Revisiting the Cup: Liberation is Fire
I threw myself into the fire realizing that the water was not enough
First, I want to recognize that this is my story and I acknowledge and own the privileges/oppressive identities that I hold. I am imperfect, I am problematic and critique is always invited.
If you haven’t read my previous revelation. click here. It’s important
I guess the best way to start this is to say that self critique, critical consciousness and the ability to acknowledge the way you perpetrate violence is extremely important. This revelation was a topic amongst so many other important things discussed over the month of February. I spent three days and two nights at a social justice retreat organized by the office of multicultural affairs at the university I attend currently. I just recently got back from attending a midwestern queer conference in Chicago. I’ve been doing the most to say the least. Assuming that you do not know me, I have been doing social justice work/activism after Trayvon Martin’s death (he would have been 22 on February 5th btw) but aggressively since 2013–2014, my sophomore year of undergrad. I’ve been shook, dragged, broken, built and validated so radically but this was different. It is important to mention this because the collective, my anti-racist, anti-capitalist, anti-poverty, anti-gender violence, anti-homophobia, anti-transphobia, anti-ableism intersectional collective is always with me. I have so much learning I need to do and this is a constant. This is why I am going to sit here and critique everything I said before in this post from last semester.
I think the first thing to bring up, and to really encompass this self drag I am about to do, is that the individualistic savior complex that shows up in my first piece is problematic. This idea that I am even capable of filling up with water to pour out on this “evil” oppressive system fire is so privileged in nature and was never acknowledged. The idea that “I’m doing my best” is not enough when the best means someone is not getting the basic needs that need to be met to survive. Yes, self care is important, but I am privileged to even participate. Although I was well intentioned, I realize now that the impact looks a lot like a Dixie Cup pouring out water onto a pile of burnt Dixie Cups who were not privileged enough to do the work I’m doing. If I’m going to do this work I need to do it by giving up my water and sharing the pain of the fire with my people. If I am not on fire then I am not doing the work. I’m no bigger or no better then the person seeking my services. I have privileges but that does not mean that their strength and resilience is not overflowing compared to mine. Being a social worker and being social justice oriented means taking a hard look at yourself, your clients, your world and saying “we’re all on fire and we have to put ourselves out while putting others out too.”
The second thing I see as “problematic” is that I centered this as an individual effort doing the work compared to a collective resistance. No one person in history has changed the world by themselves. If your history books taught you that, set it on fire in a trash can, set that trash can on fire and then put it out because burning a trash can is probably not good for the Earth. Yeah, I had a piss poor call to action, for people who are in positions of power to do the same work I’m doing, that’s not enough though. Work is not going to get done until the person stuck in the farthest reaches of the margins is centered. Work is impossible without this person’s voice, without their perspective, without their safety, without their security, without their basic necessities met , we can not change the narrative until the narrative includes them. Liberation is a bottom up movement. You start with the people who have fallen due to the systemic oppression and target them first. Not as saviors but as encouragers, empowers, advocators. I’m not here for shady mission trips centered at the intersections of Instagram activism and savior complexes. I want unabashed radical love for all and that shows up in different ways. Radical love can still be harmful but it should be open to criticism and be willing to change for safety and security to be maintained. I can not stress this point enough. I’m never gonna eat if all my people are not at the table. That mentality is missing in the anti-oppression work and it needs to be centered. This is a collective, we are the Collective, don’t let divisiveness fool you. We are all in this together like East High in High School Musical music numbers may vary.
Finally, I need to constantly recognize I am in this system. I am privileged and oppressed. I have the privilege to share my experience on Medium and I am also capable of perpetrating violence with this platform. We can revisit the image at the top of this post and easily place ourselves in the right positioned persons shoes. It is easy to say that you are oppressed, it is hard to recognize you are privileged and act upon it. I wish there was a fifth picture showing the intersections of gender, race, sexuality, able bodiedness, socioeconomic status, education, age, etc, and how that would show up. I wish that privilege was not so toxic, so inviting, so easy to live with. I can not stress that enough and I really feel like I’m pushing a privileged tears narrative but this is the reality of it all. We have to get uncomfortable to do actual be liberation. We have to tear our privilege apart to redefine what equality/equity looks like. We have to hurt to help, you have to define what hurt means and the oppressed define what help is. That is how it works, that’s how to be an advocate, an “ally,” apart of the collective.
Are these guidelines perfect, most definitely not, but it has been a semester and this is how it has changed for me. I’m growing and with it comes reframing, reworking and redistributing the way I put myself out there to be used. I want liberation and I want it at any means necessary. It is not enough to just pour out your privileged water in hopes that it puts out a patch of fire. We need to be intentional, we need to work in the fire, discuss with the people burning, be burning ourselves, recognize when we are pouring out gasoline, it is A LOT of work. Do it though, not for yourself, but for everyone. I’m extra for me, you, the Collective and the world, don’t ever forget that.
-I
If you like what you read please comment and like. If you wanna discuss the topic all handles on social media are @alltimeisaac. Got ideas you wanna collab on? Hit me up and we will see what we can come up with. Love, peace and cocoa butter based hair grease.
