Fear not. As Davis stated, generations of experience are available to guide you through the labyrinth of obstacles that lay ahead. Through conversations with members of those generations, as well as my own experience, I’ve compiled four strategies to maintain your footing on this rugged path toward progress.
No. 1: Let the Movement Carry You
When I started working with All of Us or None, the first thing Dorsey said was, “This party started long before you walked in.” Many of us come in on fire for our own ideas, but we neglect to acknowledge the vacuum within which those ideas were created. Likely, they were designed without the context of what has and hasn’t worked in the past, nor an advanced understanding of how oppressive systems function and evolve—a knowledge gained only through dedicated trudging and ongoing political education. Like the students who met with Ivan Kilgore, carrying a cursory understanding and a backpack of buzzwords will not fare well in this fight.
As previously mentioned, the movements for equality and Black liberation have been trudging along for centuries. This can be seen as discouraging: People find it more comfortable to adapt to the status quo rather than fight long-standing, cunning systems of oppression that have, for the most part, prevailed over more just causes and movements. I urge you to see it otherwise.
An object in motion tends to stay in motion. As momentum carries the movement from generation to generation, so too are generations carried by the movement itself. Some of my dearest friends are those I formed connections with doing grassroots activism. We are like-minded, persistent, and always on the move. In each other, we find love, healing, and strength. It may sound cheesy, but amid an endless struggle, these acknowledgments of each other’s humanity are essential to survival.
As George Jackson once wrote, “We can only be repressed if we stop thinking and stop fighting. People who refuse to stop fighting can never be repressed—they either win or they die—which is more attractive than losing and dying.”6
Your final destination may not be clear, but if we’re all on the road together, we can never end up lost. The road will lead somewhere, and when you arrive you will not be alone.
No. 2: Find Your Lane (And Stay in It)
In his critically acclaimed bestseller Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari makes the argument that humans have conquered the world, reining in famine, plague, and war. His proof is in the number of people who die from obesity outpacing those who die from starvation; the number of people who die from old age eclipsing those who die from infectious diseases; and suicides beating out war casualties. I’m not sure I’d classify that last one as a win, but according to Harari, we did it. It’s all rainbows and unicorns from here on out!
Back in reality, this world’s got lots of problems. I remember reading Sapiens and finding it very difficult to get past the premise that we’re ready to dismiss our failings and move on to the next phase of development. There are fights yet to be made for trans rights, reproductive rights, prison abolition, immigrant rights, labor unions, climate change, economic justice, racial justice, and countless others. It is possible to link several of these together via underlying oppressive structures, but too often the ecosystem of progressive organizations tries to take on everything at once in the hopes of arriving at Harari’s utopia. Dismantling any single pain point requires laser focus, and the desire to do good in every vertical where evil exists can lead to muddy messaging and burnout.
If you have the energy for it, great. But this work will require endurance, and where you spend your energy and where you conserve it are important considerations. I maintain my endurance by dedicating my time to verticals linked by white supremacy—namely fights against antisemitism, racism, and criminal justice—by researching, interviewing, and exposing undeniable injustices and amplifying alternative structures. For vetted organizations in the fields of immigration reform, women’s rights, and environmental justice, my support is more financial. I still participate, but not in a way that detracts from the causes I am more knowledgeable about and that require my full attention if I am serious about seeing them succeed.
So decide what you’re most passionate about, how your skills are best suited to contribute, and remain focused.
No. 3: Avoid the Oppression Olympics
I bonded with Ken, my All of Us or None comrade who introduced me to revolutionary thinking, over our ancestors’ shared traumas, but we could have just as easily been divided by it. We could have argued about whether or not the Holocaust was as horrific as slavery, or even about the validity of comparing the two. Instead we united in our pain, rather than presuming to understand the other’s.
