Category: Essay

We have noticed an influx of emails/drafts of emails from institutions & corporations regarding “racial equity” “diversity” “racial justice” that stress how said institutions stand with Black Lives Matter. We believe these letters, internal correspondences, and public and private declarations to be empty at best and an insult to our intelligence.

In the U.S., when Black people suffer and die, it’s considered progress. How we produce and digest historical narratives has everything to do with it. Selective remembrances are the tools politicians, institutions, and the state use to shape how people feel about themselves. This happens to such an extent that it's been possible to convince far too many people that they’re supposed to die for the U.S. nation. This logic isn’t exclusive to the U.S., because nationalisms employ this strategy around the world. However, the narrative of selective sacrifice deployed against Black Americans is a barrier imposed on the struggles for liberation, and must be directly challenged.

An evolving love letter to ourselves and anyone involved in this project: we constructed this in order to dream and so this is not a real space and everything is possible. and with that being said: we do not deny that the stuff from the outside will seep into this space. when this happens, we […]

The state cannot fail those who it was never meant to protect. To call the U.S. a “failed state” implies that it had the intention of serving the people it was designed to oppress. Yet, the proliferation of this form of criticism among liberals, leftists, and otherwise became more prevalent in the wake of compounding […]

Friend, And so, a long goodbye. It is 2019. My brain still thinks the nineties were ten years ago, and my body tells me that we are hundreds of shorelines earlier than that. The hours are slow. I didn’t set out to write a farewell, but it strangely seems like a gentler framework than what […]

“The burden of a long sentence would be lightened by the satisfaction of knowing that the mission set out for me, that of helping my people free themselves from the oppressor, is being accomplished.” — Martin Sostre Malcolm X once said, “We’ve only suffered from America’s hypocrisy … If you go to jail, so what? […]

“You didn’t see me on television, you didn’t see news stories about me. The kind of role that I tried to play was to pick up pieces or put together pieces out of which I hoped organization might come.”– Ella Baker  One of the most important things that the Black Panther Party left us was […]

To be free, to walk in dignity—for these precious privileges some men will go anywhere, sacrifice anything. — Homer Smith Black America is not guaranteed much, if anything, under the category of citizenship. It has never prevented us descendants of enslaved Africans from falling victim to repression, exclusion and constant infractions. Our supposed rights are […]

Some histories reside in people, in bodies and landscapes. When Natalie Diaz speaks of water, I often feel like she is speaking of time.  She writes,   I carry a river. It is who I am: ‘Aha Makav. This is not a metaphor. A few stanzas later, she translates:  … ’Aha Makav means the river […]