“If you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out six inches, there’s no progress. If you pull it all the way out, that’s not progress. The progress is healing the wound that the blow made.” - Malcolm X
As a child growing up in Oakland and Berkeley in the 60s and 70s, I learned from my family that being engaged in political and civic activism was a rule of life; particularly because we, Black people, were targets of harm from a society and government that did not want us to be free, self-determined people. But WE wanted it! We knew there was no true/real existence without freedom and self-determination.
There was a clear sense in my youth that we/I didn’t get to ease through this reality of fighting to be free without putting something in, without soldiering up for the battles. Also, without the understanding that Black people’s liberation was connected to Native people’s liberation, Brown people’s liberation, poor people’s liberation, migrant farmworkers liberation, worker’s liberation, etc. I witnessed and experienced a sincere comradeship among people working to resist the status quo and liberate themselves and their communities from oppressive systems, structures, and ideology.
My viewpoint on resistance started while sitting on living room floors listening to and learning from conversations among my adult family members and their friends. My viewpoint shifted as I held my mother’s hand at rallies and used my own voice to shout along with her, “All power to the people!” (Side note: my mom is a FEARLESS woman who fought for the freedom and dignity of anyone at any time; a labor organizer, and my example of a person who spoke truth to power, always.) I then had my personal viewpoint on resistance (though deeply informed), standing on my own or shoulder to shoulder and eye to eye with like-minded people (my comrades) willing to disrupt the status quo collectively. I had become what I witnessed, was taught, and had learned from my family and community.
This is not a nostalgic post. It is Sankofa.
Our medicine has deep community, laughter, and purpose. We shared with others freely; contributed to “the cause.” There only seemed to be one – freedom for all. We lived life together; there were family and community bar-b-ques, trips to the beach, fairs, music, dancing, creative expression, spirituality (religious and nonreligious) and a sense that we were all in it together. We were “sista” and “brotha” to one another, acknowledging that we were a part of each other. When I heard someone in the community (that I didn’t know) address me with, “hey little sista,” I grew an inch, my heart swelled. I belonged and mattered. I felt that folks were looking out for me and wanted the best for me. I felt that we were all relatives. This joy, love, and connectedness was needed to fortify folks’ humanity while living the daily fight against racist oppression and the work of organizing for resistance. When we lost sight of this need, we saw broken people, relationships, communities, and movements. I saw pain, fear, and suffering, and still do. And we have medicine.
As we stand in this season of history, are we yet at the bend toward justice in the infamous “long arc of the moral universe” as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke of, quoting Theodore Parker? Today a former US president and current presidential nominee was found guilty on 34 felony counts, structural evil continues to produce gross societal inequities in housing, jobs, health care, childcare, education, mass incarceration, economic inclusion, policing and government surveillance. We are still in the fight for ourselves against such structural evil, these systems of oppression that benefit a few at the expense of and heavy cost to the many.
What was learned over these past couple of centuries of resistance is that there is always a battle being waged to protect the status quo! We know the adversaries of change for the greater good are those who are the primary beneficiaries of the status quo. And they are raging!
We learned that this is a long race of endurance and power against structural evil which generations of people must fight. I know you are fatigued or probably downright tired. But we can never give up, give in, or give over to the ideologies of white supremacy, imperialism, capitalism, race, class, and sexisms of caste systems, otherism, greed, indifference, fear, hate, and woeful ignorance. We learned that we must resist internalizing and bringing into our own camps the harmful norms and practices of the ideologies we are fighting to dismantle. Because all of this is destroying people and the planet.
We learned that we must rest well, love deep, laugh long, respect the past, and PASS the baton to the next generation of warriors. There are beautiful, powerful, necessary movements local and global, calling us all to “Get in trouble. Good trouble. Necessary trouble.” – Congressperson John Lewis. AND stay in trouble.
This is not a nostalgic post. It is Sankofa!