Just more hot air from others theorizing about us—how we’ve done everything wrong compared to white privilege. Officials with their behind-the-scenes agendas trying to tell the stories of the victims—how bad they’ve got it, how they don’t have a chance, how their fathers and brothers are all locked away, how their mothers and sisters don’t want a job and don’t want to help their own children with homework.
State of Black Asheville [conference at UNCA was] more hot air. No sweat for change. No unity. No trust. No compassion. While the city gases up more bulldozers to take more poor off public lands. Next time, let the victims or the examples speak as the experts on the panel, while the professionals with the titles and degrees sit in the audience. Maybe then we’ll find solutions, answers, accountability from those who’ve been trying and from those who’ve been pretending—no sweat with their words. A new year, but old hot air.
Later that night, I found myself at the Reid Center watching young people exploding with hope, singing with passion, dancing with ambition, glowing in power, sweating in pride. Then I cried. I remembered there has always been a struggle and there will always be the power in us to make the sacrifice, the power in us to make the change, to make the difference.
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