spookybuttons:

being from a poor country on the internet is always a frustrating experience because we feel all the time like second-class citizens of the world; we have struggles and problems and victories that people don’t usually care to listen and more than once I have had the experience of going like “Hey guys we just had a dam disaster that killed 300 people” or “guys look at the philippines there’s a typhoon happening on top of an active volcano while covid is spreading and the president told police to shoot the citizens”, only to have that immediately swallowed by people going “Did you guys see the new TRUMP TWEET??”

and that generally sucks and I’ve actually left online spaces/gradually withdrew from friends because of just how bad it makes me feel, but nothing makes this as clear as when the USA decides a cause is important and I am bombarded by news of issues that are just the norm to me, as if they were only recently discovered

people from third world countries have been dealing with police brutality for so long that it spans generations - my grandma protested and was violently repressed, my mother protested and was violently repressed, it has been no different with me, and I lack words to express how immensely frustrating it is to open social media every day to see people go

“hey did you know that THE GOVERNMENT can use THE POLICE to repress THE CITIZEN???”

yes. that is a thing. it is a thing the state does. it is a thing that is done by the state. I have noticed. we have been saying this for a while. we have been begging people to listen for a while, but when we say it what we usually get is ‘damn, look at those uncivilized places! fighting the police! how savage!’. yes, I know, it was the cops who started it. yes I know this is not how rubber bullets are meant to be used. yes I know that the tear gas - 

it’s exhausting. it’s exhausting to see people like greta thunberg become the voice of defending the amazon when we’ve had our own voices defending the amazon for years and actually dying from it. Nothing against her - she’s doing a good thing - but GOD do I wish people knew of Chico Mendes or even Marina Silva like they know of her. what we get instead is just “brazilians don’t care about the forest! good thing this european has shown up to save it!”

what it feels like is that a thing only matters if a rich country decides it does, and then swoops down to teach us savages about the importance of the cause. as if mexican students didn’t vanish from the face of the earth by daring to speak up against social injustice. as if the kids in hong kong weren’t resisting tooth-and-nail to keep their democracy while the state uses the police to repress them. as if this very same fight against racism and police brutality, in brazil, hadn’t cost marielle franco her life in an horrific way.

it just feels as if the USA is screaming “hey guys the room is on fire” and my charred skeleton is sitting there, staring at the charred skeletons of the venezuelans and chileans and argentineans and filipinos and mexicans and all other latinos and third worlders like is that so