Brief Report Back “Safety and Security”: To Arm With Justice or To Arm With Guns" Atlanta NextDoor 12/01/2020

Some of us shared our successes in spreading the word about the real and true meaning of the original thanksgiving to both family, friends, and on social media. 

Do we arm ourselves with justice or with guns? There would be no need for guns if we lived in a just country. Audre Lorde “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” But what about police and white vigilante males? Does our silence protect us? Do guns?

We then moved on to talk more about the extreme lack of empathy white people have for those who have less or even nothing. How much of that lack of empathy has to do with the stereotypes we’ve been carefully taught about Black and brown people along with the deep, unquestioned, unshakable belief that white people have what we have because we deserve it, we’ve worked hard for it, we’ve played by the rules – and not because the playing field has been, always has been, and still in severely tilted in our favor.

How technology has contributed to both that cruel lack of empathy along with the corroborating evidence of white privilege and supremacy – videoing poor people and sending that video not just around to the neighbors but to the police as well. Because afterall, taking a person’s liberty away is part of the gross power white people constantly engage in.

For white people, “safety” means our possessions are “safe” from poorer people who are subject to the wealth we flaunt and the status and self-worth we get from having “things”. When people are prevented from amassing “things”, they do not have worth in our society. When they attempt to get those things, we have a myriad of ways to take them away: Seneca Village, Tulsa, Philadelphia and so on.

For the new year beginning: continuing to educate ourselves, engage in racism/anti-racism discussions and actions with white folks as much as possible, working on ending mass incarceration and police violence – seeking restitution/reparations for racism, slavery, Jim Crow, genocide.

Readings:

“This Bridge Called My Back” – 4^th edition is now out – edited by Cherrie Moraga and Gloria E. Anzaldúa.

“Sister Outsider” Audre Lorde

White ‘giving’: solidarity or charity?

https://www.antiracismdaily.com/archives/seek-solidarity-not-charity-anti-racism-daily-bt62d

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