What Are You Doing About The Rise of Racism?

Trigger Warning: Racism, Violence

I have had a great urge to do some physical art. And of course it is not of pretty flowers. It is political because my existence is political, these are my tears against a tsunami, but I created these works to ease the burden from me, these are my psychic barricades. I feel the bite of the worldly winds, because of my colour, my womanhood, my sexuality and my disability. I did this painting in a couple of hours, driven by a painful energy, pointedly triggered by recent local events. On top of experiencing more racism personally, a few things have happened in Norfolk, where I live, that are terrifying me within my silent skin. An activist’s confiscated bodycam recorded police officers in a Norwich police station being racist, gleeful about the violence they use, amongst many other disgusting things So who do you go to complain? The new police commissioner for Norfolk? No wait, Colin Sutton of Reform said in his campaigning material that he is not pandering to ‘noisy minorities‘. Most press don’t touch the story so what do you do? I put my anger into art. It is not only anger towards racists, it’s the ordinary person who does nothing to stop it but criticise the people being attacked from a spurious moral standpoint. In a physical confrontation with any racist, I won’t turn the other cheek, I will respond in kind, because what can I do? Call the police? When I have been attacked before, the only thing that stopped the violence upon me was fighting back. Only that, not the police and not passersbys. Those who do nothing about racism but criticise returned force, what do they know about violence inflicted on marginalised people, not only Black and Brown people, but on disabled people, be it state violence through the DWP and other state agencies, from dodgy staff in care homes and psych wards, from uninvestigated hate crime. I am a body that holds a lot of received violence. I am a body that hold received violence, 90% of which has never met with justice. The only thing that heartens me is that some decent ordinary people have stepped when Black and Brown people have been threatened Do not ask me to play a game where I will always lose, especially if you won’t stand with me in solidarity when I am being attacked, whether it is verbal racism or violence. I have stepped away from that game. I am a body of experience that holds more bruises than skin. Shut the fuck up about violence being wrong if you don’t stand up to all violence but only go for the people fighting to stay alive or safe.

Every day I am seeing the shifting sands to the ocean of full blown fascism. I will be the first to drown, because of my colour, my womanhood, my sexuality, my class, my disability, and my activism. I hope I am wrong but I don’t think I am. Nobody wants to seem to say it but I will: what are we going to do when these scenes of organised attacks on people of colour and trans people move onto disabled people? That there is violence toward disabled people, and the media just film it and feed the rhetoric, and most people do nothing. I am going to make art to help with the pain, but I much prefer people standing by me.