There were a few weeks in 2016 where I said Hillary and Trump were two sides of the same coin. I didn’t have the language to name that the neoliberal system that produced Trump was shaped by folks like Hillary even if Trump was significantly worse. And I was wrong in those weeks.

I’ve become increasingly sympathetic to people who fight for abolition *and* harm reduction. Whose political strategy holds in tension the dramatic shift of a system and the need to center the lives and flourishing of people—especially vulnerable people—in the here and now.

People confuse this with buying into liberal politics of gradual inclusion—I know I did. But it’s more complex than that. In a deep way the fundamental politics remain the same: a radically new world where flourishing is centered. The question that emerges is one of pragmatism.

Liberal politics fundamentally center the system that exists. It centers capitalism, private property, and prisons/policing. And it celebrates when minoritized faces are included in the system that exists. Radical politics seek a new system that centers collective flourishing.

At base, I don’t think a turn towards harm reduction—with voting for a Democrat or even advocating for voting as a political action—is inherently a turn towards liberal politics. It can be, a pragmatic negotiation towards the inter-generational pursuit of collective flourishing.

Because one thing I’ve been thinking about is how our political imagination is often stunted and stuck in the here and now—I know mine has been. We often don’t think about how we’ll gift our children, and our children’s children, with another step towards the struggle.

Which is why pragmatic negotiations that hold in tension harm reduction *and* broader radical goals aren’t automatically liberal politics of inclusion within the existing system.
Because the creation of a new world requires we think of now, and three generations from now.

Lately, in the moments of feeling overwhelmed, I’ve been thinking about Ancestor Richard Twiss. During the short time I communed with him on this side of existence, he taught me of the ethics he learned in his Lakota community:

Three generations past, three generation future.

He spoke of his community making decisions on a seven generation continuum—three generations past, our generation, three generations future. How do our decisions now honor the past in the here and now, while building a better world for our children’s grandchildren?

Ancestor Twiss taught me another way of engaging the world, one which I turn back to when I feel the here and now is too much.

That’s not the same as liberal politics. Because liberal politics are about maintaining that which is. This is about a continuum towards flourishing.

I don’t have all the answers, I don’t pretend to. I’m always evolving. So I’m happy to admit when my politics fall short, because we’re on a multi-generational continuum towards flourishing. And sometimes we mess up.

Our struggle includes *and* extends beyond this moment. Which means we have to hold many things imperfectly in tension. Sometimes we’ll be wrong. Sometimes we’ll be right. But in each, we’re in process with our great, great grandparents and children’s grandchildren.