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:
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.
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.
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