Bree Newsome Bass: “Capitalism is the unfolding catastrophe. It’s this thing that has grabbed us all in its arms and it is just plummeting down.”
Part of the Series“Capitalism is the unfolding catastrophe,” says Bree Newsome Bass. “It’s this thing that has grabbed us all in its arms and it is just plummeting down.” In this episode of “Movement Memos,” Kelly Hayes talks with activist and artist Bree Newsome Bass about long COVID, voting rights and getting organized in these times.Note: This a rush transcript and has been lightly edited for clarity. Copy may not be in its final form.
because their teachers’ efforts to demand safe conditions in schools have been shut down by the powerful. Bree had some thoughts to share on the broadening of disposability in the age of Omicron.: I think that there has always been a dynamic where the government only served the interest of certain people, right? And I think that it tends to kind of fluctuate as is necessary to maintain itself.
And I mean, that’s why I’m so in favor of mass movement. I love seeing the students walking out and the teachers protesting and the nurses. The more people stand up at once, the more likelihood we have of preventing that ultimate disaster. Because it’s collapsing one way or the other. I mean, that’s the last thing I’ll say on that. We know that it is, the system is shutting down one way or the other. One way is that ecological disaster causes it to collapse in a chaotic way.
That you have liberals and conservatives and the commentators on corporate media and everybody’s just parroting this line that we’re all going to get it. And the best you can do is just vaccinate and we can’t take any other measures. That’s what’s scary in trying to cut through the noise in this time. And I think it’s unfortunately another situation where we’re going to encounter disaster before many people realize it.
I’m hoping that there is a moment where they realize how the Democrats fail them. Right? And how that failure to push for voting rights for instance, is a reflection of where the priorities are being placed.
And so I think a lot of what we have to do when we’re trying to organize and mobilize people is also just helping folks to understand this concept of what politics should be. Or certainly if we have a system of self-governance, right – what does that look like? What does it look like to actually have representation versus having people who collect your money when they’re running for office, right.
Corporations also have the power to create and maintain death worlds, and that power has been encased and upheld by global trade agreements, which privilege the rights of corporations over the rights of sovereign nations and over democracy itself. The violence this system inflicts in heavily exploited countries, and in sacrifice zones here in the United States, has been invisibilized and draped in exceptionalism.
That’s what drives me up a wall because I personally have difficulty carrying on as normal. I’m the opposite kind of personality. I’m operating with a concept of what the alternative is, so that’s what I’m reaching for. But I can imagine that if you especially can’t imagine an alternative to the status quo, then it just feels like that’s the only thing you can cling to. What do I cling to except getting up and doing everything the way that I’ve always done it.
It’s just a matter of who are going to be the soldiers on that front line. And there’s so much space for everybody that I think it’s just a matter of helping people see the many different places they can show up. And this is the last thing I’ll say on it. As an organizer, like I said, I identify the things that I do, but I’m not trying to organize people around myself. I’m not even necessarily trying to organize everybody to do exactly what I am doing.
But we need to embrace all of those people, that should not be a barrier for entering a movement that is about keeping everyone safe. I think the slogan “no one is safe until everyone is safe” is the perfect statement for these times. That’s just what I try to drive home to people as much as possible.I would really ask everyone, please ask yourself first, what is something that you really care about? What is something that is really resonating for you as an issue, as a concern in this moment.
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