The Drama of Demanding Human Rights & An End to State Mandated Extortion

There's a sacred fire inside of me that burns with the ache of the world today, so this post is unedited. It's that divine rage that transforms and alchemizes pain into possibility. It's so easy for us to stay stagnated in the stories most prevalent in our lives. It's so easy to get caught up in the content and disagree with one another. It's so easy to fight over content and diminish another's character you disagree and polarize within the duality of only right or wrong. I believe this is by design: the classic divide and conquer. If we're fighting each other, we have no time or energy to devote to noticing what else is going on in the world and what might that mean for our lives and our futures? 

Global Governance is Here  

The puppet masters with a vision of a particular kind of world know this. So they keep us in-fighting all the while instituting a global governance that's somehow supposed to convince us that more concentrated power in the hands of the elite is good for us (the people). 

Perhaps I'm the black sheep amongst all this (and believe me there are millions of us) but I wonder if you can take a wild guess what happens to a world ruled exclusively by one elite unit? In the past we would have called that a dictatorship. Not in the modern world though...today, as per usual with Stockholm syndrome, we trust the very people who violate us and tell us it's for our own good. We have notions of what a dictator looks like, and it's one single guy. One bad apple that somehow cast a spell and managed to steal power and control and impose it upon a people and a nation. 

I happen to believe this radical notion that a dictatorship does not occur in a vacuum. It does not simply one day POOF and appear. Instead, a dictatorship starts with a *systemic mindset of control fuelled by fear and rage and shame and despair that leads to institutional totalitarianism*.

This is my starting point in this whole insanely divided and polarized world we have collectively created. 

Extortion, Deprivation and Violence 

In yet another powerful conversation with Sheila Winter Wallace and the group of purely magical women she brings together every month, the word extortion came up. A word I had not yet considered when it comes to our government's actions toward its people during this pandemic. Yet everything about that word felt 'right' inside my body about what I feel our elected officials are doing to us with these highly divisive mandates. 

This is my other starting point: I, like millions worldwide, feel extorted. I feel violated. I feel invalidated. By the very institutions that were meant to protect me against states-on-steroids-with-power. I am being mandated to deprive myself of basic human rights because those with power say so. 
And the feeling is awfully familiar. 

Sidenote: I thought accounting for lived experience meant something. I was wrong. Those in positions of privilege only like to pay lip service to this phenomenon. We like to talk about it because it sounds nice to "give voice" to those with "lived experience", but when it comes time to walk the walk and listen to lived experience, we default to the status quo. We give voice to the abusers and listen to their messages of gaslighting the very people they are abusing. 

Let me contextualize, in case you're not following how those who choose to remain jab-free have been extorted in an effort to appease those with institutional power and the majority(?) of the public: 

• give up our and our children's body autonomy (at the will of the state and it's minions)
• give up our and our children's right to choose what medical interventions we participate in 
• give up our basic civil rights previously guaranteed by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms 
• give up our many of our civil rights and all of our privileges 
• give up contact with our family and friends
• give up being able to visit our family and friends in any institutions, including hospitals and nursing homes
• give up feeling safe to enter any public space for fear of shame, including hospitals
• give up going to any social places or gatherings for fear of being shamed, shunned or unapologetically excluded
• give up feeling worthy of decency, respect and dignity
• give up feeling safe from government spewed hate (it was ugly when The Donald did it, but it became okay with the status quo representatives) 
• give up our livelihoods and ability to provide for our families or keep a roof over our heads
• give up our right to travel freely (I swear it used to be guaranteed under the Charter!)
• give up our voice because it does not agree with the politicized god of modernity: science *  (sidenote: i love and deeply trust science; however, not the highly politicized version of it that noone is allowed to question)
• give up our opinions and perspectives when they don't align with those of the majority or face backlash like never before 
• give up our ability to shop at certain grocery stores and retail stores (as if food is a privilege and as if it's not -30 degrees in this country)

In other words, capitulate to the powers that be and the proclaimed majority because they said so. 
For many Canadian-born individuals terrified of what all denial and deprivation of decency and human rights has already led to, they cannot trust their government nor any institutions that support violence against their physical bodies. 

Yes, you read that right, violence. Unwanted penetration of pharmacology upon one's personal body is an intentional act of violence. Spin it how you want in your own head to make it make logical sense to you as to how the government is justified in doing so because we are in the midst of a proclaimed pandemic. 

Unwanted penetration is rape. Period.

Here's a fun fact you may not have considered: it is a very slippery slope when you allow states to mandate what people can and can't do with their own bodies. 

I believed women were supposed to know this well given how our ancestors fought hard for women today to have the right to choose what goes in and out of our own bodies. The issue here is body autonomy. Sovereignty. Freedom of choice. Is abortion next? Why not?! And then, what else? 

Don't be so dramatic! 

