Acknowledgements in Black

Dr. Syrus Marcus Ware 0:07
Hello beloved listeners and welcome to No Future No Cry. My name is Dr. Syrus Marcus Ware and I’ll be your host as we deep dive into the wild imaginings of leading artists, activists and thinkers, who are all dreaming us into future worlds, while reckoning with the reverberations of the one that we all collectively inhabit and have inherited. Join us as we explore a series of short stories and speculative interpretations that engage with all that could be, and all that has been. All of these stories are set within a century from now. And these stories offer us a way of surviving and growing into something not yet created: the apocalyptic, the beautiful, the hopeful, the sacred. Today’s story is entitled ‘Acknowledgments in Black’, written by our featured guest, Tiffany. Tiffany Lethabo King is a descendant of African people enslaved in the US South. She grew up in Lenapehoking (Wilmington, Delaware) and currently works/resides on Monacan Lands. King is an Associate Professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Virginia. She is also a co-director of the Black and Indigenous Feminist Futures Institute funded by the Mellon Foundation. Tiffany is the author of The Black Shoals: Offshore Formations of Black and Native Studies from Duke University Press in 2019. As a scholar and a teacher, she is committed to thinking about how centuries long relationships between Black and Indigenous peoples have provided openings to alternative pasts, presents, and futures. Black and Indigenous liberation struggles informed by feminist and queer politics, as well as artistic production, and quotidian acts of survival and experimentation inspires her forthcoming scholarly and community building work. Without further ado, ‘Acknowledgments in Black’ by Tiffany Lethabo King read by Kyisha Williams.

Kyisha Williams 2:22
‘Acknowledgements in Black’ Tiffany Lethabo King. Dedicated to Red, Bike and Green and the dopest abolitionists and world conjuring folks in ATL. Location: Mvskoke Ancestral Lands, Territory of Black enslavement and the non-event of emancipation. Also known as Atlanta, Georgia (in a USA in a state of dissolution). Date: 2022 and its portals to alternative pasts, presents and futures.

Ein excitedly finishes a text to Iffan: Hey Iffan, I got your message. I didn’t know whether to text or call or what. I don’t even know what to say. I mean, I think I understand what it is that Ethab thinks she witnessed. But, I believe her, I just don’t know what to do with it all. Maybe we should meet at the King Memorial Marta station again? Let me know if you think that that makes sense.

Text from Iffan: Sure. Let’s do that. We really want to fill you in and try and make sense of this or maybe come into alignment with it? We all feel at the edges of ourselves right now. But, shit this may be what we have been waiting for. Does 4 pm work? Trying to get to the station before the metro gets too packed.

Yep, see you soon.

Ein, puts the cell phone down on the stand by the front door. And considers grabbing their bike.

Looking defeated, Ein thinks to themselves, damn, I wish I could bike there. I just don’t have the stamina. I wonder how I was able to bike all over the city when I was a kid. But these Atlanta hills and my fear of cars will do me in. It would take me more than an hour to get there. And I’m still so sore. Ein rubs their quad muscles to break up the lactic acid resting there. Ein sighs and resigns to the fact that they’ll just have to drive and meet Iffan there. Ein really wishes they could bike over there because that might be the key to all of this.

FUUUCCKK!!!! Shit!!! OMG, this is AMAZING, Ein yells out loud.

Ein can’t believe that this shit is even possible. Ein knows that if it hadn’t been Ethab who saw this split, this portal, this hole, whatever the fuck she saw, they wouldn’t believe it. Ethab is so sober and level headed about shit like this. She always has a way of explaining spirituality and spooky ass shit like this by talking about particles and matter. It’s always a matter of energy, masses, pockets and clusters for her. She’s acting so fucking cool about this shit. Like it happens every damn day. Well fuck, maybe it does, Ein thought.

The back of Ein’s head right above their neck was tingling and the sensation began to wrap around to the front of their neck and up their chin into their cheeks. This always meant something. Usually, something wonderful was about to move toward them, well toward all of them in this case.

Location: King Memorial Station, Atlanta, 4:07pm.

