To Resist. Revolt. Protest. Strike looks like many things
it looks like ::
going to your classroom to teach your students about their rights, about injustices, about what they can do in the world.

It looks like ::
supporting a woman to birth her baby into her own hands, on her own terms, welcoming a new life with reverence and respect, with peace and deep profound love.  It is nourishing and nurturing the future – peace on earth begins at birth.

Protest looks like…
keeping my money in my pocket, in jars, under my mattress. It looks like not supporting corporations with my money. It looks like giving my business to small shops that are the foundation of my community. It looks like buying art.

It looks like making art.

It looks like… planting wild flowers. Planting food for the bees. Planting food bushes and trees. It looks like throwing seeds wrapped in mud in empty garden plots that are designed to stay mowed, stay flat, stay monochrome green.

It looks like… picking up the litter from a passerby. Carrying a bag with me and picking up after other people who seem to not care. Resistance to their ignorance and blind disregard of the planet we all share. Our only home.

It looks like.. turning off the TV. Silencing the propaganda, the consumerist messages, the outrageous stories deemed newsworthy, but just enough shock value to tell you how you’re killing your family with the food you made– tonight – after dinner.

Resist. It looks like choosing yourself. Choosing your whole damn self to wrap up with your own arms and love.  It looks like autonomy, and firm no. and solid yes. It looks like reflection and time considered.

Rise up. It looks like listening. It looks like taking your sweet white privilege and sitting on your hands with your mouth closed for a second, so that She can speak. And you listen. And you hear. And you look into her eyes and you nod – you nod ‘I hear you. I believe you’ . you nod ‘I am a safe space to hold this reality you are living’  you nod. With a quiet mouth, and you move forward, moved by her words, her wounds, her story, her uprising. You nod in solidarity – black lives matter.

Revolt looks like.. choose public transportation. Choose your own legs, your own two wheels, the city bus, carpool. It looks like – don’t let another damn car mow over this road, another paved road ripping through forests and fogging up your lungs.
Resist. Protest. Revolt. Strike
Looks like.. reading a book, written by a woman, by a woman of colour.

Looks like.. questioning everything. Taking apart everything you think you know and asking ‘why’ – why do I believe this? What formed this belief? What is the root of it all? Where did this come from?

Looks like.. growing out the hair that society shames you into removing. Knowing your body in it’s natural state for a little while. Just to try on, because why not. Again. Asking the questions. Why do I do this? Why do I feel this way?

Looks like… volunteering your time to an organization, to a person, to an elderly neighbour. To cutting their grass, feeding their dog, making a meal for their freezer.

Looks like organizing a gathering. Of people to sit, face to face, in circle. Sharing food, stories, laughter, tears. It looks like being in community with people – togetherness.

Looks like.. feeding my child from my breast. Knowing my cycle. Choice in reproductive health care.

Revolting. Rioting. Protesting. Striking. It looks like many things. It looks like burning shit up, and tucking little bodies into bed safely. It looks like smashing the patriarchy, while reading princess stories to your kids.

Your body is a landscape of riotous order. Your birth was the body asking to be born. Asking for air. Asking to fill it’s lungs with a scream of life.

-e.darcy
February 27th, 2017