Reducing the Gap Between Your Values and Your Actions
Imposter Syndrome Inside Freedom Dreams
Come imagine with us inside the free Worldbuilding Workshop happening this Thursday at 12PM EST. We’ll dream up creative offers supporting collective liberation at the intersection of your skills, the folks you dream of serving, the interdisciplinary practitioners inspiring your politic and your story of transformation.
“You’re on the right path if you are intentionally trying to reduce the gap between your values and your actions.”
These love letters often start in my journal as notes to self before making their way to you. The title of this one comes directly from Kaba whose work I re-visit when I notice the particular restlessness that descends when I don’t know how to move through the overwhelming anxiety, the everyday lack of control. In these moments I also turn to the everyday. I unpack the boxes piling up next to my door. I rearrange my black feminist printed matter collection on the wall. I reorganize the closet to pack away summer and introduce the heavy layers of winter — feeling helpless, ill-equipped and unqualified to act responsibly at this scale of suffering. I remember the words Bedour Alagraa and continue unpacking…
“Asking “is this the right thing to do” won’t get us anywhere. Ask yourself “what is required of me right now, and am I going to do it?” and you’ll move differently.”
Imposter syndrome inside liberation struggle is hairy baggage I want to begin to unpack here. It’s Trans Prisoner Day of Action and Solidarity and you’re thinking about the cousins with life sentences. You’re thinking about how the practice of writing them commits you to walking the dangerous tightrope of your rage. You’re thinking about aunties dying prematurely from being the state’s unofficial social worker, an uncle dying of cancer way too soon because of his zip code, the cousin you don’t know how to protect from her mother’s boyfriend. You’re thinking about 107 days of genocide in Gaza, over 25,000 Palestinians killed with more bodies under the rubble. I continue sorting the mounting feelings of helplessness.
We desperately want to get it right because the stakes are too high. But when we stop asking “is this the right thing to do” and ask “what is required of me right now, and am I going to do it?” we start to notice the ideology of the Age of Enlightenment, the ideology of individuation and neoliberalism, disintegrate. Becoming a beyond human swarm, we move together. We don’t need to be healed before we act. We move together. We don’t need to read one more book before we speak. We move together. We don’t need to be unafraid before we fight. We move together. Yes, the stakes are high. Entirely too high to let our ego play creative director. Entirely too high for decisions rooted in self-preservation prioritizing proximity to whiteness. The stakes are too high to favor research over action, theory over praxis.
“We engage so we don’t keep fucking up in the exact same ways. I want to fuck up in totally new ways.”
As a researcher and recovering perfectionist, this is a reminder I need often. One of the major indicators of imposter syndrome is procrastination fueled by the endless quest for “additional information” from sources outside ourselves. Inside our struggle for liberation perhaps the only sources of information necessary are our breath, our intuition, the needs of our body, the ways of being and knowing inherited from our ancestors, the demands of those most marginalized among us. We don’t need you perfect, we need you practicing — intentionally trying to reduce the gap between your values and your actions everyday.
“Desire was our breastplate.”
— Robin Coste Lewis, To The Realization of Perfect Helplessness, pg. 43
We don’t need you unafraid. We need you available to the generational healing work of dreaming and doing outside of colonial imaginaries, getting it wrong and committing to trying again. In our realization of perfect helplessness, we take imperfect action with desire as our breastplate. After surviving the attacks outside of Al-Nasser, Gaza’s last hospital, Bisan has called a global strike for a permanent and immediate ceasefire from January 21st to the 28th.
Here are a few resource guides to support you in this week of action:
The Palestine Diaspora Movement has created a beautiful Global Strike Guide for striking where you are with the tools you have! The course is broken down in 3 sections: Educate, Advocate, Mobilize.
“Global Strike Prep Guide” by Protect Palestine
“How You Can Strike for Palestine” Guide posted by @sheeekster. You can join their “Daily Actions for Palestine” Broadcast Channel as well.
“Alternative Ways to Answer the Call for A General Strike”, an access oriented guide posted by @thetroublewithbartleby and @the_operating_system.
