Wading in the Waters of Slave Narration, Blade Runner 2049 (A Broke Radical Review)

“Every civilization is built off the backs of a disposable workforce. We lost our stomach for slaves, unless engineered.”

–Niander Wallace

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One of the ways the original settlers worked to solidify the enslavement of stolen African bodies, was by attempting to build a science around reproduction.

The psychological terror, dietary restrictions and grueling hours in itself was enough to deplete the plantation labor force.

Rebellion and the subsequent purges meant high production values replaced by having to reinvest in new bodies, conditioning….

With effective breeding they could control a lineage of workers who would add to productivity, so as to ensure their dynasties ad infinitum.

Building a world so reliant on labor meant ensuring the boundless accessibility to an underclass to do the actual work.

Advancements in technology tout an end goal of moving beyond human, and yet many scientific leaps are made with the express purpose of extending, as opposed to extinguishing human and (non)human life.

I make this distinction because in reimagining a future where humanity and machine coexist means recreating the very class hierarchy that allows power to be held by a few.

I am not of the belief that white supremacy hinges on the physical eradication of non white bodies.

Rather, in order for whiteness to remain the default definition of personhood, antiblackness has to be as malleable as the accelerationist model it fuels.

[Disparaging remark scrawled on K’s door]

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Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner film lends credence to the peril of living while non white in a world fueled by the settler economy.

It’s mentioned that the Blackout had erased most records, debt, allowing many replicants to escape from the fury of their plantation owners.

Being white they are able to effectively hide amongst their white human counterparts.

Meanwhile, humanity is force fed garish holographic delights, processed food from vending machines and replicant sex workers in legal brothels.

This underclass still thrives, having adopted a market economy based on trade, street vendor savvy and a collective will to outlast the gods that left them behind.

People also no longer have to deal with the psychological strain of determining whether their quarry is replicant or human.

Humanity is instead left to collect the flotsam of a world wrought by climate change, war and economic ruin.

Making due on an earth pillaged by the mega rich, who have taken their imperialist desires to the stars.

Still policed by archaic laws and totalitarianism.

It also stands to reason that the nuclear fallout and climatic changes have forever altered the way most carbon based life was able to reproduce.

The titans of industry had to find a way to re-insert human labor into the economy.

Most animal life in this iteration is synthetic and given more redeemable value, as rarity, than replicants.

The replicant is completely stripped of any semblance of humanity parceled out post Civil War and reconstituted via the Civil Rights Act.

Steeped in a different type of social death. Created for pleasure, terraforming newly colonized worlds or military service.

Giving the replicant a white face hints at the possibility of humanity within these synthetic beings.

As many a black scholar has pointed out, white supremacy thrives on the fugitive status of a people completely cut off from their legacy.

This includes having one reduced to visible identifiers, stripped of autonomy, explained away by philosophy as a negative force to be tamed.

Antiblackness takes root within the mechanics, the very lifeblood of what it means to be a progressive economic and social system within the greater neo-global hierarchy.

When stories of enslaved black bodies get told, Hollywood is fishing for white sympathy with an express interest in profit. The body is a prop.

Phillip K. Dick’s future, like most of our favorite sci fi titans, had no real investment in inclusivity, or faces that didn’t match their own.

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K: “I’ve never retired something that was born before.”

Madam: “What’s the difference?”

K: “To be born is to have a soul I guess.”

Madam: “Are you telling me no?”

K: “I wasn’t aware that was an option madam.

Madam: “Attaboy. Hey, you’ve been getting along fine without one.”

K: “What’s that madam?”

Madam: “A soul.”

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K is a replicant hunter-killer, a newer model with a longer life span, advanced memory implants.

Greater cognitive skills than the older Nexus models built by the Tyrell Corporation. He’s the perfect slave catcher.

His human masters have given him enough freedom that he has even cultivated a simple home life with a holographic girlfriend.

K is tasked with hunting down the origin of an ossuary found beneath a dead tree.

