In a clear, blue-skied April six years ago, there was a conference in New York City. The States of Incarceration exhibit documented the pain and suffering of the caged. Of the many talks over two days, one line still echoes loudly: “this is urgent.” The world looked different after those April days. Breathing started to hurt the soul. Fanon said it best, “I find myself one day in a world where things are hurtful; a world where I am required to fight; a world where it is always a question of defeat or victory.”
Life has been lived on urgent ever since. Decisions are made with resolve, with purpose. There is a determination that is unbreakable, that is rooted in absolutes. The absolutes that love and spirits should guide, that empathy should pave, that human solidarity be cherished. Until the world stops hurting for all, none can claim victory nor stop fighting.
In this hurtful world where fighting back is a necessary precondition of mere existence, the middle path is untenable. Centrality lost its sway when invisible hands of power decided to make visible their cruelty. They stopped hiding the game they were playing. Left hands saw what right hands did. Subalterns learned to speak. Why should we pretend we still don’t know?
Attempting to take a neutral stance in the face of unimaginable destruction of lives and our planet is akin to being a part of the problem. The rigged game cannot be won fairly. Neutrality preserves the status quo, an unequal world imploding under the weight of its own self-created contradictions. The status quo is violence and thus, neutrality preserves and protects violence. In this quiet protection there is a defense coated in a faux ideological justification of critical thinking to balance arguments. It’s how centrists sleep at night. But the defense only appeases. The rigged game continues. The hurtful world continues hurting. Neutrality becomes defeat. Defeat means the end of humanity.
Fanon wrote, “I undertake to risk annihilation so that two or three truths can cast their essential light on the world.” Which truths? Love? Empathy? Mutual aid? Compassion? Kindness? Companionship? Peace? Perhaps urgency will bring such bravery while neutrality remains impossible.