PSA to folks like me who are new to getting loud and getting active: get ready for a lifetime of this. Even if there are victories on policing, our work will not be finished, not even close. Policing is hugely important but it’s only a symptom. The disease is the deep-down white supremacy that needs […]
This is exactly how it happens. A college classmate who is a Black man just posted searing memories of being repeatedly targeted and abused by our university police and of hearing the same experiences from every one of his fellow Black male classmates. Me? I have not a single memory of *any* interaction with HUPD, […]
As we celebrate toppling Confederate, slave trader, and Columbus statues, let’s keep our eyes open to question all the other celebrations of the American colonial project that surround us. Like this one: Nearly every summer of my life, I’ve been lucky to spend a couple of weeks in a cottage on the Cape Cod shore. […]
Psst, white friends! Did you start hearing the slogan “defund the police” a couple weeks ago? Me too! And you’re like, hm that’s interesting, I’ve read some articles and I get it, I even support it, but jeez the name is confusing people and there’s gotta be a better way to say it? I think […]
“Oh absolutely, I promise,” says the police officer in my local park. It’s my coffee walk on a beautiful sunny morning, about a quarter-mile from ritzy South Coast Plaza mall, and she’s in a pickup truck parked on the grass. Another female officer in another truck is parked across the concrete walking path 12 feet […]
This bullshit coroner’s report at least partly blaming George Floyd for his own death has me remembering how I learned from my daddy that sometimes the police lie. If you know me in real life, you might have heard me tell the story of how my dad — we called him Nurn — helped bring […]
Today is the 99th anniversary of the infamous Tulsa Race Massacre. On May 31-June 1, 1921, mobs of white people burned Black Wall Street to the ground and an unknown number of black people, at least in the hundreds, were killed. Hundreds more were injured, and thousands were left homeless. The city finally agreed earlier […]
Everywhere I go, all my life, all across this country, people smile and welcome me. They never seem to realize I’m a criminal. I break the speed limit to smithereens nearly every time I drive. I trespassed through the park last month when it was closed for quarantine. I’m deeply ashamed to say, I shoplifted […]
PSA: As we’re starting to see news of staggering racial disparities in COVID-19 death rates, watch out for perspectives that place blame on individuals instead of systems. THIS IS NOT ABOUT… It’s not about Black people making poor individual choices re: diet, exercise, self-care. It’s not about ostensibly neutral characterizations like “suffering higher rates of” […]
Beloved nonprofit friends. Beloved small-business friends. I beg you to believe me when I say the new federal CARES Act Paycheck Protection Program is not coming to save you. Speaking to you from my heart and from the best of my direct personal knowledge and experience so far: we must act in the belief that […]