Iffan told Ein to meet them at the spot where they met yesterday afternoon for the bike ride and tour. Ein walked to the open space a few feet before the escalator where they all made a circle and stretched and prepared the space for their acknowledgements yesterday. Yesterday, Ein had pulled their rusty bike out and rode there. Well, barely rode there. Ein had to keep getting off and walk during the four mile ride. They had not ridden a bike in years. They arrived wrecked, legs of spaghetti, and humbled at the very first stop on the bike tour.

Ein was so glad that Iffan had invited them. Iffan had been riding with their crew of “Black errant” folks for years. That’s what they called this crew of intergenerational Black gender queer, non-binary, trans, and disabled folks who had moved through the same Black organizing circles in the city. Some were still a part of movement work and some had left. Whatever the status of their involvement with the abolitionist and decolonial work to survive this hungry and violent city, they were all living toward a form of collective Black freedom. They could feel this freedom getting wider and wider, particularly when they rode and moved together.

Ein knew two or three folks who were at the bike ride and tour. Ein knew Jean from events throughout the city and attending Black queer house parties. Jean had a double seater for folks who needed to ride with someone. It was dope to see them in their helmet and riding gear. Two little ones about ages 7 and 9 were also out for the day. Two folks who Ein did not know volunteered to drive folks who were not able to bike to the stops on the tour. The tour they were taking today was of the “New Fourth Ward.” It was really the “old Fourth Ward.” The multi-class Black neighborhood where Martin Luther King, Jr. had grown up as a boy. The bike tour was organized to unmap the gentrified space of the white “New Fourth Ward” and tell the hidden histories and reclaim the Black and Indigenous geographies of the neighborhood.

Ein was surprised to see so many folks in their 40s and 50s. Ein was relieved, just having turned 41 themselves. Ein was trying to figure out what their space in movement work would be as an “elder.” Though they did not think of themselves as anyone’s elder, a few students of theirs and young activists in the city had begun calling them one. Ein was in a space of considering how to support and be inspired by youthful energy and the unique wisdom that comes with it. Ein was inspired by so many of the young organizers like Iffan and Ethab who were in their mid to late twenties. They had such expansive notions of what living Black and free could look like. Ein was so honored that they appreciated their commitment to Black and Indigenous solidarity work. After leaving Tkaronto almost a decade ago where that work was so strong and vibrant, they had not found many places on the east coast in the USA to organize around this.

When Iffan and Ethan had organized the bike tour of the historic Black neighborhood they wanted to remap the city as an act of resisting the genocidal forgetting of the Mvskoke and the anti-Black enslavement and ongoing displacement of Black people in a gentrifying city. The bikers had made the news last week when they joined with some other Black bikers in the city (there were all sorts, Black HBCU grads, teachers, moms, lesbians, bankers, anarchists) and “spontaneously” biked through the parking lot of the Kroger in the white Grant Park neighborhood. White folks were upset that they could not navigate the parking lot in their cars the way that they were used to and had to wait for Black bikers to clear the area before they could continue their regularly scheduled consumer activity. Someone caught the footage of the bikers that stopped white consumer activity for all of 10 minutes on their cell phone. The Grant Park Neighborhood Association now had “the event” on the agenda for the next meeting. While not stated by the white woman who represented the GPNA during a channel four interview, the white residents were angered by the interruption of their lives by Black people on the move. The white women calmly expressed the need for clearly delineated bike lanes around the parking lot. While she calmly articulated her concern, the corners of her twitching eyes and mouth were communicating “this is the white Kroger. What were these black bikers doing at this grocery store anyway?”

On this Saturday, the bikers intended to fuck up white people’s rhythm in the city again. Disrupt their daily rhythm. Fuck up the pattern, the order, the code.

The opening ceremony in preparation for the ride began. A Black yogi named Kia led the group through some stretching and yoga poses. Ein was asked to lead a land acknowledgment. Folks had been able to sink into and be present with themselves and their toes spread with energy flowing through all parts of their bodies, Ein asked that people do the following:

“Think about the skin on the soles of your feet merging with your shoes and then the ground beneath you.”

“Think about your breath moving in rhythm with the pulse of the ground.”

“Send your energy out and imagine the Muscogee Creek people here also breathing.”

“Breath again and this time think of enslaved Black people’s breath as they moved in a rhythm or trance like motion to ease the pain of their forced labor and torture on this rail line that Georgia Railroad Company used to transport slaves across the US South.”

