1The MVPs and Their Three Superpowers“Mommy, can we go to Saturn this weekend?” My three-year-old, Ifetayo, looked up from pushing around her toy fire truck. She had perched a model of the solar system on top of it. Ife is the most confident person I have ever known, and her self-assurance was on full display that morning. During her previous obsession with Baby Shark, we had taken her to the aquarium to satisfy her curiosity. So, it stood to reason that we would now bring her to Saturn at our earliest convenience.
It was one of the last days of summer 2021 and I was making my way downstairs to cook breakfast for my two kids. I paused on the last step, feeling the soft carpet underneath my bare feet, and taking in the sunlight streaming through the trees to land in Ife’s soft curls. It was my favorite time of year in the Pacific Northwest, when the rain and gloom have given way to warmth and blue skies, and everything has opened up—flowers, front doors to let in the breeze, and people who, after scuttling past each other during the long fall and winter months, now lifted their gazes to smile and look one another in the eye. I couldn’t see it from our house, but I knew that a few minutes away, the Salish Sea was already shimmering in deep blue, beneath the evergreen hills and snowcapped mountains.
Ife stared at me intently. “Saturn, huh? Maybe we can ask the fairies how to get there after breakfast,” I suggested. She nodded solemnly, then looked out the window at the fairy garden our family had built around a magnolia tree in our front yard. It was already abuzz with magic, Black and Brown fairy figurines gently twirling in the breeze, a riot of vibrant purple flowers swaying above the dewy green moss below. Nestled in the moss was a host of fantastic items one might need on adventures to never-before-seen places.
I loved the wild possibility of our fairy garden, sitting in the middle of an ordinary neighborhood in Tacoma, Washington. It was a sanctuary for the unbounded wonder of children’s minds, and a symbol of the tenacious joy of two queer women of color making way for our family in an overwhelmingly white and straight city. Given the troubling state of the world, Tricia and I were determined to provide our two daughters with the seeds for creative thinking and faith in possibility that they would need to survive the coming years.
Our ten-year-old daughter, Kwali, bounded up to me with bright eyes. I waited for her usual morning questions about whether she could play with her neighbor friend, eat a Popsicle, or have screen time. Instead, she had just one question. “Mommy, is the world coming to an end?”
“What made you think about that?” I asked, buying time for my uncaffeinated brain to pivot from Saturn to the end of times and try to think of a solid parental answer. Kwali explained that she and her friends had been talking about the hurricane battering New Orleans, the wildfires engulfing the West Coast, the murder of George Floyd, and abortion rights being attacked in Texas. I listened as she ran down her list of disasters. I looked at her expectant face awaiting my response.
I wrapped my arms around my firstborn and tried to offer her a comforting answer. “Well, love,” I said. “There are a lot of good people fighting for a better world and to save our planet. We are a part of that fight. We hope we’ll win.”
The truth is no one is coming to save us.
The MVPsThese are apocalyptic times. No generation has faced stakes this high or a responsibility this large. There is no guarantee that there will be enough time for future generations to accomplish the work we were too afraid to undertake, to be bold where we were timid, to act where we hesitated. All of us who are alive and able to take action today, we are the team on the court. This is our shot, and we can’t afford to miss.
I think about this daily as I look at my two daughters and feel how much I want them and their children to have clean water to drink, clean air to breathe, and the ability to lead safe and fulfilling lives. I think about it as I reflect on my twenty-five years working in social justice movements, and the gravity of what those movements face today. Social justice victories are no longer just about who lives well or not. They are about how long human beings as a species will have a planet on which to survive. And given the outsize role the United States is playing in harming the earth, whether these movements succeed or fail has global implications.
No team worth its salt would bench its MVPs (most valuable players) during the final championship game. Yet, in the rapidly closing window of time that we have to realize the promise of democracy, to save our rights and the planet, when many of our MVPs are women of color (WOC), that is exactly what progressive movements are doing. If movements don’t figure out how to value their skills and quit benching them by leaving them underestimated, overburdened, attacked, and undefended, it will continue to negatively affect the scoreboard for everybody.
This is not a book about how all WOC are MVPs who know the way to freedom because . . . Nikki Haley. As movement elder Linda Burnham said, “Clarify your politics and we can talk from there. I don’t care what color you are. You can be wrong as two left shoes.” Nor is it a book about how everyone else needs to go quiet and get out of the way so that progressive WOC can lead. As Rajasvini Bhansali, executive director of the Solidaire Network, put it, “The points of unity cannot just be identity. They have to be political, principled, to have a movement-building orientation, and honor shared strategies for power building.” The United States is a diverse nation, and it will take people from many walks of life to ensure our collective survival. There is both a moral and tactical imperative for kindhearted people of all races, genders, and backgrounds to be active in social justice movements, as constituents, leaders, and MVPs. It’s a both-and. As in, we can put all these good people together, and without our WOC MVPs, we still don’t win.
The immense and looming forces threatening the planet, democracy, and, increasingly, the well-being of even the most privileged are not new to WOC. In a speech I gave in 2017 in San Francisco, as Donald Trump was being sworn into office on the other side of the country, I said, “As we prepare to face the dual-headed monster of misogyny and white supremacy, women of color—who have for hundreds of years in this country been battling that same monster for our very survival—have something to teach America about how to fight.”
This remains true.
WOC—and Black women in particular—have repeatedly demonstrated how essential they are to the success of every major social justice movement. Black women voted in higher percentages against Trump than any other demographic group. They founded Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, and the U.S. reproductive justice movement—three of the most influential social change efforts in decades. In the 2020 election, Black women in Georgia, through sheer grit and determination and flanked by other people of color, and Black men in particular changed the fate of the state and the country. That same year, Black women led countless uprisings for Black lives across the country—the largest protest movement in U.S. history that sparked demonstrations attracting thirty million people around the globe.
Overall, WOC are the country’s most progressive and civically engaged voting bloc, with higher voter-turnout rates than any other group. From the streets to the ballot box and to Congress, no other demographic group in the nation stands up more strongly against hate and more clearly for freedom, climate action, and human rights.
Copyright © 2025 by Vanessa Priya Daniel. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
