If you are a woman, and you critique social, political, or cultural institutions, figures, or narratives through your voice, art, writing, music, or social media, you will be called “angry” and told, directly and indirectly, to “calm down.”

Behave better. More pleasant, please. Maybe add a bow to your hair. 

If you are a woman of color in the aforementioned scenario, you will be called “angry” even if your tone is not angry at all, and Super Helpful White People will instruct you how you could “gain more allies if you were nicer.”

(People sit DOWN with that redemption bullshit. Nobody needs you.)

If you are a woman and you write satire, which, by definition, is used to call out another’s bullshit by elevating the situation or behavior to ridiculous extremes, you will be told you are “shaming” that “poor soul.” Even if the poor soul in question SHOULD be called out and NEEDS to be called out and you, as the motherfucking critic, have CHOSEN satire to do so.

That’s right: “shaming.”

Mean girl stuff. You know, vaginas in dispute.

If you are a woman and you say things people don’t want to hear, and you refuse to do it in a tail-between-the-legs, indirect, gentle, subdued way, your argument will be reduced to perpetuation of “mommy wars” or some other contrived battlefield of female bickering.

And as such, people will dismiss you as just “too much.”

Yes, even if your critique is balanced, researched, thoughtful and nuanced, your arguments will be ignored in light of your TONE. Your words will be reduced to the ravings of a “jealous,” “envious,” and “hateful” “shaming” woman.

But if you would have been nicer we would have listened to you, so it’s your fault.  

One wonders how many male comedians are told they are “shaming” people, how many male social critics are told they really should “stop being so angry.” That they are “mean” and “envious” and that is why they’re cracking jokes and writing satire and political commentary.

Even if the thing you’re writing about deserves anger, outright rage, clinched fucking fists and screams, even if the thing kills people, rapes people, unjustly incarcerates people, removes freedom and bodies and choice – the violence of the thing itself will fade to nothing under the shadow of your unpleasant delivery because check it out: YOU CAN SPEAK OUT BUT DO IT WITH YOUR INSIDE VOICE, please.

Nobody likes the yeller.

In other words, you’re not making me feel good about this topic, and I like feeling good, so in the interest of my feelings, please deliver ideas to me gently in a way that makes me feel good about myself and my pick-and-choose activism so I can go home and remember what an aware and enlightened human I am.

I love supporting causes, but I don’t like feeling uncomfortable. 

And it’s not just expected of women writers. It’s actresses and musicians and teachers and mail carriers and doctors and marines. Mothers and daughters and wives and friends.

WE GET TO BE FUCKING ANGRY SOMETIMES.

We get to say what we think in the way we want to say it.

And we get to say it out loud. And loud.

We get to not be “nice.” And they get to deal with it.

If you are a woman and you critique and publicly analyze people, systems, and rhetoric of society, you will be called mean and “judgey” and angry and irrational and shaming and “not displaying your best self” so often that one day you will wonder if they are in fact correct.

It will creep in unannounced and plant itself right there in the center of your mind, where faith in yourself lives.

You’ll wonder where it came from, that voice. Was it there before? When did it arrive? When did I grow afraid?

When did I start wondering if it is worth it?

When did I grow so tired?

And when you sit down to write that thing you want to say, you will wonder if silence is perhaps a better option, because you’re not sure you can take one more assault reducing your brain to petty shit-slinging, your voice to the squeals of a little kid not getting their way.

In that moment I hope you come back and read this, and say it anyway, because every time you do, I hear you, and I see you, and even in your rage I witness your love, and turn around to do the same, maybe even a little truer than last time.

****

WRITE WITH ME.

LOUDLY. Or quietly, actually. It’s cool.

We just need you to say the thing as opposed to not saying the thing.

We start May 24 (and we need your voice).

When Trump first announced he was running for president, I found it weird and awful in a “fuck this shit” kind of way but also vaguely amusing in a sad, bad reality-TV show kind of way. Another idiot on the screen. I didn’t take it seriously though.

How could I?

You see, I thought outright racism, xenophobia, and misogyny disqualified someone from presidency. I thought over-simplified, ignorant (if not downright moronic) proposals such as “let’s send all the illegals home” disqualified somebody from a position, say, as PRESIDENT OF OUR FUCKING NATION.

I thought emptiness behind the eyes and acting like an overall buffoon would repel people on a superficial level alone. Simply, I don’t want that asshat representing my nation.

But I was wrong.

