Dear Young People,

I see you. I see you not just as a result of your bravery this week in walking out and standing up for us, for yourselves. But I see you because I was and still am you.

In November of 2000 I was 17 years old, a senior in High School and had to volunteer as a poll worker as part of our government class on election day. We had spent 8 years as a country under the Clinton administration - problematic though it may have been at times - no one that I held close was actually ready for a republican president, let alone a Bush.

But, like most of my class, I wasn’t yet able to vote. So I sat, and watched the results roll in, confused and concerned, not knowing what would come of it all. I had a voice, but could not exercise it the way our country just had. I felt disempowered sitting on the brink of being able to cast a vote - our fundamental right as American Citizens as so many say. I imagine you might feel the same way. I was pissed we weren’t voting a year later. I was pissed I wasn’t born just a few months earlier. If you feel that way, please know I get it.

(San Francisco Youth protesting in front of City Hall after walking out of class 11/10/16)

In high school, I’d seen our state pass a handful of propositions that directly targeted young people. As a junior it was Prop 21, a gang injunction initiative that labeled three or more young people dressed alike and standing or walking together a gang. I’d seen Prop 227 as a freshman end bilingual education - something I was a direct product of. In middle school it was an end to affirmative action with Prop 209 and Prop 187 directly targeting undocumented families. To whatever extent we’ve replicated that for you, please know I really do get it.

I’m almost twice that age now and I wish I could tell you about everything I felt and everything  I did in the months that followed the 2000 election, and say that I felt the fine balance between disenfranchisement and empowerment you do, but I can’t remember that far back. Sadly all of those feelings have been buried by the time that has since past, and to TBH (that’s short for “to be honest” for any of the elders out there who need translation), whatever I felt then was overshadowed when I started college the following fall and September 11th happened during my first week of classes.

You cannot become apathetic. We did not. The class of 2001, much like the hope I have for the class of 2017, made up for the lack of influence we could have had if we had been of age. In the early years of the George W Administration we organized - certainly not by ourselves, but in community with others - we involved ourselves in a lot of social justice causes and took up issues that were under direct political target.

I’ve seen you already, in the days proceeding, take this on. I’ve seen your peers locally and across the nation stand up. Please. Do. Not.Stop.

Keep going. Take care of yourselves in the process, but do not sit and wait until four years from now when you can seek your voter vengeance. Ask questions, demand answers, continue to stand up. Get information, share information, build community.  Do. Not. Stop.

Please know, the adults around you, we’re here to support you. We love you. We will stand for you, and with you. We have to. It’s one of the best ways for us to take action - to invest in you.

You are our future. I may not be that much older, but you are my future. So come to us, for advice, for mentorship, for general support. Hone your voice, many of us are here to listen, to provide critical friendship when needed, keep you grounded. I say that knowing we need to do the same, because you are already doing the same for us in your actions.

I know this may come from a stranger, but I need you to know I see you, I was you, still am you. I, like many of the adults around you and in your lives, want what is best for you and I want you to be successful. I may not know you, but I love you.

XO

When I said I was with Her last night. I meant Her. But when I filled out my ballot two weeks ago, I also meant the Herses (to borrow a phrase from RuPaul).

I meant:

Her& London& Jackie& Latifah& Hillary*& Kim& Jane& Nancy& Kamala. *Ronen

I marveled at the number of women on my ballot, from diverse backgrounds (granted I didn’t get to vote for all of those above because of how I’m districted). When I say Her, it’s these hers, it’s the idea of a Her.

It’s reluctant and frustrated. It’s that there have been hers who fought to get this far and there will be hers that can take this even further. Don’t get me wrong, I started that post last night because I was caught up in the romanticism of it all, of a HER as Commander in Chief.

This isn’t some “Oh gee, I suddenly realized I felt this way,” reaction. I’ve felt the push and pull of what HRC represents, both good and bad. The bad is so, so bad. The good is hope and light weight lightning in a bottle. The same shit ass problems will be there tomorrow, but maybe having more Herses in office will add some different perspective, patience, that 200% mom shit Louis CK talked about on Conan.

A photo posted by Niki Mag (@nikimagtotally) on Nov 8, 2016 at 7:11am PST

Maybe.

I will breathe a sigh of relief if we do this tonight y’all, but it will be short lived. Because tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that there will still be work to do.

I didn’t articulate the depth of this in yesterday’s offering. There’s the work we all agree we will have to do. But then there’s the work only some of us see and know, because only some of us have been dealing with it forever.

Not to shit on anyone’s experience today, but I kind of feel like Kanye the night of his first tiff with Taylor Swift as I watch my friends on social media. I didn’t wear white today, or a pantsuit. Someone mentioned it to me and I just kind of spaced on it. Clearly because it didn’t register at the time. Honoring women’s suffrage is deeply important to our country’s history, today in particular. But, y’alls suffrage wasn’t my suffrage. My great grandmother didn’t come here from Cape Verde as a teen and automatically get granted the same rights, especially as a single mother of three during the great depression. My grandfather fought in a war as a Filipino citizen on our behalf and marched through Bataan blindly hoping he could do something for his kids before being granted some American rights years and years later.

I watched brown and black she friends across the country grapple with the same things I did today. I watched white she friends take pride in something so important to their mothers, grandmothers and daughters, bearing not only “I Voted” stickers but the duality of the burdens carried by their she ancestors and the pride and excitement of the future.

But, 2016 feminism is not an aesthetic. I didn’t wear white. I didn’t even wear a blazer. I did wear my Frida Khalo wearing a burka pin. I did wear my “protect your brown girl magic” pin, and I did wear my “Bawse” lipstick, a color collab with a Canadian born-Indian media personality Lilly Singh who promotes female badassery.

Woooooooo what a ride it’s been.

I’d love to explain my absence in great detail, but most of you know about it already, and there’s still some bits and pieces that are better off left in the past.

But, to lay some track, I give you two lists.

