It used to be anger

Red hot

But as the air becomes toxic

The PM2.5 in triple digits

The sun obscured

The passion is waning

The disgust is gone

Replaced with sadness

That feeling that nothing will amount to anything

I can’t be mad at the inevitable

Even anger seems pointless in the face of it all

The world will burn

And I’ll burn with it

Bill Gates can sit laughing

All the people the Gates Foundation “lifted out of poverty” 

Burning

“I can’t with it anymore, literally what am I supposed to do?”, my sisters voice is screeching from my phone. She had left me a 3-minute-long audio message on Thursday, so I sat there isolated at my desk in the windowless Choices’ office contemplating her anger. I want to respond back with the burning rage that she cast through the speaker. While she exposed her sense of hopelessness, the booming passion she radiated told me that she still believed she could mend the world. I wanted that vitriol and fervor to wash over me, but I felt none. 

How could I tell her that when I saw the news about the Supreme Court ruling on affirmative action, I cried at my desk. Not even an impassioned cry, just silent tears rolling down my cheek. I couldn’t tell her that I went for a 5-mile run without a mask even though the sky was hazy with smoke. To mask up meant that you believed a future day would be clearer. It meant you believed there could be a future where the sky will be blue and it’s worth preserving your lungs for that future. I guess I’ve realized I’m slowly killing myself, but then again, all of us are slowly dying on a slowly dying planet, so what difference does it make? 

I used to have the ability to care so deeply it hurt, and I like that I see that in her now. The day I graduated high school, I submitted a 10-page document to my county’s board of education explaining how they had failed to raise a community of anti-racist teens. One lady immediately called me to espouse just how much she was moved by my piece of mind. Nothing came of that. 

For weeks, I helped set up early for protests at my county courthouse. There were poetry readings, vigils, and speeches from community members of all ages. Sometimes anti protesters would join the mix. Their calls for white power still haunt me. All of this was to get a confederate monument removed from in front of our town courthouse. Nothing came of that; the statue still sits proudly at our county seat. 

I held the phone up and began to record my response. I tried to raise my voice to match even a tenth of her rage, but the result was unconvincing. Lifeless. I told her that I didn’t know. That not a single action I had taken felt it had amounted to anything, that hours spent knocking on doors to register voters felt futile. I tried to end optimistically, but she’s too smart to see through thinly veiled illusions.

That evening, our MOXIE group went to the Museum of the City of New York, specifically to their “raise your voice” exhibition. The brightly colored room was a spectacle of aspirations. From every direction the sound of protesters’ megaphones and chants emanated. I believe I was supposed to register this dizzying display of the people’s power as a beacon of hope. Instead, I felt swept up in the futility of it all. The same emotional abyss that I felt reading the Supreme Court’s decision came back to me. The photographs and speeches lost their jovial tone. Instead, I felt that I was simply seeing the same cruel struggles play out in different time periods with different characters, but the carnage and suffering was the same. 

The fight for workers’ rights hasn’t ended. The Triangle Shirtwaist factory is now a Shein factory in China.

Orange juice strikes in response to Anita Bryant’s “save the children” have simply taken to new platforms like twitter in response to never ending transphobic and homophobic transgressions. 

I parked myself in front of a wall of screens. The movie playing was just a splicing together of clips from various protest movements over the last century. The sounds morphed into static in my brain. A dull thumping. When all the horrors of the world are at your fingertips, what does it mean? A call to action? Nothingness? A blank stare? Shaking your head disapprovingly then walking to your corporate job to go screw over nameless mothers, fathers, and children?

If a tree falls in the forest, who hears it?

If a protester calls for change, but the whole world screams for change, who hears it?

I don’t know.

I’m really tired.

I think I’ll go to sleep now.

Happy pride month, let’s go women… or wait… not women… nonbinary people, queer people, everyone I guess. This week I’ve been thinking a lot about queerness and where it falls in the women’s rights movement. The past few weeks at Choices, I’ve been working on creating reproductive and sexual health materials for transmasculine individuals because even though the clinic is called Choices Women’s Medical Center, their services are still vital for people who don’t identify as women. Last week in our readings, we talked about the Trans Exclusive Radical Feminist movement (TERF) and how they feel that accepting trans individuals undermines womanhood and is an act of patriarchal oppression. This thought process is very present in reproductive rights movements (not to the extent of TERFs) because there is a very specific kind of violence enacted against people who are assigned female at birth. I think it’s important to acknowledge this, and I am still trying to figure out how to improve inclusivity without minimizing this harm. I think that what I’ve been realizing recently is just how much all of these different forms of oppression really intersect, and the roots of the violence live in the same place.

Before I came to New York, I was already reflecting about this summer, and I wrote in my notes app “Feminists who overlook or support violence against trans and queer people are not feminist, they are happily uplifting and committing violence on behalf of the patriarchy”. I wrote that while listening to a podcast and walking my dog along the greenway, and I think that I even feel more affirmed in that response now. By undercutting the rights of other groups we were just fighting each other rather than addressing the overarching perpetrators of harm. I think that this also makes intersectionality near impossible because it forces people to think about their oppression in very narrow facets of their identity. 