The bones of a long dead replicant reveal a truth that died with Tyrell. A prize that will allow the Wallace Corporation to colonize even more planets.

For Niander Wallace, reverse engineering Tyrell’s science, he could shift his focus from creating a new line of replicants to solidifying his God status among humans.

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During this investigation K begins to lose his conditioning in typical everyman fashion, failing his baseline tests and eventually going rogue.

The promise of participating in a miracle pressing the replicant to cosign to mayhem.

Be counted as more than machine. Atonement and citizenship.

The replicant, as Other, seeking validation within a system built on his back.

These Outsiders gathering in darkness whispering of rebellions. K wants to thrive within the system, not overthrow it.

Seeking validation amongst his people is an illogical choice. The other choice only leads to a glorious death.

This is the origin story of our time spent as wanderers in the hollow.

Ours has been a fight to reclaim our spiritual, mental health, reproductive and the most basic of human rights.

The upheavals, rebuilding, putting in a consistent bid to live. Puzzle piecing the flotsam of our existence, so thorough was the thunderstorm of enslavement.

Despite reports to the contrary, the fugitive will always have a place here.

Be it the vanguard or the back room, we’re forever tied to the machinations of the European ethno-state. It is only just that we persevere long enough to watch it fall into dust.

The Precarious Art of Not Belonging

June is upon us, and it’s time for a full tilt month of queer affirmation, sass and reminders that cops and cis-normative folks can take a back seat.

That the white gay community has alot to atone for and miles to go before the rest of us feel any semblance of inclusion.

That black and brown transwomen put it on the line for us and that unless we strengthen our advocacy our celebrations are merely a party we use to drown out their voices.

Saturday was the Pridefest BBQ where I live.

When my family and I arrived, Salem and my oldest son Lucien bee lined towards the bathroom. Leaving me and the toddlers to slowly weave our way through the crowd of multi-aged, happily oblivious white gays congregating ‘neath the bandstand.

I already suffer from social anxiety and it’s always amplified when I’m amongst a white crowd. So me and the babies found an empty spot under a tree, eating snacks brought from home while waiting.

As various pairs of eyes slide away from our presence I wondered if what it was that made me so uneasy. Why I wanted to gather up my beautiful babies and run back towards the bus stop.

Scanning the crowd, I spotted enough non-white people to fit into an SUV, and even this did little to set me at ease.

I felt like I wasn’t needed, wanted, or allowed within this sacred space. Made me think of the scene in Pose where Blanca was forcibly removed from the all male and mostly white gay bar while demanding to be served.

I’m not trans, but being a black, middle aged, disabled, newly self actualized queer person comes with it’s own aura of seclusion.

Even after four years of letting myself become comfortable with identifying out loud, I still did not feel a sense of kinship. Even spotting and briefly mingling with members of my QTPOC group, my heart was squeezed by grief. They’re all much much younger than I.

I think this is the bigger issue for me. I’ve always felt different, and have existed within that nether region where individuals who have struggled with identity are often banished. Because we’re not enough. We don’t present a certain way. Our aesthetic does not please the eye of the more tenured gays, black or white.

Now….. full disclosure, I came to this crossroads after having spent a majority of my life not only benefitting from passing privilege, but also growing up in a very misogynistic, patriarchal environment. Then prison, where coming to fruition as queer was dangerous and detrimental.

By the time I was ready to dismantle the past my worldview was tainted by internalized homophobia and misogynoir.

I’ve had the advantage of safety within the greater black community due to my AMAB presentation. And now that I’ve moved away from this, embracing a more genderflux attitude, that community is closed to me, for better or worse.

I grieved for the loss of safety even though that safe space was problematic due to the long term effects of colonized erasure.

I grieved for the multiple murders of black transwomen. I grieved for the for those who also felt dismissed and chose to stay away from the gathering. I grieved for the loss of my family that chose transphobia over understanding and true acceptance.

I sat with the pain as the mostly white crowd ate, talked and flaunted their comraderie.

