Been thinking about the way Ruth Gilmore Wilson put it: Abolition is about presence, not absence. It’s about building life-affirming institutions. Vital examples of abolition in practice: @blacktransliberation Washington Square Park celebration of Marsha; @citgny Trans Health Awareness street fest in Jackson Heights; @love.gia Celebration of Black Trans Women cookout in Bed Stuy These were delicious invitational spaces of protest and care in the midst of bleak times and dangerous experiences. And while these relationships and culture are being cultivated, Black Trans Liberation Kitchen and @fig_nyc_ @citgny Food Security Program are life affirming institution building projects focused on generating infrastructure and assets to sustain these communities long-term. These organizations are doing the place-based organizing we need right now. While a lot of social justice work is so cerebral and disembodied, or on the internet centering individual figures, this work offers clear entry points to the movement and healing community... There’s nobody who can teach us collective care practices better than these two groups come together - Black and Brown queer+trans people and food workers 💫 I see @qween_jean @lixwins88 as practitioners of radical hospitality. They are creating a world of welcome, offering a feeling of desperately needed belonging during a time of so much disconnection and despair. They are deploying age-old and deeply political hospitality practices of communities not usually associated with hospitality as it’s narrowly defined by welcome drinks and white table cloths. I’m talking about hospitality as knowing the needs of your people and tending to them without being asked. And it is knowing that beauty, a sense of possibility, and simply feeling taken care of are amongst those needs, along with nutrients and physical comfort. FIG partners with these organizers so that we can mobilize the skills + resources we have within our food world to feed people and meet survival needs while subverting an oppressive charity model and building real community power. (First pic by sweetheart @ramie_is_ramie)