rEVOLution
Love is the only way to survive the Trump times.
“Awareness is central to the process of love as the practice of freedom”- bell hooks
Bob Marley was seen as one of the most iconic musicals of our time. His songs invoked the feeling of happiness and love. Bob Marley’s song, “Could you be loved?” is trying to present to his listeners a message of not only self love but community love.
In his song he states,“Don’t let them fool ya
Or even try to school ya…
We’ve got a mind of our own
So go to hell if what you’re thinking is not right
Love would never leave us alone
A-yin the darkness there must come out to light”.
Essentially the message he is trying to relay to the listeners is that don't let western ideologies influence your perception of yourself. He is very critical of western influence onto brown bodies, and the value that they place on brown bodies. He is calling for brown bodies to disregard these values and just value themselves, essentially for brown bodies to love themselves and love their comrades. Similarly bell hooks addresses these issues in her article, “Love as the Practice of Freedom”. bell hooks main argument is that we need to dismantle the prevailing popular notion of ‘us’ vs. ‘them’ or the ‘I’ vs. ‘them’ in order to enable the practice of self love.
Time and time again we as citizens in a capitalistic society have for the most part internalized the notion of individualism. Individualism has produced this dichotomy among us, the “us” vs. “them” mindset that the media has created with the constant demonization and policing of certain bodies over other bodie. As a result, we as people have stopped caring for our neighbors well being and began to fear what our neighbor might do to us. Essentially, we have created this culture of scepticism and hate towards each other in order to protect our own well being. These present ideologies of individualism will bring no prosperity to us as people it prevents us from reaching our ultimate potential to merely focusing on the individual's economic gain. Rather, than focusing on healing the pain of the individual brought on by the violence produced by the media. We have grown numb to the pain and violence by doing so we have simultaneously reciprocated the violence. By not acknowledging the pain, violence, and the classification of our bodies we have internalized these concepts and created divisions between our own people. This division has become visible in the current times, for example the black on black hate crimes. In which 93 percent of black homicide victims are killed by other blacks. This just shows how internalized the hate towards our own bodies that we are willing to hate and produce even more violence to our own communities. So in a sense, by simply focusing on the individual we have created this culture of competition, competition with our own fellow comrades. This competition is directly linked to the creation of a culture based on self hate among minority groups. This self hate has been taught through the toys we play with to the shows we watch. The lack of representation of our own colored bodies in the toys and the shows watched has helped teach us as kids that are bodies are not good enough and need to be changed in order to be accepted by society. This is tremendously detrimental to the prosperity of our people, especially in these new challenging Trump times.
During these times there has been a lot violent attacks done to the communities of colors, either through the exploitation of our bodies, of our culture, and our our labor. Sadly in these new Trump times these systems of violence will become more frequent. We as people of color need to brace ourselves to these attacks. We need to as people who have suffered, acknowledge that pain in order to move on and to be able learn from this pain. This pain is transformed into compassion and compassion leads to action.
The battle to love, most importantly to love ourselves. Because as you may noticed the longer Trump is president the more hate towards people of color will be made evident.We have constant images circulating of our people of color being prosecuted due to the color of their skin or the legal status. Its gotten to the point where people of color, specifically the undocumented immigrants have been overly policed. Undocumented immigrants have been one of Trump's main targets that he has deported more than 41,000 immigrants using this new device, which is known as a Hailstorm or Stingray, simulates a cell tower and fools nearby phones into providing location data. Trump administration and policies thrives on hate in order to successfully accomplish their goal of a white America. In a sense, these hatred rhetorics have seeped into our subconscious, into our sense of being that we will inevitably begin to hate our own bodies. This is the kind of problem that both bell hooks and Bob Marley warm us about. They are both constantly advising us to stop wasting our time hating ourselves and focus on healing and reorganizing the revolution. Because it is then that love will break us free of our pain. We need to first get read of the old notion that love is not meant to make you weak or make you less of a man, choosing love is much more powerful that the media makes you believe. Choosing love is choosing to go against the prevailing values of the culture. Choosing love has become such a revolutionary act. It's become the biggest F**** You to the system and it provides a path to freedom for all. So choose to love your curly hair,your dark skin,and your curvy body, just love. Love everything and anything that makes you, you.
