abolition 101: Messages when Facing Doubts [LINK]- This is a great zine that will help you deepen your understanding and engagement with police abolition. 

Caste Does Not Explain Race Boston Review [LINK]- “Caste neither illuminates nor speaks to the origins, exigencies, or urgency of our time. Its celebration in the mainstream media is cause for concern because it reflects the continued priority of elite preferences over the realities, needs, and struggles of ordinary people. It is akin to books such as Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Race—books that emphasize white peoples’ emotions and behaviors as the source of inequality, thereby circumventing fundamental issues such as resource allocation, labor exploitation, and economic dispossession. This re-centering of dominant voices and desires comes at the expense of those whose marginalization is, quite literally, a matter of life and death.”

Turning Towards Each Other A Conflict Workbook by Jovida Ross & Weyam Ghadbian [LINK]- A conflict workbook from a social justice standpoint because we need tools! 

For Black Creatives Who Have Considered Leaving IG Because It’s Racist AF [LINK]- Dr. Yaba Blay and Sonya Renee Taylor are two Black women with sizable Instagram followers. They are discussing the racism baked into Instagram’s algorithms and how they get deployed on Black creatives. This Instagram live conversation is essential for those who want to understand racism in the digital space.

Left of Black: Black Girl Magic in Young Adult Speculative Fiction with Ebony Elizabeth Thomas [LINK]- This interview is a great conversation between two scholars about YA novels and Blackness in the speculative space. 

Why ‘White Passing’ Is White Supremacy Three Reasons White-Latinx Need to Identify as Just White by Joey Pierre [LINK]- “And why have we allowed White Supremacy to strip us of our human nuance and complexity? Instead of honoring Anglo-white people by claiming to pass as them, let’s honor Black people by admitting we are white — because we already are white! Let’s stop playing the same gaslighting games Anglo-whites love to play. Instead, let’s ally our Black communities in these emotionally exhausting and painful race-related conversations and stop perpetuating ‘white-passing supremacy’ and anti-Blackness.”

Jazmine Sullivan: Tiny Desk  (Home Concert) [LINK]- Heaux Tales is Sulivan’s new album that I love so much and this performance was EVERYTHING 

Cori Bush: Can She Bring the Movement for Black Lives to Congress? [LINK]- ‘The election season fervor over Black women has mixed them all together: T-shirts, articles, and memes circulate lists including Harriet Tubman, Fannie Lou Hamer, Shirley Chisholm, and Kamala Harris, celebrating Harris's historic appointment as the first Black woman vice presidential pick for a major party. Charlotta Bass was actually the first Black woman nominated as VP, who ran on the 1952 Progressive Party ticket and advocated for military budget cuts, universal health care, labor, and civil rights. Tubman was an abolitionist, nurse, healer, and mutual aid organizer. Hamer was a plantation worker and revolutionary freedom fighter who believed in democracy and direct investment in the most economically exploited people. Chisolm was a champion for gender and racial justice causes, and bragged about not being backed by any corporate interests during her presidential run. Harris, a former prosecutor, breaks from these traditions of progressive and radical Black women. She backed Representative William Lacy Clay, an establishment Democrat who held his father’s seat for 20 years, over Bush in the primaries. When I ask Bush about her legislative priorities, they sound much closer to the causes championed by Bass, Tubman, Hamer, and Chisholm.’

The dangerous magical thinking of ‘this is not who we are’ [LINK]- “Embedded within this description is an attempt to isolate those who descended on the Capitol as a hillbilly malignancy when, in fact, this was a mob spanning lines of class, religion, education and athletic ability. This sort of specious distancing is so common I refer to it as TROT, as in “Those Racists Over There.” The TROT, fundamentally, is a figment of white imagination and absolution, a tool to avoid reckoning in any meaningful way with The Problem We All Live With.”

The Science of Spiritual Narcissism [LINK]- “Self-enhancement through spiritual practices can fool us into thinking we are evolving and growing, when in fact all we are growing is our ego. Some psychologists have pointed out that the self-enhancement that occurs through spiritual practices can lead to the “I'm enlightened and you're not” syndrome and spiritual bypass, by which people seek to use their spiritual beliefs, practices and experiences to avoid genuine contact with their psychological “unfinished business.” In my recent book Transcend, I call it "pseudo-transcendence"— transcendence built on a very shaky foundation.”

Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America And Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own a conversation [LINK]- Watching Dr. Eddie Glaude and Dr. West talk about their love of James Baldwin is the palette cleanse you need. 

The Secret Internet of TERFs [LINK]- “For years, r/GenderCritical, the group Fain joined, was the internet’s largest and most recognizable anti-trans space, known on Reddit as a “major pipeline” into TERF ideology. That abruptly changed in June, however, when r/GenderCritical disappeared from Reddit. The cataclysmic events of 2020 had pushed all major social-media platforms into content-moderation crisis mode—compelling them to adopt a new dedication to removing misinformation and hate speech, adding friction to prevent harassment and viral conspiracy theories. Reddit responded to pressure from its users in the midst of the Black Lives Matter protests by introducing an overhauled content policy that contained specific rules about hate speech. Its implementation resulted in an automatic ban for r/GenderCritical.”

LUTZE SIGHTINGS:

Feminist Hotdog Podcast: S4 Episode 5: The Social Justice Doula [LINK]- I had the pleasure of being on the podcast of a recent former coaching client of mine. This was a very thoughtful conversation between two feminists.  

decomp. [LINK]- I guest-edited a literary zine titled: Twin Futures Black Resistance and Indigenous Sovereignty

LISTENING:

The Songs My Mother Taught Me [LINK]-is a Spotify playlist of Fannie Lou Hamer singing songs she learned from her mother. Hamer used song as an organizing tool, and we are infinitely blessed to have these recordings at our disposal. 

Chez Baldwin[LINK]- This is a Spotify playlist made up of the vinyl records found in the Venice home Baldwin. 

Lolita Podcast [LINK]- This is a podcast based on the book Lolita written by Vladimir Nobokov. It is a smart, well-researched feminist reading of the tragically misunderstood book. I am slowly making my way through it, and I am enjoying it immensely.  

My Gothic Dissertation [LINK]- This is the first dissertation made in podcast form. The author uses 19th-century gothic literature to contextualize the plight of a grad student in pursuit of a Ph.D. It does an excellent job of talking to grad students and the general public at the same time. 

From Woke to Work: Why Empathy is Not Enough w/ Dr. Chandra Prescod-Weinstein  [LINK]- I am smitten by Dr. Prescod-Weistein’s brain, and I tend to listen to her and read her whenever I can; this is a timely conversation. 

ANNOUNCEMENTS

A video of a Black girl being violently slammed to the ground by a school resource officer has been viewed over 70k times. This harm happened in Osceola County, which is three hours away from Miami. My comrade/accountability partner/ sister-friend, who is also the Executive Director of S.O.U.L Sisters Leadership Collective Wakumi Douglas and members of her team spent part of their Black futures month protesting, advocating, and caring for the community and the young people harmed by this state violence. 

My ask is simple, please give to the family directly and give to S.O.U.L Sisters Leadership Collective. We must fund Black futures and healing! 

Funds go directly to the family: Cashapp: $MuffinNana / PayPal: Jameshabracey@yahoo.com 

S.O.U.L Sisters Leadership Collective: DONATE

Newsletter #17

These offerings and musings are currently taking place on the ancestral, traditional, and stolen lands of the Seminole, Miccosukee, and Tequesta First Nations. These lands known as Miami.

These are stolen lands built by stolen people

Credit to Roza Nozari (@yallaroza) on instagram for this beautiful piece which they created with Warner Music for Pride. Nozari writes “this art is created around Kylie Minogue's "All The Lovers" - - against a black backdrop. Head over to @warnermusic @warnermusicuk to learn more about the incredible artists connected to this virtual Pride Installation.”

“I Hope We Choose Love”

“Love for the survivors, love for the perpetrators, love for the survivors who have perpetrated, and the perpetrators who have survived. Love for the community that has failed us all. We live in poison. The planet is dying. We can choose love. Even in the midst of despair, there is always a choice. I hope we choose love.”- Kai Cheng Thom from the essay and book titled I Hope We Choose Love

Love is not the thing we are supposed to lead with within social justice spaces unless we are talking about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In fact if you are not careful merely bringing up love can be a major sociopolitical faux pas. So-called serious thinkers and revolutionaries have no time for love. Love is a distraction or a bourgeois indulgence. Who needs love when we must do the work? I try to stay away from people like this because no one needs a comrade or co-struggler who has an aversion to being with and experiencing love. And let me tell you as a social worker and former organizer if you don’t love people and love them enough to want their liberation even when you don’t like them or agree with their political choices, doing the work is going to be challenging.

It makes sense why many people avoid talks of love in sociopolitical spaces. We want to appear erudite and not fringe. Plus white supremacy has perverted the concept of love and has made it dangerous. And, when I invoke love I am not talking about that vapid neoliberal version of love which is a love that requires unquestioned allegiance and that wants all of its self-centered, self-indulging, and often abusive whims to be validated, and tolerated as proof of being loved and loving. 

In this current context, everything is permissible and permissiveness is seen as the highest form of freedom. Permissiveness is the new repackaged neoliberal version of love. If I love you and if you love me we will allow each other to be unethical, harmful, and undisciplined human beings because that is our right. And the true marker of a North American is our obsession and unwavering fidelity with fulfilling our every right no matter the communal cost or the emotional taxes we will eventually have to pay for our decisions. 

That is not my orientation or definition of love. 

The only definition of love that I work with, think with, and try to somatically embody is the one put forth in the timeless book The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck. In the book, he defines love as “The Will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s or another’s spiritual growth.” Meaning if the relationship is not creating the conditions for me to grow and experience a better version of myself then I do not want it. I do not think we exist to heal each other, but I do believe that the byproduct of being loved and seen is that we do in fact and become more tolerant of the parts of ourselves that we despise which creates healing and makes it easier for us to sit with someone else’s ugly and raggedy while they do their healing work. 

Peck goes on to write, 

“I therefore conclude that the desire to love is not itself love, Love is as love does. Love is an act of will—namely, both an intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love, No matter how much we may think we are loving, if we are in fact not loving, it is because we have chosen not to love and therefore do not love despite our good intentions.”

Those words indict me every time I read them because it makes it clear that my behavior must match my intentions if I want to ensure that I am doing the effortful work of loving. 

So we have survived 2020 a year that was both merciless and merciful. So many life-altering and generational defining things happened this year and we still have so much more to do. How will we be with one another going forward? What has living  through a global pandemic taught you? What has experiencing the racial reckoning of this past summer awaken in you? How will you be different and forever changed by living through this moment? How will those changes color your activism, organizing, and loving?

How are we going to live with the seventy-one million United State-ians who voted for racism and fascism? How are we are going to expand our anti-racist cafeteria table? How will we love each other and doula each other into becoming better citizens and humans?  We will have many strategies for different people, moments, and communities. Our talking points will vary, but whatever it is that we do I hope we choose love. 

VIEWINGS AND READINGS:

NPR Best Book of 2020 Book Concierge [LINK]- for those who read and who are always looking for a new book you are going to love this app designed by the nerdy folks at NPR. 

Therapists and Fans are Turning Against Instagram’s ‘Holistic Psychologist’ [LINK]- “But in the wake of Floyd’s killing, Mintah-Galloway said her perspective on life shifted; she was angry and devastated, looking for solace. “I remember going to LePera’s page, wondering genuinely what she has to say about it, what resources or what work she has to put out regarding this that could be beneficial to me in my pain, to other people I know in their pain. And that's when I saw that she hadn't spoken about it.” Mintah-Galloway said she found this silence hurtful and borderline insulting. So, she dropped a comment on LePera’s most recent post at the time, expressing her disappointment.”

Undrowned- Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals Alexis Pauline Gumbs and adrienne maree brown [LINK]- APG wrote a book about marine mammals through the lens of Black feminist thought and this was a beautiful and insightful interview.

We Will Not Cancel Us Book Release Event with adrienne maree brown [LINK]- this is a great conversation between adrienne maree brown and two other transformative justice practitioners Shira Hassan and Malkia Devich-Cyril centered on her new book. This conversation is a great gut and temperature check for those of us who practice TJ or who are inching closer to wanting to practice TJ.  

BEST OF 2020 LIST:

This month I dug in the crates and went through all the articles, videos, books, and podcast episodes that I shared with you and have compiled a list of my favorite or the most critical content. 

VIDEOS:

1. Kiese Laymon on Masculinity, Body Dysmorphia, Abuse and Addiction [LINK]

2. Debunking Myths About Testerone with Dr. Katrina Karkazis (Instagram video) [LINK]

3. Would Dating Be Easier If I Had a Vagina? Kat Blaque [LINK]

4. Chika NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert [LINK]

5. Racial bypassing in the LatinX community with Lutze Segu (Instagram video) [LINK]

PODCAST EPISODES:

1. The Stakes: There Goes The Neighborhood [LINK]- this series is about climate  gentrification in Miami and our very own homegrown award-winning journalist Nadege Green helped to ensure that the story was told well.

2. Death, Sex, and Money Between Friends:  Your Stories About Race and Friendship [LINK]- because almost none of us know how to do interracial friendships well so it’s helpful to hear how others get it wrong.

3. Longform #378 Ashley C. Ford [LINK]- ACF is my possibility role model her insights about love, money, and writing have been invaluable to me, I cannot believe this was free advice. 

4. The Bottom of the Map: Space is the Place [LINK]- my absolute favorite podcast find of this year that talks about hip-hop from a very nerdy and sociopolitical grounded place. This episode was about the afrofuture and hip-hop.

5. Intercepted: Ruth Wilson Gilmore Makes The Case for Abolition [LINK]- Ruth is the truth and you need to hear her speak and commit her words to memory. 

ARTICLES:

1. You Could Never Misgender Me by Hunter Ashleigh Shackleford [LINK]- “Calling me ‘she/her’ isn’t actually misgendering me. Calling me ‘he/ him’ isn’t misgendering me either. Because my gender isn’t translated through my pronouns, only affirmed by them. I don’t look like pronouns, and pronouns don’t look like me. I don’t perform like pronouns, and pronouns don’t perform like me. My pronouns are a boundary. My pronouns are personal. My pronouns are not gendered.”

2. White Women for Defunding the Police by Showing up for Racial Justice [LINK]- We are white women raised in poor and working class families. We are in full solidarity with the Movement for Black Lives call to defund the police and invest in the services that keep communities safe. We live in the US South, Midwest, Appalachia, East and West Coast, and Canada, in cities, small towns and rurally. We are white women who know that police don’t keep us safe. We are survivors of violence calling for the abolition of police. Our solidarity lies with those most targeted and harmed by policing — Black gender oppressed people, especially Black trans women.”

3. Love A Dish Unpleasant Without All The Ingredients by Da’Shaun Harrison [LINK]- “Then I read bell hooks’ “all about love” for the very first time, and my entire life changed. Through what sociologists call “social institutions,” varying mechanisms teach us about what behavioral rules make up our culture and society. What I learned through family, and religion, and the media, and the government is that it was impossible for queerness and Love to coexist; or, at the very least, that if I wanted to feel loved by my family, friends, and other constituents, I had to lock away the parts of me that needed that Love the most. What hooks taught me, even as I have critiques of how cisheteronormative the book is, is that this is not Love at all. And that revelation wrecked me, but also gave me a new sense of peace.”

4. Whitney Houston and Aaron Hernandez: The Costly Trauma of the Closet by John Casey [LINK]- “Houston and Hernandez were both complicated, high-achieving individuals with many demons — obviously Hernandez’s tribulations were much worse. However, it raises the question, is there a price to be paid for feverishly trying to stay in the closet? Aggressively denying your sexuality is not just about being scarred emotionally, but does it push someone into really dangerous behaviors like hard drugs, rage, and hurting others and/or yourself?”

5. Mourning Sex by Starr Davis [LINK]- “When a Black man dies, I go looking for him inside the body of another Black man And if he’s not in there, I go searching in someone else”

ANNOUNCEMENTS

Merch: Did you see that the Social Justice Doula has launched merch!!!

I have some beautiful limited edition and limited quantity merch you can purchase under the “merch tab.” It is sold in a tote bundle (which includes a button and sticker) or a sticker bundle (3 different stickers).

Support a Black femme’s labor by purchasing this merch, as well as the Black-owned Miami based printing shop that made all our merch, Roots Printing.

New clients: The Social Justice Doula is currently taking on individual clients for 2021. To contact me, visit my website here.

Call for Submissions (extended deadline): “Twin Futures: Black Resistance and Indigenous Sovereignty” 

Guest Edited by Lutze Segu

decomp journal is still accepting submissions of Fiction, Poetry, Non-Fiction, and Media/Art for its first themed zine, “Twin Futures: Black Resistance and Indigenous Sovereignty.” Submissions should take up themes of Black and Indigenous futures while rejecting the false binaries and borders between these two formations. 

Indigenous dispossession and chattel slavery are the two engineered atrocities that created the nation-states known as Canada and The United States (Turtle Island). 

Black people who are the descendants of the enslaved in North America live in the afterlife of slavery, as Saidiya Hartman teaches us; Indigenous/Afro-Indigenous peoples are still fighting against ongoing settler colonialism. 

Racial reckonings, bold social justice claims, abolition, repair, decolonization, ideas about defunding the police, failed reconciliation attempts, and protest fill the air. A global pandemic is a prescient time to reimagine what is possible. Black liberation and Indigenous sovereignty are inextricably tied. There is no futurity in white supremacy, no sustainable plan for the future. But a future that centers Indigeneity and Blackness is a future where survival on this planet can be made possible. 

 This is a call for writers and artists to help imagine, and thus bring about, these futures.

 Submissions open September 1, 2020 – December 31, 2020. 

Submit here: https://decompjournal.com/submit

Newsletter #16

These offerings and musings are currently taking place on the ancestral, traditional, and stolen lands of the Seminole, Miccosukee, and Tequesta First Nations. These lands known as Miami.

These are stolen lands built by stolen people

“Identities are no longer sacred. Are we ready to admit this now?”

Election purgatory is over. The United States has elected Joseph R. Biden and Kamala Harris as President and Vice President. By selecting Biden-Harris, we have managed as a country to stop the hemorrhaging, but we are still very much in the ICU, and we require major surgery and rehabilitation and guess what? We do not have insurance. #ThisisUS

So we have a new administration, a centrist and a very reformist one. Now what?

For those of us who are serious about social justice, anti-racism, and freedom that far exceeds liberal notions and electoral politics, we already know that we have lots of work. The conditions of our work have changed, but our demands have not. Our strategies may have changed, but our vision for the future has not. It is important to note that there is a growing faction of the Democratic Party that is progressive, not just in name but in praxis. There is also a very Left contingency that struggles to create a viable Leftist movement in the United States. On a federal level, the ticket does not represent this burgeoning bloc that crosses race, ethnicity, class, and geography. The Clintonian, Pelosi, Obama, Clyburn, and 94’ Crime Bill Democrats must move to the Left if they want to be in political solidarity with most of the party. This election cycle may be the last one where the Democrats, mentioned above, can exert their power and force a moderate on the national ticket. 

Representation, reform, fake civility, and status quo is not justice!

 An anti-racist, anti-fascist, working-class coalition came together to make this victory happen. This coalition centered the collective a courtesy not afforded to this same coalition. Black people showed up for a nation that still refuses to absorb us fully into its body politic. Indigenous folks showed up to vote for a nation-state that is currently enacting colonial violence upon them and ignoring their treaties. Once again, Black, Indigenous, and Afro-Indigenous folks have proven that there is no hope for the future if we are not the architects and engineers of these future(s). 

As I type this, Trump has not conceded, and there appears to be no real sign that Trumpism has receded either. 