“Slow their breaths to a calm rhythmic place as their descendants.”

“See both peoples through the metal scar that rips through this land.”

“Be with us.”

“Ashé.”

After Ein finished the acknowledgement, Ethab shared the route. She then handed out water jars and provided the bikers with her number in case of an emergency. She ensured folks that no one would be left behind.

Ein bid folks farewell and made their way home on the train with their bike because they were tired. They vowed to be ready to ride next time. When they got on the train they watched the riders snake West on Decatur Street from their window seat. Ein would hear from Iffan the next morning via a text message.

Ein!

The voice that had called Ein was Iffan. Ein turned to see Iffan with Ethab. They walked slowly and casually. Ein was so excited that they wanted to run but resisted doing so. Ein decided to catch the vibe and wait for them to meet them where they circled up yesterday. Iffan’s and Ethab’s energy is even and modulated for a normal day. They both give Ein a hug and find a place to sit.

Iffan begins, “So thank you for meeting us. Ethab, Jean, and a few of us are trying to make sense of something that Ethab experienced and shared with us yesterday.”

Ein knew a snippet of the story that Iffan briefly left on a voicemail message but they quieted themselves and listened intently.

Ethab began speaking, “During the ride yesterday, I started to feel funny. After we turned onto Piedmont I started to feel dizzy. I have not been feeling well this week and so I knew that I should chill. I sent Jean a text to let them know how I was feeling and what my plans were. Jean sent a group text to folks to let them know that I was headed back to MLK station to rest. I went back to the circle and took my tincture and half of an edible I had with me. I started scrolling my ‘Insta-ship’ feed and fucking around on social media to soothe myself. I soon started getting these text notifications. I have them here.”

Ethab passes her phone to Ein. Ein takes it from her and looks at her screen. The screen does not look like a normal Ephone text field. There are no text bubbles. Instead, the screen is a sepia-brown color with a background that looks like a grid. Almost like a Tetris field or graphing paper. The message is typed in letters that each take up one cell. The first letter “w” of the message is located in the upper left-hand corner in the first cell of the grid.

The messages read:

“We came, we watched you ride around the land. Thank you for asking us to come back”.

Ethab – Saturday, May 2 3:37pm: “Um, Who is this?”

Ein looks up and stares at Ethab. “Who is we?” Ein asks. With their eyes bugged, “Is it them?” Ein looks at Iffan and then back and Ethab.

“I think so,” Ethab responds.

Iffan chimes in, “It has to be. I mean, I don’t think our folks would fuck around with us like this. This message is also something I’ve never seen. I mean it does not fit any of the coding systems I’ve seen before. Keep reading.

“When you called us, we did not know it would be both us Mvskoke and us Afrikan folks. We travel here and there. People call us. But we usually never get to meet up. Two of us came. Some did not. But we came. We came to talk to you. To talk to each other. To talk about what happened. What we did to one another. How some Mvskoke treated African folks. How we saw each other’s pain and did not know how to respond. Thank you for the wisdom. Thank you for calling us both.”

Ethab – 3:38pm: “Huh? I s this real?!”

You make this real. Keep stirring the air. Move, ride. Then come sit, rest. Breathe. Call us.

Ethab – 3:38pm: “Wait. When will you come again?” Can we see you? Can we talk?”

Do you want us to? Think about what you are asking. We are before you and after you. We are with your ancestors and your descendants. How do you want to relate to us? Ask yourselves. Consider your decision. It’s a quiet question.

“Ethab, Iffan, I don’t know what to do with this.” Ein exhales at them.

“Neither do we”, respond Ethab and Iffan.

Iffan speaks, “I mean, they said that we could call. Should we try…now?

“But are we ready? How do we get ready? What will this change? Will this change things? Change us?” Ethab interrupts.

Ein, thinks out loud not looking for a response, “Do we ever account for this in our movements? When do our Black imaginations ever actually consider that our ancestors want to sit and work through their desires? I mean they want to work out their own stuff with us, across fucking time? I mean, are we ready for this y’all. Do we want this?”

“Look, this acknowledgement shit is not a joke,” Ethab sighs.

Ein, nods in agreement. “You are right. This changes everything”.

