This is the post that's gonna end my Tumblr someday.
First caveat, I am not expert on the history of the Rainbow Coalition and the surrounding movements. Most of what I'm writing comes from secondary sources, so if a historian comes in and blows up my whole thesis, please listen to them. I had a white american college education and was not formally taught about the organizations I'm talking about.
I also want everybody following me to know this isn't about you, it's about a specific facet of the online left that I've seen getting more vocal in recent years. Consider this a rent-lowering gunshot. Okay? Okay.
Tumblr would have crucified Fred Hampton.
I'm talking about the Rainbow Coalition specifically, one of the greatest attempts at unifying lower-class people this country has ever seen (hence the feds getting involved and killing Hampton, a 21 year old, to stop it,) and the people in it.
The Rainbow Coalition had people in it Tumblr would have loved to cancel. The Young Patriots used a Confederate Battle Flag and explicitly worked around whiteness as an identity. The Red Guard Party used (reclaimed) slurs against Asians in their ten point plan and were highly militarized, the Brown Berets were often internally sexist, hell, most of these groups had members who were gangsters at one point or another. These were not clean-cut college-educated progressives who had wholesome backstories and all the right takes—but they FUCKING DID SOMETHING.
They all got together and worked to make their communities better despite their differences, and the FBI was killing their leadership and disrupting their movements before half of this website would have decided if they were "too problematic" to support.
The Rainbow Coalition was not a social club. All of its members were not friends or even closely aligned politically except by one main thing: anti-racism and anti-capitalism. They still, for the sake of their survival, worked together.
If your only contribution to the revolution is a callout of someone who did something shitty but is generally trying to help, you are not part of the solution, you are literally indistinguishable from the ops the feds planted in these organizations.
Yeah accountability is important. Yes you should hold people to a high standard. But if you have nothing better to do than to tear down organizations and people that do good for their communities because they weren't perfect enough for you, then don't be surprised when you never see your actions result in positive change.
If you go through my history, you will find I am immensely cancelable. I've said shit I don't believe anymore, hurt people who didn't deserve it; tldr, I've been a fucking human.
And because I accepted that and kept trying anyways, I've been a part of some really cool stuff in my community. Somehow, I think my shitty posts and fumbled friendships might be outweighed by the good I've done, and hopefully that trend continues.
This is text on a screen. This is not the revolution.
yousharknotpass
theartofmadeline
jacobvanloon
stormborns
turnnoffyourmind
jbbartram-illu
kaledo-art
