Parasocial Death By Disaffection

Reflecting on moral injury, and the spaces between shouting and silence.

One of the gifts the last 10-15 years gave me was understanding that loud people are not always responsible, safe, or well-informed people (read: me. I learned that about my naturally very 'loud' voice, thank you, Aries Midheaven.)

I started prioritizing listening between the lines of what 'loud' people were saying, and comparing that to the impact I saw them making, even when spoken to indirectly, if at all. A lot of the most impactful people I have become aware of are actually very, very quiet (comparatively and on social media), and primarily visible to folks who are building things and moving the needle(s), plural, towards their values. People whose names regularly come up unsolicited, but not, necessarily, as a product of self-advocacy or self-promotion. This includes my grandfather, who just turned 84, and who has spent his entire life as an activist, educator, artist, and organizer, including helping to start the Black Panther Party's work on the West Coast. Kwame Ture was my mother's play uncle, she remembers crawling all over him in a station wagon as a toddler, ha.

After that whole interpersonal dust up in 2016 with a former friend and colleague of mine, when I challenged them mostly on the responsibilities and obligations of how they were engaging their influential power and platform, I also went on a journey about the same. Even inasmuch as I was emotionally and personally traumatized by that experience, I was also committed to learning and growing from it. It is the fruit of that journey and actually asking myself who I wanted to be, that prompted me to dig deep and to ask myself what changes did I actually want to see in the world, and then taking that further to ask what work would I have to do personally, and what skills did I have to build politically, to remain in integrity with myself. It was these questions that made me pay so much closer attention to how impactful someone was, not just how loud they were. I have wanted to be both loud and effective, and I suffered a lot of ego mess by minimizing when I spoke, in favour of doing more listening and reflecting. But I ultimately decided it was more important to me to be, at the end of the day, impactful and effective.

Striving to have a real, tangible impact on the world around you has so many more responsibilities and risks than merely believing in something, because you actually have to cut your teeth, fail, fuck up, and do harm, and then undo that harm. Or admit you’re wrong, or decenter your own selfishness, which is so much easier said than done. It's so much more vulnerable and intimate to actually do something about a thing vs. articulating a potential. I genuinely and sincerely -- with all of the pollyanna ass optimism and delusional faith it entails -- believe that people can grow, change, and learn, and that we as a collective can and will do better, eventually. I believe we can choose to care for one another. I believe we can, with diligent effort and faith in Change, thrive with resilience. I believe this to be true even for the most heinous motherfuckers and people who irritate the shit out of me. But I know that is only if we manage to keep the inherent dignity of ourselves and others at the foremost of our minds, and accept the fact that there will *always* be a struggle, we must vigorously commit to using all of the tools, knowledge, creativity, and strategies that we have, and use those to extrapolate in response to new challenges and novel experiences as they arise. That's what we've got, y'all. That's all we've got. This is what we will always contend with for as long as there are human beings.

I know there are a lot of people who have probably read some of the things I've written and felt a kind of way about it, primarily because of my delivery -- mostly mistaking that for enthusiasm for a particular individual, or like, idk, contempt towards folks who disagree. It's neither. It's been anxiety, distress, and fear, as much as you probably feel. This is the first time -- since about 10ish years ago, actually -- that I've felt this disoriented and existentially triggered about who is my community, both proximally and at a distance. I have continued on with my spiritual practice (and political praxis) of listening to a broad spectrum of voices to apply myself to my own most coherent path of least resistance, to act consistently with my integrity. I have particularly dialed into the challenging voices of those people who have helped *me* to become more impactful, and also to heal and ground myself as a person, in service of that agenda. Again, the folks who I know with certainty have taken their values and actually built, tangible things in the world -- as in, change-the-course-of-history, things; not just my elders, but my contemporaries, domestic and international. I have also listened to people I wouldn't break bread with by choice, and folks a lot of my value-sharing comrades-at-large might not regularly pay attention to or encounter, not because I agree with those folks, but because I consider myself a tiny bit of a propagandist, so I have to understand how folks who have difference with me think, even when I find them vile and repulsive.

I've stayed comparing notes on the viewpoints of folks who share my values and what they are saying, arguing for, and doing. And there has been a lot of overlap in values, but definitely not as much in consistency, logical, historically cited and strategically grounded argument, or - more notably - in how folks have been showing up, talking about, and actually doing, relating and solidarity work in the face of grievous, unforgivable, untenable moral injuries. And, to be frank: a lot of my comrades-at-broad have lost the plot, just as the COINTELPRO of capitalist social media infrastructure has always willed and intended, regardless of what you think is the ‘right’ decision(s) in this hour.