Focus on the individuals and ignore the systemic

And for some of us, who have lived within borders of almost-absolute state power and control intergenerationally, what is happening in this country we sought refuge to is immensely traumatizing. It is revictimizing. And instead of listening to us and our concerns, we're being invalidated and made fun of not only by our elected officials, but by our friends and family members also. We are being told point blank, we are "delusional" and "dramatic". Others are suggesting we are ignorant and should "do your research". Everyone has been painted with the same brush and any effort for it to be otherwise is dismissed as illogical. 

Women know this one well too...we're "hysterical" and "crazy" because we're sensitive to violations. Such is the way of the internalized mindset of patriarchy...

All other minorities know this one well, too. Their efforts of being heard have been systematically downplayed because the privileged folk believe you attract more bees with honey. In other words, whoever is being violated should ask nicely the appropriate level of government to pretty please pay attention and because governments and their institutions are fair and just and they care about people they will listen, validate their concerns and respond appropriately. 

When the Black Lives Matter protests happened the mainstream narrative switched to "I supported the movement because black people suffer at the hands of police and because everyone has the right to protest ...but they lost my support when they became violent". The movement literally lost major support after the looting, as if the looting changes the predicament or the message of the movement! 

A person from a place of privilege may not be able to hear the immensely condescending, patronizing, demoralizing, degrading tone of their own thought process. They cannot possibly account for the intergenerational, unhealed, epigenetic trauma that fuels the rage carried inside the bodies of black folk in America. Not only were they stolen from their homes and used as a means of making white people richer, they are systematically to this day being intentionally kept second-class citizens by the actions of their states and corporate institutions.

For the folk birthed in privilege, all they know is that the institutions in place work for them, so they must be okay for everyone else...even if they're a little unfair. So instead of focusing on the immensity of the fire that fuels people's intergenerational rage because of the SYSTEMIC racism they are experiencing, folk born in unquestioned privilege focus on how unice it is to loot and break windows. They have the right to protest, but not violate property! Not scare us good white folk! Enter the police with their faceless uniforms and weapons of mass destruction instructed to shut. it. down. No communication, no attempt at resolution. Those with the bigger dicks win. Sorry, I meant weapons.

How's that for a metaphor...?! 

The burning rage of those suffering is left unvalidated. Dismissed. Ignored. The people... deprived. The message internalized is that windows matter more to "us" than your pain. After all, "we" are used to superiority and, when it comes down to it, would rather not share a piece of our pie. 

Enter now the Freedom Convoy 2022. After two full years of enduring the immensity of all the bulshit (for a review of what that is, if you forgot, see above) and after two years of increased pressure of extortion, we arrive at the point where a bunch of people from all walks of life organize, gather, connect and relatively peacefully protest on capitol hill demanding an end to the extortion. That is the common goal amongst everyone who supports this convoy. End. The. Fucking. Immoral. Illegal. Unethical. Distorted. Mandates. Period. That is the intent. 

Here's the problem: the government is uniterested in conversation or ending the mandates. They are much more interested in creating and sustaining division, and so everyone here is painted with this ugly brush of name calling and that sphere has penetrated our homes. 

So, naturally, instead of focusing on why these people have left their homes and are freezing their balls off sleeping in their trucks in the middle of winter, our fellow Canadians are focusing instead on how loud people are being on the streets.

They are focused on the low level violence of some people instead of the message in its totality.

They are calling the convoy disgraceful instead of the acts of state-sponsored violence on its own people.

They are focused on how the protesters are "terrorizing" the city instead of the extortions of the state.

They are blaming the fate of small businesses closing down on the protest instead of noticing the pattern of small businesses closing because of the (now proven) ineffective mandates demanding they lockdown.

They are hyper focusing on why would you come to parliament when the mandates are (supposedly) provincial instead of noticing the pattern encouraged, funded and modelend from the top down.

They question the racism and homophobia of some of the members of the convoy all the while ignoring the ignorant, divisive and hateful comments of our elected national leader.

They condemn expressions of hate within the protest but ignore the impact of the segregation and discrimination directly created by the mandates imposed upon us by our government.

They proclaim we still have freedoms in Canada while ignoring the systematic ways in which those are being taken away one at a time.

They proclaim the convoy is an embarrassment to the world when in fact, our elected governance is the one being made fun of (until, of course, this convoy with international support as a metaphor for the veil is thin).

It turns out, a bunch of Canadians (likely the same people that support the mandates of discrimination and segregation without daring to call it that) don't think the protest is being nice, and so they condemn it and paint everyone participating with the same brush.

It seems the privileged "we" once again fell into the mental trap of their deep conditioning to play by the rules of don't play at all, ignoring how the rules are designed by those who have rigged the game.

In the end, the powers that be are achieving exactly  that which they set out to do: keep us fueled with fear, rage and despair so they can divide us so they can create the world they envision. What world that is, we are going to have to see. 

For now, I am glad to get this off my chest and I know where I stand: I support HUMANITY'S and ALL OF LIFE'S birthright to simply be. A radical notion in and of itself, I know.