My Feminist New Year's Resolution
My Feminist New Year’s Resolution
New Year’s Day is my favorite holiday. It’s a time of year when I reflect and set goals for the future. I believe that engaging in radical vulnerability—opening myself up to hard truths about myself—is the first step to healing, which allows me to work authentically with others across our differences and truths so that we can achieve a world where human rights are recognized, protected and celebrated. I asked myself hard questions as 2018 came to a close: What have I done for social justice? Have I moved the needle? Or have I stayed in my proverbial “lane”? In an act of radical vulnerability, I am sharing what I realized: I have failed to fully show up for immigrant justice.
Activists called for the end the surveillance, deportation and criminalization of undocumented peoples at a Los Angeles rally for immigrant rights last year. (Molly Adams)
Human rights are global. Man-made geographic borders and concepts around citizenship only create the conditions to other our human siblings. Any institution that was created via imperialism, colonization, genocide and slavery is something we should divest from. But at the end of 2018, as I lived in my queer black femme body, I couldn’t deny my positional privilege as an American citizen.
It’s time for me to admit that I haven’t been utilizing my privilege to really show up for immigrants and those fighting for immigrant rights and justice. I have watched quietly from the sidelines and shown my support in the most “slacktivist” ways—saying I support immigrant justice on social media, but then moving on to another social justice issue that feels more comfortable to me. I know that if my activism doesn’t make me feel uncomfortable, then I’m not trying hard enough; being uncomfortable means I am challenging myself in new ways. Not all of our social justice work should be uncomfortable, but if I am serious about liberation, I need to do the hard work of transformation and not merely transaction.
For too long, I’ve unknowingly—or been unwilling to admit—that I have been a social justice advocate working towards liberation in tiers: me first, you second, then everyone else. I have been so focused on black queer feminist liberation, which is necessary and urgent, that I have been missing opportunities to actually achieve collective liberation with all the people who don’t share my identities.
. . . .
We start by asking ourselves one question: What will we do for collective liberation?
http://msmagazine.com/blog/2019/01/04/feminist-new-years-resolution/