Dr. Syrus Marcus Ware 21:01
Hi Tiffany! So, what a story, ‘Acknowledgments in Black’, we’ve just gone on this journey of listening to your story. Shout out to Kyisha Williams for voice acting that story. So, what are we dreaming into with your story? What world have you imagined for us?

Tiffany Lethabo King 21:21
It’s so interesting, Syrus. One, I want to thank you for the invitation. And particularly to write during the pandemic when we collectively were grieving and struggling, particularly in 2020, to like, even think about what survival meant, right? And to collectively adapt, right, to our conditions. And so, interestingly enough, I had felt pretty brutalized by the city of Atlanta, which I have come to call home now and miss deeply. But I was also writing the story to think about anti-colonial struggle in the context of Atlanta specifically–what black and indigenous anti-colonial struggle could look like. I know that you and I met in Toronto, and I had been a part of Insight Toronto, which actually was a group made up of Black and Indigenous identified people, right.

And so, one of the things that I learned in Toronto and got to experience was a really vibrant community of Black and Indigenous people who are already struggling with one another in a metropolitan space, and so miss that deeply in Atlanta, but also wanted to acknowledge the ways that that showed up, particularly in Black queer spaces, right? So, reflected on this bike ride that I took in 2016, with Red, Bike and Green, right, well, colors of the Black Liberation flag. It’s primarily a young, Black queer-led biking initiative that people from all over the city participate in. And they did a series of decolonial tours. And one of the sites that I visited with them was the King Memorial Marta Station, which Marta is the subway system in Atlanta. And we did a Black land acknowledgement, right. So there’s a way that when Black people were doing land acknowledgments in 2016, they both centered Mvskoke Creek removal, right, and also, Black enslavement by both Mvskoke people (which is difficult to talk about) and also by white settlers in Mvskoke Creek territory. And so I was asked to actually lead an acknowledgement by Nigel Jones and shaped it for our Black queer gathering, and was just reflecting on and trying to be present and really respect the way that Black organizers invoked our indigenous comrades and also ancestors, and also a really complicated history of anti black violence within Mvskoke Creek communities. But still, were crafting like an anti-settler colonial and anti-colonial feature in that particular moment.

And really, I guess the specter or the violence of one, the Black politicians and the Black administration in an all Black city who was planning Cop City in the background, and we didn’t know about that in 2016, right, that actually doesn’t begin. City council doesn’t approve the Cop City project until 2021. So literally I’m writing about this before it’s in the popular city wide awareness. But like this particular moment that it’s Ein, (I pronounced, Kyisha pronounced names anyway) Ein and Iffan are thinking about this convergence of Black and Mvskoke ancestors coming, like we do have this convergence of Black and Muskogee Creek people, descendants, perhaps of those ancestors that are caught up in the story actually converging in the city today to stop Cop City and the destruction of the Weelaunee Forest. So it’s almost like these anti-colonial struggles were always with me and always with us in 2016, and are emerging in the face of, you know, a particular kind of militarized violence that’s anti-Black and certainly continues to be anti-Indigenous.

So I think that future moment was informing what I was writing–grief of leaving a city, a political city animated by Black and Indigenous struggle in Toronto, was informing what I was writing, and then a particular kind of healing across generations and across time for Black and Muskogee Creek peoples, also kind of shaping that writing. So, I’m really grateful that you asked me to take that time to dream and write about a future that is appearing, is on the landscape right now, right? Like, folks are struggling–Black and Indigenous folks are struggling in Atlanta every day, right? In a very explicit way, as Black and Indigenous people in this place we call Atlanta. And so amazing, amazing to reflect on that writing process and getting to channel those histories and those currents, right? And the course of that river that’s always been flowing for Black and Indigenous people. It’s really, it’s so powerful to reflect on that story right now, in light of what’s going on in the ground in Atlanta right now. So, yeah, I think all those things shape it.

Dr. Syrus Marcus Ware 27:18
Yeah, and so much has literally exploded in terms of the activism and organizing against Cop City. And so much has happened since you’ve written the story. I’m so interested in this thread that you were talking about, about time, and how we have these Indigenous and Black ancestors, who are able to use technology–or somehow tapping into our technology–to give us a message. Or to give these activists a message, you know, that they are not in the struggle alone. And I’m so curious about that. And I wonder how you begin sort of writing ancestry. And again, this playing and stretching out of a lineage of activism and organizing where the genealogy of resistance stretches back, you know, generations. I’m just wondering if you could talk a little bit about the process of writing these ancestors into the story.

Tiffany Lethabo King 28:12
Yeah, I was really thinking about how we communicate with ancestors, how we imagine those technologies, right. So these two particular kinds of technologies, like the circle, our own embodiment, creating fire with one another, sharing tobacco, burning sage, smudging each other. Being aware of our bodies and breath, which were all things that we did in 2016 during those decolonial tours, led by Red Bike and Green, um, but one of the things that I actually think emerged from reading your writing, particularly forest bathing, which I was teaching at a particular time, I was thinking about my own body and some of its limitations, because I hadn’t explicitly thought about disability justice. The day that I was really struggling to ride with the crew because I hadn’t been on a bike in so long, it sounds like, I’m really struggling and had to stop. Like, I rode to the site where we were starting the tour. And then I was like, I can’t continue because this is literally working me in a way that I just–it was a surprise and a shock because I just hadn’t ridden a bike since I was probably a teenager. Like, I hadn’t been used to it. And I was like, the level of effort this requires and the bodily exertion is just something I wasn’t prepared for.

And I was also thinking about the different relationship I have to my body. The different relationship I have to notions of ability–being fit, being prepared for anti-colonial struggle. The ways that I hadn’t been thinking about disability justice and thinking about how my presence is welcomed or not, and how I also might not be doing that. So I wanted to rethink the way that the body shows up as having all capacities to do all the things. So one, participate and arrive, but also be the only kind of vessel that is required to relate to ancestor. So I thought about all the other kinds of technologies that we might consider when we want to connect with one another, right? So each other in this plane, in this temporal moment, or ancestors in another. Might we need some other kinds of technologies to make that connection happen in a way that attends to different kinds of embodiment, right, and attends to disability but disability and technology becoming a particular kind of portal to talk with ancestors, right. So that was kind of shaping the story in a way that I didn’t expect.

But then I was also thought about how ceremony can be different, right? I’m not be such a luddite at my age, and like, no, like technologies and phones and the ways that Black and Indigenous people adapt those–might that be a way to speak to not just ancestors, but descendants and those yet to come? So, I was trying to use some of that technology to move through time as well, I don’t know how successful it was, but thank you for moving with me. And was also thinking about just how to deal with my own embodied limits at that particular moment, right, like how I could show up and participate, how the characters could participate, how they took care of each other and still remain connected, so that shaped and informed the use of technology, I guess, in this piece, right? I connect the kind of tool.

Dr. Syrus Marcus Ware 32:13
I love this idea of technology and disability coming together and becoming part of this portal that connects the ancestors with the present generation. And I love, sort of, the ways that you’re tracking and on the trail of how disability justice is showing up, both in life but also in creation, in the creation of of this work. And I’m wondering, you mentioned and touched on how much has changed in the activist landscape in Atlanta. I’m thinking also about how much has changed in the activist landscape here in Tkaronto, in Northern Turtle Island. And you know, that being a place that’s also inspiring this story. So I’m wondering if you could talk a little bit about how your dreaming might have changed since you first wrote this story? And would there be anything different that you would write into the narrative if you were writing it in 2023?

Tiffany Lethabo King 33:09
Yeah, how my dreaming has changed… I think. Like, reluctantly, I’ve had to acknowledge that violence actually creates some of the landscape of my dreaming, right. And the way that I wanted, I wanted to edit it out before, right. And I’ve always wanted to have the conditions under which folks in the ancestral pain, met up with folks in the moment, in the current present that we call now and in the future, happens through a kind of intentional and deliberate… probably curation, type of curation of a space of abundance and joy. And just more than surviving but thriving and like that’s, that has not been the reality, right.

And, interestingly enough, the ways in which, particularly Mvskoke Creek ancestors and including the scholar Laura Harjot and Craig Womack and Dr. Reverend Avis Williams came together, particularly in April 2021, before the first forest offenders kind of came to the city, was because there was this announcement to the city through the city council–approval of Cop City–was that, we’re going to face some violence. We have to get ready as a united front, to commit to direct action against a militarized display of anti-Black violence, anti-Indigenous violence is coming from Black people, right, from a Black middle class in a city that hates Black people. And those are going to be the conditions under which we meet. And these are the conditions under which we’re meeting.

And violence, unfortunately, has made these particular kinds of connections, reconnections, deepening of relationships possible, right. And that’s something that I’ve been wanting to write out of my story of decolonial Black Indigenous relation building, right. Like I wanted to do it on other terms, right. I wanted to do it on our terms that were around feasting and making love and sexy queer connection. Right? Um, that’s the ideal. And that is a future. But I had too quickly been reflexively editing out violence, right, which is still something we’re confronting and building that love and building that sexy time, as well. Right? All those things are happening all at the same time. Right. So that is a part of my dreaming that I’ve come to accept, right. It is a fraught and dense and complicated and thorny space, and I haven’t been able to get around it–literally, in dreams, it pops up. And literally, as I’m writing about dream space, it’s coming up, right. So that’s something that has shifted a bit, like, the utopian work that we’re doing is really important. And I’ve learned that from Black and Indigenous spaces, particularly in Tkaronto, and also the space in Virginia that I’m building with folks with the Black and Indigenous Women’s Teachers Institute.

But we always have to confront islands, right. And I think that’s the way that we are also continuing to live. In the midst of it, is something that we’re learning deeply from folks in Atlanta and in Palestine right now, like it is.. it is a state of existence and being, in being this, that is real. And I think I was trying to write around that in 2020. And if I had to rewrite the story now, I’d be doing it in a context of violence. And I’m talking to you about this particular kind of Black and Indigenous future in the context of violence, right? So it’s something that I think I’d be more explicit about. Even learning how to write what violence looks like, in stories for me, I don’t spend much time doing that in the creative realm–as a theorist I do–but in the creative, space of the creative, I usually try to get around it or curate it out. But yeah, taking that seriously.

Dr. Syrus Marcus Ware 38:18
One of the things that I’m kind of grappling with, of course, is that, you know, we’ve seen, you know, with the uprisings of 2020, with this revolutionary moment that we find ourselves in where, you know, revolution is not a one time event, but rather an ongoing process of change-making. And violence is unfortunately a daily experience for some and really threaded through how we end up having to work. And I’m so interested in this story, because one of the things when you think about futuristic stories, or speculative fiction is this binary of utopia and dystopia. And the stories kind of take you into one decidedly distinct direction of utopia or dystopia.

And that’s not true of this story. There’s a narrative that is taking us through, where there is this, I think, you know, one of the things that we talked about in Systems Change, ‘Future Possible’, this creation of a future where it is possible for them to potentially survive, they have this connection with these ancestors, they don’t know what it means. They don’t know how they’re reaching us. They don’t know what’s happening. But there’s also the backdrop of all of these things that are happening in their community that can make it really hard to continue and to feel hopeful. And I’m wondering if you could just talk a little bit about, I suppose, the possibilities of a future where we make it and how you walk this line between dystopia and utopia.

Tiffany Lethabo King 39:43
I feel like wow, that temporality ‘futures where we make it’ is like walked out every day, probably. And so you’re taking me back to like, I guess the timeline of the story’s maybe like, a couple of days, right? It’s literally maybe two days time. So, when I think about that, it gives us like a moment to moment, kind of stepping through what’s possible, stepping towards what’s possible and like stepping through some of the violence is it tries to make the next step impossible, right, or the next movement or projection of self or connection impossible.

And so, I’m thinking about hmm, most recently where I’m struggling is in the classroom. And this is the first year that I’ve taught undergraduates at a new institution, and I’m teaching a Transnational Feminisms course. And I think for the first time since I’ve left Georgia State, certainly is the first time I’ve taught mostly white students, my students at Georgia State were primarily Black and Brown students, many of whom are Forest Offenders, who are a part of the Stop Cop City movement right now. So had a particular investment and deep organizing communities, which was refreshing to work with, students that I’m working with are primarily from Northern Virginia, some places in the Northeast, middle class, upper middle class students, who have different kinds of investments in organizing.

Particularly in a place like Charlottesville, are a little bit removed from the Unite the Right, maybe by one or two years, that attack on the city, and so are kind of coming into their own during this current war on Gaza and Palestinians, right? And so the beginning of the class had for students identify themselves as Jewish and had these bonding moments around their ambivalence toward the Israeli state. So at least all four students had never visited Israel. And like, I’m not really that into it. It’s a strange situation.

