By Mark Van Steenwyk, re-posted from social media

It is a bizarre experience—I’m reading posts from right wingers about antifa, anarchy, socialism and the “radical fringe” that threatens their freedom.

And reading posts from liberals/centrists fundamentally agreeing with the premise that these are bad things and trying to show how the Democratic Party and Biden aren’t like these bad elements.

All the while, realizing they’re talking about me, everything I’m working towards, and my community. As though we are the source of real trouble. That we are the violent ones. The extreme ones.

We, who don’t like it when anyone, regardless of political party, bombs the shit out of brown folks in distant lands.

We, who believe that the world shouldn’t have an owner class and are more worried about the looting of the rich and powerful than the looting of the poor.

We, who believe that the modern concept of policing is part of the problem and needs to be defunded as we invest more into healing the real wounds of oppression.

We, who see “riots” as a more reasonable response to injustice than a desire to simply “go back to the way things were.”

We who find the destruction of ecosystems and the toxification of our earth as a greater concern than whether or not the Dow Jones Industrial Average continues to increase.

We who don’t see “polarization” as the Big Bad. Rather, we recognize our society has been polarized all along. White supremacy, class oppression, patriarchy, sexism, transphobia, homophobia, are old and lingering problems that reveal the real polarity. It doesn’t suddenly become polarization when white family members start getting mad at each other.

Mark Van Steenwyk is the executive director of The Center for Prophetic Imagination.