Today, I’m finding reasons to celebrate my own growth. I choose to continue loving how far I’ve come. I choose to celebrate my chosen queer, trans, neuro-divergent, disabled family. I celebrate how we uplift one another, break free from the stereotypes, rebel against settler colonialism, poverty and environmental terrorism.

I celebrate my blackness, self hood and independence from a world where my life is less. Because my soul is cleansed.

I celebrate because no one else will do it for me.

Bodies, Space and Spectrum: close

“The virtual operates as a promise of immanence, the indwelling force of
things waiting, pressing, ready to act. As an immanent power, the virtual is often deferred, sometimes materialized, but always charged with the capacity to help us feel like we belong.”

– Shaka McGlotten

Virtual Intimacies

Media, Affect and Queer Socialities

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I’ve always been a wanderer.

I’d always had dreams of leaving the place where I was born. Knowing that I was leaving behind a loving family. Needing to live my own life.

In doing so I have learned that a desire to be rooted is instilled in us.

My roots are black, heavy with the weight of generational trauma, hard hustling, addiction and abuse.

I have a huge family and I remember them all fondly.

Not to mention extended family; sex workers, pimps, gangstas, cons, gamblers.

These folks were also entrepreneurs, accountants, small business owners and CEO’s, enhancing my existence on a soundtrack of blues music and juke joint smells….

It was a patriarchal upbringing, embedded with southern Baptist mythology and PTSD related to surviving Jim Crow era America.

It wasn’t picturesque. Along with the beauty came hardship, poverty. For every advantage there was loss.

I’ve never beefed with, hated on or knocked the hustle of any of my kin. I was just never around. So many of our formative years were spent growing distant, developing our own existence within this uneven social experiment called democracy.

Social media brought us all together. We gained an opportunity to catch up, to peer at one another. Often it’s difficult to look past the person you remembered from five months or 20 years ago. Some of us have grown comfortable with being respectable, responsible and ‘grown’ in the Obama aftermath.

Some……embraced rebellion.

It was these divisions along class and economic lines that made it easier for us to disengage. Until not even social media could keep us close.

Growing up within black culture will forever be an anchor for my sanity.

As I’ve grown I’ve worked everyday to deconstruct all the internalized bullshit that came with it. Use my privilege to be a better accomplice, loved one, parent and partner. Take the lessons learned and retrofit that shit so I can use it to put down new roots.

I have those memories and sensations tucked in my back pocket. For those moments when I yearn for the feeling of community I once knew.

Life has moved on and so we’ve grown. Elders have been laid to rest and we continue getting back to the blueprint. This sometimes means uprooting notions of safety in the interest of real survival.

This is an all too common kind of severance as we continue to challenge societal gender, sex and class norms. Most of my chosen family has also had to slowly or abruptly untangle their own ties. While also dealing with overlapping trauma and erasure because they are queer, trans, disabled and neuro-divergent persons.

Being silenced, scorned or encouraged to assimilate. Beaten into submission by religious dogma, physical violence and economic terrorism.

In order to survive we have to leave behind those close, comfortable places. Find our solace amongst the new green and unfelt slices of sunshine.

Those who truly know me understand the gravity of my decision. How it’s left me adrift, functioning on pure stubborn and love.

But as I grieve I grow. I’d do it all over again without hesitation.

My partner, children are important, seen and relevant. The chosen family I advocate with are actual and deserving of a place to feel close to. Their safety and mental well being outweighs any second guessing.

As is and has been prophesied, you lose one family to gain another.

These are the making of my beautiful black self.

Queer Radical Nonmonogamy in White Spaces

I speak for myself when I say that interracial relationships are not inherently revolutionary. I don’t believe there’s a magical moment when your partner is freed from the privilege they’re born with.

Neither are you presented with a free pass from micro- aggresions, institutional terrorism or state sanctioned murder. The distinguishment of being Other means the violence is more brutal.

Recently I discovered that some within my local QTPOC group are also nonmonogamous. Varying degrees of course. Even more striking, most of us are in interracial relationships.

