It’s hard not to list my resume or my online history when I write There is an entire book and some other pieces I have everywhere on this web. It’s part of having to constantly prove and justfy your existence.
You can imaging how strong it is after this election ,all of it’s build up and the aftermath.
From the “alt-right” to Hamilton to swastikas to identity politics to Bernie bros and the spirit draining chaff that passes for analysis from the coasts on the other 80 percent of the country.There is the complicity /inanity/ fear in media, the non discussion of racism/ the fact that for some reason we can’t call Nazi’s Nazi’s even when the salute and scream Heil in the middle of Washington DC.People are tripping over themselves to say I don’t deserve everything from political consideration to actual life. I am beyond angry. and everybody is angry.
Anger is free and easy right now. It’s righteous and right . I am good GOOD for a cuss out. The list of people I am ready to fight/scream at/ meet on Jamaica Ave or Tremont Ave to shoot a fair one and just pray I don’t get my ass whopped is LONG .
The world has shifted . This is shaking , startling and disconcerting .Some of you are here for the first time ,rejected by systems you swore loved you at least enough to put us in an America where duckbilled goose stepping Nazi saluting dude bros into GQ fashion spreads and call it analysis .
They ain’t going no where . So I am going to do and ask for something else. Across the board and for multiple reasons. So listen close and deep from someone whose been here for a while
Stop. Take a minute. Take a breath . Shut the fuck up about anything not about you directly and personally for a moment( more than two days ) , talk to your therapist, your preacher or whoever you need to but PLEASE STOP.
Stop with the blame. Stop with the trying to be smart. Stop with trying to explain . Data may hold the answer, history , certainly racism, but right now that’s not whats most important.
This is a marathon relay not a sprint. .It’s always been a marathon but now more know exactly what is nipping at our heels. The secret is that hating these people, or what they stand for isn’t enough. It won’t take you to the end of the week let alone the aiblity to dig in for long work of dealing with the sheer awful they are about to send our way.
I learned to justify because I lived not being what was wanted. Constant negation creates desperation . It creates a need to be something that deserves or earns it survival. It shrinks your world to reactions and explanations.
Of why you are here and why you deserve to be . It makes you nothing but what they aren’t .
You are more than that and you have to know what that is. It’s hard and they will make a game of ripping it from you.
So
STOP . AND TAKE A FUCKING BEAT.
Spraying your confusion into the mentions and spaces of folks who have been dealing with this for long with the same supemacist attitudes you claim to be fighting isn’t “building”
Trying to assure people who don’t care anyway that you are more than willing to throw POC under the bus isn’t a strategy or a thesis statement.
Explaining parts of the country you joke about avoiding isn’t smart or useful no matter how much data you drag around about it.
Trying desperately to cling to a moral high ground or avoid hypocrisy does isn’t character when they will swastika a play ground and call Nazi salutes ironic.
At best ? It’s various stages of grief being filtered through lifetimes of assured entitlement, the sureity that the America that coddled you or promised you for so long would correct itself if only people did things your way , or these complicated “others” stopped messing stuff up. That if people put more faith or demanded less accountability your illusions wouldn't be shattered
At worst it’s an advertisement that when push comes to ineveitable shove, you’ll reason with even Nazi’s till you run out of breath as long as they are can put together a jazzy enough outfit or string together enough appropriately collegiate words.
I don’t know what way you’ll go , I have my hopes but it’s less important than what I know , and what I’m asking you to know.
I know I love some things. I like some things . I believe some things . And I will fight for them .
Some of those things particular order : caramel pudding ,my family, Guyana, rap,black women,jewish people, good gin , dance,NYC etc
Are going to be why I’m here and why i do what I do.
And what that doing is ? Is going to be upsetting to some people. It’s going to be against people I may have never expected to be against, it’s going to make some people mad.
Oh well.
This is exhausting and it’s going to be MORE exhausting. We will see things we can not believe , hear things we thought never possible, and we will be angry .We can try and have “solutions” that make us believe it is a little less worse than what we are threatened with. We can figure out who we can sell out to bargain with the devil just a little longer.. We can exhaust each other,trying (and failing) to appease people who mask their love of power and dominance, with smoke, mirrors and shoe polish. Chasing smoke and mirrors to “point out the REAL problem” so that when it’s time to raise our hands for justice we can’t get them past our shoulders. We can make what we hate the center of our world until we become it.
But it won’t be what we love, it won’t serve what we love , it won’t protect what you love ( no matter what Adolf von Esquire tells you) , and the moral high ground isn’t the same as principle.
Other people have really good guides. If you care, I like you will be looking and building from them . But right now ? Stop . You’ll build bridges right off the edge of cliffs, and compromise right into the abyss.
And none of it will be about what you love or who you are.
So FOR THE LOVE OF ALL GRIEVE . STOP. TAKE A BREATH
It won’t be by beating them at their pace or their game. It won’t be easy , it won’t be called fair. The system is officially against us ( it always has been but I said I wasn't gonna do it in this one.. much) .We will fight, and because I have more hope than sense? I believe we will win. But it wont be by trying to go where they go or won’t go.
If they do not gain another yard , it’s because we did not move another an inch . We have to plant roots to plant ourselves. So
Stop. Breathe.
Begin.
