Guiding Values: The Core Principles That Shape My Work
Every decision I make, both personally and professionally, is rooted in a set of core principles that guide my work, my advocacy, and my path forward in this world. These values are not theoretical or detached ideals; they are born from the grit of lived experience—shaped by survival, resistance, and an unwavering commitment to creating something better for all of us. I invite you to reflect on your own values—what principles guide your journey? What ideas challenge you to rethink the world as it is and envision a future rooted in justice, dignity, and liberation?
Lived experience must lead. Those most impacted by oppression, whether through ableism, racism, sexism, transmisogyny, colonization, or other forms of systemic violence, are not passive recipients of harm; they are experts in survival, resistance, and reimagining a better world. Their knowledge must not be treated as secondary to institutions or credentials that uphold the very systems harming them. Their leadership must be centered, not tokenized, and their voices must shape the solutions that affect their lives.
Every life holds value. No one is disposable. No person’s worth is defined by their productivity, conformity, or proximity to power. Dignity is not conditional. Any system that decides who is worthy of care, safety, or survival is built on violence, and it must be dismantled—not reformed.
Freedom is collective. No one is free while others remain in chains. Liberation cannot be selective. It is not justice if it leaves anyone behind. Colonial violence, carceral control, and economic exploitation must be named, resisted, and abolished in all forms.
Basic needs are not privileges. Food, housing, healthcare, autonomy, and safety are not luxuries; they are birthrights. The idea that access to survival should be contingent on wealth, labor, or compliance is a manufactured injustice. No one should have to earn the right to exist.
Punishment is not justice. Prisons, policing, and institutionalization do not create safety. They are extensions of state violence, reinforcing cycles of harm while failing to address root causes. Justice is not found in retribution but in repair, accountability, and transformation. Safety cannot exist in a world where harm is met with cages instead of care.
Control is not care. Many systems that claim to "help" exist to enforce compliance, not support. This is evident in carceral punishment models, forced institutionalization, and behavioral interventions like Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA), which condition Autistic people to suppress their natural ways of being to fit a neurotypical mold. These practices do not foster growth; they enforce submission at the expense of autonomy, dignity, and mental health. True support does not demand conformity — it respects agency and honors the right to exist as one is.
Real change requires action. Hope alone does not create liberation. Liberation is built, not granted. It requires direct action, mutual aid, advocacy, and organizing. Dismantling oppressive systems demands more than acknowledgment— it requires deliberate, sustained resistance.
Systems of harm must be confronted. White supremacy, ableism, capitalism, gender-based oppression, and settler-colonialism do not operate in isolation. They reinforce and sustain one another. To challenge one, we challenge all.
Harm is inevitable, but accountability is a choice. No one is free from the capacity to harm — but what matters is how harm is addressed. Punishment does not heal, and silence does not absolve. True accountability requires reckoning with harm, repairing what can be repaired, and committing to doing better.
Growth is essential. People are more than their worst mistakes. Transformation is possible, but only when there is space to grow. Justice requires a culture of learning and unlearning—both individually and collectively.
Liberation requires both urgency and longevity. Systemic oppression was not built overnight, and it will not be undone in one movement. Immediate relief must be paired with long-term strategies that dismantle harmful structures at their foundation.
The future must be protected. Justice is not just about the present; it is about what is being built for those who come next. The world must be left more just, more sustainable, and more free than it was inherited. Anything less is betrayal.
Worth is not measured by labor. Capitalism assigns value based on productivity, treating rest and care as indulgences rather than necessities. A person’s worth is not determined by what they produce, how well they conform, or how much they contribute to an exploitative system. Everyone has the right to exist without justification.