#transformative politics

[wreckingball4good]

anarchism is not achievable in our lifetime but it’s still the most ethical goal to continually reach for. no one is trying to take away your prescriptions. we want to build a world where you’re not afraid of dying because you can’t afford them because a capitalist is holding life-saving technology for ransom.

[abolitionjournal]

”Anti-authoritarians have been great at theorizing ‘dismantling the system’, but there is less emphasis on the importance of building alternative institutions. It is no coincidence that the work of growing alternative relations and networks has largely been invisible in our movements because it is gendered labor. Both the dominant political economy and the microcosm of our movements are subsidized by the labor of those who provide childcare, cook meals, do secretarial work and provide emotional support. Even recognizing these as forms of labor is an uphill battle; we are able to articulate critiques of capital and labor in the wage economy but continue to invisibilize care work in the unwaged economy. A transformative politics requires us to rethink, reimagine and reorient work and its relationship to gender and dis/ability—what is the work that makes all other work possible? How do we foster social relations across generations and communities based on interdependency, resilience, vulnerability, and solidarity? Connection is, after all, the anti-thesis of commodification and at the heart of a truly transformative politics.”

- Harsha Walia, Dismantle & Transform: On Abolition, Decolonization, & Insurgent Politics

[processedlives]

I envision a politics where one’s relation to power, and not some homogenized identity, is privileged in determining one’s political comrades. I am talking about a politics where the nonnormative and marginal position of punks, bulldaggers, and welfare queens, for example, is the basis for progressive transformative coalition work.

Cathy J. Cohen, ‘‘Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens’’

[queerethnographies]

I am interested in examining the concept of "queer" in order to think about how we might construct a new political identity that is truly liberating, transformative, and inclusive of all those who stand on the outside of the dominant constructed norm of state-sanctioned white middle-and upper-class heterosexuality.

Cathy J. Cohen, "Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens" p. 441