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@localmutantlesbian
✨️WELCOME✨️
My name is Iridescent, and this is my blog!
Mutation masterposts 1 & 2
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Mutations explained: 1, 2, 3, 4
Longtime followers will know this as a mutanttumblr blog, but that hasn't been an entirely accurate description in a while. Therefore, this pinned post is for both new and old followers!
I was supposed to give a speech to over a thousand people today at a labor rally, but the rally was planned mostly around white union organizers who have not been to ICE recently or maybe ever. I say this because they planned this as follows: a Rally, with a march to ICE, followed by a second half of a Rally, the second half of which was to include my speech, which seemingly was the only speech to include a Salvadoran migrant speaker.
I was not originally invited to speak, but heard last minute that someone else had fallen ill and was giving up their slot, and begged white organizers through the grape vine to let me speak as a Salvadoran migrant and union steward who came to the US at age 7.
I have long been soured of going to so many rallies and felt alienated that they were allegedly for or about my people, but that no one had thought people /like/ me exist - we are still here! There are migrants in your work spaces and neighborhoods and organizations, we have stories and labor songs and speeches to share, we are marxists and labor organizers and have reasons to speak out too.
But seldom if ever do you hear our music or faces or voices near the banners. Instead of Tigres Del Norte we heard Bella Ciao, and none of the singers knew the Italian words or bothered to even translate them, so they sang nanananananana, instead of the powerful lyrics that maybe meant something once to someone somewhere. Instead of Somos Más Americanos we heard Don’t Worry, Be Happy.
Instead of a Salvadoran woman who wanted to speak to the American union workers about the Banana workers unions, we heard from a dozen white people about democracy, and justice, and the constitution, and no one was warned about what would happen if they marched down the street from the park to the ICE facility. They fully expected everyone to come back and complete the second half of the rally.
Instead, marchers with their dogs and children were tear-gassed to hell and back the second they dared get close to the facility, maybe at best 1/3rd of the marchers returned while the rest were bottlenecked towards ICE. There was little to no water to treat the untrained protestors. I returned to the rally quickly realizing I could not get caught up at ICE, knowing who I am and what awaits me.
When I got back a chorus of smiling white faces sang a silly song like a Christmas carol with their heads bobbling, reading the lyrics from some handed out papers. White people with upside down flags cheered. Then a black woman in overalls abruptly got on the mic and said “Well thank you everyone but we have to close the program early because people are getting tear-gassed, please get home to safety righty away,” - and I swore I couldn’t believe my ears.
They had brought us all here, marched all these people down to the ICE facility, and expected us all to march back without encountering teargas? And then when some people had made it back they had them sing a little jingle but turned the one migrant away? I begged them to let me speak for the three minutes I had allotted, noting that I had put myself in serious danger to come out here today. That I needed to be heard just this once, and that all the white people had their fair turn to say many unrelated things, and to sing many unrelated songs.
She said, “you don’t understand, there are children down here,” and I had to say “you don’t understand, there are children in the camps.”
And she tried again, “yes but the gas is spreading,” and I said “yes we have been down here being gassed for six months, don’t you understand?”
She blinked twice and told me they just had to break down. I watched from the sidelines as they continued to blare Caribbean Blue and smooth jazz while people filtered out, stood around talking, chatting - finally I said, “please let me speak, you still have speakers going, it’s been 20 minutes,” and the DJ, a white elderly man in a sweater vest who had a strict “only the classics” policy that seems to actually mean “no hip hop and no curse words,” - barked at me that he had to break down and to help him take down his canopy. I am no maid, so I did not listen. He then turned to my comrades and told them to take his canopy down, which they did not. Then turned to his two other labor organizers who were not paying attention, and they took a leg of the canopy and moved it somewhere without breaking it down.
And one looked at me and said quietly, “it’s okay, take that bullhorn no one will notice,” and we took it and ran.
And we ran to a firetruck which I climbed, and I gave the speech, which was in fact more than 3 minutes, sorry not sorry, to a crowd of workers who were slowly pouring out from the ice facility, some stopping, some going, some who heard me, some who didn’t. And I gave it there and it was the only speech most of these people will ever hear from a migrant in all of this, and I think that is tragic. But I firmly believe that had I not given it, had I not climbed the truck, had I not taken the mic, some people would have never heard this story at all. And I think very much you should hear it. And I hope you will share it, if you have the chance. And I hope I get to tell it again, someday, to people who actually listen, to the masses who came to actually support immigrants, and not just to the dredges after they’ve been gassed and are running for shelter while I’m coughing myself.
