State of the Constituency 2024
In which we discuss what happens in the next stage of expansion.
Welcome to Threadings, the newsletter and podcast where I contemplate world making and I look at the things that are keeping and collecting my life at the seams. My name is ismatu.
Orientation to Purpose
I have a few processes I employ on Threadings which allow me to examine the systems that I have in place, and the systems that I wade through. I am a system within and among other systems. The substance and the maintenance of my systems: that’s what I call my stitches. Those are the things that keep this plush bear, ismatu, together. Think like one of those little teddy bears that's holding a heart that you get for Valentine's Day, right? One of those. My process of exploring what goes on around me is something that literally keeps my plush little stuffing from popping right out.
I write these essays essentially to make sure that I have (1) a means of keeping track of myself, (2) what's important to me, and (3) what's important both to and about the world around me. I am not talking about Thee World, capital T. I'm talking about my world, lowercase M, lowercase W: the world that is observable to me.
Usually we just jump right in to whatever essay I have prepared for us, I read it with commentary, and we have a good time thinking about these things together. Because I like a pretty no-nonsense introduction, I don't spend a lot of time introducing myself and my circumstance. And I have been reflecting at the end of my quarter, going, “Wow, ismatu... you could be going so much harder. You could be doing more. You could be expanding in ways that are brilliant and beautiful. And really, the only reason that you're not is because you haven't sat down with a pen and ink and done the thoughtwork about what this next stage of life looks like.” That being said– welcome to our first ever State of the Constituency. Henceforth, we will be doing these every year, with places to find quarterly updates and assessments.
I am a person who is collectively made. I don't believe in the term self-made. There's no such thing as a self-made human being in any regard. I am stitched and kept and collected– not just by myself or my loved ones, but by also you all who continue to witness me and help keep me and help collect me and help remind me of what it is that I'm capable of. I owe a lot to you, including like… some basic explanations about who I am and what I do in public.
State of the Constituency Q4 | 2024
The purpose of the State of the Constituency is to reorient ourselves to who I am (the invisible pen behind all these essays, Ismatu Gwendolyn) what I do, why I do what I do, and how you all affect me. You are also invited to explore what you want from your participation in this ether community. I’m also sitting here with blueberry chamomile lemon tea. God, that's so good. With a little honey.
Phenomenal. Please remind me to take my tea. I believe in the power of thought. What happens is I sit down to record these and I get to talking and then my tea gets cold every now and again, every like five or 10 minutes or so. Someone just say in your mind, ismatu, drink your tea. Take a sip of your tea. Slow down. I would appreciate that greatly. We're starting with me, which this is a short biography.
Agenda:
Who is ismatu? (the pen behind the essays)
Productive Consumption (a means of world-making)
Necessary Expansion (how you all affect me)
Ismatu Gwendolyn, the pen behind the essays
I don't like to define myself by who I am in relationship to other people. I don't like to define myself by what I do. Usually biographies are something like: my name is Ismatu and I do this, that, and the third. I studied this thing. I'm someone's daughter, wife, mother, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And all of those are secondhand descriptors. Not that they're not important to me, but I think there's a difference between what you do and who you are. Ismatu Gwendolyn is a being who really enjoys being alive. That's it, that's all.
I am a being who really, really, really enjoys being alive. I feel like a small, brand new thing, like those true morsels of childhood. I remember how long those days felt. I remember how excited I was to get to school every day. I remember how amazing it was, like being in a physical corporal body, feeling the wind and looking at the sun and learning about clouds. Like I was like, life is amazing and I am so happy to be here. I have really come full circle and I hope to be staying in this place of reverence for being alive for a long time.
In terms of the things I do: I am a writer. I'm an essayist. I have a book coming out. I am a community health worker; I do that work for free. I think health care should be free and I'm not really willing to negotiate on that. I am a public scholar; I am a person who is funded by the public that witnesses me. I am also a material advocate for African and New Afrikan peoples, having been born to Sierra Leonean parents in the "United States of America" (colonized Turtle Island), having grown up in the mountains on either side of the Rockies, and moving back to Sierra Leone in adulthood. Life has, through the loops of time, introduced me to the necessity of working together to create good and lovely and beautiful things.
