white people love to say we need to fill our hearts with more love in this post-trump world. this upsets me (and many others) greatly, as a denial of our right to anger and resistance. but it also upsets me because it perverts and appropriates what has always been, to me, a critical resistance practice.

when white people say we need to fill our hearts with more love, they most likely do not mean the following. but i do:

love black people. love blackness. unlearn all the anti blackness in you that has been passed down through your own culture, that has perhaps caused you to not love yourself. understand loving blackness as a key underpinning of how to become free.

love people of the same sex. love trans folx. love your friends. love your friends’ children. resist the idea that love only exists in a nuclear family formation between a man and a woman and their biological children. love your friends.

love the earth as if it were another being to be honored rather than another resource to be pillaged. resist the commodification of life in the form of restricted access to clean air and clean water. love the people who are fighting for the love of this earth.

love with humility. know that love means learning and undoing your own ignorance and complicity. love through listening.

love because love is balm against violences perpetuated by the state. recognize this violence in your most loving moments. love not only through feeling, but through actions that dismantle oppression.

love because the emotional and supportive labor of women, queers, and people of color have always been cast aside as unimportant. love because emotional labor is and has always been central, not ancillary, to the building of our movements and communities.

happy holidays, i love you.