The world is rapidly changing, and we need to consciously steer its direction so we can demand more and better. It is impossible to fully integrate ourselves under capitalist white supremacy because it inherently requires a disconnection of the mind and body. Our hearts are kept far from our heads, and we are all commodified as material goods. We need a world where healing is the priority. A world where free and equitable health care is a humxn right, universal basic income is the norm, the police are defunded, the prison-industrial complex is eliminated, and child-rearing is a communal act. A universe where hundreds of millions are not allowed to starve so a select few can amass billions. Where communal care trumps individualistic success, and those who have been systemically oppressed are valued, celebrated, paid, and prioritized. What I most hope to see is a world where Black women and femmes can finally rest. We need a revolution rooted in radical compassion, and we need to come together to create collective change. Now.
THIS IS NOT A MOMENT, IT’S A MOVEMENT
Though these are terrifying times, it gives me hope to witness the magnitude of action we can take as a collective when we appreciate the risks involved. It is possible to put people before profits. To allocate billions to support those in need. To reenvision our daily lives and the world as we know it. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, many governments unified across party lines. Countries swiftly mandated public health care, decarceration, public childcare programs, and forms of universal basic income to protect their citizens. Though these were temporary measures, they need not be. Think of what is possible when enough of us realize how the status quo is gravely harming humxnity and put our energy behind ending oppression, supporting those in need, rectifying the climate crisis, and creating a world where we can all thrive. We do not have to passively watch the powers that be attempt to regain business as usual or use this atrocity to further entrench their powers. There’s no going back. We can, we must, command a new way forward.
We all play a part in creating global, systemic change. That begins with our inner healing, but that is certainly not where it ends. We must commit to being the change, both with our words and, most important, with our actions. Below I’ve set out some of the higher-level ways you can contribute in a lasting and meaningful manner to soulful social justice and the revolution to end everything that never worked right to begin with.
#1—Revillaging & Community Care
One of the many ways we can support dismantling the oppressive status quo is through community care. As my girl Rihanna once said, “If there’s anything that I’ve learned, it’s that we can only fix this world together. We can’t do it divided.… We can’t let the desensitivity seep in.”14 We heal in community, not in spite of it. We rejuvenate, learn, and grow through our relationships—with ourselves and with others. We are all mirrors, we are all teachers, and we are all students. For all the technology we have, we are more connected but more separate than ever before. Revillaging is the act of creating a village around us to support one another through our day-to-day lives. To aid in rearing children, caring for those in need, and contributing to one another’s healing and well-being.15 Especially those most marginalized. Revillaging means recognizing the failures of the global state and taking it upon ourselves to fill the gaps, recognizing the system was built to prioritize the white and wealthy and instead putting people before profit, creating alternatives to capitalism, and striving for solidarity with the queer and trans Black and Indigenous women+ and disabled communities that first created and cultivated community care.
Connection and belonging are our deepest humxn needs, but in our fast-paced world we are less united, and less compassionate, than ever. Community care demands our time, tenderness, patience, and prioritizing. It is an act of re-membering. Revillaging also means more meaningful interactions, which strengthen bonds, promote compassion, and help defuse conflict. We cannot end global systems of oppression on our own, just as they were not created on their own. We must lean into our interconnectedness and the way the oppression of some is the oppression of all. Community is at the core of how we bring about the change we most need. Both by tending to our community and calling on our community to support us in committing to the vital work required to overthrow the status quo. In the words of model Aaron Philip, the goal is to “love more, love unapologetically, love without stigma or overcompensation.”16
This means we need to start with our inner circle and move outward. We need to take time to find and tend to our people, and take equal measure to be the kinds of people we wish to keep and call in. I call these folx our Dream Support Team, or DST. These are folx you can rely on through thick and thin, who keep you accountable and help you through the tough times—and this work is tough! The folx composing your DST have the distinct honor and privilege of being a source of support for you, and you for them. Think Golden Girls or Notorious B.I.G. and Diddy. They will call you on your shit and hold loving, compassionate space when shit hits the fan. They will have the privilege of being a source of support and receiving your support in return. Ideally, folx on your Dream Support Team should be:
Compassionate—They deeply care about you and the most oppressed and seek to support, understand, and assist you.
Principled—They are trustworthy, impeccable with their word, and do what they say they will do.
Accountable—They aren’t afraid to call you out when you fuck up, nor to call themselves out when needed, and they take appropriate action to rectify harms when they cause them and change behavior.
Diverse—They are diverse folx from different races, ethnicities, religions, classes, gender identities, sexual orientations, ages, abilities, etc. who can offer you various perspectives and insights.
Anti-oppressive—They are actively anti-oppressive and share your values to dismantle white supremacy, including all forms of oppression.
