This Week's Opening Thought: October 13, 2025

This week’s opening thought - a personally hand-drawn bit of energy for a country still celebrating a national holiday based on white supremacy, colonialism, racism, and revisionist history.

Today is Indigenous Peoples’ Day. Period. Don’t be comin’ ’round here tryin’ to shout the praises of the mediocre male of pallor who “discovered America” because, and I cannot stress this enough, you can’t discover something that was already inhabited and thriving before your colonizin’ nonsense touched its soil!

Geezus.

It’s ridiculous that we’re still discussing how we should all accept the whitewashing and gaslighting of colonialism, oppression, and murder, especially around topics we all have the facts on and have had said facts at our disposal for countless decades.

Do better.


[Image description: A middle finger surrounded by a simple wreath of roses. A banner saying “Fuck Columbus” can be seen below the hand extending the middle finger.]

Image description: A middle finger surrounded by a simple wreath of roses. A banner saying “Fuck Columbus” can be seen below the hand extending the middle finger.

This Week's Opening Thought: September 29, 2025

This week's opening thought: For those not in the know, I live in "war ravaged" Portland, Oregon. You know, that place y'all's president said was on fire, overrun with violence, and 5 minutes away from devolving into Mad Max Fury Road levels of dystopia.

I was at the farmer's market Saturday morning in "war ravaged" Portland and y'all's president was right! There's just SO much danger here, y'all! Like, how am I supposed to fight these great prices on winter squash without y'all's president's help to keep me safe from getting produce right from the farmers themselves?!

Geezus christ.

If you believe that Portland is a fiery hellscape wrought with danger and violence, I've got some lakefront property in the Nevada desert to sell you for $1 a yard.

Portland has seen sizable decreases in homicides and shootings this year, down by 52% and 33% respectively from last year's numbers. Robberies and aggravated assaults? Also down. These numbers reflect one of the steepest declines among major U.S. cities surveyed regarding crime data.

So, am I scared? Do I need y'all's president to come and save me?

Hell no.

I'm not scared of folx struggling with homelessness, mental health, and addictions. Those folx need help, support, and resources, because all of those issues often stem from poverty, a lack of privilege, generational and societal trauma, and a capitalist white supremacist culture.

I'm not scared of crime in a metropolitan city. I grew up in Detroit, Michigan in the 80s and 90s. It's gonna take a lot more than the crime that Portland does struggle with to put fear in my heart regarding walking around and living in this city. And that crime? Also often stems from poverty, a lack of privilege, generational and societal trauma, and a capitalist white supremacist culture.

So no, I'm not scared living in a city where I can walk freely around downtown Portland and damn near every neighborhood I go and encounter dozens of people with clipboards seeking signatures for causes they champion before finding myself facing a potentially dangerous encounter with someone who needs our society to care about and help them.

Y'all's president could be helping Portland and countless cities across this country with funding for addiction services and addressing our ever-increasing local and national homeless crisis, but nope. He'd rather send in the National Guard to basically beat up folx with addictions, homeless folx, folx in crisis, and people peacefully protesting the inhumanity of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

His goal is to make non-dangerous places supremely dangerous for everyone living and working here to feed his narrative that "liberal cities" and "antifa" are a danger to the "[U.S.] American way of life" and harm and kill folx who protest and oppose him.

Portlanders: let's not give him what he wants.

Chill.

Have a beer.

And leave 'em to record themselves picking up trash, just like they're doing in D.C.

Taxpayer dollars at work.

This Week's Opening Thought: September 22, 2025

This week's opening thought: After this past weekend's full-on hate rally masquerading as a memorial service, and seeing the sea of people of pallor who showed up to "pay their respects" to a white supremacist bigot with tears in their eyes and a distortion of the purported "values of Christianity" in their hearts, I found myself once again playing my least favorite game: What Will It Take?

What Will It Take? focuses on me asking myself one question: what will it take for people of pallor to be uncomfortable enough to feel like "enough is enough" and stand up and fight for, well, everyone? Themselves, oppressed communities, targeted communities, everyone?

I've been playing this game for at least 30 years now, y'all.

What Will It Take?

Hell if I know.

