Alt-Reservations
Consider Jazz
white people love
Black art
Black music
Black poetry
Black performance. Continue reading “Consider Jazz”
MLK was killed, Beware the Day
MLK was killed.
And people went into uproar.
They cried in anguish because they realized he was a Black man who didn’t deserve to die. Continue reading “MLK was killed, Beware the Day”
A Tale of Two Vigils
Timothy Caughman, a Black man, was slain in New York City by a white supremacist from Baltimore. Two communities gather to honour Caughman in very different ways.
I went out to take pictures.
The Baltimore Uprising: What I saw
a retrospective
2 years ago, Baltimore experienced a movement beginning that would change it forever. While I published these photos on Instagram and Twitter, I never compiled them into a full story. Continue reading “The Baltimore Uprising: What I saw”
Don’t Let Staying Woke Drive You Mad
Self-care is primary in the revolution.
Don’t let being woke make you go mad. I know, I know. Being woke is a problematic term. It implies that people can be asleep, and for Black and Brown people, I’m not sure that’s completely true. And yet, there still is a stark difference between before you were motivated to take action in social justice, and after. But what people don’t really talk about is how painful that awakening can be. Which is why self-care has been so important in this movement. Continue reading “Don’t Let Staying Woke Drive You Mad”
A Vigil for Barry Lee
On the tail end of the original Baltimore Ceasefire weekend, a man is killed in West Baltimore
During the reading of the names at the end of the Baltimore Ceasefire weekend, Barry Lee’s name was the last to be read. His mother requested we attend his vigil in West Baltimore.
We later discovered he had been out to Cease Fire events.
Waking Up During a Wave of White Supremacy
Don’t ask Black people for more.
This morning I woke up to videos of white supremacists marching with torches.
Last night I attended a vigil for someone who died in segregated Black Baltimore.
The white supremacists in Charlottesville are literally marching to keep places like Black Baltimore, and other economically starved areas of the country, the same. Continue reading “Waking Up During a Wave of White Supremacy”
The Confederate Roots of the Maryland Flag
How secessionists adopted the Crosslands banner and how Maryland tried to reconcile with them
When I moved to Maryland, I was blown away by seeing the flag everywhere. I’d never seen so much pride in a state flag before. Continue reading “The Confederate Roots of the Maryland Flag”
Never Forget
9/11
The government asks us to remember this day, to memorialize it with hashtags and news articles and statues and vigils and sermons and moments of silence, but it dictates what part of the truth we remember. We’re called to remember the police, the paramedics, and the firefighters that put their lives on the line. We give a moment of silence to the thousands lost in the towers that fell, the Pentagon that was hit, and the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania. We’re asked to remember the pain and suffering of those who died, to never forget the trauma our nation endured, and to take pride in the resilience we have as a nation against terror.
And those are good things to remember. But some of us remember some other things that happened on this day.