Change is a Choice
Never Giving Up—At the Intersection of Systemic Marginalization
by an Unspoken Voices contributor
Change is a Choice
Change is the greatest threat to complacency. To be that change, we as advocates and change-makers, have to serve as lenses, mirrors, conduits, and voices. That is hard and makes us feel like we are just being further victimized. But were not.
Because each time we push ahead in this work, we get to make a choice.
I know the consequences of these choices and I respect that it takes a heavy toll on myself and those I love. I also know that it takes a heavy toll on the spirit and the body. Even knowing that, I choose this. I choose to be a mirror, reflecting the truth back at others. I choose to be a lens through which people can see the truth. I choose to use this voice, not for myself, not for my name. But for those whose names that I carry. For those who have trusted me with their own truths. For those who believed, not in me, but in the belief that we have.
I choose to be here, working at the intersectionality of systemic marginalization because I live at the axis of intersectional identity and community. I choose to use this voice, until there are others join their voices, until there is not just one, but soon hundreds, then thousands who seek to make these changes. I choose to use this voice until there are so many voices calling for unified action that the systems and society can no longer choose to live in ignorance and fear. I choose to use this voice as a microphone, amplifying the voices of those already screaming but not being heard.
I choose to use this voice until I die...and then I choose to hope that enough people will have heard this message to continue fueling this fight...not a fight of hatred but a fight for love. A fight for each of us to have a chance to escape more than the boxes that society places us in. A fight to love even when we have none left to give.
This is a fight and our weapon is love.
The love that the Divine Creator placed in each of us. The love that doesn't know an individual based upon their labels but rather loves another person because they are a person...because they are human. Because we are human.
If we, as humanity, don’t realize that soon, there will be nothing left here of our ancestors dreams. No matter whose ancestors...If we continue fighting as we are now, there will be nothing left but ash and rubble made from the dreams of children whose lives society is discarding.
Dreams from the children who never had a chance to realize that the world is so cold and those dreams were nothing but a nightmare...because what child can be told to dream but then be handed a pound, a .22, handcuffs, and an impossible hope to escape the confines of continued classism, colonialism, oppression, and hatred.
Some want to place the blame for this marginalization directly on those being marginalized. Some want to ask where the child’s parents were. Some may want to ask why society has to pay for the mistakes of other parents.
But those who understand the larger picture also know that the answer is never that clear. Those of us that believe that humanity needs to be something better and something more than what we are now also understand that the answer and responsibility does not just lie with any one person. It lies with all of us.
I'm a crazy dreamer...I choose to believe in a world that can connect humanity to hope through restorative healing and accountability at an individual and systemic level. If you are reading this, I have a feeling you do too.