Start again. Those words have been on a loop in my head this past week. Realizing that being in a rush to do something, to be seen as active, basically nullified every intention I had set out with to bring about change. I wasn’t actually making much of a difference because my ego was too busy feeling agitated with “look what I can do.” As it turns out, something I’d known and promptly forgotten was that helping means paying attention, listening, then stepping forward with shared intention and doing.

Start again. Stay with the wound. Not inside of it, where all that happens is reaction to staunch the pain. Not walk away from it to go find someone to help because it’s too painful and it would be so much easier if someone else handled it. To be near it and open to it so the healing can happen. My goal is to not look away from this moment. See every part: my complicity in how it’s come to be that Black lives haven’t mattered, how I gave up on my ears to listen, my eyes to see, my nose to sniff out the bullshit, my voice to make a difference, and my hands to hold the placard, dial the numbers, sign the petitions. I need to stay in it and not walk away as I’ve done before. For the good of me and all others on this planet. I can help that wound start to heal. Make sure it’s open so the light can enter. No bandage.

And to that end, I have questions on how others are situated in this time. An extraordinary young human, recent college graduate and the daughter of a dear friend, graciously agreed to answer mine below. I’m so grateful to hear her viewpoint and have a chance to explore the links she included. Without further … I introduce the wisdom of Anya: June 2020.

What, from your generational view, would you like us all to know right now?

Anya: Sometimes it feels like I was born to witness the end of the world. I’ve been told that everyone feels like that as a young adult, but all signs point to the end right now: climate change, a pandemic, the crumbling of the liberal order, political uprisings across the globe. This has scared me, it still does, but it also presents an opportunity to imagine what the new world could be. I am still very much a student of revolutionary thinkers and of abolition, and as I read more and more, I see that one of the core tenants of freedom movements is imagination. So many aspects of Black and Indigenous revolutionary thought hold the concepts of imagination and futurism. The most active members of my generation use their imaginations to keep them pushing towards the future. We, the ones inheriting such a mess, actually seem the most hopeful because we have to imagine something better—and that we can take part in making it better. I struggle when speaking with my family who seem so entrenched in the way things are, but have so much power not only to imagine but to take an active role in change. I hope we can move forward together, with imagination, towards a more just world.

What are things that all of us can do right now, this day, this week, to make a difference?
Donate to Black crowdfunds, community organizations, mutual aid groups, and bail funds! A few that I have seen boosted are:

Black Visions Collective

NYC COMMITTEE FOR TRANS ACTION

Black Womens Blueprint

The Okra Project

The Gworls Party

Emergency Release Fund

Bold Organizing

Community Justice Exchange

Look at this amazing compilation of anti-racist resources by Patia

Read up on abolition! The Black Radical Tradition is ongoing and has always been at the front of the Black freedom struggle, which is a struggle for all people’s freedom. In a recent Instagram post specifically addressed to white people, the movement Decolonize This Place in NYC named some Black revolutionaries to read or read up on: Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglas, W.E.B. Dubois, Frantz Fanon, Claudette Colvin, Fannie Lou Hamer, Amilcar Cabral, Ella Baker, Malcolm X, The Black Panther Party, Assata Shakur, H. Rap Brown, Angela Davis, Mumia Abu Jamal (source: https://www.instagram.com/p/CA_9_jZpYd4/).

And, is this even the question to be asking right now? Is there another one to ask?

I think asking the question “what can I do” is really important! And seeking out the work as well. I am just graduating college with the awareness that I know so little and the more I learn the more there will be I don’t know. As I type this, I have such a deep insecurity about even presenting what I think as important because I feel so unqualified. So many people are sharing resources online, for free, putting in hours of work to compile them. I guess that is what we should “know.” We are all learning together, supporting each other in different ways, in order to imagine together and make a new world possible.

Thank you for reading this. I’m going to keep asking. I’m going to keep reading and reading and reading more. I’m going to keep supporting (right now, among others, Darnella Frazier, the young woman who filmed the murder of George Floyd and is in need of our support). I’m going to keep looking & watching [Windy, thanks for this last link]. I’m going to pay attention and listen and keep recognizing myself in certain truths. Commit to do better. Seek out education [this Justice in America podcast to do with The Bard Prison Initiative—a college program offered through Bard College in six New York State prisons— is an astoundingly good listen. Thank you, Elizabeth for sharing with me.]

Grateful to all the voices out there, most especially today in this space, to Anya for being a fierce badass who just by living, has helped me want to be a better human, flaws and all!