President-elect Biden and many of his supporters are making loud and bold claims about healing. There can be no healing if there is not, first and foremost, a reckoning. Merely having a democratic presidency does not translate to healing and better material conditions for those this country makes vulnerable. Let us never forget that Black Lives Matter came to be under the presidency of the first Black Democratic President. Black people of conscience argued, organized, marched, defended the first Black family, critiqued the Obama administration over its stunning and staggering deportation numbers, and rolled our eyes when Obama would make classist anti-Black remarks about Pookie n’em. Black people did not go to brunch under the Obama presidency, and I hope the anti-racist faction does not go to brunch either just because your candidate won. 

As we are performing the postmortem on the election, there are some key things that we must confront and contend with if we are going to move forward together in a good way.  

The one major lesson to be learned in this election cycle is that the election of president-elect Joe Biden was not a repudiation of Trump. Meaning the people did not reject Trump wholesale on the contrary, he energized and gained new voters. His racism, lies, mismanagement of the coronavirus, and telling the Proud Boys to ‘stand back and stand by’ appealed to many Americans. Seventy- million people voted for Donald Trump. I am deeply concerned by this number and how these numbers will unfold in our human interactions and relationships over the next four years.

The second major thing we should concern ourselves with is with the question of who, who are the people who voted for Trump? 

The best place to start will be with the New York Times Exit Polls the pictures above highlight three essential things: the amount of suburban white women who voted for Trump went up, the number of Black people who voted for Trump went up, and the amount of LGBTQ folks who voted for Trump went up.

 I think it is important to note that this was a small sampling of people, and therefore, we must be prudent in the ways we interpret these numbers. With that said, the numbers do tell a story. All of these groups voting for Trumpism further solidifies one of the many truisms that I often verbalize, which is that identities are not sacred. What does this mean? It means that being Black, a white woman, being an immigrant, or gay is not necessarily a prerequisite for rejecting Trumpism.

The results prove that Democrats can no longer say that the GOP cannot attract new voters or people of color. Many different bodies and identities will show up and make themselves available if the right dog whistles are used. Our neighbors, colleagues, pediatrician, butcher, nanny, mailperson, or our favorite play auntie is far more homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic, classist, racist, anti-Black, and is more of an anti-abortion zealot than you think. White supremacy has no issue with practicing multiculturalism for the sake of maintaining white supremacy. 

Knowing this, what will it look like for us to live with our fellow United State-ians for the next four years? Are we ready for the 2024 backlash? As we get closer to the holiday season, what strategies do we have to engage our Trump-voting family members? (Because everyone has one no matter your race and ethnicity). We must build and expand our anti-racist and anti-fascist coalition if we make a significant change in this country. The people who want to defund the police, secure medicare for all, forgive student loan debt, etc are not going anywhere and neither are the people who wish to enshrine white supremacy and adopt fascism. 

It’s going to be a long four years. 

VIEWINGS AND READINGS: 

“I Had To Breakup with my Columbian and French Identities to Get Sober by Priscila Garcia-Jacquier [LINK]- “Getting sober meant I would erase in me the very things my grandmothers were hoping to pass down to their great-grandchildren; that tradition and celebration with food and drink. But if I wanted to stay sober, I had to deconstruct what my cultural performance was rooted in. It turns out that, for me, this was about so much more than food and drink.”

“Is The Shade Room Too Toxic To Function” by Micheal Blackmon [LINK]- “Culture critic Kimberly Foster, in a since-deleted tweet back in early February, summed up the issue many folks have with the site: “I want to support The Shaderoom because I respect the founder's hustle,” Foster wrote. “If it was just an aggregator of celebrity mess, it would be fine. But the platform monetizes misogynoir, homophobia, transphobia, classism on purpose. They know exactly what they're doing.”

“How Saidiya Hartman Retelles the History of Black Life” by Alexis Okeowo [LINK]- “In 2017, Arthur Jafa directed a video for the Jay-Z single “4:44,” an apology for the rapper’s romantic failings. Two and a half minutes in, a woman walks down a New York street, wearing a pensive, purposeful expression: Hartman. “I was totally awkward and stiff,” she said, laughing as she recalled the filming. “She had a certain primness, properness,” Jafa acknowledged. “But it’s an image of a person thinking in motion.” When Jay-Z saw a cut of the video, he asked who Hartman was. Jafa explained that she is “the archangel of Black precarity.” Her presence, he said, “may not register to ninety-five per cent of his audience now, but five years down the line, ten years down the line, twenty years down the line, that’s going to be one of the most powerful moments of the video.”

“Giving Up On Cleopatra” by Kaitlyn Greenridge [LINK]- “I knew I should long for her but Cleopatra never appealed to me. Why should I find empowerment in the story of a woman forced to seduce her colonizers so that she would not be subjugated, who ended up losing in the end anyways? All because I was told she was beautiful? So it was a relief in high school when I learned that Cleopatra was probably not Black but Greek, mixed with other ethnicities. That she was maybe not even beautiful, but noticeably homely, and that her charm lay more in her ability to flirt than anything else made all the lore about her feel like even more of a bait and switch.”

LUTZE SIGHTING’S 

Women Who Lead Conference: State of Social Justice in South Florida [LINK]

Racial Justice with Lutze Segu [LINK]

LISTENING 

Coffee & Books: “ Sexual Citizens” [LINK]- this is great episode with two scholars who wrote about sexual assault on college campuses. I learned so much from the conversation and want to read the book. 

Resistance [LINK]- this a new podcast about our current political moment. I love the podcasts that Gimlet creates, but I need to listen to more episodes before I hit the subscribe button. 

Finding Our Way: Remembering with Alexis Pauline Gumbs [LINK]- APG is one of my favorite Black feminist thinkers, and she has a new book out on Black feminism and marine mammals. This was a delightful listen. 

Do The Work: Silence is a Statement [LINK]- I do not think I am the target audience for this podcast, but some may find it useful. This episode is about an interracial friendship and how the racial reckonings this summer impacted two women. I have lots of critiques, but it ain’t my show. I plan on listening to more episodes. 

Being Seen [LINK]- this is my absolute new favorite podcast it centers on Black gay, bi, and trans men experiences. It complicates our understanding of representation it is sonically beautiful and the conversations are life-affirming. It is the brainchild of the writer Darnell Moore. I have listened to every episode thus far; if you are wondering how much I love it.

 ANNOUCEMENTS 

Call for Submissions: “Twin Futures: Black Resistance and Indigenous Sovereignty” 

Guest Edited by Lutze Segu

decomp journal is now accepting submissions of Fiction, Poetry, Non-Fiction, and Media/Art for its first themed zine, “Twin Futures: Black Resistance and Indigenous Sovereignty.” Submissions should take up themes of Black and Indigenous futures while rejecting the false binaries and borders between these two formations. 

 Indigenous dispossession and chattel slavery are the two engineered atrocities that created the nation-states known as Canada and The United States (Turtle Island). 

 Black people who are the descendants of the enslaved in North America live in the afterlife of slavery, as Saidiya Hartman teaches us; Indigenous/Afro-Indigenous peoples are still fighting against ongoing settler colonialism. 

 Racial reckonings, bold social justice claims, abolition, repair, decolonization, ideas about defunding the police, failed reconciliation attempts, and protest fill the air. A global pandemic is a prescient time to reimagine what is possible. Black liberation and Indigenous sovereignty are inextricably tied. There is no futurity in white supremacy, no sustainable plan for the future. But a future that centers Indigeneity and Blackness is a future where survival on this planet can be made possible. 

 This is a call for writers and artists to help imagine, and thus bring about, these futures.

Submissions open September 1, 2020 – December 1, 2020. 

Submit here: https://decompjournal.com/submit

Newsletter #15

These offerings and musings are currently taking place on the ancestral, traditional, and stolen lands of the Seminole, Miccosukee, and Tequesta First Nations. These lands known as Miami.

These are stolen lands built by stolen people

photo by Matt Rourke

“What is your Anti-Racist Safety Plan?”

“Those of us who believe in human rights and equality have to imagine resistance beyond just words, symbolism, and attitudes. Resistance should also carry a realistic outlook that includes a self-defense strategy.”

- Zoe Samudzi and William C. Anderson 

On Tuesday, September 28th, 2020, during the first presidential debate, the current occupant of the White House was asked by the moderator Chris Wallace to condemn white supremacy and, more specifically, the Proud Boys. Trump responded by saying, “stand back and stand by,” to which the Proud Boys, a white power organization, took that for what it was, which was a clear mandate. 

Immediately the pundit class did what it does, and regular folks weighed in on social media. For the most part, those words were taken semi-seriously by both racist and anti-racist. It’s been a couple of weeks since those words and lots have happened.

The question I want to ask those of you who call yourself liberals, progressive, left, left of left, human rights advocates, etc., what is your anti-racist safety plan?

Do you have a plan for how you will protect your material body, imagination, and the bodies of the people whose humanity is not up for debate to you alive? And no, this is not me being hyperbolic. Scholars who study white power movements, anti-fascist activists, and organizers are concerned. Therefore, I, too, am concerned.

Our adversaries want a white ethnostate and wish to assert white power and dominance and use all available means to ensure that this happens. These are people who have decided to embrace racism as a means to get their needs met the same way you, dear reader, have decided to embrace anti-racism to get your needs met. Everyone is making informed decisions. There is maybe a small cadre of folks probably trapped in the cult of white supremacy, but that doesn’t minimize the reign of terror that they are ready to subject us all to at any minute. Our opponents are not wavering, and they have clear strategies. My question to you and it does not matter your race, class, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, etc., what are you willing to do to protect your body, your comrades, the planet, and all the fauna and flora?

I am not interested in being an alarmist, but even if I were the current occupant of the White House has already rung that alarm. 

The time to be alarmed is here; we might as well let that energy in and use it in an instructive way. 

This moment in time keeps reminding me of the prophetic words of the poet Gil-Scot Heron who said, “the revolution will not be televised.” As USians many of us expect that Wolf Blitzer will dramatically come on the air one day with a breaking news update and announce to us all uniformly that the “revolution has started.” But that is not how all revolutions work. In some parts of the world, yes, someone sets themselves on fire, people occupy a town square, and direct confrontation happens. For too many of us, we are looking and waiting for some special symbolism or one last egregious act that we assume will be the thing that no one can deny then, and only then we will all be able to say that “x event was the night the revolution started.” 

Well, boo, that is one way things can go down. 

Currently, the reproductive organs of the undocumented in ICE custody are being removed without their consent, children are still being stolen and disappeared by the federal government, premature death is part of the daily fabric of Black life, over 200k USians have died from COVID-19, sociopolitical ideas like defund and abolish the police have permeated the mainstream consciousness of the nation, Roe v. Wade is on the brink of being destroyed if Amy Coney Barrett is appointed to SCOTUS, and you have wealthy billionaires like McKenzie Scott, the ex-wife of Jeff Bezos giving away her millions to organizations doing racial justice work.

Beloved, if this ain’t the revolution, this is most certainly the previews, and any minute now, the movie is going to start!

 So below, I have compiled a list of things I think we should be considering. It’s not robust, and it is not meant to be. My goal here is that you will read this and take seriously that no one is safe in a post-genocide society where Black people are still living in the afterlife of chattel slavery. And because no one is safe under these conditions, what is your strategy to combat the real engineered violence that white supremacy wants to visit upon all of us who dare to stand its way. 

1. What is your actual relationship to violence – The United States is a nation-state founded on genocide, rape, chattel slavery, and many wars. Although I am an abolitionist and I am against imperialism, I am not a pacifist. I will knuck if you buck! If white supremacists took over your neighborhood or apartment building tomorrow, what would you do? Which of your neighbors would you protect? Would you take up arms? Do you have a sense of how you would react in a situation so dire? Now is the time to know what your answer is. 

2. What do you believe, and how deep is your belief system?- In the face of violence and severe conflict, white people must ask themselves would they be conscientious enough to betray white supremacy? For Black, Indigenous, Afro-Indigenous, and other people of color, we need to ask ourselves, are we principled enough to not collude and betray our people for a room in the master’s house? So the real question is, are you a Peter or are you a Judas? Or are you a Mary Magdalene, the 13th disciple who never ever folded or doubted a minute? 

3. Who are your people?- Who would you protect? If it came down to it, which bodies and people would you harbor and protect? In other words, do you have a disability justice framework? Remember always the words of Mia Mingus, who writes, “We cannot fight for liberation without a deep, clear understanding of disability, ableism and disability justice. The bodies of our communities are under siege by forces that leverage violence and ableism at every turn. Ableism is connected to all of our struggles because it undergirds notions of whose bodies are considered valuable, desirable and disposable. How do we build across our communities and movements so that we are able to fight for each other without leveraging ableism?” Does your revolution include disabled folks?

   We know how to prepare for hurricanes, fires, flash floods, all other kinds of inclimate weather, and now even a global pandemic, but do we know how to prepare for white supremacist violence that is waiting on standby? 

VIEWINGS AND READINGS 

The Body Is Not An Apology by Sonya Renee Taylor- a great read for those wanting to understand how white supremacy dictates our relationship to our bodies and for those serious about disrupting that relationship. 

After the Rain: Gentle Reminders for Healing, Courage, and Self-love by Alexandra Elle- I am sure you have seen the poetry, musings, and self-love affirmations of Alex Elle on Instagram she has a new book out and it is currently my bedtime reading. 

Change: A World Without Prisons, Ruth Wilson Gilmore & Mariame Kaba in Conversation [LINK]– Mariame Kaba and RWG are the TRUTH. I have already listened to this talk twice and plan on listening to it again soon. If you ever wanted to hear two Black abolitionist thinkers be in conversation and see how the show Gilmore Girls play into it this is for you.  

Would Dating Be Easier if I had a Vagina? [LINK]- Kat Blaque is a Black trans woman who made a video about how it is to date while trans and I really appreciated the this truth.  

Ride Together, Die Together :White Supremacist Capitalist for Life by Mamademics [LINK]- “How can I teach about the dangers of white supremacy but ignore the fact capitalism is its best friend? And yet, how can I provide for my family without charging a reasonable price? These are the questions that flood my head when I’m trying to decide if I want to continue doing social justice work. I need to be able to do this work in a way that is both ethical and allows me to have the things I need and some of what I want.” 

National Book Foundation Announces the Final Literature for Justice Titles [LINK]- “The National Book Foundation announced selections in the third and final year of the Literature for Justice program (LFJ). This year the list includes seven titles that shed light on mass incarceration in the United States. Also announced today are the five committee members tasked with selecting the titles and elevating their visibility. This committee works alongside the Foundation as part of Literature for Justice, a three-year campaign that seeks to contextualize the issue of mass incarceration through literature, creating an accessible and thought-provoking collection of books crafted for broad public consumption.”

Ellen DeGeneres and the Many Chances  We Give Famous White Women [LINK]- “When white women make mistakes, they can lean on self-deprecating jokes; they can lean on the goodwill of audiences; they can lean on their own humanity and the fact that they’re always learning. And it works because we have been socialized to see their humanity.”

Kim Parker, The “Sassy Fat Black Friend” Trope, and The Pervasiveness of Fatphobia in Media [LINK]-  “Let’s just address it now: Kim is a fat character. She is a small fat, but she is still fat. The writers of the show make this clear in the very first episode by having one of Moesha’s classmates call Kim “fat,” in a derogatory sense, and make jokes about her weight. Moesha and Niecy sit back and laugh instead of defending her—an experience all-too-familiar for so many fat people. Kim is written as a fat character, and because of that, we have engaged her as such since the 90s. Her fatness is constantly made part of the joke. In fact, it feels like the character itself was created out of an anti-Black exaggeration of how fat Black women are perceived. And in doing this they make the thinner and/or lighter character look “better” by comparison. Kim was never meant to be the character audiences wanted to be but rather an example of the “ghetto” fat Black girls that society looks down on. Showing fatness as a moral failure, fat characters are made out to be cautionary tales of “unrespectable” Black girls. Using fat characters to prop up thin ones as morally better people.” 

Book Review: White Fragility by Rebecca Green [LINK]- “Diangelo tells her readers to internalize a list of assumptions she created when being called out on racism – including “Whites are/ I am unconsciously invested in racism… nothing exempts me from the forces of racism” (p. 142-3). She says that if white people adopted these assumptions, our institutions would change and become less racist (p. 144). The implication that white people simply changing their assumptions would change the system of mass incarceration or racist housing discrimination is baffling.”

Kenyon Review Mourning Sex by Starr Davis [LINK]- “When a Black man dies, I go looking for him inside the body of another Black man. And if he’s not in there, I go searching in someone else If he’s my own blood, I go looking for more blood If he’s of no relation at all, then I go looking for relations.”

Testosterone with Dr. Katina Karkazis Instagram video [LINK]- This is a great conversation that helps us divest from the gender binary and attempt to break with our addiction to putting a gender on hormones. 

On Jessica Krug’s Blackphising & the Mirror We Run From [LINK]- “Some Latines love to say “light skin” when speaking about White Latines who obviously have White skin. As a light-skinned Black woman, it is completely troubling when folks who are 5-8 shades lighter than me think we both belong to the same pigmented category. This is also a co-opting of Black vernacular that has been used to reference shades of Black skin.”

LISTENING

Cite Black Women Podcast: S2E9: Race, Technology, and Abolition [LINK] -The scholar Ruha Benjamin’s work studies the intersection of data and racism.

Is It Time To Say R.I.P. To ‘P.O.C’? [LINK]- This is a necessary conversation that we all should be thinking about critically. 

We Insist: 2020s Protest Music [LINK]- for those looking for protest music NPR has put together an eclectic playlist for you. 

Unlocking Us Brene Brown with Sonya Renee Taylor [LINK]- a talk on body shame, radical self-love, and social justice that connects how we think about our bodies and oppression.

Anzalduing It S4 EP 16: On White Latinx Fragility [LINK]- Finally a group of white Latinx folks talked about own brand of fragility a phenomenon I have been talking about privately for a minute.

ANNOUCEMENTS

I am giving a keynote at FIU on 10/23 and it will be masterclass on how to lead from anti-racist feminist space and I will talk about the death of “the girl boss.” Get tickets [here].

Halloween night I will be part of a panel for South Florida People of Color who will be screening Get Out and discussing the horrors of racism. Event information coming soon.

I have another surprise for Halloween, if you want to be one of the first to know, subscribe to my newsletter below!

Newsletter #14

These offerings and musings are currently taking place on the ancestral, traditional, and stolen lands of the Seminole, Miccosukee, and Tequesta First Nations. These lands known as Miami.

These are stolen lands built by stolen people

Taken Jan 9th, 2016 at the Perez Art Museum by me.

“the black interior”

I remember the first time that I heard that both Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald would paint President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle for their official White House portraits. I remember thinking that this was historical, just as historic as the first Black family. I was familiar with Kehinde's work and had the pleasure of taking in his art in person at the Perez Museum here in South FL. The same Wiley portrait that was in the Perez was also a fixture on a billboard on US1. That billboard marked a very particular part of my queer development. For a time, I would travel between my home in downtown Miami and the Grove to see my partner at the time. While I was in the car, I would wonder if the white people understood how lucky they were to look at a Kehinde Wiley piece while they sat in that treacherous US1 traffic. 

I was dating a Black woman who thought she was Beth Porter from The L Word *eye-roll please*. In essence, I was dating one of those quintessential "I like art types," and I got a crash course in contemporary Black art. Looking back on it now, I am grateful for this lesson that is about the only thing I learned without pain in that relationship. 

Confession: I, too, am one of those "I like art types." As Jay-Z said, "you are who you are before you got here." 

