Benjamin Kelly, the district secretary for Representative Shawn Harrison, reportedly liked a tweet that referred to González as a “brown bald lesbian girl.” (Kelly has since been fired.)
González is not deterred. She’s taking calls from Demi Lovato; speaking with Anderson Cooper on live television. Overnight, she’s turned into the face of gun control, and her being a brown bald bisexual woman is not a deficit, as some might decide–instead, an incredible talisman that seems to indicate the kind of power those of us deemed powerless truly have. That despite the Trumps of the world telling minorities how worthless we are, over and over again; that QPOCs and women are not even low priority but instead targets, we will not recoil while sheepishly raising white flags.
Emma González is the portrait of empowerment, and she’s inspiring a movement that includes us all; one that is not asking for, but demanding a safety that is no longer promised or assured by current administration. And as she continues her advocacy into the March For Our Lives on March 24, it appears the NRA might have finally mets its match in a teenage girl.
Though this shouldn’t have to be the case, teaching their children to deal with the police is often a lesson that Black parents have to instill in their children at an early age. A heartbreaking new video released on Monday shows just what those conversations can look like.
“Nonviolence is racist. I do not mean to exchange insults, and I use the epithet racist only after careful consideration. Nonviolence is an inherently privileged position in the modern context. Besides the fact that the typical pacifist is quite clearly white and middle class, pacifism as an ideology comes from a privileged context. It ignores that violence is already here; that violence is an unavoidable, structurally integral part of the current social hierarchy; and that it is people of color who are most affected by that violence. Pacifism assumes that white people who grew up in the suburbs with all their basic needs met can counsel oppressed people, many of whom are people of color, to suffer patiently under an inconceivably greater violence, until such time as the Great White Father is swayed by the movement’s demands or the pacifists achieve that legendary ‘critical mass.’”
— Peter Gelderloos, How Nonviolence Protects the State (via meatthawsmoth)
