Some passages from We Do This 'Til We Free Us by Mariame Kaba

Some passages from We Do This 'Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice by Mariame Kaba:


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So, maybe I just have a different perspective and I talk to a lot of young organizers - people reach out to me a lot because I’ve been organizing for a long time - I’m always telling them, “Your timeline is not the timeline on which movements occur. Your timeline is incidental. Your timeline is only for yourself to mark your growth and your living.” But that’s a fraction of the living that’s going to be done by the universe and that has already been done by the universe. So, when you understand that you’re really insignificant in the grand scheme of things, you just are, then it’s a freedom, in my opinion, to actually be able to do the work that’s necessary as you see it and to contribute in the ways that you can see fit. So, I think that’s my answer to that.

And self-care is really tricky for me, because I don’t believe in the self in the way that people determine it here in this capitalist society that we live in. I don’t believe in self-care, I believe in collective care, collectivizing our care, and thinking more about how we can help each other. How can we collectivize the care of children so that more people can feel like they can actually have their kids but also live in the world and contribute and participate in various different kinds of ways? How do we do that? How do we collectivize care so that when we’re sick and we’re not feeling ourselves, we’ve got a crew of people that are not just our prayer warriors, but our action warriors who are thinking through with us? Like, I’m not just going to be able to cook this week, and you have a whole bunch of folks there, who are just putting a list together for you and bringing the food every day that week and you’re doing the same for your community, too.

I want that as the focus of how I do things and that really comes from the fact that I grew up the daughter of returned migrants, African-returned migrants. I don’t see the world the way that people do here, I just don’t. I don’t agree with it, I think capitalism is actually continuously alienating us from each other, but also even from ourselves and I just don’t subscribe. And for me, it’s too much with, “Yeah I’m going to go do yoga and then, I’m going to go and do some sit-ups and maybe I’ll like, you know, go to…” You don’t have to go anywhere to care for yourself.

You can just care for yourself and your community in tandem and that can actually be much more healthy for you, by the way. Because all this internalized, internal reflection is not good for people. You have to be able to have… Yes, think about yourself, reflect on your practice, okay, but then you need to test it in the world, you’ve got to be with people. So, that’s important. And I hate people! So, I say that as somebody who actually is really anti-social… I don’t want to socialize in that kind of way but I do want to be social with other folks as it relates to collectivizing care.


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You can’t force somebody into being accountable for things they do. That is not possible. People have to take accountability for things that they actually do wrong. They have to decide that this is wrong. They have to say, “This is wrong and I want to be part of making some sort of amends or repairing this or not doing it again.” The question is: What in our culture allows people to do that? What are the structural things that exist? What in our culture encourages people who assault people and harm people to take responsibility? What I see is almost nothing.


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Not only is it true that punishment doesn’t work, but also when you prioritize punishment it means that patriarchy remains firmly in place. And if I am at my core interested in dismantling systems of oppression, I have got to get rid of punishment. I have got to do it. But I want accountability. I want people to take responsibility. I want that internal resource that allows you to take responsibility for harms that you commit against yourself and other people. I want that to be a central part of how we interact with each other. Because while I don’t believe in punishment, I believe in consequences for actions that are done to harm other people. I do. I think boundaries are important. I think all these things are really important. But with punishment at the centre of everything we haven’t been able to really address the other stuff that needs to happen. Because people fucking need to – they need to take accountability when they harm people.


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Oh my gosh. You’re asking me great hard questions. I keep threatening to write an essay called “Abolition Is Not About Your Fucking Feelings.” I wrote that in a tweet and got so much blowback because people felt like I was insulting their ability to feel what they want to feel. That’s really not what I’m saying. The concept of the personal being political as a basis for feminist organizing in the past is so true, and yet it is so fraught at the same time. What it’s not saying – and I think what sometimes people want it to be saying – is that how I personally feel then should be made into policy. And we can’t operate in a world where that’s true. We shouldn’t codify our personal feelings of vengeance to apply to the entire world.


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Also, I really feel like over the years I’ve learned myself better. And that helps you to figure out what your actual boundaries are. And also, boundaries are usually a negotiation between what you want and what other people want. It’s not like a firm, set thing. You have to get really good at being able to negotiate. And the only way to do that is to know who you are.


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It’s like, why? You’re going to burn out. It’s not humanly possible for you to just be your Lone Ranger self out there in the world. Ella Baker’s question “Who are your people?” when she would meet you is so important. Who are you accountable to in this world? Because that will tell me a lot about who you are.

And how much hubris must we have to think that we, as individuals, will have all the answers for generations’ worth of harm built by millions and millions of people? It’s like I’m on a five-hundred-year clock right now. I’m right here knowing that we’ve got a hell of a long time before we’re going to see the end. Right now, all we’re doing as organizers is creating the conditions that will allow our collective vision to take hold and grow.



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Idea/Process

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[This text was originally published as part of the free book F A N Z I N E L E V E L 2 0 / 2 1.]




