Jonathan Flowers - Freire on allies
September 18, 2025 at 1:12 PM Bluesky thread from
Dr. Johnathan Flowers, Blade Wielding Bisexual
@shengokai.bsky.social
Link (only visible to logged-in users): https://bsky.app/profile/shengokai.bsky.social/post/3lz4xasvcbc2q
(WLA: a response to some "do not sign up for protests" discussion on Bluesky. my reading of this thread reminded me of the work and exercises in Hospicing Modernity)
What we're seeing in the "don't sign up for protests" discourse is what Paulo Freire described as the convert's failure to trust the knowledge of the oppressed. As the convert tries to stand in solidarity with the oppressed, they refuse to let go of a world where they were the authority by default.
Insofar as this is the case, these would be converts to the cause of the oppressed (which is really just fighting fascists, tbh) approach their solidarity with hesitance and spring upon any opportunity to demonstrate that they know better how to achieve liberation than the oppressed.
Because they refuse to let go of this world, because they have been conditioned to see themselves as experts on all things, they can NEVER be the architect of the new world. They lack the capacity to transform the situation of oppression and liberate themselves from the ways it dehumanizes them.
Here's the wrinkle, we need these supposed converts. Not only do they possess access to resources that have been denied the oppressed, but our liberation is interdependent with their liberation from being oppressors. If we do not free them from the situation of oppression, they will just reinstate it.
We can see this in how folks are pushing back hard against even the barest hint of disagreement with horrible fucking ideas like "RSVP online for a protest," as if we should sit the fuck down and let our betters decide our path to liberation. As if we don't know how best to deal with the moment.
This is, for Freire, a sign of our supposed "allies" inability to trust us. Because they can't or won't trust not only that we know something, but that our knowledge is valuable, they are fundamentally incapable of being in solidarity with us. This, in turn, fractures our trust in our allies.
Now, Freire doesn't really talk about this, but the oppressed have to trust that converts actually want out of the situation of oppression in order to extend a hand to converts in solidarity. Insofar as the converts don't trust us, they demonstrate that they are unworthy of our own trust in them.