Thread by @GuyEmersonMount

My mother-in-law announced that this year for the #FourthofJuly the family is cancelling the Fourth of July...

and Thanksgiving...

forever.

A thread of love and respect to my momma.

Now mind you, this woman is the quintessential Black matriarch who loves her family and family gatherings more than anything. She starts planning next year’s Thanksgiving at this year’s Thanksgiving (what family color to wear, the decorations, the theme, etc). Serious thought.

A change like this is huge for her. I watched her struggle with it for years. It involves admitting that all the glorious days she planned so lovingly in the past were part of building an American mythology that masked settler colonialism and slave racial capitalism.

Granted, as Black people that was never what those days were about for the family but participating in these white public rituals that did celebrate a country built on slavery and genocide while it lied about that history always loomed large for us and couldn’t last forever.

As a 65 years old who was born under Jim Crow in the murder capital of America and barely graduated high school her ability to continue growing, changing, & adapting to new conditions is boundless. The Women’s March was her first ever protest. Now she’s out for BLM

She started this primary floating between Harris and Biden as the ‘practical’ choices but really early on she switched to Bernie and even said “Bernie or Bust” to me once (she backed Hilary in the 2016 primary).

The point is that change is happening. The spectrum is not fixed. What was unthinkable is now inevitable. There’s also no turning back from this moment. It is, what theorists call, The Event.

As an activist I’ve previously had some satisfyingly victories but this one (small as it is) may be the sweetest. It represents an entire family uniting behind a politics that some of us within it have been pushing for for decades.

As a #Twitterstorian I have to remind everyone that those decades of subtle jabs and heated discussions at family gatherings don’t cause changes like this but they HAVE to be there so that historical processes like this one can sweep in and transform the margins into the center.

So shout out to my momma. She’ll never see this but I want the world to know how much I love her, how much I love her powerful mind, and how much I’ll love boycotting the #FourthofJuly and #Thanksgiving with her.