Things I love:

Smoked Paprika

Icy Hot

Bite Beauty lipsticks

Rose-Gray Colored things (not a metaphor I swear, it might honestly be on it’s way to being a problem how much I love this color…)

Discovering that Sesame Street has an entire curriculum devoted to teaching and supporting children of incarcerated parents while doing research for my new job*

My new job*

* I hesitate to say this, but after 6 years in my previous job - I may be one of the luckiest people you know in that I’m about a month in on a variation of what might be my dream job

Things that happened:

Our Mag Familia mascot and the magical pup that saved all who he came into contact with, Sir Francis Drake passed away (suddenly, quickly, and other applicable adverbs);

My past job and I parted ways after a slightly turbulent breakup;

I had to take an unplanned but mostly appreciated almost 10 day vacation;

During that vacation I spent 3 days being questioned in the jury box and thankfully dismissed from a case where an old Chinese man allegedly assaulted a police officer;

I volunteered at a youth event and got into a yelling match with a 6th grader, she promptly apologized;

I cleansed myself of social media during presidential (and vice presidential) debates;

I missed this orange October run from the Giants on social media;

The Mag Familia got a foster/not foster dog Reggie Jackson aka Lady Regina aka Ms. Regina Jackson, Ms. Jackson if ya nasty (we were destined to be a #fosterfail and ended up keeping her of course

Insert other specifics re: media, pop-culture, election season and there you have it.

Per usual, that was a long lead in to why we’re here today and where I’ve been.

Tomorrow we may be electing our first female president. I’m With Her. This was a difficult conclusion to arrive at. I wasn’t with Her when she ran against Barack. I was with him, as I’ve articulated here before. I wasn’t with Her initially in this race because of crazy shit that was said by Her/Her camp about black and brown folks. I wasn’t with Her initially for all the reasons everyone else has discussed and waxed about for the last year. I was with the old Jewish guy, because he’d stood for brown and black folk more radically than She did, for people more like me than She did. I don’t know, I went to a private liberal arts school in upstate NY - liberal jews were a people I was comfortable with. But now, I can’t not be with Her. I have to be with Her, and that ‘with,’ has gone from a half hearted, “I guess” to a more sincere, authentic, “no, I am.”

There are two parts to this and both have me feeling some kind of way today.

There’s the never, ever, ever the Orange One sentiment. The never, ever, ever a current variations of repubs sentiment. When BSands conceded the nomination, a colleague - a white lady in her 50s who grew up poor a shit, working class from a large family and came to my old office asking if I could believe it, could I believe we were on the brink of maybe having our first female president! I expressed my discomfort with Her.

“Look,” she said to me plainly, “You really think that old guy had a shot? An old white guy amongst a bunch of other not as old white guys? We don’t need any more old white guys! We have someone dynamic, who’s well qualified and could very well be our first female president! Get with the program!”  

I’m going to ask you to reserve any peanut gallery comments for just a moment. Suspend any judgement that might be creeping up.

She wasn’t wrong. She was deeply right, not sure I would have articulated it as succinctly if I tried and knowing there was more to it than that. Since, everyone has articulated why being with Her is so important and why the narratives attached to being with Her require critical consideration.

David Valdes Greenwood summed it up quite clearly in his viral HuffPo piece:

“If you love me and you’re going to vote for Trump, I would like you to look me in the eye and say, “I’m OK with what Trump plans for you.” If you love my daughter, whose growth you have followed with joy, I want you to look her in the eye and say, “I’m OK with how Trump talks about you.”

Maybe dig out our holiday card from last year and, while looking at our smiling faces, practice saying to us: “You are less than me.”

Because that is what your vote for Trump says to my family.”

Being with Her, largely validates me in a way that voting against Her makes me less than. It stirs up some excitement, some pride and some level of Cautious optimism, capital C on Cautious.

A photo posted by Niki Mag (@nikimagtotally) on Nov 7, 2016 at 8:32am PST

It’s kind of a glorious time to be a woman. You might not vibe off of that when you look at the news, or some of mainstream media’s stories, but there seem to be a myriad of ways that women are creating and inventing spaces for expression and experience with relative ease. It’s easy to say that that could be in response to the momentum left over from Her run or as a response to being against the Orange One. Feminism is hot right now.

Yeah, some feminism today is white middle class liberal feminism. When I picture ‘Nasty Women,’ I don’t just picture Her in a pantsuit, or the financially stable career oriented young women I know doing theirs.  I think of young women fighting for reproductive rights, reclaiming handcrafts by needlepointing Beyoncé quotes, wearing fashion of past/present/future but gender fluid, with mixed degrees of body hair and a bold lip. Yes, you’re probably having trouble seeing exactly who I mean, which is fine, because I’m painting a spectrum, but you definitely saw someone independent right? Someone who is both tough and feminine maybe? Someone not taking shit from others, or if she isn’t outwardly speaking out against it, maybe she’s doing something subversive and behind the scenes…. Bet she was white though? First image I came up with was.

For what it’s worth, I do at times, also think of the counter feminisms - the black girls who are from the future/magic, Issa Rae signing to herself in her bathroom, Solange on stage at SNL basically wearing a dreamcatcher on her head singing about the power of her hair - which have clawed their ways out of the internet, and tumblr and onto screen and stage.

Y’all know my hyphen-American ass has some feelings about all of this. I’m deeply proud of my black sistren and their ability to jump out on the scene and be visible. But I’m not sure that visibility = representation = change in a discourse like feminism.

2016 feminism is not an aesthetic, but I wonder if that’s how we’re treating it, or if that’s what it’s become. I certainly described it above in aesthetic terms. As a 30 something hyphen I feel both alienated and empowered by the two feminisms I described above, both of which seem to have gained space because on a national level we’re making space to see and hear more female voices (at least marginally).

I’ve sought out other groups via social media, seeking a place or an hermandad that I could claim. I may have reckoned with a lot of my own hybridity on deeply personal levels, but claiming and belonging still don’t come naturally. So in direct contrast with my idea that feminism is not an aesthetic, it was of course on Instagram that I found a few Latina communities and groups that represent an experience that feels a little closer to home. Maybe it’s the shared language outside of English, or being a proud Chingona, maybe it’s things like the ode to hoop earrings I saw on FB. If I’d found something comparable for our API women by now, I’d be following/trolling/reblogging, bet.

So here I am, November 7th, 2016, marinating on being a woman. Holy hell we’ve been through it this year. Our rights and our persons have been the topic of public conversation in more ways than normal with the election cycle we’ve been subject to. And somehow we’re simultaneously seeing more ways, bolder ones at that, of how femininity/womanhood/feminism is expressed.

