Nobody wants to say it, but I will: if you got put on in a major way in the last wave of Black ppl dying, you cannot separate how that was paid for. Some of y’all are in rooms and a/accounts that would’ve been unheard before summer 2020. That was paid for — and not by you.

Part of the reason we’re having these problems of accountability and speaking over survivors is b/c no one wants to actually acknowledge just how these opportunities were paid for by living, breathing ppl. Cos it belies another truth: that “power” isn’t really yours.

What you would have to pay for the moral and professional authority to own the shit you *think* you do, you are unwilling to take those blows. So your moral authority actual belongs to survivors, and your jobs, well, that’s also not yours either.

So what does that leave?

I don’t know, b/c I’ve never been a bargain Hunter when it comes to life. I’ve paid every cost of every authority that I speak with. Every cost.

So I don’t know where that leaves ppl who got put on hiding from the moral, karmic costs of life & moral authority.

What I know is nothing in this life is free. Not a damn thing.

We will see more ppl who actually paid the costs, demand their space, agency and center. And you know what? It’s theirs. They paid for it. And I know you feel like you did too, but you didn’t.

You alone do not have the talent, drive, stamina, power to shift. Death is powerful. It is a human response to be moved by it.

You did not pay those costs. You benefitted from a payment. You have to know these platforms, opportunities, etc — these are loans.

People who have paid the costs, demanding to be centered, demanding ppl who have been eating off ambulance chasing whether that’s jobs, promotions, fundraising, etc — those loans are being called in.

And the cost of what they paid was so big, you could never match that.

The morale, humane, karmically aligned thing is to acknowledge that and step aside, defer, STFU and/or know your lane/role and when you’ve hit your limit.

If you could’ve sacrificed to have that same moral authority, you would’ve allowed yourself to be put on that way, anyway.

You would’ve just walked away. You would’ve said no to blood money, blood opportunities, blood amplification and blood platforms. But you didn’t.

So when that loan is called in, and the ppl who paid for it are speaking, you must shut the fuck up.

The adults are speaking.

You were cosplaying their moral authority, their platforms, their messages, their voice.

And some of them are now in the room. There is no debate. You are not equals on this subject. They owe nothing. You owe everything.

If you do not like owing people, then do not use nor traffic in blood that is not yours.

I understand how tempting the opportunities are, some of them opening up for the first time. I understand that we all have bills.

But do understand that doors washed with blood that isn’t yours comes w/an extremely high debt, and you cannot get mad when it’s called out.

If the game is the game — then the game is the game.

All debts are paid, in this life or the next. All of them. It’s the course of being free.

“How do you get free, stay free and do less harm, even as Black ppl trafficking in “progress” that’s paid for by other people’s blood?” Is the question we aren’t asking enough of.