#self actualization

While the tale of the ugly duckling growing into a beautiful swan may seem like a shallow story about only being accepted when you accept mainstream beauty standards, in reality, it is a tale about learning to accept oneself for who they really are instead of trying to obtain an ideal of beauty that is not made for them.

The ugly duckling in question was never a duckling; it was always a swan. It was regarded as a duckling that looked ugly because it was never supposed to look like a duckling let alone a beautiful one.

Swans are separate creatures and they cannot and should not be judged for failing to be a duck.

When the “duckling” grew up to be a swan, it did so because it abandoned the childish dream of becoming something that it can never become, and instead embraced themself and accepted that they are different and that does not make them lesser.

The Ugly Pumpkin is an example of an adaptation retaining the core themes of the original; the story highlights the struggles of a ugly “pumpkin” who was shamed for its differences until it found out that it was a squash.

solidarity is crucial for all people of color.

colonized peoples must struggle against the imperial apparatus that enslaved our bodies and minds to the shackles of the capitalist mode of production.

The enemy has swallowed our lands, our real names, our languages, our cultures and in turn. Regurgitated its vile repulsive patriarchal extractive nature onto all of us and on the planet.

we must struggle for our nationalist/cultural self determination. Not as an end all be all but as a tactic that heightens the contradictions between the relationship of capital and the colonized proletariat within the belly of the beast and abroad.

As much as it’s important to target the head of the beast. We colonized peoples also have a responsibility to organize and participate in the struggle for liberation of the Global South. For it is the fuel source of Western Imperialism.