One of the dangerous things about representation politics is the fact that it allows us to project ourselves onto politicians with same/similar experiences to the point that it hides the fact that they can’t meaningfully lead in institutions built to erase us.

Civic institutions are not accountable to us, they are accountable to capital and other systems of oppression that validates their power and dominance over our lives.
Representation politics is a product of that system and seeks to distract us from the ways it fails us. #cdnpoli

For years, @iamcelinacc was the only politician who directly, and sometimes remotely, spoke and behaved in ways that validated my experiences of oppression in #cdnpoli, and that blinded me to some of HER daily experiences of racism and misogynoir in politics.

I was so busy hanging on to the validation her voice gave me to pay attention to the systemic and structural oppression that had manifested in different ways in both of our experiences on the Hill, me as a volunteer and her as an MP.

What I mean to say is that representation politics and electing BIWOC & hoping for the best won’t change our material conditions and how Black, Indigenous, and racialized women interact with power.

We need systemic change, and that includes dismantling institutions that uphold and are upheld by oppression.