Summer 2021 Edition

This summer we invite the energy of liberation, play, freedom, nakedness… Let us imagine we are children running barefoot through a limitless field of overgrown grass or running through sand towards the ocean without a care in the world. Let us live, if even just for a moment, without abandon, without a care in the world. Let us close our eyes and imagine the infinite possibilities of our lives before us. Let our inner children run free.

Our adult selves know what lays before us, we know the harshness of the world, we know the challenges of the world. We have the language to name all the systems that oppress us, that feed our traumas. We know that our responsibilities are to fight to make a better world, to end the cycles of trauma, to dismantle the systems that oppress us. But this life was not meant only for fighting, for struggling, for working. This life was meant for joy, for pleasure, for fun! In fact it is in our enjoyment that we truly fight theses systems.

White supremacy is banking on us burning out. It knows that if it keeps us in a cycle of trauma and resistance, we will eventually fade away from exhaustion making room for a new generation to colonize. So we dare to break away from that cycle and celebrate, rejoice, revel, run free!

Liberation is not a vision for a utopic future, a gift bestowed on our descendants seven generations from now. Liberation is the here and now. Liberation is the ground we walk on, the treasure longing for us to uncover and open wide. Liberation is the gift bestowed on us from our ancestors seven generations ago.

Let us release the burdens our parents and grandparents suffered and endured. Let us move beyond survival and into abundance and prosperity. Let us bridge the gap between resistance and celebration. Let us fight the systems that oppress us, while imagining and creating the foundations for new ways of living. New ways that remember the ways of our ancestors, while looking toward the future. New ways that reclaim our ancestral gifts and making them culturally sustainable.

And then, we rest. We nap. We get drunk on love, get high on life. We make out with strangers, have one-night stands. We swim naked in the ocean, we let the sun soak into our skin. We rest, we re-energize. And we lead our fight from a place of joy and love. Our revolution is born from that place.

For a revolution without celebration, is no revolution indeed.