Dear T,
You can't worry about a car that isn't there, right?
That's a metaphor of some kind. I'll let you figure it out. It's impossible for me to write these days. I'm angry and I'm frustrated and I'm incredibly depressed. It's wild that we have to fight to be treated like people. What do you think it would take?
A few weeks ago I followed a link titled What if Black Women Were Free hoping to find some answers. (Now that's my kind of clickbait.) One quote, from Naava Smolash: "Speaking, simple naming is incredibly hard. The gap between word and lived reality can make people feel crazy; talking together can help clarify reality, to get it back."
When I was in New Zealand I went to the book launch for No Pride in Prisons' Abolitionist Demands. It's structured around short-term, intermediate, and long-term actions. Some of them will take an enormous effort and many never happen. Others are simple and relatively easy to implement. They called these the easy demands.
I can relate to this way of operating. I told Sophia that there are no good or bad decisions because any action creates change. You might look back and say 'what the fuck what I was thinking?'. That's fine. That's life. What are my easy demands? I'm still speaking when I can even though everything I do feels like nothing. What's the worst that could happen to me if I tell this truth? (I think Audre Lorde wrote that.) I just hope no one describes my work as "powerful."
Love you,
M
