There is No Collective Liberation Without Collective Empathy
There is No Collective Liberation Without Collective Empathy
On history and timelines—and how ours are telling a disparate story in real time.
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While the perils of social media are countless, and likely not even all known yet, one thing that it allows us to do is aggregate perspectives. We can see different timelines on our timeline—in real time.
Social media allows us to live in almost parallel space and time.
As the DNC continues in Chicago, I see starkly different timelines, histories, and realities.
There is one timeline that shows the almost Lalapalooza-like celebration of a candidate, Kamala Harris, who inspires people much more than the previous one, our president, Joe Biden. She inspires due to her energy (and let’s face it, age, at two decades younger than either candidate), her words, her background, her choice of VP, Tim Walz—who additionally inspires as a public school coach and teacher. And Kamala Harris would be the first woman president. And the first woman president would be a black woman. And an Asian woman.
There is another timeline that, in the same city, right outside the same event, shows groups of people protesting. The Uncommitted movement, a movement of Democrat delegates throughout the US started in Michigan, a swing state and the state with the largest Muslim population—Chicago being a city with one of the highest concentrations of Palestinians— is protesting to raise awareness to another timeline. The one people are literally covering their eyes and ears to avoid. The toll of death and destruction we see every day in our feeds. The tens of thousands of people killed, wounded, displaced, starved, and slowly dying from illness and injury by Israel’s government and military (the IDF) in Gaza, along with supporting settlers terrorizing the West Bank. All of this under the umbrella of self-defense since Hamas attacked a music festival and Kibbutz neighborhoods, like the one my mother grew up in, on 10/7/2023 that killed nearly 1200 Israelis and displaced hundreds from their homes. The vast majority of Israel’s weapons are provided by our tax dollars at over $3 billion during most years — and over $12 billion this year.
Uncommitted’s overall goal is to be an “uncommitted” delegate. This platform can include a delegate who does not give their vote within the electoral college towards the state’s chosen candidate as well as voters not being committed to a Democrat nominee, Harris, in this case—unless the US stops sending weapons to Israel. But for this specific protest at the DNC Uncommitted has a smaller, but vital, goal. Bring attention to the Palestinian humanity lost through the reading of the names of those Israel killed—and by having speaking time at the DNC. This is a very clear, simple, and reasonable demand from a party that always demands votes from communities that have been harmed domestically and abroad for decades under Democrat and Republican administrations alike.
Yet, their request, to have a Palestinian speak, a person of the nation Israel is currently waging a genocidal campaign against with our US tax dollars—one to represent millions impacted—was denied.
Denied under a tent of inclusivity.
It doesn’t matter the reasoning. It would have been an easy, uncontroversial gesture from the Democrats to say a Palestinian, given what their people have gone through, at least deserves a few minutes to speak. I doubt any substantial number of votes would have been lost under any polling calculation. But it’s clear that the real reason is concern that the Democrat “base” (read: white donors) lobbyists, AIPAC, would pull any financial support. And that calculation, valued over lost votes, and of course, the actual lives of those in Gaza and representation of the Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim community domestically, was the calculation that mattered.
Kamala Harris’s candidacy does matter.
If we’re having a real discussion on the state of our nation, her candidacy’s place in US history should be acknowledged.
For all that the black community has gone through in this country, for all that women have gone through—to invalidate the weight of her candidacy altogether is not part of reality, either. The reality is, as Malcolm X once said: “The most disrespected person in America is the Black woman. The most unprotected person in America is the Black woman. The most neglected person in America is the Black woman.” Kamala, and the systems she’s represented throughout her career, are necessary targets for significant criticism—but Kamala is still a black woman. I’m tired of any bullshit saying otherwise.
She may still have elements of privilege through lighter complexion, socioeconomic upbringing (though certainly not born into wealth), and for the past few decades had power as an AG and then VP that most of any background in the US will never have— but she still encountered racism and sexism throughout her life and career specific to the kind many black women in this world have experienced throughout their lives.
Representation does matter—even if we’re not talking in the most literal sense of policy alignment or revolutionary paradigm-shifting . Representation doesn’t always work linearly or logically. It can also work instinctually.
