We cannot afford to do our enemies' work

by destroying each other

“You do not have to be me in order for us to fight alongside each other.  I do not have to be you to recognize that our wars are the same.  What we must do is commit ourselves to some future that can include each other and to work toward that future with the particular strengths of our individual identities. And in order to do this, we must allow each other our differences at the same time as we recognize our sameness.” -Audre Lorde, Learning From the 60s

Every so often, I return to read Audre Lorde’s address “Learning from the 60s” she gave at Harvard University as a part of the celebration of Malcolm X in 1982. I encourage you to read it in its entirety: “Hopefully, we can learn from the 60s that we cannot afford to do our enemies’ work by destroying each other.”

This is where I’m at emotionally.

I also keep thinking about the early places and people that radicalized me. The places where I learned and unlearned hard lessons about working with and in community, knowing the road ahead will be uphill. Spaces that were supposed to be revolutionary where men still took up too much space, and we learned we could make new spaces where this wasn’t acceptable, and we did just that. Where working (and often living) together was much harder than I expected. Where the wins were usually small but felt huge. And this was enough to keep doing it. When I had so much energy and didn’t need to sleep much, if at all. Where I learned to be disappointed in people I thought I could rely on and also met some of my friends for life who taught me how to manage my expectations. People I have grown with and feel grateful to be still doing the work with. Loves that I will keep close to my heart forever.

Black Cat Cafe, Roosevelt Way, Seattle. Circa 1994

The Black Cat Cafe in Seattle was one of these early spaces that existed outside of house shows and all-ages clubs we were lucky to have in the 90s. I was part of a second, or maybe a third, wave of collective owners, not even understanding the weight of the responsibility I was signing up for as a 17-year-old anarchist. I definitely would be annoyed at myself now if I had to work with me then. This tiny black building tucked back from the one-way road was vital to our networks, a hub, a space for nourishment, music, wildness, and scheming. A place where you could find people who didn’t have landlines or even addresses and leave a note for them. Where hitchhikers and train hoppers would go to wash dishes in exchange for a meal and maybe trade their paper food stamps for cash if they were lucky to find someone who had cash. So much garlic, nutritional yeast, and late nights prepping food for the next day.

This post isn’t supposed to be about the Black Cat; I’d like to circle back and write more about that time and place. Find out who may have ended up with the records and if they still exist. I have a floating memory of someone telling me one time they ended up in storage somewhere. Someone’s parent’s house? A storage unit? A recycling bin? It’s also a place that could exist better in our collective memory and I’m learning that’s okay too. But I am glad I have a few photos and certain songs that remind me of that tiny, pretty gross but beautifully packed kitchen with barrels of bulk flour and the recipe binder. And the color of the cement floors that had been painted so many times that they looked marbled. I would love a photo of the floors if anything, I regret I don’t have one….

At this moment, I am thinking about keeping my/our heads above the water. I think about the chaos of the Black Cat as a memory that makes me smile. It reminds me of what is important to me, not because it was great; it was, in fact, a hot magical mess full of problems, shortcomings, and blindspots, but it was our hot magical mess that did, in fact, create pathways of resistance and learning. At least for me, it did.

This post isn’t meant to be stuck in the past but to lift it up and out, to drag it forward into thinking about future ways of survival together. May we all continue to support, create, and carve out these spaces in real-time, virtual time, letters, notes, and phone calls. Our connectedness is our power. Finally, thank you, Nicole, for sharing this Tim Blunk poem last week. It was the list I needed and sent me into a wormhole of his life and work.

I enjoy it when people share their reading lists and find so many good books that way. Shout out to Jess Schreibstein, who has added a dangerous amount of books to the stack. Here are a few that have kept me going recently…

I recently finished and recommend A Biography of X by Catherine Lacey and Whiskey Tender: A Memoir by Deborah Jackson Taffa. Two very different style books that I got so much out of reading.

On my work commute, I’m listening to How to Tell When We Will Die: On Pain, Disability, and Doom by Johanna Hedva. I’m a fan of all their work, but this is blowing my mind. I’ll likely get a hard copy so I can go back and reread and reference particular essays.

And I’m about halfway through Blackouts by Justin Torres. So far, I’m all in.