I watched the media put him in the spotlight over and over again, and I wondered how they could care about clicks more than the future, about circus over substance. I know. I know. This is how they’ve always been.

But damn.
And with each one of his bigoted, misogynistic, homophobic, idiotic statements, publicized relentlessly, I watched his following INCREASE instead of decrease. It was like an out-of-body experience. I kept thinking, this. This will be thing that wakes up his supporters.

But it made them love him more.

And now, I’m fucking terrified.

Last week, Trump refused to openly and immediately disavow the support of a known KKK member.

THE KKK, PEOPLE. The lynch-ers. The murderers. The children-murderers. The church bombers. Arguably the most violent and hated and ugly group of wannabe humans to ever walk our soil.

Not a deal-breaker, I guess.

Trump thinks Mexico is going to “build a wall.” He stated that Mexicans are drug addicts, criminals, and rapists. He wants to register and track Muslims. He wants to survey and close mosques. He wants to lock down our borders based on ethnicity and religion and lock down the internet. He wants to repeal marriage equality. He makes fun of his supporters. He thinks climate change is a “hoax,” invented by the Chinese (?). He mocked a disabled journalist. He mocks “fat” and “ugly” women and said rape in the military is expected if you put men and women together (NICE ONE!). He said he would have sex with his daughter if she weren’t his daughter. He said he “could stand in the middle of 5^th avenue and shoot somebody” and not lose voters. This is a small selection of what he has to offer.

And yet, his support grows.

Are we really this fucked up?

Yes. The answer is yes. We know this because his followers love him BECAUSE of his bigotry, not in spite of it.

It’s hard to believe this is really my country, right now, in 2016. It’s hard to believe a huge number of Americans think they will “make America great again” by returning to a time the rest of us look back on as the darkest moments in our history.

Make America great for whom?

At this point, supporting Trump unequivocably means support for racism. But this doesn’t bother Trump fans. In fact, I believe his openly white supremacist stance IS THE MAIN ATTRACTION of this circus.

Yesterday I read this tweet by Hend Amry: “If you’re an American confusedly watching the darkest forces of ur nation rally behind a demagogue-maybe u can understand the Mid East now.”

When I read her words I felt a moment of relief, you know, the way writing speaks something you’ve been unable to put into words? That’s what I feel. Confusion at watching dark forces I didn’t fully know existed bring to power a man that represents everything I thought my country was moving AWAY from.

Look, I knew they existed, but I thought they were a small, distant number. I thought they were radicals hiding in the corners, not enough people to elect this “rabid coyote,” as Stephen King calls him. (Undoubtedly I thought that because I am white, and have lived my whole life in California.)

I’ve listened with anxious curiosity to Trump supporters. They say things like “He’s going to keep us safe from terrorists;” “He isn’t reliant on lobbyists because he’s independently wealthy,” “He tells the truth,” “He isn’t a regular politician,” “Our country is being overrun by immigrants.”

The truth thing is wrong. He lies all the damn time and they’re just ignoring that. But the rest? We made that. We made the whole thing. We built this house one motherfucking brick at a time.

They are afraid. They are fed-up. They are fucking tired. They’re mostly poor and uneducated and overworked. And they live in a country telling them brown people are the reason why. They live in a country breathing racism. It’s in their bones. And now, they’ve found somebody willing to say it. He is voice to their family talks while watching Nascar over dinner. He is their conversation after “church.” He is bar talk with buddies. He’s the motherfucking knitting circle.

He is them.

And we made it all.

WHY DO THEY THINK IT’S OKAY TO SUPPORT AN OVERT RACIST? No, why are they straight empowered by him? Why do they see his devotion to white supremacy as the solution?

Because this is America. This is how we do.

We do it every time we call brown religious extremists “terrorists” and white ones “mentally disturbed.” White rioters “upset about the hockey game” and brown ones “thugs.” We do it every time we shoot unarmed people of color without recourse while claiming racism was “fixed” during the Civil Rights movement, a story that allows us to return to bootstraps mentalities while ignoring systemic inequalities in healthcare, education, class, and the justice system.

In other words, we blame “them.”

We set this up, one day at a time. Through our media and national rhetoric, we’ve planted images of the “other,” and the fear and power and entitlement wrapped up in those narratives have materialized in a man speaking that which the nation has been whispering under its breath since inception, carrying out with its hands, pitting poor working whites against people of color to justify the exploitation and powerlessness of their own lives.

