wrote this while sitting at adele’s kitchen table in detroit after the Allied Media Conference. i’ve come to believe that community organizing for me means working with other disabled women of color and leaving the assimilationist [trying to fit into mainstream society] political bullshit behind:
for far too long have i thought
community advancement meant
serving on boards
applying for nonprofit status
developing programs
and listening to white people speak for my experience.
but it is not enough.
for far too long have ignored racism and homophobia
betraying my people and parts of me
so i could call this place
home
but it is not enough
and it will never be enough.
i can no longer be a part of a single-issue movement that carries no understanding of how all oppressions are intertwined (without co-opting them)
i can no longer be a part of a movement that ignores multitudes of people and silences them through invisibility and a one-issue agenda
NO! i can not be a part of a movement that uses my body, my blood, my words without acknowledging where they come from
and who they are for
but instead filters them into a hetero white rich folk framework
everything that i am not and my people are not…
you can no longer quiet me, cut me,
separate me into bite-size pieces
cause yes i am no longer a part of this movement.
…so where is home?
8 Comments
June 25, 2008 at 5:38 pm
mi casa es su casa
June 25, 2008 at 6:16 pm
Expressing beautifully what so many of us feel.
June 26, 2008 at 5:26 am
This is beautiful. And so true.
Thank you.
June 26, 2008 at 10:48 am
so lovely. thank you. I love listening to your words.
June 27, 2008 at 11:21 am
Home is wherever you treat other people as people, and they respond in kind.
June 27, 2008 at 11:37 am
I realise that my previous comment is maybe less than helpful, since there aren’t enough places a queer female disabled coloured person gets treated like a person. But you have this little piece of the internet where you are. *hugs*
I know so mch less about th issues you blog about than you do, but it’s time I started to learn more. If you want a clueless white person’s help (Lord knows why you would) I can.
June 28, 2008 at 8:10 pm
“Home is the place where, when you go there, they have to take you in.” –Robert Frost
This my working definition. You will find it shifts throughout time…that’s the paradox. You are experiencing one such shift now, and there will be others. It’s a sign of spiritual growth, the shape-shifting of “home”=where the heart is.
June 28, 2008 at 8:13 pm
BEE
YOU
TEE
FULL
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