Episode 8: “Mutual Aid Is Rooted In Radical Love” by Samirah the Sapphic Siren

Transcription:

[SAMIRAH’S VOICE] I’m autistic and usually and nonverbal and the rest of the interview might have to be - I write it and someone else reads it out loud later. So I just wanted to take advantage of this moment of when I can actually speak, you know. But this is me and this is how I sound, you know, just for like a point of reference, I just think it’s really important for me to be humanized in this. I’m excited to tell you more about mutual aid work which I wrote about for my entry in the storybook. In my opinion, mutual aid is community care and it’s what sustains us. The more marginalized you are, the more you need to rely on mutual aid and it’s not charity at all because I’m usually messaging for funds for myself and I’m asking others to match for someone else. So it’s like, if I’m gonna put all this work for my survival I might as well bring someone else with me who’s even more marginalized than me. And I take that approach everywhere I go. The reason I pour so much into mutual aid as well is cause mutual aid saved me and that’s the mutual aid part of it. [MUSIC]

Hi, this is Samirah the Sapphic Siren. I like to be named and credited with my full name everywhere. That’s why I wanted to say it when it was a rare moment when I was actually verbal. I’m a brown skin Tamil person.

[KOURTNEY’S VOICE] I am currently on Tongva, Kizh, Gabrieleno, Serrano, and Fernandeño Land. I’m Samirah the Sapphic Siren, a brown skinned nonblack Tamil person (though I resonate more with Siren than person.) I write poetry and prose, and I’m also a mutual aid worker.

I write with my experiences of being autistic and queer. They are lenses through which I view the world, and are present in everything I create. I name how oppressions such as colorism and patriarchy affect me. Those narratives affect how society sees me, and I must constantly untangle from my mind so they don’t become internalized. I also write about the power of mutual aid and collective care to counter oppressive forces and sustain each other.

I create art to survive this world and imagine a better world - both for myself and my community. In my writing, there are times I’m writing about the impact of various large-scale crises on us, such as in my poetry book, “Siren’s Desire”. There’s also other times I’m imagining a different world.

Art can map the steps, but we must also take the steps. The most marginalized are the most affected by large scale existential crises, so it is where it’s most necessary to practice mutual aid and community care.

Advocating for myself AND community is something I practice often. It’s inherent in everything I do. I see the self and community as linked. It’s integral to mutual aid work. I like to celebrate other artists I’m in community with by properly crediting them, exchanging art and ideas with them, and finding ways to advocate for people to pay them! I ESPECIALLY like to celebrate people by bringing them funds when I can or finding others to bring them funds when I can’t. “Love is not just a feeling but a practice”, as Bell Hooks has said. It’s so important to pour into the community - and also pour into MYSELF so I can then pour into community more. [MUSIC]

Samirah is one of my selves who can no longer embody. They are now a spirit that guides me in this work, both as a writer and mutual aid worker. I write about how Samirah has sown the seeds, and Kanimozhi, one of my selves who can still embody experiences the fruit of Samirah’s labor. I constantly grieve Samirah. It was due to being unhoused, due to being outcast from society as a brown skinned autistic person perceived as a woman, that Samirah can no longer embody. I anger for them, and rage for them, and I will always fight for a world they didn’t have to fight so hard. I still use Samirah when I write, as a way to honor them. I also demand that I’m always credited with my full name - Samirah the Sapphic Siren. I also have a poetry tarot deck which draws from generational wisdom. Poetry in general, is a way for me to channel.

I speak about the issues with the buzzword “capacity” - specifically how it’s used by white people to disengage from mutual aid work and collective care work in general. I speak about how self care is also used as a buzzword by white people and non Black POC to disengage from collective care. On the other hand, I see many Black people practice self care as a strategy to show up consistently for the community, rather than disengage completely. I want to make sure those voices are included as well. [MUSIC]

READ SAMIRAH’S POEM BELOW

Mutual aid is rooted in radical love. They love to forget this. Anger is rooted in radical love. They love to forget this. When you love someone who suffers at the hands of oppressive system, love demands you to take action. If you can’t pay for their surgery, you find people who can. It demands you to find more support, and leave your ego at the door. If you can’t support someone alone, you create community. You create community to counter the systems that have left people alone, in the cold, and told to fend for themselves. You put love into practice, when people don’t believe in justice.

You show people how much it takes, just to organize the community to meet a single person’s needs. If it takes this much to support one person, can you get on board to do more? Or will you say this is too much work for you to take on, and wrap yourself back up in blankets of privilege? How am I asking too much, to ask for one person to be housed? How am I asking too much, when I ask for one oppressed community member to have their basic needs met? If that’s too much for you, the systems of oppression must have really got to you. They must have corrupted your mind of what you’re willing to accept.

Until you can decenter yourself, and center the most marginalized with multiple unmet needs, you don’t know what radical love means. You don’t know the power of urgency. You don’t know urgency can organize the collective, and make us come together to meet these needs now. Not tomorrow. Not when you get your paycheck. Lives are at risk tonight.

