Within this inheritance Meridel, her mother Marian, and her daughter Rachel placed inside me a secret relationship to this core message. It was a quiet secret with a loud message—an invisible membership card. I belonged to a movement. To a legacy. The loud part was the conviction that it was not my birthright based on monarchy. It was not passed through a bloodline. Woven into the fabric and embedded in the code was the message that this was as much anyone’s legacy to claim as it was mine. But it was also mine. This secret that I belonged to a movement has kept me steady amid many storms, breakdowns, conflicts and catastrophes, equipping me with the tools to wade through our movements’ struggles with disposability, unprincipled practices, and weaponizing of our shared language and concepts to gain or maintain control. I see how conditional belonging operates in our movements. I see how a lack of belonging impacts one’s ability to stay in and show up as their full creative, human, evolving, imperfect selves. Risk taking and contribution shrink in response to these conditions. Imagination is diminished. I want something different for all of us. I want to share my unshakeable belonging.

Essay on The Girl--Unshakeable Belonging:
Mutual Aid, Movement Ancestors, and Illuminating a Path Forward, by Becka Tilsen
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