I came into being a public figure without much thought as to what that would entail. I made TikToks as a vanity project because I thought I'd be good at it– I'm good at talking and love looking at my face. I thought I wanted to be a skincare influencer. I’m great at sales. Long story short, about six weeks, eight weeks into my TikTok exponential rise, we're sitting at like 120,000 followers, the brand Farmacy has just sent me their Niacinamide overnight mask, and Roe versus Wade was overturned by the US Supreme Court.
There was a lot of panic about that legislative decision and not a lot of sources as to how we, as the public, have responded in the past. And I'm sitting here like, you know… we have blueprints for what it looks like when the Head Nation State in Charge strips us of personal and communal sovereignty. There are blueprints on how to resist. From there, I started talking about my thoughts on our political systems more regularly. I recently told someone that I work in political education, and she immediately thought I meant US Electoral politics. That really made me laugh. Political education is a lot more than talking about what legislative decisions are being made over our heads; the shape and enforcement of policy acts as a means for the state to narrate every facet of human life. We educate ourselves politically so that we can answer the following conundrums: what are our material conditions as Africans and New Afrikans, as Indigenous peoples, and other peoples systemically stripped of agency and sovereignty? How do we change those conditions, what our day to day looks like?
Two things that I swore I would never talk about in public, especially as I kind of was catapulted into a life of visibility: politics and religion.
And God will always make me a liar. Lmao. I’ve spoken to the logistical side of deciding to continue in public, but never the spiritual reckoning that came with this new life.
Some things are just... bigger than me. This same timeline: around six weeks of TikTok noteriety, around the point in time where I had to decide what kind of public figure I wanted to be, I was already over it. I was like, okay, well, I've proven to myself that I can do it. I have always thought that I would be good at being an influencer or being on stage or whatever. Now I've proven to myself that I can do it and I'm good now. The internet is weird, bad, and scary and I don't want to continue. I had just decided to read The Autobiography of Malcom X and had the audacity to be angry about it in public. I was beginning to understand the cost of the life in front of me and I was like… I would rather not.
And I– whatever spiritual house that you take part in, whatever you call, you know, the Almighty, Creator, Source, Universe, you know– the exponentially expansive energy that is at the epicenter of being, fill in that word here. I was having a conversation with that entity and heard back, in essence, “That is not advisable. You stepping back now is not advisable for the life that you say that you want."
Once I hear that… obedience is the word of the day for me. I am of higher use; I need to orient myself to something new. Okay. This conclusion required me to decide what continuing in public looked like on my terms. I asked myself (and continue to ask myself) the following question: If I apply my current convictions to the idea of public life, what are the logical conclusions? The resulting thoughtwork completely turned what traditional influencing looks like on its head. It means that I do not take sponsorships. I blanket refuse them. I do not stake my word or my likeness on someone else’s product for sale, which excludes me from the primary way of making money as a public figure.
I also have obligation: a desire, a responsibility, an accountability, a duty, a calling. Obligation, but in the most beautific and loving sense. I have an obligation to you all who choose to be changed by me. Existing in public has radicalized me far more than what I previously thought was possible. Around the first year, the anniversary of my first year of being in public, I ran a fundraiser to secure farming equipment for my father's tribe, the Limba tribe of Sierra Leone. They're the only tribe indigenous to the region of Sierra Leone. In the coming 2025, almost two years later, there's a rice harvest coming because of the seeds that I planted then, because of the lessons that I learned, the mistakes that I made, the ways that I continued expansion, even when it was really hard and difficult and I had no idea what I was doing. There's no blueprint for this; I am doing something that I've never seen before in my lifetime. And I'm committed to it! Certainly not turning around now. I mean, my face and my voice are public record at this point, so like, where am gonna go?
