Read on Twitter
You know, I spent a decade trying to accumulate political capital by being strategically vocal about some issues I cared about and alao silent about others.
It's not like that didn't work some, but it wasn't until I spent it down speaking my truth that my voice gained real power
It's not like that didn't work some, but it wasn't until I spent it down speaking my truth that my voice gained real power
I have a whole lot fewer political allies now, but also comrades-from-the-trenches I'd trust with my life.
And, since my political capital comes from my willingness to speak truth to power even at a big cost, speaking that truth isn't so much an expense as a reinvestment, now
And, since my political capital comes from my willingness to speak truth to power even at a big cost, speaking that truth isn't so much an expense as a reinvestment, now
This is the real power of intersectionality in liberatory organizing-- the more intersectional we are from the get-go, the less our opponents are able to put us in the position of having to make trade-offs between one arena of justice and another.
When we start from a place of building demands intersectionally and in intersectional space, it becomes much harder for our opponents to pit our demands against a different justice demand, because truly effective intersectional demands already factor in other justice demands
The thing about non-intersectional demands is, the ones that get heard usualpy take the shortcut of neglecting the issues of the people most ignored/vulnerable.
When those folks inevitably organize and get heard, they remember who listened to them back when it mattered.
When those folks inevitably organize and get heard, they remember who listened to them back when it mattered.
That's the trap white class reductionist "leftists" like dirtbags and Jacobin smugly walked right into.
Occupy put wealth inequity issues on the map, Jacobin and dirtbags went hardcore "class matters, not race or gender," and their candidates been paying for that ever since.
Occupy put wealth inequity issues on the map, Jacobin and dirtbags went hardcore "class matters, not race or gender," and their candidates been paying for that ever since.
The class reductionist "left" rejected the idea that sexism and racism mattered, right at the moment that our country elected an openly white supremacist, self-admitted sexual predator to the White House.
My life is harder in a lot of ways now that I try my best to build my organizing practice around speaking the truth of my values (and working to practice them) rather than pussyfooting around voicing my outrage and anger at injustice at "unstrategic" times.
It's also healthier.
It's also healthier.
In the short term, it's painful and hard and politically costly to shift from a practice focused on constant values compromise to a practice rooted in intersectionality.
In the long term, though, it's a shift to a practice that's more effective, healthy, and sustainable.
In the long term, though, it's a shift to a practice that's more effective, healthy, and sustainable.
Shunning intersectionality often pays off in the short term, but you can only throw the most-marginalized under the bus for so long.
Eventually marginalized people risw up, claim their power, remember what you did, and hold you accountable for it.
Eventually marginalized people risw up, claim their power, remember what you did, and hold you accountable for it.
Look at Jacobin and the dirtbags twisting themselves in pretzels to find ways to say something about the issue of police brutality without contradicting themselves on their assertion that racial identity doesn't matter, that racial oppression is really just class oppression.
Look at stupidpol spiralling as they try to explain that ackshually police brutality isn't a disproportionately Black issue.
Jacobin and the dirtbags created an entire reactionary class reductionist "left" to avoid having to confront their own racism/sexism/ableism.
Jacobin and the dirtbags created an entire reactionary class reductionist "left" to avoid having to confront their own racism/sexism/ableism.
Doing the internal work of acknowledging, processing, and confronting our learned racism is a constant labor, but ultimately it takes far more energy to sustain denial than it takes to just work on our shit.
Intersectional organizing means moving a little more slowly as we do our best to create a liberatory movement that includes everyone, but ultimately it prevents us from trapping ourselves in a politics that alienates large swaths of the oppressed people we claim to represent.
It's like the difference between hot takes and wise takes.
Hot takes will get you clicks and attention, but over time people begin to take you less seriously & look elsewhere.
Wise takes may not align with the prevailing hot take of the moment, but begin to resonate with time.
Hot takes will get you clicks and attention, but over time people begin to take you less seriously & look elsewhere.
Wise takes may not align with the prevailing hot take of the moment, but begin to resonate with time.
There's always going to be a hot reductionism to latch onto in any given moment, but reductionisms (and the money/fame that comes with it) are passing fads.
The faces that pitch their sails the wind of a single reductionist fad too long end up washed up.
Those that try to ride the wind of reductionist fad when they blow hardest spin themselves in circles and over time end up looking silly.
Those that try to ride the wind of reductionist fad when they blow hardest spin themselves in circles and over time end up looking silly.
Intersectionality doesn't blow with the wind.
It harvests wind power and expends it sustainably in order to navigate its way to the shores of justice.
It's strategically present for the justice demands of the moment, but it never bows to reductionism.
It harvests wind power and expends it sustainably in order to navigate its way to the shores of justice.
It's strategically present for the justice demands of the moment, but it never bows to reductionism.
I wish someone had taught me that much earlier.
My career would have maybe advanced less quickly, but maybe it also wouldn't have collapsed so spectacularly when I finally found my courage and my voice in a deep way.
My career would have maybe advanced less quickly, but maybe it also wouldn't have collapsed so spectacularly when I finally found my courage and my voice in a deep way.
More accurately, I wish I'd learned it when I was taught it.
I've always been the person who has to get burned by the stove before I believe it's hot, though.
For what it's worth: if you insist on clutching it, the stove of issue reductionism will inevitably burn you.
I've always been the person who has to get burned by the stove before I believe it's hot, though.
For what it's worth: if you insist on clutching it, the stove of issue reductionism will inevitably burn you.
I wish I'd heard that lesson when it was told to me, and I certainly know it by heart now.
It's easy to warm to reductionist hot takes, but clinging to them and flinging them around always ends in burns, both of yourself and of others.
It's easy to warm to reductionist hot takes, but clinging to them and flinging them around always ends in burns, both of yourself and of others.
Don't take the shortcut.
Pick the sustainable path.
Have the humility to understand that oppression is multifaceted, and that the scales of privilege and internalized oppression are slow to fall from our eyes.
Liberatory vision is lifework, not a single semester course.
Pick the sustainable path.
Have the humility to understand that oppression is multifaceted, and that the scales of privilege and internalized oppression are slow to fall from our eyes.
Liberatory vision is lifework, not a single semester course.
That's how we build sustainable liberatory movement.
That's we come to understand that none of us are free when one of us is chained.
That's how we finally begin to learn to do the work of chainbreaking.
The end.
That's we come to understand that none of us are free when one of us is chained.
That's how we finally begin to learn to do the work of chainbreaking.
The end.