“Strike Until Ceasefire for Palestine: A Guide for Good Trouble” posted by @theslowfactory
There are no credentials needed, no identification required, no prerequisites necessary, no paperwork to fill out, no certifications to acquire to engage with the swarm of beyond human action. Performing inside white supremacy for so long will have us feeling like imposters inside our own freedom dreams. We must resist this at all costs. Your breath qualifies your action. Your desire to live is all the proof you need. In the realization of perfect helplessness we remember showing up imperfectly and falling into the laps of each other is the only pre-work. Being an artist can not simply be about representing or replicating aesthetics of indigeneity without taking actions that expand solidarity with all indigenous liberation struggles around the globe. As artists our collective mission statement is to make revolution irresistible4, one way we start to do this is through the labor of fundamentally restructuring our imaginations toward building worlds where genocide is impossible.
“But let us be clear: A poem is not the hands that pull a child from rubble. A poem is not the finger on the trigger of a resistance fighter’s gun. A poem is not the sound of rockets being launched from the besieged territories. A poem is not a protest, it is not a rally, it is not a march. It is not scripture, it is not sanctuary. A poem is not a revolution.”
— Jamila Osman, “the guerrilla is like a poet” on Amani Bin Shikhan’s blog
While understanding a poem is not a revolution, we offer support to comrades on the front lines risking their physical lives for our collective body. For the swarm, we strike where we are with the tools we have. We ask what is required of me right now and then we do it. With desire as our breastplate we do this work because it is the only work worthy of us. We commit to fucking up in new ways because experiments rooted in the queer black and indigenous imaginary are the ones worthy of our futures. We intentionally try to reduce the gap between our values and our actions because it’s the only practice worthy of our life(time).
The Worldbuilding Workshop
The values, mission and vision animating my public practice inside Seeda School can be found here and I’m trying to reduce the gap between them and my actions every single day. Won’t you join me inside this practice on Thursday, the 25th at 12PM EST?
Inside this Worldbuilding Workshop we will reflect on:
Skills: The creative skills you wish to offer inside the commitment to collective liberation.
Community: Who you’re accountable to and who you dream of serving through your practice.
Transformation: Our availability to be transformed. We’ll look at the ways we’ve been transformed in search of seed data.
Lineage: The creative practitioners, freedom fighters and black feminists animating our politic.
No matter your calling and role for collective liberation, we should all be practicing at the intersection of the skills aligned with our breastplate of desire, the folks we dream of serving, a transformation praxis and an informed political lineage. I want to invite you to register for this free Worldbuilding Workshop happening this Thursday, January 25th at 12PM EST and we’ll collectively reflect on all four. I hope you’ll join us in remembering the true imposter is the white supremacist in our head and hearts trying to convince us safety is only possible inside fear instead of relation5.
Further Artwork Artist Citation: Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo writes
Note: The original publication of this newsletter stated, “After surviving the collapse of Al-Nasser, Gaza’s last hospital, Bisan has called a global strike for a permanent and immediate ceasefire from January 21st to the 28th.” It has been updated to read: “After surviving the attacks outside of Al-Nasser, Gaza’s last hospital, Bisan has called a global strike for a permanent and immediate ceasefire from January 21st to the 28th” to clarify the hospital is still in operation albeit with intense bombing in the surrounding area. Source
A quote from the January spread of the 2024 Transformative Justice Wall Calendar by Mariame Kaba. On the first page of the calendar Kaba reminds us, “There are no experts in transformative justice. We are all called to labor. We are all called to do our part. It’s a collective project so we’re all responsible. That’s actually a comfort because it means that no one person is responsible for coming up with the answers. After all, no one person is responsible for the mess we’re in. We’re all complicit. It’s just a matter of degree. So we all have a part to play in transforming our conditions and ourselves.” All proceeds raised through the sale of the calendar support REBUILD.
As seen in a screenshot from a tweet posted by @book.andbouquets.
A quote from the January spread of the 2024 Transformative Justice Wall Calendar by Mariame Kaba.
“As a culture worker who belongs to an oppressed people my job is to make revolution irresistible.” ― Toni Cade Bambara, Conversations with Toni Cade Bambara
Screenshot of slide from Teaching and Learning as "PRIMITIVE HYPERTEXT” led by Kameelah Janan Rasheed (
) with support from Elizabeth Pérez through the School for Poetic Computation.