Threadings.

A letter written for Bisan, circulated to my constituency: Peace. I write to you from the floor of my bedroom in Sierra Leone. Two days ago, Iran launched successful counter-attacks against the apartheid regime occupying the land of Palestine, currently known as Israel (which bombed their embassy in an open act of war on April 1). I can hear construction workers breaking rocks outside my window and the children of the house playing and running and the noise of Freetown traffic in an endless rise and fall. I always find it pertinent to name the moment clearly, as I am always certain tomorrow will not look like today; the things I consider commonplace will be precious and long gone. Some of my mind firmly plants itself in yesterday already: gone are the days where I can see children running and playing in the street— in any street, anywhere in the world— and I do not think of Palestinian children massacred in front of each other. I am in a permanent after. I kneel to pray and recall accounts of young Sudanese women messaging their local religious leaders, asking if they will still be permitted into paradise if they commit suicide to avoid rape from occupying soldiers. I am in a permanent after.Today is April 15, 2024. Tomorrow will not look like today.Bisan Owda, a filmmaker, journalist and storyteller, has called the world to strike on several occasions for the liberation of her homeland, Palestine. I feel about Bisan (and Hind, and Motaz, and many others) like I feel about my cousins: I pray for them before bed, asking for their continued protection, wondering for them— the same way I prayed for my family as a child, during Sierra Leone’s own neocolonial war of attrition, or when Ebola came like the angel of death. This is the way I pray for Bisan, and for Palestine: with this heart beating in me that is both theirs and mine. She is my age. Bisan! You are my age! I wish we could have met at university, or at an artists workshop; I feel we would have long conversation. I understand more now about what my auntie dequi means when she says sister in the struggle— that’s how she speaks of indigenous womyn, about Palestinian womyn, about womyn across the colonized world that use every tool they have to resist. Sisters in the struggle. It’s never felt like an understatement— I just feel it in my body now. Sisters (n.): someone who you most ardently for. Someone who you care for such that it compels you to action. I’m certain many of you feel this for me—this long distance, cross-cultural, transcontinental kinship. Rhita, a stranger turned friend via instagram DMs, had me over for tea on a long layover in Morocco, and we spent at least two hours talking about blooming revolution and healing through art (she’s a musician and she helps pave the way for musicians in Morocco, who fight for their royalties as well as their right to exist. Brilliant). Sisters in struggle: your lens on the world changes mine, and I am grateful for it. Today we are among war; I mobilize and I organize and I pray for a day where we might sit down for tea.I write to Bisan with the attention of my own constituency to shine light on her calls for a general strike, one of which occurs today, April 15 2024. These urgent asks have been met with lots of skepticism across the Western world: how do we organize something this fast? Does it really matter if I participate? How will one strike solve anything? I write to throw my pen and my circumstance behind you, Bisan. I lend you all (my constituency) my lenses as a teacher, in hopes that I make plain to you why these questions of feasibility assume there is another way out of our current standing oppressions. We have no other option for worldwide liberation that does not include a mass refusal to produce capital. We occupy a crucial moment of pivot as a species. Victory for the masses feels impossible from the complete waste they lay on anyone who dissents to their power. This feeling is manufactured. The hopelessness is manufactured. We see the insecurity of the nation-state everywhere. Never before has surveillance from the state been so totalitarian— even (especially) through the device likely read this on. I also submit: a conglomeration of ruling bodies who monitor their citizens with paranoia do so because they are very aware of their own precarity. ^this is a very good video if you want to learn more about that claim.The nation-state, as it currently exists, knows it will fall. Never before have we had this much access to one another in organizing across the world for our good. They know, and we are beginning to find out, this iteration of the human sovereign world (capitalism ruled by white, Western supremacy) is dying. Something else is on the way. The question is what? Will the world that comes after this one be for us or against us?I hope this set of arguments helps us understand our place in the human narrative, as those that still have the power to stop the machine.Theses:(1) The genocide in Palestine is not unique nor novel except in the fact that we can see it in real time. This is what colonial war has always looked like. Ruthie Wilson Gilmore described the machine perfectly. “Racism, specifically, is the state-sanctioned or extralegal production and exploitation of group-differentiated vulnerability to premature death." ― Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing CaliforniaRuthie Wilson Gilmore is an abolitionist that has radicalized me immensely. To put the above in my terms: racism occurs or made when a group of people (Black, Indigenous, and colonized peoples) are constantly exposed to premature death (in overt ways, such as carpet bombing or slavery, or in more covert ways, like pollution, policy that denies healthcare, poverty wages, restricting access to food). This mass killing comes either with a green light from the state, or comes from the civilian