Friendship as a way of Life – Community care – Towards the abolition horizon
By A.N.
“Nine times out of ten, my heart craves reconciliation and repair. I want to stay in connection, and even when that’s not possible I almost always want to understand the context, to do the private work of humanising, even if not outright forgiving, those who have caused me hurt. (…) For years I craved an ethical and political framework where this was intelligible, where it was sayable, where it was not simplistically framed as “enabling abusers” or seen as a capitulation and betrayal of other survivors. Carceral feminism chipped away at my hope because it made this shameful and forbidden. It seemed to want to replace a vision of justice where only wealthy straight white men are consistently offered interpretative generosity with one where we deny it to everyone. What if instead we extended it to the world at large, while still centring survivors of harm and their unique contexts and needs?
A word of generosity, of steadfast care, of unwavering support for true accountability: to live in such a world is the same as Karen Brodine’s vision of being in accord. It’s Richard Wright’s life believing in life. It’s Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s description of abolition work as “demanding a future that has some sense of the voluptuous beauty life should hold”. It’s what Dean Spade calls, in a discussion with Nat Raha, the sweetness of mutual aid and community care. I want that sweetness in my life: that tenderness, that deep hope and belief in life. Even just thinking about it grabs hold of my heart. It’s a political vision I can bring my whole self to, because it’s so deeply tied to how I want to live.”
Continue reading The Queer Lonely Diaries
A.N. is a queer femme based in the East of England. Pronouns are she/her. This is her first zine!
Twitter: @queerlonelydia1
Image thanks to Anthony Shkraba
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