F$%k you: In Defense of the Angry Activist

Can I be angry yet?

Is that ok with you?

Can I scream for change, or should I stay respectable and quiet like you preach from your bubble of privilege?

What safe and quiet avenues can I take to save my life while anti-me speech is being consumed by the masses

Digested

And regurgitated into horrible actions that threaten to end me?

Can I fight yet?

I’m so tired of praying with a lonely candle

Passively asking for help

As if my own feet can’t march

And my own hands can’t clinch into fists.

Should I just sit and wait

For the right people to finally, finally take notice of my plight

Even though everyone is dying around me?

Should I let your little microagressions go

Even though they feel like jabs to my heart

Even though people that think like you think I don’t even deserve to live?

What should I wait for? Hm?

For someone to skim my calm, beautifully thought out letter,

come up with lazy excuses for why I should continue to wait for my humanity to be acknowledged

And forget my name forever?

Do you even know how long I’ve wanted for someone to hear me?

To look in my direction

How loudly I have to scream to get any help or attention at all?

What I’ve gone through in silence because of my unconscious devotion to your peace and quiet?

While you enjoyed my silence

Because it made me easier to ignore

I was in dark corners, cold and neglected, and people like you cut choice pieces of me off for their enjoyment

And pushed me back down every time I tried to stand up.

Every. Time.

Beat me away from every barrier I tried to break

Laughed at every polite request I made

Told me

“I just don’t believe in that, it’s nothing personal”

Then adopted my silence when I was beaten to a pulp for just existing.

You wonder why my enemies are so bold and unafraid? It’s because of YOU!

You who value order over equality

Over equity

Over change

Who tell me to wait for my justice and acceptance as if you care whether it comes at all.

Every time I stood up I was criticized into sitting down

And every time someone looked at me you put your finger to my lips

Or told everyone to ignore me as if I was a toddler throwing a tantrum and would eventually tire out.

For you, yes, silence is serenity

For me, it is pain if I am lucky

Death if I am not.

I am tired

I am frustrated and not only am I allowed to express that

It is my very duty

To march

To scream

To fight

To cry in public

To bring comfortability to a grinding halt

Because as you can see respect for my communities will not come gently

No matter how soft I am. How come you can’t see that?

How come you don’t care to see that.

When will it be ok to speak up?

When police and vigilantes literately hunt me

Kill me

And celebrate my death

And go unpunished?

When I am targeted for discrimination and scorn because of my nationality and language?

When my body is taken

and my attacker sympathized with

while my name is thrown away?

When my sanctuary becomes an X on the map of a hate-fueled tirade?

When a man preaching pure active and passive hate against my community could possibly be elected leader

of my home?

When I am literarily killed for celebrating my culture and my love,

my murderer having enough fire power to bring me to my end

without ever having to see my face?

Only after you say, “Oh I guess it IS bad.” when I’ve been fighting this evil for decades?

NOW CAN I PUSH BACK?

Maybe you see my anger now, maybe you’ll be quiet about it and let me yell, maybe even be angry with me

And thank you, but

What about when the world stops looking?

When public outrage dies down and everything goes “back to normal”

You back to your life, with its many problems (because you are human and perfection is not)

Me to my many problems (including bearing the oppression of communities you have just begun to learn about)

When the subtle and not so subtle

Anti-woman

Anti-trans

Anti-queer

Anti-gay

Anti-lesbian

Anti-queer

Anti-Black

Anti-immigrant

Anti- Muslim

Anti-poor

Anti-Native

Anti-accountability

Anti-anyone-who-isn’t-you messages stream back into our lives.

When I see this happening, when I know what it can lead to and I speak up against it,

will you roll your eyes and judge me

Or worse

Trivialize my anger

Or worse

Try to silence me (as if the two above are not approximations of the third)?

In doing so, you take part in violence against my community, without having to lift a finger

Because that’s how institutionalized oppression works

It’s so pervasive that it can be maintained by my silence

and your silencing.

Maybe you would rather live a light colored beautiful life

Where the knowledge of oppression doesn’t guilt you

And when someone like me dies senselessly because I am proud to be different

You can say,

“What could have caused this?” And pretend to stumble around in the dark.

or

“I wish she had said something. I would have helped.”

Yeah.

Yeah I’m sure you would have.

Fuck you.

I live this grief and with grace, might I add.

Allow me my voice

Even and especially

If it is loud.