Sunset in America…
I can’t catch my breath and not for the reason too many black folks can’t catch their breaths right now. In the midst of a virus that is disproportionately killing black people, not wanting to be outdone, the police and other folks with privilege have launched their assaults on the bodies of black people.
I’m tired. I am tired of the videos. I’m tired of memorial art with finite dates that show the span of lives cut too short. I’m exhausted with the endless rhetoric and fake outrage from politicians who have sat on corporate dollars and sold out their constituents too long. If they don’t make policy changes that shift and dismantle the entire structure of law enforcement in this country and fully restore and include all citizens, then their talk is for nothing.
Enter Minneapolis, Seattle, Philadelphia, DC, Boston, Houston, Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and my hometown, Louisville. All of these cities and more are in the streets, protesting and in some cases rioting. My advice?
To quote the asshole fire chief who let 11 black people including children burn in a Philadelphia building in 1985, “Let the fire burn.” Let the riots and the protests continue. Fuck it up, kids.
If you march in peace, march in peace but I’m not going to tell anyone how to be angry.
To remake a nation we have to begin by destroying the symbols of its empire. America is a nation founded and consistently changed when its citizens decide enough is enough and begin to chip away at the systems that have held too many of us under its foot for so long. This has never happened without a riot.
Goodbye, America the Empire. We really do want America, the Beautiful but that can’t happen with a piece of paper and no crayons. This nation needs to make good on the promises it made to all of us.
So tonight, as the protests rage, remember that America has always been an illusion for most of us and that the streets, the Starbucks, The Autozones, the Trump Towers, and the WHITE HOUSE are built on lands made rich with the blood of enslaved Africans and Indigenous people.
Sure, the leaders will get on TV and beg for calm. They will say that rioting isn’t the way to a solution but they know that as these protests grow, the power is most certainly with the people and not the military, the police or any piece of the government. They need you to be calm because they can’t stop what is surely about to happen in this nation.
The government can break out tear gas and rubber bullets but eventually they are going to have to surrender power or shed the blood of its people and power will be surrendered anyway.
What is it going to be, America?
The sun is setting in much of the nation and there are going to be some hard decisions made tonight.
It’s funny when I hear the media reports on these protests, it seems as if they are only about the three recent deaths of black people. Let’s get this straight once and for all, other black folks have been killed by police since these deaths. So many were killed before. Grow your lens and report what is real. This nation is cashing the check it’s been writing for 400 years.
It’s time to choose sides.
Me? I stand with what we all know is right, ready to catch my breath once and for all. I stand for the lives of my black people on this land stolen from my indigenous brothers and sisters and join them in looking into the belly of the beast ready to take it down.
We know that if we don’t destroy the empire, the empire will continue to destroy us and we’re done letting that happen. So, let the fire burn. Light up the nights and in the morning make your demand. If they aren’t met, rinse and repeat.
Spare your local businesses. They are folks with dreams like you.