Becoming ourselves

How do we imagine a better world and raise the questions that permit us to see beyond the given?
-Angela Davis, Abolition Democracy

I think about what it means to join or create safe environments. Safe environments ensure our growth and our development of where we live, work, learn, play, and rest. Safety involves not only our experiences, physically, but also mentally, emotionally, psychologically, spiritually, and financially. Safety requires that we can thrive and our environments must observe and ensure that we thrive.

We require safety.

I think about our places of being, to exist in spaces that profit from us while simultaneously alienating us. I think about the intimacy of our workplaces. We spend most of our lives there. Most of our time and energy are often in spaces that devalue us, mock us, and reduce us to things, to resources. People often make decisions for and about us without our input. If we are involved in decisions, they are often facilitated with the illusion of our input. We're subjected to manipulations such as ineffective policies, verbalisms, toxic positivity, or cruel optimism. These spaces are a farce if they claim the empty rhetoric of "empowerment" as they (slowly) kill us by alienating us from our bodies.

So, I imagine workplaces, schools, and places of being where we can transform them. As we most commonly hear, "those closest to the problem are closest to the solution," I observe the necessity of collective organization in which our spaces are democratic and we can collectively determine the course of our lives. That is how I envision creating safe, livable environments so that we can fully exist. Our existence requires active participation. Since we experience the world differently, our environments must observe those experiences.

Developing toward radical transformation is an absolute necessity. That is why I respect, observe, teach, learn, and follow care as praxis. I am excited to collectively create thriving environments because not only are they possible, we deserve them. Our very existence depends on it.