One of my favorite stress relievers 🥊

Can’t speak for anything else Voltaire said, but he was right on this one:

“Anyone who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities”

I'll be in Tennessee (Knoxville and Nashville) and St. Louis for work for a few weeks. Any places I should check out or food recommendations?

A lot of what people claim is common sense has just been fed to folks to reinforce a specific worldview.

Today is the highest level of coordinated direct action we've seen since Oct 7. Weapons companies, highways, ports & airports shut down around the world. Why is April 15 so effective? The call to action was a reorientation from symbolic protest to material economic blockades.

Been sharing updates on IG, but I’ve been working on calisthenics to challenge myself and complement my boxing and strength training.

It’s been very challenging but making a little progress.

Week 1 to week 3.

It's obvious where things are and where they're headed in the US. Make sure you're putting your energy in the right places if you're gonna be fighting back.

“Always bear in mind that the people are not fighting for ideas, for the things in anyone's head. They are fighting to win material benefits, to live better and in peace, to see their lives go forward, to guarantee the future of their children.”– Amilcar Cabral

This is state violence and, unfortunately, not new.

'A women’s prison in California so plagued by sexual abuse that it was known among inmates and workers as the “r*pe club” will be closed, the head of the Federal Bureau of Prisons announced Monday.'
latimes.com/california/sto…

Keep those debates about “who is actually Black” on the other side of Twitter. Don’t have time for it, and already got enough madness on this side. Smh

“The oppressed internalize the values of the oppressor…any group that achieve power, no matter how oppressed, is not going to act differently from their oppressors as long as they have not confronted the values that they have internalized & consciously adopted different values.”

“Baker and her idealistic young comrades saw the building of cooperative economic institutions as the first step toward a peaceful transformation of society from Capitalism to a more egalitarian, socialist alternative.”

Love hurt and imperfect people, hate the conditions and systems that traumatized them.

I have never regretted loving people unconditionally. Even when others thought I was being naive, or too forgiving.

I have regretted being cold towards people, especially when those individuals didn’t live long enough to start their redemption arc.

'And, if i know anything at all,
it’s that a wall is just a wall
and nothing more at all.
It can be broken down.'

Assata Shakur, Assata: An Autobiography

Imposter syndrome is just recognizing systems/spaces weren't meant for us w/out being able to articulate why. We should make what seems like a personal problem a collective and political problem and build solidarity with all the other marginalized people who feel the same way.

What are y’all reading this weekend?

Crazy that today marks two years since I’ve been ED of Alliance for Boys and Men of Color.

Still thankful that I get to do this work with amazing people and am excited to see what this next year brings.

One thing I am always struggling with:

Is the goal to deconstruct the harmful binaries that we exist within or swing the pendulum the other way?

There seems to be an emphasis on the latter, and I am not sure that leads to freedom.

In the nonprofit space, I'd love for us to stop jumbling a bunch of words together, calling it analysis, and always trying to find a new buzzword that we can get funders excited about. I'm guilty of this as well, but it's exhausting.

'Speak plainly' feels relevant right now.