I've been thinking a lot about Angela Davis lately, specifically the Soledad incident.
I think revolutionary thinking is stronger than it has been in decades now, but I worry we've become too trapped in capital, in work, in systems to actually be willing to physically wage revolution.
And I think that's needed. I think violence has more of a place today in revolution than ever. That the reality of us staying in the streets will only lead to further fragmenting amongst the proletariat while the classes that own us retreat further into wealthy reclusion. We're tearing our own apart over non-allegiance to the form instead of caring for eachother in the face of these systems that oppress us.
I don't know. My father was attacked on election night. A bunch of men got in his cab and said "We voted n-----s out." Then they dragged him out of the cab and kicked the shit out of him. He drove himself home.
When does revolution call for violence? What's the line?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuBqyBE1Ppw
I think revolutionary thinking is stronger than it has been in decades now, but I worry we've become too trapped in capital, in work, in systems to actually be willing to physically wage revolution.
And I think that's needed. I think violence has more of a place today in revolution than ever. That the reality of us staying in the streets will only lead to further fragmenting amongst the proletariat while the classes that own us retreat further into wealthy reclusion. We're tearing our own apart over non-allegiance to the form instead of caring for eachother in the face of these systems that oppress us.
I don't know. My father was attacked on election night. A bunch of men got in his cab and said "We voted n-----s out." Then they dragged him out of the cab and kicked the shit out of him. He drove himself home.
When does revolution call for violence? What's the line?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuBqyBE1Ppw
I often wonder about that as well. Nasrin did a lot of her PhD work on violence and since then I've often thought we should spend more time with the concept. I am so sorry about your dad. In my work I've thought about the line between urgency and emergency. Perhaps that's a similar line.
ReplyDeleteThis is such a potent post. It's something I think about a lot, and it always brings me back to that Stokely Carmichael quote, "In order for nonviolence to work, your opponent must have a conscience".
ReplyDelete-joshua w
Zach, Denise (and Nasrin and Ronald) had a lot to say about this post on Friday when we met. In short, they brought us back to the fact that violence has always been at the heart of the state's encounter with the black body. There has been no nonviolent relationship, ever. So the question is: do we take up the tools of the state?
ReplyDeleteCriminalization is not only another form of racialization - and the prison complex is simply an incubator of democratic (penal) violence - but racialization and necessity are co-written as seminal texts of state (and state-sponsored) violence. In other words, violence is already given as THE answer to a question that was never asked. Refusal (given in, away and as blackness) cannot be taken for a response... but rather as a claim to nonseparability. Out of a concern for the earth, towards a world where bastards such as those who attacked your father are dead before they're born.
ReplyDelete