Hey, I may be fucked, but at least I’m not brown. We’ve been doing this for years, and it’s worked beautifully.

We’ve bolstered our national (freedom-loving, land of equality) identity in spite of reality through the white-washing of history: by teaching the Japanese Internment in 15 minutes at 2pm on a Friday; by glossing over our Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1790 defining citizens as “free white people of good moral character,” and the Chinese Exclusion Act and the Geary Act; antisemitic efforts and the one-drop rule and nationwide, state-enforced anti-miscegenation laws and the 1907 Gentleman’s Act with Japan; denial of citizenship to Asians, blacks, Filipinos; the Johnson-Reed, National Origins and Asian Exclusion acts that tilted immigration in favor of Western European whites; America’s colonization of the Philippines and the resulting slaughter of 2 million Filipinos; the special gun we made to kill them; denying citizenship, voting rights and representation to America’s colonies, which we call “territories” because “colonizing” is what mean British do; we did it by forgetting the Tydings-Mcduffie Act of 1934 and Mexican Repatriation and the Bracero Act and Yellow Peril…

Make America great again.

Like that?

Our nation was formed through exclusionary racist laws, social and cultural forces, but we don’t teach that, not loudly at least, because it hurts our feelings. Is that why? Because it undermines our understanding of precious America?

Nah, I think it’s about power. Maintenance of power.

And I’ll be damned if we’re not getting what we asked for.

This is it people. This is what you fucking get when you let fantasy override reality and rather than face and learn from mistakes, reframe them into vague rhetoric about “the greatest country of earth.” City on a hill. Better than the rest.

THIS IS WHAT YOU GET THROUGH AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM AND WHITE SUPREMACY.

You get a bunch of white Americans believing they are exceptional and entitled to supremacy.

Or, Trump supporters.

The people shoving this black teen yesterday in Kentucky are the same angry mob yelling at Elizabeth Eckford as she attempted to integrate Little Rock’s Central High School, in Little Rock, Arkansas, September 4, 1957.

If you don’t teach history, you get history back again.

And now, everybody’s freaking out. It takes a batshit blowhard explaining that he needs to “check his sources” before speaking out against the KKmotherfuckingK to make us scratch our heads and say “Geeeee I guess we should do something.”

Yeah. We better.

Fuck party lines. This isn’t about the GOP or Democrats. This is about not allowing a bigoted almost-fascist (all we need is direct violence!) wannabe dictator to return our country to oblivion. This is about tearing down the mind-boggling danger of him and his followers and the rhetoric they embrace. (Incidentally, let’s not vote somebody in who just says this shit more quietly, mmmkay?)

Use your writing. Use your voice. Use your canvas use your spray paint use your music. Use your car your home your mouth. Use your art your work your hobby your legs and your hands. Use anything. Use everything.

Use your motherfucking vote.

Move your feet. Do not be quiet.

We built this house. We can tear it down.

The revolution will not be televised. It will be live.

God damnit, America, MAKE IT LIVE.

You are the person who thinks it’s “no big deal” that some young men hang banners from the balconies of their frat house with the words: “Freshman daughter drop off,” “Rowdy and Fun. Hope your baby girl is ready for a good time,” and “Go ahead and drop off mom too.”

It’s hard to believe you still exist, in 2015.

I want to rant and rave at you. I want to call you names and insult your intelligence and tell you to fuck right off a thousand ways. You support a culture that views women as objects to be consumed and taken at will.

You support a culture of rape.

And you do it openly. And you say it’s just your “opinion” as if it is that innocuous.

I fucking hate you.

But my hatred does nothing. So instead, I’ll just talk to you.

Let’s break down the messages of these banners. Translate them. Make explicit the implicit.

“Freshman daughter drop off:” The person you have raised and protected and adored as a child needs to be deposited into our hands so we can take over your role as parent and do with her what we will, which is have sex with her. We want to take advantage of her insecurity as a new student and attempt to play on her vulnerability.

You think I’m going too far? I’m not. They call her “daughter.” Ownership. Not even an autonomous human being. Somebody’s daughter. Somebody’s child. “Freshman:” New, young, nervous, unsure.

“Rowdy and fun. Hope your baby girl is ready for a good time.” More direct, same message. Baby girl. Reduced to infantile. Reduced to pure vulnerability. Purity. Perceived virginity. Don’t fucking tell me I’m reading too much into this: WHAT IS A BABY GIRL IF NOT AN INNOCENT VIRGIN?