Your DST can comprise friends, family, lovers, neighbors, healers, therapists, or anyone who can support you in supporting yourself through this vital work of healing personally and collectively. In our modern age, your DST can be your primary village. Finding these folx won’t be easy, and you’ll be lucky if you have more than a few, but with time, effort, and patience, you will likely begin to cultivate a community. You are worthy of care and support as you lean into healing your heart and activating the hearts of others. The truth is—we won’t succeed without it.
#2—Feel Our Feelings… Including Joy
The world is on fire, literally and figuratively. And we are apt to be overwhelmed by it all. When we dive into racial justice, we begin to witness things as we never had before. The violence, oppression, sickness, and hurt. The inner work cracks our hearts open and we feel it all. Our own personal pain as well as the mass grief of the collective. If we are to have any chance of staying steadfast, healthy, and hopeful in our efforts to dismantle global oppression, we need to feel our feelings and allow others to do the same. We need to stop maintaining the oppressive status quo that wants us to numb out, to live in fear, and to do as we are told. You have a right to your rage, and you can still lean into joy. For those comprising oppressed identities, our joy is part of the revolution. Learning how to cultivate it, keep it, demand it, and own it. Without fear, without guilt, without shame. Joy is our birthright. Each and every one of us, especially those of us who have been conditioned to feel unworthy of it.
Dismantling oppression does not mean confining ourselves to misery. We must learn how to acknowledge the ways we cause harm, do everything in our power to rectify it, both personally and collectively, and still seek to bring about joy for ourselves as well as others. Especially for those whose joy has been eliminated at the hands of white supremacy. How and when to prioritize pleasure greatly depends on your power and privilege—the more you have, the more you must work to support the joy of others before (but not to the exclusion of) your own.
No matter who you are, going within isn’t easy. We must unlearn the ways of white supremacy to lead with a stron
g spine while keeping a soft heart. We must withdraw from binary ways of thinking and learn to better tolerate our mixed emotions. Joy and grief. Love and rage. This requires balance. And discernment. Tending to our inner child, connecting with our ancestors, protecting our energy, and grounding with our breath—all tools we’ve moved through together here and that you can return to whenever you wish—can be of great support in identifying and leaning into our emotions. Attuning to ourselves and each other is how we can attend to the most critical needs of the day and motivate ourselves to action. Staying connected to and sharing our inner states of being—including our love, joy, and rage—is one of the many ways we can keep consistently committed to overthrowing the powers that be. It is how we activate our humxnity, awaken our full potential, and live in and on purpose. What we choose to do with our pain will define if and how we all survive.
#3—Act Up
The last and most important way we can contribute to much-needed global change is actively dismantling the status quo every day. There is much out of our control, but we have power to control our actions: our impact, our vote, our energy, our compassion, our healing, our love. We all need to center queer and trans Black and Indigenous women+, center the interconnectedness of beings, and prioritize protecting the planet. We need to start where we are, and start today. Perfection is the enemy of progress. Our work must balance earnest efforts not to fuck up with the belief that simply trying will always be better or cause less harm. It won’t. But we need to choose to act anyways. We need to check and recheck ourselves, call in others, and do the work. Let’s reflect on some key ways we’ve discussed to actively counter oppression (and a few new ones):
Center and prioritize queer and trans Black and Indigenous women+ or, at a minimum, Black and Indigenous people in all racial justice efforts.
Follow, learn from, and support (financially and otherwise) intersectional queer and trans Black and Indigenous anti-oppression educators/activists.
Engage critically. Follow those paving the way but think for yourself, do your own research, and identify ways you can support solutions.
Identify and acknowledge the ways oppression intersects and compounds.
Specifically address your anti-Blackness and anti-Indigeneity and why they must take priority in racial justice.
Act in allyship with all oppressed identities however and whenever you can.
Educate yourself, being mindful to fact-check what you learn and of how and where you receive your information.
Work to understand your power and privilege, your role as an oppressed oppressor, and what you need to do to both counter the harms you cause and spend your privilege every single day.
Become unfuckwithable. Own your specific gifts and talents and put them to work to support the resistance.
Stay humble, teachable, and a lifelong learner. This work is a journey without any destination, and no matter who you are, you will never be an expert.
Create a clear, tangible anti-oppressive vision backed by anti-oppressive values. Write it down. Post it up. Revisit and update it frequently. Work every damn day (internally and externally) to make that vision a reality.
Hold yourself and others accountable. This work cannot be done sheepishly nor in a silo. Call folx out whenever sufficiently safe to do so. Set clear boundaries, make them known, and take no shit.
Better tolerate your discomfort and acknowledge your fuckups. Thoroughly think before you act. Rectify the harms you have caused and will continue to cause. Learn from your mistakes. Try again. Do better.