populace of that oppressive nation-state.Capitalism in and of itself created the need for racial oppression. The establishment of capitalism required the open and expedited slaughter of indigenous peoples to secure their own land, and the slow-bred, constant slaughter of African peoples as a vehicle to over-harvest lands across North and South America, as well as across Europe. And they continue to expand.So then: racial capitalism is a death-machine. There is no way we can transition this world to a new order, where the masses are sovereign over our own lives, without withholding the labor that keeps the death machine going. Striking is not just in a decline of consumption, which is when we refuse to consume the products made by the machine. Radical action occurs when we decline production. That’s the only way to stop the machine in their tracks. If we do not, the machine will continue slaughter for output. Simply put: you can’t just stop buying. We do actually have to stop working.Nothing about the actions taking place in the Palestinian genocide are new! This is racial capitalism doing what it has always done: slaughtered the indigenous population and embedded heinous acts of violence to crush dissent, exacted a nation-state on the shallow graves, and found or imported a labor force to exploit such that they can strip the land of her resources. It has always been this horrifying. The only difference now is that we can see the horror live televised, in real time. (2) we are tasked with mobilization from our new understandings. We have a sister war now occurring in Sudan, where the superpower benefitting from violent civilian death is the United Arab Emirates (who extract the gold from Sudan in deals with the warring military groups while the people are slaughtered). This is a war of attrition, designed to break the will of the people bit by bit, massacre by massacre until they force consent to military rule. We had wars of similar depravity in the killings of Iraqis in this made up War on Terror by the United States, in the killings of Black radical counter-insurgents in the United States’ second civil war in the 1960s, in the attempted decimation of Viet Nam (again, by the US, there might be a pattern). This is what I mean about wars of colonialism— this is what the annexing of Hawaii looked like. The fall of Burkina-Faso’s revolutionary government. This is just to name a few. It’s happened again and again, and it will keep happening until we pivot away from allowing the technology of the nation-state be sovereign over the earth. This is what the nation-state does under racial capitalism.(2a) EXTRAPOLATE. The 15th of April 2024 also marks one year of war in Sudan, which has largely been ignored by Western spectacle. I say all the time your attention is lucrative.This particular bit is addressed to my constituency: never is this more clear than watching world trials, UN emergency meetings, world mobilization on behalf of Palestine and no such thing for Sudan. I know that Palestinians do not feel good about this. We should not have to be in a state where we have to compete for attention in order to get justice. We should not require spectacle to mobilize for our countrymen! There are no journalist influencers living in Sudan to have risen out as superstars with moment to moment updates— the technological infrastructure and the political landscape simply didn’t align for that. Is this why we don’t care? I am also hyper aware, as a Black American and as a Sierra Leonean, of how no one blinks when Black people die. We were the original capital under racial capitalism. There still is this sentiment, especially among the Western world, that suffering and dying is just… what we do.We humans are very good at caring for what we can manage to see. I am both heartened and excited by seeing increased conversations, direct actions, fundraisers, for Palestine. The responsibility to the human family is to constantly be in the work of expanding your eyesight— which means that you too care for the people that you might not see every day in your algorithm. The human tapestry, woven together in different colors and patterns, is ultimately one long, interconnected thread. The first step of mobilization that must come from from realizing our situation under racial capitalism is fighting for everyone that suffers from it— not just the people we can see. If we fight situationally, we are set up to lose, because we save one part of the human tapestry while another part burns. Coordinated action can only come from coordinated understanding. No one is free until everyone is free. (3) Fast. Train. Study. Fight. Only in a slaveocracy would the idea of freedom fighting and resistance seem mad. —Mumia Abu-Jamal, 2003 | Black August Commentary on Prison RadioFast; train; study; fight is the slogan of Black August, a month of discipline where those active in the fight for liberation remember our political prisoners and dedicate ourserlves to the sharpening of our minds, bodies, and communities in service of liberation. Black August was first commemorated with collective action in 1971 when George Jackson was assassinated by San Quentin prison guards in an attempt to quell the revolutionary spirit he stewarded within the concentration camp of prison enslavement. The article linked above is by Mama Ayaana Mashama, an educator, healer, poet, and founding member of the Oakland Chapter of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement from the Bay. Black August also acknowledges the amount of life and world-changing victories of resistance that have occurred for Black oppressed peoples in August— everything from the Haitian Revolution to Nat Turner’s Rebellion to the birth of Fred Hampton.I find these four actions to be the key to mobilization in the practical rather than just the rhetorical or theoretical, especially if you are