One of our biggest dating concerns within this town is finding other queer, nonwhite partners with whom we can vibe with about relatable issues.

It’s not an immediate concern for me as I’m bouncing back from a serious mental health crisis.

Here in Springfield, Missouri the non white population is markedly minority. Fewer still are involved in Nonmonogamy or social activist movements. Almost none are atheist, anarchist or abolitionist.

Socioeconomics aside, I look at the roots of the town, how ingrained racism and classism are. The black population was depleted by a coordinated attack after the lynching of three innocent black men in 1906. Many moved away after that night. Some stayed, choosing to separate themselves from the horror, and survive in silence. Or they fully immersed themselves into the same community that saw fit to wipe them out.

In the seventies there was an influx of Vietnamese and Korean refugees introduced into the community by the Council of Churches of the Ozarks. A heavy conservative Christian influence has possibly shaped how that community views dating.

The Latinx community has been growing. Being singled out by an administration bent on criminalizing them has caused many to remain in the shadows.

Assimilation has been a vital part of how many marginalized groups survive within Settler Facism.

This division has been transposed into how we coexist here. You see it whether we’re talking job or housing discrimination, education, religion and liberal politics.

With generational trauma comes a bond born from the pain. The simplest things we feel in our souls as a collective. Not everyone is willing to act accordingly when those feels present themselves.

Many laud this town as a bastion of fruitful integration just because there are so many interracial couples and biracial children amongst the white population. Not realizing that familial ties and internalized antiblackness play a strong role in the lack of black couples.

The diversity at MSU is used as a selling point as well. But for many of my queer comrades academia is just a more formal brand of dismissal.

None of these liberal statistics extend to those who have been effectively Othered by their white peers. I’m certain that the few within my QTPOC group do not make up the entirety of the nonwhite queer community in Springfield. Some, especially our trans comrades have been so discriminated against, they have chosen to separate themselves from society as a whole.

For one of my other local queer comrades it’s about having someone who will gladly enjoy their family holiday traditions. Allowing the space they’ve discussed sharing with their white partner to also reflect their rich Latinx heritage.

For another, the lack of queer Muslim representation causes them to often fall into depression. Xenophobia runs just as deep here as racism.

Mental illness is another situation not taken into account. We have to rely on a system that is stacked against us, further diminishing our right to find assistance or therapy that takes institutional racism into account.

Like with gentrified polyamory, it’s not my place to force a radical, nonmonogamous, abolitionist view upon all black people. I will rep solidarity given that we’re so heavily immersed in white space.

For me, there’s something healing about mingling with other black folks, whether lovers or family. It’s in our DNA.

Most of my connections are online and long distance. Deep platonic friendships with folks I have genuinely grown to care about and love.

I yearn to strum those threads and connect with other black people. I’m speaking to every black person I come across, because it doesn’t have to be a lifetime of friendship. The briefest ah ha moment as we watch white fuckery commence is a memory that we’ll savor forever.

I’ve said before that I’ve grown comfortable with cultivating long distance relationships with other black queer folks as they present themselves. Doesn’t mean that I won’t continue to hope for actual localized situations to present themselves.

Stirring Atoms in the Necropolis

The “alienation” and “exploitation” that the human worker experiences through labor are contingent conditions resulting from human conflicts.

– Tiffany King

Labor’s Aphasia: Toward Antiblackness as constitutive to Settler Colonialism

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In a recent Indiewire article David Lynch says,

it is “absolutely possible” to create unity among Americans by tapping into the unified field through Transcendental Meditation, a practice championed by the David Lynch Foundation. The director issued a call to action: “All these problems, all these people so bitterly divided, enliven this field, and they affect collective consciousness with bliss, harmony, coherence, love, all these qualities from this field. And you’re going to have a different world.”

Full disclosure: I read up on the various programs his foundation has implemented over the years. They aim at teaching the benefits of TM to war veterans, children displaced by global conflict and incarcerated juveniles. They also work towards having TM taught in schools.

