Leslie Feinberg - Beyond Pink Or Blue Lecture (CSU Sonoma, 2006/)

I've been feeling real down and listening to this lecture made me feel better. Leslie Feinberg strongly articulates that Liberation can only come about through Solidarity. LBGTQIA, Black, Latinx, American Indian, Asian, Women, Workers, Muslims, Immigrants, Homeless, Ecological, Disability, Economic Equality, Decolonizing, Peace Movements, all of us need to come together and work together and fight together, in multiplicity and as one. If we come together and say that we will not accept oppression from any direction, from any corner. Now is the time to communicate with one another, to plan and coordinate, to love one another and organize against hatred and oppression. The history of the United States is a history of codified and normalized genocide, enslavement, colonization, dispossession and theft. It is also a history of resistance to that normalization and to those patterns and practices. History is not a story of linear forward progress to a utopian condition. History is a story of continuous struggle, continual resistance and the forces which attempt to isolate and crush that resistance. Those who form the forces of oppression are able to organize quickly, able to understand their interests are interlocked. They have their own Solidarity. That is why it is called Totalitarianism. It is a Totalizing Force, a Full Spectrum Imposition of Will. It isn't about winning and losing. If our current situation has taught us anything, it is that winning and losing are temporary, that space for survival, for thriving, must be carved out within and against, and those spaces must be actively defended and maintained, by our actions and our words and our ideals, over and over and over. We cannot rely upon any government to protect us. We cannot rely upon the rule of law to protect us. We cannot rely upon the goodwill of those who have sworn to expel, to murder, to imprison, to erase or fix us to their liking. We can only rely upon each other. We can only rely upon ourselves. Wherever people are being oppressed, being scorned and bullied and despised, we need to be with them, and to let them know that we are with them. It isn't that the fight has just begun, it is that the fight has never ended. We must fight. We must fight for our lives and the lives of all beings. We must accept that there will be loss after loss. We must never give up. If we fight, we can only fail when we forget to fight, when we cease to fight, when we grow complacent. We must fight hatred not with hatred, but with love and kindness and anger. We must love one another because we cannot ever rely upon anyone else to. We must learn to love ourselves as we are, to see ourselves as beautiful, to see ourselves as powerful. If we learn to live against our fear, against that which seeks our death, to live for this world, for each other, for ourselves, for all of life, for beauty and wonder and for love, there is something in that which cannot be extinguished, no matter what. They can imprison and torture and destroy our minds and our bodies, but they cannot ever win. Solidarity Forever. <3 <3 <3 nathaxn