Engage with, listen to, and uplift our youth (especially queer and trans Black and Indigenous youth). They have far less unlearning to do, and trust me, they know shit.
Unite. We cannot create a new world order on our own, we must come together to dismantle the systems as they currently exist and forge a new path. Find others who are in this fight, lean on them, learn from them, organize your efforts, and demand a new way.
Racial justice is a choice you make every single day for the rest of your life. Every hour, every minute, every breath—you have and will continue to make the choice. To fight for or against. Engaging in authentic anti-racism means you will lose friends, family, work, time, money, sleep; but oh, what you will gain. Integrity, healing, compassion, conscious community, and, when enough of us align, a new world order.
The truth is that white supremacy isn’t really gonna change unless and until white and white-passing folx are also willing to do better. It is imperative that everyone, but especially white/white-passing people who created, perpetuate, and benefit from white supremacy, commit to actively dismantling it from the ground up. White women+ in particular need to commit to doing their daily inner racial justice work. And call men+ in too. White folx cannot love, donate, vote, volunteer, post, or read their way out of racism. Ending oppression, of any form, demands much more.
It takes intentional, lifelong internal work, and the majority of white/white-passing folx aren’t coming close. It requires a tolerance for discomfort, processing the plethora of emotions including grief, guilt, shame, and anger, and learning to stop centering whiteness and white comfort all day every day. White folx and other oppressors need to get honest with themselves about who they are and why they undertake an action—even if it’s one they believe to be anti-oppressive. I want to see a world where white/white-passing folx put their bodies and privilege on the front lines to dismantle the systems they created so I and other Black folx, especially queer and trans Black women and femmes, can rest. We can’t focus solely on what we do not want, but must also envision the world and systems for what we do. And we can dream up a new way outside of the current oppressive constraints only if we are healed, rested, and sufficiently liberated. Black and Indigenous women and femmes have been fighting for centuries for precisely that. We’ve come a long way. It’s time for those with the most power and privilege to seal the damn deal.
All of us need to be addressing our anti-Blackness, promoting decolonization, and owning our roles as oppressed oppressors. We need to identify the harms we cause against those with less power and privilege so we can commit to causing less. These are times of great uncertainty, and that uncertainty creates an opening. Our grief can be our greatest gateway to grace. And grit. And we’ll need it all.
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We’ve learned a lot here together. I’m grateful you’re here and I hope you now have tools you can return to time and time again as you continue this critical and constant work. There will always be more—to do, to learn and unlearn. This is just the start, but it can always be the support. Come back to these pages however and whenever you need. Read it all again from beginning to end or dip in and out however feels most aligned. No matter what, know that the work must continue. Beyond all you’ve learned—what matters most is what you will do. How will you use what you’ve gleaned here to challenge the status quo? Where will you direct your time, energy, and resources? How will your racial justice efforts center the most oppressed, rather than educating the oppressor? What will you do to incorporate anti-oppression into your daily life? How will you hold yourself and others accountable? When will you invoke your righteous rage? Who will you unite with to organize your efforts into collective action? How will you prioritize the care and well-being of Black and Indigenous women+? How will you tend to your heart and the hearts of the most oppressed through it all?
Racial justice is daily, lifelong work. It is hard AF and it must be done. When it comes to ending white supremacy, either you are part of the problem or you’re actively working to be part of the solution. There is little gray area in the matter of collective justice. Inaction is an action. Silence is violence. As a popular proverb says: “We don’t inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.”17 What earth do you want to leave behind? We are all needed, particularly those with the most power and privilege, and however you can play your part, your part needs to be played. You are ready. You are able. The only questi
on that remains is… are you willing?
I hope what you have learned will crack you open from the inside out. I hope you will use the insights you have gleaned here, no matter who you may be, to light a fire sent straight from Spirit directly beneath your booty to Do. Better. Especially white folx.
The time to face your shadow and commit to collective healing is now! Your future, my future, and our future depend on it.
Spiritual Soulcare Offering/Call to Action
Breathwork for Embodied Release
For this, our final exercise, you will want at least twenty to thirty minutes of quiet solitude. We are going to partake in a transformational breathwork exercise that involves active, three-part breath. This yogic practice, a form of pranayama (basically meaning “control the breath” in Sanskrit), was created by communities in India. Oxygen has beautiful healing and cleansing benefits for the mind, body, and soul, but most of us do not get enough breath, especially when we are stressed. This exercise will help you flush out what no longer serves and allow all the work we’ve done together to settle into your cells. If breathwork is inaccessible or overly uncomfortable for you, you can read below and simply take long breaths in and out, and/or imagine yourself actively breathing (the mind is a powerful thing!).
Do Better Page 28