After reading Liberation Practices, it highlights the necessity to collaborate on systemic or collective issues to work towards all-encompassing solutions. It is so important to consult and build counsel of various identities and backgrounds as they each offer a changing perspective based on their particular ways of processing the world or internalizing an issue. The examples of influential figures who applied liberation practices, like Audre Lorde and Bell Hooks, reminded me of the exclusionary perspective of the feminist movement before its expansion. Historically, many women of color were ignored or utilized as props for the early feminist agenda that primarily served white middle-class women during the first and second waves. In this, Black feminists like Lorde and Hooks were revolutionary in their perspective of rejecting this “activism” as a liberation act for all women when the narratives, plights, and leadership roles were restricted only to one demographic. After learning about gender issues that hinder our society, like misogyny and patriarchy, it becomes evident that other factors like racism, xenophobia, and homophobia are all interlinked by ideologies of superiority and domination. Therefore, when engaging in liberation practices, the webs of these biases are more apparent when seeing them from diverse lenses. I get motivated to join others to create change for this same reason which is that we can include a broader range of people. I don’t think true liberation is selective; in order to reach that point, everyone has to be free, or there is still more work to do.