This is what I had to say.
Transcribed for accessibility + added links for context, but please still watch/listen to the speech if possible. A live speech really resonates. Begin transcription.
Olivia: I came to the United States when I was 7 years old. And I became a citizen when I was 20. But I am on this stage to ask: if you will give me 3 minutes of your time, *cough* I will give you 300 years of American History that has been taken from you.
There are five crops that changed the world as we know it. Bananas. Coffee. Tobacco. Sugar. And Cotton.
First grown by slaves in the New World, these crops all happened to also grow in a little bean-shaped country that my parents lived in near the Caribbean called Cuzcatlan, ‘The Land of Precious Things.’ It would be renamed El Salvador in the 1800’s.
But the precious things remained after the name changed. And the people were captured, and they were forced to work for pennies on the dollar to dredge the precious things from the soil, and the sea, and the mountains, and the sand. Cuzcatlan was not precious just to us, you see. It was coveted by the Americans. And once they saw our jewels, they would never be satisfied again.
The people suffered. And how we suffered! Dying in the fields, raped by their masters, buried in the shining black volcanic sands, their blood fertilizing the crops.
Of Bananas. Coffee. Sugar. Cotton. And Tobacco.
Until one day, the people of Cuzcatlan said, ‘We can bear it no more.’ And they broke their shovels in half, and they plunged the stems into their masters, and they rode through the streets on their masters’ Spanish horses, and they cried out that Cuzcatlan would no longer belong to the American companies that demanded their precious things without paying precious prices. Perhaps, soon, those business leaders would learn to negotiate for the labor and crops they so needed.
And the Americans? The Americans could not stand it! They would not abide such a story be told. And so you never heard it! The American companies, and all of their corporate masters came down on Cuzcatlan, with a fury seldom seen before. They killed everyone.
Instead, you heard a story about “Communists” and “Terrorists” in Central America, spreading a disease that would destroy your country and families. You heard a story that we have no good will towards you. That we wanted you to starve, that we were lazy, and formed gangs, and were lawless, and wore weapons to sell you drugs and fund terrorism.
But you never heard the story of Cuzcatlan, because it was a sad story, and sad stories do not sell fruit, and coffee, and cigarettes!
No, they came to my country, and they wiped out entire villages. The Archbishop, Don Remar - er, Don Romero, himself, was shot by the military during his Sunday Mass, for having dared to wonder whether the workers deserved some mercy. Assassinated for having dared to wonder, and he was left bleeding on the pulpit, even as worshippers bowed their heads.
EVERYBODY was KILLED.
EVERYBODY! The women, with their children still in their arms. Anyone looking for cover; people who found cover, people who didn’t. People who worked, and people who had no jobs. Communists. Catholics. Those who didn’t know how to read, those who didn’t know what labor rights were. Simple folks. Smart folks.
And they didn’t stop there. They went through the countryside, and they killed everyone they thought was hiding labor organizers or communists sympathizers. Banana union men and women, who they labeled terrorists. And in one village, we still only speak about in whispers, called “El Mozote.” The Americans tied women and children to trees, and they threw their babies in the air, and they shot them. Everyone was killed, to send one message, and that is: “A union is a threat to the American Empire. Not one union man or woman will hide in your village, or any other. And if you hid one here, now or ever, you will never breathe to hide one again."
And I tell you this because I am you from the future. You and I, all of you, are very much alike. You worked very hard to buy the precious things you have from the ground, the sky, the water, and the aether. You all wrote stories, you filed insurance policies, you taught children, you rung people up, you made sure whatever sorry system they had worked, not because you believed in it, not because you wanted it, but because it was all you could do.
And in exchange, they offered you cheap bananas. Coffee. Sugar. Tobacco. Bananas.
But I will tell you a secret. They were never cheap. They were precious. And so are you.
And they stole you, and they stole us, and they stole it all, and they told you: if you look the other way, you get to be satisfied and at least well-fed. But who can afford the luxuries of cigarettes or vapes or groceries anymore? Even that is being taken from you. And even if you have them, your food or your small pleasures won’t satisfy you. Not more than knowing the truth about Cuzcatlan, not more than knowing the truth about El Salvador. Today, where our precious land once stood, they built a concentration camp called CECOT. And not just for our precious things, our people, but yours. Your citizens, your dissenters, your unwanted disappeared into the hole that America built.
