“If we can’t care for ourselves, how can we care for a movement?”: What Dr. Davis Taught Me About Self Care
Last week I posted this on Facebook.
If you’re feeling exhausted and overwhelmed from the last two week, imagine how your Black friends feel. We have to keep going.”
What I said stands, it’s not inaccurate, but it’s also not generous. I’ve also been doing some reflecting, on the current moment and on my own experience since I joined the fight against white supremacy and all the connected oppressions that target Black people and other marginalized communities. I’ve had numerous people reach out to me who are truly struggling. So I want to offer some insight into my own experience as well as some tips for engaging in this fight in a healthy, sustainable way.
As I said, if you’re tired after a few weeks, imagine how Black people feel. This is true. But also, taking in all this information, having the wool pulled away from your eyes like a bandage being ripped off, I can imagine it’s exhausting and overwhelming in its own way.
My own introduction to this fight was far more gradual.
For some background, I first became aware of the fight when Trayvon Martin was murdered in 2012. Before that, I knew that racism existed, I knew that I could be guilty of implicit bias, but I didn’t understand the depth of racism, I didn’t understand that I was complicit in white supremacy, and so forth. But I still thought it was safe to call the cops. I didn’t know that our prison system was corrupt. I didn’t understand that all oppression — racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, islamophobia, and more — was connected, that the fight for freedom for all had to be intersectional. I had a lot more learning to do.
And frankly, it wasn’t taking up that much space in my head. I remember sitting in a professor’s office — the only black professor in my department, because the academy is also complicit in white supremacy — and looking at the Skittles and Arizona Ice Tea that she kept on her desk and thinking that maybe it was a snack for later. I didn’t realize, for weeks, that it was a memorial to Trayvon, a reminder that he was just a kid, grabbing a snack, and he was murdered by a white supremacist vigilante.
This is to say, I was casual about the fight. I’m not proud to say so. It wasn’t until 2014 when that changed, when in quick succession, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, John Crawford III, and Tamir Rice were all murdered by police officers. It was almost too much. I felt like I was shouting constantly, screaming into the void, “Don’t you see?! Can’t you see what is happening here??” and no one was listening. I watched as the people responsible for murdering these people, of stealing away these lives, walked free, and I despaired.
I was almost knocked out by a one-two punch in November of 2014, when Tamir was murdered on the 22nd and then Michael Brown’s murderer walked free on November 24th. I had a glimmer of hope though. Tamir was so clearly a child murdered in cold blood. Surely people would see that video and rise up, surely his death would galvanize the movement and we would have real change.
I was wrong.
I watched the local news throughout 2015 as the investigation into Tamir’s murder flickered, guttered, and was finally extinguished by Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Tim McGinty. In that same time, I watched the man who murdered Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams walk free. I fought with so many people — shouting matches in person, furious typing on Facebook — but it seemed to mean nothing. Over the summer of 2015, I lost hope completely.
Personally, it wasn’t an easy time either, as I fought for trans rights, was evicted for being trans, and felt entirely abandoned by friends and loved ones who I suspected would prefer that I sit down and stop rocking the boat. Meanwhile, I couldn’t reconcile the different causes I was fighting for. It seemed like I couldn’t focus on Black lives without neglecting trans lives and vice versa. Then there was the in-fighting among the causes, prioritizing certain things. It felt like the Black Lives Matter movement was prioritizing cisgender, heterosexual Black men. It felt like the LGBTQ+ movement was prioritizing cisgender, homosexual, hetero-adjacent White men. I didn’t know how I was going to keep going. I was drained, I felt hopeless. Basically, it sucked, and I was ready to give up. I wanted to sink back into my ignorance and let others worry about justice, equity, and all that stuff.
Then I got to see Dr. Angela Y. Davis speak and she blew my mind.
I started to understand what intersectionality meant. I started to understand that it wasn’t many individual fights, but one fight. That on its own somehow unburdened so much of what was exhausting me. I wasn’t fighting for Black lives on Monday, queer rights on Tuesday, Womxn’s rights on Wednesday, Palestinian liberation on Thursday, and immigrant’s rights on Friday. These fights, and so many more, were all one fight. All these oppressions were connected. This might sound more complicated, more confusing, but in reality, it’s simpler. Instead of feeling like we were trying to sustain battles on many fronts, against many oppressors, I understood that it was all one battle, that we could work together, support each other, and that keeping the fights separate and siloed was part of how the oppressors could defeat and oppress us.
I also started to understand that this fight was a marathon, not a sprint. Listening to Dr. Davis talk about her life cast this into stark relief. I realized that this woman who sat in the front of the room had been involved in this fight since the mid ’60s. That for fifty years, she had watched progress on all fronts. She had witnessed wins big and small. And she had witnessed devastating losses. And she was still doing it.
