ON IDENTITY

We?

We don't drop bombs on the brave, embattled people of Afghanistan. We don't drop them on Yemeni boys whose first beards only they and their mothers can see. We don’t drop them on weddings and funerals and search parties in Pakistan. We don't give them, as gifts, to the persecutors of Palestinians. We don’t commission, design, or make the bombs, and we don’t order others to drop them.

We don't manufacture the guns that cops use to kill one person of color in the United States every thirty-six hours. We don't sell the guns, we don’t profit from the gun sales, we don't fight for the right to own them with the same money we fight against the reproductive autonomy of women. We don't enshrine the legality of white folks killing black folks under "stand your ground" laws drawn up by the American Legislative Exchange Council.

We don't wear badges. We don't wear uniforms. We don't demand to see your license and registration, or your passport, or your visa, or your working papers, or your student ID, or your rental agreement. We don't set up checkpoints, we don't stop and frisk. We are not racial profilers. And we are not colorblind.

We make beautiful music together. We know how to dance. We know when to dance, when to party, when to run, and with whom. And we know when to stand up, backs straight, facing the State, meeting its hatred of itself with our love of each other.

We hold hands, we lock arms.

We feed each other, we clothe each other, we keep each other warm. We don't hoard food. We don't waste food. We don’t shame you if you’re hungry. We’re not embarrassed when our stomachs rumble. We don’t eat first.

We don't build walls, we smash them. We cut holes in wire fences. We tear down advertisements. We cover walls with art and messages.

We don't build jails. We don't kidnap people, we don’t kidnap animals. We don't pour chemicals into the eyes of rabbits and mice, we liberate them from the labs where they're held captive and tortured. We don't torture. We aren't torturers who say we don't torture.

We don't distinguish between human rights and civil rights and animal rights. Every species is endangered. The world is a wildlife preserve.

We don’t hold elections hostage. We don't hold elections. We don't represent anyone but ourselves. We don't pledge allegiance to flags. We don't wave them, we don't wrap ourselves in them. We don't salute them. We have no nation, and it is not great, and it never was. We don’t govern. We are not governable.

We are not constituents. We are not citizens. We are not consumers. We are not products. We don’t yammer on about renewable this and sustainable that. We are not a science experiment. We know that ethical shopping is still shopping.

We don't take instructions from strange old men in strange robes with monopolies on god's will. We don't pray at the altar of oil. Or gas. Or coal. Or uranium. Or money. Or technology.

We know that the bed and the bank of every river and stream is a sacred site.

We understand consent, we honor it and we insist on it. We don't rape. We don’t rape women, or men, or children. Or oceans. Or economies. We lash ourselves to trees and stand up to bulldozers and knock the teeth out of the mouths of racists. We bash back.

We respect autonomy, not authority. We offer solidarity, not charity.

We don’t do business. We don’t make deals. We are not our jobs. We are not our debts. We are not our illnesses. We are not our educations. We are not our parents, or their mistakes, or their failures, or their fears. We don’t owe them. We are not our children. We don’t own them.

We don't indoctrinate children. We don't fire their teachers, we don't close their schools. We don't lie to them about the world. We don't feed them poison, we don’t rob their bellies of food. We don't round up their fathers and then blame them for being fatherless. We don’t work their mothers to death and then blame them for being motherless. We don't teach them to love their country. We don't teach them to hate their bodies.

We feed each other, we clothe each other, we keep each other warm. We hold hands, we lock arms.

We know when to dance, when to party, when to stand up, backs straight, facing the State, meeting its hatred of itself with our love of each other. We know when to run, and with whom. We know how to dance. We make beautiful music together.

We don’t target whole cultures for eradication. We don’t target whole forests for eradication. We don’t build zoos, or museums, or glass and steel towers. We don’t close libraries, we don’t destroy them, we don’t burn books. We don’t fire plutonium-powered rockets through the stratosphere. We don’t insist on cooking the atmosphere. We don’t casually calculate the risk, we don’t prepare environmental impact assessments and then, fuck it, drill anyway.

We are not all of the above. We are not multiple-choice. We are not either/or. We are not census data. We are not statistics. We are not metrics. We are not the general populace, the American people, a concerned citizenry, a nation divided. We are not a movement. We are not united. We are not the People. We don’t petition the king, there is no king.

We hold hands, we lock arms.

We don’t reach across the aisle. We don’t lend bipartisan support. We don’t legislate. We don’t segregate our concern. We don’t say that progress is being made when you stick a knife in our backs nine inches and pull it out six inches. We never thank a politician, for anything, ever. We don’t ask what we can do for our country, because we don’t have one, we don’t want one, and we don’t want to know what it can do for us, either.

We don’t ask for handouts. We don’t ask for tears. We don’t want casual, drive-by, fashionable outrage at our situations. We do want the boots off our backs.

We are not slaves, because being held captive, for days or decades or centuries, does not make one a slave. We are not, nor have we ever been, nor will we ever be, wretched refuse. We are not a melting pot.

We are not overpopulation. We are not illegal. We are not here to breed. We are not addicts, even when we are addicted. We are not welfare mothers, even when we are mothers on welfare.

We are not what you say we are. Whatever you say we are, we are not that.

We know when to run, and with whom. We hold hands, we lock arms. We make beautiful music together. We know how to dance. We know when to dance, when to party, when to stand up, backs straight, facing the State, meeting its hatred of itself with our love of each other, meeting its hatred of itself with our love of each other, backs straight, facing the State, meeting its hatred of itself with our love of each other.

(Philadelphia, November 2012)

[Note: written for the first issue of Bread & Roses, a publication that works to cultivate an explicitly anti-oppression community at Cornell University & in the broader Ithaca, NY community, run by students / comrade activists at Cornell.]