Lynch has also brilliantly created a filmscape filled with happenstance and casual violence. His vast imagination has blinded him to the fact that there is no room in the lives of the disenfranchised to sit still.

This is not unique to him. These days it’s fashionable to be a CEO guru. Using their platform to say, sit with me in this place so that we can all feel love.

We over here like, mufucka, love don’t pay the bills.

Dig it, we’re adept at reclaiming quiet space. On our own terms.

To understand how we claim space you have to understand why we demand that space be given outside of well meaning, white occupied spaces.

Our captivity has moved away from the marked brutality of chattel slavery. During its course, Settler politics has defaced our places of worship, smashed our alters. Population control through genocide and psychological terror effectively made us to cling to hope in service of the Settler gods, or co-opted spiritual teachings presented by the rebellious children of the upper class.

Through income inequality we’re beholden to insert our broken lives into this ratchet alien economy. You’ll have to excuse us while we reclaim the pieces.

What this incessant onslaught can never do was sever our connection to the universe. Social death, Otherness aside, our lives are intertwined with propulsion.

We are shaped by turmoil, movement, hustle. The storm you wish we forget is our refuge. We out in these streets, twerking for our ancestors, sweat mingled with countless lifetimes.

We’ve wandered this wilderness untethered for long enough. Our goddesses and gods have been found again.

They demand a dance of us, a nevertheless attitude, even within those quiet spaces.

Consistency, because bill collectors don’t make allowances for an attempt to will away a late fee.

We pour libations on street corners and beautiful alters. We sing, make beats, ancestor energy working it all out.

And it makes our black and brown skin glow. We speak in tongues in your sacred cubicles. As we toil, bass heavy hymns fill our earbuds, and move our spirit. We’re loud, passionate and don’t have time to sit quietly as our culture is capitalized upon, mocked and coveted.

We got shit to do.

So we find peace with movement, always accomplishing the impossible cause to sit still with you

Means we die.

Radical Nonmonogamy as Praxis IV

Without free and ready access how you gon’ call Tyrone to help you come get yo shit?“

Manifesto Digitalis

(Links provided below with permission)

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Mainstream society in general encourages disfavor towards the poor.

We want to feel protected, and financially stable. Personally, I often and always fact check my own motivations. Are my daily interactions in keeping with the disintegration of apathy, curbing poverty, if even just a little? Am I bringing attention to those even more marginalized and hated than myself?

A large swath of the populous has no disposable income for food, medical or other life threatening emergencies. Many within my circle of loved ones toil daily to make ends while also dealing with mass scale marginalization. This often limits the amount of time they can allot to dating.

Still, many of us proudly proclaim the right to exist and love as autonomous, queer, nonbinary, trans, disabled Nonmonogamous beings. Not surprisingly, those mentioned are also the ones most despised and erased.

Revolutionary syndicalism speaks volumes about the need for the people to move away from third party reliance when State or corporate controlled hierarchy effectively blocks the poor from accessing programs built (supposedly) in their favor. When coupling this philosophy with nonmonogamy you have an opportunity to create a value system steeped in grassroots ideology that is fueled not just by economic value but also decolonized love and gender frameworks.

Outside of nonmonogamy, resource sharing is already no longer limited to a few politically motivated social capitalist groups.

Many non-white, queer, disabled and neurodivergent folks are using social media as a means to encourage grassroots community building.

One enigmatic example would be #cuilverse, created by Michon Neal, a phenomenal force who also has well over twenty years experience dismantling patriarchal relationship dynamics, abuse culture, disability politics and nonmonogamy. Cuilverse is a world unto itself crafted as an alternative to mainstream publication.

Others like the incomparable Creighton Leigh who has been at the forefront of the #waterforflint movement, uses their voice to distribute funds to non men in need, and educate people about the dangers of misogyny.

This work is exhausting, time consuming and oftimes triggering.

It would do well to note that sometimes we have to just check in on our social activist friends and those we follow. Bump and share their posts to induce maximum visibility. Break bread when you are able. Do it without question. Without seeking a return.

