Get a NO out!

NO word is needed now more than NO.

NO to genocide.

NO to saying there are two sides to genocide.

NO to business as usual when Israel is committing a genocide in Palestine.

NO to racism.

NO to saying we need nuance to discuss racism.

NO to a Labour Party that seems to think the best way to beat Reform is to become them.

NO to sexual harassment.

NO to making light of sexual harassment as if it is just some microaggression.

NO to transphobia.

NO to how transphobia is thinly disguised as debate, so the “no platformed” are over platformed, turning petty prejudices into policies.

NO to homophobia.

NO to how some of us are seen as having lifestyles not lives, as being pretend or less real.

NO to ableism.

NO to treating reasonable adjustments as the cause of inconvenience rather than a chance to build better institutions.

NO to how those who need access to benefits are treated as burdens.

NO to positioning some people as undeserving.

NO to treating poverty as a crime.

NO to the consequences of saying NO, as if those who protest violence cause it.

NO to the system that stops us from saying NO to the system.

I could go on because of what goes on.

I wrote No is not a Lonely Utterance, because even though NO is clarifying, even when it is clear what is wrong, a NO can take a long time to come out.

We learn from the time it takes. From that labour.

I think of Andrea. She ended up saying NO to a professor who had harassed and bullied her (only to be warned he was an “important man”). Andrea did not start out by saying NO. It took her a long time to say it because of how she doubted herself. But then she said, ‘I was like, NO, NO, NO, NO, things are wrong not just in terms of gender, things are desperately wrong with the way he is teaching full stop.’

Once one NO came out, others followed, NO, NO, NO, NO, an army of NO’s. Maybe that is why complaint is an activist affect. We feel that release, when what has been held in or held back comes out.

A NO as a snap. Snap to it, get through it.

Get a NO out so that others can follow!

Others can ...