Yesterday, I was able to tag along with Professor Marshall, Dr. Thomas of the History department, and two other students to the #JusticeForFlint fundraiser in Flint, MI. I got to take a picture with Vic Mensa and I survived a heart attack after Janelle Monae looked at me for the SECOND time.
But that isn't the sole reason for this blog post. Last Monday 7 different student organizations and academic departments sponsored a Black Feminism/Womanism Forum. I organized it and gave the introduction. In that introduction a posed a question in a similar form as Meno at 80d of Plato's Meno. How do we as Black people know what liberation is if we have know idea of what freedom looks like? The feminist response, it seems, to oppression is creativity love. And I think the feminist response to that question is creativity and love as well.
The Meno-esque problem is an epestimic one but the feminist answer is an aesthetic one -- an ethical one. Oppressed peoples are required to create the world they want to live in and center love in it. That's what the #JusticeForFlint fundraiser felt like to me. In the face of environmental racism and violence (that is, a poisoning of predominately Black and Brown people's water) is a concert and organizing. Aesthetic and ethic.
This event allowed me to make more sense of Audre Lorde's charge that poetry is not a luxury. Poetry is a product of creativity. And sense creativity is the response to oppression, shouldn't poetry be included in it?
Responding with love reminded me of the image of a student protest - I don't recall which one - where a student placed a flower on the barrel of a Military Policeman's rifle. Responding with love and creativity is a way to fight back without propagating more violence and hate. Poetry, as we've seen in this class, is a very pure and often beautiful form of expression. The passion we see and hear in the spoken word makes me think that poetry definitely has a place in any movement.
ReplyDeletein* the barrel
Delete