[sudo-discuss] Re: meeting notes from 2023-09-20

I thought perhaps I just didn't understand community norms. I couldn't understand why behavior be accepted, that to me, appeared to be trolling. Let me add that the normalized gaslighting where whites recharacterize expressions of systemic oppression and isolated personal experiences is not getting past me anymore. Irrespective of location on the political spectrum, the majority of whites throughout the Americas, commonly deny the hierarchical system of intersectional racialized class, promoted by law and custom exists. Within that system, anti-Blackness serves as the cornerstone, qualitatively and quantitatively distinct from other oppressed minorities. From cradle to grave, millions of Black people, are detained by both police and white citizens because of cultivated fear and suspicion. It is normal for Black people to be followed while shopping and falsely accused of stealing; to be assumed less than competent at our work; to be questioned and attacked because we don't look like we belong in our home and neighborhood; to being stopped for suspicion that we have stolen our bike, motorcycle, or car; to being "detained" by park rangers because we made random white person on the trail "uncomfortable" just by our presence. We have a commodified framework that frames whites and model minorities as innocent while Black people are cast as suspects deserving of unwarranted public harassment, extraordinary policing and incarceration, state sanctioned violence and extrajudicial executions by both citizens and police. I repeat, this is deliberately constructed, and not inevitable human nature expressed as individuated personal experiences. During last night's meeting, during my remarks about the cultural norm of suspicion, I was interrupted and dismissed. The person who interrupted me, recharacterize my remarks about systemic discrimination, dismissing them as my unique, personal experience and not applicable. That same person later took exception to my interrupting them, after they again dismissed my remarks as invalid, yet when Yar repeated my statement, they for some reason they then accepted it as reasonable. This is the last time I let that kind of thing pass without objection. It is up to you, as a community, to decide whether we work together in the "uncomfortable" pursuit of truth and restorative justice under the Omni Common umbrella in general, and the Sudo Room collective, in specific.