2024 had me come to some terms about how widely I am now received. I felt through this fear. I thought about quitting. I have decided to continue afraid, which also necessitated a reunderstanding of some of my secondhand descriptors. In addition to writer, public scholar, and community health worker, (1) I am a celebrity now (2) I am wading through means of celebrity that is very different than the recent blueprints that I've been given.
The current widespread model for public notoriety has a formula: (a) garner a following, (b) sell those people something so that (c) you can create safety for yourself in a privatized manner while having fans (that adore you, aspire to be you, that wish to know you or wish to access you, that enjoy hating you).
A fanbase allows you to gain as much money from as many sources as you can (most often by endorsements, because people compelled by intimacy will buy whatever you sell them). With the understanding that increasing levels of visibility makes you unsafe, you use the money you are able to extract from your audience to make yourself safe and live a life “worth” aspiring to, typically in increasingly extreme luxury.
That is the exact opposite of what I have chosen to do.
Recall I stated that I am a material advocate for African and New Afrikan peoples, right? I would say I'm a Black American Sierra Leonean: born and raised in the United States with Black American (New Afrikan) parentage, even though my biological parents are both from Sierra Leone. I was raised by a network of people. In fact, I had two full sets of parents. And I owe something to them, right? To the communities that raised me up. As a culture worker belonging to oppressed people groups, my job is to make not just revolution irresistible, (that's word to Toni Cade Bambara), but create as many beautiful, generative, life-giving things as I possibly can with my hands, eyes, and focus. It's not just art! Material conditions include farming, literacy programs, hot food programs, drug rehabilitation programs... all things in the works, okay?
But it also absolutely requires that the content of my art, the things that you all digest and grapple with from me, the ways that I might be able to change your mind, the ways that the ideas I’ve talked about might follow you into the hair salon or the dining room table or the car ride, where you talk with the people that you love and like, who know in your real and physical life…. that’s a very intimate circumstance.
I owe you all my absolute best in that regard. I owe it to you.
I believe I will see the goodness of God in this the world of the living.
This is where my revolutionary optimism comes from. Not just because this is a prayer I pray daily, it is, but because as certain as I am in my faith, I am as certain in the works of my hands. I know I have not previously spoke openly about spirituality and religion. I do not, as of right now, belong to any of the major known religions, so I shy away from speaking openly. Despite my acknowledgements that revolution requires insanity, I am hyperaware of how… crazy I might sound if I tell you what I hear when I hear the voice of God. Either way, I have to stop hiding. The upcoming book tells on me anyways. Speaking of which:
Productive Consumption
I repeat to myself on the day to day: consumption is never radical. Consumption is never radical. Radical here defined as: a complete departure from the way that we live right now in the systems that we have, in the values that we have, in the priorities that we have, in the way that we act upon those values. Radicalism is now known for leftism or known for political work or anti-establishment work, non-political work, right? But radicalism as a whole means to literally deviate.
If you have a radical electron, it's a hip skipping, jumping away from all of the normal orbits that other electrons are going through. It means to do a complete departure of. We have a world order that is based upon consumption; therefore, consumption is never radical. Consumption never deviates from the systems that we have, right? All of capitalism is designed to promote constant, mindless consumption.
Consumption does not... need to be extractive, though. I believe that there are stepping stones that we can use to produce goods for ourselves while decreasing our dependency on the nation state as it stands. Word to Marcus Garvey and A Third University Is Possible. Consumption is never radical, but production can be.
What does consumption entail if, in terms of the making of the good, we mitigate forceful extraction wherever possible? Where consumption can pay all those people who engaged in or with the good effectively? Where consumption can still make the life of the person receiving said product or service better than it previously was?
