By TGP Founder, Adrienne Pickett
I recently read the Washington Post editorial by Perry Bacon, Jr. detailing the abrupt fall of CNN’s Chris Licht. And I couldn’t agree more with his sentiment that there is a problem with centrist, anti-woke sentiment. Then I started thinking more about it, and thinking about it as a self-identified woke, anti-racist, feminist. All the attacks and the name-calling from the right, the constant drumbeat against trans kids and drag queens and the LGBTQ community as a whole (if I have to see one more person claiming that LGBTQ people just living their lives are “cramming it down our throats” one more time in a comment section…), the racist othering we see conservatives doing to asylum seekers and immigrants while cheering as they are illegally marched onto busses and chartered planes to dump in a “blue state,” the science denialism that the planet is warming. All of these things serve to prop up the current late-capitalist patriarchy that we all call home.
When I started The Guerrilla Politic, I did it because I essentially “woke up” from the cushy, cis, privileged white upper-middle-class suburban life I was autopiloting in and said, “What the actual fuck is happening right now?” The election of Donald Trump shook me so hard out of this sleep that I was essentially moved to action. I felt like it was my obligation to do something about all the horrorshow things that were happening in the world—if not for me, then for my children and this little part of the planet I call home. And I made a socially-conscious business out of my resistance. (TGP makes enough to pay our people fairly for their work. We’re not doing this for yachts. The orcas have no reason to target us.)
The list of things to be woke and shook about is so long — just take your pick: Systemic racism that goes back to chattel slavery, climate change decimating the planet, a health care system that is imploding from within, attacks on marginalized communities from indigenous to trans to Black and Brown people, stripping people with uteruses of their bodily autonomy, constant and ongoing gun violence that kills more kids than car accidents or cancer, a corrupt and one-sided Supreme Court, poisoned water, corporate billionaire overreach, the media paying more attention to a few billionaires who willfully chose to get into a tin can with a man who dismissed serious safety concerns rather than the hundreds of migrants missing on the Mediterranean, and, and, and on to infinity.
This is a lot. It’s overwhelming. Outrage at an ongoing pace is hard and not recommended for those who like to be asleep at the wheel. We are all human beings who occupy this one planet for a very specific length of time. Our problems and our hopes and dreams all intersect whether we like it or not—no matter religion, political affiliation, skin color or social status. And looking at that list it can feel like these are disparate issues. Maybe you think the rich people imploding on the seafloor don’t directly affect you. But at the end of the day it really, really does. And what do all of these things really have at their core? Late-stage capitalism running amok and, at its core, greed.
Doom scrolling through my Instagram yesterday (a great tool of distraction), I was a bit upset at myself and how I was reacting to the many many memes from the #OceanGate accident. I didn’t find myself feeling bad for these men (well, maybe for the teenage son and the researcher). Rather the opposite. My outrage was spilling out. Multiple countries used resources to mobilize and attempt to find them over multiple days. And the incessant question I kept asking was if that was me on a boat or someone of color, would the same resources be deployed? Or did their wealth and status dictate that a no-expenses-spared rescue effort be the reaction? I think we can all collectively answer that. But according to sociologist, Dr Crystal Fleming, the gallows humor surrounding this incident wasn’t collective glee over wealthy people dying. “The humor emerged from feelings of disgust, dismay, shock, and confusion over the fuckboy hubris of the whole affair,” she Tweeted.
Living in a system where one person’s $250,000 seat on an X-Box remote-controlled death trap is equivalent to the average person buying a caramel macchiato at Starbucks is unacceptable, and we have to do something about it.
What is that thing we have to do? I’m so glad you asked. The answers really are simple. Be part of organizations that hold billionaires and corporations to account. Tell them to stop skipping out on paying their taxes. Better yet, elect people who will pass legislation that makes the rich pay their fair share instead of people who scream about which bathroom someone can use. There is a reason the Republicans do what they do, and it’s really not to protect you or your kids from evil Drag Queens. When the wealthiest people in the world tell you pronouns are the problem, they’re trying to distract you from something. Tearing down the government is a way for the private sector to move in and CAPITALIZE off of you. Billionaires get rich off of you.
The most patriotic thing I felt I could do was to start The Guerrilla Politic, give my time and talents to those who’ve been doing the hard work for years fighting against late-stage capitalism that harms and exploits people, and takes lives at the expense of corporate billionaires. We’re here to tear down the patriarchy and create a more just and social system that is more equitable and fair. If saving peoples’ lives from gun violence and forced birth and protecting the planet we live on for the next generation and ultimately having some empathy for other people is woke, then I’m wide awake and I don’t ever plan on going back to sleep.