ARMED (AND UNAFRAID)

I am not scared of dying. I am not scared of very many things. Which is surprising considering the rampant, insane anxiety that I wrestle on a daily basis.
But I learned to stop being afraid very early in my life. If I was afraid of my dad’s belt, it felt like every whip of it hurt worse. If I was afraid of my mother’s words, they cut me deeper. If I was afraid, I had to suffer twice. Once for the fear, and once for the actual thing I was afraid of.

So I grew up, and I stayed unafraid. Unafraid of the boy who would end up raping me. Unafraid of the wife who would treat me poorly, break my heart, and leave me homeless. Unafraid of homelessness, starvation, joblessness. Unafraid of moving across the country. Unafraid of walking through New York City at midnight. Unafraid.

And so while many of my neighbors and friends were scared of project 2025 and the election cycle, I was calm. I lived through Trump’s last term in a red city, in a red county, in a red state. As my friends posted about their fear and grief and disappointment, I felt nothing. If anything, I felt justified. I was right. I knew who America was, and I hadn’t been fooled into the false hope of democracy that US propoganda lulls us into over and over and over again.

But as I checked on my friends and my sister and my partners, I felt something different. I felt heartbroken, that I couldn’t provide them with a better world. That I can’t give them safety.

My belief is that safety is something we create together. Safety isn’t something that someone else can give you; it is a gift that you give to yourself and others by being a person who is responsible for the outcomes of your own life. It is a gift we give each other by accepting accountability and holding others accountable.

But we live in a country that says laws and cops and the military keep us safe. We have abandoned our personal responsibility to safety.

And I think it’s time we pick it back up again.

How do we create safety together? What does safety look like and feel like in our communities? How do we make sure people feel safe from harm, both mental, physical, and material?

These aren’t questions any person can answer on their own, but I have some ideas that might help you to start. Safety begins with the understanding that it belongs to you. Someone else cannot grant you true safety. We can all work together to create relationships and spaces that are safe for us all, but at the end of the day, unless we each individually pick up that responsibility, none of us will be safe.

Safety (in my opinion) has several ingredients: Responsibility, Relationship, Consent, Accountability, and Repair. It is not something you can build overnight. Safety often takes years to build between people and groups. There is no quick fix to the problems at hand; we cannot wish our way into a better world filled with safe spaces and harm reduction and reparative justice. This is hard work that we must undertake together.

First, We Must Take Responsibility

Second, We Must Build Relationship

Third, We Must Understand Consent

Fourth, We Must Accept Accountability

Finally, We Must Engage in Repair

Then, We Do it Over and Over Again