Newsletter #23

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

I. Last month was exceptionally hard for those of us who are Haitian, those of us who believe in immigrant justice, and for those of us who call for the abolishing of fake borders on stolen and occupied lands. 

The pictures of the Haitians in Del Rio, Texas, were heart-wrenching and quite frankly shameful. Watching white men on horses use their reigns to whip Black Haitian migrants, seeing the terrorized faces of the Haitian children was devastating. I follow several Haitian media accounts on Instagram, so I heard first-hand accounts from Haitian migrants whose stories were not being mitigated by white US-centric media. For me, it was critically important to listen to Haitian migrants speak en Kreyol and detail the atrocities they are experiencing as they make their sojourn to the United States. These migrants did not start their journey off in Haiti; these sovereign beings are migrating from primarily South America from places such as Brazil and Chile. In one story, I listened to this pregnant woman recounted how she got out of being raped by acting more pregnant than she was and faking like she was sick. This same woman talked about how all migrants, regardless of their gender, are at risk being of being raped by gangs who not only prey on migrants by enacting sexual violence on them but by also robbing them.


One of my childhood besties is a traveling nurse and is currently in a border city in California. She shared that in the children’s detention center, they automatically give all female children ten and over pregnancy tests. My fellow United State-ians WE have a major human rights crisis on our hands at several borders which is also intersecting with gender-based violence and child sexual abuse. And we are not adequately being informed!
 

II. My family is currently impacted by this wave of migration. My father has several family members who left Haiti a long time ago who settled in Brazil. A month ago, they all decided to risk it all to attempt to enter the United States. This trek involves passing through 11 countries, lots of walking, travel on the bus, and lots of fees. There is a whole exploitative burgeoning underground economy that has grown out of this migrant crisis. The last time my dad touched base with these family members, they were in Colombia making final preparations to make their way to the U.S. Through the power and interconnectedness of WhatsApp, my family members and other migrants know what’s going on in Del Rio. However, they still want to try their luck. I told my dad to tell them not to come, and my dad said he couldn’t do that. How does one say to a migrant, refugee, asylee seeker not to try and enter the United States? I immediately saw the error in my comments. 

My father spent weeks deep in sadness when he could not connect with his family while watching the crisis unfold. He was afraid of the worst. However, when he was finally able to communicate with them, my dad was shocked. His cousins were laughing, making plans for the future, and refusing to abandon their dreams of coming to America. Black people’s radical joy practice and will to live is sometimes incomprehensible to even other Black folks. 

I had to remind my dad that their determination is no different from that of my parents, who came to Miami from Haiti on a boat back in the ’80s to follow their freedom dreams,. Their significant risk did not result in death or deportation, and it made my life possible. 


For me, a diasporic Haitian born and raised in Miami who thinks about defecting from the United States every week, this migrant crisis is reminding me of something I heard recently on a podcast, “one person’s dystopia is another person’s utopia.”  Watching the rapid yet slow, meticulous decline of the U.S. empire fills me up with so much daily dread. This place is getting more and more dystopic to me, and it is also simultaneously a place so many people are still risking their lives to get to.
 

III. Watching the national response or lack thereof has also been infuriating and depressing. We were all told by President Joe Biden's supporters and President Joe Biden himself that he would be different and would not govern cruelly. Uncle Joe was supposed to be different, and the first Black woman Vice President was also supposed to be different, but the images from Del Rio, Texas, do not look different from the Trump regime. 

During the Trump regime, Adam Serwer, who is a writer at The Atlantic, wrote an essay which was titled “The Cruelty Is the Point.” The article was published on October 3, 2018; Serwer has recently come out with a book of essays with the same title. 

Serwer used the phrase “the cruelty is the point” to capture how Trump and his zealots bonded over being cruel and how cruelty was a key feature of how Trump and his ilk governed. However, this past month while watching Biden’s immigration policies unfold, I don’t see how the Democratic response is more humane. I thought it was cruel when VP Kamala Harris, who herself is the product of immigrants, went to Central America to tell the people that America’s borders are closed. You can’t help destabilize whole regions of the world and then tell them don’t fight for your survival or come to your borders. When it comes to immigration, both parties are cruel.  Xenophobia is the glue that bonds many United States-ians together, no matter their race or ethnicity. The most respectable immigrants among us "The Dreamers'," can't even be saved by the Democratic Party- that to me is cruel. 

Today it is the Haitians, Central and South Americans migrating, becoming displaced, and overnight becoming refugees and asylee seekers. Tomorrow it might be us. I wonder who would take us in?


VIEWINGS AND READINGS:

Sex Worker Syllabus And Toolkit for Academics by Heather Berg, Angela Jones, and PJ Patella-Rey 

so you’re ready to choose love, Trauma-Informed Conflict Resolution for Social Justice and Spiritual Growth by Kai Cheng Thom - this is the workbook I mentioned above that I believe is a great addition to your toolbox.
 

What Makes A Black Woman Real? by Hannah Giorgis - “This is a pressure that asks Black women to have a perfect body and to have gotten it the right way. It’s a pressure that is inescapable, especially now that social-media algorithms encourage young people, particularly girls and women, to compare themselves with celebrities, models, and influencers whose looks seem more attainable despite being no less altered. And it’s driven some women to spend their money and risk their lives in pursuit of acquiring value—interpersonal, economic—in a society that has always held up white women as the physical and moral ideal.”

Op-Ed: When Speaking Wrong About Sex Work Goes Right by Josie Pickens - “But one critique of my tweet that I couldn’t ignore was that I punched down on sex workers with that snarky summation of my earlier conversation. We should always be mindful of how we communicate about those who live on the margins of society. Sex workers, because of our messed-up ideas around what is morally, politically and societally correct, face so much violence in the world. They are rarely respected or protected and they are treated as though they are disposable human beings who don’t deserve care. I added to this violent notion of disposability with my tweet. Without intention, I suggested that men who might be toxic and harmful to women be dismissed to sex workers—as if many of those men wouldn’t also be harmful to sex workers. The tweet said, without saying, that certain women deserve certain kind and decent treatment from men and certain women do not. 

I was terribly wrong.”

LISTENING:

The Chauncey DeVega Show- I am a recent subscriber to this podcast and I love it. What bought me to this podcast was the interview with Dr. Aruna Khilanani. 

The Road from 9/11 to Donald Trump - This is the nuance we all who are United State-ians need to listen and sit with. 

Movement Memos Ten Years After Occupy Wall Street, Another World Is Still Possible- This was a smart analysis on Occupy.


A Latto Thought podcast, "kinfolk not skin folk"- This is a podcast created by a mixed race Black man who appears to be going beyond the facile understanding of race and mixedness. It is refreshing. The episode I chose to highlight is all about DNA testing, a thing I think Black people should avoid at all costs, and this podcast makes a good case why these test are predatory and scientifically unsound. Also, please listen to theIn Our Blood Series,it is riveting, beautifully, and methodically lays out how Black and Indigenous people on Turtle Island are inextricably tied.

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

Great news, everyone! For those of you who missed out on watching Black Feminist Future's Jubilee live, you are in luck and can watch the playback on Youtube here. This is a great resource for those of you who want to deepen and enhance your knowledge of Black feminisms.