newly radicalized (like me. I’ve only been radicalized for six years).What are the practical ways to strike?Fasting from consumption: Do not engage in mindless consumption. Do not buy anything from companies who use your dollars to oppress yourself and your neighbor— this includes groceries, gas, flights, fast food, more than that. Do not grease the machine with your dollars. I understand these things are embedded into our day to day society. Resist anyways.Additionally, fasting during the inaugural Black August included abstinence from radio and television. Last year, my first time fasting for Black August, I fasted from screens. Conscious divestment from the machine includes mind and body, not just dollars. Training (in mind and body): Train your attention. Train yourself to notice when you impulse spend. Money is a token you can trade for power. To be in the role of consumer is to constantly trade your chance for power for a momentary comfort— a good feeling, a rush, a high, a status symbol, all of which depreciate for you and all of which give tokens of power to the world-makers currently in charge. Now is the time to build up the muscles of dissent (both the literal and the metaphysical strength and will to act in favor of the people when it is time to).Study: You are only as useful to the movement as you are able to use yourself well. Study yourself and your own wants needs and habits. Know intimately your own boundaries, motivations and desires. What is your version of freedom? What are you specifically fighting for? Write it down!Study your own observable world. Ensure that you are caught up well on the events that surround you. This means local. When you walk around outside, what do you see? First: do you take walks? I would recommend them. Who are your neighbors? What do they do? What do they want? Who are your comrades and who are not? What is going in your local policy?Study the world that you cannot personally observe (and not just the news that comes through your algorithm). Learn where the stitches of the human tapestry are frayed. Note where they are being or have been burned intentionally. How do you connect to those charred places? What does regeneration and recreation look like?The backdrop of Sudan’s war saw about eight months of sporadic striking that finally led to the general strike, which then led to the successful popular uprising. Sudan had a successful popular uprising in 2019 because they engaged in strikes, strikes, strikes until they created enough mass action to win. It will never feel like the right time. We create the time we need to mobilize on our best behalf. Fight:Fight the impulse to do nothing. You are in a natural state of doing nothing—by design. So better, I should say: you are kept in a default state of believing that you should do nothing. Do not do nothing. The more you do something, the easier it is to do the next thing. Fight the will to accept the world as something that happens above you. You have more power than you think you do. Fight the urge to act alone.Fight the urge to shrink from consequence. Fight the restrictions that inevitably follow dissent.Also literally engaging in combat training is helpful (for legal purposes I don’t condone violence :P).(4) Revolution more about beginnings than endings. Critical mass happens with repeat action. The tide will not change because of some mass quantum leap everyone has in logic and circumstance. It will not come because your neighbor saw you pick up your pitchfork and thought, “oh yes, we need schedule Revolution today, let me grab my chainsaw.” The masses will shift because person after person after person continued to practice small, increasing modes of dissent. Dissent!— such that when powder kegs go off, when moments occur like this, or like Black Lives Matter worldwide uprisings of 2020, moments which break through the numb dissonance we all wade through every day, we have enough discipline to engage in organized action.General striking needs to be not just for Palestine, but for all the pressing problems that have a time mark on them. If Palestine is what gets you to mobilize, I commend you. Because Palestine is what got me to mobilize for general strikes. It was because of my sister Bisan, who called for them. And I thank her. Thank you! We as a human species need to recognize that what’s happening in Palestine will happen again if we do not have a coalesced list of needs and demands. We need to understand the need to shape policy. We strike for sovereignty under the hands of the masses. Sovereignty under the hands of the masses!I learn so much from studying the successes and failures of the Burkina Faso revolution, lasting for four glorious years. Here’s what’s previously happened across colonized countries that managed to have revolutions, like clockwork. Step three (mobilization) was executed by a critical mass of people (not everyone, not even the majority, but enough people fasted, trained, studied, fought, enough people taught their neighbor/girlfriend/cousin/librarian/grocery store clerk the same thing, of the ways we can engage with struggle rather than the ways we run from it, or assume it’s the job of someone else. There was enough mobilization sustained by extrapolation (the understanding that this was bigger than them) such that a popular uprising occurred, when which is a hard thing not to lose (as in, to let dissipate). A popular uprising is a difficult thing to lose! The strength in numbers is very, very real. Look at the farmer’s strike in India! How could they fail?Then, this new and fragile union with a new world, this baby that needs attention, protecting, a family of support around it— gets hijacked. Colonial or neocolonial regimes take root and begin killing as many people as they can in attempts to spread epigenetic fear into the populace such that they never, ever try and imagine a world