21st Century African American Women

"Some of the things that have most astounded me that have come to pass in our recent history have been the ways we have galvanized and changed the culture and conversation around sexual harassment, harm, assault, and violence through the #MeToo movement and understanding that that change was made possible because of a lot of people at a relatively small scale being willing to tell their stories, tell their truths, and begin to make interventions for themselves by stepping out into the light. Concurrently, we've seen a major shift in the culture and the conversation around abolition and prison systems and the preciousness of Black life through the work of Black Lives Matter and the Movement for Black Lives. And with both movements there have been massive learning edges."

"When I imagine the world in a right relationship, it's a love story between our species and this Earth and amongst us."

"If we were able to unshackle our imaginations in this moment, I think our compatibility with the Earth would become possible."

"Afrofuturism, I will say, is a thrilling — to me, a thrilling arena. And now there’s African futurism. There’s Black speculative fiction. There’s all these arenas where, basically, Black people and people of African lineage are saying, “We were almost erased from the lineage. Right? People wanted to erase us and have us just be labor. We’re writing ourselves back in. We’re writing ourselves back in. We’re creating stories that are rooted in African heritage and that articulate an African future.” So, it’s an exciting place. It’s an exciting arc to be inside of as a creator."

"So much has changed there because of the work of Octavia, because of the work of Nnedi Okorafor, because of the work of Tananarive Due."

"The work of decolonizing the future is the work of decolonizing our imaginations. We have to tell stories in which the protagonists are those whose stories are least often told, recentering our attention away from the elite, the celebrities, the influencers."

"Writing fiction allows us to dream aloud, to dream onto pages that we hope others will read, and to craft worlds we hope others will visit. We are already dreaming beyond this current moment, these crises, these norms. Dreams are the foundation for what we attempt to turn into reality. Democracy was a dream (and some might argue it still is in most places, even for those who claim to be practicing it); the abolition of slavery was a dream (and some should argue it still is, while the prison industrial complex thrives); every garden we find nourishing was first a dream."

"I think it’s really important that I sit down and have very important and solution-oriented conversations with the people who have been holding the city down through multiple administrations and find out first what solutions are they wanting to bring to the table. I think that’s really important not just for buy-in but for effective solution building.”"

"I don’t want to end up with more of what philanthropy has done to us, where philanthropy as an industry requires that there are always cash-poor and economically disenfranchised people. The non-profit industrial complex requires that there are always cash-poor and economically disenfranchised people. It is literally built upon people who — if suddenly there were no poor folks — they wouldn’t know what to do with themselves because their entire lives have been built upon this non-profit industrial complex. So, I think that there’s an economic injustice that we’ve allowed to exist for the sake of keeping the non-profit industrial complex going, keeping certain public projects going so we’re not actually invested in ending the actual injustice."

"We’re at a pivotal point where we’re asking that big existential question of ‘who has the right to live in Seattle?’ but also ‘who has the right to stay in Seattle?’ I’m critiqued a lot for my stance on wanting developers to have to invest more, but you’re right — it’s not about investing in buildings when we want investors to invest more, it’s about actually investing in the people of Seattle — people who have made Seattle the attractive, beautiful, cultural place that it is. It’s becoming a museum of those things, things that folks who grew up in Seattle can come visit sometimes, but those folks can’t live there. We need some people who are willing to draw some hard lines in the sand and say, ‘This is our value. We value Seattlelites getting to stay here and live here.’ I also value this growing city. But if you are not investing in the people who are going to be living in your buildings then what are you building your buildings for?"

"I didn’t get into this race to grow people’s theory and intellectual prowess around equity. We got into it because we want to see that become a real thing. We want to see affordable housing actually exist, we want people to be able to move back into the city, we want people to have actual incomes and livable wages that allow them to live in the city. That is really what equity comes down to."

"I expected the age critiques and the experience critique, because I know that people do not value activism, organizing, or coalition building when it comes to public service. Even though that might be more valuable than career politician experience in the sense that career politicians often get so isolated from actual community members, so their ability to work in coalition — we’re usually convincing them to work with us."

"I really do believe artists, our trans community, folks who choose the pathway that actually feels best to them even if it’s maybe not the pathway their parents wanted for them, folks who break open boxes, really do set the stage for the rest of us to have opportunities to live in more liberated ways. I feel a certain sense of responsibility to keep pushing those boundaries. So that 10, 20, 30 years from now the generations that come, they can live in those more liberated spaces."

