Another Week of Striving to Overcome Injustice

This week has us grieving yet more murders of unarmed black and brown people, asking what happened to Sandra Bland and India Clarke? Kenny Wiley responds to #IfIDieInPoliceCustody offering, "We are all gifted, and we are all flawed. I can speak and write well, and I also have depression and let friends and family down all the time. I should not need to be perfect in order to matter. Sandra Bland was not perfect, and she mattered."

What does healing or resilience, self-care or survival even begin to look like in the face of this state of emergency, as organizer Tia Oso called it when she interrupted the Netroots conference?

• Some brilliant folks at Intelligent Mischief  have birthed The Black Body Survival Guide, a satirical, multimedia resource. They told Afropunk, "Our goals are to use the healing elements of laughter and validate many forms of anti-Black oppression through humor. Through this process, we will build political movement and consciousness."
• I often turn to song - this week it's Hezekiah Walker's "I Need You to Survive" and K'naan's "Take a Minute."
• And still there is joy. Last Friday morning a car with purple balloons calling out Eid Mubarak' drove by me as Muslims all decked out in their most festive headed to celebrate Eid al-Fitr, the end of holy month of Ramadan.
• Writer extraordinaire Lindy West got married and wrote a fierce piece about love and bodies.

And where is church in this? Rev. Osagyefo Uhuru Sekou, in an interview with Yes! Magazine says, "I think a church has a role to play, but this idea of the Church, with a big C, I think is obsolete. The young people in the street disturb our religious respectability and sensibility. Queer woman, single moms, pants sagging, tattoos—it disrupts the very character that the church presents to the world. I’m not terribly hopeful for the church. I think queer, black, poor women are the church’s salvation. They don’t need to get saved. The church needs to get saved."

This is the world, beloveds. Here's to the survivors, the freedom fighters, the joy-finders, the leaders and the followers, to saving each other,