I Did A Difficult Thing Yesterday.

Some of you have no idea what I'm talking about. In which case, enjoy your coffee! What are you sippin’ on today?!  Unless you're just curious, there's no reason for you to read on. For the rest of you who might feel invested in some of my justice work, I'd like to share a few things I've learned from a recent task I just completed.

I joined the Board of Directors for Preemptive Love in March of 2020. As a nation, we were in the beginning stages of what I thought would last two months tops! Y’all remember those two weeks when COVID-19 was something way out in China that felt a lot like SARS and Ebola to us Americans?  As to say, this outbreak is something that sucked but did not concern us? My predictions couldn't have been more wrong. Two years later the world is still fighting off variants and every board meeting I've ever had were Zoom calls. 

For the most part, board meetings are rather lackluster. They consist of a couple slideshows, some really big numbers, pie charts, bar graphs, legal jargon, votes to up the amount of travel per diem, and then see ya next quarter. One would think with work as beautiful as PLCs, the board meetings would be full of movie-level spy stuff with grainy cell phone footage of sneaking milk past Taliban guards. But alas, it's just pie charts. Either way, it's great for the resumé, I believe in the mission, core values and the founders so I am here for the boring. 

My homie Jeff Chu said to me, “Being on a board is great until it's not.” And boy was he right. Some issues that required our attention started popping up in summer of 2021. Off rip, don't even ask about the specifics of the case because you already know I can't talk about it. What we can talk about is outlined here. We as the board were caught totally off guard. We found ourselves having to deal with something way out of our league. This was quite a gut check for me because I'm personally invested in the founders. What do I think of Jeremy? Well, he wrote the foreword to my first published book and I mentioned him by name in a song called Cynical. You tell me? The video for Olympian is all footage from PLC’s work. Not only am I bought in, I've commingled my brand with theirs. This situation put me in a position I never in a million years thought I'd be in. I'd never been on this side of a justice issue, the side where I hold the power of change.  I talked about being a change agent my whole life, but now it's gotten real. This here blog ain’t really about the situation itself. It's about me. I would like to share a few things I learned and am still learning. 

Do you really REALLY want that seat at the table?

  Picket signs, petitions, clicking hashtags, changing your avatar, showing up at City Council meetings, calling for accountability, and even grassroots organizing are a necessary part of the work. They are also amazing fodder for movies. But all that is from the outside. The fact of the matter is one can only get so far when fighting from the outside. At some point, every activist has a moment when they realize that nothing really changes if you are not in the room or have a seat at the table. (Of course there is also the moment of realization that the table is trash because the whole system sucks, but that's  another blog) 

When I finally got a seat, I didn't actually grasp the weight of what it means to have power. I, like most people like me, picture myself as a firestorm, a revolution! Turns out the work at the table is learning the art of choosing between seven horrible options, knowing that one tweet could cause 75 people to lose their job. In my case, a misstep could mean a family in the mountains of Sinjar could go hungry. A young trans woman in Juarez could be sent back to fend for herself. Being cancelled is literally the least of your worries. I don't give a single flying fuck what a total stranger on a social media platform thinks.  They weren't in the room. They don't know the weight. They aren't carrying in their mind the fact that in the court of public opinion, this is a no-win situation. Someone is going to hate your choice. The only option is to muscle up that spine, choose all words carefully and remember that this seat means holding actual lives in your hands. Everyone wants to be a boss until it's time to do boss things. Everyone wants a seat at the table until becoming aware that the table is full of impossible rubix cubes that even if you get right, you're still wrong. That all decisions come with a body count. Are you sure you want that seat? Are you even ready for it? 

Who wins in a fight between White Savior and White Fragility?

So if a Karen and white lady with one of those BLM/ “all people are welcome” signs in the window of her gentrified neighborhood home, which most likely displaced the very people listed on her sign, ever had to plead their case against each other, who do you think comes out on top?  White savior or the white fragility? If you, as a BIPOC person, had to adjudicate their case, who would you side with?! It's a pickle huh? 

I've looked from the sidelines at many a white foolery over the years. The whole, we gon go dig wells in Guatemala because apparently Guatemalans don't know how to use shovels. The whole, Africa needs American youth groups to sponsor a child because all of Africa lives in the stone age as if the first successful brain surgery wasn't in South Africa. It's not so much that white people aren't welcome, it's that they have a habit of centering themselves wherever they are. One thing I've always liked about PLC was that, from my perspective, as an org that has a ton of white folks, they seemed to do a great job at not centering themselves.  The point was always the mission. I think that is what has resonated for so many of us who bought in. 

There was a time in my life that I decided I would never support either fragility or saviorism. I thought these issues were easily spotted and avoided. I'm learning that, like almost everything else, It's complicated. I was being very reductive. My homegirl Nikki Black reminded me that to try to discern and identify these issues is of course a good practice, but not the point. Your duty: Seek justice, love mercy, walk humbly. Full stop.  

