I had a different post I was working on yesterday. Instead, I’m offering this kindling from my Twitter post today (@Kkearns23) for our liberation from all forms of power-over oppression. In solidarity with our collective liberation from human supremacy, imperialism, white supremacy, ableism, capitalism, resource and labor extraction, patriarchy, and power over.
This morning’s headlines: Indiana’s near-total abortion ban is now law, takes effect Sept. 15. And the first two lines in an article from our local news organization: Indiana Republican lawmakers voted Friday to force thousands more people to give birth every year in a state with some of the worst maternal and infant mortality rates in the country.” And Gov. Eric Holcomb quickly signed the near-total abortion ban into law.
To people in Indiana and everywhere, first we grieve, then we get angry, then we organize in coalitions and communities. I share with you a few empowering thoughts from the webpage of the bell hooks center at Berea College:
- “Students as social justice leaders who are active in the creation of a radical undercommons where their many and varied expressions of difference can thrive.”
- “Navigate and agitate against the intersecting structures of power that hooks generatively describes as “imperialist-white-supremacist-capitalist-patriarchy.”
- “Sex and gender oppression are products of not just patriarchy, but also and especially of white supremacy.”
- “Cultivates radical coalition between women, LGBTQPIA+ students, and students of color.”
- “Imagine and enact new relationships that need not reproduce the gender hierarchy, which we believe, following bell hooks’ teachings, is also a racial hierarchy.”
- “The oppression of one is the oppression of all.”
Read hooks’ books: Teaching to Transgress, Teaching in Community, Feminism is for Everyone, All about Love. And follow the lead of people and coalitions already engaged in the work.
Katie Kearns 