Two days after the presidential election in 2016, I flew down to Miami where I was scheduled to work with a local labor union on diversity, equity and inclusion issues. It felt like an impossible task. The plans that I’d developed with my co-facilitators a month before had to be tossed out the window so that we could make space for people to simply grieve. The employees of the union had been working for over a year to elect Hillary Clinton and they took the loss very hard. But more importantly, they knew that a Donald Trump win posed a very real and dangerous threat to their lives and those of their loved ones. As a group of mostly women, people of color and immigrants, they were now targets and were shocked into the reality that millions of people in this country chose a xenophobic, racist misogynist as its leader—directly after electing the first black president. It was devastating. They felt under attack for who they were. People grappled with the very idea of having to talk to Trump voters and how to make sense of what was to come next.
When I finished that very difficult work (which involved many tears, including my own), I ended the trip by visiting with my dear friend Crystina. It was Crystina who first told me about this concept of safety pins being worn as a symbol of solidarity with vulnerable people. Crystina and I have been friends for several years and knowing her well and having witnessed her activism on issues related to social justice, I had no doubt that she would actually intervene in a situation where a minority, immigrant, woman or LGBTQ person was being harmed in some way. But I had serious doubts. I didn’t trust that safety pins were anything other than performance—a symbol designed to make the wearer feel better about their allyship but not a guarantee that they had done any actual work to learn about systems of oppression and injustice nor would they do anything about injustice when confronted with it happening in front of them. Crystina and I debated the benefits of wearing safety pins and the good they would do. I remember specifically wondering whether or not black people were even wearing them and if it was necessary to, considering that we were targets in Trump’s America too. Upon leaving her house, she gave me a hug and a big safety pin to wear on my sweater. Still unconvinced, I took it off in the airport, for fear that it would set off the metal detector. I never did put it back on. But I did continue to engage in debates about their usefulness.
Apparently, around that same time, Marissa Jenae Johnson and Leslie Mac were also debating the utility of wearing safety pins as a practice of allyship. The two women, who have a long history of being organizers in the movement for black lives, met online and were in Jamaica on vacation together right after the election when they heard about this idea of people wearing safety pins to show support. This led them to create Safety Pin Box, a monthly subscription for white allies interested in tangible activities they can do to be allies in the fight for black liberation. I was with Marissa and Leslie at BlogHer 17 in Orlando, Florida earlier in June where they received a Voice of the Year award for Impact (full disclosure: I was an honoree as well in the written work (long) category). I had the pleasure of meeting Leslie then and interviewing Marissa a few days later. They are both unapologetic about their commitment to speaking truth to power and about why their work is important for ending anti-black racism.
from Daily Kos http://ift.tt/2uem52j
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