About to be violated. STILL NOT ADDRESSING THE ACTUAL HUMAN BEING.

Still not addressing THE YOUNG WOMAN IN QUESTION who may or may not want to have sex with a dude or 2 or 6 but that is not the point is it?

They’re writing to the parents. They’re not writing to her. They don’t give a shit about her. Her sexuality is a non-issue. Her desires are irrelevant. Her body is not her own.

SHE IS A NON-ISSUE.

SHE IS IRRELEVANT.

The only people who matter are the parents, the ones who blocked them from getting to her vagina.

“Go ahead and drop off mom too:” Hell, we don’t care. We’ll fuck any warm body. Even if she’s old and gross, because we all know that’s what older women are.

We’ll fuck your baby girl and your wife. Two objects you own that we want.

These messages reduce women to bodies to be passed off between men: dads and husbands to frat boys.

These messages reduce women to THINGS to be TRADED between men.

Do I think these boys are posting these messages with full awareness of the what they’re saying? Maybe. Put probably not. They’re probably too fucking dumb for that. THEY ARE ABSORBING THE CULTURE AROUND THEM. THEY ARE ABSORBING THE CULTURE YOU ARE SUPPORTING EVERY TIME YOU SAY

You’re overly sensitive.

These are just boys being boys.

Young college boys are horny.

They’re just having fun.

Meanwhile, girls are raped.

Meanwhile, boys are growing up thinking this is what being a man means.

Meanwhile, our sons are reduced to douchebag morons with penises that blur humanity.

Meanwhile, our daughters are reduced to available or unavailable vaginas.

Meanwhile, our daughters are on the ground with a boot on their neck, choking under the power of a patriarchy that protects or consumes them, but never lets them breathe.

We buy a onesie that says “Daddy’s little princess.”

We buy a onesie that says “Lock your daughters up.”

We buy heels for our 3-year-old. She can’t run at the park anymore.

We put her in skirts and tell her to close her legs. They’ll see your panties!

Somebody’s older brother touched her. “Boys will be boys. He’s just exploring.”

She says nothing the 2^nd time. The third the fourth the fifth.

We tell her to adhere to dress codes. Don’t show too much leg. That belly. Shame!

We tell her to buy some pepper spray.

We tell her not to get drunk.

Boys will be boys you know they are just having fun they can’t help themselves the power of their dicks is just too much LOOK AT THOSE PROMISING FOOTBALL CAREERS.

You want sex? No don’t have sex you’ll be a slut and nobody likes a slut be clean be good be respectable you can do anything YOU ARE DADDY’S LITTLE PRINCESS.

“Drop your baby girl off here.”

We’ve got it. We’ll take care of you now, little princess.

She shouldn’t have done that keg stand.

She shouldn’t have worn that skirt.

She shouldn’t have gone upstairs.

She shouldn’t have walked alone.

She shouldn’t have driven.

She shouldn’t have been born.

It’s no big deal.

You’re being too sensitive.

He was just horny.

He was just having fun.

Welcome to college, princess. Welcome to the world.

Ah shit, drop her mom off too.

Recently I read (yet another) thread on Facebook that went like this:

Main post: “Teenage boys are so hard.”

Comments in thread: “You should be glad you don’t have GIRLS.”

At least you don’t have GIRLS. OMG TEENAGE GIRLS.

They are THE WORST.

Insane, emotional, slutty little things. Mean. Irrational.

I’m paraphrasing, but you know the story.

Get your shotgun out. Lock em up. But goddamnit why are they so ANNOYING?

I have a daughter. She’s 13. I don’t see it. I don’t see the horrible. I don’t think I ever will. Tell me I will. Tell me she’ll be “the worst” in a few years.

Dear humans:

What would happen if we dropped the storyline that teenaged girls are “the worst” and just let them fucking BE?

Love,

Janelle

Well, since we’re on the topic, American teenage girls, I would like to provide a few guidelines for keeping yourself safe and navigating these awkward teenage years:

Do not wear revealing clothing like short shorts or leggings because boys just can’t control their hormones at this age and your skin makes them want to rape you. Yes, this is your problem. This could get complicated because you may have sexual feelings too and maybe WANT to show a little skin and explore the sensual side of your existence – OR MAYBE IT’S JUST A HOT DAY AND YOU ARE ACTUALLY PHYSICALLY HOT –  but this makes you a slut.

so don’t do that. nobody likes a slut.

