The people dying are moms and dads, kids and teenagers, nerdy, quiet boys and girls. This movement is showing what wholeness looks like and demanding a whole and uncompromised justice.
“Black Lives Matter” is the rallying cry protesting the escalating deaths of innocent black people at the hands of police and other authorities in the United States. Those three words are radical: They get at the root of what blacks and other Americans standing up for justice believe we must assert, unequivocally, every day.
We are embodying something different in this movement. It is worth celebrating what is new in how we are living the movement today.
Our generation’s grief is closer to the surface than ever before as we experience—by means of simultaneous spiritual and technological awakening—what it feels like to be collectively aware of oppression on a national scale. We feel the desperate speed with which injustice falls on us, and hold each other through it in physical and virtual spaces. But it doesn’t just feel like we’re being slaughtered—we have the texts, records, reports, and videos to document the rhythm of modern violence.
We are learning to dance. To grieve collectively, online and in person, to grieve marching and blockading and healing, to grieve in motion.
The “who” matters. The black people who are dying in this racial conflict are not esteemed movement leaders, strategists, voices of dissent, people choosing to practice radical economics, or armed militia. They’re daughters and fathers focused on survival, asking for help, on their way to or from work. Nerdy, quiet boys and girls. Teenagers and children in or near their homes. They’re people who fall outside a guilty or innocent paradigm. Any of us, or our family members, on any given day, could be these people.
Those who have responded don’t fit the traditional mold of leadership either. That relatively young people are leading this movement shouldn’t be a surprise; each generation rolls up like a wave that has never faced the sand and transforms the shoreline. (It is thrilling, I’ll admit, to see mature organizers stepping aside, but still playing the roles of mentor and cheerleader.)
The people showing up to lead this movement are young, and they are black, queer, trans, disabled, poor, middle-class, students. And they’re bringing their whole selves—all of their converging identities—to the movement. To have multiple oppressed identities in this country used to mean learning to create an internal hierarchy where identities vied for the need to be witnessed and loved by the community. Many of us have studied how, in previous movements for liberation in the United States, gender, sexuality, class, ability, and other core aspects of ourselves were routinely diminished, considered controversial distractions when raised.
Now, love is the language of the movement—self-love, and loving the wholeness of our comrades. We have been in real struggles, internally and with each other, learning how to bring our whole selves into political conversation.
All black lives matter, every single one. And that truth necessitates a society in which all lives matter: queer, trans, disabled, multiracial, elder, writers, artists, teachers, healers, workers, parents. All of them.
Those who are shaping this movement have in common a practice of saying “yes” to being many things. Yes, we are black, we are queer, we are lovers, we are mamas and daddies and aunties and uncles, we are Asian, we are disabled, we are transgender, we are allies, we are white, we are unlearning and unteaching racism, we are listening, we are transient, we are Arab, we are indigenous, we are immigrant, we are persecuted, we are dying too, we are with you, we are you.
This movement isn’t asking for inclusion—it is showing what wholeness looks like and demanding a whole and uncompromised justice. There is a saying that you have to love yourself first, before others will see how lovable you are. Yes, look at us. We are irresistible.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
Last week, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy