caresse sur l'océan

It’s so important to remember that mass movements like this don’t appear out of thin air. They are the result of decades of work by activists and community organizers who kept at it when no one was listening, who kept at it when no one cared. These are the people that build the community networks that allow for mass mobilization to be possible. These are the people that give us the language to articulate the injustice of the times and our protest against them. These are the people who educated and protested and organized and painstakingly shifted the narrative inch by inch to get the conversation to where it is today.  

There are times when a political moment is lost because the groundwork that is required to mobilize the necessary public mass is just not present. It is no easy feat to get this many people out on the streets armed with an understanding of the issue and the vocabulary to speak truth to power. Communities of care and solidarity take years to build and black activists in America have set an example for the world in doing that. We also see the strongest level of solidarity coming from the most well organized political communities such as those present in the Palestinian resistance. 

Remember that it was three black women who gave you the words “BlackLivesMatter” that are now splashed across every news channel and celebrity instagram story. It was activists in online and offline spaces who did the intellectual labour of unveiling how systemic racism and the police state operate and made that understanding accessible to broader audiences. They had already done the work on how you mobilize your own community, how you mobilize solidarity, how you speak to allies and how you speak to enemies. We already had an incredible amount of resources available, drawing from a rich history of black resistance and resistance movements across the world, that helped shape our response to this political moment.  

The reason this is all so important to reiterate is because you don’t sit around waiting for revolution to “happen” to you. You create it. You work at it day in and day out, even when it feels like nothing is changing because that is the revolutionary work that makes effective collective responses to moments like this possible. Without that work, it’s just another day of injustice and despair where we scramble to figure out how to respond. Revolution is not a singular day of riot, though those are part of it, it is a conscientious way of living your life where you must do the work required for your circumstances, wherever you are, so when push comes to shove, you and your comrades are ready.

2019-11-30

https://www.instagram.com/hwantastic79vivid/

Yuzuru Hanyu 2018.09.20 ACI Practice

Moonlight (2016) dir. Barry Jenkins

Mao Asada - Vittorio Monti’s Csárdás

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Mao series  |  Art print