Yes, that’s right: What’s unavoidable in boys is equally unavoidable in girls but in boys it’s expected (and possibly celebrated as a sign of virile heterosexuality) but in you it’s just dirty and shameful and your virile dad will need to protect you with a shotgun from virile boys whose parents dressed them in onesies at 6-months-of age that read: “Lock your daughters up.”

Now’s the time, daddy.

Lock.Your.Daughters.Up with those wild breasts and vaginas JUST OUT THERE FOR THE TAKING.

On to the topic of friends: Don’t be a “mean girl.” When boys have problems with their friends they are humans having problems with friends, or “assholes” or bullies, but when you do it there’s a special classification called “mean girl” because we need to make sure we establish early on that you are catty, simple-minded, and trite.

Newsflash “mean girl” is not actually a thing.

Assholes come in all genders.

Speaking of assholes, hormones rage in male and female teenagers, resulting in mood swings, tears, uncontrollable emotions and rage, but when you do it it’s a result of your vagina and uterus and menstruation and ohbytheway you’ll carry that with you your whole life. The irrationality. The emotionally unstable. When men cry we either deem them “pussies” or laud their gorgeous sensitivity. (Oh yes we’re screwing them too but that’s a different blog post.)

Have you dropped out of math yet?

Good. Stick with literature. Our emotional brains function better in those tender humanities.

Anyway, in short, teenage girls, this is why people hate you and why you read Facebook threads of grown-ass adults lamenting your existence and claiming you are WORSE than “boys:” Because you’re crazy and mean and irrational and emotional and slutty and your potential to get pregnant and evoke the (obviously unavoidable) rape drive in boys makes you a liability to yourself and your family.

Welcome to femaleness. Welcome to womanhood.

Welcome to the motherfucking jungle.

Oh shit wait! I forgot. How to not get your throat cut by strangers (this is from an actual list of helpful citizens on Facebook who commented on the occasion of a woman getting her throat cut by a stranger on the street):

• do not get out of the car at night
• learn self defense
• always carry pepper spray
• do not know bad people
• don’t be a prostitute
• do not go into bad areas of town
• don’t walk alone ever on a street ever.

(Why are they virtually unconcerned about the human who MURDERED another HUMAN? Well shoot your guess is as good as mine.)

WELCOME TO WOMANHOOD NOW DON’T GET OUT OF YOUR CAR LEST SOMEBODY SLICES YOUR THROAT AND YOU GET BLAMED.

(good times.)

Lemmetellyousomething my girl:

I don’t see this and I never will. Oh okaaaaay I see difficulty and I see pain and I see emotions and I see the hormones and the silliness woven with grown-up-ness and I see myself.

I see your father.

I see a child. I see a woman-child. I see a woman-child becoming woman. I see emotional turmoil. I see upset. I see rage. I see building moats in the sand and looking for seashells and painted nails and pedicures and long lean muscular legs and new curves and unruly curls on rainy days.

I see perfection.brokenness.gaping faults.attitude.

I see the difficulty of any kid that ever lived. I see all the boys and girls.

I see helpful. lazy. I see easier than my 4-year-old. independence. separation. wit and sarcasm and naiveté.

I see myself.

I was a teenage girl. I didn’t know the world hated me. Maybe because there wasn’t social media.

I see exploration. I see changing. I see life. I see a couple text messages to boys and a few discussions about this one and that one and I see you learning navigating working to understand other humans, life, sex, bodies, school, futures, loveheartangerragepainhystericalLaughingFriendsSiblingsFamilyandTomorrow.

(and you drive me nuts BECAUSE ALL KIDS ARE FUCKING ANNOYING.)

Heyyyy daughter, I don’t hate you. I don’t think you’re slutty or evil or mean. I expect you to be irrational and emotional just like I am sometimes, and your dad is sometimes, and your brother and every other person ever.

I want to lock you up, but not because of your gender.

I want to hide you away from the idiots. I want to hide you away so you never think you are the worst. So you aren’t ashamed. So you aren’t embarrassed. So you don’t gaslight YOURSELF when you’re emotional and unstable and irrational in your room away from the family for a few moments telling yourself “Well here I am just another faulty female fulfilling those prophesies all over the internet.”

And I don’t want you to not see that you are growing up in a clusterfuck of rape culture victim blaming female-body shaming (all hail the thigh gap) – WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN – and it isn’t you at all at all at all. It’s us. Them. Them. Them.

