Dear K I N O T I T A,
The world is moving at an incredible pace!
It feels like yesterday that we began our residency. We worked through pandemic anxieties and sat still in our future fears, watching the world expose its ugly face from our rooms.
Suddenly, we are out protesting. The pandemic is still happening, but we’re done isolating. Collective health and communal well-being will not be achieved if we’re retreating into our homes, snuggled up in romantic imaginations of a world that has ‘slowed down’. Racist oppression is as endemic in our societies as ever, it’s destroying livelihoods fast.
Did we see this coming? With all that talk of “what will the world look like after?”
We have been hoping for it not to be as vile as before, now that our generation realised that most of our work contracts grant us no security at all. When black people are at a 4 times higher risk of dying from covid-19, and vulnerable humans are stuck with their abusers. When women are pushed deeper into the sexist gender roles that we have been trying to unmake for decades, we demand that the world will not continue as it was, “after”.
Non-black people, you must understand: Black folks who are protesting in the streets are aware that corona will spread amongst their communities. Black patients will be treated as less than humans and consequently die more likely than you. Protesting death means more death, and yet here we are. We h-a-v-e b-e-e-n faced with black mortality, black pain and the d e h u m a n i z a t i o n that comes with neglect, trauma porn, and empty promises from the rest of the world.
It’s time you stepped up. We are not only protesting in solidarity with Afro-America, we are fighting anti-blackness globally and in our own contexts (yes, your country is racist).
Educate yourselves on what to do within your communities and your families, RADICALISE YOURSELVES, learn how to be useful anti-racist allies.
Here are resources for white people, non-black Arabs, Iranians, brown folks. We could find more, but really, do it yourselves. Everything is available, you just need to want to find it.
Wonderful Hani, who facilitates our “Tracing Black Histories” sessions, is doing important work to support refugees in Libya. If you are not aware of the situation there, you can read up here. Anti-blackness is at work in it’s most horrific form, funded by the EU (yes, your country is racist).
Follow her on Twitter to keep up to date with her advocacy projects: @Hanispreekt
Ask yourselves: Are you “supporting” Afro-American protests temporarily/for clout, or are you willing to put in the work long term?
Here’s a Master List of Black Revolutionary Readings.
Black family: gal-dem have written down what you can do if you can’t protest in the streets.
Stay safe & REMEMBER THAT YOU ARE LOVED.
We will do our best to support you and we are here if you need us.
Black Lives Matter. Always have.
KANDAKA 