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You Have the Right to Remain Fat

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Virgie Tovar

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“Justice Beyond Month (Sonnet 1182) Pride that ends with the end of June, is but an episode of looney tunes. Divergence that dies with April's wake, is no inclusion but bark of buffoons. Black history that ends with the end of February, is not solidarity but a hashtag cacophony. Women's history that ends with the end of March, is no celebration but a sacrilege of equality. When AAPI are only visible in the month of May, It ain't no visibility but a mockery of life. When nativeness is welcome till October 15th, It ain't integration but desecration of light. Awareness is justice when it reduces prejudice. But one that's trendy only in specific months, is no awareness but a different kind of malice. Acceptance is awareness, awareness is life. 100 calendars fall short to celebrate mindlight.”

“Going high is about learning to keep the poison out and the power in. It means that you have to be judicious with your energy and clear in your convictions. You push ahead in some instances and pull back in others, giving yourself opportunities to rest and restore. It helps to recognize that you are operating on a budget, as all of us are. When it comes to our attention, our time, our credibility, our goodwill toward and from others, we work with a limited but renewable set of resources.”

“Going high is something you do rather than merely feel. It’s not some call to be complacent and wait around for change, or to sit on the sidelines as others struggle. It is not about accepting the conditions of oppression or letting cruelty and power go unchallenged. The notion of going high shouldn’t raise any questions about whether we are obligated to fight for more fairness, decency, and justice in this world; rather, it’s about how we fight, how we go about trying to solve the problems we encounter, and how we sustain ourselves long enough to be effective rather than burn out.”

“Leadership has never been an exact science. But it has always found itself particularly challenged when tasked with elevating one segment of a society onto a level more politically, socially, and economically equitable with another.”

“Going high is work—often hard, often tedious, often inconvenient, and often bruising. You will need to disregard the haters and the doubters. You will need to build some walls between yourself and those who would prefer to see you fail. And you will need to keep working when others around you may have grown tired or cynical and given up.”

“Your grandmother and I (and many others) would have had to be more extreme people than we were, during that critical period, to have done whatever it was we should have been doing. And our lives had not prepared us for extremity, to mobilize or to be as focussed and energized as I can see, in retrospect, we would have needed to be. We were not prepared to drop everything in defense of a system that was, to us, like oxygen: used constantly, never noted. We were spoiled, I think I am trying to say. As were those on the other side: willing to tear it all down because they had been so thoroughly nourished by the vacuous plenty in which we all lived, a bountiful condition that allowed people to thrive and opine and swagger around like kings and queens while remaining ignorant of their own history. What would you have had me do? What would you have done?”

“Protesting problems doesn’t really bring solutions. It just brings more problems. We reap what we sow. If we want to reap happiness, we must sow happiness. And that happiness inspires, strengthens others and builds bridges. If we want solutions, we have to think about solutions and be detached from the problem. Otherwise, [if we focus on the problem] we take the problem with us, [keep it active,] and poison the future. If we want to reap love, we must love. With no ifs and buts. And, we need to do it OURSELVES instead of asking others to do it. This is freedom. This is empowerment. This is our own solution from the problem, from our sorrow, frrom our pain. And the more people detach themselves from the unwanted, and walk the path of love, and [focus on] the joy of the wanted, the more solutions we achieve for the world.”