2022 Wrap-Up

I spent most of 2022 living in hotels, doing everything I could to help take care of family members, & did a lot of work to survive being abused & abandoned by my biological family. An employer stole my wages & lied to me about employment. I learned that I was a friend to many who are not friends. I watched family members die from the very things I’ve spent studying hoping are better understanding & looking other options that could keep it from happening to them & me. By mid July, 11 people that I knew who were alive at the beginning of the year were gone & I was losing my housing & having what I did work hard for stolen from me by my biological mother.

Something important to me is my understanding (& practice) of freedom & agency. Despite experiencing harm at the hands of people in my life who were supposed to love & protect me, I didn’t lose myself. Part of why I’m still here is because people stepped up where others dropped me. As much as the social institution of family was obliterated, there were so many days & points where that I wanted to give up but I didn’t because people extended care & support. I didn’t stay away from the fact that trying to get power by committing unprincipled acts & exploiting people & calling it freedom.

What I experienced in 2022 & continue to experience will never be understood through diversity politics. The worst case of worker exploitation I’ve ever experienced was with a Black public health non-profit founded by & ran by Black women. My mother, a Black woman, lied, schemed & robbed me to send money to her pastor who lives in a mansion in ATL when she was supposed to be paying bills. The thing about race(ist) colonialism that many misunderstand is the fact that whiteness is very much a practice/behavior & so much of the work of white supremacy is practiced by racialized & colonized peoples. What I went through was due to those around me creating dangerous & exploitative conditions. As Simone de Beauvoir said, “the existence of others as a freedom defines my situation & is even the condition of my own freedom” (1947:90-91). 2022 was a year where the people who had a responsibility to reciprocate care & support instead robbed me & left me for dead. My biological family (mother, father, siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles, & etc.) created & facilitated the conditions of unfreedom & abandonment that I experienced in 2022 in ways I never expected.

Updates

Most of 2022 felt like a failure because I was barely getting by and those who said they’d show up for me didn’t. I survived attempts on my life, homelessness, lies & I did that thanks to those who stepped up & provided mutual aid, information, subscribed to support my work here on Patreon & the words of encouragement. I appreciate the support that you’ve all provided while I have been fighting to survive over the years.

I’m working on my materials & getting things organized so that I can get back to writing & publishing my work here on other social media sites. I’m still doing consulting work & looking for academic jobs to apply to. I have to work on re-structuring the tier system so they reflect a number of ways that patrons can get access to learning materials, articles &/or projects that I’m working on. I’m also working on figuring out how I can teach classes, & likely will be using another platform to formally teach some classes.

Your patience is greatly appreciated.