I’m nervous, and confused, and excited about the present and the future. I’m disappointed about the past, sure, but if we don’t look ahead… what’s the point? As much as I get frustrated and have been waxing (in personal life) about not being there for eachother, my favorite theme of 2016 being cultivating that black/brown/yellow/white/mocha love, we also have to be here for our selves. Maybe being with Her, is a piece of that and a piece of our necessary revolution.

I’m going to leave you with this clip - full of badasswomanery but also because of the following lyrics:

When it feels like

The world is on your shoulders

And all of the madness

Has got you goin' crazy

It's time to get out

Step out into the street

Where all of the action

Is right there at your feet,

Well

I know a place where we can

Dance the whole night away

Underneath the electric stars

There’s still a story here that I can’t tell, but what I’m learning is that maybe it’s just that, a story and not a reality. Someday I’ll tell it, hopefully soon.

In June I joined a meditation group specifically for People of Color. I’ve never been good at meditating, tried over and over but never succeeded. Coincidentally, we meet on Wednesdays. I often look around the room after our 30 minute sit each week and am grateful. We were together the night after news about Alton Sterling. We are together mid week, where stress and frustration is often at it’s precipice and I am so, so thankful, for the space and affinity group, and the fact that I am sitting in a room full of black and brown faces.

10 weeks of this regular practice - with lite private practice at home, it’s been invaluable. I mused on my two month marker:

“I'm deeply grateful that it's helped me experience a pretty significant paradigm shift in dealing with the daily/lingering/predictable BS that comes at me every day.

As an imperfect being (and recovering Catholic) it's really helping me when I have to really reach into my spirit in both a spiritual way but also as a survival mechanism.

When we - as people of color, young people with old souls, as women, as intersectional beings et. al. - allow ourselves to be so, we can really be resilient as fuck.”

So here it is, here is what meditation has taught me.

I can sit still for 30 minutes

This spring and summer has worn me down. I feel like a shell of myself sometimes. I’m a weirdo, a stone cold one, I’m goofy and I’m a clown at heart but I’ve felt like a dulled version of who I am. Despite that, the idea of me sitting still for any period of time is like a joke to so many of my kin - blood and otherwise. But I can do it. I need it. For at last 30 minutes a week I can sit and practice mindfulness, or try to, or not at all, but take that 30, brief as it might be and only a fraction of the over 10,000 minutes in a week, for me, and no one else. It’s become a sacred moment that I cannot, and will not give up for anyone else.

A video posted by Niki Mag (@nikimagtotally) on Jul 9, 2016 at 10:06pm PDT

I can get through “this” because everything is impermanent

A lot of what I learned isn’t something I’m necessarily cognizant of in the moment, but as I reflect on things later, it’s clear the tools I’ve developed over the last few weeks have been at play. So much of Buddhist thought is about moments and things passing. At some point, perhaps finally giving in or some form of acceptance, relinquishing control, I heard a favorite teacher and mentor’s voice. It wasn’t just “this too shall pass” as elders often tell us, but a very specific phrase Ms. Furaha used to say to me over and over again. “Let it go Joe.” This might be a little bit of an over simplification, but as desperate as I have been for movement, for change, for the conditions I’d been living through to be different, soon, now, yesterday, I realized that it would change. That though I couldn’t have full control over it all, what I did have was control over how I dealt with it and processed it during those inbetweens.

Breath is everything

I don’t know that I was ever really an indoor, or an outdoor kid to be exact. Y’all know I wasn’t exactly athletic, but there’s one thing that’s critical to me. The Ocean. My people, historically and again on that kin level, are coastal folk. Beach, coastal redwoods, islands, I’ve always fucked with them. So after a spring and summer of the above mentioned and the lather rinse, repeat of my previous posts, I feel serious spring fever. Not during spring. I feel it now, because spring passed, and summer almost gone, and I spent the last few months cooped up inside. My vitamin D levels are probably low, but so was my need for salt water, and air. Meditation and mindfulness, reminds you to breathe. Not just in relationship to concentration during whatever style of practice you do but in grounding yourself, in firing your synapses and bringing them energy. Breath, is also, on a very meta level, what I go to during tough times, not just the act but the fact that it makes one pause, take a beat - ultimately preventing me from doing, or saying something I will regret later. Yes, as we say in group each week, is you can always, come back to your breath.

Loving Kindness and Sympathetic Joy are pretty rad notions

Me, musing on love and kindness and loving kindness can’t be a surprise to you. It’s something I’ve been asking for, trying to bring to my own reality, but also the one we all share and live in together. My hope for it, my need to recreate it and share it as best I can is absolutely tied to the hate being birthed by election season, by current events. So the idea of sending someone, some loving kindness even in the smallest ways should have be a given. The tools of metta meditation specifically, have allowed me in the most heated, hottest moments professionally (because if you haven’t caught on, that’s been the only life I’ve been letting myself live) rather than explode, or say something crazy I’ve caught myself sending loving kindness to the person or thing that triggered it to begin with.

May you learn to love yourself. | May you live with ease. - Simple moments, part of the beat mentioned above, the redirection and paradigm shift I first noticed a few weeks ago.

Sympathetic Joy, or Mudita specifically, has been a different sentiment that I’ve experienced and practiced less. The idea of being genuinely excited and happy for someone and what they are experiencing, with absolutely no self-interest in it all. I hope for it, I look for it and if it arises I feel lucky to have experienced it. As a result I try to celebrate others when and how I can. It’s a necessary component of self care and social responsibility feel I have to my affinity groups, and POCs especially.

I have my shit more together than it feels

Today the discussion that followed our meditation session was about hindrances. Buddha outlined five of them, the one we discussed specifically was aversion - aka, anger, fear, annoyance, etc. etc. etc. The main form we discussed was self-hate. It’s 2016 and I’m a 30 something short, smart, clown and mixed-race woman of color. I know self-hate. Who doesn’t? Childhood, teens, twenties. In college I took all my self-deprecation and hate and flipped it. Turned it into fuel for my ventures in standup and comedy.  There wasn’t a way for me to really understand it then, but that shit fortified me for a lot of future work. My improv skills make navigating crazy shit professionally or operating with a rough template or sketch. But really, it also, getting laughs - which is still in my top priorities in most moments, served as a way that that self-hate dissipated. The last year has been a series of feeling like in word, name, and respect, I am at a peak. Cannot get, be, or do better. But in action, in practice, that’s not the reflection. What could turn into a really deep dark place to head toward, I know I’m the shit, regardless of the outcome of what’s going down. Yeah, vague, still part of the story I can’t tell yet. But for once, there’s a push pull between how I really feel about myself, and the conditions that are keeping me from being rewarded for being so fucking awesome, are out of my control. Tonight I realized, and accept that the days where I feel fat, and crappy and instead of hating my body I’m thinking, this outfit was a bad choice, next time I’ll add a belt, are grown, grown days. Self-hate isn’t a hindrance, it’s not fuel any more either, it just is. Just like stress, just like love, just like happiness.