And what will we do when they start building incinerators at the camps? What will you do when they open up mass graves?
For our people, the most precious gift of all: do not take my warning lightly. The story of Cuzcatlan is not just from the past. It is from the future. The workers face the same enemy, and the enemy never had your interest in mind. From the moment they had you, the plan was to have a worker. From the moment you existed, it was to create another soldier against the people of Cuzcatlan and the rest of the world. You were a commodity to them.
But we have written you a new future. One in which we no longer point guns at each other. One in which our billionaires fear the land of precious people from learning they are no longer precious things.
Turn to me now! And tell me you will not forget the last three minutes. You will never again be ignorant of this story. And you will not let it happen here. You will close the camps. You will destroy ICE.
Spectator: Yeah! Olivia: You would rather have seasonal bananas or never see one again than have it covered in blood.
Spectators: That’s right! Yeah!
Olivia: You would rather trade fairly with other union workers than kill your fellow man, wouldn’t you?
Spectators: Yes! Olivia: Tell me you love me, and that our fates are tied! Tell me you’ll stop them from dragging me down from this place, and I’ll never let them do to you what they did to us. I promise. El pueblo unido…
Spectator: JAMÀS SERÀ VENCIDO!
Olivia: Nunca será vencido. Amen.
End Transcription.
It means a lot to me, that someone wrote down this speech for me, that I in the middle of the night wrote for as a love letter to the American labor movement.
I know I stuttered a bit, as I had just been gassed, as it took place not but 400 feet maybe from the Portland ICE facility.
One correction among many tiny ones:
“You worked very hard to /ply/ the precious things you have from the ground, the sky, the water, and the aether.” - And that work, it is very precious.
May the message make it to you all regardless.
does the school accept mutates or people with superpowers who does not come from the gene x?
You would have to ask someone from a universe with mutates/people with non-x gene based powers, as they don't exist in my home universe! On Earth, the only people who have "superpowers" are mutants. The Shi’ar, who are aliens that have had some contact with Earth, do also sometimes have powers but I don't think any of them have ever expressed interest in going to Xavier’s.
“Some Principles of Harm Reduction
Meet People Where They Are is one of the mottos of harm reduction. It means not only physically showing up to people where they are at and offering education and tools, but the phrase can also be applied metaphorically - it means meeting someone at the mindset they are operating from, meeting them at where they are operating. It means working from an open perspective and showing up for folks without judgement.
Any Possible Positive Change means just that. If a person is engaging with activities that may be risky, like having unprotected sex, as a harm reductionist I will offer them education and supplies that may help them to make a different choice. I am not going to tell them what that choice needs to be; I am just going to offer the education about risks and about options to reduce risk, and leave it up to the person to make their own choices about what changes they may make. For example, using a condom some of the time, or with some people, is less risky than never using a condom.
Nothing About Us Without Us - Peer Leadership This phrase is held true and dear by many communities including disability rights, sex worker rights, and the Harm Reduction movement. What these communities have in common is that they hold peer leadership as a central value. What this means is that people with lived experience of drug use, sex work, and often unhoused life, for instance, are central to the movement. Legislation and organizational structure and movement values all inform the input and vantage points of folks with lived experience.”
LaSara Firefox Allen, What's Harm Reduction?
Man, I miss being at Xavier's... Being the only mutant at my college class fucking sucks.
Megan Thee Stallion (2024)
he has 2 electrons... who? the boy reading this...
Girl, you got a headache because……. you have powers.
Does Xavier School for the Young and Gifted work only for underage students or does it have upper education level programs?
There is a undergraduate program! I personally actually only attended the higher education offerings at Xavier’s. Sometimes to differentiate the two, I'll refer to college and above programs as the Xavier Institute for Higher Learning, while the middle + high school programs (though there are occasionally younger students the vast bulk of the student body is the middle school and high school range) I refer to as Xavier's School For Gifted Youngsters. That's my own personal terminology though; it's in no way official. The college program is very small. While I was in undergrad there were only 3 other students. Some people do stay longer to train as X-men as well. There isn't technically a graduate program, but I was lucky that recently there's been some cooperation between accrediting institutions that work with the U.S. government and Xavier’s, so I've been able to take a mentorship with Dr. Hank McCoy. So right now I'm working towards my masters in biology with a specialization in X Gene Mutations!