Example: Threadings has become a public service which generates means of sovereignty. In this case, it’s food sovereignty. You did not have to pay for the essays to receive them. I wrote them as fast as I reasonably could. And I made sure to use the money for world making benefit for people in Sierra Leone who have almost nobody advocating for them on the world stage. How many Sierra Leoneans do you know? Exactly. Okay. So: Threadings, the little money that we got from Threadings, which was between six and eight thousand U.S. dollars a month, ensured that there is a rice harvest coming in the fall of 2025. 30 acres of rice is being produced as we speak because of the money that Threadings made throughout 2024. And that's amazing. Like I did not know that was possible.
When I originally conceived of writing in public, my only goal was to get out of the shadows. My only goal was to stop hiding. I could not have imagined then that this would, or could occur.
Necessary Expansion
I have decided to make this a podcast episode where I include you all in these reflections because I realized that I could be going so much harder.
I understand that it's like very much "baby food leftism.” I am okay with that. This idea of productive consumption... what I have studied in the past several years is that most of the Western populace is not actually ready for a revolution. Beyond ready, most people do not want a radical departure from our current systems; they want better lived circumstances. Those of us pushing for and moving towards radical change are still on the margins of society. Radicalism is still quite… radical, aha. How do I get these ideas to be a little more palatable while also bending the arc of justice?
Enter: the necessity of expansion, which is that final bullet point we're getting through. We answered who I am, what brought me here, why I stayed, and now we need to talk about how you all affect me.
Money. You all have let me know that there are multiple kinds of capital and I need to care about all of them. Capital under capitalism is your ability to world make. It's your ability to make the world that you wish to see. Okay. And all of my previous understandings and iterations of what being famous looks like, what being a celebrity looks like or having a following looks like means that you extract capital to make yourself safe. Quote unquote. The problem is I don't actually think that joining the petite bourgeois or the elite is safety. I think it's so psychologically precarious, not just because you have everyone watching you– [from the audio recording] hold on a second. I love my ringtone.
[ismatu picks up their ringing cell phone]
ismatu: Hey, let me, I'm recording a podcast. Can I call you in like 15 minutes?
[an indiscriminate voice responds back on the phone]
ismatu: Okay, I love you. Wait, do it again, do it again.
Lydia: Hi podcast, hi listeners. Welcome to Her Music Academia, the podcast–
ismatu: You're such a snake!
Lydia: I am your host, Lydia Bangura.
ismatu: You are such a snake, goodbye.
Lydia: –joining me today is my guest, ismatu.
ismatu: How fun with the rest of your 20 minutes. I will call you later. [laughing] Bye, I love you.
You see that? She messes up my whole flow and then comes on my podcast to self promote. That is crazy to me. Anyways, capital.
You all have changed my mind in terms of what power looks like. I grew up really poor in the United States. That entails a lot of money trauma, a lot of financial trauma that you all have forced me to have to confront and unpack.
Basically, I have walked around believing that money corrupts– that power corrupts absolutely and that the best thing that I could do to be helpful to the people that I love is to make sure that I stay humble (and that means not being powerful). You all have told me (lovingly) that I am dead wrong. Not in those words– like no one has sent me an email that's like ismatu, you're dead wrong.
But the amount of emails over the course of, you know, deciding to work for free, deciding not to charge, making myself precarious– the amount of people that have said, you know, it is okay to be powerful. Like it is okay to garner power, especially because we trust you to do amazing things with that power. You all trusted me before I trusted myself. Okay. It has forced me to reconcile with what is, “safe," right? Like what is safe under capitalism vs. what my ideas of safety are, which are living in sovereign communities that can produce their own, where we produce world making collectively, right? It's not just on one individual or one lucky leader or one disciplined authority where we spread sovereignty like seeds. And I… The reason that I understand that as possible, not just in an abstract sense, but possible within my lifetime, possible with my hands, is because you all have raised my standards and my bar for what I expect from myself. It is spiritually and revolutionarily immature to say, "I will just make sure that I'm never powerful," because it means that you don't ever have to contend with what it is like to be responsible for that power.
