My heart is heavy. I am angry, sad, mourning. I have remained quite because what words can I use to describe what’s going on AND because I have a sea of words to spill.
I am aware. I am a person in this world. My perception is limited in so many ways but I do have the universe in me and I feel this, with tears and heavy heart.
In: When I was a child I was overweight. I was made fun of and I felt I was being discriminated against, or shunned. I remember the feeling of insult, helplessness and anger from being judged for something else other than my character or humanity.
Out: Now take this small judgment of my external form and make it something so huge in space and time, that you can’t possibly fathom its magnitude anymore because it goes so far beyond your reach.
People are being judged based on the color of their skin to an extent that is greater than any words I can think of. No words can really capture the monstrosity of this judgement.
Someone thinks they can tell you how to wear your hair to school, and you’re just a child.
In: When I was in high-school a teacher once demanded I go home to change clothes since she thought my outfit wasn’t befitting school. I insisted to stay just for the principle of her not telling me what to wear.
Out: And what of these children who do not have this power, not because they don’t have it inside them but because of everything else that I cannot put into words that they’re experiencing in their lives. How many times can children hear the same negative things from different people and remain indifferent? Words drip into fresh minds and destroy them.
As a parent, how do you explain to your child WHY this is happening. I can’t begin to imagine the heartbreak.
Power has been taken from the people for so long and in any imaginable form. “We The People” have not been a real “We” at any point and it seems to me people have forgotten what “People” is as well.
Every one of us is people. Nothing is new under the sun and terrible things happen all over the world. People’s struggles are camouflaged by lies, inventions, excuses, pumped by everything, including “the people”.
I can’t precept everything in this world though, I can only focus on a few things if I want to remain sane.
I feel all these current disclaimers being made are fake because where have you been all this time? I want to say where have you been since this last wave of photographed killings began? But even that is a blurred timeline.
Where have all these corporations been all this time? Nowadays I receive so many emails with slogans like “together we stand”. Is that the same “we” of “we the people”? Meaningless.
Can anyone in the western world not black really understand what it feels like to walk in the street knowing you could get shot at any moment just because your skin is brown?
Can anyone understand how it is to feel so royal inside, to know your soul is divine and you’re living in a world of crap and discrimination?
You’re being shunned by society that you don’t even want to be part of because it’s so messed up but do want to be a part of because you want to survive in a foreign, hostile, environment that so many people around you work so hard to keep as is, and you away from. A constant struggle and contradictions that never cease.
In: Sometimes I have dreams that I try to scream and I can’t. Then I wake up realizing I woke up from my own screams. It doesn’t happen much but when it does, it messes up my day. Feeling of enormous frustration.
Out: Now imagine having this feeling every single moment from frustration of other people’s behavior and words. From America abusing its people. From people abusing people.
Sometimes injustice is so blunt and shocking that it leaves you speechless, unable to react. What words do you say when someone is coming at you? “I am a person too” Is all I can think of with tears in my eyes because it should be a given when we look in each other’s eyes that we are all people. How can we live like this?
I am happy to be here in America during this time. This is mine too. This is in my genes and in my veins and in my soul and in my voice, and I am carrying this in the way I walk and in what I listen to and what I put on myself and
Everything that I am is this voice that says “IT’S TIME TO STAND UP AND TAKE WHAT’S YOURS” and I have been speaking it for years quietly, which is absurd considering my message.
I feel that to be able to write everything I have to write I will need a few weeks and so many pages. I don’t know who will ever read it and I don’t presume to think it interests someone that much what Tut has to say about history, religion, America, Black People in America, the Jewish people, and more.
I feel I owe it to hip hop though, to my future children, to myself – I need to speak my energy into the world.
Who am I if not a flame burning in these dark times? How can I sit in the dark when I preach for light in every word I speak?
Maybe I will take the time to do it one day but until then,
The worst thing to do is claim to understand the existential fear other people live with.
“Stand with” is meant to do good but it is so fucking dumb and presumptuous.
STAND ALONE! With yourself, your community.
Look within, feel mortified for all the wrong you did intentionally or not, feel truly sorry for pain that you did nothing to prevent, feel motivated to do better – and start doing better.
Pay attention to your words, to your thoughts and detect your own misconceptions.
Speak up for yourself as a person in this world who understands what is right and what is wrong when it comes to being humane.
Stand up and speak because you understand if today it is my friend then tomorrow it could be me.
All this bigotry should be eliminated so it doesn’t happen to anyone!
STAND and not because you stand with someone else, that is bullshit. That is not what this is.
No one needs anyone’s favors.
We need respect!
Acknowledgement of our magnificent humanity.
This is all of us. The People.
Are you going to let this slide or are you going to lead yourself towards change in perception?
I am this. And I will stand alone and be this. And will walk together being this.
America is not the land of the free to anyone, how can it be, being capitalistic as it is?
When the highest value is external – money – how can freedom truly be obtained? Freedom cannot be achieved when it is searched outward.
Yet a black person in America isn’t tied to the illusion of freedom the same way other Americans are.
How can you feel free when you’re being shot in the street for living your life? Or at your home when you’re asleep? Police or not…
And everyone keeps going to work like everything is usual, because “money”….
Slavery IS America today more than ever.
Now when there’s no work and we are all home there is time to stand up more than before. The streets are filled despite the Virus, and the momentum to rise has finally come again.
Protests continue despite the fact that here in New York we are being threatened by military and have curfew from 8pm till the morning. This is just the beginning of our silencing, so
It’s time to roll the dice for all or nothing.
I can’t say how but I can say the power to do it exists in us.
And let peace be the guiding principle in everything we are.
Peace is endless power.
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