Beyond Stitch and Bitch: Why Conversations Alone Won't Save Lives
Conversations without action aren’t enough. In a world on the brink, we need more than words. Let's not be complacent. Lives are at stake, and it's time to make a real impact.
Happy New Year!
Have you ever been in a group of largely white people, maybe white women, and they state there are problems with the world but refuse to have active conversations about solutions? It happens more than I care to admit. Sometimes, I lean into challenge, and sometimes, I step back. I assuage myself that my work makes me work - both with directly impacted people and on my own racist, sexist journey. So, maybe I don’t need to agitate whenever I’m conversing with people?
But these spaces, where you have largely white, middle (to upper middle) class people, often turn to some form of, “We can’t make change now, we need to wait, progress comes slow, you know.”
We have serious problems. Our world is melting, is on fire, and we are fighting and destroying ourselves and our world. We humans are in charge of this destruction. And we are either going to kill ourselves off with our negligence, or we are going to take command of the problem and find solutions now.
Burying our heads in the sand and ignoring the problems will not solve them. We must be woke.
We were born into a racist, sexist, classist social construct.
Everyone deserves to have access to their potential, whatever they think it is, for however long. Everyone is entitled to safety: in relationships; in safe, stable housing; in clothing themselves; in feeding themselves, and in educating themselves. We deserve love and respect no matter who we love, what we look like, or where we come from. We deserve access to safe, stable housing. We deserve adequate resources to clothe ourselves. We deserve access to food and an environment that is based on clean air, water, and soul. We deserve access to educating ourselves in the best way for us.
Our worldwide resources are divided between the richest 1% and everyone else. We have people hoarding money and access to resources while others suffer and are forced to live without basic safety for basic needs. As such an evolved species, we are doing a terrible job of caring for one another.
The directly impacted people know firsthand the terrible job we are doing. They see the inequities every single day. They also see access to the solution. And part of that is the white person, who in this white supremacist social contract we are in, benefits most from this unequal contract. The white person must be swift in recognizing their privilege (OUR privilege, I’m a cis-white-woman), be swift in interrupting these oppressions, and be swift to usher in solutions.
We must not assuage ourselves that a stitch and bitch with no tie to action is a solution. We must not be complacent because people’s lives are literally on the line.
Martin Luther King Jr. was gruesomely correct when he said that the white moderate is the one who is getting in the way of progress. And here we are, more than 60 years later, still getting in the way. If we have an ounce of humanity in us, we owe it to ourselves now to admit we are part of the problem and work intentionally on the solutions. Now.
If you are white and reading this, please explore SURJ and White Awake as two places to start.
I am also starting a collection of resources to help on your anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-classist journey. Please fill out the form here with your favorite agitational resources to read, watch, and listen to.
Happy New Year. Let’s stop being complacent and actively work on change now.