"people who move through the world without the privilege you have are uncomfortable, probably every minute of the day, but are actively choosing to be their liberated self. They make it possible for everyone else to live more honestly, even if that means we live more uncomfortably."

"We’re not going to get to a place of change or transformation if we only want to engage in things that make us comfortable. As a non-binary person, very little about, I don’t know, going to buy clothes feels comfortable. Who decided that because you have X genitals that you needed to do X thing or act X way? I spent a lot of my life very uncomfortable in my body and very uncomfortable with what I was told was the expectation for me as a “woman.” When I finally came to the understanding that is actually not who or what I am and chose to move honestly, I started to feel more free, but also other people felt more uncomfortable."

"no community is a monolith. Whether we’re talking about white communities or Black communities or the Asian diaspora or Native communities, there is disagreement around a lot of things – gender, age, class. Going back to Ericka Huggins, that conversation was very formative for me, because I asked her, “How do I interact with elders I disagree with?” And she said, “You know, I had elders I disagreed with. This is a tale as old as time and is not a new thing. But are you moving in a principled way? Are you moving transparently? Are you being accountable? Is it really coming from a place that is grounded in a bigger vision of community care and wellbeing? Then keep moving in that way. If you’re not causing harm and what is being built is actually transformative, that will come out in the long run.”"

"We live in a really messed up society. It’s not equitable. It is still very racist. And white supremacy is very present – and classism, and sexism, and homophobia and transphobia. All of those things permeate the many institutions that we move through, and that has deeply shaped my life, my work trajectory, the things that I do."

"We’re not trying to create a space that’s like how the world works. I’ve just learned time after time that when you allow a young person to actually make decisions about what is best for them, oftentimes in the long run, it actually is best for them. They know a lot about their daily lives. I only see them for four to five hours a week. Who am I to tell them what to do in those four to five hours?"

"If u want ppl 2 deliver u groceries & goods but don't want to hold the corporations they work for accountable for PPE, thriving wages, hazard pay, & taxes, you're exploiting cheap labor for your own safety. We won't survive on exploitation. We only survive through solidarity."

"The current system expects activists, organizers and abolitionists to do it 100% perfect right now with limited resources. While the flawed racist system has been doing it imperfectly for hundreds of years while exploiting us and our resources. Things I think about..."

"For all y'all talking about "we can't have lawlessness": What do you call it when cops murder without consequence? When a mayor violates the municipal code? Shouldn't the people in power be held to highest level of accountability when it comes to following the law?"

"“What a time to be alive,” adrienne maree brown has written. “Right now we are in a fast river together — every day there are changes that seemed unimaginable until they occurred.” adrienne maree brown and others use many words and phrases to describe what she does, and who she is: A student of complexity. A student of change and of how groups change together. A “scholar of belonging.” A “scholar of magic.”"

"We might be learning slowly, but change is coming fast."

"So far, the only thing incremental about climate change is our American response to it."

"There has been one constant, as far back as we can understand: The world is always changing."

"The stories we tell can either reflect the society we are a part of or transform it. If we want to bring new worlds into existence, then we need to challenge the narratives that uphold current power dynamics and patterns."

"Science fiction is the perfect "exploring ground," as it gives us the opportunity to play with different outcomes and strategies before we have to deal with the real-world costs."

"We hold so many worlds inside us. So many futures. It is our radical responsibility to share these worlds, to plant them in the soil of our society as seeds for the type of justice we want and need."

"I don’t avoid the “activist guilt” that’s tied to devoting yourself to justice, but... I certainly examine it. I believe it's tied to the truth that, as an individual, I can never do enough in the face of all the intersecting injustices of my life and time. But I sometimes look at how far I've come, in my lifetime, in my lineage. How much repression I have cast off, how much oppression I have negated, how I went from homophobic to pansexual, from military brat to post-nationalist/post-capitalist. I feel free a lot, I surround myself with good revolutionary people...and I think, ok padawon. This may be an insignificant life in some grand epic scape, but in the scale of my life, I am doing my best and really getting a lot done for a lazy weed lover."

"My most subversive joy is... that internal knowledge that I am not inferior to a man who is simultaneously thinking that he is superior to me."

