Ancestors

Written by Ali Alkhatib on 2025-01-20 at 15:36

I'm reading Imagination: A Manifesto by

@ruha9 and discussing it with a reading group spanning a few platforms.

I'm going to post a few quotes and start some conversations here and there about it. Hope you'll bear with me (and maybe better yet, join us)

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Written by Ali Alkhatib on 2025-01-20 at 15:37

(you can just reply if you want, but if you want to keep up with reading group stuff, you can join https://buttondown.com/al2)

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Toot

Written by Ali Alkhatib on 2025-01-27 at 21:21

I think I said in another comment that this framing took me a little by surprise. I don't think I've given enough time to the thought that the ridiculous ask, the outrageous proposal, the "far-fetched" request is to ask for people to survive in this world as it currently exists.

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Descendants

Written by Ali Alkhatib on 2025-01-27 at 21:21

Millions of people have died from COVID, countless disabled by Long COVID; settler violence has been a defining part of America for hundreds of years, and anti-Black violence has and continues to be the core purpose - not an accident - of American policing.

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Written by Ali Alkhatib on 2025-01-27 at 21:26

I think a lot about Tinu Abayomi-Paul and Shafiqah Hudson. Tinu spent so much time fighting for other people, helping promote mutual aid efforts so people could survive another night in the world. Shafiqah and a number of others (Ra'il i'Nasah Kiam and Sydette Harry) coined #YourSlipIsShowing, and she was one of the first people to identify and document the disinformation campaigns on Twitter and elsewhere on the web in the 2000s and 2010s.

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Written by Ali Alkhatib on 2025-01-27 at 21:26

In this chapter, Ruha Benjamin invited me to think about what may be pie in the sky, or too far-fetched. I think about how often I look at the first DMs I shared with @sassycrass. I think about a world where she and Tinu are still here, but not crowdfunding for a rideshare to the hospital. I think about how impossible it is to keep living like this, and how much this world needs to change because we can't keep living like this.

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