Meditation has helped me remain resilient, has helped me protect my magic, and hopefully helped how I treat and show care for others during this crazy ass time.

May all beings be peaceful and happy.

May all beings feel safe and protected.

May all beings move through challenges with wisdom and compassion.

May all beings trust and love themselves just as they are.

What I’m about to say I’m sure is going to piss people off, but I need to take a minute to talk about something I’ve been marinating on for a while.

I don’t buy it. I can’t always get behind it. I worry we do more damage when this happens than help, but it’s part of the circumstances we have to deal with everyday, particularly as people who occupy black and brown bodies. We have to hold our young folks close, encourage, nurture and help them grow into questioning, thoughtful future citizens. But sometimes, maybe in this, we love too much. We love too hard and we forget to keep it real, we forget to create accountability checks and systems and revel in the love instead. I know I’ve written a lot about love, but this week I’m also wondering about balance.

We create and sustain counter narratives to tell black and brown kids they are special, they are unique, that they have talents, and intelligences all their own. We run with and turn truly extraordinary stories into tall tales to keep the momentum going, almost as a means of providing receipts for when we’ve excelled beyond expectation. But we especially do this with black and brown boys who’ll grow into men. We have to, because the cards are so deeply stacked against them.

Somewhere in this journey I wrote about how my parents have always supported my dreams and aspirations but also kept it real. "It's great that you love basketball Nik, but you should really reconsider wanting to go pro. You're a little small and not that good at it." That may seem harsh but it was true and there was love behind it. I needed to practice, work hard and hone any craft I hoped to be successful at was their ultimate message.

Maybe they weren’t wrong. Maybe I’m not exceptional at one thing, and that’s cool. There are plenty of things that I do well, and I’ll take being a jack of all trades/ master of none over having no marketable skill, no desire or passion and just being a potato otherwise.

But even if that wasn’t the case and I was the best, baddest writer, or best 5’ 1’’ female guard to ever play basketball in middle school, I don’t think my theory would apply. My life is a constant reflection, an internal feedback cycle on how I’m giving to others, supporting my peers and being an ally. Yeah, this shit is a struggle sometimes, otherwise it’s second nature.

I’m worried however, that we do damage, to brown and black men who we find exceptional by telling them they are exceptional without a check or balance system, without holding them to high standards in areas where they aren’t as extraordinary.

You’re probably confused, but that’s okay. Here’s an example. Junot Diaz. He writes well. He can spin some story, and it’s great reading. But if we pause for a minute, and consider his last big work, “This is How You Lose Her,” it is a book about cheating, and greasy grimey dudes, many whose stories come directly from Diaz’s experiences.

It was critically acclaimed, on everyone’s reading lists, and ultimately captured a very raw, human part of our lives in a way that people could accept. I won’t say related to, because for certain it wasn’t everyone’s experience, but it was honest. And we accepted that honesty, and praised him for being so human, and in many ways he banked a credit that could serve as a pass later on.

In the case of Diaz, and I’ll borrow something my friend G brought up, there’s some stuff to unpack about how different periods of history have made us brown folk hate ourselves and hate each other and discussing how brown men treat brown women and vice versa is a consequence of that and definitely some shit we need to work out. But if all we’re doing is acknowledging that shit is still fucked up - it’s also superficial.

Now I’m not saying that this is what I did, or what others did, but it seems like Diaz in admitting he’s flawed, that we as humans, but especially brown men, are flawed  - was supposed to be enough of a statement. He did write about it all beautifully and put words to what I’m sure other brothers of ours have had trouble articulating, but what are we praising him for exactly? We’re certainly not praising him for doing right by women of color. We’re certainly not praising him for changing his behavior or supporting others in doing the same. He isn’t the only one we do this with. There are dozens of others, artists, musicians, scholars. Men of color who are woke, or growing in their wokeness who we accept and applaud for having the courage to admit that they’re working on it.

Admitting you are imperfect is not a pass to not try to be or do better. Speaking on an issue, or acknowledging there’s a problem is worth nothing if it’s not followed by some kind of action.

So here’s the particularly blasphemous shit I planned to say. I’m not sure I’m all about Jesse Williams, in light of his BET Awards acceptance speech.

Look - the man is FINE, the speech was beautiful and the following quote from it, has me feeling some kind of way:

“The burden of the brutalized is not to comfort the bystander… if you have a critique for the resistance, for our resistance, then you better have an established record of critique of our oppression, if you have no interest in equal rights for black people then do not make suggestions to those who do…”

But then I wonder, maybe, if I’m just wearing my “woke brown bae goggles.”

Jesse Williams has all of the components to meet my much requited “brown dude with hella appropriate swag,” criteria. He’s fine, he’s smart, he’s passionate, he’s actually involved in doing the work he asks us all to do, he’s employed and people generally like him. That may seem pretty basic, but it’s definitely the bare minimum for my needs. That said, I’m a little suspect. Maybe because I’ve fallen victim to “woke brown bae goggles” before. The dude I friend broke up with last summer, and other dudes in my proximity. Spellbound and bamboozeled into seeing only their exceptional magical shit and giving them a pass when they slip up, when they don’t meet those already high expectations, and often at the cost of women of color. But that’s an aside, and my own shit - I’m really not trying to get Gary Dourdained, cause I have certainly loved and given passes to greazy grimey dudes who have a special craft and are often also woke.

I also don’t want to undermine the power of what Jesse said. It’s huge to have someone publically bring to light or express things we so badly want to say out loud. Put names to feelings and wonderings we know are circling in barbershops, behind closed doors. And he’s seemingly doing the work, practicing what he preaches, but still I hesitate.

