Freedom for All — The Turn Left

I spent three summers buried under wet sand thanks to Armida, the old school Xicana who met my mama while she waited tables at La Cocina de Tere and quickly became one of the handful of women who raised me. Armida taught me about floating. And beach sun. Sandcastles and living on boats and salty air in your hair. Side ponytails, and brown coppery lipstick-growing up Xicana by the sea. The last summer we spent together, Armida got sick. I was four when I had just learned the ABCs song in English and I couldn’t wait to sing it for her. I practiced the song all the way to her house. But when I walked into her room...her small body covered in white blankets, her voice soft, her eyes still loving, she was barely there. I knew it would be the last time I’d ever see her. I never sang her the song, no words to describe the feelings that come with endings at that time. Armida died. To this day I know I grew up Xicana by the sea because of her.

Four years ago, I was excited to participate in a circle of love called the Transitions Labs, a growing community experiment from the Movement Strategy Center asking many of us to ponder what we, as people living in this current moment, want to plant now to harvest 100 years from now, 1000 years from now, 10,000 years from now? The question has ebbed and flowed in my body ever since and while I’ve been doubtful of many things during my time alive, the only thing I’ve ever been certain of is my dream/wish/calling/commitment to be a mother to Xol one day.

Of course raising a child does not guarantee the survival of the best humans can offer. We ask ourselves overwhelming questions like...Is it audacious to think that what I can do now can be useful in 10,000 years? Will humans and life forms, as they exist now, even be around in 10,000 years? Or, what kind of something is important to plant if I will not be the steward of those seedlings? What responsibility am I passing onto someone or someones hoping they too decide it’s worthwhile to keep growing?

I always return to gratitude for having heart and thought partners to feel through these questions because they’re thoughts worth “moving at the speed of trust” as many in our movements say. Perhaps these aren’t so much doubts, but more of an attempt at loving, self-reflective accountability for actions taken now that will inevitably have ripple effects for our kin in near and far futures.

These thoughts aren’t unique. Many brilliant hearts and minds have been asking the accountable, courageous questions for a long time. Octavia Butler, wrote worlds and struggles and strategies into existence in her prolific writing interventions. I’ve been deeply touched by Adrienne Maree Brown, who has made huge offerings through her collaborations like Octavia’s Brood co-edited with Walidah Imarish a and her book Emergent Strategy, with tools, lessons, reflections and delicious footnotes for us to try, highlighting, among many nuggets of wonder, the ways nature “organizes” to survive. Our social justice movements are experimenting with old and new strategies approaching our current political moment with creativity and love. On Mother’s Day 2018, Southerners on New Ground (SONG), a regional Queer Liberation organization in the South, led “A Labor of Love: Black Mama’s Bail Out Action”.

The action, led by organizers, family members and loving community, released 30 black mamas and caregivers in the thick of money bail systems that for too long have targeted and preyed on working class people of color. SONG addressed the devastating racial and gendered impacts of growing U.S carceral systems on black mamas and black people in a collective action that changed the “flowers and cards” Mother’s Day Holiday into a platform for love and change making. Black Lives Matter and #MeToo have taken us on journeys, leveraging celebrity platforms, grounding us in the power of direct action and reminding us of the power that STILL lives in storytelling. In Brooklyn, New York, a small loving team of queer women and people of color bicycle riders started BiciNinxs, a summer cycling camp for brown and black girls ages 8-12, offering a space to learn how to ride, build, and maintain a bike and care for each other. @cycle.bici raised 5K to run three camps with over 20 girls in Summer 2018 funded through a grassroots fundraising campaign! These efforts seemingly large and small are all HUGE. Whether the work is largely visible or seen only in our homes, down the block, at church or at the farm, many are believing in an us now, and building for an us tomorrow.

I don’t know if Armida knew the impact she would have on my life. As I honor her memory in the simple mundane acts of humaness she offered, creating the most joyful glittery aspects of my childhood, I think about the ripple effects we experience in our short lifetimes and wonder if maybe what we can pass on as future ancestors, lives in the lessons offered to us everyday in the complex contradicting simplicity of being alive. Armida loved me. Made a home out of sand and ocean water for both of us to live our joy. Her love is not a social justice movement that everyone knows. But in my childhood riddled with harsh and trauma, her love WAS justice. Her love, like the love that grounds our movements and inspires us to keep trying even and especially when we fail is what deserves our awareness and thoughtful attention. It’s the reason I dare to dream about parenting.

