By “What can be more violent than the process of building a nation? Where there are already people living, existing, building families for generations…”
At the Festival of Dangerous Ideas (FODI), Alicia Garza, activist and writer, breaks it down in this hour-long talk on Black Lives Matter and identity politics. What happens when human beings are killed, imprisoned, maimed and stolen from for profit? It is no longer acceptable (not that it ever was) to pretend that Black and Brown people have no right to be angry; to accuse us of being too aggressive. Us, violent? Let’s say it again,
“What can be more violent than the process of building a nation? Where there are already people living, existing, building families for generations…”
It is not acceptable for the oppressor to dictate how the oppressed should cope and react to oppression. Because even when we are building platforms to be heard, taking a knee or peacefully protesting there are still black/brown bodies being murdered in the streets. We will never live in a country not founded on the bodies of its indigenous peoples and the subsequent oppression of those people. So the rage bubbles because, “we never get to forget the violent history that we have become a part of” — and neither should you.
The full talk can be watched above, and on YouTube.