A woman, a black woman, at the highest elected seat is representation in history. It is a girl pointing to a screen seeing herself, as in the past it was a boy touching President Obama’s hair to see it was similar to his own. That instinct of connection, that moment, doesn’t have empirical analysis. Because representation doesn’t always reason with empirical analysis, statistics, our more educated, ‘enlightened’ selves.
We may, in retrospect, understand that Obama made only incremental changes in domestic policy while continuing a legacy of a capitalist economy that furthers wage disparities and a neoliberal foreign policy—it doesn’t change that instinct, that intangible that meant so much to so many.
In addition to the intangible aspects of representation, the fact is that domestic “liberal” Democrat incrementalism can, tangibly, improve quality of life and even save lives. Especially of historically vulnerable and marginalized communities.
Even just insofar as rhetoric not being used.
Trump’s rhetoric undeniably (unless you believe the election was stolen—then you also deny numbers) led to the Charlottesville Unite the Right hate march and the Capitol’s insurrection on January 6th, 2021–both of which killed people and injured dozens, and was the closest this nation has been to a mf coup. Trump’s policies toward undocumented immigrants, didn’t start immigrant detention or deportation, but it prioritized separating families as a deterrent and banned travel from certain Muslim-majority countries, until courts struck it down—even going as far as to hold citizens from returning. Not having those policies would certainly have made a measurable difference to those families. His delayed Covid-19 response measures likely resulted in thousands of deaths. The justices he appointed to the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, among many other significant precedents, which already nearly killed people who couldn’t get an abortion. Additionally, Trump staunchly supports brutal policing to a point of outwardly stating he wants police immune from legal consequences. And never forget, Trump took out a page in The NY Times advocating to kill black and Latino teenagers and never apologized when the Central Park Five were exonerated.
The US is a nation whose law enforcement kills and incarcerates more black and brown people than any other country by several orders of magnitude.
It makes sense some people from those communities may want to do everything in their power to make sure he isn’t president to allow that to happen more. Even incrementally.
Not to mention, Trump blatantly wants to be a dictator. Which might scare some vulnerable populations into any measure they feel will prevent that. Even incrementally.
However, in foreign policy, Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden may have had pointedly different rhetoric, which matters to the extent of what Americans see as permissible speech in society, and how much foreign leaders think they can get away with on our soil and tax dollars (see Benjamin Netanyahu)—but an Afghani, an Iranian, a Syrian, a Yemeni, an Iraqi, a Palestinian all saw the US fund weapons of war that killed members of their own families. And Kamala Harris, in addition to presiding over the DNC’s decision to not allow a Palestinian speaker, presided over what many organizations see as the genocide of their people.
It makes sense some people from the community on the receiving end of said genocide might not want to do anything in their power to vote for that person. Not even incrementally.
But it’s important that a sizable contingent of the population exists of people who won’t be voting for Harris—and yet—have empathy for people who will.
It’s the only way we move forward past the 2024 election with more pieces gained than lost.
The definition of collective liberation varies depending who you ask. But, at its core, it means the oppression of all communities is intersectional, so freedom from that oppression is connected as well.
We can write that—and then we can live that.
To write that is a macro statement many activists are on board with. To live that is to redefine our inclusivity to include collective empathy for those at different stages than we are, but still acknowledge our shared, equal humanity. Ultimately, we must acknowledge the timelines of all impacted communities.
If we can’t do that in our everyday lives, it’s all just theory. And as Fred Hampton said: “Theory’s cool, but theory with no practice aint shit.”
There is no practice, no inclusivity, that doesn’t include people in Uncommitted, Abandon Harris, Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims, those not involved in the Democratic Party at all, and those who are going to vote for Kamala Harris.
You are not inclusive if your timeline doesn’t include the reality of millions of marginalized people. Millions are here. Whether you deem them “enlightened” and “aligned” with you or not. If liberation is legit your cause, they still in it.
We don’t got time for anything else but reality.
Millions of marginalized people are going to see Kamala Harris as a candidate that represents their once most distant dreams and prevents their worst nightmares.
Millions of marginalized people are going to see Kamala Harris as a candidate that presided over their worst nightmare.
We’re dealing with communities who just want to feel a bit more safe. Even incrementally.
Have empathy for how others navigate the oppression of their people—racism has impacted so many over so long; it’s going to create collisions, just to get pieces of freedom. That doesn’t invalidate the same collective destination.
For people: Hold space. Have grace.
Fight systems until they’re replaced.
