Come Outside First, Then Curate Your Ideology

There’s been an insane wave of perfectly spoken, academia-centered creators telling us word for word, bar for bar, what framework is the most accurate, what ideology is the most perfect path to our liberation. And they’re pulling all of this exclusively from reading. Not from anything else. Just reading, and then telling us what’s best for our road there.

It’s wild to witness, honestly, because these are often folks with no community relationships. They’re not implementers. And you might be wondering, well, why aren’t the implementers the ones speaking up, telling us what’s worked and what hasn’t?

Here’s why: We’re tired. We’re exhausted. We’re overworked and unsupported. So what makes you think we have the energy to come online with perfectly polished, well thought out narratives for y’all after the day we just had? What if you met us outside and helped, then curated your ideology?

Now, I know a lot of y’all are going to say I’m coming for theorists and thinkers, that theory is more important because theory shapes practice. Nobody’s arguing that. Even when I was a kid, forming my own thoughts around historical leaders and abolition, it was because of theory. I know exactly how significant it is. But the catch is I didn’t just listen and read but I also saw it in practice. Through my parents involving themselves in local efforts for the people as a resistance to our collective struggle, them collaborating with other parents in the fight. I don’t think I would have made the programs and systems that support many today had it not been for both of those lenses.

So here’s my actual issue. People are loud about what works when they’ve never tried it, when they have no community relationship at all, when they’ve never even attempted to see any of it outside of a book. And I blame a lot of this on our serious lack of physical community. Yes, we can build internet community. Yes, there are real spaces online where we grow and learn together. But there is something essential about physically being in community with people that so many of y’all are missing. And it’s infuriating, because it drives delusion. It drives cynicism too, this belief that doom is coming and there’s no solution and nobody’s even tried. And doubt whenever you see someone sharing what they’re doing or what they’re trying to help address. It’s a cycle, and we need to end it.

What I actually want is for implementers to start talking. More of us, about what we’re trying to do, what we’re feeling, what we’re actually doing on the ground, so people get a lens that’s more credible than a reading list. Or at least supports the lens of whoever you’re reading from. I promise you, if the people building in real life had the time and capacity to unpack everything they’ve tried, what’s worked, what they attempted based on theory and watched succeed or fail anyway, y’all would have a lot more understanding. A lot less cynicism. And honestly, a lot more hope.

So how do critical thinkers and implementers actually close this gap? How do we fix this culture before it swallows another generation of people who could’ve been building instead of just theorizing at each other online?

I think it starts with critical thinkers, all of us really, acknowledging that implementers can be critical thinkers too. There’s this ignorant perception floating around that without academia, without the language and the jargon, critical thinking isn’t really happening in what gets called informal, imperfect, or even illiterate community spaces. But here’s the thing. A lot of us were exposed to critical thinking long before we ever sat in a classroom for it, through organizing efforts passed down or shown locally, from Black family members, from neighbors, from people who never needed a degree to know how to strategize, how to protect each other, how to move a whole block toward something better. Just because someone can’t back their thinking with a citation doesn’t make their strategy, their process, their years of trial and error, any less valid.

And to be verrryyy clear, this isn’t written to denounce reading, or learning, or listening more than you speak. Especially right now, since it’s Black August, I’d like to emphasize that reading and learning is critical. But it’s worth saying that Black August didn’t come from academia. It was originated by imprisoned individuals. People the world had already thrown away basically, and they still gave us some of the most important political education we have. So even that proves my point. Learning comes from people you wouldn’t expect. It always has.

So it’s not that we don’t need the reading, the theory, the language for what we’re building. It’s that we also need the implementation, the actual outcomes that come from trying something and seeing what happens when you do. We also need to make sure we're not internalizing credentialism, the idea that a degree or the right vocabulary makes someone's thinking more valid than someone who's actually done the work. And we should be honest that credentialism itself has roots in white supremacy, in a system that decided whose knowledge counted based on institutions we were never even allowed into for most of our history. We have to check each other on that too (both thinkers and implementers).

If we started resourcing the folks running a local welfare network out their block, the ones tracking who needs groceries, who needs a ride to dialysis, who needs eyes on their kids after school, the same way we resource somebody quoting theory they read last week, I think that's where the gap actually starts closing.