 The thing that I love so much about Kehinde Wiley's work is that he paints Black people in his image. Meaning he paints Black people as sees us and not how whiteness has tried to train Black people to see ourselves. In Kehinde's Black imagination, Black people are majestic, take up space, have an inner world that is very present in the eyes, and we are a sight to behold. 

Black people also live freely and unencumbered by the white gaze in Amy Sherald's imagination. In October of 2019 one of my favorite Black culture writers and podcasters Jenna Wortham, interviewed Black women artists Amy Sherald, Lorna Simpson, and Simon Leigh. In the interview, Sherald introduced me to an idea that would intellectually set me free and give me a new language to talk about my work, which is the same experience she described having when she came across this language. Sherald says this about her work, 

I think my work represents and connects to the journey that I'm on as a woman and as a black woman, and as a Southern black woman, because that's a separate identity as well, and trying to shed all these external directives — from social norms, from expectations from my family, from my all-white school, from religion and popular culture — that influenced how I think about myself. My work was a way of processing an identity that was given to me. Being told whom to worship, what to wear, how to act in front of white people. All those were things that were projected on me. A lot of my identity was performed. I realized that I wanted to do away with all that, and then I tried to figure out who I really was — who am I outside of all of these things?

I think that's essentially what my paintings are about. A reflection of something other than what's projected out in the world. I'm focused on the way that we experience ourselves, our interiority. It's that private journey, the interior space, and stepping away from the public journey of Blackness, and how people consume who we are, what we make, food, culture and all of that.

Interiority noun

1. the quality of being interior or inward.

• inner character or nature; subjectivity.

Finding this word turned on a switch in me and gave my understanding of Blackness more depth, weight, nuance, and textures. 

The interior lives of Black people is a subject matter that haunts me. At the core of anti-Blackness is the belief that Black people are subhuman and subhuman beings do not have complicated interior lives. Therefore Black people cannot have nuanced understandings of life and have philosophical answers to the quotidian mundane violence of white supremacy that Black people must metabolize daily. 

You see, this comes up when conversations about defunding the police enter the conversation. Many white people cannot fathom that Black people have loved ones who are officers, have complicated feelings about the criminal justice system, or that safety is an issue that also concerns us. People think Black people who practice abolition do so because we somehow are not tethered to the real material conditions of life. It is because Black people have made a home with our actual material circumstances under white supremacy and know our interior selves intimately is why and how we can imagine new worlds. The Black woman scholar who gave Amy Sherald the framework and language to describe her work is Elizabeth Alexander, who defines the black interiority as, 

"The black interior is not an inscrutable zone, nor colonial fantasy. Rather, I see it as an inner space in which black artists have found selves that go far, far beyond the limited expectations and definitions of what black is, isn't, or should be."

I often think some non-Black people of color and white people who call themselves antiracist believe that Black people have interior lives similar to dogs. When a dog looks at you intently, every human has had the experience of thinking to themselves, "I wonder what the dog is thinking?" but you do not worry about it too much because you understand and accept that you are the human being. You are the superior one in this equation, and whatever the dog is thinking would not be essential or would matter to your life. Besides, the dog exists to comfort the human. It is best for this relationship rooted in dominance that sometimes involves care that the human does not know what the dog thinks because it would probably fuck up the human's vibe. This is what white paternalism feels like to me. I exist to make white people better, but my real thoughts and concerns do not matter because it will always fuck up the vibes. I have been in the presence of white and non-Black people of color who I knew cared about my physical safety and who would never want me to come to a tragic end similar to #BreonnaTaylor. However, these people were unable to reconcile that I, too, had a rich interior life and that I also could feel like them and, in most instances, feel much more deeply than them.

The black interior is that place and space that is not touched by anti-Blackness or defined by it. The black interior is that space inside Black people where we know ourselves to be intrinsically valuable, worthy, and powerful. That space gave us The Haitian Revolution, where Harriet Tubman went in her dreams to find the coordinates of freedom, the place where Thriller, Purple Rain, and Lemonade were born. 

So much of what we know about Blackness is rooted in the external. What the state does to Black people, what the white gaze thinks of Black people, what non-Black people think about Black people, and on those rare occasions when we listen to Black people we listen to them talk only about how their Blackness is poked, prodded, and provoked by white supremacy. Blackness under the white gaze is bound up in costumes and performance. This is what gave rise to Rachel Dolezal and her sister-in-scam Jess Krug. These white women believed that donning hoop earrings, wearing braids, speaking in African-American vernacular (AAVE), majoring in Black Studies, and sleeping with Black men is all that is needed to be Black.

The black interior is what I see when I look at Amy Sherald's work. Black people look and feel different in her paintings, we look like our inner selves. These days I only want to spend my time with non-Black people who do not struggle with the idea of the black interior and its existence. The kind of people who understand that Black people's inner world needs protecting just as fervently as our bodily sovereignty. 

VIEWINGS AND READINGS 

 I Hope We Choose Love by Kai Cheng Thom- I have never experienced the feeling of picking up a book and saying to myself, “this author wrote my book.” I literally texted a friend these words and she lovingly walked me back from the ledge. I recommend this book to people who are serious about living in integrity and bringing honor to their practice of social justice. 

 As Black As Resistance Finding The Conditions of Liberation by Zoe Samudzi and William C. Anderson -for Black August I read this book that is critically important to those who want to further understand why liberal notions of freedom will never bring about Black liberation. This book reminds us that Black Leftist politics has a long tradition in this country and it must be studied and taken seriously to ensure that Black Lives Matter.  

 On The Record [LINK]- is a documentary available for free on YouTube and is produced by HBO MAX it is chronicling the Drew Dixon a former A&R executive who is accusing Russell Simmons of sexual assult. This documentary is well done and does a good job trying to grapple with the nuances of racism, white supremacy, and sexual assault. Drew Dixon is a musical genius whose career was killed by Russell and L.A. Reid. Drew Dixon built the culture and the culture did not protect Drew. 

 Cripping The Resistance: No Revolution Without Us by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasimha [LINK]-Sometimes during the fascism/ Covid/ racism/ ableism quadruple pandemics  it’s hard for me to think about what my goals are because I’m frozen in fear. But when I stop and can feel into my core, my primary goal as a disabled queer person of color is to survive, and to work to keep my disabled kin and communities alive. “To exist is to resist” is a saying many of us say- all the ways we survive a world that wants to kill us as disabled people is resistance.

 White Women for Defunding the Police by Showing Up for Racial Justice [LINK]- We declare our commitment to abolition feminism and solidarity with gender-oppressed Black people. As white women, we are abolitionists because we feel a moral imperative to abolish the systems that uphold the horrors of white supremacy. We are also abolitionists because we know that the world being built through Black-led abolitionist struggle is one in which our younger selves would have been safer, where our families would have gotten the support we needed to thrive.

 The Invention of Ibram X Kendi and the Ideaological Crises of Our Time by Anthony Monteiro [LINK]- The book’s title, How to Be an Antiracist helps to explain what it’s about. It is a self-help book; a genre preferred by marketers of “cures” of all types. The more recent variant of this genre is the self-care books, marketed to petit bourgeois professionals confused by the chaos and contradictions of modern capitalism. Like most books in this genre they are highly autobiographical. The author himself has been cured of the malady of racism and wishes to share his cure to a wider audience. Kinde optimistically announces, “We can be a racist one minute and an anti-racist the next.” Astonishingly for a Black person, he declares: “I used to be a racist most of the time. I am changing. I am no longer identifying with racists by claiming to be ‘not racist.’ I am no longer speaking through the mask of racial neutrality. I am no longer manipulated by racist ideas to see racial groups as problems. I no longer believe a Black person cannot be racist.” (my italics added.

 Black Women Are Topping The Bestseller Lists. What Took So Long? by Roxanne Fequiere [LINK]- Diversifying our collective bookshelf can’t be something done as a one-time event—we’ll need to relish today’s bright young talent while simultaneously excavating the work of that of several past generations. Without this crucial context, we’ll only ever be partially well-read.

LUTZE SIGHTINGS 

Creating Inclusive Spaces with Gabriela Guzman and Lutze Segu [LINK]

 The Full Set with with Didi Delgado [LINK] (if you want to watch the conversation link here). 

 Deconstructing LatinX Identity with Priscila Garcia-Jacquier [LINK]

 For Real, For Real [LINK]- I am currently hosting a weekly show on FB live with the homie Krystina Francois and you can catch past episodes on my IGTV 

LISTENING 

 Drew Dixon’s Impact [LINK]- this is a Spotify playlist of all the genius that Drew Dixon helped create this women was the TRUTH. 

 Unholier Than Thou Reverend Warnock and the case for the Religious Left [LINK]-I appreciate the way this episode troubled our understanding of religion and who gets to lay claim to it politically. I for one would be very excited about a religious left movement. 

 How To Citizen with Baratunde Prelude: Revolutionary Love is How to Citizen with Valerie Kaur [LINK]- I appreciated this very hopeful conversation about how to expand our understanding of citizenship. 

 At The Intersection: Gene Demby and the Anti-Blackness of Black Exceptionalism [LINK] -This title says it all. 

 Toward Black anarchaism [LINK]- “The interview is essential listening for anyone who desires the abolition of the state and white supremacy alike.”

ANNOUNCEMENTS  

Brielle’s Protection Fund [LINK]- A Black trans woman is still in need of our monetary support. 

I am guest editor for a literary journal that is wanting to highlight the mutuality of Black and Native futures [LINK]

 Steps To End Prisons and Policing: A mixtape on Transformative Justice [LINK]- I bought this course, I have not started it yet, but I am exctited to make time and dive into it. 

Newsletter #13

These offerings and musings are currently taking place on the ancestral, traditional, and stolen lands of the Seminole, Miccosukee, and Tequesta First Nations. These lands known as Miami.

These are stolen lands built by stolen people

“The Nuances of Karen or the other Karen”

In the beginning, there was Miss Anne, and she begat Becky, who begat Karen. Karen is the new name and iteration for a familiar white woman who is also supremely dangerous. Karen comes from a lineage of white women who have no issue weaponizing their white femininity as a tool to get you fired, arrested, publicly shamed, or lynched. The podcast Code Switch recently did an episode on the genealogy of Karen. 

If you have ever watched the movie The Color Purple or 12 Year's A Slave, then you are familiar with the character representation of Miss Anne and her form of terrorism in literature and film. 

White supremacy is often presented in a gendered way, and that gender tends to be male. In many of our hearts, minds, and sociopolitical understanding, white, male, able-bodied, heterosexual men are seen as the embodiment of racism and as seductive and satisfying as that narrative is; maybe it is not valid. As I stated last month in my essay, we must stop conflating identities with our targets. White supremacy is the target, not white skin or people. 

Although white supremacy is not exclusive to a gender, white supremacy does organize our current understanding of gender and sex and the politics surrounding them. Indigenous scholars refer to this as settler sexuality. The white settlers who stole this land and stole Africans and enslaved them had a very narrow understanding of sex and gender. They used gender as a tool of subjugation and oppression against Indigenous people first and ultimately against enslaved Africans. White supremacy is obsessed with an order of the world that posits that monogamy, heteropatriarchy, and the gender binary as superior ways of being and that the most acceptable form of these behaviors is embodied by only white people. This narrow understanding of gender means that gender gets coded as white. 

What does this mean? This means that white women who may often feel powerless in many areas of their lives have a vested interest in buying into and performing their white femininity within the confines of white supremacy. Karen gets to feel like Helen of Troy and that is a seductive form of power and cache for a person who does not have an antiracist gender analysis. The same way we tend to think white supremacy is coded as male when we do finally talk about white women who espouse white supremacy, we tend to think she is a default Republican. Meaning she is part of the 52% who voted for 45. But that is also too simple a reading. I know lots of liberal, progressive, and maybe even leftist white women who are Karen's. Will SJ Karen call the police on Black people no, but will they police you yes! Will she call you a nigger to your face no, but will she support policies that further ghettoize Black folks yes. 

Nuance. 

Below I compiled a list of Karen's I know who are very much part of the social justice community; this type of Karen does not get analyzed or dissected enough. 

This is not a robust list:  

1. Karen the TERF- she is transphobic and believes feminism gives her a right to be transphobic. She totally missed the part about feminism being a gender liberation project. She is obsessed with the gender binary and bad hot takes. Her patron saint is J.K. Rowling. 

2. The Spiritual Karen-engages in toxic positivity thinks oppression is a choice. She is smart enough to know she can’t say this out loud, but you know she is thinking this very thought based on her vapid responses about anti-Blackness. Her spirituality has no sociopolitical underpinnings. She thinks dehumanizing Black women by making us her savior is sisterhood. Her spirituality is rooted in neoliberalism, which means she exploits and commodifies her ONE native or Black ancestor for clout and monetary gain. And above all thinks, we are going to love and light our way out of white supremacy. Lots of talk about shadow work, but shows very little interest in dealing with her white supremacist shadow.

 3. White LatinX Karen- LOVES to racially bypass, meaning she refuses to accept that she is white. She thinks that ignoring her conquistador ancestors in her lineage and the one who stares back at her in the mirror is revolutionary. Only a white woman would aggressively deny their whiteness. This type of Karen is all for Black Lives Matter as long as she gets to Rachel Dolezal. 

4. Around the way girl Karen-grew up listening to Black music, takes part in Black culture and she will get in fights with other white folks over Black Lives Matter. However, inherently she thinks she is better than Black women, prettier than Black women and dates Black men who openly display misogynoir. Even if she doesn't date Black men, she sleeps well at night, knowing that white supremacy puts her on top of the desirability pyramid. 

5. Capitalist Karen, aka Lean In Karen- thinks a women-centric form of capitalism will cure racism, and for 4 easy payments of $10,000, she will show you how in her new online course. CK doesn't understand that for Black Lives to Matter, racial capitalism must be dismantled, she is too busy trying to sell you the cure to be bothered with facts or books. 

6. Americorps / Peace corps / TFA /Philanthropy / Non-profit Karen - does not interrogate how these very systems create the problem and are part of the problem. Uses her proximity to low-income youth and communities of color to launch her career and low key, she feels like she is going to run for office at any minute. She loves the idea of social impact and believes racism can be solved through programs, grants, and silent auctions. Racism is okay with her as long she gets to have her yearly gala and women's empowerment brunch. 

 7. PTA Karen- practices opportunity hoarding AND loves educational segregation. She will sacrifice thousands of Black and non-Black children of color to ensure that her Chad gets to rule the world. Karen has divested from public schools completely. She sends her kid to an elite private school that exists to enshrine inequality. If she cannot afford the tuition, she sends her kid to a good public school that maintains educational segregation within its walls because Chad is going to become a Supreme court justice by any means necessary. 

 Who am I missing here? Do you see yourself on this list?

It is only through having a rigorous antiracism practice you will be able to extricate your inner Karen. Your inner Karen is not your friend and she is stopping you from creating the kind of solidarity needed to bring about liberation for all.

VIEWINGS AND READINGS 

*The X in Latinx is a Wound, Not a Trend by Alan Palaez Lopez [LINK] - “While the argument across Latin American millennial media is that the “X” is supposed to neutralize the Spanish language and everyone should adopt it, I argue that “Latinx” is not for everyone. Transgender and gender-nonconforming Latin Americans living in the U.S. have used the “X” as a reminder that their bodies are still experiencing a colonization invested in disciplining them to fit a standard gender identity, gender presentation, sexual orientation, and a particular sexual performance. For this reason, it is important for us to not normalize “Latinx,” but to engage in critical reflection of how violence against Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex, Asexual + (LGBTQIA+) Latin Americans has been accepted by Latin American people to the point that LGBTQIA+ Latinxs have had to create a linguistic intervention in the hopes that they can live a livable life.” *please note this article is old.

The Queer and Poor Aesthetic by Shak’ar Mujukian [LINK]- “Our community has a phobia of privilege—especially when it’s ours. Because privilege isn’t cool anymore, we’re taking great measures to downplay ours and only selectively highlight the ways in which we’re oppressed. Because class is relatively invisible and awkward, it’s easiest to hide—especially when we’re marginalized in other ways.” *please note this article is old. 

Carceral Feminism, Femonationalism, and Quarantine by Caren Holmes [LINK] - “As stated by Olufemi, abolitionist feminists seek to use alternative methods aimed at ending harm for good, and that “No other approach takes seriously the idea that violence is not an inevitability.” When we limit our political imaginaries to the capacities of the state, we not only fail to address gender violence, but we reinvest in structures of state violence and white supremacy. As communities mobilize to divest from prisons and policing and invest in non-carceral responses to harm, Mimi Kim reminds us, “we can’t fuck up more than the cops.”

We Want More Justice For Breona Taylor Than The System That Killed Her Can Deliver [LINK] by Mariame Kaba and Beth Ritchie- “As prison industrial complex (PIC) abolitionists, we want far more than what the system that killed Breonna Taylor can offer – because the system that killed her is not set up to provide justice for her family and loved ones.”

How I Became A Police Abolitionist Derecka Purnell [LINK]- “Police abolition” initially repulsed me. The idea seemed white and utopic. I’d seen too much sexual violence and buried too many friends to consider getting rid of police in St. Louis, let alone the nation. But in reality, the police were a placebo. Calling them felt like something, as the legal scholar Michelle Alexander explains, and something feels like everything when your other option is nothing.”

Teaching Isn’t About Managing Behavior It’s About Teaching Students Where They Really Are [LINK] by Christopher Emdin- “The best teachers don’t just keep teaching. Instead, they use their pedagogy as protest: They disrupt teaching norms that harm vulnerable students. In my years in the classroom since 2001, I’ve learned something about how to do this. I call it reality pedagogy, because it’s about reaching students where they really are, making sure that their lives and backgrounds are reflected in the curriculum and in classroom conversations.”

  What’s In Your Movement Pantry [LINK] by Deepa Iyer and Trish Tchume 

 White vs White Passing LatinX. What Am I? Part II by Priscila Garcia Jacquier  [LINK]

LUTZE SIGHTINGS 

Doin’ The Work Episode 31: The Social Justice Doula [LINK]

 How To Talk to Mami and Papi About Anything: Dad Denies Systemic Racism [LINK]

 Intensive Anti-Racism Learning Series: Our Fund Foundation Partners with Equality Florida and The Alliance for GLBTQ Youth [LINK ]

LISTENING 

 Last month I shared a playlist with you all and I am sharing anther one again. I created this playlist for my Black Feminist Sunday Service that I had last December. Enjoy! (Spotify): [LINK]

 Voz Episode 1’Stay in Your Lane: Decentering Settler Ego in Digital Spaces” [LINK] -this is a great episode for people who are interested in the nuances of LatinX identity and how to take up space ethically online. 

 Peepshow Podcast Episode 60: Ignacio Rivera on Healing Sexual Trauma and Sexual Liberation [LINK]- an episode for people who are interested in sexual liberation and how survivors of child sexual abuse can heal using sex and kink. 

 FANTI 24. Black Women Have Been Left Out of #MeToo [LINK]- this episode explores the intersection of hip-hop, race, and racism and how the #MeToo reckoning is slow to happen within hip-hop. 

 Lady Don’t Take No with Alicia Garza: dream hampton Brought Revolution [LINK]– dream hampton is one of the most important culture makers of our time and I appreciated this conversation between a millennial and gen X-er about revolution and the generation al differences between the two. 

 Episode 402: Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman [LINK] – this is an excellent episode for those of us who take platonic love seriously and want to partner with our platonic loves and make art with them. This is also a great episode for writers and they talk candidly about money. 

 Toure Show: Eddie Glaude- I love James Baldwin [LINK]- a conversation about Glaude’s new book in which he is writing alongside Baldwin. If you love Baldwin you are going to appreciate this conversation. 

 The Nod: The Case for Abolition [LINK]- this interview is with Beth Ritchie a brilliant scholar who has been writing and thinking about abolition for a very long time. This a super short podcast episode that does a good job of introducing you the major concepts of abolition.