I think in the future we'll see the higher education aspect of Xavier's expand as more mutants are vocalizing a desire to seek degrees in a mutant-centered setting. Right now tho it's a very cobbled together thing. Definitely not a traditional university experience.
Anastasia Trusova: Black Cat in the Garden
Saying "Magneto was right" but shaking my head the whole time so people know I don't mean that he was right about mutants being a separate species when they don't satisfy any of the criteria for speciation.
From a social standpoint I totally get the whole "mutants are a different species of human". We share the presence of an x gene*, we broadly have similar experiences of existence that are distinct from non-mutants, and there can be much community to be found from rejecting the broader human societies/existence
HOWEVER...
From a scientific standpoint it's muuch more complicated. Mutants and humans are able to reproduce and create viable offspring, which doesn't necessarily rule out that we are two different species but it makes it less likely and more baffling still, the probability of a child being a mutant or non-mutant is the same regardless if the parents are two mutants, a mutant and a non-mutant, or two non-mutants. This would suggest that "the X gene" is a random mutation and not heritable, and according to the theory of evolution would not lead to a new distinct species. But then!!! We are now seeing some families that are comprised of mostly mutants produce mutant offspring that are consistently more divergent from a non-mutant. As in, their physiology is less recognizably "human" and their ability to manipulate/access/perceive properties not accessible to non-mutants (what are commonly known as mutant powers; e.g. hydrokinesis, telepathy, etc) is much greater. This suggests that there is some heritable aspect to the X-gene mutation over time.
The question that always gets asked, whether in good faith or not, is if mutants will replace humans. Biologically, there is no current consensus on whether mutants are an evolution of the human species, a variation of the human species, or an entirely new species of human. So.
*don't even get me started on what actually the X gene is. We've been able to pin down aspects of it but long story short there is no one Thing, no one gene you can point to as Thee X Gene.
On the heritability aspect, I am always so fascinated by families that share traits, as in similar expressions of an ability or physical mutation.
My brother and I couldn't have more WIDLY different abilities. I am physically mutated. He is not, except for some impossible in non-mutant humans colours in his irises. I am psychic (oneiro+hypnokinetic), and he has pyrokinesis.
Which points to both of us being the "random mutation" kind, lightning simply struck twice on my house or something.
Happy birthday trans people!!!!!! ✨💞🥰💙🫶🌟💕🦎🏳️⚧️💞the world is better with you in it ❤️
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Did not mean to add the lizard 😐
Ok happy birthday trans people x2!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 🎉✨🎈🎉💕✨🫶🏳️⚧️💙🤍💖🎉✨🌟And also this lizard!!!!🦎🏳️⚧️💕🎉
Rita Ora with a chrome dinosaur spine, 2023
FINALLY, SOME REAL FUCKING FASHION
Wojciech Fangor
From a social standpoint I totally get the whole "mutants are a different species of human". We share the presence of an x gene*, we broadly have similar experiences of existence that are distinct from non-mutants, and there can be much community to be found from rejecting the broader human societies/existence
HOWEVER...
From a scientific standpoint it's muuch more complicated. Mutants and humans are able to reproduce and create viable offspring, which doesn't necessarily rule out that we are two different species but it makes it less likely and more baffling still, the probability of a child being a mutant or non-mutant is the same regardless if the parents are two mutants, a mutant and a non-mutant, or two non-mutants. This would suggest that "the X gene" is a random mutation and not heritable, and according to the theory of evolution would not lead to a new distinct species. But then!!! We are now seeing some families that are comprised of mostly mutants produce mutant offspring that are consistently more divergent from a non-mutant. As in, their physiology is less recognizably "human" and their ability to manipulate/access/perceive properties not accessible to non-mutants (what are commonly known as mutant powers; e.g. hydrokinesis, telepathy, etc) is much greater. This suggests that there is some heritable aspect to the X-gene mutation over time.
The question that always gets asked, whether in good faith or not, is if mutants will replace humans. Biologically, there is no current consensus on whether mutants are an evolution of the human species, a variation of the human species, or an entirely new species of human. So.
*don't even get me started on what actually the X gene is. We've been able to pin down aspects of it but long story short there is no one Thing, no one gene you can point to as Thee X Gene.
By Maria Denise Dessimoz