We plunk you down in an insane world then belittle diminish fault and blame you as you struggle to find your place in an insane world.

You are me. You are him. You are her.

You are not the worst.

You are the motherfucking best.

Ours, at least.

If you read it, all that nonsense, don’t believe it.

Believe this. Believe it to the end, and I’ll see you on the other side, kid.

******

HEY LOCALS:

My dear friend Sarah Maren and I are teaching a writing & photography intensive workshop in Sacramento next month and it’s going to change lives. Well, maybe not. But it will be fun, and you will become a better writer and photographer.

8 spots left.

GET ON IT LET’S HANG OUT DAMNIT.

(also, how cute and innocent do I look in this drawing?!)

I know a few things. I’ve studied them, or better yet, felt them. I’ve watched, heard about them. Better still, lived them. I know a few things.

But I don’t know shit about Baltimore.

I know CNN and Fox are liars, and they don’t know shit about Baltimore either.

I watch people talk.

Here’s a thread of women analyzing whether the mother who “beat” her kid for attempting to join the riots was right or wrong. As if that’s the fucking point. Perhaps turn that white gaze inward.

I’m pretty sure they don’t know shit about Baltimore.

Here’s the “violence is never the answer people.” That sounds nice. It would be even nicer if it were true. Violence, it seems to me, is America’s go-to move, abroad, and at home, among the subaltern, the black and brown poor.

Now you speak up. Now that CVS was injured. Now all of a sudden you care about their “neighborhood” and “property.”

Their lives though? Nah. Still not on the radar.

Where were you on violence when these children and men were killed, unarmed?

You don’t know shit about Baltimore either.

That’s for darn sure.

I read people saying the “rioters” are disgracing blacks, and I wonder why I never read the same about whites, when they burn and loot and break shit because their sports team didn’t win.

Do we call them “animals?” “Thugs?”(just use the “n-word.” it’s way more honest.)

I watch whites cling to the people of color in agreement with them, the ones yelling “looting is not the answer.”

“Look! A real black person agrees with me!” (definitive proof that they are correct, obvs.)

But I wonder if those people, whatever color, know shit about Baltimore, or West Baltimore, to be exact.

As in: Disenfranchised people of color living in poverty, geographically and systematically removed from that which “we” (those of us not in their shoes) see, that which we know, that which we understand to be “life.”

And “America.”

Centuries of removal.

I move in, I move out. Maybe today I think about race. Maybe I don’t.

My newsfeed was eerily silent on Walter Scott, except from my black and brown friends. It occurs to me how choosy white liberals are. So enlightened, when it’s convenient.

I do it too. It sickens me.

A student told me during a class discussion about racism: “You get to not think about this if you don’t want to. I have to live it. Every day. No matter what.”

Her eyes were tired.

I leaned against the whiteboard (ironically) and couldn’t talk.

She said it all.

This ain’t no ivory tower material. These are lives. These are lives that are not mine.

I have no capacity to understand any of it unless I shut the hell up and listen to people who know something about Baltimore.

I read these words the past couple days, between driving my kids around and not worrying about getting shot:

The Baltimore Protests are About Freddie Gray and So Much More and Freddie Gray’s Death & Baltimore’s Ongoing State of Emergency by Arnebya Herndon.

Black America’s Baltimore schism: Why the Freddie Gray tragedy demands more serious soul-searching by Brittney Cooper, PhD.

This FB post by Erika Nicole Kendall. (Note: This now links to her blog since FB apparently deleted her post, which is a whole different problem, I think.)

And this one by Feminista Jones.

In support of Baltimore: Or; Smashing Police Cars is Logical Political Strategy by Radical Faggot

This Twitter essay by Jesse Williams

Nonviolence as Compliance, by Ta-Nehisi Coates

The Brutality of Police Culture in Baltimore by Conor Friedersdorf

Eyewitnesses: The Baltimore Riots Didn’t Start the Way You Think  by Sam Brodey & Jenna McLaughlin

It’s not lost on me that I’m SPEAKING (writing) the words “I need to shut up and listen.” In other words, not shutting up.

But silence seemed wrong. Silence feels like compliance. Silence could be listening and learning or it could be quiet derision, or ignoring, because I can. Because it’s comfortable and easy from a place of race and class privilege.

I don’t know. Maybe I shouldn’t say a word. Who cares? It does not matter. My voice is not the one to be heard, here.

I don’t know shit about Baltimore.

Do you?