I get and resonate deeply with people’s frustration with energy suddenly being put into these seemingly pacifying name changes and settler colonial statues being taken down, but I think we need to understand a few things before we wholesale dismiss it:

First off, these actions have been coopted. Let’s always be clear on that. Some changes in this vein are are very condescending and clearly ones that the state and brands decided to come up with to nullify larger asks (the Golden Girls mud mask episode removal)

But despite that, these are things we are fighting for alongside with larger change in the world. People work hard for years for this a lot of times.

Yes we’re seeing the state in some instances decide to give on this in because it seems like an easy ask and it is convenient for the goal of to win us to their side and defanging our movements., but mostly this is the culmination of community work. That should be respected.

Every person who wants name changes and statues taken down might not always have the bigger anti-colonial vision of abolition and deep change, but many do, especially those doing the most to visibilize and drive that change

We aren’t into the removal of statues or changing of bigoted titles of landmarks and institutions because we are “easily satisfied” or “appease” by “small” tokens. Nor do I think them small

Getting rid of these symbols and icons that assert the centrality of the setter state and the colonial world at large isn’t meritless. They are a key part of white world making. They erase and superimpose onto other histories and invisibilize them.

There are things you DO NOT know, and deep bigoted misinformation you have, about the land or certain Indigenous people of the land, or of displaced Black and migrant Indigenous/GS communities, because instead you know about the white icons and history they’d rather push.

Statues, schools, airports, locales and landmarks etc named after their key white world mythos builders educate, normalize and essentialize the settler world. And invest you in it. And make you protective of it.

What’s more, getting together to take down these statues without permission is an excellent practice with abolitionist energy. It is a way to challenge power and to flex people power. We can meet, see, honor and hear each other in really transformative ways in these acts.

If these titles and icons all serve a purpose and has a role in the violence of the settler state, disrupting that is of merit in a myriad of ways. Taking down their icons are a win. One of many but not at all the end. We have many more things we need and want to achieve

It’s key to keep an eye on the prize and call cooptions, distractions and slips into complacency and reforms for what they are, but we shouldn’t totally negate the wins we get on the way or what purpose they serve.

Of course I want things other than statues removed or names changed, but that isn’t the end goal for anyone who wants to tear them down. As I said, just one of dozens, hundreds of things we wanna see changed. Destroying this world is part of our own world-building.

We needn’t denigrate or underestimate the worth of challenging and destroying these meta narratives that constantly surround us. We shouldn’t underestimate what deep ignorance and white supremacist programming and reaction they reveal and illicit.

I also don’t jive with people who aren’t from those most affected communities who’s histories and stories are being suppressed with their abusers revered and esteemed in our landmarks and placemaking speaking about the merit of tearing down statues (or keeping them up)

Part of the work is surrending white patriarchal narrative domination and letting the people most affected take lead and make decisions, and that includes letting them express the various ways how they feel about statues and landmarks.

Outsiders dismissing it all as Cheap Tactics or empty performative gestures we’re “falling for” oversimplifies the convo, diminishes and belittles the work and ask, and blames people for state cooption.

What we must resist is the state defanging that work and taking it out from its context of a series, a world of wants, desires, demands. We must be clear this is an amazing part of, not the end, of what comes next.