Chris Finley Quote

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One of my dear friends, political organizer Lee Ann Wang, theorizes that we need to prepare for things to go wrong as part of political organizing campaigns. None of us is completely right or good, so why do we act like political organizing is a sacred space where only whole, righteous subjects roam? We are all broken and cannot possibly have read everything, so we will be wrong sometimes. We live in rape culture. None of us gets to be free of this even as we work toward critiquing heteropatriarchy and white supremacy. Living among humans and in the world is a true act of courage because, even with those working toward social justice, institutionalization and violence exist. We are all in the world, which is full of violence. This is not an excuse for bad behavior but an acknowledgement of the fact that we can try our best but still fall short of being perfect subjects. The call-out culture has only made the gap between the good and the wrong deeper and wider. We need to celebrate moments of truth a solidarity too.

– Chris Finley, Building Maroon Intellectual Communities



[From the book Otherwise Worlds: Against Settler Colonialism and Anti-Blackness.]


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