Many of us feel so overwhelmed right now.
One of the many reasons I think we feel overwhelmed during times like this is because we are made to believe that to do politics is to engage in something wholly separate from our everydayness, like taking up a new hobby.
Our routine of work, commuting, raising kids, hanging with friends, romance, caring for ourselves leaves little to no room for politics (in the way that many of us conceptualize it, e.g., hobbyism) outside of voting every so often. That disconnect is purposeful and is no fault of our own. Capitalism demands our vulnerability and exhaustion. A people too tired, stretched too thin, are robbed of the time to learn together, to recognize and resist oppression.
But in this moment, the veil has been pulled back revealing yet again the abject evil of Western colonialism, and thrusting many folks into global politics for the first time as we all bear witness to the horrors our people in Gaza and Sudan and the Congo are facing. We are all feeling the weight and pull of trying to get through our day, while also rising to meet what this political moment is demanding of us.
So what do we do with all these heavy feelings? This pull between our everydayness and our political selves? I want to offer a counter narrative.
Whether we have an interest in doing politics or not, we are politicized the moment we enter this Earth. The minute we are assigned gender and all the assumptions bound up in it, when our birth parent has to return to work immediately (that’s assuming they survive childbirth despite being in one of the richest countries in the world), we are marked political. And our politicized existence follows us, coloring every experience we have until we draw our last breathe here on this land.
As Dean Spade explains, “There is a false separation between politics and injustice and our everyday lives...all the aspects of our lives-where and how we live and work, eat, entertain ourselves, get around, and get by are sites of injustice and potential resistance."
So what does that mean?
When we acknowledge that everything is political, we can begin to disrupt the things we previously accepted as normal. We can change the things we once thought were unchangeable.
-Rent too high? What if we lived communally while organizing around free housing?
-Food prices too high? What if we got together on Sundays and made meals communally while organizing around food insecurity?
-Is punishment the only way you’ve been taught to handle harm? What if we tried restorative justice that was directed by and centered the needs of the person harmed instead of focusing solely on the disposing of the person who did the harm?
-Tax dollars being used to fund a genocide the world over? What if we held a book club to learn more? While also organizing around decolonialization, land back, reparations, etc.?
Doing politics should not feel separate from our daily lives because it isn't. Our principles and values should ground and guide us in every aspect of our lives. One example of how this shows up for me is in home decor. Everything I decorate our home with, how our furniture is arranged, the lighting, the music, is all intentional. "The house is not merely about decorating walls, but rather a declaration of principles" in the words of Frida Kahlo. If everything is political, I want our home to be a place where fat, Black, queer and gender nonconforming, disabled, poor and working class folks can enter and instantly see themselves, and feel affirmed and safe and renewed, challenged, held, inspired.
Expanding on this idea of politics and everydayness, Dean Spade concludes, “At our best, social movements create vibrant social networks in which we not only do work in a group, but also have friendships, make art, have sex, mentor and parent kids, feed ourselves and each other, build radical land and housing experiments, and inspire each other about how we can cultivate liberation in all aspects of our lives...it should feel like living in alignment with our hopes for the world and with our passions. It should enliven us.”
My hope is that our politics become so entangled with our everydayness that the two become indistinguishable. I hope our lives become strong reflections of our values, and that instead of exhaustion, we feel enlivened when we do politics, we do politics because that is what it means to be alive and free.
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