1. Stays open later than the average coffee shop

2. Doesn’t require me to spend a bunch of money just to sit down

This week, I decided to try out some libraries.

Because the Inglewood Library’s main branch is closed until 2028 (yep), I headed over to the Bebe Moore Campbell Library in View Park instead. I’d been there maybe once or twice before, but today I noticed something I’d completely missed before…

The library is a whole vibe!

While taking a standing break in the stacks, I realized that the books around me seemed to center mostly on Black history and Black popular culture. A quick Google search confirmed what I was sensing: this library isn’t just named after the prolific writer Bebe Moore Campbell-- its selection of books is intentionally curated to reflect and serve the Black community.

There were so many titles related to Black Hollywood, Black popular culture, and Los Angeles history. Here are some of the interesting titles you wouldn’t ordinarily see on the shelves at a city library:

Originally founded in 1940, the View Park Bebe Moore Campbell Library serves residents of View Park and Windsor Hills, unincorporated areas of Los Angeles known for their deep connection to Black history and culture and for being historically affluent Black neighborhoods (thanks to post-Civil Rights-era white flight).

The library was renamed in honor of Bebe Moore Campbell in 2015, about nine years after she passed away from brain cancer. It officially reopened under its new name in September 2017.

Who Was Bebe Moore Campbell?

Born February 18, 1950, and passed away on November 27, 2006, Bebe Moore Campbell was a prolific writer and longtime resident of View Park. He most well-known, acclaimed novel, Your Blues Ain’t Like Mine (1992), is just one example of her powerful storytelling.

But there’s a deeper, more personal layer to Campbell’s work that hits close to home.

In her novel 72 Hour Hold (1998), Campbell tells the story of Trina, a young woman diagnosed with mental illness in her late teens, just before she’s set to leave for Brown University. Though Campbell insisted the book was fiction, she did admit that it was inspired by her experiences with an unnamed mentally ill family member. The novel was published in 1998, years before her daughter, Maia, would speak publicly about her struggles with mental health and addiction.

Campbell’s daughter, Maia, is well-known for her role as Tiffany on the sitcom In the House (1995-1996).

She’s also well-known for her personal struggles with mental health and addiction. However, today, Maia has been sober for six years, a testament to resilience and the possibility of recovery, something her mother wrote about so powerfully:

“Mental illness is a kind of slavery. We won’t always have to hide and run and do our work in the dark. The day is coming when people with brain diseases won’t be written off or warehoused, when everyone will know that recovery is possible.” - 72 Hour Hold.

Before she passed, Bebe Moore Campbell founded the National Alliance on Mental Illness Greater Los Angeles County (NAMI GLAC), a non-profit that offers free support and resources to people in L.A. County who are impacted by mental health issues.

Sitting in that library, surrounded by stories and histories that matter, I realized I’d found more than just a quiet place to write (that’s also open pretty late… 8 PM on weekdays!). I’d found a space that carries weight, memory, and hope.

I’ll definitely be back.

Have you ever been to this library?

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Opening the 1925 “The Southern Campus” yearbook feels like stepping through a time portal. It captures UCLA at a very special moment-- its transition from downtown Los Angeles to its current campus in Westwood.

On page 22, the yearbook recounts the story of a school constantly on the move. It began in 1881 as the Los Angeles Normal School, spent 30 years operating out of the Central Library in Downtown L.A., then moved to the Vermont Avenue campus. By 1907, it had outgrown that spot too, and the state promised a proper 24-acre campus. After a few setbacks, this teacher’s college was finally renamed “the Southern Branch of the University of California” —51 years after the flagship Northern Campus was established in Berkeley, California.

The 1924-1925 school year was special: it was the first year UCLA would grant four-year Bachelor’s degrees. As the yearbook authors so perfectly put it, “The branch [was] bearing fruit.”

Flipping through the pages, you see familiar names of PanHellenic sororities-- Delta Gamma, Alpha Phi, Delta Delta Delta (Tri Delt). But noticeably absent (to me at least) are the trailblazing chapters of the National Pan-Hellenic Council. Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.’s Pi Chapter was chartered in 1923. Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc.’s Upsilon chapter was, too. Their omission from the yearbook says less about their stature and more about the racial climate on campus and in the broader city of Los Angeles at the time.

This exclusion makes the role of another chapter even more profound. For the next half-century, this group, alongside Pi, Upsilon, and later the Gamma Xi Chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc., would become vital sources of community for Black, brown, and asian students at UCLA.

The Alpha Gamma Chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. was chartered in1925— a full year before UCLA broke ground in Westwood. From that moment on, Alpha Gamma was woven into the fabric of UCLA. And while the chapter’s impact is vast, one contribution stands out to me as the ultimate example of its selfless character: the establishment of Stevens House.

Creating Space Where None Was Given

In the 1920s, while Black students with means were technically allowed at UCLA, they were far from welcome. They were excluded from campus socials and parties, barred from coveted on-campus jobs, such as working at the bookstore, and, of course, there were no Black professors. Finding housing was a huge struggle.

But the women of Alpha Gamma never let that stop them from creating space for everyone.

Their mission of building up UCLA began literally—they were one of the largest donors to the construction of the Physics building (now Haines Hall), one of the original four structures on the new Westwood campus. The 1931 yearbook proudly lists their contribution.

