Freedom Ain't Free
A gray fog hovers above. It’s almost ominous. This could be the last day of my life. Or it could be the beginning of a new journey. As the world continues to spin out of control, I find myself surrendering my body to a surgeon. He’s removing an organ we no longer need in our bodies. My appendix. A nervous mother sits next to me. Quiet but anxious. I’m doing my best to repel the energy so I can walk into the hospital unnerved.
It feels like I'm discovering myself all over again. Taking inventory of where I've come in just a year is a bit overwhelming. It's been all good things. When I started this blog, in my "about me" section I put into the universe what I wanted. It all happened. I said I wanted to leave the classroom to take on the world, and the work that I did had a much larger impact than I could've imagined.
But now i’m back in the classroom. This time though, I switched boroughs. I’ve landed myself in the sugar hill neighborhood of Harlem. I’m living one of my dreams. I’ve always wondered what the great artists of the Harlem Renissance lives were like. I often go for walks and just drift off into my thoughts. I may lip-sync to a Beyonce song or two. I’ve been working on my mastery of her sickening verse at the end of Apeshit. I’ve finally gotten a good handle on it. I often walk over to Riverbank park and peer over into New Jersey.
I want to continue to make a difference in the community but in a new way. The pandemic has given me time to not only be sheltered in place at home, but it has opened up a new world of creativity. I’ve lost track of the days i’ve been in quarantine, but the things i’ve created have brought me so much joy. I’ve gone so far as to create a time and space to work on my dream. I’ve called it the Dream Party. It’s not as lofty and aloof as it sounds. It’s just time i’ve carved out in the day to work on manifesting my dream with other people. It’s really been remarkable to hear other peoples dreams for their lives and how they intend on making it happen.
“There’s really no end, there’s really no beginning”
I remember hearing this lyric and connecting with it deeply. In times of crisis, especially one that looks apocalyptic, it’s important to remember that this is not the end of the world. It may be the end of the world we once knew. The world where we gathered in large groups for sports and entertainment. The world where we gathered for work and school. The world where we gathered in person for Sunday brunch and after work happy hours. That may well be over but it doesn’t mean its the end of the world. It’s truly the beginning of something completely new.
I predicted this would come. Not exactly this, but I knew that something would come to change our behavior. The course we were on was headed toward self destruction. It’s the western way. We’ve been lead by western ideas for centuries now. They built an incredible global machine that over uses resources and pollutes the environment without regard. The universe sent a virus to change the system. Something more sustainable and safe for everyone. It is devastating that so many people have to perish because of it. It is a blessing however that our children, for the most part, will go unharmed. It is them we must begin to focus on. They will be the ones who will have to rebuild the world. We should be thinking about two or three generations in the future as we make our next steps.
Here we are now at the crossroads. Even in the midst of chaos, all roads lead to our success. We just have to decide what kind of life we want for ourselves. There’s a life filled with adventure that awaits all of us. Even in our homes. We just have to decide what we want to do. Now start doing it.
The summer has come and is almost gone. It's been a very trying summer for me personally. I entered another season of transition. Transitions aren't bad, but they make everything feel uncertain. Unbalanced. I have had one of the best years of my life and I was hoping to continue the party into the summer. However, the universe gave me time to slow down, reflect, and take inventory of what I've experienced to help me figure out where I'm going. In order to balance myself out in this season I've created a morning routine that includes some exercise, meditation, and journaling. I've been writing a lot of my thoughts down. Most of it just comes out as a bunch of unpublishable chatter, but it helps clear my mind.
I was hoping the summer would be filled with rooftop parties but I've spent a large majority of the time reading books, lounging on the beach, and finding quiet spots in parks around the city. I'm reminded that it is okay to take breaks. I was carrying a lot of the negative energy produced from recent news headlines: school shootings, family separations at the boarder, and the constant ineptitude of America's commander in chief. It was all a lot. Disconnecting from it for a season is becoming more and more important as I continue to figure out ways to manage my mental health. In order for me to healthy, I'm finding that I have to surround myself with beautiful things. I see the most beauty in nature. Seeing green leafy trees, yellow sun flowers, orange butterflies, crashing waterfalls, and even a good summer rain uplifts and feeds my spirit.
Creating is my other form of therapy. It's the other tool I use to get me through seasons when smiling gets hard. I was able to create a short but uplifting song that helped me deal with my feelings about existing in country that attacks blackness for sport. I'm astonished at the restraint of the black community. I'm inspired by our collective fight for joy in the midst of one of America's darkest hours. May we continue to use our creativity to strike back against the powers and principalities in high places that seek to harm us.
I knew I wouldn't be able to sleep easy. My anxiety was at an all time high. I'd been waiting my whole like for this moment. CNN was coming to film an event I'd worked extremely hard on to plan. All I had to do was get a quick nap, wake back up, and start my morning. But then in the middle of the night...
My mind started spinning again. Flash backs of hearing George Zimmerman's Not Guilty verdict came. The feeling of helplessness and a loss of hope in a country I so desperately desired to love rushed over me. My morning would now be more complicated. In that moment I was ready to risk it all and throw out everything I planned. I wanted to take to the streets. Scream. Cry. Fight. I wanted to do everything I could to get rid of this feeling. But this is the moment I was prepared for. This is why the universe put me on this earth. In the midst of chaos, it was my job to begin creating a new path. A new way forward. Thus, BROOK-LAND was birthed.