It’s clearly different with men I come into contact with, that I know, whose numbers I have or whom I have less than 6 degrees of separation with, our sheer proximity to one another makes the sour taste left in my mouth by suspicion that much stronger, and the distrust in intentions that much more of a betrayal.

With celebrities, writers, rappers and others who are generally famous/infamous, it’s all trickier. We hold them in higher regard, we praise them more, especially when they venture not only from being talented and good at their craft, but when they stand up and show just how woke they are. Beyonce making a statement with Formation was as much about the timing, her power and her role in our social landscape as it was something that needed to be heard. We praised her too, for finally saying something - key word finally. But we also criticized her and critiqued her in ways we haven’t and won’t the men. Fame is funny that way. In public discourse it’s practically the rule that critique of women (by other women even - the family is cute as shit and I stan for my Warriors but cough Ayesha Curry cough, I’m looking at you) is fair game. It’s often volatile, and uncalled for, and administered by even our own community members. Maybe I’m wrong, but i feel like women of color especially, rarely get passes. Yes, dominant culture has plenty of fucked up things to say about men of color but I feel like in our own communities, we still hold talented, successful and well-spoken men as precious.

My friend L just asked me if I would carry this analogy to the president. He’s a black man that people of color in particular put on a pedestal. I’ve definitely done it, and often. His pass? His pass isn’t so much a pass, but to some extent part of the job. It’s expected and somewhat understood that trickery, lying through omission and general greazyness is part of the president’s daily duties - am I right? As much as he stands to “represent us” however, the president will never speak for us or relate to us the way we rely on and request artistic types to do just that.

Woke brown brothers like Lin-Manuel Miranda, who - although he’s the child of pretty successful parents - was just a Boriquen kid in New York City, doing his thing, going to public school, who liked rap and wore the same clothes, watched the same movies as the rest of us. He literally went to a college like mine and is only a year or two older, what’s not to relate to? Talented as he may be, truly mastering the art of written word and rhyme in a way not many others can, and we commend him for writing a rap musical about history. He’s a genius, he’s this, he’s that.I’ll give him one thing - he’s the first to do this and that makes it special. But y’all, he took a story that already happened, created some rhyming prose about it, embellishing things here and there to add flavor for sure, and then called his music producing friends to make it happen. Forreal, that shit is hard and I definitely couldn’t do it. But honestly, we’re hype about it because it’s safe. Musicals are safe domain for white folks, and as a brown man, he’s exceptional because he broke boundaries doing this. He can - and in many cases should - get praise from all angles and directions. Maybe we’re hype about it simply because no one had done it yet - not to say that Cam’ron was about to write about the Battle of Alamo, or Common was ready to write about Japanese Internment, but someone had to do it, at some point.

I say all of this like I’m laying in wait, like I’m waiting for the bubble to burst. For these men we’ve decided are remarkable, to somehow show us their darker selves, some deeper truth.

I fear a level of disappointment when that happens. Hoping that they will rise to the occasion in light of a potential truthbomb and have to admit their inevitable vulnerability, their humanity, that maybe they fucked up - they’ll act and be and do differently. They won’t do, or say or be shitty toward others and grow, and change. So many times I’ve seen these men, these woke black and brown men, we love, we hold in such high regard, who are my brothers, my uncles, my friends, family and would be lovers - admit and acknowledge their own flaws, transgressions, growth areas, and even though they don’t necessarily ask for forgiveness, we give it to them. We absolve them of their mistakes. Some may call for us all to be and do better in light of what they’ve learned, but it’s often been only a call. Yeah, I have no evidence to suggest that maybe some of these men have actually done, and are better. But that shit has to radiate outward.

In his speech, Jesse also said:

“We’ve been floating this country on credit for centuries yo, and we’re done watching and waiting while this invention called whiteness uses and abuses us… The thing is though, that just because we’re magic doesn’t mean we’re not real…”

Yesterday, on a random, unprovoked email purge and mission to get my inbox full of 4,900 read emails down to 2000 or less, I came across an email from 2010.

It was from my last long term ex. He’d sent it about 6 months after we’d broken up. It was about how sorry he was for our last interactions. About his inability to love - because he didn’t love himself - he had loved me, but didn’t know how to anymore and that he thought I deserved someone who loved themselves enough that they could love someone else.

I’m paraphrasing. That’s all that needs to be said about him - that email and how I felt about our four years together. IT’s been 6 years and truly, that’s all there is to say. We were together, then we weren’t. It wasn’t a clean break, but we both knew it needed to happen.

But it’s funny that I came across it yesterday.

The last time I wrote - at length, because the amount of energy I expelled putting that post together, dealing with everything life has offered us over the last few weeks has left me a bit depleted - was about love. I’ve been musing on love - and cultivating love, since I started this project. In fact, at one point, I took out a notebook and tried to chronicle the themes of my essays and love came up in different forms. Mostly, however, in grandiose, culture shifting, giving to humanity ways.

On the other end there were posts about self care, self love, but still, they were hypothetical and grand.

Since I last wrote anything, I’ve seen and experienced it, I’ve watched it attempt to overcome so much, and also been gifted love in immediate, tangible ways. But before I wax on what this all means, let me give you a little bit of a travelogue.

Mid May: A pretty significant time of transition started for me. It’s one I can’t yet talk about - not that I’m sure I want to, and if you talk to me regularly you can guess what I’m referring to. In any event it’s been rocky, it’s been frustrating and now I’m in a place of neutral acceptance about it. Don’t worry, it’s not related to health, or my physical well being, so I’m aight.

Late May: I walked my 3rd AFSP Overnight walk, here in my city, with a group of diverse women, including my sister, some family friends/pretend sisters and my former officemate and quickly on the rise to bestie status D, all of whom I’m happy to know and have in my life. Real talk: we were diverse and as a means of creating a roll call since there were so many of us and we wanted to try and stay together we came up with the idea to call out ROYGBIV. We were each assigned a color and when whoever was in front yelled out RAINBOW GO, each of us would take our turn to respond with our assigned color in ROYGBIV order. YELLOW! … The AFSP Out of the Darkness Overnight community remains a community that is full of love, bound together by not only loss, but hope. Walking through streets I’ve walked through before, noticing things I’ve never noticed, scattering while standing at a reststop in a cutty park in Chinatown as rats ran out of nearby bushes like true city kids, I felt the love differently. Carrying with me the love generated by the #Frisco5/500/5000 it was a grueling (those hills on Scott near the Marina though…) but beautiful night.

