So, as some of you know, I just spent a little over a month in the US. I hadn't been there in about 2.5 years. It was really bizarre for so many reasons, and this is clearly the best community to deconstruct all this head chaos.
Lulu so excited to discover Target is a real place, living the capitalist dream
I don't want to pretend the US hasn't been shitty for a long time - because it has. Maybe forever. Especially for certain groups of people. The US was founded on genocide, built on slavery, and grown on oppression and division. I guess we should've known nothing good would come of this.
To be certain, though, it's gotten a lot worse in the last 2.5 years, mostly I think by its visibility. No one is trying to hide it anymore. The cops have always murdered poc, but now it's on camera, and still nothing is done. I saw today that the police union in NY is appealing the suspension of the pig that murdered Eric Garner on the grounds that Garner was obese and would've died anyway. So. Yeah.
White supremacy is clear as day on the table. Women's rights and lgbtq rights are being rolled back. Then of course there are the concentration camps on the border. Meanwhile, parents are losing rights like wildfire as the pro vaccine pharmaceutical Mafia marches toward their seeming goal of world domination. They will shut down home schooling soon. The dark descent is palpable. And nauseating.
Pixabay
And yet. The country marches on. Like nothing is happening. When I went, I expected a lot more tension, but it's like the lobster in the pot. Of course so many people are so busy trying to survive that they have nothing left. And I think people are burned out by the continuous assault. It reminds me of when I went to China. What surprised me most (aside from the obsession with KFC) was how similar it was to the US. You couldn't really see or even feel the level of oppression. Just people living their lives.
People always say they'd never let something like the Holocaust happen, but it's just not true. The US is clearly headed in that direction. Fascism is growing stronger and bolder. Maybe it's genuinely too late. Maybe the time to act was decades ago. So the liberals wait for the next election as though that matters. Antifa waits for some sign that revolution has started. Libertarians seem to be defecting to the radical right at alarming rates. And anarchists wait for it to all burn already. While I can certainly feel and understand that, poc, immigrants, lgbtq folx, and women, especially poor women, are being put in increasingly dangerous and compromising situations.
What do we do? What can we do? I think we're beyond the point of calling out individual racists and misogynists. I feel like it's time to lay our bodies on the gears of the machine, but I don't know what that looks like either. Are we relegated to violence? I do believe it's time to put the most marginalized at the center of organizing though. Women of color, lgbtq people of color, lgbtq immigrants. I think this is who we probably need to ask about how to move forward, about what needs to change to improve access and opportunity for everyone.
Curious to hear your thoughts, friends.