 It’s Been a minute: Reckoning With Race in Journalism [LINK]- this episode gave great context for the racial reckoning happening in news rooms. 

 The Ezra Klein Show 344: Free Speech, safety, and ‘the letter’ [LINK]– for those of us who are interested in the nuances of free speech and the need for discourse.  

 The Dig: Read This, Not White Fragility. With Jarred Loggins and Wendi Muse [LINK] – for those who want to read something more complicated and rigorous than DiAngelo’s book and do not know where to start.

 Why Is This Happening: America on Drugs with Dr. Carl Hart [LINK]- This episode debunks everything you think you know about drug use and addiction.. 

ANNOUNCEMENTS

1. Last month I shared with you all a GoFundMe to help me fund my getting an intern. In less than 24 hours I collected all the money and hired an intern. Please meet my amazing intern Nohelya pronouns they/them.

•  I'm a Taurus Sun, Aquarius Moon, Leo rising (though I used to think I was a Virgo rising for the longest time), Aries Mercury and Cancer Venus 💙

• I was raised on the ancestral lands of Lenape people, colonized and known today as New York City. I was born in what is known as Guayaquil, Ecuador, the traditional lands of the Inca people. The majority of my blood family still lives there, but I have made beautiful soul connections with my chosen family over here.

• This summer I’ve become hella connected with Pachamama, Mother Earth. I became a plant mom in May and soon after started volunteering at my community garden. I’ve found so much painful and blissful healing through connecting with the Earth. As I build my politics through self and communal education, I am guided by the lessons the land gives us towards liberation and healing to all sentient beings of this Earth.

• Similarly, FOOD IS LIFE. Next time you eat, PRAY TO AND THANK THE EARTH AND THOSE WHO TENDED TO THE LAND AND ANIMALS FOR THEY BROUGHT ABOUT SUCH DELICIOUS NUTRITION IN YOUR LIFE!! Honestly food is one of my favorite things to talk about, consume, share, create 😌

• I love chatting AND listening. Throat chakra open. I love connecting with people, sharing stories, and learning from one another! 

2. A Black trans woman in South Florida is in need of emergency funds. Brielle is a leader in her community and was recently a victim of anti-Black violence within a non-profit setting. She is need of monetary support. Please donate if you can and boost this campaign. [LINK]

Newsletter #12

These offerings and musings are currently taking place on the ancestral, traditional, and stolen lands of the Seminole, Miccosukee, and Tequesta First Nations. These lands known as Miami.

These are stolen lands built by stolen people

“Who are your comrades?”

Who are your comrades? Who are your co-strugglers? Who are the people who make getting free and laboring for that freedom worth it?. As seductive as it may seem, social justice, antiracism, and abolition, whichever one you are practicing, or if you are me, you are striving to practice all three simultaneously then you understand that these political orientations are not self-improvement projects. Yes, I am trying to help build a better world and on some level I am trying to be better at this human thing, but I practice antiracism, abolition, and social justice because they are the antidote to the pandemic that is white supremacy a virus that infects every life and every aspect of our lives. 

White supremacy is the belief that the category of human and white are synonymous. Human = white. If you are not white, then you must try out for your humanity, and if you are Black, anti-Blackness makes it that you are always left out of the category of human.  

Antiracism is a long walk back home to yourself. The self that you were denied from knowing when you are swimming in white supremacy without any awareness. I do not think that you truly know yourself, can love yourself, or love another if your love and knowing are always being filtered through oppression or the subjugation of others. Meaning, if you are not aware of the power dynamics that are ever-present between you and another and you are not seeking to flatten those power dynamics then love is not a thing that can genuinely abide. It was not until I started reading feminist theory that a path to self-love, acceptance, and self-forgiveness was made possible. Those ways were made possible because I was getting clear on how white supremacy undermined my ability to know myself and relate to others. The more I rooted down into my politics, the more I had to ask myself where I can find other people who are doing the work of not allowing white supremacy to dictate their knowing? I knew if I was doing it, others were doing it, and those people were my potential people. 

My people are people who are serious about being antiracist, anti-capitalist, and anti-imperialist. My people understand that there is no freedom or life on this planet without seriously confronting global racism. My people know that conflict is not abuse and accountability is a love language. My people are people who submit to being transformed by their politics. My people are people who are more invested in their evolution than their ideas because they know ideas evolve and sometimes expire. My people are people who on the daily try their best to practice abolition and who get on their hands and knees energetically to uproot the weeds of the carceral state that keeps defiantly growing inside of us. The carceral weeds turn otherwise loving human beings into cops, parole officers, correctional officers, judge, and jury inside of our relationships. 

My people are the ones who understand on a cellular level that the words of Angela Davis are real, "freedom is a constant struggle." As revolutionary Black queer feminist ideas become mainstreamed and as representation gets falsely equated with justice and liberation, my people are willing to make unpopular statements and remind us not to be seduced by the lobotomizing power of neoliberal capitalism that wants to co-opt and whitewash our radical messages. 

Who are your comrades?

Notice that in my description of who my people are, I did not use race, gender, or ethnicity as qualifiers. I think it is too facile and unsophisticated to say wholesale that all Black people, queer people, and femmes are all automatically my comrades. Nah. I want love, freedom, and the needs of all people to be met, but knowing the identities of people alone does not tell me anything about their politics or values. Political solidarity requires work, intentionality, coalition building, negotiations, and lots of ancestral intervention, grace, compassion, and forgiveness. There is no shortcut to becoming one’s comrade in the struggle. To be my comrade, we have to share similar visions of the future and be organizing our present lives around this future. There is a nuanced difference between people who agree with me and people who are my comrades aka my people. Many people will concede that Black Lives Matter and that #GeorgeFloyd should not have been killed the way he was killed, but my comrade will take this to the next level. My comrade will fight for a world where #GeorgeFloyd being killed by the police will become an aberration and not remain the norm. The Black Lives Matter movement has reached a fever pitch; it is stronger today than it has ever been.

We are witnessing on a large-scale people realigning their values, clarifying their values, and asking themselves what my values are? 

In the book How To Be An Antiracist, a book that I have fundamental intellectual disagreements with that, you can read about here [LINK] Ibrahim Kendi writes about an interesting phenomenon that he calls biological racism. 

Kendi defines biological racism as, 

Biological Racist: One who is expressing the ideas that the races are meaningfully different in their biology and that these differences create a hierarchy of value

Biological Antiracist: One who is expressing the idea that the races meaningfully the same in their biology and there are no genetic racial differences

Why does this definition matter, and what does it mean in my life? I do not rely on others' identity categories as the determining factor of who is or is not my comrade. To do this is to engage in biological essentialism. Biological essentialism reinforces the racist idea that there is something inherently different between humans that can be surmised by racial differences. As people on the left, we do this often. We often conflate identities with our targets. For example, cisgender, heterosexual white men are not my natural enemy. Whiteness and white supremacy are my targets. How white cisgender heterosexual men interpolate, their power is what I have an issue with and what I am seeking to address. If we take Kendi's argument seriously, we must be honest about the fact that there is nothing inherently wrong, evil, or flawed about having white skin. There is nothing inherently righteous about having Black skin. 

I recently told someone that I am not a sacred cow and have no interest in being treated as if I am. The assumption that my identities make me inherently right about everything is absurd, and I do not see how this helps the overall freedom project. What we should be clear about is asking each other what do we believe? What do you practice? What are you for? How deep is your commitment to freedom? 

Antiracism is about resisting straightforward narratives, definitions, and hollow critiques. Your people are the ones who will get in a fox hole with you, vote with your interest in mind, put their bodies, money, and relationships on the line for you if it means those actions will get us that much closer to an abolitionist future.

So, who are your people? Who do you study with? Who holds you accountable? Who are your thought partners? When is the last time you had a conversation with your people and asked them to articulate what is their vision of the future, how do they think we should address harm, what are they willing to lose for the sake of freedom? What do they believe? What are their nonnegotiable when it comes to advancing racial justice? These questions help us lay the foundation for us to queer intimacy and to queer our politics. Put differently, these kinds of questions invite us to prefigure and practice living and loving as if the world and ourselves were already free. 

The geographer and abolitionist Ruth Wilson Gilmore describes solidarity as something we make. Therefore, the question I leave you with is, who are you making solidarity with? 

VIEWINGS AND READINGS

Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along The Transatlantic Slave Trade by Saidiya Hartman –  this book is about the complicated, messy, and devastating relationship that Black people who are the descendants of the enslaved have with Ghana and with Africans who are not the descendants of the enslaved. 

 the black interior by Elizabeth Alexander- this book is about Black interiority a thing that Black people are denied because of anti-Blackness a subject I am obsessed with exploring. 

 “Black Men Loving Black Men Is A Revolutionary” Act by Darnell L. Moore [LINK]- “It is not easy to love those imagined as broken, dead, the terror, and the perpetually captured. It is not easy to love black men, men who are not imagined as sites of worthy cultivation. It is easier for some black men to rationalize away our disdain for other black men or intellectualize our thirsts for white men as inherent, rather than a consequence of anti-black socialization and fetish. Fetish isn’t love, although it can be pleasure. Fetish sits on the surface, on the skin, and doesn’t quite dig deep enough to see the human, the man, the black or white man, under the skin we kiss and touch.”

 “Letter From Newark: I Hated That I Had to See Your Face Through Plexiglass Nyle Fort responds to his Nephew” [LINK]- “I was anxious the first time I visited you in jail. What could I say to comfort you? How could I explain, in 30 minutes, that your 10-year sentence testified to centuries of racial bondage? I didn’t want to lecture you, but I wanted you to know that the system didn’t fail you. It’s rigged against you. I wanted you to see how your choices are shaped by what Sadiyah Hartman calls a “political arithmetic” that multiplies the chance you’ll end up dead or in prison. I wanted you to understand that your inmate number marks our government’s criminal history, not yours. More than anything, I wanted you to know that I love you.”

 Geographies of Racial Capitalism with Ruth Wilson Gilmore [LINK]- RWG is my new intellectual muse. I aspire to be as clear and precise in my analysis of the problem and the solution as she demonstrates in her scholarship. 

 No, the police cannot be reformed with Professor Alex Vitale [LINK] – Kim Foster (For Harriet) interviews Professor Vitale about police, reform, and abolition. Abolition is not a new idea or ethic and Black people are not the only people who support this idea this is a great conversation if you are new to abolition 

 Sunday School Abolition in Our Lifetime [LINK]: Dream Defenders assembled a crew of abolitionist including Dr. Angela Davis that served as both an introduction to abolition and as a tune up of sorts for those of us who are striving to practice abolition. 

 What is an Anti-Racist Reading List For? by Lauren Michele Jackson [LINK] - “An anti-racist reading list means well. How could it not with some of the finest authors, scholars, poets, and critics of the twentieth century among its bullet points? Still, I am left to wonder: Who is this for? The syllabus, as these lists are sometimes called, seldom instructs or guides.”

 On Turning Breonna Taylor Into a Meme [LINK]-This youtuber goes into the dangers of turning Breonna Taylor into a meme something that I have been noticing on social media and something that I am completely uncomfortable with and saddened by. 

LUTZE SIGHTING’S

I have been making the rounds I wanted to share with you all the spaces I have traveled with my gospel of antiracist feminism

 Blogger’s Union- How To Use Your Influence for Social Justice [LINK]

 Las Comadres Lunch Break Series – Committing to Antiracism [LINK]

 Miami Workers Center – Living At The Intersection: Immigration, Race, and Gender [LINK]

 Working While Black – I narrated a film about the anti-Black violence that Black people experience in the workplace. It Is making its way through the film festival circuit you can watch the trailer here: [LINK]

 Humanity.the Podcast: Interview with the Social Justice Doula [LINK]

 “What You Need To Do To Support Your Black Colleagues Right Now – And Always” [LINK]

 “Guiding words to help educators connect  with their students and peers in support of Racial Justice [LINK]

LISTENING

The first four podcasts I am sharing center Black people talking about their vision of the future. Some of these Black folks have reformist dreams and others have capacious abolitionist dreams of the future. I share these episodes for two reasons to further underscore that Black people are not a monolith and secondly I want you think about where you would place yourself on the spectrum of change. On the spectrum of abolitionist futures and reform where are you? Now, is a great time to answer this question for yourself.

Intercepted: Ruth Wilson Gilmore Makes The Case For Abolition [LINK] 

Intercepted: Ruth Wilson Gilmore Makes The Case For Abolition Part 2 [LINK]

AirGo Ep 253 The Abolition Suite Vol 2: Mariame Kaba [LINK]

Terrible, Thanks For Asking: Policing and Racial Trauma with Angela Davis [LINK]

For the 12th issue I also wanted to share some older podcast that I revisit or that have stayed with me for one reason or another.

The Nod: You Don’t Make Free People [LINK]

 Justice in America Ep 20: Mariame Kaba [LINK]

 Why is This Happening: Organizing in Trump Country George Goehl [LINK]

 The Bitter Southerner: Hillbillies Need No Elegy [LINK]

1619 Project [LINK]

 BONUS: I am sharing a playlist I created called “Black to the Future” lets normalize sharing playlist as a love language again. This playlist is only on Spotify and if your music taste leans conservative this may not be for you. [LINK]

ANNOUNCMENTS:

I have a very vulnerable ask of you folks. I am raising money to pay an intern a stipend. Since the unrest has started my work has been in high demand. I am raising 2k to pay an intern. All the money is going to pay this amazing young person. Here is the link to GoFundMe: [LINK].

Later this month I will be opening registration for my second online class that will be about antiracism. People who are subscribed to my newsletter will know about it first. Stay tuned.

Newsletter #11

These offerings and musings, are currently taking place on the ancestral, traditional, and stolen lands of the Seminole, Miccosukee, and Tequesta First Nations. These lands known as Miami.

These are stolen lands built by stolen people.

“Why racism and anti-Blackness are not the same, and why being antiracist requires mindfulness”

It's May 11, 2020, and it is early it is 5:00 o'clock in the morning, and I have just arrived at Vancouver Airport. I have a 7:00 a.m. international flight back home to the 3-0-5, aka Miami. It is not unusual for me to travel back home during May, but nothing about this trip and the moment we are in is normal. This trip feels very final because I have moved out of the room I was renting in Vancouver, put my stuff in storage, and purchased a one-way ticket to Miami. The world is currently experiencing a global pandemic, and in the middle of this, I am moving back home. The pandemic has turned mundane everyday activities into an extreme sport. Moving across North America and flying during a global pandemic is an extreme sport that I do not recommend trying. It took so much prayer, ritual, and lots of affirmations to ensure that my mind and body could handle traversing these fictitious borders of these two nation-states. I am traveling knowing full well that I am leaving Vancouver, where the curve is flat and making my way back to a chaotic country and city. Living in Canada has made it abundantly clear to me that the United States is my home. This is a highly controversial statement to make out loud at this moment as a queer Black femme. The moment we are currently in is once again being marked by hashtags memorializing premature Black death, Black pain, and Black mourning. Black people have new ancestors to add to our altars. Their names are #BreonaTaylor, #AhmoudArbery #GeorgeFloyd, #TonyMcdade and the many other Black lives that are lost that never become hashtags. The United States, as a matter of public policy engineers, the premature corporal and social death of its Black citizens and even with ALL that I prefer this side of North America any day over the sunken place, that is Canada.

What does it mean to miss and love a country that does not fuck with you, does not love you, that would be nothing without you, and you would be everything without its hatred of you?

Shit is complicated.

Back to the scene at the airport, I am waiting for the clock to strike 5:30 a.m. that is the official opening hours of the airport. I just paid an excessive amount of money to check in several bags. I am in line practicing proper physical distancing with my cloth mask on waiting to drop my bags off. The clock finally hits the appointed time, and the employee who will be claiming our baggage has arrived. She is East Asian, and I notice that she is very chipper since it is so early in the morning, and we are in an airport during a global pandemic. As I am waiting for my turn in line, I watch as this woman performs what I would label emotional labor. The sociologist Arlie Hochschild created the term emotional labor. The definition of emotional labor explains how workers have to manage their affect and their emotions to emotionally do their jobs. For, e.g., this employee is doing emotional labor by making small talk with everyone, smiling, and wishing each individual a safe flight. I do not know if she genuinely cares or if her job has made it compulsory for her to perform this labor. As I continue watching this woman do her job, my mind drifts, thinking about how weird it is to be in an airport right now. Under normal circumstances, this international airport, even at this early hour, should be busier. Still, the airport is operating at half capacity, and gloves and masks serve as a reminder that this is a different world. However, in the middle of my thought, I have a new thought. As a Black person, I always feel like people are trying to and with much success socially and physically distance themselves from Black people, our pain, and our struggle.

It is finally my turn to drop my bags and interact with the cheery woman. Immediately I get the sense there is a slight shift in her that occurs as I approach her, and this shift will create a significant fault line in our interaction. Every Black person knows the subtle cues and changes that happen in the demeanor of another that alerts you that the customer service you just watched everyone and their momma receive is not the customer service you are going to be served. The customer service I am going to be served will be scooped from a vat filled with anti-Blackness.

Firstly, there was no good morning for me or a small talk for that matter. To be honest, I do not require hourly wage workers to perform emotional labor for me to feel like I am getting "good" customer service. Still, if I watched you warmly greet twenty white people before me with a smile in your voice even if it was fake, I kinda sorta need you to keep that same energy when it is my turn boo. Now, it would be an excellent time for me to alert you dear reader that I am the only Black person in sight at this airport. Plot twist. Which is a common occurrence when I am flying out of Vancouver. This icy interaction is getting more frigid when the employee discovers that the barcodes on my seven pieces of luggage are not activated. A mistake that the woman made me feel personally responsible for causing. While all of this is happening, I can feel my anger rising and my patience wearing thin. I stopped and did the Black mental calculations: I am traveling internationally while Black which already requires its own strategy, there are no other Black people around, I am not Canadian, and we are in the middle of a global pandemic. All this equates to me not being able to afford being perceived as a problem or causing a problem.

I painstakingly recount this travel story because I want to do the following three things: talk about and introduce the concept of lateral violence, make the distinction between racism and anti-Blackness, and show you why antiracism is a mindfulness practice.

Firstly, lateral violence is when Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) get in the white supremacist sandbox. Instead of us breaking the box or refusing to get into the box, we choose instead to build sandcastles in the white supremacist sandbox and play by its logic. BIPOC play by white supremacist's logic; by allowing white supremacy to dictate the terms and conditions of our interactions. We also do this by subscribing to the same racist stereotypes and ideas about each other and parroting racist language.

Secondly, every one of us needs to get better at making the distinction between racism and anti-Blackness. Anti-Blackness is its own universe within the universe of white supremacy. All racism stems from anti-Blackness, but not all racism is anti-Black racism. All non-Black people of color can, through time, educational attainment, class mobility and etc. be seen glowingly by the white gaze and above all be allowed to thrive and access full citizenship within this machinery called the United States. This level of absorption into the system does not happen with Black people. Black people under anti-Blackness are treated as perpetual outsiders. Anti-Blackness is what built this nation. Chattel slavery is what made America great. Black people have excelled at many things, but Black people are still trying to be seen as fully human within this system. There is no transcending anti-Blackness for Black people. Anti-Blackness stalks Black people like a shadow. Anti-Blackness in the stool that whiteness stands upon to know itself as tall and sturdy. All non-Black people of color measure their worth and progress against anti-Blackness. Everyone profits from anti-Blackness except Black people. You cannot compare anti-Blackness to anything else. The holocaust is distinct and cannot and should not be compared to anything else, just like the genocide of Native peoples. So too is anti-Blackness, and the litany of issues it unleashes upon the mind, souls, and bodies of Black folks it cannot be analogized.

