STOP ASKING FOR PERMISSION TO BE FREE
A TEXT BY SONY THĂNG
The system needs you to believe that the system is the only possible system.
That its courts are the only legitimate arbiters of justice.
That its elections are the only legitimate expression of political will.
That its economic arrangements are not arrangements, choices made by people with interests, but natural facts, like weather, like gravity, like the speed of light.
ONCE YOU BELIEVE THAT, YOU ARE COMPLETELY CAPTURED.
Because every challenge you mount will be mounted in the system’s own language, through the system’s own institutions, by the system’s own rules, and judged by the system’s own courts.
YOU HAVE ALREADY LOST BEFORE YOU FILE THE FIRST DOCUMENT.
That is what being legible to the system means.
It means the system can read you.
It knows what you want. It knows how you’ll ask for it. It knows which channels you’ll use. It knows your timeline : election cycles, news cycles, funding cycles. It knows your leadership structure. It knows your coalition’s fracture points.
IT HAS, IN MANY CASES, DESIGNED THOSE FRACTURE POINTS DELIBERATELY.
STOP BEING READABLE.
Stop making demands that fit within the system’s vocabulary and possible responses.
THE THINGS THAT HAVE ACTUALLY CHANGED HISTORY WERE NOT THE THINGS THAT THE SYSTEM WAS PREPARED FOR.
The Haitian Revolution was not legible to the French Empire.
The Algerian maquis were not legible to the French colonial rule.
The Viet Cong tunnels were not legible to the US Air Force.
THE SYSTEM CANNOT BOMB WHAT IT CANNOT SEE.
THE SYSTEM CANNOT CO-OPT WHAT IT CANNOT NAME.
THE SYSTEM CANNOT ABSORB WHAT REFUSES TO BE ABSORBED.
STOP ASKING FOR PERMISSION TO BE FREE.
Stop filing the paperwork.
Stop making it easy for them to know where you’ll be and what you’ll say when you get there.
MAKE THEM COME FIND YOU.
In the conclusion, in the illegibility, in the space between what they expected and what you actually did :
THAT IS WHERE POWER HAS ALWAYS BEEN BROKEN.
THAT IS WHERE IT WILL BE BROKEN AGAIN.