If you can’t make it happen on your own, then you need to call in others. Call in as many people as it takes, to get this need met. Until you can decenter yourself, and make sure this call for help reaches far and wide, you are a bystander. You are a barrier in the way of liberation.

Until you let love radicalize you, you’ll see anger as a weapon, instead of a call for change. You’ll expect respectability from a cry for help, instead of seeing the urgency, and then doing what it takes. Until you can decenter yourself, and embody mutual aid, you don’t really know what love means.

If you feel stretched thin, you need to call far and wide for more support, not leave people to fend for themselves alone. Love isn’t only a feeling. Love is doing. Love is practicing. Love is putting collective care into action.

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You made a way out of no way. That’s not a trait you should have had to learn, but I honor that you did. I honor that your spirit watches over me. I honor that we can bleed, let it go, and start all over. We can never start fresh. But we can start over. I’ve released this trauma, but it also took parts of me I can never get back. There’s new parts of me in it’s place, and there’s parts of me still empty. I honor the emptiness. The emptiness makes room for me to start again. I still grieve what trauma took from me, and I always will. But Samirah would want me to take off with what they started, and make it my own. I never tell people they were ahead of their time, because there’s change makers in every time, who never got to see the fruits of what they started. Kani means fruit. In some languages, Samirah means seed. You seeded it all Samirah. And now, Kanimozhi must take the lead.

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I feel you watching over me, when times get hard. I remind myself, if trauma took me from you, there’s no way you’d let it take me too. I didn’t have you watching over me then, and I do now. You were a force, and with you on my side, I feel my power too. It’s returning to me, under your protection. Under your wings, I rise. I have time on my side.

You didn’t have enough time. You were always ahead of your time, but I’ll hold my past and history with me, the way you held our future. I wish it gets easier, but I admit it’s a constant fight. But you’ve done so much to fight for us, so we can fight for others. We're going to fight regardless. But because you fought so hard to get our needs met, we can fight for a future where all our needs are met. We can fight for community care that could sustain us all. We can fight to tear down systems, and we’re doing so in a way, where we center the most marginalized. We don’t need to take to the streets, though that must happen too. We take action where we are, with every person we meet.

We don’t center whyte comfort. We center what it takes to get this need met. If you’re looking for someone to hold your hand and teach you strategies step by step, you need to reframe your expectations. As soon as we tell you what this work takes, you all run away. So we don’t teach you everything we know on how to make a way out of no way. We give you the minimal information it takes. Then we see if you take action, or if you tell Black disabled people to wait even longer. We don’t want people who demand more free labor. We need people who take action with what they have, like their own lives are on the line.

Most people run away when confronted with the reality of how much community care and labor it takes to sustain one Black disabled trans person. It takes an entire village, a village that demands more from every person in their personal networks. You say we shatter family, but love, we shatter respectability. We shatter false ideas of community and show people what community requires. It requires mutual aid. It requires love as labor. If everyone split this labor fairly instead of running away, then the most marginalized bodies wouldn’t be holding all the pain.

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We weave consistency out of the inconsistent people who come and go. That’s a feat. That’s a lot to hold, to recruit someone new every time someone leaves, and we do it just for the cycle to repeat. It’s a lot to hold, and we refuse to hold it. We redirect it, and redirect it, over and over and over till we find someone who says yes to our mutual aid request. Till we find someone to take the load. Just for a second. Just for a moment. And when they drop it, we start all over. Look all over for someone else to take the load, share the load, even just for a second. We are persistent. We keep asking people to become community, instead of the individualized people society has taught them to be. We keep believing in the power of community, even when it leaves us on a stuck pattern, like a broken record. Because we believe in more. And call us a broken record, if you want, but we are consistent. We wove consistency from the inconsistent people who come and go from our mutual aid teams, like this is their volunteer opportunity. Call us a broken record, for repeatedly asking for more and demanding more. But we show people we can do more, we can be more, and we can ask for more than the little we are given. Call us a broken record, but you keep breaking, and we keep spinning.

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They leaned against the rock, fully spent. But they weren’t drained. They were fulfilled. That was mutual aid. They had utilized every resource they had, but they had found a way - not only to meet people’s needs, but to redirect the urgency to others in the community, rather than hold it in their body. And not only that, but they had specifically redirected the urgency to those with more privilege. They were a channel, not an anchor. They were a river, not the ocean. They refused to build up salt. They refused to hold the stress. They released and redirected, and it was this reason and this reason only that they didn’t develop high blood pressure. Their body and mind remained clear like freshwater, for they embodied the constant movement of rivers. Only community was the pool of resources - only community was the ocean. It can’t be anchored by a single person. When they find a way - they don’t try to become an anchor. They find a route to the ocean.

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Sustaining eathother

Samirah the Sapphic Siren

MUSIC & SOUNDS USED:

Theme music : Water Fluid - Music by ItsWatR from Pixabay

Ethereal Ambient music.: Sound Effect by Clacksberg from Pixabay

Ethereal-remix: Sound Effect by wi-photos from Pixabay