My final point is the one that prompted this blog post. If you are seeking to be antiracist, then it is imperative to strive to be present in your interactions. I recount the airport story because I want to highlight how unconscious bias will set you up for failure if we are not mindful. I don't know what was informing the East Asian woman's behavior towards me, but what I do know is that I was treated differently. It was not the good kind of difference, and it was noticeable. Let's go further and take the example of Amy Cooper, the Canadian woman who in the New York park who weaponized her whiteness and her gender in an attempt to cause Christian Cooper (no relation) bodily harm by calling the cops on him. What if Amy Cooper had taken a minute to breathe? Perhaps she would have realized that the level of anger she was exhibiting was unwarranted. Maybe she would have noticed that she was choking her dog and acting like a racist damsel in distress. If she had stopped and checked in with herself, she could have gifted herself the choice of STFU and walking away. Her unconscious bias took hold, and it morphed into anti-Blackness, and now she has to live with the consequences.

The airport employee was fully engaging in lateral violence that was being fueled by anti-Blackness.I say all of this to say that if you intend to practice antiracism, then you must be committed to being present and aware of your interactions with people who are different from you. We have all been socialized and fed a steady diet of anti-Blackness. It is like high fructose corn syrup. It's in everything, and it's everywhere. The only way to stop yourself from ingesting it if you are trying to avoid it is by stopping to read the label. You learn to read and know racism by being mindful and aware.

In my antiracist workshops and individual coaching sessions, I describe antiracism as a practice. Antiracism is very similar to having a yoga practice or any other kind of mindfulness practice. You cannot mentally be out of the room when you are doing yoga. To hold complicated poses while remembering to breathe is hard. By dropping into your body and bringing awareness to your mat, can you genuinely do the pose, relax into it, check in with the parts of your body that is resisting, or experiencing pain in the pose, that is how we do antiracism. Antiracism is not solely an intellectual endeavor. Reprogramming ourselves to see Black people as people is going to take lots of unlearning. When we are on auto-pilot, we are more likely to misgender people. We frown at people whose faces represent the outsiders we have been told to fear. We miss racist interactions and miss opportunities to show up in solidarity for others. It takes work to not let your unconscious bias dictate the terms and conditions of your engagement with others. An antiracist life is not a sedentary life. It is a life that requires you to use your body, voice, mind, money, power, and etc., to disrupt, dismantle, and divest from white supremacy. It is not enough to wake up you now have to remain forever vigilant.

VIEWINGS AND READINGS

How To Be An AntiRacist by Ibam X. Kendi - I am finally getting around to reading this book.

In the Wake: On Blackness and Being by Christina Sharpe -I am reading for my dissertation proposal it is a book about anti-Blackness it is beautifully written and accessible.

26 Ways To Be In The Struggle Beyond The Streets -[LINK]

Black Feminist Perspectives on COVID-19: A Reading List-[LINK]

A Youtuber Placed Her Autistic Adopted Son From China With A New Family – After Making Content With Him For Years - [LINK] “My heart aches for poor Huxley,” wrote one person on Twitter. “They dragged this poor little boy all the way from China, making him start all over again, then giving up on him.” The person added that Myka had gained followers and got sponsorships from the story.”

Mapping Our Social Change Roles in Times of Crises by Deepah Iyer [LINK]-”Identifying the right actions in times of crisis requires reflection, and it’s in that spirit that I’m offering a new version of a mapping exercise that helps us identify our roles in a social change ecosystem.”

LISTENING

The Unmute Podcast 38. Episode 045: Lindsay Stewart on Black Joy [LINK] - my favorite podcast has come back with a new season. This podcast is hosted by Dr. Myisha Cherry she is a Black woman and a scholar of philosophy who interviews other philosophers mainly scholars of color. This episode is about Black joy and the dopiness that is Zora Neale Hurston and her intellectual badassery!

Bottom of the Map: Space is Still the Place - [LINK] - This podcast episode is centered on the intersection of hip-hop and the afrofuture.

Writ Large: The full spectrum of human beauty - [LINK] What Zora Neale Hurston Can Teach Us About Cancel Culture

ANNOUNCEMENTS

1. I am happy to announce that I am back in the United States and home in Miami

2. If you like, love, and or support my work please consider giving. You can do so the following ways:

   Cashapp: $LutzeB

   PayPal: thefeministgriote@gmail.com 

   Zelle: lutzesegu@gmail.com 

3. I will be announcing an online course this week. oI have adapted one of one of my popular offerings from last summer. People who are subscribed to my newsletter will hear about it first and unlock special discounts.

4. S.O.U.L Sisters Leadership Collective is hiring a Program Manager find the job description here [LINK]

5. I am taking on new clients for individual and organizational coaching [LINK]

Newsletter #10

These offerings and musings, are currently taking place on the ancestral, traditional, stolen, and unceded lands of the Musqueam people the lands also known as Vancouver.

Why We Need to Abandon Multiculturalism ASAP

Anti-Asian racism and xenophobia are on the rise ever since the coronavirus started spreading to North America. This global pandemic is highlighting the cracks within our systems and how we understand our worlds and our various standings within it. One major fissure I want to highlight is the relationship between power and privilege and its relation to identity. Identity is not fixed; it is mutable. It makes us feel good to operate under the assumption that our race, gender, sexual orientation, ability status, etc. are immutable, but identities exist within a context, and contexts are always in flux. For example, living in Canada in a supremely white city like Vancouver has given me a new understanding of my blackness. My blackness physically has not changed, but my knowledge and engagement with it on a sociopolitical level have evolved. The contexts and the relationships you are in changes the dynamics of how your identities get animated and impact how you understand yourself. One such relationship we are watching be reshaped in real-time on a public stage involves East Asians.

Yes, the first cases of COVID-19 came out of China. However, genome scientists have been able to trace that Europeans were the major carriers of COVID-19 that fueled the outbreak in New York. Now, I am not a fan of blaming citizens of other countries for diseases. The United States has a long history of this racist practice, but what is important to note is that it was Western citizens who are usually never denied entry into the United States who were the carriers. We cannot ignore the power of Westerners, and their elite passports who have freedom of movement throughout the globe and the myriad of implications these travelers expose the various nation-states they visit to. It matters very little where the virus started from, but what matters and what has been made clear is that we are globally inextricably tied to one another. What one country fails to do puts everyone at risk. This is what it means to be globally connected. The same way dance crazes, films, and culture gets exported and imported, so does disease. Welcome to the new world! 

With that said, Asians as a group, more specifically East Asians have experienced immense privilege. Asians have been allowed into the country club of whiteness. They do not access the full benefits of whiteness, but have been granted the title of “model minority.” Model-minority is a set of beliefs and stereotypes that both benefits and harms East and South Asians. The myth states that Asians are good at math, dominate STEM fields, are academically and financially successful, are polite, docile, work hard, and are apolitical. With that said, many East/South Asians do often buy into this myth and therefore start to act in ways that exhibit anti-Blackness, white supremacy, and settler-colonial logic.  

East Asians occupy a complex space in society they are both people of color and allowed to be honorary whites when the context suits white supremacy. 

The road to white acceptance has not been easy for East Asians. One of the first racist immigration policies in the United States was The Chinese Exclusions Act of 1882. Japanese Americans were put in internment camps during World War II. Our East Asian comrades know racism, know exclusion, and know intimately how the boot of white supremacy feels on their necks. And they also know a level of white acceptance that evades many other minoritized communities. 

However, in the midst of a global pandemic, the relative comfort that East Asians have felt has been violently interrupted. Whiteness is a country club in which membership can be revoked at any moment without notice. East Asians are reporting at an alarming rate that they are being menaced and harassed. East-Asians bodies in public spaces are being treated and seen as a contagion. All of a sudden, the privilege that whiteness had bestowed upon East Asians has now turned into yellow peril. 

White supremacy is always ready to turn on its faux object of affection. White supremacy isn’t loyal, not even to itself. COVID-19 has stripped away the thin veneer of racism that was always wound up tightly in the “model minority myth.” 

Vancouver, Canada, is a place that has a significant population and diversity of Asians across the diaspora. It is considered socially acceptable in many circles here to deride and say racist things about Chinese people openly. White Canadians call this bonding, and many white Canadians have tried to “bond” with me using racism (talk about not knowing your audience). I bring Canada up because it brings me to my thesis. Canada, as a nation-state, has adopted multiculturalism as a policy. The United States has not adopted multiculturalism as a policy, but we espouse multiculturalism in various political ways. Especially as a tool of diversity and inclusion. The definition of multiculturalism that I am putting forth is one that believes as long as a room, board, organization, or school has different races and ethnicities present that room magically becomes inclusive. The idea is that diversity fixes all things. Nah. A room can only become anti-racist and inclusive if the room consents to working towards this goal. Full disclosure, I HATE MULTICULTURALISM. It took moving to Canada for me to see what a Ponzi scheme that multiculturalism is and how it serves the interest of white supremacy. Multiculturalism is in service to white supremacy, and multiculturalism in and of itself is not an anti-racist tool. Multiculturalism does not threaten white supremacy because it does not promote plurality; it promotes violent assimilation and erasure. Multiculturalism simply makes space for people of different races and ethnicities to proudly align with white dominant culture, norms, and mores, thereby furthering the invisibility of white hegemony. 

Multiculturalism gives the allusion that an organization, group, a nation-state is engaging in anti-racism simply by having people of different races, ethnicities, gender expressions, and sexual orientations present. For example, I have frequented many spaces where one is asked to state your pronouns, but that same space will still have binary restrooms and adhere to the binary through their policies, language, and beliefs. Just having queer people in a space and using queer-friendly language does not make a space inherently queer affirming. What multiculturalism does well is it plays up ethnicity while obscuring and erasing race and racism, and that is dangerous. Therefore, in the quest to be multicultural systemic and structural racism ceases to exist. In a multicultural model, the only kind of racism that is allowed to exist is interpersonal. Meaning if no one refers to you as a nigger/nigga to your face (if you are NOT Black it’s never okay to use this word no matter the spelling unless you don’t mind catching some hands), or tells you to go back to your country, or doesn’t call you Chung-Lee to your face then racism does not happen. Which is convenient if you are trying to maintain white supremacy in a rapidly Browning world. 

Multiculturalism is so not a threat Nazis have embraced it. 

Even neo-Nazi groups have a multicultural agenda (el. oh. el). Many men of color are part of Neo-Nazi groups, and they are welcomed with open arms. The reason these Asian, mixed-race, and Latinx men are part of these white supremacist projects is because centering whiteness and upholding white normativity is something one can do all while holding on to your ethnicity. Meaning you can have a racially diverse room that aligns with racism and white supremacy. Put differently; you can have racial inclusion without social justice. Black bodies, Asian bodies, Brown bodies, queer bodies, trans bodies, disabled bodies, etc. can be agents of white supremacy. This reality is something that those of us who espouse social justice, feminism, and anti-racism are often reluctant to wrestle with and name. We tend to want to turn specific identities into deities or shields, which is both unethical and a dehumanizing tactic. 

Neo-nazis understand that racialized bodies can become foot-soldiers of whiteness. In my research, I have found that white supremacists have a far more complex and nuanced understanding of race and race relations than white people who identify as liberal and progressive. Neo-Nazi’s see race and often do not underplay the role that race and racism play in our society. For example, Dylan Roof, the white domestic terrorist who murdered the Black parishioners at Emmanuel A.M.E church in South Carolina in his manifesto he described a rather sophisticated racial stratification and on the top of his list were East Asians. All this to say is that if neo-Nazi makes space for diversity and inclusion, we (the ‘we’ who believe in anti-racism) should, therefore, interrogate the utility of this intervention. 

Multiculturalism has a lobotomizing effect. It puts all people of color into the sunken place. It convinces you that you are “just like white people” until the fatal day you are reminded by those very same white people that you are not. This cold truth is the sad and realization that many Asians have to contend with. As a Black person, I know how it feels for your body to be considered a problem, a menace, and a thing that needs to be controlled, surveilled, or worse. 

Anti-racism does not ask people to mute themselves to become white or to deny the historical and present-day context of race and racism. Anti-racism does not turn people into ornaments or tokens. Anti-racism does not shy away from racial or ethnic differences and doesn’t require one to worship at the altar of white supremacy. Anti-racism is about disrupting, dismantling, and divesting from white supremacy; no one should be comfortable in a room whose agenda is anti-racist.

VIEWINGS AND READINGS

Conflict Is Not Abuse by Sarah Schulman- I am revisiting this book because I need to constantly remind myself that confronting conflict skillfully is an ethic and practice that I am serious about mastering.

 The Cancer Journals by Audre Lorde- This book is all about survival and a great book to revisit during a pandemic. 

 “How The Creator of #BlackGirlMagic Got Erased from the Movement She Started”- [LINK] I feel like a founder of #BlackTwitter especially Black feminist Twitter. I was online when the hashtag #BlackGirlMagic was birthed. I have been following Cashawn for years and I am shocked by the amount of people who do not know her and why she created the hashtag.  

 “The F-Word: Jane Elliott needs to modify her “anti-racism’-[LINK] (context this article is old it’s from 2018. I recently stumbled upon a spicy comment section where Black women were calling out Jane Elliot and someone shared this article and points were made!) “I want to be fair. Perhaps 50 years ago, Jane Elliott’s ideas were groundbreaking for her small white town. And for 50 years, Elliott has been playing and replaying the same exact script. And we have loved her for it. Elliott stayed in the safety of her privilege, while getting immense recognition for doing way less than many leaders and educators of color did way before her. Jane Elliott is the embodiment of white people getting praised for doing the bare minimum rather terribly.” 

 “How A Vegan TikTok Star Became  A Daily Pick-Me-Up For Millions of People”- [LINK] “You need a hug?” asks Tabitha Brown at the start of one of her most popular TikTok videos. Her voice is warm, disarming, and unmistakably Southern. “Well, sometimes potato wedges make you feel like they hugging you, at least that's how I feel. Let's make some,” she says, her eyes sparkling with joy. In a matter of seconds — 60, to be exact — she details all the ingredients you’ll need to turn your day around by creating a delicious starchy snack with a dip to accompany it. “Life is always better with a potato, honey. See that dip? When I dip, you dip, we dip, oooh!” she says at the end, by which point I was mentally rummaging through the ingredients in my cabinets to see if I could concoct my own version of the dish.”

 “Caster Semenya and the cruel history of contested black femininity”- [LINK]- “In the 10 years since Caster Semenya won the 2009 World Championships at just 18 years old, the sports world has whittled her story down to one thing: her body. Narrow hips. Wide shoulders. Pronounced jawline. Manly.”

 “These Three Activists Are Bringing Overdue Attention To Childhood Sexual Abuse” [LINK]- “Amita Swadhin is the founder of Mirror Memoirs, a project that intervenes in rape culture by uplifting the stories, healing, and leadership of LGBTQI+ people of color who survived childhood sexual abuse. Through the creation of educational multimedia tools, including healing circles and theater projects, Mirror Memoirs is helping everyone invested in ending sexual violence strategize together about how to build the world they need.”

 “My PTSD can be a weight. But in this pandemic, it feels like a superpower”[LINK]-  “My therapist used to tell me that PTSD is only a mental illness in times of peace. Our bodies and brains are consistently attuned to war, so we look paranoid or hypervigilant in peacetime. But in times of crisis, PTSD is an incredible survival mechanism that our genius bodies created to help us adapt.”

 “Love: A Dish Unpleasant Without All  The Ingredients” [LINK] – “According to bell hooks, Love is comprised of several different ingredients: “care, affection, recognition, respect, commitment, and trust, as well as honest and open communication.” She offers that one of these ingredients can be present without the others, but for it to be Love—real and true—they must all be present at once.”

LISTENING

Verzuz: Babyface vs.Teddy Riley playlist – [LINK]-Black history was recently made on IGlive when Babyface and Teddy Riley battled each other. Four million people logged on to bask in the glory that is Black  American culture. This is the playlist from the night you can find the playlist on Spotify or Tidal. The link provided leads to Spotify. 

 South by Southwest SXSW playlist [LINK]- SXSW was one of the first major festivals to cancel because of the pandemic. This playlist is comprised of all the music acts around the world that were going to be at the festival. Here’s hoping you find new music to add to your playlist. The link provided leads to Spotify. 

 Dissect Season 6 Beyonce: Lemonade- [LINK] Every season this music podcast does a deep dive into an iconic album and this season is about the album Lemonade. I am so impressed by the level of research and care that was put into this season. If you listen to it on Spotify there are no commercials.  

ANNOUNCEMENTS

1. If you like, love, and or support my work please consider giving. I will be moving back to the United States soon and if you want to donate to that as well you can do so the following ways:

   Cashapp: $LutzeB

   PayPal: thefeministgriote@gmail.com 

   Zelle: lutzesegu@gmail.com 

2. Black Feminist Future is hiring a Program Coordinator [LINK]

3. I will be offering one of my very popular trainings via a webinar in late May early June. People who are subscribed to my newsletter will know about it first. Make sure you are subscribed!

Newsletter #9

These offerings and musings, are currently taking place on the ancestral, traditional, stolen, and unceded lands of the Musqueam people the lands also known as Vancouver.

Dear Beloved Community,

You have been on my heart and on my mind heavily. I have been searching myself to find the perfect words to share with you during this time, and I could not find them because they do not exist. I have never lived during a global pandemic, and therefore, I have nothing in my past experiences to pull on. However, as someone who is a descendant of enslaved people and who has been parented by two refugees, I know survival intimately. Shit is real! The rona is not playing with us, but we are a mighty resourceful and resilient people and species, and we will find a way to survive this collectively. 

COVID-19 is yet another shining example of why anti-racism must be a way of life for most of us if we a serious about thriving as a species on this planet. How do you contain a contagious virus in a country that engineers poverty and poor health outcomes? We contain that virus by becoming acutely aware that we are inextricably tied to one another. I am only as healthy as my neighbor. If my neighbor is forced into precarity, eventually those conditions that rendered my neighbor precarious will also become my undoing. 

Living in a white supremacist society is risky for all people irrespective of race, class, age, gender, and etc. White supremacy does not have a retirement plan. White supremacy is a virus; yes, there is no denying that it will destroy BIPOC first, but eventually, it will turn on itself. 

We already live with many apocalyptic conditions and pandemics, such as racism, poverty, classism, transphobia, homophobia, ableism, xenophobia, and the climate disaster. These isms shorten people's lives every day.   

Below I made a list of things to consider in this moment that is tied to anti-racism and social justice. Now, more than ever we must train ourselves to think within a social justice framework and to be anti-racist in how we choose to meet this moment. 

Lastly, as someone who is an international graduate student and consultant who is squarely part of the gig economy all of my gigs are now non-existent. If you find value in my work and learn from my work and would like to donate please do. Please note that now more than ever the kinds of services that I offer is crucial in meeting this moment. If you need coaching or strategic HR consultation then email me and let's work together! 

Cashapp: $LutzeB

PayPal: thefeministgriote@gmail.com 

Zelle: lutzesegu@gmail.com 

Social Justice implications in the time of COVID-19

 1. Disability Justice Framework- Disabled people have always been organizing, working, advocating, loving, surviving, and building new worlds from their beds, wheelchairs, while on ventilators and using any other device that helps them live full lives. Disabled people are the ones we should be listening to, and we should be using a disability justice framework to ensure that we are moving in a way that does not exclude anyone or further center our most ableist impulses. It is time that we center the wisdom and expertise of the disabled community, which is the largest and most diverse group. Here is a [LINK] to the ten principles that guide disability justice let's all collectively practice putting them into praxis 

 2. Shift the language- We are physically distancing, not socially distancing. People need people to survive. Let's cultivate and deepen our connections with each other safely where we can during this time

3. Resist Saviorism- Resist the urge to spearhead a project right now. Amplify the good work of others who are more community rooted and who have expertise in online organizing. Ask yourself are their mutual aid initiatives already underway that you could support and boost

 4. Practice kindness- This moment is calling us all to be more kind, patient, and loving with one another. We can practice physical distancing without not dismissing and devaluing each other's humanity. We are all collectively experiencing this global pandemic. Be kind to yourself and practice that kindness with others 

5. Keep the flow of capital going- If you can still afford to keep paying the domestic worker, babysitter, dog walker, & anyone else in that capacity keep paying them. If money is not a worry for you in this moment, keep the flow of capital moving justly in the areas you can control. 

