Thoughts on the Hands off Protests
Take notes, make adjustments, keep going.
It’s been a bit since my last newsletter, life and work have both required overtime from me the last few weeks. But I did make time to go to my local small town hands off protest on Saturday. There has been a lot of discourse on the optics of the organizing that are necessary conversations to have. A lot of folks are learning the first lessons on leveraging their privilege for more than just themselves. It’s going to be a messy time. I hope that we can do our best to listen to the organizers who are trying to help us all by educating us about the realities of protesting as a marginalized community.
The Hands Off protests were not free of violence because they were “done right” they were simply “done white”. I suspect a good amount of you are on the same page and understand this, but there are many on the internet who are several chapters behind and making it everyone else’s problem. Now I say this knowing there was a lot of discourse on the internet encouraging Black, Brown and Indigenous communities to stay home in case things did go sideways on Saturday.
However, we can’t be ignoring marginalized voices in the process. This government wants to segregate us.
White folks, this is not your moment to gloat, you don’t get those moments anymore. You take the feedback and use it to improve. Remember that organizing means more than just protests, protests are just the beginning. They will only have the impact we give them. The impact is in the follow through. Tesla sales are cratering. Target, Starbucks. We are not only capable of having impact, we have done it before, repeatedly.
Now I won’t lie, it’s really easy to not spend in a recession. So, there’s that. But keep evolving your definition of resistance. We have to keep coming from new directions.
Rest, take care of yourself. This advice I struggle with the most for myself. You all remind me to check in with myself, thank you for that.