These past few weeks have been a sticky whirlpool of emotions, ideas and improvements. I left New York City a few weeks for New Orleans to work on a youth-led consensus-based food justice project, and to (finally) get out of the city. I lived and worked at Our School at Blair Grocery, an urban farm/school, in the lower ninth ward. I was in the second brigade of the summer, and the first co-ed group (the first group were all womyn, power to them!). The idea behind Food Justice Summer, was to learn first-hand about sustainability and the injustices of food in our society, while incorporating organizing methods and empowering our voices as youth.
To even begin to explain all that went wrong is the all-too-familiar prejudices based on what’s between our legs and the color of our skin. Understanding power dynamics amongst ourselves within the circle was crucial in order to function as a powerful group but we never achieved that altogether. To get an idea of what exactly was going down, let me explain what Staceyann Chin’s hair had to do with all this: A fellow organizer and I created a curriculum to open up a conversation on gender by showing powerful videos of Marjora Carter (Green the Ghetto) and Staceyann Chin (A Question of Impeachment). During the go-around after the showings, the entire half of the group, majority white and male, were uncomfortable by Chin’s free-flowing ‘fro and didn’t understand who would pay money to be yelled at.
Those comments began to ignite sparks among the other half of the group, majority womyn of color, to rain down on the ignorance and privilege that was prevalent among the white males. A young black womyn branded one of the white males a ’slavemaster’ and that his comments were like ‘whippings on her back’. Then, going against our structure of consensus and facilitation, the white male started talking above everybody else and out of turn. The argument escalated with two womyn calling each other ‘dumb bitches’ and our model for a safe space obliterated.
Currently, I’m staying with a friend of mine who is going through personal matters involving the ‘white male syndrome’ (as I like to call it). As an organizer and as a womyn, how do we work around these issues without losing the bigger picture and breaking unity? How can a youth-led movement grow if we are met with internal barriers that butt heads with our beliefs? How can we break the molds of race, sex, class and everything else that separates us in order to work together without falling into the same perils like prior youth movements? How, what, when, who and why’s swirl around in the air around my mind every single day and minute, questioning my motives as a young organizer. Why is that our voices are only heard after we become the victim?
These are just a few scattered thoughts brought up in conversations after that night. However, before some professor of Sociology at a big-name school or the director of a prestigious social justice organization begins to write out answers to these questions, stop. Leave these (and all the others) to be answered and figured out by us, the youth, without any biased-adult interferences. Thank you for your academic texts and hefty lectures, but your politics is old and boring as fuck.
Make way for the new minds and souls to recreate what a revolution truly looks like. Now.
