Even if you face harm from one source, if you can fundamentally trust in the humans around you to recognize it and name it openly with you, so you can agree that it is happening, then the harm does not become so destructive. There is a kind of deep, visceral betrayal of human trust that can magnify harm significantly, when those around you do not even perceive it occurring. And yet that is precisely how normalized systemic violence works: it renders the harm normal, and all resistance to harm “disruptive.”
Ask Sunnie about this. How do we do this--learn to name harm openly--while still focusing on the kind of positive world we want to build and not focusing too much on the negative?