Later May/Memorial Day Weekend: My family and I walked from their home in Upper Noe over to the Carnaval parade in the Mission district. I took a photo and posted the following on Instragram underneath it after we’d watched a few minutes of Sambistas go by on Folsom and 24th streets:

“There are few days a year I feel as in community as I do during Carnaval weekend here in my city. It’s my favorite day of the year and inevitably has moments that annoy the hell out of me, but I still love it. It’s when you run into friends from past, present and in some cases future. Into family, like we did when we ran into so many middle school folk at once, it’s where my version of my city still lives and breathes no matter how many gentrifiers, cops, and tourists walk along side us. Because this is our space, and we are happy to share it with you.”

We walked over the the festival that took place after the parade a few blocks away and roamed for a while. At some point my parents decided they’d had enough and my sister and I picked a spot, mid festival to wait for her boyfriend. We stood on Harrison Street, between 18th and 19th, in front of the mural depicting the parade itself, truly at the center of it all. We watched people, we chatted a little, we felt at home and neutral. After a few minutes a male voice broke our meditation and screamed out “Look at these gangsta girls!”

My sister and I went stone cold, and kept our posted up, stance ignoring the dude, but within seconds he was in her face trying to hug her. He’s lucky he was actually a kid she’d grown up with, friend of her boyfriend truthfully, and not some random dude because I don’t know what I would have done to him - no I take that back - I don’t know what she would have done to him had he been a stranger, she’s the one to be afraid of. He was drunk, and in a good mood and it spilled over and spread a little into us. The three of us joked around and before we knew it he was calling out to someone else who walked by… a crazy teacher who’d taught at our middle school and recently retired. God it was awkward, but it was still full of love.

Less than 5 minutes later, we ran into a few other middle school folks, my folks since I’m older by 4 years, as a woman in the crowd walking by us and I locked eyes. It was my friend C, with her was our other friend M who I recruited to work for my organization recently and begged her to make a cross country move. We hugged, we chatted and M tapped on a guy’s shoulder who was in their crew, it was A.

Though I hadn’t seen C and M in years, I talked to them often on Facebook, and M and I texted regularly. For A, it had been since middle school graduation, nearly 20 years. We weren’t close at the time, though we’d been a little close at one point as I was dealing with some unrequited crush on him in 7th grade. He turned quickly and hugged me.

He hugged me long, and hard. It didn’t mean anything - truly, but something happened. We said very little as we stood there in this embrace, but the hug spoke volumes and was some kind of love. It said you are loved, we are good, so, so good. We as in all of us, not just A and I but C and M and their families with us, and A’s wife who he introduced me to afterward, and my sister. It said this is family, this is love.

First Week of June: My family and I, including my blonde, former college roommate S, ventured to NYC for the 2nd AFSP Overnight this year. I opted not to walk, but my parents chose NY over our home here in SF and my sister and S decided to join them even though it would only be 2 weeks since our SF walk together. I got to connect with a handful of friends from college in our 6 days there, we got to connect with my sister’s dude’s family, with S’s friends and my sister’s friends. I even got to watch the Warriors whoop the Cavs asses in game 2 of the finals with two friends I consistently texted during this seasons big games.

I loved New York. Though I’d gone to college in NY state, I’d spent time in Brooklyn and Queens and so it still held a special place in my heart. But while there, I learned how far New York and I had drifted apart. That learning may have been soured by a pretty shitty Air BnB situation - something we hesitantly did in looking for a place for 6 of us to stay, near the walk opening ceremony and on the fly- when we found out after being confronted by the landlord that it was an illegal listing and that our host hadn’t paid her rent since February. What a fucking douchebag.

I summed up my trip in a reflection that ultimately, for all of the wonderful and beautiful reasons I loved New York, it also caused me equal amounts of anxiety and brought up tensions I couldn’t really jive with. “You can’t take the Bay out of me, or me out of the Bay,” I realized. For all the love I’d felt, our housing situation, and random annoyances I’d felt just by the tempo and energy of the city, I wasn’t really feeling the love. As we left our Air BnB and headed to the airport we ran into the landlord again. She asked us how our trip had been and if we enjoyed our visit. My mother told her yes, and said we’d been in town for a charity walk. As the landlord asked us what charity and my mother uttered the words “the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention,” she softened and apologized for directing her anger at her tenant - whom she’s in the process of evicting - toward us and my mother apologized for causing her any added stress. She said no, we had no way of knowing, commended us for doing the walk and contributing to such an important cause and after a few more minutes of conversation we were on our way.

I could keep going, week by week, but I won’t, but I’ll mention some quick things.

The tragedy in Orlando and how communities came together in love, because of love, to cope, process and acknowledge how this kind of thing is simply unacceptable.

Random political acts and actions across the country about the 4 million other things happening nationwide.

Venturing to the Nor Cal Pirate Festival (yes, I know, it’s a thing, it’s kind of like a more rugged Ren Faire, but we go every year) on father’s day and chatting with a young single black dad with a toddler and his family.

Deciding to send a best friend across the country a birthday gift for the first time in years, and picking out exactly the right card(s- it was actually too hard to choose just one) and trinkets for her and feeling the excitement and love through text messages.

Riding with the Warriors through an incredible season, and in true Draymond fashion, feeling some kind of way as he took blame for their loss of the championship, something I undoubtedly would do, and did in reflecting on my own behavior at work.

When a mentor/colleague/friend/older brother figure, during a check in said his life was good, real good. He was in love, the romantic sort, and suggested those of us with him just, you know… try it sometime. His excitement, even his ridiculous suggestion being an act of love toward those of us in his company.

Taking a bit of a jump outside of myself, my normal routine and joining a People of Color meditation group which, while I’m a novice, has proven  in two weeks, to be a good outlet, to at least be still, release some of the frantic energy that’s been building and spend time looking inward.

Being able to listen and support friends and colleagues going through it in unplanned and unexpected ways.

I’m sure there have been others I’ve missed. 

