ik i said i was focusing on other shit but i have to say this:

as someone who spent a chunk of their childhood on the front lines of protest, neck deep in martyr rhetoric, i truly want Black people to understand that you *do not have to die for the cause.*

i remember my mum asking me if i’d die for the cause, for my beliefs, and i don’t quite remember what my reply was (or if i replied at all) but i remember thinking, “i don’t even understand what death is. i can’t imagine dying of of old age, let alone being murdered.”

i wanted to say yes. i wanted to be ready to give my life for the cause, for my people, and then i came face to face with a police officer who was ready to swing a baton into my 14 year old face, and i realised my answer was that i wanted to find a way for us to *live*.

my mum dragged me out of that policeman’s reach that day, away from the hundreds of officers attempting to kettle us - mostly women and children and babies in prams - on horseback and on foot and she never asked me if i’d be willing to die for what i believed n again

i got on my knees at 5 years old on the balcony of my house, with a fire ravaging my childhood bedroom behind me, and begged god and the universe and everything that’d kept us alive up that point to let me and my family live. i barely knew what death was, but ik it meant The End

and i didn’t want to end.

i wanted to live, and be one of the only people in the world that could make my sister laugh. i wanted to live, and hear my mum’s heartbeat in my ear when i lay on her chest and napped. i wanted to live, and i still do, and there is NO shame in that.

admitting that you may die when you go out there to face your oppressors, to fight the evil that is racism, as a Black protestor and activist is not something to celebrate. this is war, but we are not soldiers. we are people, fighting for our lives.

and being out there isn’t something everyone can do. forcing people who aren’t ready, who aren’t capable, who can’t cope with the reality of protesting against violence that v likely may turn violent - let alone a military sanctioned by the president to murder them - isn’t right

we need people - and now i incl. non-Black people in this - fighting in every corner, in every way possible, on every level mentally + physically bc Black people are *human beings* going to war in, every way possible, to defend their humanity