Hello.
I hope that my comrades are well.
I had taken a two-month break due to my health being in absolute disrepair, my own safety I had to address, and my own personal heartbreak over the betrayal I felt at organizers and people I had known for years choosing to side with people who had harmed me and many others instead of taking accountability. I had seen people I had literally protested alongside with calling me names, allowing others to call me an infiltrator and a federal agent despite my current political situation and to others who had been my comrades in name only, passively standing by as bystanders refusing to stand up to organizations and leaders who had committed harm.
I had decided that I wished to have nothing to do with the movement -- that it was completely over for me. I find myself in a place of complete and utter despair, unable at times to process or comprehend the multiple layers of grief I find myself entangled in, unable to process the power of a state over my own life and autonomy.
There were moments where I felt as if this were it -- that I must give up completely. I felt as if I was a shell, barely tasting, barely living, barely alive.
But there are moments where life becomes so hard to hold onto, it feels as if you're drifting by, watching as people are killed, watching as you, yourself are dehumanized, and it feels there is no hope. It feels as if I am disconnected from who I am, yet still present and aware enough to understand that I am a part of this, I can do something, but what? What does one do when confronted with the magnitude of this violence? What does one do confronted with the apathy of humanity when faced with death?
This is what I struggled in these past two months -- the struggle to stay alive or let my own self-loathing and despair consume me. Yet, as history shows, and as the very nature of humanity demonstrates, there is always the desire to continue living, continue to strive. Yet as life shows, we have a responsibility to each other, to continue living, to grow and to survive for our communities and for the next generation.
These statements have caused a trigger, an almost wondrous chain of events leading to many people and many organizations quitting spaces where women's abuse and sexual assault isn't prioritized. These statements have allowed people to find themselves the awareness and agency to organize outside of the limitations of organizations and activist cultures that prioritize rape, misogyny, oppression and abuse. In doing so, you all have given me a hope in my deepest state of despair.
For these people who have been struggling against the state, who have been fighting against misogyny and abuse, for all who have refused complicity with these organizers, these next statements are dedicated to you and your efforts to bring forth a new movement -- one that can truly fight for liberation.
The statements will finish. Part 10 is coming soon.