AmeliaI don't have anyone in particular in mind here, but there is definitely a pattern I've observed that seems worth calling some attention to.
Entrenched, systemic oppression relies very heavily on making it difficult to change - that's the nature of power inequality: those impacted have less capability to affect things.
But *everyone*, regardless of level of privilege, is subjected to a kind of systemic exhaustion. "Change is too hard and too slow" is the bottom line, but the idea is rarely expressed so plainly. It's often felt, but rarely put into such blunt words.
So let's talk about spoonies for a second. I'm referring to those of us who have to be extremely careful about where we place our energy every single day, because we just don't have that much capacity to do *anything*, let alone all the things daily life demands of us, plus take on changing the world.
Oppression is designed so that the path of least resistance always serves to reinforce that same oppression.
This means that liberation is always going to be a huge amount of work. In fact, it is - by design - more work than we can actually take on directly, in a limited amount of time. This is *why* oppression has never gone away: it is literally designed to be immune to erosion.
But as anyone who is disabled or lives with chronic pain or illness can testify, just because it's too big to do all at once, doesn't mean we can't handle it at all.
We just have to be very, very wise about how we allocate our energy.
And anyone who wants liberation is going to have to learn those skills. Otherwise the system will continue to chew y'all up, spit you out, and eliminate yet another group of people who *might have* made a much bigger difference if you'd been able to avoid burning out.
So what better way than to learn from those of us whose literal daily survival depends on us being very good at that exact skill set?
Disabled Anarchist 🏴
Divinely Crafty
The Bird