This interview appears in full at Ms. magazine. Tune in to Looking Back, Moving Forward for more.

Aimee Allison founded She the People to empower more of us to envision an America redefined and inspired by women of color. As its president, she launches and spearheads efforts to demonstrate the political power of women as color and advance racial, economic, and gender justice.

As part of the first episode of the new Ms. Studios podcast Looking Back, Moving Forward, Allison talked to me about her vision for a feminist future, rewriting the American story, and what it will take for us to build a better democracy. 

There are three huge cultural forces that we’re dealing with right now, and we have since the inception of this country: racism and white supremacy — at its core, it has a lot to do with anti-Blackness and anti-Indigenous people; patriarchy and male supremacy, in all the ways that we have seen [in] the culture, even now; and market capitalism.

And all of these forces have pressed on and limited our review of what’s possible. Why am I going into this speech? Because it’s very important, in this time, where our democracy has faltered. We have a regime in charge who’s trying to take us back to the 1850s — before Reconstruction and the 14th Amendment, and birthright citizenship, and all the things that our predecessors, our godmothers, had fought for.

Those things are at risk of being removed, fast as they can, and it’s important that we recognize the role of women, from the very beginning of the country until now. 

I don’t know about you, but [I] had to say the Pledge of Allegiance, growing up in Ohio. I had a story about the founding fathers, and their wisdom, and things like that, but we have to break the spell that we have been under about what this country is in order for us to create something new — and Black women,more than most people, throughout history, have been able to see through the lies and to embrace a justice vision.

That was true when the founding documents were crafted — by a bunch of slaveholding people, who wrote in there that Black people were not human, and Native people were not human — until now. 

The forces that have taken over the U.S. have taken over many places. It’s a global thing that’s happening, in places like Hungary, and it happened in places like Brazil, the Philippines, and others, and what we do know is that this legacy that women were born into. At our very best, women-led movements have been central to both defining what’s possible in terms of justice and having the infrastructure in terms of fighting for democracy.

That’s one person, one vote. That’s a society where people can live with dignity. Women-led movements, at their best, can be that, and that has been true, certainly, for 250 years, since the U.S. was around, but that is why I have focused on women of color. As a Black woman, I understand the specific and very powerful role that we have had.

The way I think about us at our best is: We have been standing in the gap. I grew up in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, in Central Ohio, and the minister would talk about this Bible story about standing in the gap. The specifics of the story aren’t really that important, but the thing I got as a kid was standing in the gap means you’re protecting something precious and important, and in order to hold that space, you have to both see, with clear eyes, what is, and speak the truth about it, at the same time as envisioning what could be.

That is the hardest thing for human beings to do. It is something that is deep in the culture of Black women, and it is deeply a possibility for women of color. Not that it’s exclusive to folks, but it shows that our strongest group who can protect the idea of democracy, can protect the idea of diversity, equity, justice — the things that we have defined as bringing us together, uniting us, imagining this society that we haven’t created quite yet, all of that requires us to lean into the leadership of people who come from this tradition.

That’s why I focus on women of color. That’s why I think that that’s the best hope for America’s future, even if it means that we go back to some of the things that have been created in the last 250 years.

As those are destroyed, we have to hold a vision of what can replace it. Even now, when we’re feeling afraid and we’re confused and uncertain of the future, there’s some beautiful things that we have held through some terrible times, and that is our goal now and into the future.

Aimee Allison

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