Emily Cunningham

Good thread, attacking individuals is punching down

But Mike is right each human being needs to wrestle with the pervasive, life-and-death moral dilemmas we face being alive today, and do the right thing. My experience is that the best way to do this is through connection and inviting people to be their best selves (not shaming).

I'm interested in how you consider power enters into this. Often this sort of 'dont shame' people is seen as tone policing valid concerns. For example marginalized people being angry about systems are often told by majority groups to 'say it nicely'.

I agree with @dragonc on this question. Also: I see tone policing as different from what I'm (trying) to communicate. If we don't situate individual action within a larger system framework of power, we won't be as effective in fighting against it.https://twitter.com/dragonc/status/1217858428971839488 …

I would consider power and positionality within the system. I see @emahlee using her positionality to enact change from within, and @monteiro using his positionality to enact change from outside. Both are necessary.

For example, I'm a first-gen refugee former tech worker. My mom works at a nail salon. My dad worked in assembly line, dry cleaning, and office check processing. I worked at Boeing right out of college. My salary helped us move out of public housing.

My salary also has to go a long way, literally. We send money back to Southeast Asia to support our extended family in a country recovering from decades of war. So, I had to have really good reasons to leave my job.

I was in a rotational program at Boeing, and one of the rotations was with a division that was outfitting older commercial planes for military purposes, basically loading bombs on the planes. I faced a massive moral crisis.