I didn’t watch, and I’m struggling to buy into the whole Hamilton hype, but Lin-Manuel Miranda’s TONY acceptance speech (some of y’all know how I feel about the homie Lin, but if you don’t that’s for another post. Let’s just say: suspect as fuck) and the buzz around it got me curious.

I mean, yeah, it was a sonet, and in response to Orlando, news we had just heard about that morning, but when he says the following, I can’t hate.

“We live through times when hate and fear seem stronger.

We rise and fall, and light from dying embers

Remembrances that hope and love last longer.

And love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love;

Cannot be killed or swept aside.”

Because love is. It just is. As a refrain in light of Orlando, “Love, is…” has penetrated our social world. But if it just is, why has it been so hard to see and feel and touch.

So much love over the last few weeks. Love needed, love given - unconditionally and unsolicited. I’ve lacked the cognizance to make space for it for so long, to realize that I’ve been lacking the ebb and flow of giving and receiving love. I’ve pushed love away for so long, let so many other emotions and feelings take up space.

Now, and quite suddenly, quiet unknowingly, I’m welcoming it. I’m open to it. And need to accept it in as many forms as it will come.

There is a stillness in the air. It's not a calm still, just a quiet. But underneath it is a rumble.

There’s a big one coming. That’s what the news is saying about an earthquake due to hit California any time as the pressure along the San Andreas fault line which runs up and down most of our coast is building.

Berkeley scientists have said that the fault line is “locked and loaded”. But in San Francisco the big one may have already hit.

On Friday, the 6th, a group of 5 people who’d been engaged in a 17 day hunger strike, in response to continued issues with our local police department’s actions toward people of color were taken to the hospital.

For almost 3 weeks, 5 people, all San Francisco natives and longtime residents, sat outside the Mission District police department, in peaceful protest, starving themselves asking that our mayor or chief of police step down.

There’s an echo, throughout the US, around police brutality - we know that right? This isn’t  news to anyone. San Francisco isn’t your Ferguson, but here we’re experiencing the same thing that’s rippled across the nation.

Alex.

Mario.

Amilcar.

Luis.

All men of color, all shot with questionable cause. Our city is raw off of these incidents - so naturally, as our police chief and the force he represents are under ongoing investigation and our mayor too, has had some shady, shady incidents under review - questioning our city’s use of force seems like a natural thing.

Stone strikes stone, makes a spark.

The Frisco Five, as our hunger strikers have come to be known had had enough. It makes sense in our city, full of history, culture, birthplace of ethnic studies, hippies, Ginsberg and Kerouac, black panthers, brown berets and the San Francisco Burrito, (just worth mentioning), that we’d have thinkers and community members willing to make a statement, but this, this felt extreme for 2016.

Sellassie and Equipto, two local rappers.

Ike Pinkston and Maria Cristina Gutierrez, two local educators.

Edwin Lindo, a local education advocate, who was (is still?) running for office.

Edwin admitted it might be political suicide to strike. And y’all give Bay rappers so much shit for being politically oriented, but I don’t see Jay or Kanye or even Kendrick, the most woke one of them all, putting themselves out there (unless you count Killer Mike basically being Bernie’s running mate). Ike and Maria Cristina are known in the community and work directly with kids so you can’t hate on that - and a side note, Maria Cristina is no spring chicken - she’s 66 yo!

In a peaceful, but bold protest the Frisco Five sat, and meditated, and prayed, and read, and entertained a few visitors, awaiting a conversation with the mayor. Mayor Lee would not relent. He showed up at the station on Monday of last week, on his terms, not theirs so no conversation was had. On Tuesday they were wheeled through the streets to city hall, marchers surrounding them and aired their concerns publicly at city hall interrupting a board of supevisor’s meeting.  As the days went by they asked that if anyone wanted to support, they come by with sage smudges and candles as a means of holding vigil and keeping them strong.

Though their bellies may have been empty, their hearts were so, so full. Their love, for our city, for our people, radiated outward, and what we as a community put into supporting them, they reciprocated with their actions. They could not be stopped. Sellassie was taken to the hospital on Wednesday afternoon, but returned to their camp site as soon as possible.

On Friday, it rained. It wasn’t a steady rain, but it was and stayed wet. It was calm, not a storm, just rain. Though the Frisco Five had signed “Do Not Treat” orders, all concerned knew the rain would be nothing but bad for them. Though their love was strong, their bodies and health were clearly compromised and so they packed up, were taken to UCSF and their site cleaned.

But this love, it spread - or maybe that’s the wrong idea. It was always there, and it was ignited in our city, this Black/Brown/Yellow/White/Mocha/Ecru love I’ve talked about… It was set ablaze. And when the Frisco Five could not be there in body, others stepped up.

They took their place at the Mission station.

They marched to city hall, took it over and would not be moved.

The spirit, and love of the Frisco Five would not, could not be moved.

Our people marched, and occupied and called for action. But it didn’t end peacefully, despite all attempts to remain so as City Hall closed at 8 and protesters continued to occupy the space. 33 were arrested, who knows how many were actually hurt. The Frisco Five, was suddenly, potentially becoming the Frisco 50, Frisco 500, Frisco 5000.

On Sunday the Frisco Five ended their hunger strike, but vowed to continue their cause. 20 days without food was enough and they are now under a careful re-feeding plan. In their message to the community their love shined through and certainly makes one pause. I am not that strong. I may suck at eating lately, but even I know how miserable I will be if I don’t eat so tonight I force fed myself a beer and some shitty frozen xiao long bao from Tjs. 20 days without food - that’s when the only thing that will feed you, is strength of the spirit, love of your community.

They called for a general strike on Monday, asking people to demonstrate at city hall, to continue, and not give up, as they wouldn’t, even from behind hospital walls and would back on the street as soon as they were able to.

Resilient as fuck, and determined as hell, we have not stopped, we will not stop.

I can’t and won’t front. I did not march to city hall today, but reported to work, and did my thing in my low level government job. I can make a ton of excuses, remind you of my “destroy the master’s house with the master’s tools” mentality, but that’s bullshit. I just didn’t go, and didn’t have it in me to tell my colleagues and department head that I wouldn’t be in on the first day after my boss transitioned out of our department. But my weak ass non-action today does not speak for where I really stand. It was something that was difficult to pinpoint over the last few weeks, but it became clear after Friday night’s actions.