These are just two of many examples. Social media fundraising has been a viable asset in our bid to ease the burden of non men who have been forgotten, in poverty, and even in death.

We are not only radicalizing how we love, but bringing attention to radical efforts used to counteract Settler Facism. No one within any marginalized community should have to be overly concerned with how to pay bills, childcare, transportation. In addition, the internet is being threatened by legislation aimed at silencing the voices of dissent. Long distance relationships and monetary pipelines can soon be held for ransom.

Imagine if we continue on a higher level, each non-monogamous group standing tied together through activism, with (decolonized) love being the silk that binds us to the greater good.

Our love practices will continue to evolve. Those who’d benefit most are working more towards bare minimum survival than love practices. This is not to say that we don’t deserve respect, devotion, intimacy and love. In our bid to survive the horrors of a disreputable regime we are seeking to love on our own terms.

I have chosen to deny colonized love’s hold on me. I’d rather surround myself with friends who love me, lovers who aren’t afraid to commit acts of resistance, accomplices willing to deconstruct the system that affords them privilege.

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http://postmodernwoman.com/

https://m.facebook.com/itsmeCreightonLeigh/

Radical Nonmonogamy as Praxis II

“I’ve also come to realize that I can love my friends and accomplices with the same amount of devotion and ferocity given my partner, inside social activist space. This is a true hallmark of radical nonmonogamy, extending my emotional availability to comrades within reason, whether we sleep together or not. This also means being able to consistently accept my failings and work towards being a better (non)human.”

– Untitled, M. Goosby

“Love is not a spackle for the rest of your humanity.”

– Salem Goosby

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Access to Basic Needs:

I think long and often about the mechanics of nonmonogamy. How it can be arranged into something tangible that allows me to continue to build in keeping with the various movements I wish to address through my Otherness.

Many of us are working to ensure bare minimum survival rather than focus on standard issue love practices.

This is not to say that we don’t deserve respect, devotion and intimacy. In our bid to survive the horrors of a disreputable regime we are seeking to love on our own terms.

The distended value system of checks and balances on display in film and TV has no desire to envelop us in its embrace. Any more than liberal politics or mainstream polya is ready to see past respectability jargon or the myriad walls that has safely encapsulated its social capital.

Family obligations, income, mobility, sexuality, gender identity, race, all this factors into the ways in which individuals are able to fit nonmonogamy into their lives.

[Salem doing a nebulizer treatment]

We should be able to concede to one another’s distinct mode of production, and use our mutual resources for upliftment.

Time management, planning dates, budgeting, all of this requires capital, an influx that feeds the machines used to beholden the people to the Gods of Commerce.

A perfect example of this is my daily schedule. I work 8-12 hours regularly. My trip home via public transportation and walking takes an hour minimum. Then when I get home I clean, cook lunch for my toddlers and partner, plan dinner, decompress. All while attempting to engage loved ones and friends. I also write, manage my own mental health and and unpack, to ease the burden of emotional labor on my partner, who is chronically ill and disabled.

We make time to solidify our bond, be it simple conversation, snuggling while binging a show, or intimacy, if I can stay awake long enough!

Our time is precious, accounted for and extremely valuable. We both work within our separate niches to make sure that bills are paid and food is on the table. We engage and educate our children about anti-blackness, Eurocentric settler politics, gender..

Abolitionist work is just as vital to our daily lives, and the lives of the people we interact with via social media. It is only natural that time cultivates something deeper than what we know of love, viewed through a lens crafted from the fires of change. Feelings that surpass physical commitment. Growing with this foundation, relationships that are outside of the boundaries of normalized archetypes. Everyone striving, on their own path, with the same end goal in sight. Growth, financial stability, evolving into an organism that centers and shelters all involved.

If the end game is finding, and expressing love in it’s multitude, then showing solidarity with friends, accomplices and potential lovers who are terrorized by the state is just as vital as finding someone to fuck.