The term Oppression Olympics was coined by Chicana feminist Elizabeth Martínez in a conversation with Angela Davis at the University of California, San Diego in 1993.7 In reflecting on this conversation years later, Davis would write in the foreword for Martínez’s book that Martínez “urges us not to engage in ‘Oppression Olympics’ [or create] a futile hierarchy of suffering, but, rather, to harness our rage at persisting injustices to strengthen our opposition to an increasingly complex system of domination, which weaves together racism, patriarchy, homophobia, and global capitalist exploitation.”8
Like any Olympic sport, the Oppression Olympics can be draining and exhausting. It requires energy that’s better used to fight a common oppressor than each other. It is also a common tool of purveyors of oppressive systems, ensuring the fight is always among those vying for power, not against those who are in power.
When we first started organizing the Stop Killing Us rally at All of Us or None, a rash of infighting quickly spread between the Black and Latino members of the staff. Especially in a place like California, where Latinos are the largest racial and ethnic group at 39 percent of the population,9 the number of Latino victims of police homicide also exceeded other races. The local and national trend, the Black contingency argued, was that per capita more Black individuals were killed by police, not to mention the fact that the murders igniting protests around the country were reactions to the deaths of two Black individuals (George Floyd and Breonna Taylor). Meeting after meeting, we debated over how many dead people from each race should be displayed on the posters I was charged with creating. In fact, the organization spent so much time fighting over the numbers that other elements of the protest—such as public outreach, media outreach, transportation, and more—were overlooked or rushed at the last minute. In the end, the posters displayed the per capita rate, but few victims of either race were given the attention they deserved: The protest was poorly attended, poorly covered by the media, and had little impact as a result.
In an effort to ease tensions, elders in the organization offered a way to approach intersectional situations without engaging in hierarchical suffering. Dorsey, for example, had participated in the 2006 protests against HR 4437, a federal legislation that would increase penalties for undocumented immigrants and classify them and anyone who helped them enter the country as felons. Many of the immigrants at risk were Haitian, but the vast majority were South American. According to Dorsey, the protestors presented a unified front—the most likely to succeed—by putting South American immigrants front and center. These individuals would then be responsible for acknowledging the far-reaching implications of the legislation, including the criminalization of their Haitian counterparts. Some states did end up passing similar legislation, but HR 4437 was defeated.
Focusing on suffering, or attempting to “out-suffer” another person, detracts from the focus required to end such suffering. Remind yourself that infighting is often the result of clandestine efforts by the ruling class to retain power by convincing those without power to participate in their own oppression, whether it be the FBI’s counterintelligence program or the prison department’s censorship of a ceasefire letter. Be clear of what you’re fighting for and who you’re fighting against.
No. 4: Laugh Out Loud
I was moderating a panel at Stony Brook University called Writing for Liberation when a graduate student raised her hand and asked about self-care.
“I can see how intense this is,” she said after I had patched Ivan into the conference and the “this phone call and your telephone number may be recorded” memo had interrupted at least 100 times. Even in a conversation about liberation, the carceral system was managing to get a word in. “How and when do you find the space to breathe, to pause?”
It’s a common question that many organizations are still grappling with. Some have healing retreats, where they shut down operations for a few days and meet with spiritual advisors. Others offer unlimited personal days or workshops around meditation and regeneration.
In my interviews for this book, I have found that elders in the movement have tremendous laughs. Woods laughs with their entire body. Ivan howls, and the harder he laughs, the higher his pitch becomes, working his way to a screeching cackle. With every “ha ha!” these tireless defenders of freedom produce massive exhales, expelling bodily toxins and opening up their lungs to large breaths of fresh air.
Ivan or Woods may not consciously see laughter as self-care, but I have found it to be a commonality among the toughest fighters in this space. Laughter is a kind of freedom that can’t be chained or minimized, even by the most composed individuals or by the most repressive systems. In the words of Mark Twain, “Power, money, persuasion, supplication, persecution—these can lift at a colossal humbug—push it a little—weaken it a little, century by century, but only laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of Laughter nothing can stand.”10
Maybe your own self-care isn’t allowing yourself an uninhibited guffaw. But find a freedom that cannot be taken from you, and lean in.
