3 minute read
Election Protection
from WARTIME FALL 2020
SIGN UP TO PROTECT YOUR PEOPLE AT THE POLLS
BLACK MEN BUILD 2020 Text DEFEND to 79606
BLACK MEN BUILD 2020
To The Sisters We Love
Dear Sisters,
How often do we layer our words to the Black Woman with the rich romanticism of unfulfilled promises? The phrases we write are often sweet and kind. But the subversive energy behind our intentions somehow fails to bring about adequate healing. The obtuse nature of these Europeanized desires to conquer the ocean, the moon, and the stars, have positioned us to be nothing more than poetical liars. And for that, we seek your forgiveness.
Despite the fact that y’all have consistently demanded more from us as brothers and lovers, these shortcomings remain the zenith of our love story. All Black Women deserve love, all Black girls are special. Curse anyone in this society who dares to argue against this truth. Even still I’m open enough to tell you -- I got issues I’m sorting through. I want to be real with you, and then maybe I can finally be real with myself. I cried when I wrote this because this was only my side of the story. This multifaceted dilemma they have us involved in is deeper than the gossip. When they burn your name, they burn mine. I know you are tired of my shortcomings.
But still I plea, please don’t let me go.
The year 2020 has been nothing short of a dog fight. But even still I pray we find a way to go deeper with each other. There’s no need to acknowledge the Black Woman as God if you can’t first see her as human.
Today I’m just trying my best to say I see you. Rather your request is that I hold your hand, rub your feet, or plug up the heating pad. When the rent is late and we both mobilize our resources to feed our family. When their doctors fail to see her humanity and she screams for help from the operating table. We wish nothing but death to all of her enemies. No more lame-duck excuses for the abuses she has experienced. When we burn down these cities do we do it for her too? No more love letters with sweet nothings being whispered to the Black Woman. From here forward it’s Molotov(s) and Akay-47(s) on Valentine’s Day. No more misjudgments of your honesty, from here forward this is a death note to this entire system. We stand beside you as you fight for your freedom... Death to those who exoticize your hair, murder your children and jail your sisters. We buck with you against any and all opps. From the WNBA to the front lines of Section Eight low-income housing.
We ride together, always and forever.
As I rebuke my own insecurities, for every time I forced you to make a decision that was against your first mind. My blind permittance of the rape you experienced. My lack of hatred towards your oppressor did this. My lustful admiration to be more like them has done its inevitable part to put us both back in chains. A nation of inventors and scientists came from you but they’d much rather see you giving birth to gangsters and hoodlums.
You retaliated and I kneeled at the threshold of the devil’s tavern and made you my enemy. Through this confusion, they poisoned us both through opioids and unemployment. Then they told us we were better without each other and we both managed to believe them. The greatest lie the universe ever told permeates around the notion that we are all nothing more than -- ”niggas” and “bitches.” But I say let our daughters and nieces grow strong enough to piss on the coffins of their own abusers.