No one really knows how it works. Is there an idea? In the grant applications you of course must at least pretend there’s an idea. An idea that will be developed throughout the course of a process. What actually happens throughout the course of this process? Things are attempted, some are accepted, others rejected. The criteria for such acceptance or rejection appears to be ever-shifting. Criteria as some sort of feeling. A difficult to pin down feeling. Almost like a pain. I feel this thing should be part of the idea we are working on, while I feel this other thing perhaps should not. Or is it the other way round? The more things that become part of it, the less newer things seem to fit. At the beginning, when there is nothing, almost anything might fit. While near the end, when there are many things, almost nothing will. It is not a puzzle, because the various pieces haven’t been cut into shapes, and therefore there is no pre-decided way they may or may not fit together. The pieces will never, in fact, really fit together. That is the works charm. Also that it is charmless. And that we made it. We made it together and only we know how. And we don’t even know how. We can go back to the grant application and look at the original idea and wonder how we got from there to here. The audience cannot see the process but we want the audience to see the process. At least some shadow or taste or hint of it. The decisions and ever-shifting criteria and internal disagreements that brought us all the way to this fragile point. The point at which our process meets its end in the form of potential judgement. The point when our friends from the audience perhaps don’t quite know what to say. Would it all be better if we had started from a better idea?



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Some favourite things from my 2021

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[So it seems like I now do this list more or less every year. I really do love lists. As with previous years, this is in no particular order and many of these things didn't come out during the previous year. As well, there would normally be some performances and exhibitions, but due to the pandemic I didn't see very many and couldn't quite figure out which ones to include, which is sad.]



Books
LOTE – Shola von Reinhold
We Do This 'Til We Free Us – Mariame Kaba
Believers: Making a Life at the End of the World – Lisa Wells
Pollution Is Colonialism – Max Liboiron
Search History – Eugene Lim
Writing in Space, 1973–2019 – Lorraine O’Grady
Incognegro – Frank B. Wilderson III
The True Deceiver – Tove Jansson
We, Jane – Aimee Wall
The Freezer Door – Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore
The Sunflower Cast a Spell To Save Us From The Void – Jackie Wang
The Actual Star – Monica Byrne
Eladatl – Sesshu Foster & Arturo Ernesto Romo
Insurrecto – Gina Apostol
The Secret Service – Wendy Walker


Music
Mega Bog – Life, and Another
Pino Palladino / Blake Mills – Notes With Attachments
Chicago Underground Quartet – Good Days
L’Rain – Fatigue
Ben LaMar Gay – Open Arms to Open Us
Eddie Chacon – Pleasure, Joy and Happiness
Wau Wau Collectif – Yaral Sa Doom
Peter Ivers – Becoming Peter Ivers
Gilles Poizat – Horse in the House
Tiziano Popoli – Burn the Night
Virginia Wing – Ecstatic Arrow
Fievel Is Glauque – God’s Trashmen Sent to Right the Mess
Bruiser Wolf – Dope Game Stupid
caroline – Skydiving onto the library roof
Bilal Salaam - Swordlord: Swordz II Zakat



Plus:
Some passages from Writing in Space, 1973–2019 by Lorraine O’Grady
Some passages from Believers: Making a Life at the End of the World by Lisa Wells
Some passages from We Do This 'Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice by Mariame Kaba




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Some lines from the first two volumes of Susan Sontag's diaries

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From Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963




I am not myself with people […] but am I myself when alone? That seems unlikely, too.


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The world is cluttered with dead institutions.


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Life is suicide, mediated.


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There is often a contradiction between the meaning of our actions toward a person and what we say we feel toward that person in a journal. But this does not mean that what we do is shallow, and only what we confess to ourselves is deep. Confessions, I mean sincere confessions of course, can be more shallow than actions. I am thinking now of what I read today (when I went up to 122 Boulevard Saint-Germain to check for her mail) in Harriet’s journal about me – that curt, unfair, uncharitable assessment of me which concluded by her saying that she really doesn’t like me but my passion for her is acceptable and opportune. God knows it hurts, and I feel indignant and humiliated. We rarely do know what people think of us (or, rather, think they think of us)… Do I feel guilty about reading what was not intended for my eyes? No. One of the main (social) functions of a journal or diary is precisely to be read furtively by other people, the people (like parents + lovers) about whom one has been cruelly honest only in the journal. Will Harriet ever read this?


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Harriet said something very striking yesterday, apropos of Sam W.’s enormous library, that collecting books in that way was “like marrying someone in order to sleep with him.”

True…

Use libraries!!


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Inspiration presents itself to me in the form of anxiety.


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I told her tonight she is always putting me in the position of saying “I’m sorry.”

She told me to go read a sex manual. 


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From As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980




A miracle is just an accident, with fancy trappings.


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One man thinks before he acts. Another man thinks after he acts. Each is of the opinion that the other thinks too much.


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If I can’t bring judgement against the world, I must bring it against myself.

I’m learning to bring judgement against the world.


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Every act is a compromise (between what one wants + what one thinks is possible.)


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Ivan searching for a reply to something I said: “Wait… I can taste it but I can’t yet find the words.”


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I suspect now that lusting after the good isn’t what a really good person does.


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Thoreau on his death bed – on being asked what were his feelings about the next world: “One world at a time.”


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The extraordinary frequency with which the plot of a serious contemporary novel turns on, or resolves itself, by a murder – compared with the extreme unlikelihood that the educated writers of vanguard fiction have ever been anywhere near a murder in their lives.



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