Kenji
@elementaleucology.com
2.4K followers 2.6K following 16K posts
Healer | Miraculist | Cultural engineer Black queer strategist and organizer committed to a habitable earth and joyful embodiments of the erotic. Life finds a way. (Some NSFW) campsite.bio/the_eucologist
![Image taken of page 93 of Beronda Montgomery's book 'Lessons From Plants'. A vague outline of a shaggy blue blanket can be seen in the background.
Lightly edited text reads as follows:
"Pioneer plants in primary succession may need to emerge through barriers or put down roots in difficult places [but they] can often effect change with minimal resources or networks to support ideas, growth, and innovation. The effort of these individuals... leads to additional ecosystem changes that support the next wave of individuals needed to drive and sustain cultural change and institutional transformation.
The transformational goals of pioneers often require an initial period of disruption. Just as prescribed fires are needed for managing certain ecosystems, intentional disruptions may be required in human ecosystems to interrupt entrenched patterns or status quo thinking or action, and to move purposefully toward intended change outcomes. Although intentional disruption is often necessary, we should not overlook the reality that beneficial disruption opportunities can arise from ['bad' events or] intentions. For example, the 2016 election of a US president whom many Americans viewed as anti-woman and anti-science led to a national protest movement, including the 2017 Women's March and the March for Science."](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:lydxxesjjmqdibq5xacb6smk/bafkreieervde7fpexept662prp2u7mcwxfsq4uhgorprgyzwjmjzidvvd4)
![Image taken of page 94 of Beronda Montgomery's book 'Lessons From Plants'. A vague outline of beige forefingers can be seen near the bottom of the page as the book is propped against a shaggy blue blanket. A sparse, wood-paneled floor can be seen at the left edge of the image.
Lightly edited text reads as follows:
"We tend to ignore the need to introduce intentional disturbance or disruption, just as we do in fire-adapted ecosystems [but] significant changes [in/to] the composition of individuals may be required to move towards change targets. People often purport to desire significant changes to ecosystem structures in the pursuit of equity but ignore the need for real 'disturbance' to break away from the status quo community composition. An organization may need to reevaluate recruitment strategies and screening processes to promote the identification and recruitment of a broader range of individuals. We must understand that intervention and intentional disruption may be critical for supporting environments primed for the succession needed to support cultural change.
We can accomplish systemic change through multiple means... Strategic ways to initiate transformation start with reflection on and awareness of our current situation: identify the features of the local surroundings and what resources are available, and assess our needs. At the community level a subset of individuals, pioneers, can serve the whole by acting as 'sensors'. Such individuals are positioned to assess climate or rapid changes in the environment which require responses or innovations."](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:lydxxesjjmqdibq5xacb6smk/bafkreigj4agzxjbxbi6vdq5j5fekvhnktvwl7hgww72rgrzuigvtaxtjhi)
![Image from the Introduction of Julian Go's "Policing Empires: Militarization, Race, and the Imperial Boomerang in Britain and the US."
Edited text reads:
"To better understand the boomerang effect and police militarization, we might first listen closely to the victims, such as the founders of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense [BPP] in the United States in the 1960s. In 1967, Bobby Seale, a leading figure of the [BPP] wrote: 'The racist military police force occupies our community just like the foreign American troops in Vietnam.' The organ of the party, The Black Panther, similarly announced: 'The police action in Vietnam is no different from the police action in the Black Ghettos of America. The police occupy our Black communities like a foreign troop occupies territory.'
...
The Black Panthers thus put their finger on the boomerang effect precisely [and] their critiques... help us dissolve the puzzle of militarization... The civil police, theoretically, is protecting citizens [so] policing should be peaceful... The military-colonial police, meanwhile, are... repressing ostensibly inferior subjects, and therefore employ 'uncivil' tools... The militarization of policing through the boomerang effect means that these boundaries are transgressed. Citizens are treated like colonial subjects. But why? Why have police imported colonial methods used abroad for use on citizens? How is it that the so-called civil police have come to treat citizens as if they are enemies? Armed with [BPP] insights, the answer is plain: [domestic] police use colonial modes of coercion on citizens... because police see citizens AS colonial subjects. And... the key social code by which this miraculous transubstantiation of citizens into subjects occurs is racialization... By racialization, citizens are constructed to be inferior, dangerous, and violent just like colonized peoples. Racialization thereby warrants... the importation of militarized tools, tactics, and technologies."](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:lydxxesjjmqdibq5xacb6smk/bafkreih57sykqb5a364semyurmd4twmkw7ugnxmc7iwgiipqd4raokkevu)
