When fear mongering media people spit out the word radical, it sounds like a threat. But radical politics just means a political view that advocates for change to the system in order to
When fear mongering media people spit out the word radical, it sounds like a threat. But radical politics just means a political view that advocates for change to the system in order to create more power for people and less oppression. The specifics of what that means are so diverse amongst radical thinkers that we are notorious about our inter-group squabbles. Everyone comes at the question of how things should change differently, but a radical viewpoint really just means you think: things are messed up here, and some of this needs to change.
America is an extremely individualistic society. We have national myths of cowboys and John Wayne and revolutionaries that teach us we are only successful if we are ruggedly self-sufficient. We idolize billionaires and captains of industry as American heroes. We do not talk about the fact that half of those mythic John Wayne style cowboys were, in reality, Black or Mexican. We don’t talk about the enslaved people that those revolutionaries dehumanized in order to make their fortunes. We don’t talk about the wage theft and union busting the billionaires enforce to hoard that money.
These national myths that create the American identity of rugged individualism depend on lying about the truth.
Lies have many insidious consequences.
Such as pitting us against each other.
Such as denying the reality of our own humanity.
Such as setting us up to measure ourselves against a standard that can never be met.
Starting when we are small we hear the stories of bootstraps and starting at the bottom, and it seeps into our bones. In this culture it is so easy to believe that you are only worth love and life and belonging if you are working.
Any time not spent hustling and grinding is time spent being lazy.
Any time spent in rest is shameful.
Any human need that requires support is a burden you should try to keep to yourself.
Writing in 2021, there are examples of the dangers of this viewpoint everywhere I look. Ignoring the needs of the body to prioritize capitalism has catastrophic results. We are not individuals with our own fates in our hands, but members of a society that is only as healthy as the most vulnerable of us. But that’s not what we were raised to believe.
We were raised to think of the economy as a patriotic duty.
Live the American dream.
Don’t take the sick day.
Work harder, strive more, grind it out.
Don’t take the time for yourself, don’t be lazy, don’t whine, keep going until your body crumbles underneath you.
Whatever you do, don’t inconvenience anyone. Don’t be a BURDEN.
That conditioning affects us all in one way or another. Usually through shame, self hate, and negative self talk.
There is no one who understands the fears of being a burden like a disabled person. I have had to live those fears and find a value for myself outside of work or even independence. And I have. Here’s the secret for how to love yourself outside of what your job values about you.
This is what I know to be true: I am every bit as valuable as every other person. Because every other person is inherently valuable.
If every person is valuable, that means even I am valuable. For a brain steeped in skepticism and self hate, I had to go all the way around to get back to the start. Once I found a way in I could find all kinds of other things to value about myself eventually, but I couldn’t even begin as long as I believed I was disqualified from worthiness.
Because the thing is, believing I was disqualified was really just internalized ableism.
The fear that we’re only lovable if we are thin, beautiful, productive?
The fear that we aren’t lovable if we can’t take care of ourselves?
That’s ableism. Nobody can take care of themselves independently their whole life. That’s not how humans come.
Most of the reasons we actually hate our bodies come out of inherited or cultural beliefs about gender, sexuality, race, class, ability and so many more intersections. Inherited beliefs around what kind of bodies are acceptable. These internalized oppressions are the source of so very much of our self hate.
So the way to free ourselves from hating the fat on our bodies is to stop hating fat bodies everywhere. The way to stop hating the signs of aging on our bodies is to stop hating aging bodies. The way to stop hating ourselves for every way we need support is to stop hating the people who need support.
My time as a community organizer has made me speak in catchphrases.
Nothing about us without us.
None are free until all are free.
My liberation is bound up in yours.
Lead from the margins.
My experience being disabled has shown me these slogans last the test of time because there is survival in them. Mutual caregiving I have experienced taught me that all I have to do to get the support I need is to help the people around me get the support they need. We depend on each other.
As a community organizer, I have also been deeply influenced by Black art and thought. When your leaders are from the margins, a lot of those leaders are disabled people, queer people, indigenous people, and Black people. I owe so much to the wisdom of people who left maps behind in their work, guiding the way out of internalized oppression. Angela Y. Davis, bell hooks, Audre Lorde, Maya Angelou, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Oprah Winfrey, Kimberlé Crenshaw. Tressie McMillan Cottom’s Thick. Sonya Renee Taylor’s The Body In Not An Apology and Tricia Hersey’s Nap Ministry. I live in solidarity with all marginalized people, and I stand with Black women, gratefully.
Bodies have needs. Body loyalty is about living in support of those needs. In order to meet the needs of our body, we need to be in solidarity with BODIES.
All bodies need rest, food, shelter, dignity.
All bodies need medical care.
All bodies need bathroom breaks and time off work.
All bodies deserve access to society, education, justice.
That’s not the world we currently live in, but it’s the world we can create, if we can imagine it.
Loyalty to my body, loyalty to your body. That is radical.