"Liberation is a Velocity"
“Movement serves as a mechanism that seeks to fill the gulf between what we might call ‘freedom,’ or liberation on the one hand, and ‘emancipation,’ or formal inclusion in the (late) liberal state on the other. […] liberation is a velocity rather than a state of being” — Savannah Shange, Progressive Dystopia
what comes to mind when you think of liberation?
perhaps you conjure up the image of a place, occurrence, or a futuristic moment.
cool, but…
do you think of magic, momentum, and movement as agents of fugitivity and freedom?
if liberation is indeed a velocity, how can we keep on movin’?
Magic and Manifestation:
“magic is ritual speech and action intended to perform what it expresses” (Theophus Harold Smith, Conjuring Culture”)
to manifest our liberation, we must conjure up and perform the desires of our spirits so that these desires may manifest in the material world and reflect the futures we deeply long for. [#BlackGirlMagic]
Kinetic Kinships:
in the words of June Jordan: “whether they speak Spanish or Xhosa or Arabic, these new field n*ggers expect the rest of us here in the Big House to watch de Massa and take appropriate care of de Massa’s soup!” (Jordan, “Black Folks and Foreign Policy”).
having kinetic kinships requires us to actively seek out our “victim cousins” and work toward making “this Big House safe,” or better yet, work toward abolishing the settler colonial state(s) all together. [#PoisonTheMassaSoup]
Funk & Fugitivity:
lastly, funk must be to freedom what leave-in conditioner is to coily hair: indispensable [#PerforminTheFunkForFugitivity].
to manifest a funky future of black (and) queer liberation, we gotta keep it funky & afrofuturistic, envisioning futures and performances of fugitivity beyond heteronormative and colonial frameworks [#KeepItFunkyLikeMissy]
in all our endeavors toward liberation, we must understand freedom not as a mere moment in time, but as a journey toward building alliances, toward undoing erasures, and toward writing/righting/rite-ing for our ancestors and for the generations we will be ancestors to. in everything we do, let’s keep it movin’ and keep it funky.
— Jaye Similton