honeyed fire

strugglingtobeheard:

readnfight:

youarenotyou:

weexist-weresist:

youarenotyou:

notyourkinddear:

soydulcedeleche:

jumpstart-therevolution:

Ok, I’m officially annoyed with this 99% shit. POC been dealing with shit 10 times worse than this, but now that white people are dealing with some of it all of a sudden we’re seeing signs and people are protesting.

Nobody was trying to fight the system for blacks. Maybe I’m just looking at shit the wrong way, idk but this just doesn’t feel right to me anymore.

yeah no i cant help but be like “cry me a fuckin river”. doesnt that happen to POC daily all the fuckin time? i truly cant w this shit now.

its starting to look like a bunch of white whine from afar.

And with this I must sign off for the night. I just can’t…

[deleted a gif, sorry]

This gif is really becoming my go-to….

i’ve been thinking about it and this.this is probably why i havent placed too much faith in these protests. and why i have been wondering why there arent any brown black or yellow faces in these fucking crowds. no, this is not me saying that ~protesting is a privilege~ because if anyone has a reason to protest, its certainly pocs.

but here is my question: the shit hit the fan a long time ago, why havent POC communities done something? why are we not turning this particular set of uprisings into an opportunity to get something done? the economy has been worse for you, sept 11 made things worse for you, shit has always been kinda sucky for you. so why are these crowds so white washed?
 

why are you so resistant to the idea that protesting involves privilege? you’re asking why POC aren’t protesting…. might a lack of privilege have something to do with that? i *get* that it’s not as simple as protesting=privilege, and i was never trying to argue that it was black and white (no pun intended). but how can we deny the ways that oppression keeps people from revolting?

I think part of it also is that communities of color do things every day that should be considered revolutionary. They just aren’t huge spectacles. One of the most lasting legacies of the Black Panther Party, for example, was the free breakfast programs—but that’s not flashy so it’s not what people think of. I have had to point this out to white anarchists/radicals many times, that in whatever work they’re doing, if people of color are at all a part of the equation, they’ve probably been laying the groundwork for years, or doing that exact work but maybe in subtle ways, or it’s just been totally overlooked.

I tend to be more interested in day to day work that builds strong foundations for a better world, so I’m pretty wary of getting excited over big actions that seem to be lacking roots. A lot of the things I’m hearing as small victories out of Occupy Wall Street are things that happen all the time. Like that now people are talking about the economy and the power rich people have—that ain’t new! I have those conversations with people of color I meet in the park or on the bus or wherever.

Some of the work that goes on in my city that is really amazing and powerful is behind the scenes work—gang mediation, creating black history projects, cross-border multi-lingual radical women’s theater (!!! srsly), immigrant workers organizing against their bosses without a union. None of it’s flashy, and if white people don’t notice…oh well. We’re getting our shit done anyway.

So I think what we should be asking isn’t just why aren’t people of color joining a mostly white protest movement (I mean, I think we can come up with some easy answers to start with, and then some more complicated ones), but also what work are people of color already doing? And who controls what we are collectively paying attention to, and whose interest does that serve? And how long will each type of work last, and who will it benefit? And if people of color do want to join this movement, what needs to be done for us to trust that movement?

I didn’t want the picture on my dash. But everything readnfight said. I mean, I am honestly not that active in any movements or activism or anything like that right now. I just learn and talk and try and live in a way that is ethical for me. But I do read amazing things that people of color do regularly. From protesting immigration policies, creating in neighborhood gardens for their communities, helping to monitor how cops treat people in their communities, starting programs and safety nets for people who need help. I read about actions like this that people of color are doing everyday. It makes me feel like I need to be doing way more. But also, it has helped to re-frame my idea of what protest and resisting and revolting is. It has many forms. And when it comes to highly visible protests like the one on wall st., people of color obviously have a lot more to lose if things go wrong, on top of us being the most affected. For me, I don’t feel connected in anything that has a sea of white faces. It’s really hard for me to get into it and feel connected and like my involvement will matter to others in any way. I also know that I take a chance of having supposed support networks vanish if shit hits the fan. We have pragmatic things to worry about that will effect us more in the long run if a protest like this does nothing to change things. I think many poc have different reasoning, though their are poc who are involved and doing things in ows.

I have also noticed as pointed out, this mobilization is directed towards specific needs of community rather than the abstract concepts of corporations as people usurping all of our rights and resources. Obviously, it’s a real thing and I’m not saying poc don’t understand it. I’m saying that we can get mad at that and attack and protest the loss of wealth the people have experienced or we can directly work to help people survive and overcome those losses and actually take back stolen resources and use them for communities, rather than protesting to basically appeal to those same thieves to give it back. And from a cynical perspective, I think this is only a good method if we want to get more people who haven’t been paying attention to pay attention. Which is generally more middle and upper class white folks. Cause poc have been living this reality. These “peaceful” protests may have done something to move change in some areas but right now at this point in America, I have little faith that a peaceful protest, no matter how large or civilly disobedient, will do much to change the overall structures that truly cause these problems in the first place. Some of my thoughts.

diggin this…

(Source: wearethe99percent)