I don't actually think that power corrupts. I think that power clarifies. And the process of working for free, handling donations, deciding how much to pay myself and my family and deciding how much goes outwards has really clarified how afraid I am of being powerful. And what work I am okay with charging for and what work I'm not.
I’m about to say this out loud and you're to go, ismatu, do you just hate money? You want to be precarious forever, is that it? You just hate money? The answer is no. Money's delicious. I love money. It’s just, at this point, about proving to myself it can be done. Bigger than me.
I've written a book that book is coming out in the next two weeks at the date of writing (Sunday, December 29th, 2024). It’s called Small Prophecies. That book will be available in PDF, ebook, audioboook, Mobi for free. Okay? You can read it for free. I do not believe that the knowledge that I have been given and that I have laid out in this text is proprietary, meaning that I have solid ownership of it that I even have the right to charge. I don't believe that. It is free. You can read it for free. You can share it for free. That also makes the text accessible in parts of the world where books don't get to (like Sierra Leone) or parts of the world where any amount of us dollars to spend on a book is imagine is unimaginable (like Sierra Leone). Okay? It is free.
Of course, there will be a print edition that print edition will be as widely as available as I can make it with my own two hands. So it will ship across bookstores. It will be in libraries. You will have to go request it there, but one will materialize for you should you ask. You can buy it online. You will be able to get it everywhere you can normally buy a book or read a book for free.
I will not be keeping any of the money from book sales for personal use.
100 % of my cut of the royalties will be going towards a universal basic income program for the primary subject of the book. Should there be surplus (and I pray there is), those monies will building survival programs in my two homes (the United States and Sierra Leone).
As far as traditional public relations go... this is a pretty banana nuts decision. Also, as someone who also doesn't take sponsorships, I have a very unusual relationship with income at this point in time, which is that I am alive and able to pay for my food bill and for my mom's medical supplies and for food production and systems and children's literacy (and all of the other cool things that you may or may not hear about) because people want me to do them and that's it.
So, usually someone in my circumstance– a public figure, especially a writer or someone who produces art– would produce said art, call that intellectual property, charge money to access said art, and then create some stability for themselves because they charge for their art. They charge for the production of and the performance of that art. I'm not gonna charge for this as much as I conceivably can. And what I do have to charge for (like printed materials)– I'm not going to keep any of that money.
I have never seen what communalized intellectual property could do and what that could be like. Usually, by the time an artist can donate a hundred percent of the proceeds of one of their pieces of art, they're already so rich that they don't really need the money. They have come into a place of economic security such that they will be in the top, you know, 10 to 5 % of worldwide wealth distribution for the rest of their life. They don't need the money, and that's why they give it away– that’s the charity model. I am not that. I am very much a working class person. I am not, you know, sitting on a secret pile of millions such that I can make this decision. This absolutely does leave me precarious. I do not care. I don't believe that knowledge is proprietary. I don't think that I can own it. And I don't think that I can sell it.
As a product of productive consumption, I also fundamentally, in my bones, know this book will sell excellently. The sales from this book will surpass my wildest dreams. I know that if I kept all that money from myself, I would become a millionaire. I also… do not think that personal acquisition of digital, fiat money is the point of the life I wish for. I am much more interested in what effective class traitorship would look like.
The subject of the next essay is literally entitled Class Traitorship, so we will flesh these ideas out more, I promise. But in short: I live primarily in Sierra Leone, making US Dollars. For that reason alone: do you realize how rich I am in Sierra Leone? I betray the ideals of my class (in Sierra Leone, I am in the petit bourgeoise). I am supposed to aspire to build myself stone and marble mansions with privatized services and a staff to run the homestead. I am supposed to aspire to joining in the elite class of rich Africans, who run through their home countries in the same manner neocolonialists do. Instead, I am farming rice and building drug rehabilitation clinics.
Productive consumption: I want people to buy this book because they understand that it makes the world better.
