Decompiling Oppression #125
Sam McVeety
"Hope is a discipline," in the words of Mariame Kaba. It is something that we must practice, put effort towards, moving incrementally towards a better world in a thousand different ways. Right now, it might feel very hard to practice hopefulness. I find myself fixated on the prospect of human suffering, magnified, over the next four years, alongside an accelerated path towards environmental ruin. Still, I think about how I might practice hope, and offer that practice to others.
For many of us, practicing hope might look like taking time to rest and renew, as paradoxical as that might sound. I see so many people who are exhausted, and unable to hold that exhaustion with self-compassion, rather than guilt and judgment. As someone who can struggle to find that self-compassion, I'm reminded of a visualization exercise, of cradling a small animal (an otter is a popular choice in our household) in your arms. How would you regard them, and their exhaustion? Would you regard them with the same judgment you pass about yourself, or would you offer them shelter and love? We need all of us to do this work, but we can't do it if we don't care for ourselves.
All means all, too. We cannot build liberatory movements that treat people as disposable, even (especially!) when it's hard. There's a story I've told myself, one that I realize doesn't serve me (but one that keeps coming back). Among all the hateful, dehumanizing words used over the past few months (and longer), I focused on the idea that anyone who accepted this message was actively choosing others' suffering. Yes, there are true believers where these harmful supremacies are deeply rooted, conditioning that might take a lifetime to undo. And, there are people who are seeking reprieve, from the sense memory of economic havoc and a global pandemic, for whom these ugly words are incidental.
I wish that it were otherwise, but it is so, and it leaves me with a choice: of who I decide to give power to. Authoritarians seek to divide us, and that is exactly what they accomplish if they can so shock our sensibilities (crucially, by what they say) that we isolate ourselves from their followers, abstracting those followers as the unforgivable other. Put another way: once a public figure realizes that they can spout obscenities and still retain their flock, it is in their interest to be as extreme as they can, to use their words to isolate those followers from any chance at forgiveness and reconciliation. A different story is this one: that these are the places for tough conversations, braiding curiosity, compassion, and, yes, accountability. To be clear, this isn't giving a pass to racism or misogyny; it's offering people a way home, helping them break the hold of those ideologies.
I'm reminded of a recent event where JaTaune Bosby Gilchrist, Executive Director the ACLU of Alabama, spoke. I can't remember the exact wording of the audience question, but it was something like: "If the worst happens, why should we stay?" I was struck by the compassion in Bosby Gilchrist's response, and by its resolve. She invited the questioner into her heart, explaining that, in her community, they don't have to imagine what Project 2025 might look like, because they are already living it, and not everyone has the choice or ability to leave. Yet, through restrictions on bodily autonomy and voting rights, they are surviving; they are resisting. They are carrying forward work built across generations, uprooting white supremacy from the very cradle of the Confederacy.
There is a tension, a duality, in accepting the world as it is, and, in longing to touch the world and change it. I struggle with what it means to accept the times that we are living in. On one level, it feels vital: to understand that this is the world as it is, and it is our charge to make it better. It is not the work we might have chosen, but it is the work we have been given. At bleaker times, I worry that acceptance tiptoes towards a more nihilistic tendency, especially from a position of privilege, to accept what is, without the radical imagination to envision what could be. In these moments, I'm reminded that to build the world we dream of, I have to trust myself to hold this tension, between acceptance and change.
The road ahead is a difficult one. We will need to support each other, to imagine new ways of organizing and building power. We cannot choose the times we live in, but we can choose to wake up every day and practice hope:
The fight for our freedom will take hard work, but like I always say, we like hard work. Hard work is good work, hard work can be joyful work and the fight for our country is always worth it. It is always worth it.
Here are this week's invitations:
Personal: What do you need right now, to be ready to support yourself and others through the days and months ahead?
Communal: Who else can we invite into our movement for liberation, day after day?
Solidarity: Support the Washington Immigrant Solidarity Network, founded in the wake of the 2016 election, and their work to protect, serve, and strengthen communities across the state.
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