right to resist

Heard of a last stand? This is like that.

Don't be looking for leadership from the outside either. There's no guru or magical Black person or wand waving that's going to fix any of this. There's not. Don't look to me for leadership, I can hardly see through my own eyes, climb stairs anymore or get around without walking sticks and mobility devices. I'm not here to lead anybody. Lead yourself. Why all this looking outside for everything? That's what got us into this cataclysm, giving all the power away. People give their power away and are happy to do it, will pay for the privilege. Enough already. 

Last stand doesn't mean we have to fight about it, it means lines have to be drawn. There need to exist some limits, some values. I don't know how anyone can look at their faces, these so-called electeds, purportedly representing others. It's all greed and delusion, with a side of malice. The giddy intoxication that comes with what seems like power— they're getting away with it because everyone is letting them. That open emotional center urge to not rock the boat and avoid confrontation is going to get us all killed. More than that. Death isn't the end of this destruction, all of these systems are coming down and maybe it's their time. Maybe all this is over. It's possible that the values people said were important were jut words to them, not vows to live and die by. Has everyone forgotten what commitment is, what discipline is? Why do I have to ask these questions?

It was like finally after all this time I can get all my things together in one place. A child of divorce, I spent a great deal of time shifting between one set of circumstances and another. Gathering my little things, being packed off to be in someone else's reality, alternating every few days. A night or two on a floor here, a few nights in an infested hovel there, maybe some time outside because children are supposed to be able to play. Divorce sounds so sweet now, it was still a little unusual then, still a thing that people were nervous to talk about. Not like the violences unleashed on children today, buried in the rubble of their family homes, whole lines being wiped off the registry. Or the fates of those who lived long enough to relocate into one of the "safe areas" they were promised, still they died violent deaths from starvation and lack of clean water, separated from their loved ones, bombs constantly falling in air. 

Someone wrote a song about it. Horrible to think about now, but they did. Rocket's red glare... bomb bursting in air, gave proof through the night that—There's good reason I never sang along with that song. Even as a child (a free child, a brave child) it didn't make sense to me that any Black person would sing along with it. We've got our own anthems and they're not about this animalistic violence. Animals though we be, and we are, through and through— we don't need to be behaving this way. We have the capacity to make choices. Choices that can protect and benefit all. Our emotions don't have to drive us. These highs and lows, the moods and insecurities are what's fueling this chaos. They could be a source of awareness. We could learn from these waves until the waves calm and perception expands. It could become a source of awareness. Oceanic. We are ocean, not separate waves. I thought that was already obvious.