There’s a school building across the street from my home. It has a playground area, now largely silent due to the summer vacation that’s just begun. Alongside summer, we in Baltimore have been greeted with a heat wave that feels like scenes out of Do the Right Thing.
The summer depicted in that movie happens every summer in many Black cities and neighborhoods. It’s unfortunate that this truth still resonates over 30 years later. It strikes harder knowing that a Black man was killed by the police in Baltimore last week.
Bilal Abdullah. Many people knew him as a kind, warm arabber. I just watched some of the news. Police released bodycam footage. And I don’t like this one bit. It’s the same old story. Look, he had a gun. We proved it. Their showing this footage to the public repeats the same old violent belief: Black people deserve to get killed if they’re wielding guns.
I see Bilal Abdullah… and in this footage, he is a Black man fighting for his life, defending the planet that is his body. That’s his story. Black people have a right to defend their bodies. Black people have a right to autonomy. Even against the damn police. And Bilal Abdullah should still be here.
38 rounds from the police versus 3 rounds from Bilal Abdullah. It’s obvious who was the aggressor. It’s more than clear who was in the wrong.
Bilal Abdullah should still be here with his family, doing the sacred work of giving fruit to his people. Nothing will ever change my mind about that. Nothing.
In another part of the country, Cincinnati, Ohio, Laura Schueler is murdered. Two weeks ago, another Black trans woman left the earth by yet another gunshot. I’ve only read one article on her and I hope I find another that tells me who she was beyond a murder victim because Black trans women who are murdered are more than a collection of murder victims, more than statistics, more than numbers.
What is your story, mother? Auntie? Sister? Cousin? Teacher? Goddess? Fuck what the news reports. They follow a script anyway. Same old, same old. They think it’s a service to the people that loved her, that she loved… but it isn’t. A script isn’t solidarity. A script isn’t justice. I hope someone knows her story so she won’t be forgotten. Someone alive knows Laura Schueler. Someone alive knows her story and will tell it.
And there are other things… wars… conflicts… episodes of Amerikkkan fascism… It’s all so much. The bombs were falling before the physical ones landed on the soil. Yes, you can feel the impact thousands and thousands of miles apart.
I came across an alchemist who had the audacity to upload an Instagram video saying, “I don’t give a fuck about that war! Ain’t no war over here! Look at where I’m at! Ain’t nothing but love and light! If I don’t look at my screen, ain’t no war going on.”
FOOLISH! How foolish can you be? And selfish! And WRONG. He received an unfollow from me. Because it makes no sense for one to present themselves as caring about the spiritual and metaphysical, but don’t give a fuck about war.
You should give a fuck about war. War should break your heart. And you don’t need to watch a war to know it’s happening. War… is all around us. Even quietly. War starts as a thought, a premeditation, and it has effects on all of us because we are all here.
With all the tragic spiral, I still left my house to go to the playground on Sunday. It was necessary. I thought it was just to see myself… to be with myself… but it was also to be with the earth.
It was, and is, so fucking hot.
And as the heat progressed, I remained in the effort to know what I had to get from a Sunday afternoon grounding. As I took my shoes off and scrubbed my feet in the dirt. As I laid my hair in the earth’s hair, the grass. As I listened to the buzzing of cicadas and insects. As I became.
And I remember in my 20s what it was like when I learned about the Emanuel AME Church shooting… when I learned about Pulse Orlando… when I learned about any Black trans woman killed in any part of the country… when I learned about Trayvon Martin… and Freddie Gray… and Alton Sterling… It all made me not want to live.
All of it… All of them and more… The ongoing wars that we and our communities have to fight. Back then, it made me not want to live. Who would want to? I used to think that.
When I rose up, still grounding, that’s when the ground spoke. Life is always going to be here.
And I looked around. Every flower. Every blade of grass. Every small clump of dirt. Every ant. I was surrounded by life. My eyes magnified from where I sat, zooming in and out, creating different sizes of space while sitting still and not moving.
Life is always going to be here. That’s how we’ve sustained. There will always be life.
And when I was grounding, I wasn’t thinking of crisis or catastrophe. Or the world ending. Or who got killed. Or worried. Or wondering if I was going to make to the end of the day. Or see tomorrow. I was just told life is going to be here. And I needed to be told that… to remember how to fight.
Because once upon a time, I gave up fighting. And if I ever give up again, I might as well be dead because the experiences are synonymous with me.
So that quote was derived from something Mother Jones said… “Honor the dead and fight like hell for the living.” I fucking get it now… just like I’m finally getting a lot of things.
I would like to make one slight amendment… Fight like hell for yourself too. Because you are part of the living.
I know there will be days of fatigue… of wishing for an immediate betterment… of a roaring rage. But somewhere in it all is a passageway to freedom on the daily, which leads us to the ultimate freedom from all these systems and regimes and world orders and respectabilities… and overall bullshit.
Life is always going to be here. Find it wherever you can. Be it wherever you want. That is a key to freedom.
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