manifesto

I’m a lesbian womanist with zero tolerance for spaces that require forced assimilation and adherence to white supremacy culture. I grew up in Massachusetts where racism isn’t overt-- it’s primarily hidden-- deeply embedded in the system. People will look at you sideways if you walk into the city with confederate gear, but no one really looks at you crazy if you have a Black Lives Matter sign in front of your $2M Milton home and continue to vote against expansion of affordable housing in “your” backyard (the land of the Neponset people, that is). No, you can’t say the n-word, but you can say your organization is “doing everything it can to advance equity” when really, they’re still perpetuating practices of systemic oppression behind closed doors (Ask their staff of color, disabled staff, or queer staff how they’re really doing). Having existed at the margins of most, if not all, the spaces I’ve ever inhabited, I’ve come to some major conclusions: 

They really playing in our face, y’all

To the white people who think they’re better than immigrants because they didn’t “illegally” cross any borders: 

  • Borders are made up-- When was the last time you saw a line marked by the Earth itself delineating where Tennessee starts and ends?

  • A human being can’t be illegal-- They just gave you language to distinguish yourself as superior

  • a country that granted citizenship to its own indigenous people in 1924 is trying to tell you who is and isn’t “legal”…

  • Y’all couldn’t be a Black or Hispanic immigrant living under this regime for a day-- I’ve seen how y’all live-- one minor inconvenience sends you into a spiral… better yet, y’all aren’t even willing to inconvenience yourself for your own, remember COVID?

  • Instead of doing the research on why your country which boasts “America First” constantly destabilizes foreign governments throughout history triggering massive waves of immigration, you just swallow

Ring by Spring Girlies:  

  • There’s a reason why purity culture pushes you to get married before 25-- Your brain isn’t fully developed before then. It’s a lot easier to manipulate you and feed you bullshit like: No sex until marriage, no living together until marriage, and no divorce. Girl, if being married to a man benefited YOU, the patriarchy would take that away from you. 

  • There’s a playbook for girls who get married-- Get married, have babies, and submit to your husband as his helpmate. But there’s no playbook for how to be an independent woman. Instead, you’re told you’re going to be an old cat lady; not a woman married to a man, who she sacrificed her dreams for, and what society deemed necessary, only for her to die in servitude to him-- barely respected, as he spent his life voting against her own interests and rights.

White Women: 

  • Take a lesson from Marjorie Taylor Greene: Once you are of no use to the patriarchy, they will not only dispose of you, but if you threaten their status, your life will be in LITERAL danger. 

  • Y’all are married to and submitted to men who will do ANYTHING for power, even deny YOU YOUR rights, all while you pursue an agenda that primarily benefits them. 

Black Evangelicals: 

  • If you lived next to a neighbor you know abused their children, would you let them babysit your child? So, why do you think the religion that was used to justify and perpetuate the enslavement of your ancestors and white supremacy is the one that is for you?

  • What would it look like to create and adopt a trauma-informed belief system centered on community and inclusivity?

  • And ladies, you do realize it’s a boy’s club? 

    • How much time is spent on preparing girls to be submissive virgin wives?

    • If Black men had as much social power and influence in the real world, would they create an institutional structure that so directly mirrors white supremacy culture?

  • What if i told you i have proof that your submission to this religion is integral to the interests of white supremacy.

White Evangelicals: 

  • How do you feel after your churches failed miserably to the mosques with the baby formula social experiment?

  • We all saw in real-time how your warped theology works

  • “He prepares a table before me in the presence of my enemies” sounds good on paper, but the numbers demonstrate that when war breaks out, the “enemies” crushed the most are women and children, and the innocent

  • Last time I checked, a man can’t deal with a headache without complaining, but a woman who's submitted to him can be on the receiving end of atrocities he couldn’t even begin to bear, like undergoing a C-Section with no anesthesia

  • We have Christians defending and SUPPORTING the acts of a war criminals and suspected pedophiles

    • Women especially, if this doesn’t show you how dumb it is to uphold a belief system that fails to center you and your children’s experience, I don’t know what will

Fierce Upholders of the Patriarchy and White Supremacy Culture:

  • What do you benefit by bottling up your fears and pretending you’re okay when you’re not? 

    • How is it that emotions are weak, but you’re suffering in silence because you refuse to share or demonstrate how you really feel?

  • Who are you if you don’t have someone else to look down on and feel superior to?

  • You say our generation is so sensitive and “riddled with anxiety”

    • Has it dawned on you that maybe we’re anxious because our schools aren’t safe and you refuse to elect politicians who would actually pass comprehensive gun legislation?

    • Or maybe we’re anxious because we can’t afford to buy a house like you could in your 20’s

    • You call us wimps but are too afraid to stand up against injustice, go to a protest, hold yourself, friends, and family members accountable

    • You say you love us, but do nothing actionable to preserve our rights and freedoms in this rigged system when they’re under attack… so yeah, we’re pretty anxious

Coons:

  • You know they’re probably calling you a monkey behind your back, right?

    • Them seeing you as “not like the others” is proof 

    • That’s quite literally a way of affirming superiority to your face

  • “Making it out” means nothing if you aren’t opening doors for those left behind

The Patriots:

  • Y’all say you’re ready to die for your country, can you open a damn book and read for your country too? 

  • You do know the second amendment you love to quote so much also says that you have the right to form a militia and overthrow your government if it’s not working for you and I KNOW this shit not working for y’all 

  • You subconsciously believed your whiteness was a guaranteed spot for greatness, huh? 

  • Here’s what they don’t want you to know-- the only color they see at the top is green-- they just make you believe your issues are with people who aren’t white

  • You keep saying you don’t see color, you just don’t understand why you have to work so hard while immigrants and minorities are “handed things” 

  • Who you need to be mad at are the corporate CEOs who profit off of your rage and misinformation

  • They build data centers in your backyard raising your electricity bills, sell you canned products they know aren’t good for you, make you pay health insurance you can barely afford, that doesn’t cover your tailored health needs exacerbated by your labor-intensive job, which you also don’t see the full benefits of taken from your taxes because they’re paying for universal healthcare, instability, and genocide abroad, and the little time you do have to yourself, you have to spend flipping through a ton of expensive subscriptions just to find the game you wanna watch... but yes, its the Mexicans, trannies, and “Blacks” making life so difficult for you. 

White liberals and Black elites: 

  • Some of y’all are lowkey worse than the KKK in a lot of ways-- you use the rigged system to enrich yourself and once you’ve “made it,” only work to “carve out” unjust practices instead of working to rebuild the entire system

  • The quiet part y’all won’t say out loud is that you too don’t know who you are without white supremacy

  • If it doesn’t fit the mold of white supremacy culture with a rainbow, BLM sticker or small grant attached to it, y’all don’t want it

  • You stay dangling kibbles and bits in front of marginalized populations knowing damn well if it requires real work and material repair, you’re not gonna do it 

  • Talking about it’s gonna take almost 100 years to eradicate poverty yet the share of billionaires grew the largest in the shortest amount of time 

  • You invest in corporations and donate to politicians contributing to the climate crises and political instability and look at everyone so defeated by an America you “don’t recognize”

  • No, you’re not rich like the 1%, but you uphold respectability and white supremacy culture-- you keep the system running for them

If you’re not in the 1%, you’re better off aligning yourself RIGHT NOW with the most marginalized individuals. 

  • That means, if WE are not fighting for the rights of HUMANS displaced by injustice and instability, poor people, individuals with disabilities, and Black trans women-- that is, those who are the FURTHEST at the margins, then we too are playing in people’s face. 

welcome to the reconstruction renaissance.