know your enemy

Rivers of grief flow from the phantom whip marks that children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren of slaves bear, still raw and painful though invisible to the privileged eye.

Raised hands plea then and now for the masters to have mercy, and the denial transcends time.

Their backs ache from keeping their heads down, working in the fields like good little slaves should for the profit of the people who hold the key to their shackles.

Their feet are weary of marching through the streets and outrunning bullets, fleeing in terror from the lynch mobs and the white hoods.

Their voices are taken, their throats crushed under the weight of racism and necks broken by the noose of oppression.

You say there's no excuse for the violence.

You say that the voting booth is their most valuable weapon, that their voices are equal to ours.

But it wasn't too damn long ago that they were each considered 3/5ths of a person, so how does that math add up in your head?

Slave masters aren't dead; they just exchanged plantations for precincts.

Their whips were laid down in favor of guns to open much deeper wounds in brown skin.

Shackles became sleek, silver handcuffs.

Nooses became too tiresome to knot, so they silence dissenters with knees and arms locked in a chokehold.

While generations of black and brown bodies inherited poverty and pain, they passed down power from father to son, trading out their cotton for a badge and a gun.

So these children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren of slaves got tired of bowing and pleading and mourning and realized that freedom is a phoenix that is born from the ashes of rebellion.

I say burn the fucker down.

#blacklivesmatter #blm #minneapolis #georgefloyd #restinpower