No one really wants to do justice

Doing justice is hard, slow, tedious, redundant, draining, exhausting and if you are lucky, effective. Can any one of us name everyone that died in the civil rights movement? The law clerk that stayed up all night finding court cases for the NAACP to use in litigation? Who wrote and proofread the drafts of the civil rights act. No googling! What were the names of the congresspersons who signed it into law? I don't know either. Justice work ain't sexy. One must set aside personal opinion while simultaneously tapping into your humanity and experience. 

Since July we have had meetings almost every week all the way to Christmas Eve. I lost sleep, lost my appetite, missed out on family outings and I held my tongue the whole time. We read countless emails, combed through everything we could legally see. We listened to everyone that would share with us. We heard arguments in support of and in protest to. Doing justice calls for us to take everything seriously. One must consider the validity of a perspective that might be diametrically opposed to yours. One must see humanity in places that do its absolute best to stamp out all evidence of said humanity. One must love anyway. 

The endgame was and always will be dignity and personhood. The struggle is to somehow dance with the systemic and individual, the micro and the macro, the immediate and legacy. That takes a nuance. I truly believe nuance is sacred work. It's slow and hard and sometimes means you won't be understood until you're dead and gone. 140 characters just won't do the trick. It's complicated. Some people just want blood. They want heads on spikes. I can't just give you that. Check my twitter feed,I don't drag people in public.  I live by a different code passed down by runaway slaves, freedom riders and gangbangers. It's harder, it's slower,  but it is the call. 

Deep are the wounds of a friend 

I have friends I've had to talk out of felonies.I have friends that committed felonies for me. I've had screaming matches, fist fights, literally tackling people in the streets that I loved. I've been confronted and done the confronting. I thought I was prepared for this week. This was a hard thing. I admire the Courtneys. But I was given a job. My task is to steward the mission. I was handed a pile of shit that I didn't ask for to clean up with my bare hands all while the arena of social media looked on shouting directives. We agonized, wrestled with legal counsel. I had an existential crisis because I was forced to play within a system I fundamentally think is bull shit. But if I say what I think, everyone is open to lawsuits. In the end, I had to make a call that I was able to live with. I want to be able to look my family in the eyes and say I chose the path of love and justice. This was one of the hardest things I've ever done. In the process, multiple times I said to myself, “What would a white man do?” lol they seem to do this type stuff all the time. I feel like I can easily tell lil Lunch-Meat from Main Street Crips (I made that gang up so don't go googling)  that he's buggin,’ but this, for some reason, felt new. 

This might seem disconnected, but when I broke off my first engagement to my college girlfriend, (I  was engaged before i met the DOC) her dad called me at work to tell me I was a coward, not worthy of the faith I proclaim and God would never bless any future relationship because I'm not a man of my word. I know I'm going to get  the “yall aint SHIT'' messages because I've gotten those before. But I know I did the right thing. Her Dad wasn't in our relationship. I imagine as he holds his grandkids, maybe once every 4 years he thinks to himself, “I wonder what happened to that bum who tried to marry my daughter?” Shrugs and goes back to the bliss his current son in law gave him through them babies.  I’ve accepted the fact that I might not ever talk to the Courtneys again. The human in me totally understands.  Deep are the wounds of a friend. 

I remain no ones negro 

The racial dynamic of this situation was pretty unavoidable. It speaks to the double consciousness that w.e.b. Du Bois told us about. He taught how black people must  be fluent in our own language and culture and the dominant culture, culture and language. Unfortunately in the country we live in, to be Black and see any semblance of success means that at some point you're going to find yourself in between two white people. Even when these people genuinely love and respect you, the dynamic still remains. The sad fact is it is on the shoulders of the white people to be aware of one's own social position and work to overcome this. Political strategist Tezlyn Figaro once said “white institutions love black people they can control.” While I would be very hard-pressed to call PLC a white institution, I will say, once this thing went public I felt an enormous amount of pressure from my white brothers and sisters, save a few notable exceptions to “do the right thing.” And to those “notable exceptions,” y'all know who y’all are. Y’all some real ones. On the other hand, from my BIPOC and LGBTQ fam, I received no directives, no demands, only empathy, votes of confidence and reminders to take care of myself because they understood the difficulty of the position. Reminders of what our ancestors have been through. That they would be proud that I have a chance they never had. So in the words of the hoodstas I grew up with, Imma stay dangerous. I don't owe y’all  anything but my integrity. My duty was fulfilled with dignity, honor, respect, love and humility. I am not your negro. I am Prop. 

So that's my story. PLC is far from done. We are in the beginnings of a terraforming project. I truly believe we can heal and build that livable world together.  I learned so much throughout this journey. I'd be honored if y’all stay connected. As for me, I'm a rider, so nevertheless, I remain.