Today's post is written by Maiga Milbourne:
I feel like in many ways I’m living every myth of exile. Every archetypal story told of telling the truth and being shunned.
And it’s not entirely true. There is miraculous, vibrant, beautiful belief and support.
But we are social creatures. And the defense mechanisms and denial that emerge in the wake of a reckoning are baked in.
MOVE survivors told the truth about a fraction of the abuse they have experienced. More is forthcoming.
In the wake, there was silence.
And then slowly, some vague declarations of support. Others more specific: "I support them but not these others."
There was confusion and chaos.
Pixie, Salina, Maria, Josh, Witt, and Sara have said publicly a number of times: I want those who love me to tell the truth. And not to obscure their own responsibility by inventing claims that we’re being manipulated. Don’t belittle us that way. Simply own your part.
And that hasn’t happened.
And I see in my own history, and I hear from so many other survivors, that wound being activated. Unfortunately, so many of us were drawn to activism to heal our own wounds. So many of us share very similar stories.
The hardest part is owning our own involvement. Not blaming anyone else. Not obscuring it. Not doing anything but standing up and saying, “I’m sorry. I did that to you. I see how it hurt you. You did not deserve that. I’m sorry.”
No one wants to touch that.
None of us want to own the fact that we are not innocent.
None of us are innocent.
We are all capable of harm. We all commit harm.
And we don’t know what to do with it.
We hero worship to give our power away and to try to further the myth that there’s some pristine infallible way to be human. That we can buff and sheen ourselves to perfection.
And that leaves no room for the truth.
The MOVE reckoning is happening in the wake of #metoo and so many moments where we have collectively risen up to tell our stories. We have learned to expose when we are victims. We have not yet learned to own when we are offenders.
What we have yet to do is determine what happens next.
There is nowhere to exile offenders. Especially when we are all, to varying degrees, offenders.
Most of us following the MOVE reckoning, to this point, are on the left and have a general agreement that the prison system is unjust. We fight the deportation of immigrant humans as that too is unjust. We don’t have a mechanism to remove offenders from our midst and theoretically, we feel that it is unwise and against our moral code to do so.
So then what?
Right now, those who have harmed the survivors in MOVE are either silent or attempting to deflect their own responsibility. Those who were involved-- supporters, enabling members, and the general public-- are largely silent and watching wide-eyed. None of that supports the survivors. Their care, their restitution, that is the priority.
I think so much of the reason why this stalemate occurs is that people know what typically happens next-- canceling.
Based on what we’ve done with previous offenders, the course is that you no longer say their name. Their history is erased. They were never here. The good they did is gone. Their art is tainted. Their contributions diminished.
That doesn’t produce justice. That doesn’t offer balm to the survivors. And that makes current offenders and bystanders more reluctant to own their part.
We have an opportunity for a new model.
If we’re a community of activists who believe in revolutionary ideals, why wouldn’t we rise to this challenge?
What if we said to survivors: I believe you. You owe me nothing. I will work to lift your voice and listen to you. I will do my best to support you. If there is something you need, I will be there to do my best to offer it as you heal and rebuild.
What if we said to offenders: Your path forward is to fully own your part. You will not be exiled. You will not be shunned. We, your community, know you are capable of the truth and we are here to receive and witness it. We, your community, will work with you to heal so that burden doesn’t fall to those that you harmed and so you can integrate this past and move forward. That can only happen if the truth is acknowledged and responsibility is taken. It doesn't mean that there will not be consequences for participating in the abuse or allowing the abuse to occur. It simply means that there is a path left open for redemption.
What if we said to the history of MOVE: We will tell this history. We will continue to tell one another about the events, beliefs, and people of MOVE and we will tell the whole truth. We will tell about what it felt like to be part of a movement alongside how that hope made many of us blind to the suffering in our midst. We will tell the whole story that to many of us MOVE was a promise and to those born in it was a prison. It will not be erased. We will tell the whole story.
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Appreciate this thoughtful, nuanced testimony of what it means to be human. The final sentence in this statement and the biggest challenge for all involved, once the truth is told and heard: We who are human pledge to do no further harm.
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