without their power ever again. This is what’s currently happening in Sudan right now. This is what is happening in Palestine. This is what’s happening everywhere where there are colonized people fighting against oppressive regimes.If we can manage to act together, if we can manage world-wide mobilization and world-wide solidarity, we can stand for one another at this crucial stage— we must dream past the start of something and be thinking towards the day when we are inevitably successful— how will we keep those gains? Past the fall of the empire— what are we fighting for? How do we intend to keep it?Peace to you and yours, Bisan. The sun has set in Sierra Leone. There is not a day that goes by where I do not think about you. And I thank for being plugged in, being supportive of, being for the revolutions across the world— especially your own. Thank you for being someone who belongs to your country in ways that are bold and ways that endanger you. I am so proud of you. I can’t thank you enough.And peace to everyone reading, here meaning: I hope the work you engage with today emboldens you to act tomorrow. ismatu g. PS. THIS IS STILL A STRIKE THAT LIVES LARGELY ON SOCIAL MEDIA! WE NEED THAT TO CHANGE. TALK! TO! YOUR! NEIGHBORS! YOUR PARENTS! PEOPLE YOU KNOW IN PHYSICAL, DAILY LIFE! I DID NOT LEARN ABOUT THIS UNTIL PEOPLE IN MY PHYSICAL LIFE TOLD ME! USE THIS TEXT AND TALK ABOUT IT thank you have a good day. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ismatu.substack.com/subscribe

an essay nearly entitled, “the orange trees teach me art-making.” This essay is a continuation of my prolonged look at revolutionary healers in practice to become one— where healing also includes artistry. What is my role as an freedom-minded artist, this side of revolution? Check the link to donate to the universal basic income program for Ebola Survivors in Kenema, Sierra Leone below! https://msha.ke/ismatu Theses: A (art-making) = B(world-making) = C (truth-telling) (1) One of the greatest powers held in the human sovereign world is the power to create and destroy: to make, shape and reshape the world and what we know to be true. I call this world-making. (2) We are currently at war and (I would argue) in the exposition of a new world. (3) This world is still actively being made. What constitutes power in the hands of the masses? What methods of world-making are truly available to us? All sources available at ismatu.substack.com. Jazz of the Episode (sampling):Melancholia x Wynton Marsalis For All We Know x Ahmad Jamal Why, Buzzardman, Why? X Alabaster DePlumeTezeta x Mulatu AstatkeMy Odoh - African Lofi x Lofi Afrobeats This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ismatu.substack.com/subscribe

Exploring the impact of Toni Morrison and Tony Cade Bambara, the war for truth and human potential, embracing truth and identity, reflections on writing and ethical dilemmas, social media influence and responsibility, and the power of written expression and social responsibility are some of the intriguing topics discussed in this podcast.

Exploring how trauma impacts reading habits, the benefit of literacy to the ruling class, and the importance of honing reading as a skill. Discussing childhood trauma's effect on literacy perception and escapism through fiction. Highlighting the power of literacy, struggles with dyslexia and the importance of critical thinking skills in a world dominated by screens.

internet friends, I am still burning alive. Today is February 10, 2024, which marks two years since my entrance into the social internet. This has been a terrifying, incredible, world-changing transition— maybe not (yet) for the world, but most certainly for my world. I did not have any social media previous to virality on my first TikTok video. Honestly? I viewed these spaces as nothing more than cannon fodder for the degradation of the mind and of any true, real, lasting community. I wanted no part. I made a video because I wanted to tell a silly story on this silly new app, and because I had 17 followers (all of which I knew in real life), and because I was still busy swallowing the griefs of this world. I wanted to do something that felt… silly. And inconsequential.I am chuckling to myself, in hindsight.To be clear: I was right to be fearful of these spaces. Do you know how long it’s taken me to fully realize that every view, every point on a metric, is a living, moving someone interacting with my personhood? My face and voice are public record. I am watching myself become infused with authority I did not ask for and did little to earn. The visibility alone… not everyone that sees me feels kindly. I was right to be wary and skeptical and terrified. And these apps do allow us to cosplay learning and mimic connectivity when we are deeply lonely in real life. These apps are actively drugging our minds.And.You all have fundamentally restructured what I conceive of as reality. Online is most definitely real life! And we— this community, what I call my Constituency— have accomplished amazing things and truly, if you knew what I am working to prepare us for off-screen. We are just starting. We are just starting. Recently, I made public my feelings of burnout and exhaustion with the amount of people that are contented with short-form video. I have come to detest the medium; video— especially video that is under fifteen minutes— is very good at convincing the viewer they are doing something active. The amount of people that watch me and feel like they have learned something, when in reality they are watching me learn— it astounds me. I wonder if I am taking part in placating us as a community rather than galvanizing us towards action that’s truly necessary. There were so many comments under that video— too many to read, but one I caught over and over again: never stop writing. Listen: that was never on the table. I said I