Farzana: 'I am hopeful'

Feeling so moved by all the remarkable creative and critical young people I get to work with and learn from. Shake! last week, as per usual, blew me away. It's always just too much! Today is also the last day of a summer program I have been coordinating with young women in my community and of course they too completely smashed it.

I can't help but be hopeful for the future, especially for gender and race relations, despite the state of everything in this world telling us otherwise. How can there be so many imaginative, fierce and self-empowered young people and people of colour and things remain the same?

I pray and hope that the relentless injustices they face does not wither away their zeal for bringing about powerful and transformative change. Or that the day-to-day sickness inflicted by capitalism and patriarchy does not wear away at the rigorous challenging and questioning they have embarked on.

Equally, I hope that us as facilitators, educators, artists, activist or in whatever we do, we are always working to cultivate engaged and embodied spaces for young people, esp for young women and people of colour. And that these spaces always bring in and considerately hold the marginalised in our communities, in the way that any sense of other-ing only comes from a place of self-distinguished autonomy and affirmed identity and not ever from a sense of not belonging. More over, that these spaces are forever unapologetically gentle while stringently equipping us for the long fight in dismantling unfair power structures and working towards justice.

I am hopeful!