Collective liberation is not found in violent revenge and dreams of becoming oppressors. Collective liberation is not about demanding fealty and enemies bowing at your feet. Collective liberation is refusing to accept such and rejection of oppressive systems.
It is an invitation with an expectation: No dehumanization allowed. It does ask something of us, a dress code of sorts, that we bring love, real love, to the party. We come with the understanding and shared value that no one is an acceptable casualty of liberation.
Sometimes we must remember the long road. We must take the closest imperfect bus to our destination when it doesn’t go all the way and march our way down the road, generation after generation. Passing along what we have gained and refusing to go back.
Collective liberation doesn’t see my freedom as your continued harm. If you are freed, I cannot be your new target to get the acceptance of oppressors. Exclusion is the thing we exclude. Vitally, we do have one thing we must agree on, that we are tyrants for: No more tyrants.
From Cone to Kendi, from Stonewall to Sherronda J. Brown and Judith Butler and my friends on social media, from the earliest church to the women of modern books, Substacks, podcasts still resisting a patriarchal faith, we learn the only liberation worth having is collective.
If our gospel leads to death for some, it isn’t the Words of Life for any. If our work is only legitimized by those we leave out of it, it isn’t the work of Christ. We start imperfectly and evolve continually to be better. If we uphold the harm, we cannot liberate from it.
Invisible Cake Society 