So yes this is the moment to get into the streets, to harness the power we gain by coming together and to understand that Black folks have always been fighting for all of our humanity, to save our souls now on this earth. The demands for basic respect is to save us all from participating in the dehumanizing impact of being a person who ignores the humanity of others.
Tag: resistance
the revoke award show
When a person wins an award it is all celebration, publicity, and inscriptions in the record-books. Now we face the flood of “revelations” that many recipients of such awards do not deserve the honor. So a small article is typed out to state that the award, distinction, title or honor has been revoked. Yet no transgressor…
days without capitalism
The fireworks display I’ve watched for many years are made by guys from the neighborhood. The soundtrack to my holiday is blasted from family sound systems. The landscape is families taking over sidewalks and streets to host events for communal celebration. Cars are used to block of intersections so that streets can be filled with…
When I Think of Tamir Rice While Driving
in the backseat of my car are my own sons, still not yet Tamir’s age, already having heard me warn them against playing with toy pistols, though my rhetoric is always about what I don’t like, not what I fear, because sometimes I think of Tamir Rice & shed tears, Source: When I Think of…
for non-Black folks
A powerful new call for the empowerment and respect of Black people has been issued. It has transcended grassroots activism, permeated discussion of culture and power, made demands on those in political positions, and inspired a creative response from artists. For non-Black folks it can feel alienating, aggressive, “disrespectful”, divisive… But I have never understood…
Who Will Be the Gun Takers?
Who will be the gun takers? Don’t forget that actual individuals, not the devil himself, will have to go to gun person to gun person and collect all that power…
No other choice
My blog posts have most recently focused on the act of writing. Writing is one of my survival mechanisms to resist the collective failures of our world. We all need survival escape hatches, because failure is not a healthy paradigm by which to view the world. We have no other choice but to survive, struggle…
Fake it until you Make it
Faking it perhaps sounds like a horrible mantra. Faking, pretending, posturing, projecting – may sound like excuses for lying. I am not fond of lying, actually I find myself to be particularly inept at it. Blatant honesty or uncomfortable silence are my two modis operandi. But lying, deceit, manipulation make my stomach ache and I feel…
Letting my weakness’ show is a muscle I flex
this was a short piece I wrote last summer for the “Jumpstart Odyssey” assignment for the Calderwood writing fellowship: The Strength of Weakness “For Amily to be able to enter into third grade, she must be able to write cursive. Our second graders at the Learning Project have already learned this skill. Amily will fall…
the whole world is watching !!!
during my protest years, on the frontlines, my critical nature began to wonder why we were there, city after city, phalanxes of riot police, same shield, same batons, same arsenal of crowd control tactics. same chants, same filthy clothes, same blisters, the sameness began to seem useless. http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/21/us/illinois-summit-protests/index.html?hpt=hp_bn1 now I am on the outside, far away…
what could be a bigger downer than “failure”
I had started this blog with just my name, but it is not about me as a person, my writing here is meant to be me as a thinking, observing participant in our world. Collective failure was going to be my first entry, which seemed like a terribly depressing notion. I’d pondered, “will I simply…
collective failure 