What has it given to oppressed people in the United States besides new forms of domination?

I hold these truths to be unstoppable: that all human beings are created equal, that all human beings share the same rights and needs, and that human rights and needs should be given and protected by society.

The rights are first when it comes to shaping human experience: life, freedom, and love. To secure these rights, society should be created to include and accept everyone. There's no reason racism needs to exist. Sexism, ableism, queerphobia, human discrimination of all forms are unnecessary for a healthy society to exist. Simply put, all humans are human beings. Difference amongst human beings should not be punished the way it is in this society, where your your skin color determines your income and your sex determines the quality of your education. (Vice versa is true as well.)

The needs are physiological: clean water, food, air, shelter, clothing, education, medical care, and temperature regulation (as our climate changes, the need for creating safe climates will only increase). There is a deep inequality around the world when it comes to which humans have their needs and which don't. First World countries take what is not theirs through force. A new society should restore the balance forcefully-- work as hard and skillfully as it can to equalizing humanity, which includes commitment. Our society should pursue the best ways to live life, be free, and love wholeheartedly for centuries.

As most things do with me, hearing the word regeneration reminds me of love. It reminds me that growth can come from trauma. I think of things living and dying and living again in new ways and old ways. I think of persistence and survival.

I imagine huge communities of care where society is built for you to rest & develop into your best self. I imagine serving and being served in return. I imagine spaces where there is free food and water and beds to sleep in where you can go and replenish yourself. Where a regular interaction brings healing into the world, not death. I imagine Gaza rebuilt. Beauty and riches restored to Congo. Endangered species beginning to blossom. The takeover of urban spaces with trees and greenery. We run on renewable energy and all our jobs have something to with improving the Earth and nature, whether it's medicine or cleaning up the ocean or caring for animals or teaching or redistributing wealth and resources making sure everyone everywhere has enough. The world has accepted every human form of love and respects nature. We live health first, prioritize mindfulness, make sure everyone gets the chance to care for someone not in their generation, stay environmentally-cautious, live life like art, dance, sing, write... conscious creation for the better.

Is it logical, reasonable, understandable at all that I want to learn as many things as I can about what they don’t want to teach us? I think they’re important. It’s these stories that could change the world. I feel it. And I know that to so many, feeling and faith is not reason enough but it is for me. 

​I do not wish to be a person of this society. I imagine living in a loving world and I know imagination has been brought to life over and over again. I’m going to at least try. What regrets would I gain from living my life as lovingly as possible for a time? If I must inevitably bow at the knee of white supremacy, if they have claimed my body and reduced me to no one and nothing, I will always have a small solace in my memories. Even if I forget how to remember, I’m living now and making those moments exist in reality for us all. I shall live while fighting, and go down fighting too if I must. I do not wait around for action to happen-- I take it. I act. I do shit. So let’s go fucking do shit.

As we sit, as we stand, as we learn, as we fight, as we resist, we are making more than history. We are making a loving world right now, by asserting our place and space in the world.

My time at Columbia has radicalized me but I've always been radical.  By birth I am radical, like others for sure, but I want to take a minute to speak from a mixed minority biracial person-- not the half-white perspective that is so often centered. Think about this for a second: four hundred years ago, a person of my background could have never been born. The types of humans that came together to create me were on islands (Jamaica and Japan), separated by oceans and continents, half the circumference of the earth. They only came together in this world because of colonization and imperialism and slavery. This has revealed two things to me. 1) I see how much monoracial people take for granted when it comes to existence. 2) I see how fragile my life is compared to their own.

Being on the outskirts of society, checking yes on nearly every box that asks for your "different" social identities-- race, gender, disability, class, sexuality-- I know that my difference is also perceived as negative. Not by all, but by many. It weights on me as it does so many others. Understanding one's perceived inherent inferiority destroys self-esteem, adds stress, and makes it harder to succeed and become superior. Belief in yourself is power and that was taken from Black people, Indigenous people, women (just to name a few groups)... that assault and theft is intergenerational trauma. That is the legacy of white supremacy, slavery, colonization, genocide, the legacy that lives within and outside of us today. The theft of our power. It lives in buildings, in centuries old institutions, through epigenetics, in the food we eat... Once aware, it becomes natural to question everything that exists. It's an awakening of consciousness, perhaps the true Enlightenment. It's a return to center, to humanity, to an orbit around love that calls us.

Reconciling this kind of change, returning to our orbit-- how are we supposed to do that? The first answer that comes to my mind is surrender. The surrender of white supremacy to the true nature of the world would be a huge step towards where humanity should be. It would require surrender on so many... all levels: spiritual, logical, rational, philosophical... is it possible to surrender economically? Socially? Culturally? Scientifically? Is it possible to even convince a white supremacist, an elitist, a Western scholar, a giver of unnecessary violence, to stop using their weapons? I haven't quite figured out yet how to use love to really transform the world. But I know it can.