6. Interrogate your class privilege- Many of you are part of the managerial class, which means your jobs can be seamlessly done online and remotely. What does it mean to have that kind of privilege that allows you this level of safety? How can you operationalize your solidarity with other workers whose jobs puts them at risk so that you can do your job safely in your home? Sit with this even if it makes you deeply uncomfortable. Out of that discomfort insight is waiting to greet you

 7. Practice physical distancing AND practice your social justice values- We must keep our physical distance from each other, but we can still do it and practice being good citizens to each other. Keep in mind that intimate partner violence is on the rise, people who are food insecure are more so now, people who are in recovery from addiction are experiencing a heightened level of stress. All around us are people who are in deep need of support and intervention. A pandemic is a great opportunity to practice your values and practice being in community

 8. Sociopolitical self-check-in - What is this pandemic revealing to you politically? Are your values shifting? What is currently making you the maddest? Check-in with yourself and reevaluate your values and politics. I encourage you to write and get in touch with your righteous anger. What will be socio-politically different about you once we are on the other side of the pandemic?

 9. Resist the urge to want to return to" normal"- I do not want to return to normal. Now that we can see that evictions can be stopped, jails can quickly be emptied, officers can be ordered to slow down arrests. These are all social justice demands that these systems are forced to temporarily adopt because they are humane and they work! What can we do to keep this up? Also, there is no going back to normal. The society and the people we were before Covid-19 is gone. Many of us will adapt, become more resilient, and change for the better, and many other people will become more fearful. Activate your imagination what is the new normal that you are. Envisioning for yourself and your people?

 10. Center the kids- Check in on the kids in your life privately if it is at all possible. For many kids school is a safe haven it's where they can get a meal, wash their clothes, be their authentic self if they are gay, trans, or non-binary. It's also a place they get a reprieve from sexual and physical abuse. Now more than ever, let's make it a priority to check-in with the children in our lives and try to pay attention. Although children are not as vulnerable to COVID-19, they are forever vulnerable to the whims of adults  

11. Audit your giving- Are you prioritizing queer, transgender, Black, Indigenous, & POC in your giving?  

 12. Practice queering love- We are going to have to get creative about how we show up for each other and showing up for each other's interior lives. Make sure you are asking people what does love and support look like now during physical distancing 

13. Tend to your garden-Go inside of yourself & tend to your spirit. This moment has inspired me to get reacquainted with the teachings of Jack Kornfield, Louise Hay, Wayne Dyer & other spiritual teachers. If you have the courage to be with yourself and be with all that is coming up. This is a really hard time and, therefore, check-in with your body, spirit, and mind and ask them what they want and need in this moment. Honor what comes up and tend to it. Resist the urge to zoom your community to death. It is totally okay to be still and be quiet and lay low. We are going to be here for awhile

14. GRIEVE- 2020, for many of us was supposed to be our redemption year. Grieve what you lost and what you are going to lose. Death is ever more present now. It's okay to be sad. We North Americans are not good at doing grief, but we do not have to grieve alone. Find your people and cry together if you must. Name what you are feeling, confront your feelings, be with your feelings, and know that feelings are not facts. Feelings are merely data that helps informs the facts and contexts of our lives

15. Abandon the patriarchy- Women/femmes/gender complex people who are in heteronormative/homonormative relationships rooted in patriarchal gender norms; it may be time to embrace egalitarianism. One person can't be expected to carry the weight of the pandemic alone while another person just chills. If there is no threat of violence in your relationship, now may be a good time to renegotiate with your partner(s) for more equity, love, and care. Masculine folks, this is your time to operationalize your feminism. Show up more around the house and truly be there for your partner(s). If you love your partner(s) then now is a great time to align your actions with that truth 

16. Reading for liberation- What does Black feminist thought, women of color feminism, & Native feminisms have to say about collective organizing, the end of the world, utopias, mutual aid, & collective living? Don't know go find out 

 17. Embrace ancestral knowledge and ritual- What are the home remedies, herbs, and plants and rituals that your people used to stay healthy and boost their immune system? If you do not know then who in your circle has that knowledge who can share it with you? We can follow the CDC guidelines while also honoring ancestral knowledge 

 18. Make time to access your pleasure and your joy- It does not have to be gloom and doom all day Watch your favorite show, dance, masturbate, have sex (LINK to safer sex guidelines during COVID-19), learn a Tik Tok dance do something that makes you feel alive. Life is for the living so live while you are here! 

 19. Disrupt anti-Asian xenophobia- There is lots of xenophobia being launched towards East-Asians right now. Let's all find a way to disrupt it and let's check in with our East-Asian comrades 

 20. Adjust & manage your expectations of yourself & others during this time- This is a marathon, not a sprint. If you manage people, now is NOT the time to expect the same level of productivity from your students, employees, and colleagues. Resist the white supremacist impulse to act like working at home during a global pandemic is normal. THIS IS NOT NORMAL. Adjust your expectations and chill. Honor people's boundaries and know that it is hard for many people to ask for what they want and need. One way we can help each other is by creating the space for people to tell us what is possible and fair to expect of them during this time. If you are the kind of person who likes to throw themselves in their work during chaotic moments know that is your coping mechanism and that is not true for others. Do not make an already awful scary situation worse by being the perfectionist who is expecting perfection from others. Don't be that person

VIEWINGS AND READINGS 

 Brene Brown on 60 minutes- [LINK] she is talking about vulnerability and leadership 

 Chika NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert- [LINK] Chika is dark-skinned, Black, queer, femme and she got bars if this is your thing you will enjoy the music 

 Kiese Laymon on Masculinity, Body Dysmorphia, Abuse, and Addiction- [LINK] This is a very powerful interview that Kimberly Foster aka For Harriet did with Kiese Laymon. It’s so GOOD!

 AM 2 DM The Sit down: Selenis and Marizol Leyva- [LINK] Selenis from the show “Orange is the New Black” wrote a book with her sister Marizol who transitioned and they talk about their journey in this interview 

 “I Can Forgive Andrew Gillum, But I Don’t Have to Like It”- [LINK] “I will exercise grace here and not set this written statement on fire — even if I feel tempted. What I will say for Gillum, and those already cheering him on for a comeback, is that while time can heal wounds, that only happens after a person comes completely clean. And there’s much cleaning left to do.”

 “Why We Called for Black people to support, not shame Andrew Gillum”-[LINK] “The author bell hooks says in her 2004 book We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity, “In patriarchal culture, all males learn a role that restricts and confines. When race and class enter the picture, along with patriarchy, then black males endure the worst impositions of gendered masculine patriarchal identity. “In other words, men have been socialized into heteronormative patriarchal ideas for centuries. When you add race and class to that, as we must do with Gillum’s identities as a Black male politician, then you must understand that American society sees those identities as targets — games, in a sense, that are to be figured out, played, and mastered. This can become overwhelming and, sometimes, unbearable to endure.” 

 “How Brown Girl Solidarity Harms Us”- [LINK] “This is one of the obvious challenges to brown politics; brownness itself became stigmatized because of anti-Blackness and anti-Dalitness. What became an internal discourse amongst Black people and internalized violence was never intended to be an identity catchall for Desis. Deploying it as a catchall strips positionality and obscures where there might be complicit relationships.”

 “Dressing Down, Layering Up”-[LINK] “People punished for a radical commitment to the dispossessed know the importance of this sensibility.  When the world seems unbearably cold—harsh and lonely and broken—don’t run to the closest shelter.  Put on a jacket.  In other words, don’t abandon principle for luxury.  Equip yourself to survive an inhospitable world.  A jacket isn’t part of human anatomy. It’s a temporary solution to ephemeral conditions.” 

 ‘You Could Never Misgender Me’ –[LINK] “Calling me ‘she/her’ isn’t actually misgendering me. Calling me ‘he/ him’ isn’t misgendering me either. Because my gender isn’t translated through my pronouns, only affirmed by them. I don’t look like pronouns, and pronouns don’t look like me. I don’t perform like pronouns, and pronouns don’t perform like me. My pronouns are a boundary. My pronouns are personal. My pronouns are not gendered.”

 “Let’s Make Dog Parks Less Racist” [LINK] “As I left the dog park that day, I looked around to see if there were any other Black people there with dogs. There was one. We nodded, that silent acknowledgement Black people give one another that says, I see you, good morning, or, more often, Do you believe this shit? Informally, I started asking friends of mine with dogs if they went to dog parks. Two were Black, one was Puerto Rican. Every single person said they just didn’t feel comfortable. It was always too white.”

 LISTENING 

 Unlocking Us hosted by Brene Brown- I am an avid practitioner of Brene Brown’s work and now she has a podcast. She was made for this medium. I have listened to every episode, but the one I love the most is the with Glennon Doyle episode three. I am already on my second listen of this episode 

 Bottom of the Map- This is my dream podcast. I am a HUGE hip-hop head and my genre of choice is Southern hip-hop. I have been looking for a podcast about hip-hop that is not hosted by white men or misogynistic men of color. Enter hosts hip-hop scholar Black woman who I have been following for years on Twitter Dr. Regina N. Bradley and Christina Lee music journalist. This show dissects Southern hip-hop in ways I have never heard outside of my brain. The analysis is on point the episode that hooked me is one about Big K.R.I.T. and the episode about global trap which gave me a new perspective on reggaetón 

 Con Todo: Brown Love – Dascha Polanco from the show “Orange is the new Black” is hosting this podcast that is all about Latinx folks in Hollywood. The episode that hooked me is the one about afro-latinx /BLatinx women in Hollywood

 Oprah’s Super Soul Conversations- Oprah and Tracee Ellis Ross: Your Life In Focus – If you love Tracee you are going to appreciate her wisdom 

 Secret Feminist Agenda: Choosing Love with Kai Cheng Thom- For those serious about practicing transformative justice and who know that love is an ethic this conversation will feel like chicken soup 

 Invisibilia The Confrontation- This episode is about a social justice camp for teens that makes them talk about and confront racism. I ran a similar program for three years also for teens in my former life and because of this I had strong feelings and critiques about the episode, but overall, I think it was good and worth listening to 

 Scene on Radio S4 E5: Feminism in Black and White- The episode gives great historical context to feminism in the United States 

ANNOUNCEMENTS

Sign the petition to ensure that the hourly wage workers at University of Miami get paid during this time of great economic precocity [LINK] to the petition

Newsletter #8

These offerings and musings, are currently taking place on the ancestral, traditional, stolen, and unceded lands of the Musqueam people the lands also known as Vancouver.

Anti-Racist Pro-tip Level 400+

Hollywood is obsessed with the high school cafeteria scene. You know the one where all the Black kids are sitting together, there is a white-only table, sometimes if the movie is super progressive there is an Asian table, the band geek table, and of course the alternative kid's table. This is how I imagine the social media landscape to be. We are all in the high school cafeteria and depending on how you have curated your newsfeed/timeline your cafeteria is probably pretty diverse.

I spend a great deal of my time on social media watching how people move and respond within the cafeteria (I am a social scientist) and it appears that some of us understand the rules of engagement and many of us do not. Below is a list that is designed for white people specifically, but it can be applied to other people who are members of dominant groups watching conversations unfold in their midst. These are things to consider before responding to issues online:

 1. W.A.I.T = why am I talking but in this case, it’s why am I typing -Being mindful of my social location (race, gender, class &, etc) does this story require my voice as a white person? Ask yourself: “do I have the intellectual range to enter this discussion?”  

2. Are there Black people on the internet already making the points that I am itching to make? If I have not seen these opinions is it because my timeline is a homogenous gated community?

3. What role does white supremacy play in my need or want to comment? Are their historical implications associated with the situation? For e.g. there is a long racist history of whiteness trying to tell us all that men of color and in particular Black men are all rapists and white women are in particular danger from these predatory Black men. If you are white and you know this history how do you balance this in an anti-racist way?

4. Am I being paid to give my opinion? Meaning am I a JOURNALIST? And if I am a journalist and I have to write about the story what structures do I have in place to manage my white supremacy in my writing? If I am not a member of the media who actually needs/wants/looking for my opinion? 

5.  Is this my business? Meaning am I witnessing an intracommunity dialogue happening in front of me on the internet and am I trying to insert my whiteness into an intracommunity dialogue? What are the ramifications of me inserting myself into a conversation that Black people have a good grasp on? 

Nuance is not an easy skill to acquire or teach if it were I would gift it to folks during Kwanzaa. It takes a great deal of skill to know when and how to offer up your opinion in ways that are generative and moves the conversation forward in a good way. For example, there is a propensity among some anti-racist white people to literally preface every statement by saying, “I don’t want to take up too much space” to which I internally start to roll my eyes. Because when we are talking about systemic and structural racism we need EVERYONE in the conversation. A white person using their voice to disrupt racism, be in solidarity, or call their fellow whites in is not taking up space. However, interjecting yourself into an intracommunity conversation is the definition of taking up too much space. But so many white people do not seem to know this crucial difference.

 I am not suggesting that white people do not have the right to talk about issues on their social media. But if you are a white person or white coded person who claims anti-racism as a sociopolitical ideology how do you operationalize this on social media? Herein lies the work of nuance. I will offer another example, I had lots of opinions and feelings about this year’s Super Bowl halftime show. I saw blackness being used in various ways and being signaled to, but I saw no actual Black people. I also had strong feelings about seeing Latinx folks say that this was a win for the Latinx community. Reading those kinds of sentiments made me think, “was this a win for BLatinx folks and why does a win for the Latinx community must come at the expense of Black solidarity?” I had lots to say, but when I looked around my social media landscape I saw many white, Brown, & BLatinx femmes saying the same things and in more astute ways. Therefore, I opted to listen and read what people most impacted had to say about the situation. 

 Now one can argue because I am Black, Haitian (Haiti is located in Latin America), & from Miami, I could definitely have weighed in and to that, I say probably yes, but not every situation requires my analysis. I have three social media accounts that I use very heavily and if you audit them you will see that I do not comment on everything.

 Being a good citizen means truly being mindful of how one engages in larger public discourse. As United State-ians we are encouraged to offer our opinion on everything and I feel like that is an imperialist impulse. The belief that every conversation should be dominated by our uncooked opinions. We forget that there is so much power in learning and amplifying the brilliant informed and expert opinions of others.  

These guiding principles can be used in various ways and situations. Knowing when and how to use your voice is a great mark of a seasoned thinker. Nuance is not a thing that lives on social media which is why we all need to have strategies on how and when to engage things publicly so that we do not inadvertently cause more harm and reify the white gaze. 

VIEWING AND READINGS

 I reviewed the Netflix dating show Love is Blind you can watch the video on my YouTube channel –[link]

 Phillip Agnew and Cornel West on Identity Politics: [link]

 Pure Love Episode #11: The One About Kink- [link]-I appreciated watching a unicorn mama talk to their adult daughter about kink. These folks are modeling before us what kinds of truth telling can be possible between us when we have language and comfort around talking about sex and sexuality. We rarely see sex talks between adult children and their parents and the fact that these two folks are Black and queer is just pure perfection. Many queer folks who are also survivors of child sexual abuse (CSA) are exploring kink to reclaim their power over their body and that is touched upon lightly in the video

 Ta-Nehisi Coates speaking at UBC- [link to video]-THC was recently at my school doing what he does best and you should watch this conversation. He talks about masculinity, weaving history and poetry together, and why he came to Gayle King’s defense, and of course his new book The Water Dancer 

 Danez Smith: ‘White people can learn from it, but that’s not who I’m writing for’-For Smith, the bigger crime is that too few reviewers are aware of many of the established poets who have been influences – people such as Patricia Smith, Lucille Clifton and Amaud Jamaul Johnson. “If your understanding of black radical art starts and ends with Amiri Baraka and Sonia Sanchez, then you don’t really know a lot of the archive. I think a lot of folks only know the ‘canon’, but there are so many canons to pull from,” Smith says. “All writers deserve that type of deep reading and seeing.”

Colonial conservation- ‘a cycle of impunity’- A UN investigation has suggested that rangers funded by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) have beaten up, abused and murdered people in the forests of Congo. These atrocities were committed in the name of conservation. 

 Fat Studies, Body, and Desirability Politics: A reading list -In recent years, with the help of social media, there has been an uptick in conversations around fatness, “body positivity,” and general body politics. You may have run into words you hadn’t heard before, like “fatphobia,” or “anti-fatness,” or even fatmisia”

The Age of Instagram Face *the article was published in 12/2019*- There was something strange, I said, about the racial aspect of Instagram Face—it was as if the algorithmic tendency to flatten everything into a composite of greatest hits had resulted in a beauty ideal that favored white women capable of manufacturing a look of rootless exoticism. “Absolutely,” Smith said. “We’re talking an overly tan skin tone, a South Asian influence with the brows and eye shape, an African-American influence with the lips, a Caucasian influence with the nose, a cheek structure that is predominantly Native American and Middle Eastern.” Did Smith think that Instagram Face was actually making people look better? He did. “People are absolutely getting prettier,” he said. “The world is so visual right now, and it’s only getting more visual, and people want to upgrade the way they relate to it.”

 Bernie Sanders Earns Support From Black Women Activists Like Barbara Smith, Isra Hirshi - Dream Defenders, a youth-led racial and economic justice organization, is one of several minority-led groups trying to make the case that an older white man is the best candidate to represent their interests. The group’s codirector Rachel Gilmer says that 90% of its membership voted to endorse Sanders and that she thinks the media’s focus on “Bernie bros” is part of an intentional “erasure” of the Vermont senator’s supporters of color. Gilmer moderated the following conversation with four other black women activists — Combahee River Collective cofounder Barbara Smith, who helped coin the term “identity politics”; poet and organizer Aja Monet; climate activist Isra Hirsi; and mental health advocate Kenidra Woods — about their support for Sanders and “what it means to be a left black feminist in 2020.”

Black Womxn For Supports Elizabeth Warren for Admitting Her Mistakes -While taking responsibility for her actions is not inherently exceptional, Warren’s ability to do so and to grow from the experience is an exception in a political climate where personality is gaining traction over strategy and the ability to get things done. Our exchange — along with Warren's Working Agenda for Black America, which focuses on making big structural changes in health care, student loan debt, access to free college, housing, and the criminal legal system — assured me that I should put my vote, money, and time toward supporting her candidacy.

Why Are So Many White Women Suddenly Wearing So Much Gold Jewellery?[link]- There is a scene in Sex and the City I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. Miranda Hobbs, Carrie Bradshaw’s very dependable and sensible friend, tried to help Carrie’s boyfriend at the time, everyone’s favorite nice guy who finished last Aidan, pick out an engagement ring. Carrie hated the ring. She hated it so much she threw up when she saw it. Dramatic, yes, but she couldn’t understand how the man she could potentially become betrothed to would buy her a gold ring. “But you wear gold,” Miranda said (who could forget Carrie’s cherished “gold” name plate she almost lost in Paris?). “Yeah, ghetto gold for fun!” Carrie shot back flippantly and quickly.

