To 47

In the Blackstack Saloon (if you don’t know, now you know), we were tasked with writing a letter to our current administrator in chief. Our guide on this journey was

Jacquie Verbal

. We were told we didn’t need to share; we just needed to get it out. I wrote my piece and was surprised I wasn’t as angry as I thought I needed to be. I’m realizing I no longer view Black liberation through the lens of what white fragility has or hasn’t done. Liberation is an inside-out act: the ability to exist within the madness without letting the madness drain your essence. Black joy sustains, yet many want to consume without ever bringing anything to the table. So I’m learning the spices I have to offer, because the revolution will not be televised, but it will be consumed.

I’m working on using my voice more. Speaking up, even when it feels redundant, even when it feels unnecessary. Because language is a gift. Finding the words to express something is so valuable. When you find your language, you must exercise that muscle and teach it to others. That’s why many systems try to erase it: because the easiest way to control people is to confine them to one thought pattern.

This exercise was so powerful in many ways. It reminded me why voice matters. It took me back to childhood, when we wrote letters to the president with hope and excitement. It reminded me of children writing to Obama, celebrating the joy of what his presence in office represented for them. And it reminded me of something even deeper: a classroom of children once instructed to write hate-filled letters to Angela Davis during her trial, calling her dangerous, un-American. That, too, is what language can do. Because when people consume hate, they don’t keep it to themselves; they feed it to their children as if it were one of the four food groups. Liberation, then, is both sustenance and speech: protecting joy from being devoured, and protecting language from being silenced.

Here is my letter:

To 47.

Do you. You are so attached to the system, you don’t even know yourself. The strings are so tightly bound on your wrists and legs that you don’t even know how to turn your head to look up without assistance. You call it government, but it’s nothing more than vomit from consuming trash daily and attempting to spread the sickness to everyone around you.

Fear is not my future. We don’t run, we stand, sit in, we pray, we connect, we live, we exist, we LIVE. To be Black in Amerikka and still inhale, still spit fire, still release seeds of beauty into our children, our connections, our community that is our strength.

It’s hard for me to hate you, because that requires love, and there isn’t love for a system that was never about me in the first place. One that needs to have congressional hearings to determine if pedophiles should be prosecuted. While our people are punished just for existing.

So I give my energy to the soil. I till. I plant. I root beauty deeper into the earth, deeper into my community. Because you can’t erase the blueprint. You can’t recreate the original design. You can’t buy it.

Oh, the beauty that is US. Oh, the way my smile warms the earth. Like Kendrick said, we gon’ be alright. I can’t say the same for you. But that’s not my problem.