during the riots and upheaval of our nation during the 2020 pandemic, i turned to my friends in frustration. i expressed that i am tired of our people proclaiming that “we can’t breathe.” i’m tired of uplifting the darkness and sharing the painful imagery in hopes that it will evoke sympathy. it is hard for me to believe that the descendants of people who found pleasure in our lynchings—hosted picnics to enjoy food while they watch our bodies hang— would find sympathy from seeing our modern lynchings. they—and even we—are used to slaughter, use to horror, we consume it for breakfast with our lattes.

so, i did what i know how to do best…rant on social media, mainly to myself and peripherally to the 300 or so people who skip through my stories on instagram. i wrote a frustrated post that demanded that instead of saying, “we can’t breathe,” we need to exclaim that “we breathe free.” my friend dillon sat with me in this thought and together ideas blossomed. from my words, dillon visualized images and breathed life into our proclamation of freedom.

published in melanin mag on july 14, 2022