(Side note: Going through my notes from this night, I got all fired up again. So I’m going to try to type them up and make them make sense to someone not in my head and I’ll share them at a later date.)
Someone asked her the question that I was burning with as I sat in the crowded church, “How? How do you do it? How do you keep doing it and not burn out or give up?” And let me tell you: She had answers.
So all of this is a set up for me to pass on the advice she gave those of us in that room. Because I don’t know how to survive this fight, but we do. Not one of us is alone in this fight. So here is (some of) what I learned from Dr. Davis that night:
1. Education
Education is key. We will be more effective the more we know. If you are new to the fight, this is where you should focus most of your attention. If you don’t know what you’re talking about, you’re more likely to cause harm to the cause than to help. Read up. Read about intersectionality. Read Dr. Davis’s work. Listen to podcasts. Watch talks by social justice leaders. Listen to those who have been part of this fight for years, decades. The origin of the word “radical” is the Latin “forming the root”. Educating ourselves is how we understand the root of the fight, so that we can understand how it grows and flourishes.
Dr. Davis also made a point that we must account for what we do not yet know. When she first engaged in social justice, trans rights were not on the radar. Dr. Davis admitted to not understanding it at first, but she learned and grew. She left space to learn and grow, to accept and integrate new information.
2. Self care
Oppression affects us externally and internally, so the fight against oppression must be external and internal. Dr. Davis continually expressed the importance of self care. She asked, “If we can’t care for ourselves, how can we care for a movement?” She also reminded us that it is intrinsically a marathon, “It is a long term commitment. It MUST be a long term commitment.”
She went so far to specify what she meant by self care. She urged healthy eating (Dr. Davis is a vegan), mindfulness and meditation, and regular exercise, as well as finding joy when you can. And lastly, regarding social media, Dr. Davis said, “We can and should use technology, but we can’t let technology use us.”
3. Empathy
We have to have empathy among ourselves. For ourselves and for each other, for the various individual causes that make up the fight. Bickering amongst the causes helps no one but the oppressors. The idea of “calling in” centers on this empathy. We will all make mistakes, we are all human. When someone messes up, we have to have empathy for them and help them to understand their mistake and grow.
Empathy is abolishing the cop of the head and the heart. Meaning, the voice that punishes and judges. Shame is a tool of oppression.
We also might want to find empathy, in a form, for the oppressors. Dr. Davis said, “When we become angry and want to harm someone for harming us, we only perpetuate violence.” This DOES NOT MEAN that we forgive them their oppression. This DOES NOT MEAN that we excuse it. Empathy simply means “understanding the feelings of another.” To have empathy for those who perpetuate oppression means we work to understand them, their motivations, their actions. Through what we learn, we can better fight their oppression.
4. Faith
By this, I don’t mean faith in something supernatural or some specific religion. I mean faith in the mission, faith in the fight, faith in our comrades. We must believe in each other and in what we are working toward.
Faith also means believing in what feels, at times, impossible: full freedom from oppression. Here Dr. Davis said one of the most important things I’ve heard in this fight, “We must ask for what we want, not what we think is possible or reasonable.” When we temper our hopes and expectations, when we compromise our goals before we even propose them, we are doing the work of the oppressor for them. We must believe that freedom is possible and fight for it.
5. Collective effort
This is a movement. We don’t do this alone. When one of us needs a break, another is ready to step up and take their place. Focusing on the “I” in this movement will only harm us. That is the thinking of possession, that is the thinking of the oppressor. The whole time Dr. Davis was speaking, she tended to use “we” more than “I” unless she was speaking of her own personal experience.
Everyone has a role to play. You do not have to be on the front lines of the protests to be a part of this fight. We need everyone. We need people who can help support the fight financially, we need legal advisors, we need administrative experts, we need communication experts. There is no single point to engage in social justice struggle.
And, Dr. Davis said, we need artists of all kinds. She said, “Art creates our connection, reminds us who we are, shows us our humanity.” We need writers of fiction and non-fiction, and children’s literature. We need poets and journalists. We need visual artists, we need performance artists, we need all of them. The oppressors want us to believe that money is the most important human creation, that everything’s value is determined by its monetary worth. They want us to believe that art and creativity do not matter, to be so bogged down trying to make money that we don’t have time to look up and see how broken the system is.
I hope you find this helpful. I know that this is a lot right now if you’re just learning about all the ways in which white supremacy and the oppression that it perpetuates affects our world. But its defeat is not impossible. Keep going, keep fighting, and take care of each other.
Dr. Davis said, “The current norm is entirely impossible,” meaning the progress that we HAVE seen. For all there is left to do, no one can deny the progress we’ve made. Dr. Davis followed that by asking, “Why not our impossibility?”
