Octavia’s Brood – Walida Imarisha & Adrienne Marie Brown
A few weeks ago, I attended a rally in support of Bernie Sanders just north of Oakland, in Vallejo, California. At the rally, I heard a sentence that struck a deep chord within me: An idea does not have to be radical to be revolutionary. It’s a simple statement, sure, but it has legs. I imagine that, during the height of the civil rights movement, there was a portion of the American population that felt the idea of racial equality was radical. But thinking about it, were people asking for anything completely new? No. They were asking to have the rights of protection, access, and representation that already existed for a majority of Americans. I don’t mean to say that radical action wasn’t taken in the name of revolution. Rather, that the desires of the movement were not radical, though they were certainly revolutionary. I think that our current politics are
