On the waves of Liberatory Mania, I’m on the down slope. Processing, digesting, feeling, and processing some more. This is a note to self: liberatory literature is a powerful support in grounding - try to be more consistent!
After every non-fiction book I read, I go through my underlined portions and notes. “Practicing New Worlds” by Andrea J Ritchie had a blatant theme to what resonated with me. Here are a few excerpts that I underlined.
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“Rather than worry about critical mass, our work is to foster critical connections. We don’t need to convince large numbers of people to change; instead, we need to connect with kindred spirits. Through these relationships, we will develop the new knowledge, practices, courage, and commitment that lead to broad-based change.”
“We effect systems change through relationship and experimentation, not by blueprint.”
“…safety is relative to our relationships with others and with resources. It is something we create together in community.”
“As Mariame [Kaba] concludes, ‘I think one of the most important parts about mutual aid has to do with changing the social relationships that we have among each other, in order to be able to fight beyond this current moment, beyond the current crisis, beyond the current form of a disaster that we’re trying to overcome. And so, one of the beautiful aspects that you really don’t know where the connections are going to take you. You’re going to make and build new relationships that will lead to new understandings, that will shape the potential future of your community and beyond.’”
“Assata Shakur asks, ‘How do you organize a community that does not exist?’”
Over the past 5 months, I find myself saying over and over again that relationship and trust is a key part of this movement. So as I swim through the unknowns of how I apply myself to the resistance in this season, I come back to the quality of relationships I have over and over again.
As I am connecting and meeting new comrades, my question is - who can I build the new world with? Over this next year, 5 years, decades. And of course, that is a huge question mark with people I don’t know well. At the top of 2024, I felt in my gut my social arena was going to change, and sure enough I was right. In a way, I feel like I’m starting over socially (except for my few tried and true bff’s.) The gist of this year is that I’m observing people’s character and integrity while deepening my own to see who I want to invest in for the long(er) haul.
It takes time to develop relationship and trust. Even in the face of urgency and intensity it takes time to grow and deepen connection. In the past few weeks, I’ve seen and experienced the messiness of organizing and interpersonal relating as it happens in every grouping of humans. Sitting with myself and slowing down…I feel convicted. I can’t lose sight of the goal. It is the depth of relationship and integrity that matters.
I’ve found myself swept up in the mobilization of comrades and in that energy, I lost a bit of my agency and grounding.
My energy is valuable. I think that there is so much trying to distract me from the agency I have and the impact I could have towards a Free Palestine, a Free Congo, a Free Sudan. While building relationships is important, I want to make sure that the energy I put into them is in the same trajectory my life is heading towards. Liberation should encompass everything. Not only when I show up for direct action or teach a workshop. It’s in the way that I move, talk, draw boundaries, lean in, and love.
Healing and growing in a decolonized way means integration of liberation in every aspect of life.
That last quote by Assata Shakur hit me. When I was a Christian and working my way out of the indoctrination, I would say all the time that they were obsessed with “community,” but most of the time it was the illusion of community. The care was absent when it came down to it. The structures didn’t support the said values. It is so dangerous to feel the comfort of “community” that lacks true relationship and trust. That most commonly leads to being blindsided and harmed.
True community takes actual relationship and over a period of time. And it’s ok to be honest that things are at its infantile stage. That’s beautiful and vulnerable!
Relationship - platonic, romantic, comrade-ic - is key to our liberation. How we go about them is everything. Our relationship with ourselves, with the land, with our bodies. We can’t under value it as we resist supremacy.
In this moment, I am stunned by how vulnerable it is to be open to fighting for liberation with new friends. It’s so open and soft. And in that softness, there already have been so many tears of awe, gratefulness, honor, and also pain. The commitment to myself that was so clear last august is that I will always choose to be vulnerable and soft in the name of true love and hope. Love and hope for a liberated world that is possible. Love and hope in the face of despair and unthinkable violence.
Witnessing Rafah and Jabalia refugee camp this past week was a wake up call for me. It was a call to come back, recenter, and remember what it’s all for.
What does Liberatory Imagination spark in me today?
Being shoulder to shoulder with comrades I trust, because I know that they are committing their life-calling to liberation. The comfort that thought gives me feels like a heavy warm cloud blanket on a rainy night. It makes the fear of the unknown dissipate.
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