WILL THE 🧊 EVER MELT?
TW: Discussions of State Violence
I haven’t really been the same since a foot of snow fell on New York City a few weeks ago. The winter is hard enough without being surrounded by giant snowdrifts covered in dog waste and human waste and…whatever is making the snow the same black color I imagine a monster in an HP Lovecraft story would bleed.
It’s…bleak. Because not only is your neighborhood covered in biohazard-laden, ice-hardened snow, but the temperature barely rises and the sun barely shines and the wind never stops blowing a chill straight through to the base of your fucking bones.
Not to mention the fact that any time you hear, “we haven’t had weather like this in New York City in over a hundred years,” your brain immediately goes to, “Because the goddamn climate is cooked.” And let’s be honest, things feel pretty fucking cooked lately.
You probably figured out I’m not talking about the ice in NYC anymore. This is actually about the ICE in Los Angeles. And Memphis. And Chicago. And the Twin Cities. And yes, even New York City. And yes, every fucking where.
This is about the ICE that we need more than a good run of sunny, 50 degree March days to get rid of.
I haven’t really been the same since Renee Good was murdered. I try not to watch the videos. I don’t feel the need to SEE the evidence to BELIEVE that the state would brutalize its own people. I’ve lived through the beating of Rodney King, the standoffs at Ferguson and Standing Rock, the abandonment of Flint, MI, the murders of Sandra Bland, Breonna Taylor, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, and countless others, the violent opposition to the Occupy movement, the jailing and abuse of Mahmoud Khalil, the co-signing of Washington lawmakers of the murder of Heather Heyer and the various treasons of Jan. 6, and of course the public execution of George Floyd and the groundswell of support that ignited for dismantling the police after it.
And yet here we sit, six years on from that flashpoint, and the police are stronger than ever. And to make it worse, we now have a fully-funded secret police full of white supremacists so bad even the cops wouldn’t have them, roaming our streets, kidnapping our neighbors, building concentration camps, and murdering our loved ones. And the regular ol’ everyday pigs are helping them do those things at every turn. Because, as anyone with half a brain knows, ACAB.
And I’m fucking scared. And fucking angry. And fucking lost. Because Renee Good was a Queer mother, in the car with her spouse, doing what any person with a heart would try to do in that moment. What my own wife would try to do in that moment. She was trying to put herself between the state and the people, between violence and her neighbors. And the state executed her for that, on video, in the street. And then they lied about it. And then they did it again to Alex Pretti, a VA nurse who had the audacity to try and stop them from beating a woman.
And I think for many well-meaning white people this was a wake-up call. Because it pulled the whole mask off, finally and completely. Your whiteness only protects you if you are willing to accept that it gives you supremacy over others. Your whiteness only protects you if it doesn’t exist in proximity to Blackness, to immigrants, to Queerness.
I wish that so many people who look like me didn’t need to see someone who looks like them murdered before they could really take this seriously. Because the world that many well-meaning white folks now wake up in is a world that every Black and Brown person you know has been living in their entire lives. But I’m not here to chastise you for what you have or haven’t done so far. I’m not interested in telling someone they were wrong for going to a No Kings march or wearing a pink hat or donating a little money each year to whatever cause they most believed in. I think all of those things are a great fucking starting point. But it’s high past time all of us got out of the starting gate.
Because I need all of us—myself included—to accept that if we’re going to beat these fascists, if we’re going to melt the ice so we can finally get rid of the garbage that’s attached to it, we’re going to need more than a few sunny, 50 degree March days.
We’re going to need robust mutual aid networks, massive get out the vote canvassing operations focused on elections that matter (local, state, judicial), daily phone calls to Congress, field medic and naloxone training, front-line protesters, ICE watch training, a willingness to open our homes to a neighbor in danger, self defense classes, meal trains, organized work forces, and more.
You don’t have to do all of these things, but you do have to pick one of them and get very fucking good at it. Because the age of waiting for politicians to fix it is over. The age of appealing to the better angels of their nature with people who have none is over. The age of choosing comfort over safety is over.
I promise there’s a mutual aid group, local political action network, lefty martial arts space, food distro, jail support, etc. in your area. And if there’s not, start it.
Each one of us doesn’t have to do everything. But every one of us has to do something. And if you need help, ask me. I’ll tell you where to go.
Love and resistance,
GBW
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