Safety Should be the Goal, Not Unity

I am all for radical inclusion, but you can’t have a safe relationship, let alone unity, with someone who is committed to their violence. I have boundaries to make myself safe. I will not include the inevitable harm caused by people committed to being unsafe. If a person cannot come to the table with a willingness to transform their violence and the supremacist thinking at its root, then we simply can’t be in safe relationship.

Instead of unity, which is an impossible and useless illusion of a goal, we need to do everything in our power to dismantle the systems that empower violence and supremacist thinking and make our society safer. Safer is a far more viable goal than unified. We need to enable protections, like Nevada did by protecting same-sex marriages in their constitution. That is a small step towards safety and it did not require unity, just a majority.

Centrist Dems listening to and working with progressives would be a step toward safety for all of us (especially regarding the safety of the planet for humans), far more than trying to unify with Republicans. While Biden will take some small steps toward safety, if his goal is unity then he won’t get far because unifying with supremacists isn’t safe for anyone.

I learned about supremacy thinking, and how the work is making ourselves safe + making ourselves *safe to be with*, from the program that transformed our adoption triad’s fracture into a healthy, nonviolent dynamic. And I’m seeing how the principles apply to our collective relationship. The illusion of unity is dangerous. The Dems will not be significantly safer than the Republicans until they do the work of uprooting their supremacy and making themselves safer to be with.

Making ourselves safe to be with is long, difficult, and painful work that requires deep self awareness and a willingness to be real about the harm we cause, but it is so very worth it when everyone in the room feels truly safe to be all of who they are. Safety is the goal that will create the transformation in our interpersonal and collective relationships that so many of us desire.