If I become someone else after this, believe me, it wasn’t by accident. And I don’t mean my soul will change, but the way I’m perceived will go through changes.
- Apotheosis, by Kai Straw
This is not a memoir or a biography, but it is a manifesto in the same neo-tradition of how George M. Johnson made their work All Boys Aren’t Blue as a memoir-manifesto. It is a guide, in a way I hope the people who need it will understand. This is focused in part on individual growth, but do not see this as an individualist creed - change will not come by the power and ability of any single person, but by many individuals who have found their strength contributing one or two specialties to the collective.
We live in a time where our power, autonomy, identities, our realities are being stripped for parts—for those most marginalized and those further crushed by the gears of the machinery of empire, imperialism, white supremacy, and patriarchy. You cannot keep sitting idle, stagnant, waiting for something to happen. You, reading this, have to be the one to make it happen. I’m sorry, but we cannot keep waiting on someone else to do the work of saving us, because someone must be the one to start moving.
This is urgent yes, but at the same time we must not rush, for forcing us to rush unprepared into the work we must do is a tool of white supremacy to ensure nothing can successfully undo it. You have to find others like you and learn how to grow together. You can no longer give in to isolation and stagnancy because you aren’t sure any of what comes next will be safe. It will not be safe. Change, especially for the better, is never safe for people like us—at best we will see our efforts come to fruition, at worst, well, “You already dead, asshole. At least die a sacrifice for something worthwhile.”
We must choose the path of uncertainty, because I would rather my life mean that eventually they cannot lay hands on a single other Black, trans, disabled, woman’s body after mine. We all know that there is much more that we can and should be doing beyond watching and pretending there’s nothing we can do, that our circumstances hold us back from doing something. There is always Work to be done, that some are already doing and that some want to do but need someone to take the first step, and not all Work is physical, monetary, or constant.
This is a tool to help you reach a place where you have the willpower and focus to take on that Work and step into a more collective role, whether you view this work solely in a spiritual or material sense, or as a combined concept. You must look at yourself and take that first step.
