We got us.
By Mariana Ruiz-Firmat
We got us.
In response to a dystopic Donald Trump America, Black and Brown folks are responding with, “We got us.”
When I see tweets and Facebook posts from friends saying, “We got us,” it feels like someone is sending me a private message. “We got us” is like when Gotham sends out the bat signal. When you see the signal, you know what it means — it means you’re not alone. No matter how terrifying this is or how dangerous this is going to get, don’t worry — we got us.
A week ago, disaffected, primarily White, voters overwhelmingly voted to elect Donald Trump. White folks came out of the racist closet to use their voting power to let us know just how afraid they are of our power building, our solidarity, our inspiring and powerful movements to build Black futures, fight back against deportations, and dismantle Islamophobia. And they elected a sexual assaulting bigot.
Crippling racism and liberal Democrat politics as usual have allowed for this outcome. When Donald Trump rose in the Republican ranks, many of us who are aware of just how racist this country is knew that he was riding on a populist wave — appealing to disaffected White voters and laying the blame for all of the country’s problems at the feet of undocumented immigrants, Muslims, Black people, and trans folks.
The stakes for people of color have never been higher. Our movements are winning on the local and state levels — and winning big. Our movements are being led by queer, Black, and Brown women. And we are organized.
Since the election, I’ve woken up every single moment grateful for Facebook and Twitter, and not because I’m interested in the post-election finger pointing (please keep that away from me). Facebook keeps me from feeling isolated. Despite the amazing community of queer people of color that I am fortunate to share my IRL day-to-day with, as a digital campaigner, I spend most of my time online. So I’m thankful when people I know in other parts of New York, California, Minnesota, Texas, Florida, Illinois, and elsewhere are posting stories of resistance and resiliency.
After the initial shock wore off, people of color were posting tips for how to defend our communities. Ruby-Beth Buitekant shared this brilliant 10 point call to action for how to stay physically safe, protect our digital footprint, and tips to help trans people change their passports.
I coped in the way I have since I was a young girl — I turned to community and art. I’ve been reading Black, Brown, and Beige, edited by Franklin Roseman and Robin D.G. Kelley, which is about African surrealists in the diaspora. Surrealism was a resistance movement to fascism, colonization, and enslavement. On Friday night I saw the film Moonlight by myself, in Brooklyn. As the movie ended, I sat in the theatre feeling completely filled up. I was filled up with love, Black love. The kind of love that actually does resist hate, absent of the tropes and niceties of the abysmal slogan “Love Trumps Hate,” which became the battle cry of liberal Democrats during the election.
I spent time with my niece who goes to a Black and Brown-centered preschool. We sang Bob Marley songs together, and we talked about Fred Hampton. And as we hung out, singing songs and eating raisins, I touched both of her cheeks and kissed her nose, and I said, “We got us.”
These posts and tweets, text messages, art, and family literally saved me last week. All a constant affirmation of, “We got us.” And it gave me the permission to be numb, hurt, sad, worried, angry, resilient, and ultimately tap into a feeling of resistance.
Resistance is powerful. Resistance is putting the tools of democracy in the hands of Black people, queer people, trans people, Muslims, and undocumented immigrants. Resistance is being armed with coding skills and strategy development. Resistance is taking everything we know as people of color about community organizing — about how we talk to our aunties, our titis, our ’buelitas, our cousins, and our parents — and learning how to hack digital tools so that we can scale our message and our campaigns.
Resistance is knowing that people of color use mobile as our primary way of getting on the internet. We text. We Instagram. We Facebook. We are the adaptors and innovators of social media. We were the first ones to flag the problem that tools like Facebook and Slack and Google that don’t have end-to-end encryption are literally toxic to communities of color.
And we can build our own platforms. We can build our own tools. We can learn how to hack what already exists.
Two years ago, I co-founded the Kairos Fellowship along with more than a dozen other Black, Brown, and White people interested in diversifying the digital progressive space. All of us in that room were national digital leaders, gatekeepers, or gate openers. I stepped in to lead the project not because I was interested in diversity in any way. I’m not. Diversity is racism cloaked in quotas. Diversity doesn’t shift conditions, doesn’t shift power, and has no power analysis at all. But I knew then as I know now that the project of Kairos — to train people of color to use digital tools for campaigning — is about building resiliency in our communities, not tokenizing our participation in White liberal digital spaces. That’s building power. The Kairos Fellowship creates these opportunities by unleashing our digital acumen and unlocking the access to the tools that we can use to create change. This is the kind of diversity of thought and action I’m working towards.
We got us.
To join the next cohort of Kairos Fellows, please visit us at www.kairosfellows.org. The application deadline is November 30, 2016.
