WHITE MAROON MXNIFESTO
WHITE MAROON MXNIFESTO
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We are a community where people can unpack their whiteness in a brave, liberated space. We recognize this as an eternal process. We believe that privilege should be a tool to undermine the structure that is dictating the privilege, if not all social injustices. We remove the shame sometimes associated with privilege from the self. If anywhere, it is to be directed towards the system that dictates the privilege. Due to the atrocities, genocides and oppression caused by white supremacy and white Anglo Saxons, we specifically recognize our role in being the first to strike a blow, putting our white bodies on the frontlines and leveraging our white-bodied privilege in doing so. We engage in the revolution with militancy as we fight to alleviate and eradicate the white supremacy that we have inherited from our ancestors (and share the legacy of our ancestors that have resisted and stood in solidarity), that lives in our families, communities and in our own bodies. We are a community that shows up with love, power, humility, courage, receptivity, solidarity, education and praxis.
We fight, educate and prefigure, inspired by many freedom fighters who we aspire to resemble: John Brown, Newton Knights, the Weather Underground, Ohio 7, Laura Whitehorn, David Gilbert, Jaan Lamaan, to name only a few.
10-point program:
(1) As white Maroons we follow the revolutionary leadership of Black, Brown, Indigenous, and Asian Maroons and form a rainbow of resistance against oppression toward liberation. We learn ideologically and ontologically from Black, Brown, Indigenous, Asian and white Maroons like Fred Ho, Russell “Maroon-Harun” Shoatz, John Brown and others by putting their teachings into praxis. Our praxis is the practice of taking everyday actions from the teachings of the 5 tenants of the maroon party for liberation, of the principals of the Art of War, Ominous Paratis and others.
(2) We recognize that whiteness is a construct with an extremely oppressive and real impact in society. We work constantly to challenge and dismantle white supremacy, racism, racialized capitalism and patriarchy, which are intertwined and at the root of many if not all social and environmental injustices. We do this by any and all means necessary in our actions, hearts and minds on a personal, communal and institutional level to create a liberated society.
(3) We ensure that everyone in society is valued, supported and feels a part of the fabric of community by continually checking in, listening, observing and deconstructing/destroying toxic patterns of “othering” and other internalized forms of white supremacy.
(4) We move our consciousness more along the lines of an Indigenous one and look at our privilege as an obligation and responsibility. We remember and learn from the indigenous ways of our ancestors that have been attempted to be wiped out by patriarchy and capitalism yet not destroyed, restoring our (spiritual) connection with mother earth, educating white people in our communities and gathering resources. We utilize our privilege as a weapon by freely sharing connections, skills, resources, time, and influence when and where they are necessary.
(5) We go back to the source of practices, rituals, as deep as possible and debunk existing myths and misrepresentation of herstory, honoring what really happened and not allowing our herstory and society to be whitewashed and partiarchified. This means the praxis of constant assessment of our cadre and ourselves in relationship with the overarching, power grabbing, patriarchal narratives. This means learning and teaching the true stories of revolutionary matriarchs such as Queen Nanny of the Maroons and Assata Shakur. This means re-learning the reality of unacknowledged atrocities of colonialism and imperialism, the witch burning times, and how the demonization of earth-centered, matriarchal magic divided countless communities with the force of patriarchal fear. We will re-learn and re-share these stories, reading and talking about and focusing attention on the words of Toni Morrison, Octavia Butler, Maya Angelou, Robin Wall Kimmerer. And many other Black, Brown, Indigenous and Asian Matriarchs who are re-writing herstory. This is our everyday praxis. We understand that our privilege can be a burden, and we are strategic about the spaces we take up. We do not ask any Black, Brown, Indigenous or Asian individual to help us understand our own whiteness. Instead, we utilize white maroons, white cadre and similar groups to develop our growing edges and awareness. We continuously challenge ourselves and our communities to “kill” whiteness and all forms of oppression within and around ourselves through unrelenting self examination and community accountability practices.
(6) We place our white bodies in front of police, brutality and oppression on every level, physical or otherwise.
(7) We “kill” mediocrity and liberalism and any form of being reactionary. white maroon work should not be reactionary. We study, study, study and organize, organize, organize. We always remain critical, first and foremost of ourselves. We do not react to be reactionary, we prefigure. We are revolutionaries.
(8) When we see people weaponizing their whiteness, we fight back in a diversity of ways. We make white people aware of harmful words, behaviour and actions and remove them from spaces if necessary. We use our own education and resources to call in folx whose ignorance is harmful. We call on our white cadre to support us if necessary and we are ready to make moves on the ground, to use our bodies, our physical tools and resources to carry out the manifestation of the safety and well-being of Black, Brown, Indigenous and Asian people. We further our education on how to dismantle the indoctrination of white supremacy on all levels of society from education to health to housing to respecting pacha mama.
(9) We understand that undoing whiteness is a lifelong task and will be carried out over several generations. We commit to further that mission every day. In order to undo whiteness we will call our white family, cadre, and allies in rather than out by sharing resources that we have studied. We will create and connect resources for unschooling our children and divesting from the systems of ‘education’ that perpetuate whiteness. We will build new revolutionary systems of creative learning, where children are surrounded in an anti-racist curriculum and lifestyle that teaches their true white maroon herstory and our natural and spiritual connection with our fellow rainbow human beings, the lands, arts & culture, wisdom & griots.
(10) white maroons do soul work with the intention of making our hearts open to the infinite possibilities of how to love. Our praxis is anchored in critical love for ourselves, our comrades, and the revolution. we step up for the people we care for, creating motion to support and protect them. because our love is critical, we never love blindly. There is deep intention behind why we love. We use our love to interrupt, to demand, to bind urgency and patience into one. our love sifts through history, handful by handful, to discover and understand the continuous injuries that white supremacy has caused. We acknowledge that whiteness is used as a weapon of destruction that can only be dismantled with an overwhelmingly powerful love, harnessed through our collective work centered around the oneness of love. our love is liberation.