Historic Moment. Historic Moment. Historic Moment.
My generation has been blasted with this refrain too many times throughout our lives. From the fall to the resurgence of American empire and military might with 9/11, seemingly progressive political turns with the passage of same-sex marriage, and the violence that Covid-19 has wrought upon the world, especially those marginalized.
Now we get to live through another: the decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. Historical precedent, a precedent that lingered for generations crumbled right underneath our feet. Many conservatives and reactionaries made fun of all the tension when Trump was elected president during the 2016 election. I was blatantly told numerous times by White faculty, staff, and students at my private high school that I was “overreacting.”
— Doesn’t seem like much of an overreaction now.
“How could this be happening?”
“How is this country going so far backwards?”
The fuck you mean how is this happening? The map has already been drawn and the coordinates charted out. This is not the future that I imagine a lot of us have fought for. This dystopia is far more grueling than anything Octavia Butler could have conjured, and that’s saying something.
Pondering the days over, I thought about what I wanted to say. I was going to do some long tragic article about the demise of Roe v. Wade. Don’t get me wrong, Roe is still the center of this conversation. But, I want to turn this into something different. There is no longer time to wait. We must use the tools that we can to create spaces and zones of survival, where we can engage in resistant and transformative politics.
1). Fundraise and Donate Money to Pro-Abortion Campaigns
This might seem the most obvious, but in the terrible world that capitalism has birthed for us, profit motivates most things. That being said, donating money to pro-abortion campaigns and organizations is one of the easiest things that you can do. I would especially encourage people to donate to organizations that specifically target Black, Brown, and Indigenous people as they tend to be underrepresented in terms of maternal and reproductive health. A startling truth that rings even bitter as Black women are 4x more likely than their White counterparts to die during the process of childbirth. Decreasing the historical precedent and power of Roe v.Wade effectively spotlights but also makes Black women symbolically and literally disappear from our political calculus.
2). Counter-Narratives
As the famous Black feminist poet Audre Lorde once said “I write for those women do not speak, for those who do not have a voice because they were so terrified.” Implicit in Lorde’s statement is that there is a power to writing, speaking, and conjuring up narratives. Whether you are artistically inclined or not, spreading counter-narratives has the potential to disrupt normativity, especially the kind of emboldened white cis-normativity that we see taking center stage throughout the Supreme Court. Creating narratives isn’t just writing stories; it’s piecing together infographics on Instagram; it’s creating a long-ass Twitter thread that also relies upon the contribution of others. Humans are social creatures, and we constantly create meanings to give our lives purpose. To give them breath. To give them narrative.
3). Grassroot Activism
All good social justice activism begins in the home and the community. Wherever you’re at, whether that be Los Angeles; California or Aiken; South Carolina, one of the best ways to help protect abortion rights is through grassroots activism, which can take many different forms. From protesting your local and state governments, volunteering at abortion clinics, or taking a cue from the show She’s Gotta Have It by engaging in public art as a form of resistance and disruption, these micro-level political maneuvers provide the opportunity to create alternative modes of engagement for the way that we interact with structures of power and for what we even think about as being as powerful in the first place.
I can’t claim to be an expert on abortion rights because I’m not. Even still, I refuse to be sidelined, sequenced, and trolled by Federal Government, let alone the Supreme Court. This list is not exhaustive nor did I intend for it to be. This is simply me adding my own counter-narrative into the collage of futures that we’re trying to create.