Alternatives
I prefaced this book as an exploration of humanity. If nothing else, you’ve met some incredible humans. Perhaps you’ve been inspired to join them. Maybe you’re intrigued but not convinced. Maybe their ideas have sparked some new ones within you. The more barriers to freedom the US’s systems of law enforcement, punishment, and economics put on oppressed communities, the more limitless the freedom movement becomes. That includes its access points to newcomers and its opportunities to evolve.
“Because there are multiple ways in which the prison industrial complex infiltrates and impacts people’s lives, there are multiple ways 1) to bring people to prison industrial complex abolition, and 2) to fight back,” Woods explained. “Understanding that—as new people feel compelled by this politic—opens up new opportunities, not just in terms of capacity but also new opportunities for sites of struggle.”
In that vein, I offer the following alternative organizations with which you may engage, although know there are many more.
The Movement for Black Lives
I would be remiss not to mention the Movement for Black Lives (https://m4bl.org), the governing organization of Black Lives Matter. Black Lives Matter is arguably the largest racial justice movement in modern history, with local chapters all over the country and several international chapters. Since its inception in 2012 following the killing of Trayvon Martin, the group has raised over $100 million in private funding and galvanized a new generation of activists. Their demonstrations have helped initiate federal oversight of police forces in Ferguson, Louisville, Baltimore, and Minneapolis. The Movement for Black Lives Electoral Justice project drafted a federal omnibus bill known as the BREATHE Act. Championed by Representatives Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib, the legislation calls for a reallocation of federal resources from law enforcement to community programs. It also proposes repealing the 1994 crime bill and the federal Three Strikes law.
A whole chapter can be written about the Movement for Black Lives, but the reason one is omitted here is simple: They didn’t want me to write one.
I initially contacted the Movement for Black Lives in 2021 through its PR team. After two screening interviews about my project, I was granted a thirty-minute Zoom call with the organization’s national field director and its director of partnerships. There was mistrust from the beginning—this was the first of many instances where I was asked “why” due to my skin tone—and both directors indicated that their willingness to participate in these kinds of relationships had been taken advantage of in the past. The downside of having a movement born and raised on the internet is that social media offers a chance for the widescale spread of disinformation. In fact, a month after my conversation with the Movement for Black Lives directors, the New York Post ran an unsubstantiated story based on a Facebook post that claimed one of its founders used BLM donations to purchase luxury houses.11
Perhaps more significantly, the Movement for Black Lives has ballooned into a robust apparatus of funding and resources, creating an abundance of ways its leaders can tell their stories without a conduit.
I’m not here to co-opt anyone’s story, so if you’re interested in the Movement for Black Lives or Black Lives Matter, its founders Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Ayọ (formerly Opal) Tometi have written extensively and brilliantly about it. When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir by Patrisse Cullors and asha bandele and The Purpose of Power: How We Come Together When We Fall Apart by Alicia Garza both provide excellent tools for movement builders and organizers. You can also visit M4BL.org to learn about any one of their several campaigns and subprojects.
BYP100
Millennials’ engagement in political and social movements has increased dramatically in the last five years. Between 2016 and 2018, there was a 10 percent increase in both political engagement and organized demonstrations among the members of this generation. More than 10,000 young people demonstrated against racial injustice after the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor in 2020, per data collected by the Brennan Center for Justice, leading to record civic engagement in the general election that year (half of the eligible voters aged eighteen to twenty-nine participated, compared with 39 percent in 2016).12
It should come as no surprise that a coalition of young activists arose from this surge of enthusiastic youth. Black Youth Project 100, or BYP100 (www.byp100.org), is a member-based organization of Black eighteen- to thirty-five-year-olds dedicated to creating justice and freedom for all Black people. Since the majority of its members are young and new to the movement, BYP100 conducts several educational workshops on grassroots organizing, fundraising, public policy debate, and electoral organizing.
With the guidance of American political scientist Dr. Cathy Cohen, the group defines its politic through a Black, queer, feminist lens, informed by the traditions of radical Black organizations such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Combahee River Collective.