Since leaving the classroom, I've been able to find ways to bring youth together to discuss and deal with some of the social ills of the world. Police brutality, structural racism, interpersonal violence, and gentrification are just a few of the topics we've focused on. This youth leadership summit was my first foray into creating a platform for youth to speak out about how they felt about the recent school shootings that took place this year that sparked the "March For Our Lives" movement our youth have picked up. What was missing from that movement was black and brown faces and voices. This was my way of making sure our youth have a seat at the table. Now they do!
When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time. Words of wisdom spoken from ancestor Maya Angelou. Though I've heard this over and over, and have taken it to heart, when I'm shown negative sides of people, I still find myself holding on to toxic relationships. Why? I think my heart is just too open to giving and receiving love. Or maybe I just keep choosing not to love myself first.
I've always wondered how our ancestor allowed the Maafa (African Holocaust) to consume them. They were wise. They were spiritual. Yet they we're overcome by evil. The Coming,a novel by Daniel Black reveled a few answers. He recently sat down with Can These Bones, a podcast that focuses on Faith and Leadership to discuss the impact the middle passage had not only on the Africans who were at the bottom of the ships, but also the impact that was made on the white men who rode above on the decks of the ships. He also explores the term "people of color" and suggests it might be more rooted in racism than many people think. Check out the podcast and lets have a dialogue in the comments section.
The future is black. Black as night. Black as tar. Black as you. Black as me.
The diaspora of blackness is united. Black American, Black Caribbean, Black African. Black Latinx. Each culture contributing to the creation of this black utopia. Chitlins and Roti, Gumbo and couscous. The food, the music, all blended together. Soca and blues, Afro beat and gospel. Everyone is at least Triligual. We worship all forms of God's expression of God's self without conflict. We recognize every expression of God's self in human form. Hetero, Homo, Bi, Trans, you name it, we celebrate it. The intersections of existence keep us connected and not separated. Every child goes though a rite of passage to learn how to be an adult in our society. Ancient and Modern wisdom are infused to guide our paths. We value nature. The earth is sacred. The trees are abundant. We kill only what we eat. We've learned to let enough be enough. Greed doesn't dominate our way.
For decades artists have be painting a portrait of this future. We call them Afro-Futurist. They've been using their creativity to envision the future through the lens of afrocentrism. Putting black people at the center of this future gives us the freedom to dream in this current season of turmoil. Marvel's "Black Panther" is ushering in a possible vision for this utopia. Wakanda, the home land of our beloved superhero. Hidden within the borders of the African continent, it is known for being the most technologically advanced society on the planet.
It's centered around blackness. It's so centered around it that we no longer have to speak about it. It's so engrained in the fabric of society that there's no longer a need to shout "Black Lives Matter" because you'd have to reside in a mental hospital not to know and understand it. It's so central that we laughed at the time when we only celebrated its history for 28 days. It's centrality is how we formed our schools. In kindergarten, all of our children have learned to speak English, Swahili, and Twi. We no longer grade our children by their academic tests alone, but by the mastery of of their character and their ability to articulate their point of view. Their blackness no longer holds them in positions of inferiority because white supremacy no longer exists.
Dr. L'Hereux Lewis-McCoy, Dumi to many, recently gave the Men of Morehouse some insight to find a way to bring this future into reality. "Wakanda Revolution Do You Want?" he asked. Take a few minutes to see if we can find an answer to this question.
It was a normal day like any other. She sent her kids off to the school house. She made her way to work. She'd clocked out and was walking her normal route back to her little piece of heaven. The Bluff. It was the most beautiful piece of property anyone had ever seen in the Gullah Islands. Its only accessible because of a land bridge that was created to let one and a half cars come through at once. Realizing you're driving over a tiny part of the Atlantic Ocean can seem daunting, but that was the normal way of life there. Bridges were everywhere. Some made from sand, some made from wood, some made from steel. This place, while connected, provided enough division to keep the community in peace and harmony. But then Betty never showed up at home that night. In fact, she would never come back.
April, 1978, Betty was stopped by two white men and one white woman. They stopped to ask her some questions. From that moment, her life, the lives of her family, and the lives of an entire community would never be the same again.
20 years later, the New York Times reported:
A white man who strangled a black hitchhiker and carved K.K.K. into her body 20 years ago was executed on Friday by lethal injection.
The man, John Arnold, 43, was convicted of killing Betty Gardner. Ms. Gardner, 33, was picked up by Mr. Arnold, his cousin John Plath and a female companion in 1978 as she made her way home.
The companion, Cindy Sheets, led the police to Ms. Gardner's body and testified against the cousins under a grant of immunity. Ms. Sheets said Mr. Arnold had strangled Ms. Gardner with a garden hose while Mr. Plath stabbed her with a knife and a bottle and stomped on her neck.
Mr. Plath is expected to be executed by early summer. Mr. Arnold is the 14th person to be executed in South Carolina since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.
I was in elementary school in 1998. I remember the adults in my family sending my cousins and I outside to have meetings. While I knew something was happening, they never shared that information with the children. Then one day my mother took off from work and sent me to her aunts house to sleep over on a school night. This was abnormal for her. She'd taken off to be a family witness for the execution of Betty Gardner's murderer. This would be only the third time in historu a white person was put to death by the state of South Carolina for killing someone black.
Violence, in its many forms, impacts everyone. Watching violence in the media, experiencing violence in relationships, random acts of physical violence, and racial violence all produce trauma. Trauma, when unattended to, can negatively impact those who experience it. Mental health is a big taboo among black men. My theory is that we run away from therapy because it'd mean we'd have to admit that something is wrong. In the black community, men are supposed to be strong, and any sign of weakness lessens your manhood. This is of course not healthy.
Here's a video that opens the conversation about black men, violence, trauma, and how we can begin to seek healing. (It's also my very first public speaking event)!
