i am not the kind of girl who goes 150% in on her new year's resolutions. let me laze through January with the urgency of a sloth. i work my ass off and i deserve to do nothing. i swear i believe it about 75% of the time, which is a miracle from my roots of Catholic guilt and need to prduce to be useful and "good". speaking of good, Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good were gunned down in Minneapolis by ICE this month and protests have erupted all over the country in response, as we see military training and weapons turned onto white citizens, another reckoning is happening within American whiteness. this time, there is no George Floyd to see as a criminal; a mom, wife and poet, a VA nurse, both cloaked in whiteness and liberalism, in caring for others, and almost as vilified in media. something is rupturing here, because many middle-class white folks are realizing that our whiteness does not necessarily protect us from where this regime is going. as they buy up ICE properties in midwest states for detention centers, we wonder how long it will take for folks to notice that people in those centers are U.S. citizens.
as all of this unfolds, we kidnap the President of Venezuela and claim their oil, we threaten Iran and play place-a-dictator in the same-old and in new places, because greed and conquest know no bounds. we see this in the Epstein files, of which many were released this past weekend and people are poring over, becuase they're deleting files and telling us we're not seeing the truth with our eyes. we have video evidence and we are being told we are not seeing what we see. and now that we know new, depraved details, now what? what does accountability look like for countless tortured, defiled, traumautized and many dead, yet leaders still leading, and rich, and free.
i've taught dystopian literature for years. honed in on criticality and the need to recognize patterns of fascism when they find us abroad, because they will be used at home. if we can dehumanize anybody, we can dehumanize everybody. we are remembering this in real time, in so many ways. Octavia Butler taught us in Parable of the Talents that they will blame us for the brutality they unleash against us, and we do not have to hold their confession as our fault. we remember our humanity and take care of each other, it is our birthright.
it's also been a frozen, snowy winter, debilitating cold. i am prone to hibernate and view the world like a snowglobe from my window, but my work keeps me connecting to struggle, holding space for breath, learning somatics, reading and learning still. i have wild, activated kids who cannot be contained by the walls, and so we often bound outside into the snow, gyms, indoor playgrounds, wherever little bodies are allowed to move and scream and wail and dance. i still live in my active wear, and crave quiet, silence, coolness. i get loud, acrobatic, vibrant colors instead.
reading this winter:
- how to be free - shaka senghor
- zaftig - molly pershin raynor
- we will not cancel us - adrienne maree brown
- we do this til we free us - mariame kaba
- practicing new worlds - andrea j. ritchie
- unraveling harm, cultivating safety - lauren m. williams & angel mckissic
- the world we make - n.k. jemisin
- read this when things fall apart - letters to activists in crisis edited by kelly hayes
wishing you softness, peace, joy and the spirit to keep fighting toward liberation, for all.
