To center Black and Indigenous women and femmes, trans and gender nonconforming folks, queer folks, immigrants, disabled folks, poor folks, and everyone that we want centered in our movements, we must actively decenter whites, men, cis people, straights, ableist culture, and the wealthy class.
Decenter from time, attention, power, space, money, labor, and energy. Deliberately decenter. Note that decenter does not mean devalue.
White capitalist colonialism equates being the center to supremacy. It is deified. It values no other option than a single superior entity. Those who have been historically centered see decentering as a direct threat to their very existence because they see it as a complete devaluation of their purpose.
But in a liberatory practice, superiority and a singular center are not vital. There can be multiple centers. Decentering and decentralizing are, in fact, more powerful in community-based culture work.
Dominant demographics must be decentered because white capitalist colonialism supremacizes them at the cost of everyone else. We must decenter them because we must decenter supremacy culture itself, all supremacy culture.
When we say organize, we also mean build trust to build power. The trust part was not there this time around. That was clear very early on. Our work is changing. Our next era must decenter power OVER, and reclaim power WITH and power WITHIN.
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