Page 6 - Vo Vo | FIX MY HEAD #6: QTPOC PUNK ARTISTS

The Moon Followed Me Everywhere I Went
(or a story of how I got into (then swiftly out from) Anarchist politics)
My journey into Anarchist politics began quite early on, because my parents were Communists who fought during a revolution, risked their lives, and fled their homes to live in exile, so I knew a thing or two. Radio Spectrum International’s Iranian diaspora broadcasts were regular background noise. My dad would watch the news and loudly oppose everything that was said to anyone who was listening. The lullaby my mother would sing to me was an old revolutionary song (my darling, your father lays tied in heavy chains, his eyes closed, his heart awake...)
But really, my journey started when I was born, because everything I ever experienced informed my politics more than anything my parents, school, books, the television, or other people did or didn’t teach me. My politics were informed by bombs in Kabul. Being a young immigrant. Speaking English as a third language. The Home Office. Being brown. Growing up on a council estate. Loneliness. Racial slurs. White middle-class institutions. Domestic turbulence. Displacement. Learn- ing Farsi on Saturdays. Learning that the Moon would follow me no matter where I went. Writing letters for my dad because my English was better than his. Watching my parents struggle. Watching my family being Othered. Understanding borders by struggling across them and feeling them disconnect me from my cousins, to whom access was denied. Ghorbat...
but REALLY, my journey started BEFORE I was born. The truths I inherited. Family members tortured in prison. Bombs over Tehran. Blacklists. Eight kids in one room. Pencils sharpened to their stubs. Separation pains. All the tears my grandmother ever cried. All the tears my mother ever cried. 14 year old martyrs. 18 year old mothers. Watermelon fields. Violence. Grief. CIA backed coups. Addictions. Pots of boiling water...
When that thing happened in New York with the planes and the towers, I was in Tehran watching it on the television, and not feeling any more saddened than I did when I saw tanks rolling into Kosovo, or any other scenes of warfare and violence I’d seen on the news. When I returned to London, I learnt this thing that I had already known in my bones, and had been carry- ing around with me all my life: white bodies mattered more than brown bodies. American deaths were MORE of a tragedy than all the tragedies that me and my peers had ever borne witness to. Everything was a lie. I felt alienated and unable to articulate myself, and turned to Socialist and then anarchist politics for comfort and support. Their discourse fit in with MOST of my anger - there is a Capitalist Imperialist System, it is extremely destructive, our Governments are lying to us, there is no justice, our freedoms are illusions - and so I identified as an anarchist for a good while. I joined anarchist collectives. I worked really hard to align myself with the people I met who shared these sentiments with me, because the alternative was those old feelings of alienation and powerlessness.
To the point that I kept my mouth shut when Deep Truths In My Bones were being disrespected, ignored, and silenced. It really slowly dawned on me that I was being white-washed. That I was letting it happen. That when I looked around I saw a sea of whiteness and middle classes. Mostly able-bodies. That actually, some of these slogans I quietly aligned myself with were very exclusionary of the people I identified with the most. That I couldn’t see my people, my history in this crowd. And I learnt all this through opening my mouth to speak, to people I thought of as allies. It was like the aftermath of that thing that happened in New York ALL OVER AGAIN.
But this time, it led me to have REAL political awakenings and find the communities I TRULY relate to. It led me to be able to articu- late things like this (in response to an awful situation in which none of the brick throwing insurrectionists in the anarchist col- lective I was part of could seem to find the words to condemn...): I am making connections between the macro and the micro, as
I believe this is an important tool in dismantling shitty structures of oppression. Because my politics are deeply rooted in what is going on around me. Because being radical does not begin and end with throwing bricks and burning cop cars (however noble these actions can be). To quote the wonderful Audre Lorde ‘The true focus of revolutionary change is never merely the oppressive situations that we seek to escape, but that piece of the oppressor which is planted deep within each of us.’
It led me to realise that every single struggle begins on a personal level, and that most anarchist ‘us and them’ rhetoric is rooted in racism, sexism and ableism, and a total refusal to face that piece of the oppressor which is planted deep within each of us.
These days, I’m a little cautious of identifying as an anarchist. I know a lot of anarchist ideology sits right with me in theory, and that anarchism does not begin and end in the West....But their communities let me down, and ULTIMATELY, their anarchism was just not big enough to house ALL OF MY TRUTHS.