some premises

Here are some gigantic statements that operate as assumptions that my work is built on top of:

<<adding as they come to me>>

• This world is built on a hegemonic trajectory of inequity and injustice that I see as best described by bell hooks when she calls it "imperialist, white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy".
• Climate Change is a symptom of this world's hegemonic trajectory.
• Confronting Climate Change means reckoning with our history as a species.

• There is no such thing as a neutrality.  Neutrality is an idea that operates as a microcosm of hegemony, and that is used to maintain our current hegemonic culture.
•  Whiteness is the primary example of neutrality in our world.  
• The violence of whiteness shows the danger of the concept of neutrality.
• Naming white supremacy is the way we call out this false-neutral

• Though not all cultural assimilation leads to whiteness, Whiteness is held up as an endpoint, a goal, of the process of cultural shift that we call assimilation.
• The process of assimilation is a process of choosing self-interest (individual, communal, ethnic) over solidarity.  
• We protect ourselves ahead of others when we are afraid for our own safety.  Fear of our own safety has a ripple effect of trauma that moves beyond the scale of the threat in terms of scope and time.
• We assimilate because we are traumatized
• Whiteness means that someplace in our family history, our ancestors chose self-interest over solidarity.  Whiteness is a historical byproduct of trauma.

• everyone deserves empathy
• not everyone needs to empathetic to everyone else.  From a position of oppression it's perfectly reasonable to feel rage at anyone remotely embodying your oppressor.
• embodying the role of an oppressor is a painful, traumatic, and/or paralyzing experience.
• Living in a body that has historical been an oppressor necessitates that you will perpetuate those oppressions and inequalities, despite any efforts to do the opposite.
•  Living in a body that has historical been an oppressor means that you have been socialized with a shortage or absence of exactly the tools you need to transcend the oppression you perpetuate.  

• Climate Change is a direct result of many many generations of colonialist, imperialist economies.
• At its core,  colonialism is fueled by racism.  
• Racism= race bias + dominant power.  Racism is the name we give the social product of the deeper institution of white supremacy.
• Climate Change is a symptom of white supremacy.