i'll make this brief.
i think off and on about what it means to be as educated as i am, to be as conscientized as i am, to be as confident and verbal as i am, to be as empowered as i am and to have started out this life as a black child born on a tiny island, who witnessed my father brutalize my mother...a young child who was not born into an affluent family with status and name...a child immigrant who narrowly escaped having my intellect pathologized by racist school teachers who tried to put me in esl (also known as the beginning of the end for many children of colour and/or poor children), who managed to put my sister (now a school teacher) in esl...a teenager with blocked/submerged memories of abuse witnessed as a child, who understood being sexual as the prime way of getting touch and accessing the affection of others...a child grown to teenagehood who lived in a roach motel from the time i came to north amerikkka until i left home and went away to university, academic education paid for because the government received papers from me saying that we had nothing that could be used to pay for a university education, no house, no car, no boat, no cottage, no business, no stocks, no bonds...no nothing...but the struggle to survive...
i'm thinking about movements for social change, about demos and revolutions in north amerikkka and elsewhere led by, profoundly influenced by people who come from well situated families...parents are professors, thriving business owners, high up bank officials, real estate agents, extremely expensive real estate owners, petty bourgeoisie back home...
i'm thinking about the vacations they take to places where poor and/or people of colour wait on them hand and foot, as they try to not benefit...too much...from the privileges they know they have...but still have a good time and get lots of rest and meet all the really kewl people...
i'm thinking about their ability to just get on a plane and encounter people making revolution in other countries or in other parts of this country...
i'm thinking about how easy it is to network effectively, gain prominence and forge bonds with new allies when the people you encounter understand that you have privilege and power...
i'm thinking about the past few months and all the uprisings in the middle east and about the numerous exchanges i've read online where white/middle-class/educated privileged people discuss whether they will define what is happening as revolutionary, as true change or whether it's just the masses being angry and breaking things...
i'm thinking about who gets to decide when a revolution is a revolution...the people who resist and risk and fight in the streets? or those who understand themselves to be those who think and have access to the writings of privileged people in the north and west, who defined (themselves) regardless of how much privilege they had, as revolutionaries in the streets.
i'm thinking about who gets to say what constitutes change and what symbolizes things staying the same.
i'm thinking about sex work and about this kind of work being done predominantly by wimmin and children, but also by lower class, of colour men and boys, but also transsexual wimmin here and in other parts of the world, who have no meaningful say in the laws that effect them, who have no empowered right to choose the type or location of the sex work they will do, who are not protected, who have no worker rights, who have no societally grounded systemic power...
i'm thinking about female genital circumcision and about the girls who experience this kind of procedure and about the cultures they come out of...
i'm thinking about wimmin, children, girl children, lower class, of colour men and boys, transsexual wimmin here and in other parts of the world who have no collective bargaining power and about all the people who get to decide what will be best for them...
i'm thinking about pimps and johns and mothers and fathers, whole communities, about people/activists/law makers in the north and in the west...everyone knows what these wimmin and children, girl children, lower class, of colour men and boys, transsexual wimmin here and in other parts of the world should be doing.
some think they should be sucking cock and getting pieces of themselves chopped off with dirty broken glass. some think they should be going to school and learning a trade and being paid pennies for piece work.
everybody knows what's best for them...but them, it seems.
i'm thinking that when anyone gives a shit about what these wimmin, children, girl children, ower class, of colour men and boys, transsexual wimmin here and in other parts of the world actually think, when they are asked for their opinions, when people listen to what they themselves think they need, the reality may be that the answers will range far and wide across continuums we didn't even know existed. perhaps their answers, their solutions to their issues may be in line with what some of us, many of us think...
but then again...
maybe their proposed solutions to their own issues may boggle our minds.
or maybe...
the rising cacaphony of their voices, not unified, not in collective agreement, but instead all over the map, empowered to speak but coming from different view points, like we do, like we have the power to do, this being the essence of what we enjoy here, to agree to disagree, to try different approaches, to support different plans of attack, a diversity of resistance...
maybe these wimmin, children, , girl children, lower class, of colour men and boys, transsexual wimmin here and in other parts of the world will only agree on one thing and one thing alone.
maybe they will tell us to fuck off and go mind our own business. :)
maybe they will tell us that they will be the arbiters of what is best for them and that we have not even the faintest clue what their lives have been like.
maybe they will tell us that there is no fucking way to actually explain the personal, public, political, familial, religious, societal, planetary currents that pull and push them, stressing them to the max.
maybe they will just pat us on the heads, label us misled, missionary hysterical pampered adult children collectively triggered by what we ourselves have collectively and individually experienced.
maybe they will tell us to go get some help and stop smearing what has happened to us on them when who we are is part of the shit that has rained down on their heads.
maybe they will tell us that we have much to learn about resistance, power and choice and that our relationships to them in the micro and in the macro are skewed in our favour even as we understand ourselves as wanting to topple the systems of domination that keep them in their place.
maybe they will say something like:
"you don't recognize or understand our realities as well as you think you do. you prioritize your understanding of the political over ours because you do not hear us or realize the significance of our ways of doing things. you don't defer to our power because you don't want to truly see us or know us. if you did, you would realize that you are not capable of helping us. helping is about charity and about your own power. we don't want your charity. we want you to go and learn some more. learn to see and understand better. stop stroking yourselves with the delusional view that you are helping us or could ever help us. when the time is right, we will recognize it and we, not you, will help ourselves."
yeah.
if i was them and i'm not saying i am or was ever destined to be any incarnation of them...
that's what i'd say. most definitely. that's what i'd say.
(wicked little laugh)
most of the revolutionaries/activists/organizers i've met don't really want to see what any of the people they're attempting to liberate would look like if they were fully conscientized, empowered and beyond well educated, filled with self knowledge, self actualized, verbal and clear.
hehehe
nah. they really wouldn't know what to do with that kind of person because for that kind of person to exist, for ten or twenty or one hundred or one thousand or one million of those people to exist would mean pandemonium inside the ranks. this would turn the ranks so careful arranged in subtly hierarchical ways into sheer chaos. these liberated, empowered, verbal, educated, clear and critical people who come from nothing wouldn't be the kind of people who would easily take orders from the children of those who have dominated them no matter what their politics look like, no matter how radical their stances. they would be able to spot inconsistencies splitting political theory from day-to-day praxis from a mile away. they would call people on their shit because they would expect better of people who expect to lead. they would risk everything, anything without a shiver or a backwards glance because they would already know what it means to have nothing, absolutely nothing...except a piece of green tinged balony in the fridge. they would not be swayed at the thought of ostracism. when you've grown up outside and in the margins always looking in, inside might be a nice fantasy but outside isn't a terrifying unknown.
sigh...
that wasn't very brief. sorry. i lied. ;)
if what you're reading here grips you, holds you, fascinates you, provokes you, emboldens you, pushes you, galvanizes you, discomfits you, tickles you, enrages you so much that you find yourself returning again and again...then link me.
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