Hey Y’all,
This is my last day here in Montgomery and my final audio reflection. As I moved through all the legacy sites this week, I struggled with this question: how do you face evil and still have faith in the unseen?
I also struggled with the notion that we should be trying to save democracy or preserve aspects of it. Or, reimagine a future built on political, philosophical, and governmental frameworks that undergirded colonialism, dispossession, slavery, Jim Crow, and state violence. Why can’t we throw democracy in the trash and imagine a different kind of system altogether, one we don’t currently have a name for? What I’ve learned from history is that Empire’s deepest power is its ability to make people believe that their oppression is permanent and that creating something new is simply unimaginable.
I’m leaving Montgomery thinking about what it means to have faith in the unseen. I’m thinking about the limits of democracy, how white supremacy is irreparable, and how we can imagine and build a post-imperial world. What kind of relationships and forms of freedom will we build after the fall of American Empire? Because it is falling. How do we fix our minds to imagine what does not yet exist?
Come go with me . . .
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