might stop making videos— I was always going to write. I have absolutely been battling hopelessness, despair, dissolution and defeatism about how difficult it is to accomplish basic shit— to get folks to make the transition from passive watcher to active learner. I spent two weeks taking time with my teachers: my loved ones, here and gone. They reminded me how powerful it is to be able to hide in plain sight. I am using my fertile mind to bloom this community— you who read, who write, who change their real lives. This was always the plan. I refuse to waste our time. I want this community to live long past my last video, to have ripple effects that I will never know about and never see. I got like, four more years in this iteration of online space, give or take a year. We have a very finite amount of time to mobilize around ideas that are for our good, the good of the masses, the good of the people, the world-keepers of tomorrow. The world-makers of today. Nothing about this is idealistic. I am not being poetic or metaphorical. The work is urgent and calls every one of us. Excerpt from a poem: The Lesson by Afeni ShakurThesis: Revolutionary is not some lofty, miraculous, singular idea nor title. Revolution is not a singular event. It is a beginning. It’s a marriage. And We (the People) have a world to retake and rebuild! There is no sweeter call. We owe it to one another to commit ourselves to the rest of our shared lives. The freedom song drives me wild— I do not earn the song, I only respond to the call— I AM A REVOLUTIONARY! I AM A REVOLUTIONARY!So I ask you, those of us that know me in these spaces, that give me the space and kind consideration to be a teacher and a healer and a mobilizing agent: our task is to be mobilized enough to outlive me easily. How can we ensure that? What are our communal values? How do we wish to continue? What do we need and want from me, the person at the front of the room? How do we practice reciprocity? How do we ensure that the Constituency outlives me? What have I not thought of yet?I’ll tell you what I want: to be forgotten. I want to be deeply insignifcant and unremarkable. I have accepted this momentary role as catalyst, as a teacher, as a launching point. A space of radical contagion— that is fine. It feels above me. I AM A REVOLUTIONARY. And: I want you, each of us, all of us to become so wrapped up in the condition of our children(’s children’s children’s children) that we forget about I and me, such that we dissolve into a love that erodes boundaries. Like Sonnet XVII— so close that your hand on my chest is my hand. So close that your freedom dreams bloom in my sleep. Among my greatest wish is to be unremarkable; a face among many; one stone in the mountain, that we do not see as a collection of little pebbles but as a mountain full in herself, whole on her own and majestic in range, a return to sovereign earth. The beautiful exchange: we climb and catch the song of liberation and fall and rise again. Dissolve into the soil! I AM A REVOLUTIONARY! I AM A REVOLUTIONARY!DISCORD LINK: https://discord.gg/9d4SVjXYfour more years, friends. my mind expands all the time. thank you for the motivation to consider freedom. what a life. i hope the work of your day passes through your hands with ease. i hope that work brings us closer to the sweet plum of freedom on the other side. and i’ll see you all there— or simpler said: peace.igPost script: I provided the discord link so that we could discuss the above questions. How do we want to exist? Where do we want to exist? I want these spaces to be Black and Indigenous led specifically. I want these spaces to be one of prolonged learning, of trying and failing, of asking questions of frsutration of joy of hope, of space foro the full iteration of human emotion and of spaces that allow us to be vulnerable enogh to change. at least to start. we’re blooming something. I don’t want to shy away. You don’t have to earn the call of revolutionary, you have to answer it. I AM A REVOLUTIONARY. I AM A REVOLUTIONARY.Jazz of the episode:Drume Negrita (Afro-Cuban Lullaby) x Andy BeyLena’s Song x The Sweet EnoughsAbusey Junction x Kokoroko This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ismatu.substack.com/subscribe

Threadings. and quite literally everything I do is free! I only can do this because people voluntarily pay! Wow! Thank you!!!!Transcription below because someone asked for the still words.Long time no see. Hi there. If you're new here, which if you're here, I doubt you're new. I mean, but just in case. My name is Ismatu. E-S-M-A-TU. I like E, S like S, not like Z. Not Ismatu, not Ismatu, Ease, like Easter egg. Ease-matu. One day.I will be an Ismaltu that other people can say, oh yeah, like Ismaltu, like Ismaltu Gwendolyn. It's gonna be a great day, hi. I have pistachio tea on screen, a stack of notebooks, a increasingly worn copy of How to Go Mad without Losing Your Mind, and a need to situate myself such that I'm not making so much noise with the mic. Hold on, hold on.Okay, starting now. I should have put my glasses. Hi there. Grab your tea, I'm having pistachio as per usual. It also has roasted almonds in it because I'm on the go right now. I didn't bring all my florals. I do so love a nutty floral. Long time no see. I generally don't like being on video because my face and voice are now public record in a way that alarms me. But we can't go backwards. Hi, it's good to see you.I'm out here making housing and security look very cute. It looks like a cute place, right? You're sitting in the window sill right now. It's a lovely winter's day in Brooklyn. I would otherwise be really excited to be here if I were not here for the passing of a loved one. Which thank you for your condolences, by the way. I'm receiving a lot of kind messages. None of this feels particularly real. And if the past is any indication.This is just gonna be