on voting and divestment from licensure

Someone in an ancestral practice space I was co-facilitating this morning wanted to know about my stance on the election as a white person, and how I am showing up for a Free Palestine within my own lineage and integrity. Which made me realize that maybe that information is important for other white folks specifically determining how to orient.

My answer to that question is this:

I am a white descendant of a founding father. As a descendant of a founding father that caused a massive amount of violence, and in the name of Sally Hemings and all her children, I refuse to vote for another head of this genocidal state, especially as they perpetuate multiple other genocides in Palestine, Congo, Sudan, Haiti, and on Turtle Island via Covid, and I instead re align my energy and the energy of my family and descendants towards the full destruction of what my ancestor built, and towards Black liberation and towards land back. I am committed to the destruction of the so-called ‘United States’ and its colonial project and all like it, as a way to say “not in me and my family’s name any more.”

I am in alignment with indigenous folks who name that voting is not harm reduction.

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All my actions as a practitioner align towards destruction of white supremacy from the roots. It is in Sally’s name and in honor of her, and in honor of destroying institutional policing of the mental health industrial complex, and the way that it not only polices many through psychiatric incarceration but also through methods of coercive control against mad people (among which I include myself), that I divested not only from therapy licensure, but from the framework of therapy altogether.

These are things I have learned through my own somatic practice, connection with my ancestors and my integrity, alignment, and agency, through connection with teachers like Susan Raffo, through the clarity of Klee Benally, through learning from people like Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarsinha and Sins Invalid about disability justice and mad pride, and also especially from a podcast from Brontë Velez, shared with me by Hannah Harris-Sutro - The Pleasurable Surrender of White Supremacy.

I divested from licensure last year, officially in May 2023, because it was literally making my body sick to be in alignment with anything tainted with a genocidal instutitional construct. Just before I divested, I was asked by a student at a local university how I squared up my work with the knowledge that “we are supposed to divest from all these institutions.” Damn, babe, call me on it, thank you. My answer to that student was “well, I don’t” and then the next day, called into alignment by their words, I revoked my license.

My ancestors call me into alignment and responsibility. In seeing the violence they wrought without apology that has had widespread and massive damage, there is nothing I can do -except- call for its destruction. It is wildly pleasurable and with full deep extensive gratitude that I surrender white supremacy and cede to the care of Indigenous and Black folks for this land.

It’s in honor of Black and Indigenous liberation everywhere to its deepest extent that I refuse to vote and re-ify what should be burned from the roots, and that is my commitment. I call in all my wise and powerful ancestors of might and magic that predate Christianity who support Palestinian liberation, Black liberation, and land back to back these actions and this work of destruction and land back, with me.

to learn more about how therapists actually are the cops, read this article “Therapists Are Also the Police: Sex Work, Social Work, and the Politics of Deservingness” by ismatu gwendolyn, who verbalizes many reasons why I divested.

the other reasons for divesting (besides what I mentioned above about abolishing the so-called “US” and my responsibility of “no more in my and my family’s name” as a descendant of people who committed widespread violence) include how I believe therapy as it is currently formulated is closer to a method of social control that is utilized on purpose by the state to further its goals of eradicating madness, establishing “sanity”, and attempting to “civilize” and “regulate” Black, brown, indigenous, trans, mad, disabled folks and anyone else who falls outside the norm. it is a fully carceral system that i believe is also very violent and carceral to suicidal people and folks in a variety of crisis. it’s very “Get Out” vibes to me and I’m not interested. what I want is full and total liberation.

p.s. I am not taking feedback about this integrity and alignment. if you feel an impulse to respond, please check in with your own integrity, alignment, and responsibilities at this time.

p.p.s. I have client openings for 2 ongoing clients biweekly (book a consult to see if we’re a good fit here), and will have a new workshop offering coming up that I will put out later this week. Stay tuned!