I’ve had around twenty messages from ppl telling me to watch the 4corners ep from last night, which I had, and I’m going to lay out some of my thoughts here...

I am always cautious of doing this. As a criminalised blak woman in this colony, and someone whose life became a magazine anyone could thumb thru

ppl always assume I am offering myself up for their judgement...I’m not. Also, I’m always cautious because I know that acceptance of lived exp voices is absolutely conditional & contingent on invisible parameters you all arbitrarily set for us

But here goes...
In that whole special there was one lived prison exp voice......in this country, blak lived experience voices are invisabalised...which is weird because there are loads of us

It’s actually a trend we are seeing right across the country within the abolition movement...it just seems that space for our voices is being squeezed out.

I think the world of @latoya_aroha and I wanted to hear more from her. Latoya reminds us all in her work that we aren’t fighting for innocence we are fighting for justice. Latoya says we have to love people beyond who we want them to be

Latoya’s words are always powerful, and should have had much more primacy than they did

The entire thing gave me a feeling that I should accept that my liberation is bound up in white people’s acceptance of our oppression

We learnt 230 years ago that white people will never let us live free. We forget this is a whole system, it’s not just about individuals. I am not waiting on any of them to emancipate me. My liberation will be found standing beside my brothers and sistas in the struggle

The show was appealing to white people through trauma porn and carefully constructed narratives. I will not bleed to get this colony’s attention. I have no interest in playing a role to either assuage their guilt nor generate it

And then there’s the curious thing where friends of mine are telling me to watch the show as if the things they saw on TV are new, as if myself and other mob haven’t been saying all of this forever!!

Why does it take a carefully constructed TV special for you to believe, for you to care...
Did I not bleed enough for you?
Did I not cry enough?
Were my stories of violence, brutality, sexual assault, racism not enough for you?

Ugh come on...none of us were yesterday old when we found out that police and carceral violence is killing us!

I just don’t know where to go when people I need to see a blak mans last breath extinguished to believe us, to care...

And then when you finally believe, what will you do? I mean will you set fire to this joint to save us? Will you hand in your badge? Resign your job? Pull apart the colony? Tear down the very systems you benefit every single day from?

Didn’t think so.

So carry on....because you’ve been carrying on for 232 fucking years and I expect nothing less

{and please don’t @ me. These are my observations from my lived experience, and are not a criticism on individual people, but on a process, a narrative, a dialogue, a colony}