Every aspect of our lives is guided by the demands of work and corporations. In our society – run by business and money – we are considered “things” and not people. We are reduced to labor, wages, and products. This leaves little to no time for us to determine or explore who we “really” are beyond that.
Our jobs determine our identities, when and if we have children (and how many we can afford), our gender, our relationships with one another (intimate and otherwise), who and how we worship, what type of work we do (or don’t do), where we live– you get the picture.
Poverty puts so much stress on our lives that we take it out on one another — and women and children bear the brunt. The leading cause of death for Black women is domestic violence. Muslim women faced an increase in domestic violence post 9/11. The stress caused by the violence of capitalism and fear is literally killing us.
Our generation is the most economically productive generation yet we are the most in debt, the most anxious, the most medicated, and the most addicted. We are dying younger than our parents and grandparents.
The freedom to be is about living a life beyond survival; a life focused on fulfilling our wildest dreams and our most creative pursuits, rather than competing against one another for crumbs.
Ask yourself: who would you be if money wasn’t a concern? Who would you be with, if work wasn’t a concern? Where would you live? What would you do?
Each of us has great potential and the opportunity to pursue it should not just be afforded to those who control corporations in this country. Women are more than mothers. Men are more than emotionless stones. We are more than men and women. To be fully human is a right, not a privilege.
By virtue of being born, each of us has the absolute right to become our greatest potential. We demand immediate attention and to the opioid crisis and a drastic restructuring of society so that we no longer have to cope to get by. We demand the end of capitalism, white supremacy, patriarchy, antiblackness, homophobia, transphobia, and ableism. We demand a moral reckoning in our country that recognizes the great human potential of coming together, an end to the corporate control of our state and a government that values all of us, over profit for a few.
