LOVE WANT Issue 15: What Remains with Mariah Parker
As Dorian Corey said in the iconic Paris is Burning “You leave a mark on the world if you just get through it” but how do we want to get through it? Consciously or not, we’ve all sat with this thought and its varying degrees of existential crisis.
In an era of self-fashioning, legacy, or at the very least identity, is at our fingertips and on our minds. While it’s deeply rooted in all the ego, narcissism and privilege that drive our connected lives, there is a motivation to do, and be better. A realisation that feels pressure-filled and freeing all at once. With self-discovery on the rise, people are readily tapping into what remains; the stories and lifetimes of those who have inspired. While the resources to craft these considered identities are more available than ever, if the internet stopped, would our legacies live on? It feels like a reality check we should more actively consider.
As a word, legacy feels deeply optimistic. Perhaps because, by personal association, it’s rooted in the idea of human connection; those remembered and those who made a significant impact never failed to acknowledge the power of truly seeing others. There’s something about this that extends beyond the physical, sitting at the source of our world's greatest movements and in turn, greatest legacies.
Yet, as we face our many self-inflicted global crises, one has to wonder if there will be a world for our own legacies to live in.
The people featured in and behind this Issue of LOVE WANT give me hope that if there is, it will be a world we will want to live in.
Mariah Parker
26, openly queer, a rapper, a PhD candidate, civil rights activist, community organizer and now the newly-elected Athens-Clarke County Commissioner. ‘Contains multitudes’ doesn’t begin to describe it.
We’re building this issue around the idea of ‘Legacy’, partly because we’re living in a time where people have the power to craft, and hone, their own identities in a much more public way than ever before. I wanted to hear your thoughts on legacy - is it important? And should we be actively crafting our own?
I think that, if you're in a position to concern yourself with creating a legacy, it's morally imperative to focus that energy on creating new leadership. As the Tom Peters’ quote goes, ‘Leaders don't create followers; they create more leaders.’ So no, I don't think legacy in terms of being remembered or leaving a physical trace is important; if I can change somebody's life and they don't remember me for it, that's amazing.
We’ve started to see legacy as more than what physically remains. What’s something - an idea, an aesthetic or a movement - that transcends time and speaks to you?
Freedom struggle is an intrinsic and forever-evolving quality of human society, I feel like, and one that I feel very connected to and want to remain connected to as the face and needs of it continue to shift.
You took your oath of office on The Autobiography of Malcolm X - can you explain your connection to his legacy?
American life was founded upon the erasure of folks like myself and brother Malcolm. We're meant to assimilate or die, though the latter is preferred. To invade the public discourse without assimilating into it was Malcolm X's highest skill, and though race constitutionally connects me to the legacy of Black erasure that made and makes brother Malcolm so important, I feel that as a person with political power, building upon his legacy by cultivating in myself public discursive verve and skill is one of my duties.
Your work, and inevitably your legacy, is centred around transforming the poverty and discrimination that has held the community of District 2 back. How can those in places of privilege be an ally to these communities and the work that you do? What’s something we need to know?
Discomfort and risk are unevenly distributed in our society. Black and brown people and queer folks and poor folks and differently-abled folks are asked to bear more discomfort and risk than other people. For example, because not all built environments are designed with full accessibility in mind, someone in a wheelchair is asked to bear considerably more risk and discomfort in trying to access public spaces. When housing markets become volatile, as they did in '08, black and brown communities take the hardest hit and bounce back the least; this is the kind of disproportionate risk we live with, given our nation's history of legislated, systematic disruption of black and brown wealth creation (Mehrsa Baradaran's The Color of Money is a seminal read on this topic). Frank and humble conversations about and direct action against these ills can be deeply uncomfortable for folks in privileged positions, but it's only because conversation and action redistribute discomfort more equitably. If you're comfortable, you're not doing it right. Sit with your discomfort, interrogate it, withstand difficult conversations calmly, accept that you're wrong, and show up when the people need them even when you feel awkward about it.