Becoming a mother to Xol one day is bold in this time of such hurt. To have these dreams, commit to them, and do is the work of believing. Trust. The work of love. I write about Xol, speak of and to Xol often. I used to think I needed to keep Xol to myself, like uttering their name would spoil their arrival, but they came in a dream almost a decade ago and named themselves (They/Them is pronoun I use on purpose as I would like to support Xol in deciding how they want to be gendered.) I know now Xol is an ancestor returning, an ancestor I’m welcoming into this world with words like I do with veladoras and cempazuchitil flowers on Dia de Los Muertos for our dead. The more I speak of them, the more they become.

The world I believe in and love is like the baby Xol I believe in and love- I’ve never seen or touched either of them, but I’m committed to being part of the dreaming, plotting and loving that brings them both into existence.

As we begin 2019, I’m setting intentions to continue this parenting/world dreaming in conversation with loving community.

Below is a list of writings, guides, podcasts, and brilliance that has continued to help shape these thoughts and held space for courageous questions:

● Parenting for Liberation

● The Big “We” Podcast

● How to Survive the End of the World Podcast

● Leaving Evidence by Mia Mingus

● Movement Strategy Center

● Caracol Crxcuzando

Here at The Turn Left, we’ve thought a lot about causes. Name one and we’ve mulled over it, gotten involved in it, attended conferences on it, or penned scholarly papers about it. No matter what it is, it’s in a long line and someone from the cause in front likely said, “Wait your turn”. You know the activists I mean: the environmentalists who don’t think it’s the right moment for LGBTQ+ rights or LGBTQ+ activists who refuse to acknowledge misogynoir.

So, we decided to have a 'chat' about causes. Are they really mutually exclusive?

Myriam: The more time I spend in cause-based life, the more I find that whatever rifts come between activists have only somewhat to do with The Cause. We recreate the idea that there is so little space, money, time, or resources that it is impossible to truly share equally. This is the lie our institutions tell us and precisely the lie we fight when we ask for equal rights or safety for minorities.

Inevitably, when passionate people come together, they disagree. In activist communities those disagreements become huge debates over white privilege or misogyny—both of which do play huge roles in how we speak to each other and decide what actions to take. I find that we hide personal spats behind the big ideas. Sometimes, it really is a simple failure of humanity between colleagues that no one apologizes for. Sometimes, it’s a betrayal of one cause for another. More often, it’s both.

Every time, however, it’s almost impossible to tell the difference. I always find myself relieved to be in an activist space in the beginning. The political correctness eventually does start to flake off after long hours painting signs. Each time I find myself asking: Why do we still believe the lie?

Sandra: I see what you mean about this idea that resources are perceived as limited. This could be a holdover from the 'spaceship Earth' idea touted by Buckminster Fuller (see Adam Curtis’ documentary All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace), but I think it also makes us realise that HOW terms and concepts come about is also problematic. For example people have to identify under the term 'minority' for their grievances to be legitimised in the eyes of large bodies such as the government (see the work of Saba Mahmood).

Buckminster Fuller had to convince people to think of Earth as a self-contained ship in space just so that people would start being more environmentally conscious (or so Adam Curtis tells us in All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace). I think activists don't always educate themselves outside their given cause, adding to your point and making it easier to keep things personal. There's nothing wrong with being personally attached to the cause you are pursuing; I prefer that to people who are just 'there', but it is super important to do the background reading. That enables you to see how things are interconnected and maybe avoid this hiding of personal spats behind big ideas.

At the same time I think the latter point may involve an element of selflessness people do not always possess. We are living in an age where people have the freedom to express themselves in new and different ways (and reap the sometimes horrifying consequences), but what I find myself wondering often is how to translate that expression into action that those in power will actually respond to. We get very bogged down in the details of what and how we want things to change for our given cause, and in so doing fail to see the commonalities with other causes. So maybe the problem is that there is so much information out there that people do not always realise the ways in which resources are not limited? Maybe it is also the argument made about people becoming trapped in their own bubbles and not actively seeking people who have different ideas?

Myriam: I agree, there’s a lot of history and theory that goes alongside movements. I am worried here, though, about the division between those who read and those who do not read. Movements often prize those with education over others and it doesn’t always protect the movement from division. Those leaders should be careful what knowledge is treasured and not allow their movements to be divided along lines of privilege.

To be clear, I’m not looking down my nose at reading. I don’t know where I’d be without the books I’ve had access to. I just want to keep in mind that book-learnin' is yet another way we divide our efforts. There are many different ways to learn and we should use them all. Chief among those is empathy. How many training manuals are there out there for empathy? I know the works of Paolo Freire and bell hooks aren’t chiefly concerned with empathy but there must be others like them whose work has been translated into dozens of languages.