But as we met, particularly after October 7, there was a hard divide, literally: two people who are clearly students who are showing up in solidarity with Palestine, and one in particular is a very vocal SJP member at UVA and two other students who talked about themselves as neutral and really affected by the fact that people don’t respect folks suffering because of the loss of Israeli lives, right? And so the classroom has become a difficult place to be. So literally had a student remove a teach-in flyer, a flyer that was doing a teach-in on apartheid and genocide in Palestine–violent remove of flyer, remove it from the class and not return to class anymore. And so the ways that students have had to try to protect each other and create a different context for talking with one another, to not harm one another, has been deeply instructive for me. I’ve never been in a classroom space like this, I’ve never been surveilled like this. I have not worried before about my class being reported to the president, which has actually happened. And so the very small ways in each individual space that I’ve been limited for the past 60 days with this classroom has taught me a lot about how people choose to police one another, act out aggression towards one another. And to that extent, that is creating a pace, a temporality, at which I’m like tracking and watching violence at a very micro scale, right. And it’s informing then how I would show up in other kinds of protest spaces but it’s made me really aware of how young people are building a particular kind of ethic or way of being with one another that’s informed by a brutally violent US settler regime, right.

So we also have to be aware that we’re waging war on the Monacan people in the Monacan nation and Indigenous nations here and also hold that, that violence is also extending across the waters to Palestinians. And then to think about how that violence is shaping our interactions with one another is another type of work that is becoming really present and real and visceral, right? I can feel all those multiple violences like in my body, and figuring out how to respond to a student who throws a flyer, crumples one up and leaves the class, right? And how to check-in with the student for who that happened to. The scales of violence are becoming very minute, right, and like, just momentary, and very quotidian and regular. And I feel like I’m getting far from your question, haha, so bring me back, hahah, to what you were asking about dystopia and utopia, hahaha?

Dr. Syrus Marcus Ware 45:58
Hahha, no–it’s great, it’s great. And yeah, haha. Well, I think it’s true, we’re living in a lot of ways in a dystopic moment where I think, you know, there is these micro aggressions, there is this level of underlying violence. You’ve mentioned, of course, what’s happening with the war. I’m thinking also about trans faculty and trans students in the classroom at a time with attacks on gender studies. I’m thinking about, you know, and on and on and on. What does it mean to be teaching in the classroom in these times? What does it mean? I mean, now more than ever, I want to get that message on my phone from an unknown ancestor today, telling me, you know, what I might need to do. I’m so propelled forward, towards a different kind of justice, because I want us to live in a way where we don’t have these daily, as you say, these quotidian, everyday experiences of violence.

And I’m so interested in what might be possible, what we might be able to build towards together. And I think about academia and the classroom environment as this nexus, this place of ideas coming together, but also, you know, underlying conflict from the social world playing out in the microcosm of the classroom. I had students this year, telling or writing each other speculative fiction stories, I wanted them to dream into a different kind of future, even if it was a dystopic future. Where are they seeing themselves headed? And so the papers haven’t come in yet. Students are, they’re due today, actually, I think. So, I’m really looking forward to diving into these speculative fiction stories and thinking about speculative fiction as a strategy for helping us to imagine where it is we’re trying to get to. I think about Adrienne Maree Brown saying that speculative fiction was a way of practicing the future. And I’m really interested in this idea that we get to dream a little bit when we tell these stories. And so I loved being able to be in ‘Acknowledgments in Black’ and being able to be in this story and imagining, what would I do if I was coming home from the protest and I had, you know, this ding on my phone? And what would happen for me?

I’m curious, Tiffany, I know we don’t have a ton of time, I could talk to you literally for the entire day. I just want to hear all of the stories that you’re bringing here. But one of the things I wanted to know was, if you were to leave people, I mean, especially now reflecting back a couple of years since writing the story, to leave folks with something–what is it that you hope that people take from this story, and carry forward with them in their lives?

