silence is killing us
death is the final silence and it’s coming for us all if we don’t say what’s on our minds and call for revolution
It’s been almost two months since my first post when I told myself I’d start sharing my thoughts out. I meant to start sharing regularly, but I’ve been stuck in analysis paralysis because it’s not that I don’t know what to say. It’s that I have too much. I have so many ideas written down, saved as drafts, but to me, they’re not “refined” so they’re not ready to be shared.
I have perfectionist's block, not writer's block.
To break it, I realized that I'm going to have to practice sharing since I’m not used to doing it. While I mainly want to share analyses about the world, fear of criticism holds me back. I don’t feel ready to confront that yet, so I’m going to practice by sharing an analysis about myself—about why I’ve struggled speaking up in my life. In writing this and putting it out there, I hope it’ll be easier to talk about things that are more important.
(I’m pretty uncomfortable talking about myself, let alone online. I keep thinking, “Who even cares?” and “What’s the point?” I’m cringing and feel like throwing up at the thought of writing and posting this, but I feel like it’s necessary, for myself and for whoever might be feeling the same way as me. So, here we go…)
When it comes to sharing, I know the barriers I face of fear and perfectionism are not unique to me. They are characteristics of white supremacy culture designed to keep us all from speaking our truths so that our collective voices don’t shatter the lies that maintain this capitalist hellhole. Breaking these barriers has been the biggest challenge of my life so far because I’ve internalized that how I act is just who I am.
I now see that fear and perfectionism are not only barriers keeping me from living as my fullest self, but they are also puppet strings keeping me complicit with capitalism. In freeing myself, I want to help others cut their strings so we can take out the puppeteers (profiteers) and live liberated in a communist world.
For me, there are two specific fears that I face when it comes to speaking up. One is the fear of being perceived. (Content warning: suicidal ideation.) Since I was 12, I’ve hated existing and wished I could disappear. Any chance I have, I’ve always shut myself away in my bedroom to retreat from the outer world and into my inner one. It’s how I learned to feel safe and how I tried to simulate a world without me in it. Participating as little as possible in life was how I coped with being alive while almost always wanting to die.
I realized that isolating myself only gave me the illusion of safety. I still suffer because the collective is still suffering. I was only distracting myself from feeling the suffering with technology and THC. If I want all our suffering to end, I have to contribute to the collective to help bring about that change. That can only happen if I communicate my inner world to the outer by saying what I’m thinking.
The other fear I face is being misunderstood. It happens so often in person because I struggle to reflect what I feel inside on the outside. Online, I have more control since I can edit my thoughts before releasing them, but then I keep editing and never releasing because I think of all the ways my words can be (mis)interpreted. I know it’s going to happen no matter what I do though, so I’m trying to figure out what “good enough” looks like because I know that “perfect” is a myth.
If cultural conditioning wasn’t enough, I was also conditioned from the start of my life that my voice doesn’t matter. Growing up, “conversations” with my parents were more like monologues from them. They’d just keep talking without asking for or responding to my input, so I learned to shut up rather than speak up. We also never really ate meals together or talked about what was going on in our lives. Emotional neglect did a number on my communication skills... as if being autistic wasn’t enough.
In 2014, I was first radicalized with the murders of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. I was in high school, and those around me either didn’t know or didn’t care, with some even justifying their deaths. My closest friends at the time whined about how Ferguson flooded their Tumblr dashboard, so they’d unfollow anyone posting about it because they only cared to see anime. My anger being surrounded by apathy and absolution was just another way of the world telling me to shut up, don’t speak up. My first political awakening and political suppression happened at the same time. The suppression won out, and I haven’t spoke out since.
A decade later, atrocities like murder by police brutality are not only common but increasing with collapsing capitalism and rising fascism. When israhell escalated its 75-year genocidal terrorist campaign against the Palestinians in October, I had just moved to New York City one month prior. I immediately jumped into organizing, which I had no experience with, because that was why I moved in the first place. I was tired of sitting on the sidelines watching the world fall apart and doing nothing. However, I soon learned that my body could not keep up with all that I wanted to do. Trying to work, organize, and adjust to a new city while masking (physically and metaphorically) because everyone I knew was new took its toll. Taking on so much change at once landed me in the depths of autistic burnout by the end of January, where I could hardly do anything but eat and sleep for 3 months.
While I hated having to take a step back, I had faith that the depravity of a genocide documented in real time and funded by the U.S. government with taxpayer dollars would wake the working class up to finally see that only a revolution to overthrow capitalism can bring an end to all this. Over 6 months later, we’re seeing sparks of revolution now with student encampments spreading across college campuses. But we need more sparks if we’re to ignite a fire large enough to burn down this blood-soaked capitalist system. Every voice that calls for revolution is a spark, yet I’d been holding mine back this whole time. How individualistic of me.
In my silence, I also realized that I was being an armchair activist. I’d been to a handful of protests at first but stopped going because I felt like they didn’t make a difference. Military aid bills still passed. Ceasefire measures were still vetoed. U.S. politicians doing literally the opposite of what we’ve been demanding made it so clear to me they don’t care how many times we flood the streets because our power is not in our voices. Our power is in our labor and consumption, so without collectively withholding that, I didn’t see a point in going to protests. I thought that any action that wasn’t direct action didn’t matter.
What I failed to realize until now is that protests are just the beginning. They’re where you meet the people who feel the same way you do, again and again. It’s a powerful way to be connected to the collective. In my cynicism and individualism, I forgot the most foundational ingredient needed for revolution: community.
I’m coming out of my cocoon now and breaking my silence. I’m adding my voice to the collective choir calling for (communist) revolution. The systems of oppression we live under thrive on silence so we don’t hear each other. They thrive on fear so we don’t love each other.
Silence is complicity. Speaking up is resistance.
It’s never too late to find your voice and start resisting. The reason why multiple genocides are still happening is because there are still too many workers complicit, and so by extension, so many silences to be broken.