Failed State

We are not a failed state…we just need to reimagine the possible.

Understanding the political, emotional, and social implications of a failed state is difficult because all we are conditioned to see is the failure. We only see the rubble, but some folks can imagine the majesty of the possible, some folks can see this as a moment where we can rebuild.

Do you see the possible or the failure?

I am from Detroit so I saw a city, a community, a public space destroyed by capital accumulation and ravished by onlookers and developers preying on the city center and trying to diminish the people. It was appealing to some even lucrative — they thought we could take this buyout and run and rebuild somewhere else, but where is the imagination in that? Where is the majesty? Where can we dare to dream the impossible if we run?

Our dreams are often limited by our reality which scares me. It scares me because before March, 2020, I did not know what was really possible other than work and faith. Joy was a mirage that I only saw in moments and drifted as I got close. The closer I got — the more all I saw the failed state and the destruction. Life had always been in the rubble and the one partnership I cared about had been destroyed. There was no reimagination possible and the future for that partnership was improbable. So I settled for what reality told me was possible in a failed state — safety.

Don’t sleep on safety. That is the thing/the space that keeps us grounded in the difficult moments — it is what enables us to imagine. The world around us had been chaos and imploded beyond recognition. All the parts of the world that we knew to be safe became toxic. Everything errored — leaving nothing — we were unprotected and destroyed. There was nothing to salvage or so we thought.

Reality — which is where we dream from — would say that nothing was possible that we should walk away and move on, but I remember the dream and the hope for possibility. Will you dare to dream with me, again? Will you dream the world we thought we could once build from the rubble of the world currently destroyed? Will you allow my fearlessness and your courage to guide us through this rubble to create a new world?

I trust you. Will you trust me?

We are not a failed state…we just need to reimagine the possible. Please.