something that I remembered. I'm gonna be going about my day going, God, I really wanna talk to Baba about, oh right. Oh my gosh, I can't wait to tell Baba, oh right. Let me text Baba and tell him I was thinking.like that.I'm making this video not to cry on camera. So you all know how much I love that.but to talk to you all about some changes that I am making existing online. Which is, I really have been, I don't want to say slacking, but sincerely deep prioritizing being here with the patrons and the substachians, the substichites, the substichanders.Stubstiganders is actually very cute and I'm keeping it. The Patreons, the Stubstiganders, mostly because I am not compelled by money. So the idea of making extra content to reward people for giving me money was always just such a low burner, especially with the other things that's on my plate. You know, familial duties, personal duties, the reading and writing for short form and long term projects, organizing on the continent and also in the United States for some, I just like-for some care infrastructure that I've been feeling is necessary. More on that later as per usual. So that means that like making extra content for people that pay to support me was always kind of like a, when I get the extra energy, when I get the extra time, when I get the extra focus, I will give you my extra, you know, you're paying for extras. And I find that uncompelling for a couple of reasons. The first being thatbecause I am not compelled by money, it never really becomes a priority. You know what I'm saying? If the idea is, oh, I make extra things so that people who wish to support me continue to have incentive to support me, I actually don't care about being broke. As you can see, again, chronic housing insecurity. I'm more housed than I have been since I lived in Chicago, and it's still quite precarious. It is tough to not have a permanent address in the United States, it makes everything difficult. And I shouldn't be surprised at how long it's taking me to come back into like fully fledged housing, but it's again, really tough. Like I still don't make enough to qualify for renting. So I mean, I should be motivated. I should be motivated. And I just am not. And then secondly, it undermines what I want to do with this space.So people that pay to support me, especially at this point in time, because I give you so little, I have to imagine that you're here because you want me to be well. Because even if I don't care about being poor and destitute, you all are like, that's not a reality that we want you waiting in. Because in honesty, you're right. I shouldn't be skating towards financial disaster and catastrophe all the time. I agree. There should be many layers of safety between me and death by preventable disease.death by hypothermia, death by substance abuse, because truly the only way that you can survive chronic housing insecurity and or homelessness is drugs. It's drugs, it's the only thing that makes it tolerable, et cetera. So you're right. I keep coming back to this email that I got a while ago, sometime in like, I think like October or some shit. And they said,you can't die. If you die, you don't understand there's nobody that does what you do. There's nobody to replace you in your online spaces and in your real life spaces. You actually cannot move like this. You have to consider yourself more precious. It's essentially the text of the email. I haven't stopped thinking about that. I'm trying to reconcile that with, yes, but I'm not motivated by money. So why?Yeah, I just, I think what's happening for me is that I don't want you all to be motivated by production from me. Cause what kind of has happened less and less so, but like, especially at the beginning of things, you know, I would set up paid spaces and I would promise perks. And my ability to fulfill those perks, which I'm still behind on fulfilling, I still work on it, especially cause the perks that I have in mind and the perks that I promise.are labor intensive and time intensive. They take like a lot of time and care, so I can't do them very fast. And so many people wrote me letters and I just, I refuse to half-ass that. So if I write three letters a week, that means, and I got 300 letters, it takes a long time to get back to people. But I still am. What happens is the emphasis is on my production. You did it to get something extra for me so that if that thing comes slowly or not at all, then subscription drops.And then it makes it something that I can't actually depend on consistently and like I already said I'm already not motivated by money in the first place. So I just You understand what I'm trying to say I hope so what I want is to take Support from of me and my work away from the idea of production So I have decided that we're starting over with the patreon and with the sub stack. I was sharingthe things that I was sharing, A, to practice, just to get my feet wet with what it feels like to create things consistently, to create audio, to create visuals, to do all these things. And all I really had was the models of content creators and influencers that came before me. Now, I don't fuck with either of those two terms. My primary job on the internet, I do not think is content creation. My primary job on the internet is not influencer. I don't...I'm not really here to change the minds and hearts of the populace. I'm here existing in public because it keeps me accountable to the public. And I'm here sharing what I learned, which is not feel like content. Like we don't call authors content creators. We don't call music production content creators. So I'm not a content creator because I'm an essayist or because I'm existing online content. The idea of entertainment.is so superfluous to what I am actually doing here. I am a public teacher. This is actually what I wanted when I was graduating from grad school