Everything I have done in the last 12 months, including contending with the reality of RB doing direct action on the ground in Palestine -- and all of the potentialities of that, including political imprisonment and death -- has been informed by a lot of deep, careful consideration, analysis, and *a lot* of listening, primarily centering the folks who understand who, and how, the brunt of the choices I'd be making or advocating for would be born out in material circumstances. The folks who regularly talk about, and get up to, all of the boring, tedious, emotionally and physically exhausting shit that happens between big flare-ups in demonstrations and executive election years, if they're here in the US. The folks being impacted, the folks on the frontlines. Those voices. All of them. I have vigorously interrogated any dissonance, or what felt like I was agreeing without understanding my actual position with genuine, citable anything at all. I have come to none of my opinions or positions via empathy or sympathy alone, even as my body and my heart have been torn apart alongside the rest of the world who have two eyes and an iota of decency. I have come to my opinions in the wake of the self-reflection that happened because I also, shamefully, had to choke down my desire to be a coward and overly self-interested, because I love my husband, and I didn't want him to die at the hands of this horror anymore than I want Palestinian or Lebanese people to be dying at the hands of this horror. In that moment I really had to ask myself what was more important: my personal love, my personal identity, my personal dreams, or living up and into the values my partner and I share that made him worthy of my devotion in the first place? That has shifted the central gravity of my politics and their praxis more than anything else I have ever done, in ways that I can't really begin to articulate, and will probably spend the rest of my life trying to for the sake of impelling others to act.

I say all of this primarily for any readers, former clients, colleagues, etc., who have privately felt a kind of way about me, my morals, or ethics, mostly in response to my decision both disclose that I voted in the federal election this time 'round, and my decisions to vigorously argue for that choice (if you live in a ‘battleground’ state), alongside several other options that I feel/have felt were ethically tenable to everyone who isn’t Palestinian (not voting in the federal executive, but voting down ballot, if you live in a solidly reliable ‘safe’ state; doing people-to-people appeal efforts to conservative voters if you really could not bear not voting/felt you were obliged to vote 3rd party.) I didn’t vote in the federal executive election in 2016, or in 2020, because I lived in a state where my down-ballot participation and community action + support of organizer was not only more ethically aligned, but more impactful insomuch as my political values were concerned, too. I decided to engage in the morally injurious decision to vote in this election not because I believe (as some folks might suggest…) in the candidate I cast a ballot for, but because the alternatives are either not realistic from a dysfunction of the system stance, or unquestionably, far and away, significantly more dangerous for the whole world, not just myself and the most vulnerable others who live here, too. Say whatever you need to say, feel whatever you need to feel, I get it. I do. I made the morally deleterious decision that I feel chooses life, above all else, just as many of my Ancestors have done.

This is me saying all of this out loud — on the record, for the posterity of history to judge me accordingly — as a bid for understanding, but also an attempt to release the fear all of this extra shit I've been carrying around in my nervous system, that has rendered me significantly smaller, unhealthier, and less impactful that I could've been. I wrote this because trying to have an impact is more important than my ego or how I feel, even as I try honoring said feelings and ego. Do I care that I know that there are probably at least two dozen people who think I'm a monster for casting a vote that wasn't for Jill Stein, or not choosing to do my usual of abstaining from executive elections? Yeah, I do. I would be rather concerned if I didn't care, actually, especially considering the stakes for all involved. I totally get it, too, which makes it all the more catastrophically injurious and horrible. Am I defending myself? Yes, a little, primarily because I am more frustrated at the ways folks from all praxical arguments are currently — and going to — play into the hands of our shared oppressors with how they choose to relate, or not, in this moment, as we’re all faced with deleterious and untenable choices. Do I have to defend myself? No, maybe, I don't know. Why am I doing it? As a bid for my own congruency and ability to keep going, to not feel anger and resentment unnecessarily and at the wrong targets including myself, to be connected to my values of responsibility and care. Is it going to help? Who knows.

I write to understand myself, and I share that writing so that maybe other people can understand themselves (or others) better, too. I am articulating all of this to demonstrate to myself that I am actually trying my best to gauge if I am moving with substantive, action-oriented integrity or not, no matter how much that hurts personally. I can't apologize for disappointing anyone, but I totally get why someone might feel some sense of something. I continue to hope the world surprises us all with its liberatory possibility anyways.

The only thing keeping me going now is figuring out what we're going to need next, and how I can be the most useful to that struggle.

I hope you're doing the same.