I feel very excited by this project I’ve undertaken at the clinic because it really gets to the core of a lot of things I’m passionate about. I certainly don’t have the answers for how inclusive the language used around reproductive rights should be. I just want the resources to be out there and those resources can evolve as the conversation evolves. I understand that the vast majority of the people that the clinic serves are cisgender women, but the whole goal is that every individual person is given another shot to make their life what they want. So, if even one trans person is able to access those services, then that is a win on behalf of the clinic and a middle finger to the patriarchy. So happy pride! Only the patriarchy wins when feminism turns on queer and trans people. 

I adopted a new identity this past week of working at Choices- Condom Czar or perhaps the Corona Condom Captain. On Saturday, I had the opportunity to attend a public health fair in Corona Queens on behalf of Choices Women’s Medical Center. I woke up bright and early and made the commute to the Corona District Health Center. From 9am to 2:30, the outreach coordinator at Choices and I sat at a small folding table laden with brochures, diagrams, and birth control demo props and talked with passing community members about what services at Choices may be of interest to them.

The most noticeable thing about our table, and what likely drew the most people in, was the piles of condoms in all colors of the rainbow prominently placed on our table. I initially found it uncomfortable to speak with older individuals about their sexual health, but the more I had those conversations, the more comfortable I became explaining to elderly women that they were still at risk of STIs and then I would gesture at them to grab a handful of the free condoms. This experience working directly with the public has made me think a lot about my aspirations for the future and the work I’m doing this summer. 

In high school, I was really involved in local politics, and when I came to Duke, I had planned to study political science and public policy. I felt deeply committed to making change on the global stage. If you had asked me then what my career ambitions were, I would have said senator then president. I had this really firm belief that making change on a small, personal level was so insignificant in the grand scheme of all the injustice in the world. As I navigated my college career, I began to realize how much I value interpersonal relationships and how meaningful small actions to right injustice can be. It was this shift in my perception of change that guided me to completely switch my academic and career ambitions at the end of my sophomore year to begin on the pre-med track. While I still think that significant change has to happen on an institutional level, I think that the devaluing of personal relationships and community building locally undermines any attempt at these larger changes. A lot of progressive organizations and campaigns become so fixated on these large-scale problems and their bright and shiny solutions that they completely forget about the very real harm being done to marginalized communities every day as a result of oppressive symptoms. I think that this prioritization also reflects the fact that the largely privileged individuals writing laws and running these organizations won’t directly feel the impact of these issues and may only identify with their cause on an ideological level.

While both the founder and various staff members at Choices have spoken to me about their work advocating for women’s rights and abortion access, the center is primarily focused on the individual patients who walk through the doors each day. Choices moved to Jamaica Queens because it was one of the NYC neighborhoods most in need of abortion services and reproductive healthcare. Each patient served by Choices is given another opportunity to live their life on the path that they choose. Tabling at the health fair primarily serves to help provide education and contraceptive resources to individuals who happen to pass by. If even one person is motivated to take steps to protect their health then that feels like a win. I have loved the opportunities I’ve gotten these past 2 weeks to help with patients, and it makes me excited about what the rest of the summer will bring and my future career as a doctor. I have thoroughly enjoyed the readings and discussions in MOXIE, but I think that many of these conversations fall into the more ideological realm. I think that our conversations around objectification and harm provide an excellent framework for service, but, ultimately, I think that the small conversations I had with patients in the surgical recovery room at Choices have been the most impactful aspect of my MOXIE journey thus far.

What’s up y’all,

I’m eagerly anticipating my time in New York this summer for a few main reasons. Firstly, I’m excited to work with Choices women’s medical clinic for the duration of the program. I only recently went pre-med, and I made that choice because despite the tenuous road to actually becoming a doctor (especially all the tears I shed over Biochem this past semester) I know that I want to work closely with people and contribute to their wellbeing. I hope to really take advantage of this opportunity to become familiar with all facets of the medical space, particularly in a clinic which deals with some of the most intimate parts of a person’s life. I don’t have family members or close family friends who work in the medical space, so I’ve often felt really in the dark about what career opportunities and paths are available. Because of this, I’m really looking forward to being able to speak with all of the employees at the clinic to hear their thoughts on the field. Additionally, I really just love talking with new people, and considering I know very little about New York or Queens, I see this as a way to really get to know the city and community I’m working in.

This brings me to the next thing I’m excited for which is being in the city. Up to this point, the biggest city I’ve lived in is Durham, and even that was a big transition from my hometown. I’ve also never lived outside of North Carolina besides brief vacations, so I am beyond stoked to get to explore such an international city. I am worried about my general ability to navigate life in NYC, and given that my hometown barely has a bus route, using the metro consistently will be a challenge, but its a challenge I’m excited for. I’m also just generally looking forward to getting to know the other participants and exploring the city together.