Tiffany Lethabo King 45:58
One of the things that I learned is, I feel like there was a particular experience or experiences that I had that really shaped me and been so fundamental for my, for who I was in that moment in 2016 that were coming from Tkaronto and my work with Insight Toronto that I was trying to experience again or have them reproduce themselves in Atlanta. And I just, it might have been dulling my senses to what was present and vibrant and vibrating like, historically. And so I think writing that story helped me kind of stir the atmosphere and brings from the history and the current kind of anti-colonial struggle. So the historical anti-colonial struggle and the contemporary anti-colonial struggle, it was kind of stirring it up and making me experience it and live it and get it in my pores, right. So there is the being present, being present in the multiple kinds of times that are converging on you, is just a particular kind of practice I’m trying to hold, right.

So I’m in a situation now where I’m in the Monacan lands in a place called Charlottesville, Virginia, on Thomas Jefferson’s plantation, and trying to receive the energy of what that kind of anti-colonial struggle and struggle to overthrow the slave state looks like, right? And really be present in that and be called to participate in that, right? In that long kind of trajectory, in that long current. And so it is, yeah, being present in those currents of history that you can choose to flow with, right, and be attentive to. So I think the speculative and speculative fiction as tools can have you open up to those, those energies and those vibrations that you really need to tap into, right? To show up for people, right, and to show up for struggle. And I love that you’re doing it with your students. That’s brilliant. And I need to think about that for next semester, which will probably be equally intense.

But I think yeah, the writing toward a pause, where you can feel–I’m gonna go with this current thing, I’m really feeling the moves of multiple rivers, right? So you can get in with that flow, right? And would not have believed if you told me, that there would be just a huge contingence of folks from Muscogee Creek lands in Oklahoma, like converging to be with Black folks in struggle, like would not have believed that in November 2020, right? Yet, it was unfolding, right, as I was thinking about ancestral gatherings, right? So just deeply, deeply, deeply be present through the speculative, what’s possible. So like, I really like this particular kind of work of the speculative and its own type of conjuring that it does, I think. Thank you. And I haven’t done it before, Syrus. So it helps me practice a certain kind of stillness that prepares me for movement, right, for some profoundment, better. I really appreciate, so that was my takeaway. I don’t know if it’ll be the same, but get into it, accept invitations to be speculative, accept them. So yeah, that’s it, right?

Dr. Syrus Marcus Ware 53:07
Yeah, I hope that people who are listening, maybe want to write their own stories. I hope that this podcast and what you’ve been listening to inspires you to turn towards your own speculative imagining, and dreaming forward, where do you think we’re headed? So, to take Tiffany’s promt, pick up a pen, or get out your keyboard and start dreaming a little bit into the future that you’re imagining. I think that would be amazing. So Tiffany, it’s been amazing to get to be part of this conversation with you today. And to get to hear your story read aloud. Thank you so much for writing this story, for dreaming into a different kind of future where Black and Indigenous communities are coming together, have come together. And you know, I’m here in support of the continued fight against Cop City and all of the organizing that you’re doing now in your new city. So thank you so much Tiffany, for joining us.

All right, everyone, thank you so much for listening. Please be sure to like, follow, subscribe, and of course share. No Future No Cry is a collaborative production of Visitor Media and 221A, a nonprofit organization that works with artists and designers to research and develop cultural, ecological and social infrastructure based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Original Music and Sound Design by Dominic Bonelli, Podcast Production by Krish Dineshkumar, Production Management by Afua Mfodwo, Editorial and Creative Production by aeryka jourdaine hollis o’neil and a special thank you to New Sound Production Music Studio for their recording services, to Sean O’Neill and Anni Spadafora from Visitor Media, and to Tao Fei from 221A.

Tiffany’s piece will be read by Kyisha Williams. Kyisha is a Tkaronto-born, Black, non-binary, femme, dreamer, actor, director, writer, prop master and Health Equity consultant. Kyisha fuses public health and digital media by creating socially relevant content that discusses health, promotes healthy sexuality and consent culture. Kyisha completed a Masters in Public Health in 2016 and graduated from film production programs at the Toronto Film School in 2021. Kyisha’s film titles include: Queen of Hearts (2018), The Zoo (2021), and Zarmina (2022). Kyisha has acted in TV, feature films, short films, commercials, PSAs, and in the award-winning Scarborough (2021) and American Gods on Stars. They are deeply committed to Black and Indigenous joy, health and freedom everywhere.