Feeling Fear, Grief, and the Political Imagination
I saw a tweet that said something along the lines of how heartbreaking it was for them to realize how desensitized to mass shootings they had been since the massacre Pulse, and realized, that was true for me too. It’s taken me a while to let myself feel the grief and fear out of of these terrifying moments, that arise from the love and desire to protect the people I care about and love from harm.
I remember the fear and grief that gripped me when I was younger, and these days, it’s more numb. I notice the rage and anger and sadness and hurt in my thoughts, but as I tap in more, I notice how tight my body is, how much I’m trying to not feel the weight of it all.
As I do, I feel fear and love more than rage; and a certainty that it’s not that we don’t want to protect each other, is that we literally can’t because we haven’t built enough power, that we haven’t developed those skills at scale. Not for lack of trying or desire. Not that there aren’t concrete things to be done to lessen the harm, but what we’re up against isn’t just a deeply powerful weapons industry — but that organizing and building power takes so much damn time and that the hegemony of racialized and gendered capitalism inside and outside of the State tied to deeply invested policing and military infrastructure while cutting social safety nets is a fucking beast to tackle. They’ve been sharpening their knives and shifting to new conditions for over 500 years. So have we, but with not nearly the same economic, political, or cultural power in place.
I remember that a friend once said that the strongest strategy is informed by deeply facing into what is. Not that we don’t move from vision, but we acknowledge our material conditions. What is at the moment is that we have not built enough power yet to ensure that our demands, policies, and visions not only win — but have staying power. What is at the moment is that we have not fully put a theory of change or a concrete strategy together on how we will meaningfully and accountably move masses of white folks to being protagonists and comrades against racialized and gendered capitalism and towards a just transition where a life, culture, and economy of practicing real safety, democratic governance, and an economy that works for all of us. What is at the moment, is that geniuses and organizers and strategists and culture works and communications folks, are responding and skilling up and in it to fight and win.
There is a hopelessness, grief, and fear here, but also a clarity of purpose and a sense of not being alone here — in the questions, in the depth of feeling, in the strategizing or the political imaginations.
As a prayer and as what is: I believe we will win. I believe we will build power, transform our political economy and cultural hegemony towards a just transition, towards the abolition of the prison industrial complex. I believe, as part of that, we will generate campaigns and movement building strategies that support masses of white people in sitting inside the contradictions of being white people and paying attention to the ways that whiteness works to have us betray our longings and our loved ones alongside also believing that there is a possible future where won’t be white anymore, and we can generate the skills of knowing that we can embody dignity rather than domination — and that we do the individual transformation work knowing that what will resolve that contradiction is being meaningfully involved and connected to movements that work towards the demise of racialized and gendered capitalism. I believe that one day we will have the skills, power, and culture to prevent, reduce, and address small to massive moments of harm and white supremacist patriarchal terror.