There are a lot of bubbles and echo chambers. We should have more exposure to different models of governance and organization…and find ways to build consensus properly. We are socialized to seek hierarchy, to reproduce hierarchy. Or even that the best will naturally rise to the top, to trust in the meritocracy. We dive deep into our causes because we have seen that this is not true: we don’t all start life with equal chances at success so how can we really tell who is the best?

We need to train ourselves to think differently, to plan differently. It scares me how difficult it is for me to break those simple patterns in my own work. Who can we learn from?

Sandra: This can be dangerous territory as this is how some people see the divide between left and right extremes in the US—those that read and those that don’t. I am not saying that this is what you are talking about, but I just wanted to be clear for our readers’ sakes. I wonder though—if everyone read to atleast a certain minimum, would we still call it a hierarchy or try to pursue one? What if we ensured that everyone read the same things or atleast the same variety of things?

Absolutely reading is not the only way to learn—knod at Tim Ingold and embodied learning (see his book The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill)—but sometimes when people have different experiences based on, for example, skin colour it may be a medium that has to be relied on. There are still some experiences people cannot have, and that is where both reading and talking to people can be helpful. In that sense, what if we all knew how to build/make things? What if we engaged in more projects that involved learning through doing/experiencing alongside people who were different to us in some way?

I agree entirely that there should not be a division between those who read and those who do not, and there may be a bit of ego that needs to be overcome there. There is an assumption that people cannot communicate or that if they can they can do so only to certain point. So how do we overcome this? And what about how people divide themselves over causes? I admit I have my moments of preferring animals and environmental work over working with humans, but that has yet to stop me from working with humans. How do we get to a point where the majority of people can see the overlaps between the environment, the feminist struggle, struggles of peoples of colour and so on until the end of the list?

Because it is all bound up in the personal, what people have read, and what they believe the world to be. It may also boil down to what some are willing to do in the realm of acceptability. There is what people do so others see them doing it, and what people do and think for themselves...aand suddenly we find ourselves in the territory of morals and values which is a whole other conversation.

Myriam: Practically, I think we have to start making cooperative spaces. We have to train ourselves to think differently. That may mean expanding our realm of experience with other people’s stories, written or otherwise. That may mean actually taking or crafting courses that focus on building consensus and facilitation. Learn from the moments in history where goals and leadership were shared rather than the moments they all fell apart.

Personally, I’ve wanted to learn more about federations of the First Nations such as the Iroquois and other systems of governance. There is more to history than what happened in Ancient Greece and Rome. Not to discredit the classics, mind you, we just need to create more space for the actual history of the WORLD.

Everyone I’ve ever met in politics or activism is tired of the way things are but so few take the extra step to make actual changes. In some ways, we need a complete system overhaul: decentralized leadership, mentorship, consensus building, and ALL the trainings. We have to learn what the new world can look like if we’re trying to build it. Boldly going blindly with only the status quo behind us is too slow going. For the poor, the marginalized, the economically vulnerable, we have no more time to waste.

Sandra: You know what? I think WE are the solution to this! In a serious vein though, what specifically would training ourselves to think differently look like? I think looking outside the histories taught in schools is crucial, especially as it enables us to think about the different ways we have come to be where we are socially and politically, and it reminds us that we are dealing with issues and modes of being that are not linear but hypercomplicated.

To push your points further, Greek and Roman history and philosophy have varying influences on global historical trajectories, and overshadow the impact of Indian, Arab, African (plural) and East Asian histories to name a few. Also, this ties back into your earlier points about empathy and destabilising hierarchy, which then ties into ongoing attempts to decolonize different institutions alongside decolonial projects. Moving towards existing groups and organizations, maybe it would be helpful for groups who target multiple ‘causes’ to re-stress the overlaps between all causes, to coax people out of their specific corners? To teach across and around rather than top down? Everyone IS tired, but in addition to not acting people often do not know how to act, or think their actions won’t make a difference anyway (another issue touched upon in an Adam Curtis documentary).

I sometimes think of it like a post-apocalyptic world: everything has been supposedly destroyed and torn down, but people still carry the structures and institutions of the ‘old’ world with them. They cling to them for a sense of stability and comfort. When I was a child I was asked to design my own country and government. So, how would we, as a plural, hybrid, hyper complicated people, design our own country? A system overhaul means stepping into the unknown and the potentially unknowable, but we can’t know where that boundary lies if we do not try to step across it.