CICADA

i want to make 15 yr old me proud more than i do my parents. 15 yr old me wouldn't want me to believe my value is based on my face and how well i cover it up. 15 yr old me wouldn't point at homeless people on the street and claim they were drug addicts who deserved it. 15 yr old me wouldn't hate people for being born a certain way. 15 yr old me wouldn't want to be rich while people starve or starve while people are rich.

*deep breath* If the antifascist (esp. American-centered) art you make or consume refuses to acknowledge the truth that framing this time period as the "sudden rise of fascism" along with its supposed volatility (i.e. "it can't last; that's not how its built") is just a comforting construct to keep white Americans from reckoning with their literal centuries of active and passive participation in this country's fascist, genocidal violence against Indigenous and Black people, your art isn't just wrong...it's worthless. How can you imagine dismantling unjust systems without seeing the blood on your own hands? How do you comprehend the size of the fight for mutual liberation without seeing that the scale of the threat is exponentially larger than your personal experience of the danger of state violence; or is your envisioned win condition only as shallow as the return to your previous sense of safety?