I may only have one brain cell but i...uh •́︿•̀

Hi y’all❤️ Made another post & it got no traction so i’m making another one. I’m brie, i’m a black trans woman who is currently between jobs, I’m asking for assistance so I can get groceries & refill my metrocard because I have a bunch of fucking interviews this week. Just asking you see this please boost this. Literally anything helps.

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Part 1/2

When this news broke my dad told me and my siblings, all of us who are US Citizens, born and raised in the US, that we have to carry some form of official documentation on us, especially because we live in a city that has been heavily targeted by the Trump administration for being a sanctuary city. My grandmother was staying with us and even though she is my non-latine grandmother, and she's a US citizen, my dad and aunt made the decision to have my dad drive her back home to New Jersey because she has an accent and her documents are back home.

As someone who is latine and south asian, I need you to know that this will not just affect latine people! My non-latine cousin was pulled over by ice about two weeks ago just for being brown! However this will disproportionately affect latine people. Just today ICE was seen on the street by my home and my work! One of my duties at work is to make sure that ICE does not come into our elementary school because we're a predominantly latine school. I HAVE TO MAKE SURE ICE DOES NOT KIDNAP 5 YEAR OLDS. That is the reality of the situation.

I want it to be known that I have been scared before because I'm living as a person of color in the United States. I have been scared before because of being a south asian born post 9/11. I have been scared before being a latina growing up during the Dreamer movement, despite being a citizen. However, before this week I have never been scared enough to feel the need to carry documentation proving I am a citizen of the damn country I was born in! Now I feel that scared though. Especially because a few months ago, for the first time in my life, someone assumed I didn't speak English. Another person of color assumed I didn't speak English and shit talked me in the CVS aisle because they assumed I didn't speak English. And then a week ago I also got mistaken for not speaking English when I went to the doctor's office and chatted with the receptionist in Spanish and then was handed Spanish paperwork to fill out.

Anyways, the point is the fact that I have seen maybe two? three? posts about this on here is upsetting and immensely telling. Speak up. Talk about the fact that this is happening because it will not stop with targeting latines. It will become worse. It already is because the government is going to punish immigrants for "making light of" charlie kirk's death. Not for celebrating, or joking, for making light of.

One thing I love about the "random" unicorn figure on Frankie's boat, is that at first it seems slightly out of place until you realize people from the park literally throw stuff at them.

I think it's very likely that that unicorn was from a carousel or something, and was discarded and thrown there.

The title of this book is a reference to the 1999 Mos Def album, and specifically the track "Mathematics."

The song focuses on how structural racism (particularly antiblackness) functions in the United States through citing different stats and numbers-- how much money is spent on the US military, how many Americans own cell phones being surveilled, how many people have AIDS, three strikes laws, minimum wage, unemployment rates, budget cuts being funneled into more police, rates of incarceration and probation, health & economic outcomes sorted by zip codes, and so on.

The specific lines from "Mathematics" that Snorton references explicitly in Black on Both Sides are:

"Numbers is hardly real and they never have feelings But you push too hard, even numbers got limits"

The book's beating heart is concerned with the necropolitics of Black trans life, and how Black trans people are discussed, known, constructed as death statistics. How many Black trans women are murdered, how many Black trans people kill themselves.

Since reading that book, I've been listening to the song a lot. I've been thinking about how another song I listen to a lot probably took direct inspiration from "Mathematics"-- a song called "Strange Arithmetic" by The Coup.

In "Strange Arithmetic" the lyrics focus on the ways in which public education functions to socially reproduce racial capitalism to ensure submission and funnel people into (acceptance of) powerlessness. It opens with the verse:

"History has taught me some strange arithmetic Using swords, prison bars, and pistol grips. English is the art of bombing towns While assuring that you really only blessed the ground. Science is that honorable, useful study Where you contort the molecules and then you make that money. In mathematics, dead children don't get added But they count the cost of bullets comin' out the automatic."

I've been thinking about this a lot lately, especially writing fundraisers for friends in Gaza. Last week, I wrote a post for a teenager named Ahmed. Two weeks ago the Israeli military bombed a sewage line to destroy access to potable water in his area.

I googled "Gaza water news" and I saw articles discussing how often this exact tactic is used. I read analysis by a Palestinian activist, Ahmad Abushawish, titled "In Gaza, water kills too" where he outlines how the Israeli army targets Gaza's water infrastructure, blocks entry of materials for repair, and kills anyone working in the water sector.

I wrote that week about the struggle for water globally, and how control over water systems is so central to settler-colonialism. When I drink water, it is impossible for me to not think about Gaza, and Flint Michigan, and Standing Rock, and the fight over the pipeline expansion in Canada.

After months of starvation, famine in Gaza was officially declared. I read the news. The Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations says 98.5% of cropland in the Gaza strip is destroyed or inaccessible in militarized zones. The World Health Organization says that 100% of people in Gaza now suffer acute levels of food insecurity.

Israel mobilizes to occupy the remainder of Gaza. Al-Jazeera reports that 86% of the Gaza strip is now either a militarized zone, under forced evacuation, or both at once. This is where Ahmed is living. This is where his family's damaged tent is.

Ahmed messages me. He tells me, "the army is approaching our area, there are sounds of bombing, and we feel hungry."

Everything is statistics. Everything is deeply, viscerally personal. Everyone is a number.