Try to Remember and Follow

Aug 13

The United States has a funny sense of memory and selective forgetting, y’all — for realz!

The hypocrisy of oppression has showed it’s ugly ass face recently. For me it was in images of armed protestors on the steps of the state capital building in Lansing Michigan, calling for the head of the governor. This open show of aggression towards the state wasn’t met by calling on the National Guard. There certainly wasn’t a public outcry condemning Western Michiganders as violent terrorists. They squatted on those steps, made they point and then went home.

A few weeks later, when Black Lives Matter protests kicked off following the murder of George Floyd, the armed protests in Lansing by White protestors were a figment of our collective imagination. Some folks reading this making a mental note to fact check me (you won’t follow through). You’ll remember the tear gas and the BLM protestors and justify that as a response to all those scary kids breaking the law and starting trouble. You’ll label hypocrisy as conspiracy theory. This kind of selective amnesia is typical.

I’ve had “stop living in the past” moaned at me so much it’d make you light-headed. It’s a pre-programmed, knee jerk response. I’m told gripping history’ll keep me from ever “healing” by mo’ fo’s could give a shit about lingering wounds. Ironic AF the last time somebody used that weak ass argument, it was response to the removal of a statue Teddy Roosevelt. Removing a statue is an attempt to squelch triggering emotions of people being stuck in the past, but wanting to keep the statue is...er...um.

“Americans” love they history and traditions up to where shit gets shameful. Then, it’s “harping” and “clinging” on the past. Shit forgot one sentence to the next with a legal system supporting selective forgetting. Deeds, contracts and grandfather clauses the string tied so some shit stay remembered. 400 years of stolen labor from kidnapped Africans, and stolen land from Indigenous residents of Turtle Island just “slipped my mind.”

So, what’s it gonna be, America? We gonna hold history or we gonna let that shit go and start from a clean slate? I got some debt I’d be happy to see forgotten. You’ll prolly need to empty the prisons too. Really think about what you’re saying when you say forget the past. You might be giving up your wins along with your losses.

Pink Flowers

Pink Flowers is a Black trans artist, peacemaker, educator, and pleasure activist whose work lives at the intersection of embodiment, governance, and cultural transformation. Trained in Theater of the Oppressed, Art of Hosting, and Navajo-informed Peacemaking practices, Pink designs spaces where conflict can be addressed, power can be examined, and joy can be reclaimed.

Her artistic and pedagogical practice draws from African trickster cosmology, Brazilian Joker traditions, shamanic ritual, and cooperative economics. She is the founder of the award-winning Falconworks Theater Company (2005–2021), which used popular theater to build civic capacity and participatory leadership in historically marginalized communities.

Pink served for over five years as a trained Peacemaker in the Red Hook Community Justice Center in Brooklyn, facilitating restorative processes within the New York City court system. From 2015–2018, she worked in cooperative business development with the Center for Family Life, supporting worker-owned enterprises in immigrant communities.

She currently serves as Director of Education and Training for the Inter-Cooperative Council in Ann Arbor, where she leads leadership development and conflict engagement initiatives. Her work has been presented nationally and internationally, including at the Stretch Festival in Berlin and the Pedagogy and Theatre of the Oppressed Conference.

Across ritual, performance, mediation, and institutional design, Pink’s work asks a central question:

What becomes possible when we refuse shame and choose conscious power instead?

Try to Remember and Follow

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Define “White” for Me, Please?