This weekend, after 20 days of observing, of not having the words to articulate the swirling thoughts I had about not only SFC, but of the human condition, of love, of what it means to be brown in 2016, I finally took to social media with an original thought of my own.

“My spirit is tired. What's going on in my city and in this world is wearing it out a little. But seeing how our city has decided to mobilize after the ‪#‎FriscoFive‬ were hospitalized has also filled my spirit.

It says we are here.

It says we will be heard.

It says we want justice.

It says we have and will continue to cultivate a black/brown/yellow/mocha/buttermilk love for our people. For our city.

Oro en paz - fierro en guerra.”

(”Take Back SF” by Monica Magtoto) 

Today you could hear the helicopters over city hall from my office. All day you could see police stationed outside, on guard, waiting. I haven’t seen anything on the news about today, though if I’m honest I’ve been watching the Warriors game while working on this post. But there were certainly demonstrators - we are all still here.

We are taking back SF, not by force, but by taking up space. This is not a new concept, by my sister constantly reminds me (probably herself as well) to take up space. To not be silenced, pushed aside. Being pushed aside is not an option, I never let that happen. But often, I do allow myself to fade into the back, this act essentially creating space for someone else.

But I can’t and won’t do that now - we can’t and won’t do that. Our love, something we so desperately need as Americans right now - this multicolored, multi-generational, multi-lingual/faith/sex, cross - red vines vs. twizzers, east-west rivalry love - cannot be held back.

12 years ago, right after starting my junior year of college I got a phone call that one of my sister’s best friends had passed away. He didn’t just pass away sadly, he had taken his own life.

Matthew, or Frick as he was known, was one of those too smart for his own good kids - a genius, a creative, strange and wonderful in all the best ways. The first time I met him, I remember thinking, “this kid is a lunatic,” because he’d taken a motor from god-knows what, jerryrigged it to basically create a fan, had made fan blades out of packing tape, and was torturing another friend of theirs with it while sitting on my couch. I’d later learn how I’d misjudged him. He was a dancer, a pianist, loved techno and had the biggest heart for someone his age.

Right before I’d left for school that year he’d wished me well and reminded me “not to do anything [he] wouldn’t do”. I’m positive I gave him the same peculiar look that I’d been giving him for years when he did something strange - not bad, just peculiar - smiled and wished him good luck in school.

His passing was devastating. The circumstances surreally tragic and oddly wrapped in a sense of beauty only he could capture. I was miles away and couldn’t do anything for my sister, my family, their friends, so I walked around Sunset Lake (yeah, my campus had a glorified pond we called a lake) with my friend T and yelled obscenities and cried. He wasn’t the first person I’d lost, or the last I’d lose to suicide, but the experience was tricky. 

Frick had struggled with mental health issues for some time, as do many teens. He was figuring himself out, he’d been put on different medications to manage all that was going on with him and ultimately it was too much for him. I don’t know that I can fully understand what he was going through, though the idea of things being “too much” as a teen doesn’t seem unfamiliar. As we grow, our brains develop and we start to learn who we are there’s no lack of confusion - we’re steeped with internal and external conflicts, pushed and pulled in different ways. Our individual experiences only complicate or put different spins on where we fall within the spectrum of negotiating our own mental health.

In the years since Frick’s passing my sister and their friend group have all dealt with not only coping and grieving and accepting his passing but their own mental and physical states. Some have been more successful than others of course, but many have grown. My own reflection on that time, on my own challenges at that age, and even where I stand now are peppered with the sheer experience of living, of growing older, of living on both coasts, in Hawaii and in my buttermilk yellow-tan skin. Maybe I’m also impacted by the jaded state that comes with age, when we accept that some shit just is what it is, fake it till you make it mentalities. But I’d lie if I say I don’t think about Frick often. That I don’t think about the impact his passing had on my sister, on her best friend H- our chosen sister - both of whom have grown into powerful, intelligent, beautiful women bound together not just by friendship and chosen family but by this shared tragedy. That my parents lost a son of sorts. That I don’t think about Frick’s parents who’ve attempted to fill his loss with writing and baking and who knows what else. My sister has even created a way of coping with her grief that might help others. 

May is Mental Health Awareness Month.

I say that to you not just because it’s May 3rd.

I say that to you because I’m gearing up for my 3rd American Foundation for Suicide Prevention Out of the Darkness walk later this month and here in my home town.

I say that to you because in all of the writing I’ve been doing here on WNB, in all that is going on in the world, y’all need to be reminded.

We need to remember this as we continue to live in a world that (yes, I’ve said this before and I do not care that I’m repeating myself) tells black and brown kids they ain’t shit, every-fucking-day.

We need to remember this because we continue to live in a world that tells trans and gay kids they ain’t shit. Heaven forbid you’re gay or trans AND a black or brown kid, cause then you’re a double negative.

It’s 2016 and we’re still giving people shit who can’t speak English, evicting people to make a mint off of the nouveau upper middle class, discriminating against people because of their religious beliefs.

And yet…

We stigmatize those who admit they have mental health issues. WE THE ONES CREATING THE CONDITIONS FOR MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES TO BE  A THING.

Not a single one of us, if we were to reflect on it for a second, can say we don’t know someone who has or have not directly been impacted by compromised mental health. Yet, we are living, breathing proof that our actions or those of our neighbors, directly contribute to having negative impact on others.

Admittedly - we have a lot of work to do, it doesn’t fall on one fragment of our society, it doesn’t belong to one community, but we have to do it.

3 weeks from now I’ll walk from sundown until… whenever I finish… 18 miles, overnight through the streets I’ve grown up on.

Last year I walked through storms in Boston.

The year before I walked through storms in Seattle where my sister was the keynote speaker and shared her journey with Frick’s passing.

So, this year, if it storms again, I’ll still be there, walking for Frick. For our younger selves that didn’t have the language, perspective or support to figured it out. For the black and brown kids who get told daily that they ain’t worth shit. For the trans folks who get told they don’t matter. For girls that get told they can’t. For you, me and everyone in between. This year means something slightly different to me and it means so much to do it here in my city.

To find out more about the AFSP’s Overnight Walk and all the good work they do click here. I could go on and on about the important work they do, what the walk itself does to people and the community it’s built, but perhaps that’s for another time.

I hope you’ll take some time this month to reflect on what you can do - for yourself, for others, for us all.