Not because they need to, not because the knowledge within the book is behind a paywall, but because they want to, because they understand that the world will be materially better for the people in the book, and also because the knowledge they receive from the text might aid in their own radicalization.
Existing in public has required expansion, right? You all affect me. You all have made me more radical than I was yesterday or the day before. I would have never thought of life like this if you all did not push me to do so. My desire to deviate from everything that I've ever known and what's comfortable, my desires for prestige, for money, for excellence— oh, my loving responsibilities. You all raise the bar, even when you don't mean to or when you don't ask me to.
I realize how much power and authority that I have been given as a young person, is unusually, right? I'm 26. I owe a lot of people a lot of things, because this is a communal effort. Always has been, always will be. I'm humbled at the site of the world stage. I am motivated consistently to increase my capacities. And I am responsible for the way that you interact with me like I'm responsible for the way that I shape you. I'm responsible for these words. I have accountability over them. I own their impact. And so I want that impact to be kind, to be generative, and to embolden people, to make them braver in moving away from comfort, towards a life of things that are beautiful and generative.
What happens now?
I have never previously been motivated by money and I am not motivated today. Nothing changed! I am motivated by world-making, and find money as a necessary vehicle for that. As Thomas “Blood” McCreary, veteran of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense said: it costs money to fund a revolution.
The previous season of the ismatu gwendolyn experiment was: will people care enough to pay for me to stay alive and continue this work even if they get nothing extra in return? The answer is yes.
I now need to expand. I find myself having a desire to engage in exchange– I want there to be a reward for supporting financially, even if one isn’t necessary. I also want to compel people to give because now I have seen what brilliant things I can accomplish with some consistent funding. So, in line with those goals:
$5 month or up gets access to the Small Prophecies course.
I have heard you! I am teaching a course on the book I have coming out. It goes through my path of radicalization over the last six years or so, including themes of spirituality, substance abuse, fame, community, and political theory. The replays of the live course will be made available to everyone, but the actual live instruction is limited (for now) to members paying over $5 a month. You will hear a lot more about this course in the next coming weeks. You have until January 20, 2025 to sign up.
$10 a month and up gets access to ismatu.fm
I have also heard you all requesting more in-real-time updates about how various projects are going. I have heard you! If you want to know the in’s and out’s of the projects that I only briefly mention in public, that’s where updates will live. There is a video posted every Monday. All of these videos will be declassified in one calendar year.
$25 a month and up invites you to the quarterly Founders Meeting.
The Founders Meeting is a live, quarterly, financial transparency meeting in which I talk about how and where we're spending the money. We go over the receipts. I ask for feedback, ideas, and glean knowledge I might otherwise not have. This is priced high because I specifically want to be talking to people that have money— enough money to be able to have resources that I might not know about, that have enough money to be able to know about wealth management. I historically do not come from wealth management. I would be the first in family to graduate from college if my sister hadn't beaten me a year before. We grew up eating Kraft Singles for dinner. The management of a non-profit, of international businesses, of a publishing company… these are new hats. I want somewhere to check my work with other people that invest heavily in the financial infrastructure of the ismatu gwendolyn experiment. These meetings will also be declassified after one calendar year.
conclusions
(1) You are going to see me everywhere. You're gonna see me out and about. You're gonna see me on Instagram. You're gonna see me on YouTube. You will see me on Pinterest. You will see me on a speaking tour. You not be able to escape my face, my voice, and my ideas because I accept the calling on my life. This book is gonna be everywhere, okay? You are going to see me everywhere.
(2) I'm really excited for this process of expansion. This is just the announcement, right? This is just the start. I'm going to continue and continuing in public raises the bar in ways that I don't think I would originally imagine it for myself if I was the only person that saw me.
(3) This life is so much more beautiful than I could have contended with or anticipated. Thank you God. And thank you all for being on this journey with me.
May the work of your day pass through your hands with ease.
or, simpler said:
peace.
ig
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