a lil thread on *HOPE* and why shaming people for believing that a different reality is possible, directly undermines all revolutionary resistance—past, current & future.

HOPE is a form of resistance.

I know this, because they don’t want us to have it. Shit, our own folx say we shouldn’t have it. That’s how I know that hope is magical as fuck. it’s our Book of fucking Names, & whiteness ain’t shit when we have it.

1stly—this isn’t about being “surprised” or “shocked” that white supremacy gon be white supremacy. It’s about feeling dismayed because we still have access to our own humanity.

when you engage with children in your life or in your work, you also begin to understand HOPE as a very specific form of protection too.

Hope says to children, “I believe in your future, so I’m going to protect it. You deserve joy, so I’m going to nurture it. You are entitled to freedom, so I’m going to resist the pessimism that seeks to steal it from you.”

many of us are devastated right now. we are hurt, sad, angry, raging, frustrated, disappointed—fucked up. we are going the fuck through it! and that is just our humanity showing up & showing out. it’s trying to preserve & protect itself.

humanity is a hopeful concept, and HOPE is one of the most human emotions you can have. surrendering to the trauma that attempts to steal it & warp it, is just not something I’m willing to do.

why else would our ancestors have run, if they didn’t have hope? why else would they have risked their literal lives escaping, sitting, voting, eating, marching, protesting, boycotting, fighting, RESISTING—if they didn’t have hope that their reality could be different?

when I hear people saying, “what did you expect?” & engaging in other forms of survivalist-defense- mechanism-level shaming—what I really hear is, I’ve decided to accept the conditions of my reality bcus I’m traumatized.”

and that’s why I’m not gon *shame* you for displacing & projecting. because I *know* how trauma works. I know compartmentalization is a survivalist tactic. I know cus I do it too. I just refuse to do it here.

I refuse to do it here because I refuse to accept the conditions of our reality. I refuse to let white supremacy dictate my future and our children’s futures. I refuse to let their insecurity steal my soul.

I refuse to denounce all the work our ancestors did, all the HOPE that they had, that kept them fighting—the same HOPE that ensured MY future. I refuse to give up on that because their HOPE was resistance. And so is mine.

And this pain we are in is an indicator that we have refused white supremacy access to our spirits! Our pain shows that we’ve maintained our humanity, even after they’ve tried to strip us of it again & again.

I grieve because I am hopeful. I grieve because I am human. I grieve because I have to BELIEVE that this shit can be different. I know it can. This is what we deserve. We have a right to liberation. We have a right to our freedom.

As an abolitionist, I do not have the time, or capacity, for pessimism like this (the shaming). And quite frankly, I’m tired of everyone who chooses to remain complicit in the taking of their own spirits.

whiteness wants us to ask, “what did you expect?!” it wants us to be jaded. it wants us to pursue our own trauma. it wants us to conflate human emotion with “stupidity” and “ignorance”.

white supremacy does not want us to have hope, because that is its fucking kryptonite. It wants us to accept that this is our reality & nothing we do can change it. and comrades—THAT is conditioning I will always refuse.

THAT is why I have—and will always have—hope. I know a different reality exists. I know different futures our possible. I know our children’s futures, are possible. They already exist.

choosing abolition means I’m choosing hope. understanding that collective liberation is the ultimate goal means I’m choosing hope. HOPE is the catalyst for all creation, for all freedom dreams, for all imagination. we choose abolition bcus we have hope for something new.

Hope has always been our ancestors’ North Star, and it will always be the path I choose to follow to escape this ghetto ass world of white supremacy.

so kick fucking rocks you racist, transphobic, homophobic, elitist motherfuckers. hope is my healing, and y’all will never take that shit from me.

and to my own folks—please do not let white supremacy snatch your hope away from you. we can will our world to change. we can make that happen. and we gotta have hope to ensure that it does.