LISTENING

Death, Sex and Money: Carmen Maria Machado Is Using The Word ‘Abusive’-this episode about intimate partner violence in queer relationships *fact sheet for queer survivors [link]* (this podcast has transcripts)

Edge of Sports with Dave Zirin: Former NBA Star David West on Political Journey- I do not watch sports, but I love to read and listen to how sports intersect with race, gender, and class issues. This is one my favorite white men to listen to (the list is short) he is feminist and anti-racist and knows his stuff. This episode he is talking to David West who is a Bernie supporter and who is challenging the NCAA

Fanti- this is my new favorite podcast discovery. This show is about how you can be both be a fan and anti-someone aka fanti. This show is from two Black queer journalists and there is a sharp queer analysis. I have thoroughly enjoyed every episode. Get into its children! 

Longform #378 Ashley C. Ford- Ashley is one of my favorite writers and people to follow on Twitter. The things she has to say about love in the first ten minutes of this interview is beautiful, and hopeful. Ashley talks about money in the most honest way I have heard in public. This episode is a masterclass in adulting

The Ezra Klein Show: “cold, atheist book”- listen to Ta-Nehisi Coates interview Ezra Klein about his new book which all about polarization. I enjoyed listening to two friends talk and it was cool to hear THC interview instead of being interviewed 

ANNOUNCEMENTS

I am on the advisory board of Black Feminist Futures Org and we are hosting a Black Feminist School in Philadelphia. The weekend is open to Black feminist cultural workers, organizers, students, non-profit folks and etc. The deadline has been extended to March 8th and there are scholarships available. Please apply here [link]

If you got your tax refund and want to bless a family please donate here [link]

Newsletter #7

These offerings and musings, are currently taking place on the ancestral, traditional, stolen, and unceded lands of the Musqueam people the lands also known as Vancouver.

Happy Black Future Month. This year Black Future Month has an extra day due to it being a leap a year. Therefore, this means we have 29 days of all Black everything! Valentine’s Day is also coming up so my musings this month is about love. I wrote about love back in November’s issue, but I am a Libra sun and I have 5 placements in Libra which means love and relationships for better or worse are serious preoccupations of mine. And, I truly believe that our relationships tell you so much about people’s politics and praxis. For e.g. almost every B/I/POC has had the experience of going to their white or white-coded friend’s wedding that is pretty racially homogenous. All of a sudden it becomes hella clear that your fronds anti-racism is only for social media and work and that it is not an actual way of life.

 Feel free to reflect back to me your thoughts and feelings. 

The future of love is queer and platonic 

 “We learn to love by loving. We practice with each other, on ourselves in all kinds of relationships. And right now, we need to be in rigorous practice with each other because we can no longer afford to love people the way we’ve been loving them” -adrienne maree brown from the essay ‘Love As Political Resistance” from her book Pleasure Activism

Since 2019, I have been really thinking about and theorizing out loud about the capaciousness of platonic love and how we all need to queer our understanding and enactment of love. I am always thinking about how much of my politics am I truly bringing to my relationships.

 I recently, woke up to a text from a beloved sister-friend that would help clarify this answer for me. In the text my sister-friend was calling me in on how I was not truly showing up as fully as I can in our relationship and how it was causing her harm. Essentially from the text and the beautiful conversation that followed later that day it became clear to me that I could no longer afford to love her the way that I was loving her. In that moment I was being gifted with the opportunity to live out my values and really lean into radical platonic love. 

 To queer love is to do intimacy differently. It means that we throw away the white normative cultural ideas about love that we learned and do a new thing.  To queer love is to love people how they want to be loved. 

 I like to use queer as a verb because to me queer is instructive and it is a mandate.  Queer is not just about gender or sexual orientation. Queer is deeply sociopolitical and relational. When I queer love, I am actively rejecting the notion of the golden rule that we have been socialized into in this Judeo-Christian society. The golden rule says, “to treat others as we would want to be treated.” I think that is a super selfish and self-centered way to approach love and relationships. The golden rule is rooted in capitalism and white supremacy. If you check the following boxes: 

·      White 

·      Male 

·      Able-bodied 

·      Cisgender 

·      Heterosexual 

 Having a combination of these identities makes it easier to love or be loved and it increases your chances of being treated well. Having a multitude of these privileges may allow one to have less problems articulating their personhood and having their personhood be seen as legible and legitimate, but what about the rest of us? 

 Someone who is a survivor of child sexual abuse/sexual assault, who grew up with an incarcerated parent(s), who is a transracial adoptee, grew up in the foster care system, is in recovery, has abandonment issues, is learning to have boundaries late in life, is undocumented, is a migrant, is transgender, queer, femme, low-income, disabled, or etc. is going to require love that fits their specific desires and more importantly their lived experience and context. 

 Love must fit the object of the affection if you want your love to register and matter to your beloved.

With this in mind, I asked my sister-friend “how do you need me to show you love?” And because she is a self-aware person who is doing her own WORK she gave me three things that she needed from me. They were clear and more importantly they are doable! Now, I am clear on how I need to organize my love and efforts to meet her love language. I know for a fact that the conversation her and I were able to have and the space we were able to create for this level of truth telling and confession could only happen because we are both politically aligned and serious about putting our politics into praxis. In the end, our shared Black feminist ideology, our belief in abolition, and our mutual desire to be in a radical platonic friendship ensured that both of our needs got met.  

 I hope this month that you will take the time to do an audit of all your relationships and really ask folks how do they want to be loved? And when you get answer I hope you will implement it.. 

 VIEWINGS AND READINGS 

Sula by Toni Morrison- which is this month’s book club read 

 We Can Only Process Kobe Bryant’s Death by Being Honest About His Life by Evette Dionne-When we’re wedded to specific narratives of how feminists should act, it can be all too easy to disregard humanity. But feminism, at least the tradition I follow, makes space for redemption too. Only Bryant’s accuser can decide if she forgives him, and it’s not our place to do that work publicly on her behalf. What we can do is complicate these conversations so we can usher in more honesty about who’s elevated in the aftermath of a sexual assault and how fame and money insulate perpetrators from being brought to account. We can do this while still acknowledging that Bryant didn’t deserve to die in such a manner at such an age and that the people who loved him are grieving.

 Two Things Can Be True True, But One is mentioned First by Jeremy Gordon-Things can change once enough time passes and the dissenters are browbeat into holding their silence. After all, a man died, along with his daughter, and seven others, and if you think now is the time to litigate all the messy stuff that happened so long think again, because my opinion is more important than your opinion. But when I read all these tributes to Kobe, I don’t learn anything about him, because while his death is tragic, he is a person I did not know. Instead, his death teaches me about us.

 Millennials Love Zillow Because They Will Never Own a Home by Angela Lashbrook-This is a sad reality and truth and yes I have Zillow app on my phone currently 

 Pendeja, You Isn’t Steinbeck: My Bronca with Fake-Ass Social Justice Literature by myriam gurba- In order to choke down Dirt, I developed a survival strategy. It required that I give myself over to the project of zealously hate-reading the book, filling its margins with phrases like “Pendeja, please.” That’s a Spanglish analogue for “Bitch, please.”

Can ‘Bad Boys’ Become Good Men by Soraya Nadia McDonald-Will Smith became the biggest movie star in the world by playing one cop after another. Now, he’s got a new Bad Boys movie coming out, but there’s a question looming right alongside it: In the post-Black Lives Matter era, can Bad Boys still resonate?

 Transgender Activists Scoff at Idea of Voting for Pete Buttigieg- video [link]

 The Future of Trans Representation in Media- video [link]

 It Is a Terrible Irony That Kobe Bryant Should Fall From The Sky by Charles P. Pierce-But it is 2020 now, and Jeffrey Epstein is dead and Harvey Weinstein is in a New York courtroom, and erasing a female victim is no longer a viable moral and ethical strategy. Kobe Bryant died on Sunday with one of the young women in his life, and how you will come to measure his life has to be judged by how deeply you believe that he corrected his grievous fault through the life he lived afterwards, and how deeply you believe that he corrected that fault, immediately and beautifully, and in midair.

 Whitney Houston and Aaron Hernandez: The Costly Trauma of the Closet by John Casey-

Houston and Hernandez were both complicated, high-achieving individuals with many demons — obviously Hernandez’s tribulations were much worse. However, it raises the question, is there a price to be paid for feverishly trying to stay in the closet? Aggressively denying your sexuality is not just about being scarred emotionally, but does it push someone into really dangerous behaviors like hard drugs, rage, and hurting others and/or yourself?

LISTENING

First Draft with Sarah Enni- this podcast interview is with Chani Nicholas and its about her writing process and the container that Chani built for herself to finish this book. I love hearing creatives talk about their creative process plus I really enjoyed Chani’s book

Capitalism and Desire: In Dialogue with Psychoanalysis- If philosophy is your thing you will appreciate this conversation about how capitalism shapes and fuels are desires 

Why Theory: Hegel and Race- another very philosophy heavy podcast examining Hegel’s ideas on race and how they shifted 

Death Sex and Money Between Friends: Your Stories About Race and Friendship-for those who have been harmed by racism inside of your interracial friendships and for those of you who have caused harm inside of your IR friendships this episode is a must listen. I shared it with a white friend of mine and we had a beautiful conversation that deepened our friendship 

Code Switch: ‘Between Friends’-this is a companion piece to the above episode furthering the conversation about interracial friendships 

SunStorm Alicia Garza and Ai-jen Poo- this is a new podcast listen to two movement leaders and friends humanize social change makers 

The Baron of Botox- this is a 10-part podcast series about the celebrity dermatologist Dr. Frederic Brandt and his suicide. I am really riveted by the story and the feminist questions this podcast is making me confront as it concerns the pursuit of beauty  

More Than Enough-This is a 4-part series on universal basic income produced by The Nation that talks to actual low-income people about how universal basic income would impact their lives 

 Always be Optimizing by Jia Tolentino- [listen to the essay here]- this essay is about how women are forced to optimize themselves and the feminist implications associated with this optimization hustle 

 How To! With Charles Duhigg: How To Kick a Meth Habit- change is hard and this podcast episode really drives home the point of what is needed to change your life when you cannot change your physical setting 

Committed-this is a show about marriage and it what it takes to have a successful marriage. I have listened to three episodes thus far, and I am not sure how to feel about the host. I got thoughts and feelings lol

ANNOUNCEMENTS

Sula-book club meeting will be on Saturday, Feburary 29th 12:00 p.m. PST sign up for details

Newsletter #6

These offerings and musings, are currently taking place on the ancestral, traditional, stolen, and unceded lands of the Musqueam people the lands also known as Vancouver.

In Honor of Martin Luther King Day

A happy new year and new decade fam. We made it, we survived and also Happy Martin Luther King weekend.  I hope this weekend is more than just a day off from work for those who are afforded such a luxury. I hope that we do not take for granted why this day exists. John McCain aka “The Maverick” opposed this day becoming a holiday. In many ways being pro-MLK is not a divisive issue presently, but that was not always the case. We have turned Dr. King into Santa Claus in many respects. We have neutralized him. We forget that King was shot in the head. He was considered too radical and pushing the United States to move "too fast " on the issue of integration. Let us never forget this truth. As I reflect on this holiday from Vancouver, Canada that does not celebrate King I am remined of an interview that he gave to NBC. In this interview, we hear MLK grappling with the ugly bitter reality of what the United States is and the devastating impacts that it has on Black people. 

In this video, we also hear King quote James Baldwin when he says, “what is the point of being integrated into a burning house?” Social justice is about equal rights, recognition, and creating the conditions for the margins to be centered. In other words, it’s about different kinds of bodies being absorbed into the larger body politic. But lately, I have been thinking about why would I want to be mainstreamed into white normativity aka white supremacy?

As a doctoral student studying race, gender, sexuality, and social justice I am obsessed with utopias and the future. I think about and theorize what a future not predicated on white supremacy can look like? I do this through a queer Black feminist lens. I want to live in a future that does not require assimilation, civility, or the squashing of one’s anger in order for people to be seen as legible and as worthy of human rights, recognition, and equality. For example, the more queer people get mainstreamed into society the more queer people have to fight to maintain their queerness. Queerness is not simply about who you desire to sleep with or who you are willing to sleep with. There is a political and relational aspect to queerness that gets lost in the quest to prove that we are "just like the straights."  I want to live in a world where I can be me without the threat of violence, but I have no interest in being normative. Assimilating into white norms is not a win because it requires a form of emotional and psychic death, denial, and separation from our radical politics. Assimilation means accepting the status quo and never changing or abolishing the systems and structures that keep us from accessing our full freedom. 

Communities and individuals should not have to be forced into assimilating into a burning house before they can be allowed the right to live fully. 

I hope this year and decade you will get clearer on your politics, queerer, and more radical. May this be the decade that we resist the impulse to be watered down and whitewashed for the sake of having a seat at the table. There are some tables that do need to be diversified they need to be knocked over. 

VIEWINGS / READINGS

The Bluest Eye- Toni Morrison this is the first book that is kicking off the social justice doula book club

You Were Born for This Astrology for Radical Self-Acceptance by Chani Nicholas- Astrology is a tool that I have been using for years that has helped me harness my power, accept myself, and learn how to work with all parts of myself. I have been reading Chani’s horoscopes for years and I am so happy that she has a book out. Its written in that fiercely beautiful social justice voice of hers. 

What exactly is “micro” about microaggressions?- The title speaks for itself. Especially since science is able to quantify the harm that racism has on Black bodies it really does call into question can racism ever be considered “micro?”

Journaling isn’t just good for your mental health. It might also help your physical health- I literally can’t preach the gospel of journaling enough. I do three pages every morning

The pitfall of symbolic decolonization- “But here is the question. Consider all the unresolved historical inequalities where slavery becomes indentured servitude as Indians are imported into British colonies, colonialism becomes neocolonialism, and neo-colonialism opens up to unequal globalization. Also consider the inherited trauma still suffered by comminutes all over the world that have been, generation after generation, at the brunt end of global exploitation. Can what we in the West are calling decolonization in philosophical and material terms, really address historical inequalities”

 Mona Eltahawy Would Like You to Fuck Right Off with Your Civility Politics- “Patriarchy is global, and what patriarchy demands of us across the world is this certain politeness and civility that Stella Nyanzi and radical rudeness destroys. I want people to pay attention to Stella Nyanzi and to start adopting the radical rudeness that she is a proponent of. I want them to look our oppressors in the eye and say fuck you. That is my message for the next decade.”

 Radical Academics for the Status Quo- this article was trying to be shame-y, but I simply found it ridiculous and funny. There is nothing radical about electoral politics (my spicy hot take) and I am shocked that the Jacobin printed this, but my favorite academics giving did line up with their philosophies

Becoming Billy Porter- One of my favorite writers wrote an exquisite feature about Billy Porter and you simply got to get into it 

LISTENING

Dua Lupa- Don’t Start Now- this song is brining me pure joy. I am finally healed from my heartbreak and this song is reminding me that I am G O O D

 Riton x Oliver Heldens -Turn Me On ft. Vula- another song that is bringing me joy in the winter and rain of Vancouver 

 A Little Juju Podcast- this my new favorite podcast finds for those who are interested in a podcast about Black spirituality 

 Touré Show- Nikole Hannah Jones I live in a slavocracy- this episode is amazing, but NHJ analysis on public school education is the most clear and radical articulation that I have heard on the subject matter. Also, the way she ran circles around Touré was a masterclass 

 Slow Burn- Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I. G- this eight-part series is about the murders of Big and Pac and for those of us who were kids when this happened it is good of us to to revisit this as adults. I have so many questions and so many of my old suspicions seem to have been answered

 Prelude & Feud on a ‘G’ Thang: Biggie vs Tupac- this episode does a great job trying to define what is a west coast or an east coast sound. It is a great companion piece to the Slow Burn series 

The Nod an Oral History of Knuck If You Buck- if you LOVE the song “Knuck if you Buck” then this oral history is for you 

The Stakes- There Goes the Neighborhood- is three-part series centered on Miami and climate gentrification and Nadege Green of WLRN co-produced this amazing three-part series 

Announcements

January 26th -The Social Justice Doula book club will have its meeting via zoom 

 Black Future Month aka Black History Month is around the corner and this year it is a leap year. To celebrate Black Future Month, I will be hosting a journaling challenge. In order to participate you have to follow me on IG and/or Facebook. My IG is thefeministgriote check my socials for more details

 I am still collecting money for my sister-friend Shel please give to this campaign and help us reach the goal of 5k [link here]

Newsletter #5

These offerings and musings, are currently taking place on the ancestral, traditional, stolen, and Unceded lands of the Musqueam people the lands also known as Vancouver.

Love and social justice

What does your romantic, platonic, and relationships with strangers reveal about your values and your beliefs? We all know of the tragic story of the clergy who shows up for his congregation but can’t save his family. The charismatic leader who organizes the protest and gives beautiful impassioned speeches about freedom and justice, but is a womanizer, abuser, and/or a neglectful lover and partner. Relationships are the places where we can practice living in a world that is not centered or mediated by white supremacy. 

As a Black queer femme who dates primarily Black people I know first-hand how white supremacy can corrode love and turn loving human beings into the worst possible versions of themselves. I blame white supremacy for the pain that I have experienced inside of my romantic relationships.  White supremacy doesn’t show up in the ways that we might be able to easily identify. White supremacy can rear its head through disputes about money, addiction (both the socially and not socially sanctioned), infidelity, lovelessness, and/or emotional/physical abuse. My exes and I are not awful people, but we are survivors of awful things and those things hindered our ability to see each other and offer each other the love, kindness, and freedom that we ultimately wanted to feel. 

I cannot control the various ways in which white supremacy is trying to destroy our world and our republic, but I can control the limits in which I will allow white supremacy to take root in my love life and in my platonic relationships. I have spent the last year of my life doing deep grief work. Grieving all the love that I have lost and the pain, shame, humiliation that I have endured. White supremacy does not want us to heal which is why we must be make confronting our trauma a priority! To live a feminist and/or anti-racist life whatever you choose to call it requires that we commit to healing, loving ourselves better, and loving each other in ways that speak to our values. In the words of adriennemareebrown, “`we can no longer afford to love people the way we have been loving them.” 

VIEWINGS / READINGS

When Things Fall Apart- I am currently listening to the audiobook by Pema Chodron. I have found Buddhist teachings very helpful in my personal development and healing

Decolonizeallthescience.com & decolonizeallthethings.com- For those who want to read about the intersection of science and racism

The Next Question Ep 6 Brave Together with Brene Brown- This is a great episode about racial justice and interracial friendships among white women and WOC

She Was Allegedly Raped And Couldn’t Bear Going To Trial. So She Met Her Attacker In Person To Work Things Out-For those interested in how using restorative justice can be used to address an assault case. 

Ask Polly : How Do You Learn to be Happy Alone?-Great advice for those in struggle with their loneliness

Climbing Everest Isn’t a Bucket List Dream- It’s a Crisis of Overtourism- A great article about the intersection of tourism and settler fantasies of conquest

In the End, BoJack Heals-but at Whose Expense-BoJack Horsemen is my favorite show (feel free to judge me) and this essay made some excellent points about the women who were used to help BoJack heal

LISTENING

Intersectionality Matters Ep 6- What Slavery Engendered: An Intersectional look at 1619- Kimberlie Crenshaw discusses slavery and gender with the Dorothy Roberts a must listen! 

The Daily Who’s Actually Electable in 2020- Sexism appears to be the forever issue in the U.S. elections 

Switched on Pop: Rihanna Party- This episode truly contextualized the reach and impact that Rihanna  has had on pop music

Esther Perel How’s Work? The Break-Up-this podcast is only available on Spotify in this episode Esther helps two bestfriends breakup professionally. This podcast proves that whoever you are in your romantic life it will translate professionally

ANNOUNCEMENTS

Newsletter #4

These offerings and musings, are currently taking place on the ancestral, traditional, stolen, and Unceded lands of the Musqueam people the lands also known as Vancouver.

