The intersections of oppression & liberation
At a recent staff retreat, one of our coworkers reminded us of a grounding belief in our work: “If our movements aren’t intersectional, they’re bullsh*t.” This Black History Month, we’re reflecting on the Black Feminist origins of intersectional frameworks and are called into solidarity because our liberation is bound up together.
bell hooks said of intersectionality, “I began to use the phrase in my work ’white supremacist capitalist patriarchy’ because I wanted to have some language that would actually remind us continually of the interlocking systems of domination that define our reality.” When we commit ourselves to intersectionality in our work, we mean:
This week, we extend our solidarity to the 1.5 million Palestinians under Israeli bombardment in Rafah, and to the organizers and activists being targeted and imprisoned for their work to stop Cop City in Atlanta. The Israeli military and United States police departments are mutually supportive, and our liberation is bound up together because our oppressors share the same tactics of terror and control. Just as U.S. police officers train in Israel, Cop City is poised to host Israeli soldiers as they train in the United States.
Join us in learning and taking action:
#StopCopCity
Georgia is setting dangerous precedents in its repression of the Stop Cop City movement, and activists are calling for solidarity and sounding the alarm that the state’s tactics could be replicated across the country:
Last week, a multi-agency task force raided the homes of activists working to stop Cop City
Learn about the recent legislation that would simultaneously expand the state’s cash bail system and criminalize charitable bail organizations.
States like Tennessee are already working to build their own massive police training sites.
“The outrageous political charges against the Atlanta Solidarity Fund, as well as Cop City protestors, are part of a new playbook that criminalizes the coalition of advocates who are providing financial and physical support to movements.”
Solidarity with Rafah
1.5 million Palestinians have fled to Rafah on the southern border of Gaza, after being urged to move to what was deemed a “safe zone” by the Israeli government. Now, they are trapped and under bombardment. Jewish Voice for Peace shares, “An Israeli invasion of Rafah would be the most dangerous stage of the genocide yet, causing death on a scale unseen even in these four months of sheer brutality. After indiscriminately flattening Gaza and pushing Palestinians towards famine, now the Israeli military is seeking to remove the Palestinians from Gaza permanently, whether by displacement, disease, hunger, or execution. This is the next stage of genocide.”
Our tax dollars are funding genocide. Contact your elected officials and demand an immediate and permanent ceasefire.
Continue to bear witness and share information about what is happening in Gaza.
What we’re reading this week:
“What we cannot imagine, we cannot create or prevent. These are the stakes of imagining liberation that doesn’t come at the expense of someone else’s, imagining land and resources as something to steward not possess, imagining systems that heed truth and accountability.” from Hala Alyan
“In South Dekalb County, Georgia, the South River forest forms a canopy so lush and life-giving that it is referred to as one of the “four lungs of Atlanta.” This sprawl of green space was known as “Welaunee” by the native Muscogee people, who were forcibly displaced in the 1830’s. Swaths of Welaunee Forest were settled and cleared to make way for a cotton plantation. This history encapsulates the twinned imperatives of the American colonial project: the displacement and genocide of indigenous populations and the stolen labor of enslaved Africans.” Read FREE PALESTINE. STOP COP CITY. in the New Inquiry.
“and i love that even in this time of despair and precarity, of Palestine and climate catastrophe and feeling the scarcity of our chance to continue on earth, so many of us are moving, dancing and singing and wailing and poet-ing and marching and locking down and interrupting speeches and intervening in legal processes and educating and crawling and praying and flowing towards life; we are life moving towards life, and as june jordan saw in us, ‘we are the ones we’ve been waiting for.’” by adrienne maree brown
Not for reading, but for listening: our staff compiled some love songs for our beloved community. Listen to our playlist.