After all my years on this planet, and decades of my own learning around the intersections of white supremacy and history, I honestly have no clue what it will take to get people of pallor to recognize how dangerous this country is for marginalized, targeted, and invisible communities and decide they're ready to fight.

I have no clue what it will take for people of pallor to collectively realize that white supremacy harms them, too, and that it's time to do more than show up to a "No Kings" rally.

And I'm flummoxed when it comes to understanding what it'll take for people of pallor to realize that we've been long past "talking it out," "finding a middle ground," choosing to "not get into political conversations," and well into dealing with an escalating level of danger that will eventually subjugate, eradicate, and oppress most if not all of us.

What Will It Take?

What will it take for y’all to fight?

I honestly don't know.

Y'all do always seem more than ready to fight and "stand up" against Black and Brown folx, melanated folx, trans folx, and queer folx for pointing out the harm, hate, or discrepancies in y'all's words and actions, though.

Huh.

Guess I know the answer to the question after all.

On Kirk, Unearned Days of Remembrance, Anti-Blackness, and the United States Doing What It Always Does

TW: mentions of murder, hate, and anti-Blackness.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day didn't become a national holiday until 1983.

It took 15 years after the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., - he was assassinated in 1968 - for this country to declare a national holiday in his honor. The original proposal for a national holiday in his honor was in 1968, not long after his murder. Politicians and much of the country immediately rebuked it.

It took 15 years to properly honor a man who lost his life seeking the betterment of all citizens, regardless of their race, while voraciously fighting for human rights that Black people in the United States did not have access to.

Fast forward to today, where Charlie Kirk, a white supremacist terrorist, fascist, and bigot who fomented terror on multiple communities and profited from harming other people and the subjugation of young minds, is on the verge of his birthday becoming a national holiday.

Yeah, you read that right.

Barely two weeks after he was murdered by another white supremacist bigot fascist whose ideology was that he was not hateful enough, Charlie Kirk will likely be given a national day of remembrance. And here is the kicker:

He shares a birthday with George Floyd, a man he openly mocked the death of.

And your elected Democratic officials? Most of them have already voted for or are planning to vote this into law, as many of them are scared that if they don't vote yes, their no vote “will be perceived a certain way.”

Seriously. That's what they are giving as their reason for voting yes.

Oh, and in other news, a wannabe rapper of pallor dropped a song this week glorifying lynchings and has received little to no pushback for it.

“This is not my Ameri--”

Yes, this is your America.

Quit denying it.

This is the U.S. you grew up in.

This is the country that millions of y'all have been clamoring for.

You wanted a “return to greatness.”

Feeling great yet?

Hope you enjoy your new national holiday.

On Crossing Streets, Clutching Pearls, and the "Danger" Debate

It's wild to me that people of pallor still do that thing to me where they see me coming and cross the street, clutch their purse, pull their kids "out of harm's way", or recoil in general when they see me in a store, restaurant, or out on a walk, minding my Black business. After 43 years on this planet, with at least 33 of those years spent observing this nonsense, I can't help but be amused by how ridiculous many people of pallor are with these ignorant antics.

People of pallor, I think I can speak for almost all Black people when I say that - and I cannot emphasize this enough - WE DON'T WANT YOU.

We're not out to get you. When we're out and about, living our lives? We don't want to engage with you unless we have to. We don't want anything in your purse.

And we definitely don't want yo' kids.

The overwhelming majority of us aren't out here to "endanger" people of pallor. We seriously don't want to be involved in any messiness with y'all, no matter how miniscule it may seem. We're just out here trying to live in a world that hates us, yet we're always painted as a threat to said world. It's preposterous. It's weak. It's old. And I think I can speak for most Black folx when I say that the less interactions and engagements we have to have with most people of pallor, the better.

In this economy? In this increasingly hostile country we live in?

No thank you.

Y'all are, and continue to be, more of a threat to Black bodies than we are to y'all, and you don't need to Google that to know that it's true.

I'm at the store, pink headphones on, listenin' to Clipse and buyin' some Triscuits, not even thinkin' of you, while you out here fleeing in terror and trying to get the attention of a staff member because melanin has "invaded" what you believe is "your space" and you feel squirmy in your white supremacist, anti-Black tummy.

Chile, please.

Your stomach feels that bad, you probably need to be grabbin' some Triscuits too.