 This newsletter was supposed to come out last week. However, my very good friend Wakumi came to visit me and it is just what my heart and mind needed. Please take time to honor the platonic relationships in your life while you can! 

There are currently 60 days left in 2019 and in this decade. The last ten years have both flown by and gone by painstakingly slow. I have been thinking deeply about this grand closing of the 2010s. Sociopoitcally we have changed as a society. We are in the midst of a radical paradigm shift. Everything has been unsettled, everything has been destabilized, and everything is demanding redefinition. 

This past decade we experienced our first Black president, #BlackLivesMatter movement, #metoomovement, The Arab Spring, The Occupy movement and etc. I suspect that the next decade will be equally as politically charged and dynamic. We are living in a world where Black, Indigenous, and People of Color are centering ourselves in ways that isdemanding a shift in the status quo. The margins are becoming center and the question I have for us all is do we have the political will and discipline to deal with this level of change? Who do you want to be in this next decade and year? Will you resist change and succumb to atrophy or will you rise to the occasion and fight for your humanity and the survival of our planet. There is no option where one can opt-out. 

 The next decade is going to require us to be clearer, bolder, and more intentional about the worlds that we want to build. We are going to become more divided, we are going to be more principled, and we are going to be more unrelenting in our fight for recognition, justice, and decolonization. There is no neutrality in this era that we are already in. Find your people, find your ethical line, build your social justice practice, stay curious, and know that the future will belong to those of us who are willing to fight for it.

VIEWINGS / READINGS

How To Support Harm Doers in Being Accountable-for those of you interested in abolition and transformative justice practices you will appreciate this video. 

 Black people in Canada are not settlers-just read it! 

 Miley’s Pansexual, But That Doesn’t Mean She Cares About Queer People-this essay males me think about why the “born this way” narrative is too facile to be universalized. What if Miley is playing queer in the same way Rachel Dolezal is cosplaying with Black womanhood? 

Doubling Down on Love by Brene Brown- this next decade needs us to double down on more love 

LISTENING

Mogul Season 2:Miami- is all about the genealogy and evolution of Miami hip-hop. It focuses on 2 Live Crew and Uncle Luke. If you are a hip-hop head and you love Miami and Southern hip-hop this podcast is for you. Thank me later!

 NPR Fresh Air Ronan Farrow- I DON’T make it a habit to cape for white men (or men period), but Ronan Farrow is that dude to me. He should never ever be allowed to buy his own drink in any bar on this planet if I had my way. Ronan Farrow IMHO exhibits in the truest sense of the word what a male ally should be doing to help disrupt rape culture. This podcast episode is about his book about Harvey Weinstein. It is a great interview. I am low key a Terry Gross stan! 

 The Happiness Lab: You can change- This podcast is the brainchild of Dr. Laura Santos who created the Happiness course at Yale that got lots of press. I am determined to be a happy well-adjusted Black woman and this podcast episode discusses the science of happiness and how happiness takes work 

 The Nod-Cha Cha Now Y’all- I hope this episode makes you as happy as it made me. This episode is the genesis story of the Cha Cha slide. Trust me you want to know! 

 Dolly Parton’s America-Sad Ass Songs WNYC is doing 9 podcast episode series on Dolly. This first episode gave us a complicated look into Dolly’s song writing and politics. This episode is drenched in white feminism and all the ways its limited and problematic, but overall, I enjoyed the episode 

Newsletter #3

MUSINGS

These offerings and musings, are currently taking place on the ancestral, traditional, stolen, and unceded lands of the Musqueam people the lands also known as Vancouver.

Remember when everybody was about that “we are the resistance” life and hype? During the summer of 2017 AKA “the resistance’ that was the first time I started doing anti-racist workshops for the public. As part of a wrap up email I sent these tips via email to the participants. I have edited and updated them and sharing them with you here. I hope this is helpful and useful.

HOW TO BE AN ALLY IN THESE TOUGH TIMES TIPS FOR THE RESISTANCE 

1. Check-in with the QTBIPOC, immigrants, & undocumented folks in your life. Anyone in your life who is deemed the other by this government and this nation-state needs our love and demonstrated concern and care. For e.g. as I type this yet another Black person has been murdered by the state in her home #AtatianaJefferson. I am very sad and angry. Almost on a weekly basis a Black and/or Brown transwoman is murdered and let us never forget the bevy of Indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit folks who go missing and their disappearance never makes it to the news. These ongoing acts of violence unsettle and disrupt the sense of safety of those whose communities are under ceaseless attacks. Make it a point to get on the phone and call folks, text, and ask them how they are doing. Ask these folks what does support look like for them? Do not be alarmed if their answer is, “I don’t know.” People are not accustomed to being asked what they need and have probably not given this any thought. If the idea of checking in with people who are radically different from you frightens you, then it is imperative that you do it! Be honest, direct, and vulnerable with folks and let them know why you are checking in with them, and that you are struggling on how to do it. Let folks know your intentions. Do not get angry or take it personal, if these folks give you a response that is lukewarm or worse. White supremacy makes it hard to be vulnerable with those who occupy the space of your oppressor. 

2. Give money directly to activists/organizers when at all possible. Your fav activist and/or organizer’s ideas has been used to double the grant funding of many of your fav social justice organizations, but the brilliant organizers NEVER EVER gets a raise, promotion, or bonus. Many of your favorite social justice organizations abuse their organizers and are deeply rooted in white supremacy. Many of these organizations would sell out their base to be tokens at various problematic tables with donors, who have NO interest in disrupting white supremacy. Therefore, treat your fav activist and/or organizer to a spa day, lunch, dinner, or if you have a cottage or summer home offer up the space to your fav who is in dire need of respite. *Giving money to Black folks directly is NOT reparations, but it’s an awesome gesture! * 

3. Have the hard conversation with your in-group. Meaning white folks talking to other white folks about their white supremacy. Straight folks talking to other straight folks about their heterosupremacy. Cisgender folks talking to other cis folks about dismantling the gender binary and OUR cissupremacy. This means we must get comfortable with being in conflict and sometimes inviting the conflict. A just world will require many many hard conversations and conflict. Lean in folks! 

4. Ask yourself why are you fighting for racial/social/economic justice? What do you seek to gain from being in this fight? Articulate it. Write it down and let whatever spills open from your heart be your guiding pillars. 

5. Ask yourself who are you willing to part with in this quest for social/economic/racial justice?This is a hard one for folks, but the time to think about this is now, before you haphazardly stumble upon your cousin’s picture at the alt-right rally holding a tiki torch. Or, before you are embroiled in a Facebook fight. Everyone you love will NOT be able to walk this road with you. That is a fact. Family, is not just about DNA. One of the best lessons that the queer community has gifted the world is the concept of chosen families. As adult’s we have the honor of assembling our chosen family and we should relish in this fact. Some of us are working for a socially just world, some people are actively working towards an ethno-white state, and others will go with whomever will allow them to dominate. Learn the difference and assemble your people accordingly. 

6. Audit the social justice spaces and organizations that you pledge allegiance to 

• Who is in charge? If the people who are being most impacted are not at the helm of leadership, at the mic, or at the strategy table that is a problem. 

• Is the space accessible? Disability justice MUST be part of our fight for liberation. We must always be thinking about making the space physically inclusive and accessible!!! 

• Are there gender-neutral bathrooms? 

• Is childcare available? 

• Is food available when meetings are after hours? 

• Are the people being asked to share their stories for the 100th time on the behalf of the organizations being compensated for their emotional labor? Compensation can be: cash, gift cards, groceries, gas card, etc. 

• Has there been a community norm/agreement set to establish that pronouns will be respected in the space? 

• Is the space youth friendly? Youth are NOT the future, they are the right NOW! 

• Is there language justice in the space that extends beyond Spanish? For e.g. in Miami Haitians are the second largest ethnic group, but very rarely is Creole made available in spaces. Whose language justice is truly being centered? 

• Is there a stated and explicit framework for addressing harm in the space? Is this framework made public and has everyone consented to it? 

• Is healing justice and a trauma-informed framework a cornerstone of the social justice spaces and organization(s)? If not, run like hell fam. For many of us our trauma brought us into the movement, but our trauma if left untreated and unresolved, will not be able to sustain our work. We will become those who abused us if we do not seek help for our trauma. You cannot effectively and successfully organize multi-racial broad coalitions of people without practicing healing justice and having a trauma-informed lens. That is reckless and dangerous. 

7. Get an accountability partner. Unseating your inner oppressor is going to take work and we all need a sponsor/buddy to keep us honest and on an integrous path. 

8. Get out of your zip code. For e.g. in Miami people tend to not travel outside of their preferred zones. That is problematic on various levels. The information, inspiration, fuel, and community that you need is probably not all going to be found in your zip code. 

9. By doing #8 you will be able to naturally diversify your friend group. 

10. Be willing to be vulnerable-the fight for liberation, dignity, and our humanity requires human beings that are fully present, empathic, willing to call on their courage, and those who practice being vulnerable. 

11. Make time to read and study to inform your praxis of your social justice. Read books, articles, and essays from the people who are living at the intersections. 

12. Challenge everything you know! As in everything. 

13. Unleash your imagination/creativity. Make time to play and nurture your creativity. Practice imagining what a society without “x” oppression looks like. We spend so much time protesting and fighting, but we do not give any time to imagining what the alternative can look like or articulate that alternative. Adults need play the same way kids do. Make time for rest, relaxation, and fun. 

14. Indulge. Eat your fav foods, spend time with your fav people, have good consensual sex (if you have sex), watch mindless tv. Do your thang! Live your best life and invest in your joy. Do not let the movement, or white supremacy rob you of your ability to pursue your dreams, to love, to be present, or to enjoy your life. It is OKAY to take breaks. Healthy people create healthy communities. 

15. LOVE. Always love. Never stop loving. Make space for love. Even when humans fail you. Let love be your guiding force and be the rock upon which you stand and build your social justice house. Read bell hook’s All About Love.

16. Practice self-compassion- We were ALL socialized in this fucked up context. Sometimes we are effective allies and sometimes we are NOT. Nurse your wound’s and move forward. 

17. Have Integrity-Find your ethical line and do not let anyone push you over that line. Once you cross that line it is very hard to comeback. It’s either ALL of us or NONE of us. It is NOT about you or your organization. It is always about the collective! 

18-20. Listen to Black and Indigenous folks! 

VIEWINGS / READINGS

Desirability: Do You Really Love Fat People When You Can’t Even See Us Beyond The Political—[link] the title says it all! 

TransformHarm.org—if you have ever been in my class or workshop you have heard me quote Mariame Kaba who is in my humble opinion one of the most insightful brilliant feminist thinkers of our time. She is an abolitionist and she created this website that is dedicated to transformative justice and abolition.

Yes, ‘Black’ is capitalized when we’re talking about race—[link]I judge folks who don’t capitalize Black when talking about Black people and culture and this article makes it plain on why you should change this practice if you have not already. 

Prison abolition is more than a lofty theoretical. It’s also unpretty, everyday practices of resisting state policing –[link] Hari is one of my favorite writers and they grapple with abolition and I appreciate this reminder that abolition  is messy and it not necessarily a pacifist stance. It’s complicated! 

Photos of A Butch Woman That Challenge What Pregnancy ‘Should Look Like—this is a beautiful reminder that mothers are not monolithic. [link]

Mary J. Blige on Recovery, Healing ,and Taking Care of Herself—[link] This essay is written by one of my favorite writers and it really speaks to how Black women who show up for other people rarely have people to show up for them. Needless to say, it resonated. 

LISTENING

Switched on Pop: Chance The Rapper, Kehlani, & Shifting Sound of R&B- if you are a music nerd you will be very happy to listen to this episode that is talking about R&B and its many iterations [link]

The Secret Lives of Black Women- Challenging the Status Quo with Jamilah Lemieux—[link] this episode features one of my favorite writers and I love how she talks about her abortion story. Rarely do we hear this kind of honesty about abortions especially as it concerns Black women 

It’s Been a Minute: Interview with Writer and Poet Saeed Jones On How We Fight For Our Lives—[link] A powerful episode about Jones’s new memoir it is about being Black, gay, and from the South this interview is beautiful and powerful

The Ezra Klein Show- The original meaning of “identity politics” with Keeanga Yamahtta Taylor—[link] if you want to learn the Black feminist roots and conception of the term identity politics from a Black woman scholar.

The Nod--Fearing the Black Body—[link] this episode explores the racism that underpins fatphobia and discusses how BMI is rooted in racist pseudoscience 

All My Relations--Celebrate Indigenous People’s Day, Not Columbus Day—[link] learn why it is deeply offensive and ahistorical to celebrate Columbus Day 

Newsletter #2

MUSINGS

These offerings and musings are currently taking place on the ancestral, traditional, stolen, and unceded lands of the Musqueam people the lands also known as Vancouver.

 This newsletter was supposed to go out on 9/23, but that was my birthday and I had a host of other things that I needed to handle. Sorry for the delay. I will be celebrating my birthday all throughout Libra season. I am happily accepting love, affirmations, gifts, and cash :)

 What is your vision of the future? When you are not allowing white supremacy to put a cap on your imagination what does freedom look like to you? What are you doing in this free place and space? Is the land free in your vision? Do all people have access to clean water? Does our Indigenous kin have their land back? Are Black and Brown transwomen being allowed to become elders because their life expectancy is no longer 35? Is your vision of freedom informed by feminism and if so whose feminism?

I was listening to a podcast over the summer where a white scholar who studies neo-Nazis asserted that if there was a pre-requisite for someone getting red-pilled aka becoming a neo-Nazi or alt-right enthusiast that the two things you would need to look for is a vehement transphobic ideology and a rabid hatred of feminist thought. Now, everyone who is not a practioner of feminism is not automatically a neo-Nazi, but everyone who is a neo-Nazi or member of the alt-right is definitely anti-feminism. 

 The definition of feminism that I am using these days comes from Imani Perry’s book Vexy Thing in it she defines feminism as a critical practice for understanding and working against gendered forms of domination and against the way gender becomes a tool of domination and exploitation. Perry goes on to talk about feminism being about gender liberation.

 I find it hard to conceptualize how we can truly have economic, racial, and climate justice if gender liberation is not at the core. How we treat the land, children, the ideas that uphold rape culture, how we decide who we dehumanize, and whose life is worth protecting is deeply rooted in our understanding of racialized gender.

 So again, I ask what kind of feminism are you practicing?  Is your feminism informed by?

·     Black feminist thought

·     WOC feminism (incorrectly called intersectional feminism, if you went to my workshop over the summer then you already know that there is NO such thing as ‘intersectional feminism’)

·     Third World feminism 

·     Indigenous feminisms 

 Does your feminism center disability justice? If you are not sure how to answer any of these questions then take this opportunity to seek the answer. 

VIEWINGS/READINGS

I am currently deeply exploring polyamorous platonic love these two articles were super helpful: 

Queer, Poly, and Platonic: Two Partners Discuss Their Unconventional love [link]

Relationship hierarchies: Defending queer friendships, community, and being single [link]

I found this essay by Kai Cheng Thom really helpful in thinking about the toxic dynamics found in the queer community “Why are queer people so mean to each other?” [link]

I recently revisited this talk by bell hooks and got my entire life [link]

I reread the book Ezili’s Mirrors Imagining Black Queer Genders written by Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley her work is going to be a huge basis of my dissertation 

LISTENING

Secret Feminist Agenda – Living a feminist life with Sarah Ahmed(a great listen for feminist thinkers, scholars, and students)

The Cut -- Growing Up with Toni Morrison(Black women talk about Toni Morrison’s impact on them as readers, writers, and as Black women)

On Being – The Erotic Is an Antidote to Death(I have lots of complicated thoughts and feelings about the host of this podcast, but I am a devotee of Esther Perel. This is about the radical potential and healing power of the erotic. Think Audre Lorde) 

Modern Love – My Platonic Romance on The Psych Ward(on platonic love my new favorite subject)

Still Processing – Yeehaw(this is about Black people and our relationship with country music and so much more)

ANNOUNCEMENTS

I have decided to start a book club in 2020. I am excited to put this plan into motion. Official announcement will come out sometime in November.  

If you like or LOVE my work and want to support me the easiest way to do that is to share this newsletter with your folks and share and follow my Instagram. Sharing is caring! 

Newsletter #1

Musings

Christopher Wallace aka Biggie Smalls the only Christopher that I and the culture acknowledges (fuck Christopher Columbus) is considered one of the greatest rappers to have ever touched the mic. One of my favorite Biggie records is the song “The Ten Crack Commandments” and yes, this song is about crack cocaine. I always thought the “Ten Crack Commandments” was clever because in it B.I.G. doles out advice to dope dealers like he is the hood, Moses.

In the song, Biggie talks about the importance of boundaries and having a code of ethics when it comes to being a street pharmacist. 

 My favorite commandment that I have applied to life is #4 

Never get high on your own supply

As someone who both teaches and studies social justice it is imperative that I stay grounded and not get high off my own supply! A life rooted in social justice must be a life that is filled with humility, self-reflection, clear values, and sustained engagement with accountability taking. 

 In this white supremacist world everyone who can dodge accountability does so and that is not a practice that those of us who are working towards social justice and/or decolonization should mirror. We must learn the art of giving proper apologies, accountability taking, and when appropriate submitting to restorative justice circles or transformative justice processes. It does not matter how many books we read, what we do for a living, who we are partnered with, where we volunteer, and who we donate our money to we are all works in progress in constant flux. Every time I give a proper apology, take accountability, make amends, and change my behavior I divest just a little bit more from white supremacy. 

 Here are just a few ways that I build accountability into my life AND avoid getting high off my own supply:

•  Critical self-reflection-because I have a social justice practice of reading and engaging frequently with social justice ideas and texts I know what kind of questions to ask myself. I am keenly aware of my areas of growth

• ·Integrous friendships-Being friends with people who have values and ethics and who are NOT afraid to challenge me friends who never call you in are setting you up to be called out!

• ·Letting go of the concept of good-I do not aspire to be a good person because I do not believe in the binary of good or bad. I rate my effectiveness in situations. I ask myself, “how effective was I in honoring my values in a context or situation?” And based on my answer I adjust accordingly 

• Rejecting martyrdom- I remind myself often that I am not always the victim in a situation that I too can be a victimizer. Engaging with abolition ideas and texts have helped me to stay grounded in this truth 

Are you practicing accountability?

 Viewings

I am currently reading for pleasure the following books Pleasure Activism by adrienne maree brown. This book is all about social justice folks reclaiming joy and pleasure as part of our resistance and liberation. The second book is Care Work Dreaming Disability Justice by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samasinha. If you are serious about deepening your understanding of disability justice you should engage with this book

Listening

The podcast episode I cannot seem to let go is "You Don't Make Free People" by the Nod [LINK].
I have listened to this episode multiple times. It has struck a deep chord in me, I am not even going to try and set the episode up for you. All I am going to say is that if you work in non-profit especially with youth you should listen. The Nod is a supremely Black podcast made for and by Black folks. If you are not Black keep this in mind when you engage with the episode.
I have a conflicting relationship with the podcast "With Friends Like These" but in this episode, Ana Marie Cox interviews Dr. Ibram Kendi in the second half of the show and he has fundamentally shifted how I am thinking about my anti-racism work and I have not even read his book yet! [LINK]
Dr. Rev Barber is a possibilityrole model for me and I enjoyed hearing him talk to Chris Hayes about to build a multi-racial coalition [LINK].

Announcements

I am currently taking on private clients so if you are in need of a social justice doula contact me so we can talk.BOOK ME!
I am thinking about creating a digital book club and I am interested to know if any of you would like to join me. If you would, let me know!