and thinking about the job market and looking at jobs that just like bored me. There was exactly two jobs that I was really excited about. And I got really far like in the processes for being considered before they, you know, went to people that have more experience than me because I was just graduating. Job market's tough.One was in curriculum development for English and teaching that curriculum to like high school level students and one was in a policy think tank for public health that was localized to a specific urban region. And remarkably both of those things are things that I do now with my day today. So I'm not a content creator, I'm a public educator.That's what I'm doing here. I have a syllabus that lives, that is directly affected by the questions that you all ask me and the ways that you engage with me. And I have projects and capstone projects that you all are and will be, continue to be involved in, that have to do with public health and safety. And obviously there comes a lot of education within that as well, because that is my field of study. I have two degrees in public health now, global health, and one degree in English.So I'm doing what I want to be doing. None of that is about the creation of like things that are designed to entertain. None of that is about content. I just, the fact that I am existing in video and audio format is just the medium, the vehicle in which I can come to you with the things that I hope and dream for myself and for us as a collective. What I'm finding is that short form video land, so TikTok and Instagram, and even long form video land with YouTube, which...I keep promising a return. It's gonna happen. It's just that I can't come back to YouTube without finishing up the Malcolm X series. One, the person that I wanted to talk to about that is Babaseku. So give me a second. And then two.Yeah, give me a second. All forms of video and just existing online in a way that the public can interact with me.suck like respectfully like uh any kind of video i think because it's so ubiquitous to society at this point in time because we view these people that are making art as content creators instead of artists opens you a lot like opens you to the wide heights and depths of the internet it opens you to being recirculated in ways that you do or do not consent to um and it makes it soquestion, comment, recommendation that is helpful to my thinking and to my praxis. Every actual thing that I find helpful has a couple on this side and a couple on this side. And this side is like the angelification of me, the me becoming like a deity or a legend or someone that is above critique, where I can do no wrong and that is dehumanizing. And then the other side in which I am.the devil incarnate, an agent of chaos, someone who is actively out to sabotage the collectives of liberation that I am a part of via identity. And that is also dehumanizing. I don't enjoy either of those things. And they, if I read too much of that, it warps my sense of personhood. That sort of consumption of what people feel about themselves projected onto me is...not really something I wish to engage in, which means that I can't really read the comments on TikTok and Instagram anymore. I don't read YouTube comments. I don't check my notifications. I don't see, like I can't actually interact with people in the ways that I would like to. So I think what I'm going to be using these spaces for is to talk about the things that I am learning in real time. Because usually by the time that I've like made a video about something and it's circulating on these short form. Um.places because I know that my reach is wide and far. I'm well read. I am well situated. I feel comfortable enough to say, to make a claim, to state a thesis statement. I'm still comfortable to be wrong. I can be wrong about anything, but I'm definitely not. If I'm ever talking about a text in public, I've read it at least twice, usually three times. SoI want spaces where I can learn in real time and have first draft thoughts because first draft thoughts are not safe for the general internet. And I think that's what I'm going to use those spaces for. These spaces for. The Patreon, the Substaganders, that's what I would like to be doing here. And I think these are also spaces that are niched down enough, not quite small, not quite large, but just like the people that engage with me on Patreon, the people that engage with me on Substack are here because they like...what I have to bring to the table and they want to discuss with me. I think that you all work to see me as someone who is just like a finite person and not someone that solely exists in their video screen or someone who has much stock in the idea of being legendary. I'm just a person.The conundrum that I've been having is, well, that's educational work. Like I'm just, I'm talking about my thoughts, I'm learning in public by proxy. People also learn as I do that. So how do I charge for that if my work is free? Like if everything educational, if my best work is the work that I think that people can learn from is free and is free on purpose, why wouldn't I just give that away for free? And that's been at loggerheads because it's like, these paid spaces are supposed to be paid and they're supposed to incentivize people to support me and da da. That's why you make extra stuff.but the whole extra thing doesn't compel me to do it because then I'm motivated by money and I'm not motivated by money. And if the thing that I actually want to be doing in these spaces is essentially like long form book clubs, listen, this is an amazing text. Hey, remember when I said she cute and she thick? This is dense and good. It is prose, it's prose poetry, prose, prose poetry. Okay, it's so like, you can see how haggard this is becoming. Ben's terps, okay.A Ripper 2, Doodles and the Margins. Okay, I love this book. I keep