‘vote them in and then let’s hold them accountable’

“There is no de­bate any­more. There’s no room for it in my book. We ei­ther make this hap­pen. Or lit­er­al­ly, more of us per­ish. Peo­ple are dy­ing. Some­one I love died. This virus is real. If it hasn’t vis­it­ed your doorstep, it will.

“Oh but, Ka­mala did this or she didn’t do that. I hear you. I know. And I don’t care.

“Be­cause what she DIDN’T DO is aban­don cit­i­zens in a pan­dem­ic, rip ba­bies from their mother’s arms at the bor­der, send fed­er­al troops to ter­ror­ize pro­tes­tors, man­u­fac­ture new ways to sup­press Black and Brown votes, ac­tive­ly dis­re­spect In­dige­nous peo­ple and land, traf­fic in white su­prema­cist rhetoric in an ef­fort to stir racist vi­o­lence at every turn, at­tempt to dis­man­tle most Amer­i­can de­mo­c­ra­t­ic sys­tems of checks and bal­ance, de­grade women all day every­day, in­fect the Supreme Court with an­oth­er misog­y­nist hack, de­mol­ish America’s stand­ing on cli­mate, ac­tive­ly cul­ti­vate and fur­ther white su­prema­cist struc­tures and sys­tems across all as­pects of Amer­i­can dai­ly life.

“I mean, that’s what she DIDN’T do. So I don’t wan­na hear any­thing bad about her. It doesn’t mat­ter to me. Vote them in and then let’s hold them accountable.

“Any­thing oth­er than that is in­san­i­ty. It’s ego. It’s against our own in­ter­ests. It’s self­ish. It’s dis­re­spect­ful to our el­ders. It’s non­sense. It’s talk­ing to hear your­self talk.

“This is a mat­ter of life or death. We need all our en­er­gy fo­cused. This is a fight for more than can be ex­pressed here. There is no de­bate anymore.”
—Ava Du­Ver­nay, writer, pro­duc­er, di­rec­tor, 13th

 

a l l  o f  t h i s
is what I was say­ing last week to a Trans Black woman who ha­rassed me on so­cial media.

I keep bring­ing this up be­cause I am very dis­turbed by the anti-black­ness/an­ti bio Black queer woman vibe that I have en­dured by Black Trans women for the last few years — and quite frankly from cis-het­ero Black women as well.

I have not pub­licly spo­ken about it
b c
the fe­male queer and cis com­mu­ni­ties do some­thing sim­i­lar to what Black men do to Black women when we try to get them to un­pack their misogyny.

It’s viewed as un­der­min­ing the ‘cause.’

Any­one who knows me knows that I LOVE Black women pe­ri­od but I am hav­ing a hard time un­der­stand­ing why ver­bal abuse to­wards Black women BY Black women has for some rea­son been giv­en a pass?

AND then I see white Trans folks sign­ing on to it?!?! I’m sor­ry ya’ll I’m an old BIPOC queer who has been stand­ing up for peo­ple’s rights for decades. The fact that I have spent the last 2 days see­ing Black women need­ing to pub­licly jus­ti­fy why we

1)  Will not per­son­al­ly pub­licly at­tack Kamala

2)  Why we should have the right to claim this mo­ment in his­to­ry DE­SPITE what Kamala’s past has been tru­ly disconcerting.

Why? Be­cause I feel like Black women can’t have anything!

i m e
I have been re­duced to per­spec­tives that I have nev­er claimed, judged, and crit­i­cized for choos­ing strat­e­gy over reck­less­ness. I’ve been in­sult­ed and told that I was trash be­cause I want to pre­serve Black lives over boy­cotting the sys­tem when we are fac­ing a man de­ter­mined to make this coun­try into a fas­cist dictatorship.

We are al­ways cut down to size, made one di­men­sion­al – like, we can’t have dif­fer­ent points of view si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly which is in­sane bc WE ARE BLACK WOMEN! We are in­tri­cate and com­pli­cat­ed – we can hold many ideas and pref­er­ences at once be­cause we have been forced to do that ever since the slave mas­ter raped us while whip­ping us in the cot­ton fields.

We are con­tin­u­ous­ly hav­ing to de­fend our­selves – of­ten time from one an­oth­er. And it seems es­pe­cial­ly amongst those who have had the priv­i­lege to tran­si­tion – and yes don’t get it twist­ed – it IS a priv­i­lege to be able to live your life the way that you need to out loud – those of us who are in our late 30s and 40s know this was some­thing that was rarely done and now it’s mainstream.

The col­lec­tive WE (yes Black Dykes and those Black Dykes who even­tu­al­ly tran­si­tioned to be FTM) helped to make that happen.

And yet it seems we still get no love?!?

Any­way … the saga continues …

 

—jasper james

Flom­mist Jasper James is a mul­ti­fac­eted di­ver­si­ty-trained en­tre­pre­neur, mul­ti-in­stru­men­tal­ist/ writer, event pro­duc­er, and for­mer Bill­board Record­ing Artist. They are also the co-founder of Ac­tivism Ar­tic­u­lat­ed, and Women’s March Blac, an all-Black branch of Women’s March Na­tion­al Lead­er­ship. Jasper is on the ACLU Sacra­men­to Chap­ter Board and the Sacra­men­to Stonewall De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Club (PAC) and is an ac­tive mem­ber of the ACLU Speak­ers Bu­reau. They were also one of only five Black sit­ting fe­male Pres­i­dents in the na­tion for the Women’s March Sacra­men­to Chap­ter. Copy­right © 2020 Jasper James. Im­age source.

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