Finally, after decades of struggle, it seems that a big number of people in our society are recognizing the victims of the fucking capitalist system and the racist State.

Sure, there are still a lot to do, and people are still strongly being victimized by the unjust system, but at least they are starting to being seen: Women, Children, Immigrants, Indigenous people, Black people, Brown people, People of Color (as a whole), Gay men, Lesbians, Trans, Queers … and the list never stops because we keep finding out that the oppression was way bigger the our eyes could see.

And some of the oppressed can now say out loud: I’ve been oppressed, and I now demand my rights, and my place, so I can be resilient.

And we’ve been teaching the youth that showing how oppressed you were is the way to be seen and be heard.

Even in an anarchist environment, not infrequently, an assertive statement can be taken as an authoritarian move, something of the aggressor.

People are not expected to learn to say no anymore, and fight for their “no”, assertively. Instead people have been taught to avoid being hurtful at all costs, trying to guess what happens in other people’s mind.

Curiously, the historically oppressed and shut down, were not so because they were harmless, but because their presence was strong enough to make the “leading part” uncomfortable.

Would evoking ourselves as victims of an oppressed system just make ourselves harmless and more prone to be governed on “their” terms? Could it be that recognizing people as victims is just another way of shutting them down?

Do we really need to see ourselves as victims to be able to fight the capitalist system and the State?

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