A Letter to A Young Activist

Dear Young Friend, 

No doubt one day you will lead in justice work. But I can see you now confuse it with partisan work and you easily get caught up in roles handed you by the system as rewards for your good labors.  These roles may not be formal ones, they could be informal ones, like being the cute young white upcoming activist we should all support.  I know you've been to the marches, the frontlines, and to jail. You deserve rewards and respect, dear friend, but don't be an asshole.

The work of justice is not a place for righteous glamorous one-liners or words of wisdom you can put in your placards. It is not about a moral position you cannot change. Egos will ruin everything. When you are only demanding from afar, you are respecting the present dynamics that created the problem, you should be on a poster inspiring people who will grow many but never change a thing.

Justice doesn't start with a demand. It starts, with a confrontation in a conversation that changes the oppressor and yourself. If you still look good, you haven't been broken. If you haven't been broken, you haven't been vulnerable. If you haven't been vulnerable you have resisted change. If you have resisted change, you haven't done the good work.

So care for your friends in the work of good whose names are riddled with doubt, whose faces are tainted with realities, whose minds are heavily burdened. Be kind if you're a true ally. Stand with them in ugly work. Always take the side of the oppressed.

The powerful will confuse you saying they are shamed when injustice has been exposed. And your good heart can sympathize and should, but be not silenced. Telling the truth is the first work of justice. Truth-telling is ugly, it tells people you have seen the muck that everyone thinks is too tacky to talk about or dirt that only cleaners need mind. This is what it takes to  start the work. It is the work of bringing people into a conversation of breaking together.  

The work of justice is not for the high-minded.  It is not for the person who can grab the mic or stand on a platform to say what the topic is about tonight or who can summarize for us things that we have been blind to all along.  That work does not belong to anyone. Those facilitators have been telling us they know the right road in the mindmap where we all can be found. As if they can punctuate to end history. And what shall we do with the rest of of the mindmap? Throw it out? Bury it for now? This is the reason why there is always an again and again in ritual.  The map never ceases to expand and nothing gets obliterated. Just look at the faiths that used to be heresies in the last centuries. They persist.  And the only thing we can do is keep conversing around these conundrums.

The deep work is in conversation dear friend. And perhaps this letter is not even for you but for myself. Perhaps when you read this letter and we have a conversation, I will be found to be the asshole. See, that's alright, my dear. That is my partly my point. I've grown fond of watching your growth in spirit in the hope that our quality of conversation grows in wisdom.  The other part of my point is: I don't want to see your ass in the middle of the road on my way to the office of the latest oppressor.  Stand aside. We will not hesistate to run you down.  

Remember the day we all thought we could listen to your shit. Perhaps you will not be shamed if I expose your ugly ass because you've tainted me enough in your microaggresive conversations that pass for concern among your gossiping fragile friends.  Just know that when it all boils down to power, we are more than you and all it needs is consciousness of how few and puny you are behind your guns, goons, and gold. 

I hope that day never comes, dear friend.

With fondness,

Tet 

This is for no one in particular and was meant to be a piece of literature.