returning to it. I keep rereading it. And I don't have time to talk about the rest of the text. Most people, especially with academic books like these, they only read the first chapter because it's a prolonged thesis. And that's good. If you only read the first chapter, lovely. And also I wanna read the whole book. I don't have time to do that on my big social media. I have a syllabus to get through that I'm already, I don't wanna say behind on.But we have work to do, you know what I'm saying? I have projects, I'm working with multiple kinds of people on the things that we're gonna be talking about. So I wanna take these spaces to talk about what I'm reading. I also have Thomas Sankara in the corner over there. I started talking about that in live on TikTok. I want a space to be able to repost my lives without fear of them getting redistributed in big ways. You know what I'm saying? And all of that's very educational work. It's work that I enjoy. It feels like an office hours situation.and you don't pay to go to office hours.So I'm starting over with the Patreon and with the sub stack. Everything that I think should, I've gone through it again and I've made free what I think should stay up and things that I made with a specific audience in mind. Like also one of the reasons I was posting specifically to paid tiers is because it denotes at least some sense of adulthood. If you have your own money to be able to spend to give me a couple dollars a month, you are likely in...in have enough agency over your life to have your own bank account and your own finances. So I was kind of using that as a metric for like making sure that like kid kids aren't here because there are some kids that follow me and like to engage with my work. And I was not about to be, some things are for adults. But I just like, I don't really wanna have conversations without kiddos. I like the kids, I like the teeny boppers. I like that like 12, 13, 14 year olds are here. I think your ideas are incredible.and I wanna hear what you have to say. And I don't wanna exclude you from the learning because you can't afford to pay for it. What is it? When I was 12, $5 was a million dollars. When I was 12, $5 was like a cupcake, a very big cupcake from the bakery that I could walk to. And that is about a million dollars as 12, as a 12 year old. So, I'm just gonna do all of this for free. I hope that you weren't here specifically because you felt like you had special East Montsue content because I'm not.Any more special in the space I am in big spaces? I don't really want the incentive on your side to be exchange for extra. I want the incentive to be because you care about me. And I'm here. I want my incentive for being here to be because I care about you.So it's all just gonna be free.We're starting over. And this frees me up a lot to just exist without having to make a product or something compelling or fancy or what have you. And I can just breathe. And you'll know that when I'm here, it's because I wanna be here and not because I feel like I have to.Yeah. All right, well.What time is it? That's about all. In terms of loose life updates, I'll talk about those ones when I feel like talking about my.Nothing is easy. There's a lot of ease, but it's not easy, if that makes sense. Even amidst tumultuous circumstances and difficulties.This is the most blessed I've ever been. You know what I mean? Blessed in the original etymology of the world is someone played in blood for the amount of freedom that I get to have every day. And it's my job to continue the work of making sure that everybody that interacts with me and comes after me, however much after actually exists because colonialism really fucked up time.I want freedom to be contagious. Just like hope.Thank you for watching. I wanna do more of this.And I'm excited to be back in spaces, Patreon, subscandies, where you all can talk to me and I can see you and I don't have to worry about being assaulted with the ways I am more or less than little h human. It's very nice to just exist without complexities or pride.The internet continues to grow bigger and bigger and bigger. And I stay the same size. And everything growing means that I have me that goes outside of me. And that's difficult for my brain to reconcile. And I have never been so well suited to make my dreams reality. So I can't go backwards.It's just gonna help for me to have as much little space as I can possibly hold onto because there's gonna come a day where I'm not on the internet anymore, where I don't do this, where I can't talk directly to you like this. So I'm gonna enjoy it while it's here.I hope the work of your day passes through your hands with these, okay? Have a great day.or whatever time of day you're listening to this. If it's three in the morning, have a good three in the morning. Goodbye. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ismatu.substack.com/subscribe

Juju Grant, a writer and spiritual tower, discusses topics such as the tools for resistance and survival, the role of Haitian Vodou in the revolution, cynicism and hope, engaging in the religion of liberation, and creating a better world for future generations.

An essay from The Vault on how miraculously pain steals language. CW: mentions of self-harm. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ismatu.substack.com/subscribe

The first essay of the Revolutionary Healers series. WHAT USE is "measured rationality" when to be Reasonable means to dying quietly, all the time? Notes from the text, “How to Go Mad Without Losing Your Mind.” Full transcript, with sources, at ismatu.substack.com. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ismatu.substack.com/subscribe

in which ismatu delivers a free-styled, spoken essay where they realize Grief as a seed blooming their bones. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ismatu.substack.com/subscribe