"I’m reading... Octavia, Ursula. Kiese Laymon. Mary Oliver. James Baldwin. China Mieville."

"I appreciate the chaos of unplanned time. I find unorganized human time particularly intriguing."

"My pleasure icons are... Marla Stewart of Velvet Lips. Rihanna, obviously. Lizzo too, the pleasure she gets from just confronting the world with her excellence and then laughing."

"I remind myself I can't be good at something I'm doing for the first time, and that reminder helps me humble into learning mode."

"I had to surrender so many wrong thoughts to begin to see."

"Find the pleasure path for your life and follow it. Let it reverberate healing back into your ancestors' wounds. Let it open you up and remind you that you are already whole. Let it shape a future where feeling good is the normal, primary experience of all beings."

"When I feel like a failure, I look at my plants, at how they wilt and seem to be dying, and then water and sun and my loving words bring them back to vibrancy. I let water move over me, sun change me, love reach me. I root down into the soil and back into my lineage, which reminds me that everything is temporary but nothing disappears, this is how life is. I reach forward and up, shaping a world that feels good for me, for all who look like me, for all who love like me, for all who have yet to realize that love is liberation. I let myself work through anger until all that is left is compassion. I cultivate justice within myself, rooted not in vengeance or righteousness but in love and interdependence. I work hard on answering my calling, listening to the bass notes of my life, following underground rivers to find more room for my whole self. I let my days be spent in love, connection, and creation."

"True pleasure-joy, happiness and satisfaction-has been the force that helps us move beyond the constant struggle, that helps us live and generate futures beyond this dystopic present, futures worthy of our miraculous lives. Pleasure-embodied, connected pleasure-is one of the ways we know when we are free. That we are always free. That we always have the power to co-create the world."

"My body has the capacity to sense immense pleasure, and as I get older I keep intentionally expanding my sensual awareness and decolonizing it so that I can sense more pleasure than capitalism believes in."

"Your no makes the way for your yes. Boundaries create the container within which your yes is authentic. Being able to say no makes yes a choice."

"I believe that all organizing is science fiction-that we are shaping the future we long for and have not yet experienced. I believe that we are in an imagination battle, and almost everything about how we orient toward our bodies is shaped by fearful imaginations. Imaginations that fear Blackness, brownness, fatness, queerness, disability, difference. Our radical imagination is a tool for decolonization, for reclaiming our right to shape our lived reality."

"I believe that transformative justice is actually a crucial element in moving toward the kind of large-scale societal healing we need-transformative justice is a way we can begin to believe that the harm that has come to us won't keep happening, that we can uproot it, and that we can seed some new ways of being with each other."

"Pleasure activism asserts that we all need and deserve pleasure and that our social structures must reflect this. In this moment, we must prioritize the pleasure of those most impacted by oppression."

"Ultimately, pleasure activism is us learning to make justice and liberation the most pleasurable experiences we can have on this planet."

"Our world inspires a certain level of paranoia. Perhaps it is a measure of intelligence-after all, everyone is being watched and controlled within borders they didn't determine, exchanging paper someone else told us is valuable for things of actual value, living under a dangerous government since forever. These truths, along with the constant violence and death and ego-based conflict, can make it hard to relax, to rest and sustain ourselves in the longer arc of justice and transformation. ("weed on, weed off")"

"If you are born into an abusive identity, there's another way possible. If you were shaped into being someone who is driven towards conflict, causing harm to other people, there's another way possible."

"(White supremacy) is a fundamentally mythological state. Human beings are not supreme to each other based on the vagina we came out of. That’s not what determines our worth and our well-being or miraculousness."

"Going through an abusive situation just creates another need. And if we can stretch far, we can say even the person who's caused abuse has some unmet need, and they think it can be met through harm and domination and manipulation and gaslighting. And they think that's going to meet some need in them, but the need is not met. The abuse continues. They just find new people to take it. But mutual aid suggests those needs can be met. Maybe they need a different therapist, maybe they need a different kind of healer or a group of healers, maybe they need to see that people who were structured and shaped to be abusive found another path."

"I think ultimately that mutual aid is going to teach us a ton about how to be in communities that can be accountable to each other, because mutual aid only works when you're able to say, "I have a need," [and someone else says] "I have something to offer to that need. Being in conflict is just another need."

"I want to lift up the book Mutual Aid by Dean Spade"