Mourn & Organize
I am so tired and I have not been at activism and organizing as long as some of the people I have been working with. I should have been at it as long—I once got started on this path early combatting economic injustice and oppression, but capitalism and well, something I have just learned to discover as a form of disability, has a way of making that challenging to hang onto.
About 10 years ago, all as a result of my eating disorder, I had a second heart attack, attempted suicide, lost my job, alienated all of my friends and a good portion of my family, and became homeless for a short while until I ended up in, at that time, about the 6th or 7th psychiatric ward somewhere in the foggiest part of the southern area of the San Francisco peninsula. Cameras were on me while I slept and I was stuck most afternoons smoking cigarettes in a narrow room enclosed by Plexiglas talking with people about travelling through the Redwood Forests—and through time—to come to Mills Peninsula Hospital’s psychiatric unit. Thanks to having a mother who both wanted and could afford to take me in for a short while, I returned to Syracuse, but I did not get better. I was in ERs a lot again, in treatment centers when I could afford to, accelerated my drinking, and went from relatively violent relationship to violent relationship. I denied my queer identity so virulently—trying to find something to make me not so terminally unique—that I ended up not only in more heterosexual relationships than I did queer ones, but also abusive ones, as well. Sexual assault. Domestic violence. All of all that.
Let me pause and thank you for hanging in with me, to steal a strategy I have seen my some other verbose social justice folks use out there. See those of us who experience oppression are often talked over, but then when we are finally given the floor, we’re told that brevity is the spice of wit, or some crap like that, so we have to shut up again. Well I/we have a lot to say. I have some significant privileges, so I am not saying I need to be taking up all the space—only when it is a moment in which it is valuable for me to talk and when I won’t be talking over the voices of my siblings in the struggle who have better things to say. Second in this pause is I also want to say my story is not so unique and I do not want anyone reading it that way. I did not end up in a women’s shelter because of my domestic violence. I did not get jailed for fighting off my attackers (mostly because of white privilege and just slightly because I did not fight back—I did not think I was worthy of that). Many people have far more challenging illnesses to contend with than I do. I am lucky and grateful and privileged as a working-class, queer, cis woman with white privilege. But have recently learned it is also the words of most victims—no matter their trauma—to compare it to others and say it isn’t so bad/It wasn’t that bad/she or they had it far worse. Wowwwwwww … So minimize and maximize not and I hope I get my story right-sized.
So back to it … at the DisruptJ20 demonstration, there was such an outpouring of love and camaraderie that I never had when I was out there in the world alone, letting the patriarchy impact my relationships and self-worth and safety, succumbing to capitalist demands on my time (which cannot always be avoided), and ignoring the ways my white privilege blinded me to the work that needed to be done for liberation for all. On the march, my bag broke and my friend—my comrade—gave me a pin off his jacket to hold it together. I shared water with friends. We danced holding political signs and shared nuts and granola bars and apples and peanut butter sandwiches. (That food-sharing is pretty dang critical for a girl who grew up poor with anorexia.) We swapped turns driving. We were offered beds in a home we didn’t know and given so much political knowledge that it was unbelievable. Returning home, after being up about 24 hours on only about 4 or 5 hours of sleep and marching miles in DC in January, that old familiar shame came back. I was not doing this right. I should have gone to that march, too. I should not have said this or said that. I am annoying the people most impacted by Cheeto-Hitler’s administration and I took up too much space (a familiar thought I have as a person with an eating disorder, but critical to be aware of as a white person and the irony of this long blog is not lost on me so I will wrap up ASAP). And then I just balled up and sobbed for the second time that week (the time before was when Obama denied Leonard Peltier clemency). I hadn’t meant to. I didn’t have time to. I never do. Work, school, dance, activism and political education, chores, oh and that pesky business of trying to maintain recover … Who has time to cry? But I could not help it and then I cried for the shame from wallowing in self-pity, which really would not help my wrongdoings or perceived wrongdoings in the fight for liberation for all.
So I picked myself up and reminded myself—well I reminded myself to stop crying because I had a lot of homework to do and a gig to make later—but also that the time to mourn could come later. That the time to mourn could be public, see, and here is my point, why is emotion so bad? Why must we take our emotions out of it? Why must we not engage in activism with emotion? Since emotions are so often feminized, I cannot help but determine that it is from the cis-hetero-patriarchy that we are often told to take them out. That was certainly what I was told when I used to engage in activist work before—be rationalllllllllllllllllll they said. Be calm (who ever has calmed down by someone telling you to calm down, please and thank you let me know?). But I am angry despite that women are not supposed to be angry-and black women are even more so vikified for it, so checking emotion in activist work can really police black women and that’s a racist practice no one should be getting behind. Checking my emotions in my work—thinking I had to stifle my anger—stifled all parts of me and a self-hatred ran so deep that I let the patriarchy abuse me and internalized misogyny and let capitalism run rampant because I was too beat down to do anything about it. Realizing this life lost to that made me cry again and so OK—so I needed to cry at that moment because for some decade and a half I had not let myself actually cry (much at all or) about the things that mattered and I grieved for what capitalism stole from me … for that life lost to capitalism as I know what it steals (in different ways) from others including Red Fawn and Leonard Peltier and the people who go unnoticed in their beautiful work to combat all injustice. I cried for them and I felt all of them and our losses well up and when it was over, I got back into this work and put my emotion into it because we are told not to and so when we use some emotion, we resist just a little--and sometimes a lot--that which seeks to oppress us. So I keep learning what I need to learn and to teach when I can and learn a lot more. And now I rest because the emotion has got to be in the work and then all that emotional labor needs a union break.
This is dedicated to Red Fawn Fallis whose life and activism and good spirits has connected me to my emotion and for whom I will tirelessly support in my work. Free Red Fawn.
