Lead yourself
So many allies will be a youth mentor but refuse to build solutions to systemic challenges like poverty wages and gentrification.
Allyship seems natural when conditioned to act according to society's rules about who matters and who does not. ALLIES DO NOT ERADICATE OPPRESSION NOR BUILD LIBERATION. They plead with those in power, believe in hierarchy and their own superiority. Allies don't offer what it takes to win.
Being an accomplice is an active experience. Accomplices have to acknowledge our privilege and reject the constant invitations to lead while leading our own selves. We have to witness the suffering of the profoundly oppressed at our side and pursue our own transcendence, first and foremost, to remember the urgency and peril of our position and the harm that will come to those we love if we fall into thinking of ourselves as saviours. We must witness the power of the oppressed at our side and not shrink into invisibility and denial of our own power while fetishing others. Instead of leading the oppressed, accomplices lead ourselves into alignment with liberation-our own liberation.
Being an accomplice is an active experience. Accomplices have to acknowledge our privilege and reject the constant invitations to lead while leading our own selves. We have to witness the suffering of the profoundly oppressed at our side and pursue our own transcendence, first and foremost, to remember the urgency and peril of our position and the harm that will come to those we love if we fall into thinking of ourselves as saviours. We must witness the power of the oppressed at our side and not shrink into invisibility and denial of our own power while fetishing others. Instead of leading the oppressed, accomplices lead ourselves into alignment with liberation-our own liberation.
For more on accomplices, check out this piece provided by Indigenous Action titled "Accomplices NOT Allies: Abolishing the Ally Industrial Complex" here.
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