What needs to be seen

O, Laughter, Grief sees
    itself as a knife, carving out what needs

to be seen. See yourself as an ice skater,
    the knives on your feet. Sometimes the pain

bursts out of me like a flock of starlings.
    My throat releases everything but you.

Billionaires are a menace to the rest of us: their sheer political size warps our public life. Disproportionately older, white and male, they function as unelected powers, a sort of freelance global aristocracy who are too often trying to reign over the rest of us. Some critics think that the supergiant tech corporations that have spawned so many modern billionaires operate in ways that resemble feudalism more than capitalism, and, certainly, plenty of billionaires operate like the lords of the Earth while campaigning to protect the economic inequality that made them so rich and makes so many others so poor. They use their power in arbitrary, reckless and often environmentally destructive ways.

I remain convinced that the way home can always be found by following the people who have been working all along for the world we must have. Who refuse to demonize, as easy as it is to do. Who remain dogged in their commitment not only to the vision of another world, but to building it, now. Even when things seem hard and painful and hopeless. As they have for so long. We must look to those teaching truth and liberation now, and let them teach us the way. We must follow them.

In our experiences practicing, teaching, and building out projects connected to RJ and TJ, we frequently hear one of two things: that RJ and TJ are essentially the same thing, or that the two are incompatible — with TJ being seen as better and more just than RJ. It is our belief that both of these understandings are inaccurate, and do a disservice towards growing our collective efforts to challenge punishment, violence, and domination and to create just and meaningful pathways to safety and justice.

Every day, I decide not to come out. In this boxing gym, in this world of men willing to be hit again and again in the face for hours and then hug, men speak openly and often about not being able to sleep the night before a fight, about their brother’s arrest or when they were fat in high school. Everybody has a story. Like mine, it’s rarely visible from the outside. For now, I prefer to guard my most tender parts, and to see them reflected back to me in the stray details of other men’s stories. To be myself, my new and old selves, without having to explain them: I see now, that is what I’m fighting for.

you may wonder why Helen’s fragmentation is even important enough that I’ve spent paragraphs upon paragraphs of this post on it. my answer would be to point to Barbie, yes, but also to the infinite list of the archetypes, expectations, interpretations, and censorships men have imposed on women over the course of history. it’s useless to pretend this doesn’t still happen - one only has to glance over to the Depp v Heard trial or the recent attempts made by Joe Jonas to frame Sophie Turner as a bad mother in the wake of their divorce.