This ambitious effort was led by the chapter’s founding members, including Willa Clothilde Curry, who served as chapter president in 1928 while completing her Bachelor’s degree in junior high school education.

The Westwood Move and a New Problem

On September 23, 1929, students officially moved to the new Westwood campus. But this exciting move created a new crisis. The old campus was near downtown, close to the heart of L.A.’s Black community along the Central Avenue corridor. Westwood, however, was built on farmland, across the city, with few public transportation options.

To make matters worse, Westwood itself was a segregated neighborhood. Non-white students, including Jewish students, were not allowed to live there. Their choices were a brutal daily commute or renting a cot at the nearby YWCA.

The YWCA was run by the University Religious Conference (URC), one of the less discriminatory groups on campus. They believed that regardless of race, all people are God’s people, so they provided housing for those the university had sidelined. (The URC was also behind the founding of UCLA’s famed UniCamp in 1935, which originally brought low-income students of color to spend time in the outdoors.)

Reading between the lines in the archives, it seems Black students skillfully used the URC’s benevolence to push the university to serve its marginalized students. For example, Black student athlete and future Olympian James E. Luvalle led UniCamp, and URC members were responsible for raising the $700 honorarium paid to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. when he visited the campus.

The House that Alpha Gamma Built

I can’t say for sure who had the idea first, but it’s clear that Alpha Gamma spearheaded the campaign. In the 1940s, the chapter sold fried chicken meals on the main quad during lunch. They raised $4,000 for a down payment on a house.

The home, technically purchased by the URC (because Black people couldn’t buy property in the area), was in nearby Brentwood (close to the present-day site of University High School). It opened in 1948 as a 22-bed residence hall called Stevens House, and it was helmed by Alpha Gamma. For decades, a member of the chapter served as House President almost every single year.

According to a 1994 Los Angeles Times article reporting on the sale of Stevens House, it always operated on a shoestring budget. It charged minimal rent and required residents to cook and clean for themselves. Volunteers worked tirelessly to keep the house standing and maintain an emergency loan fund for residents who were often just scraping by.

To get the university’s approval, Alpha Gamma had to pitch Stevens House as a “co-op” open to all students interested in a diverse living experience. And while it primarily served Black students, it also became a home for many Asian women, especially after 1942, when Japanese American students were banned from UCLA during the shameful era of internment.

(And just for a bit of name-dropping: the legendary actress Diahann Carroll lived at Stevens House when she was a student at UCLA!)

A Legacy of Leadership

I wasn’t around for these dark chapters in UCLA’s history, but I am forever indebted to the Black students who fought to make this university work for its brightest stars. I’m proud to be a part of that legacy of pushing for better.

And I’m especially honored to have joined the long lineage of women who came through Alpha Gamma.

I remember researching the chapter’s history before I joined and being completely inspired. I found Soror Yvonne Braithwaite Burke on the March 1974 cover of Ebony magazine— the first sitting Congresswoman to give birth and be granted maternity leave. I learned that she helped found the city’s beloved California African American Museum and established a legal fund for activists arrested during the 1960s uprisings. Soror Burke was also the first woman to chair the Congressional Black Caucus.

Soror Yvonne is just one of many. I love bragging about my prophytes and neos like my prophyte Mediget, who is the head of breast surgery at UCLA Health and was invited to throw out the first pitch at a Dodger’s game last year, or my neo Hallie, who was recently promoted to an endowed coach position with the Stanford gymnastics team (and had a hand in choreographing so many of those viral floor routines coming from the UCLA team in the 2010s. If you haven’t seen her Beyonce routine, please treat yourself!)

Our chapter home is filled with professionals from various fields, including doctors, lawyers, professors, realtors, nurses, school administrators, and business and communication specialists. These women are not just working in their fields; they’re leading and breaking new ground.

I couldn’t make it to Los Angeles for the centennial festivities, but I hope sharing this post expresses my deep love, reverence, and respect for the Absolutely Gorgeous, Alpha Glamorous chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., a sisterhood I am so thankful to have been initiated into.

Love you, sorors! Have an incredible weekend. Don’t let the rain stop the show :)

There’s something off about Rio, and it’s taken me a minute to really articulate it. I had a great time down there-- loved the culture, loved the people, but there was this really uncanny vibe that I couldn’t shake the entire trip, and I think the tear in the fabric of my reality came when my colleague’s phone was stolen in Centro (downtown Rio), but not for reasons you may think.

I’m not one of those people who travel scared-- assuming every other major city in the world is somehow more unsafe than the one I live in simply because it’s foreign. I’m not ignorant in that way, but as many of us know, the dynamics of danger in every city can look very different, and I guess I spent the first few days trying to sort out Rio’s version of this in my head.

Perhaps my apprehension also stemmed from Rio’s idyllic scenery, which belies its risks —a disorienting quality that I’m not completely unfamiliar with, having grown up in a similarly beautiful major city (albeit not as beautiful) that deals with its own issues. However, back home, the “dangers” felt more distant from the postcard-perfect image. For example, every morning on my way to run on the beach or grab a green juice, I’d walk down beautiful sidewalks adorned with the iconic alternating waves of the Portuguese Mosaic or “Calçada Portuguesa” (irregular stones of white limestone and black basalt).

The path was canopied by majestic palm trees (much larger and healthier than the ones that struggle to survive in the unnatural, non-native climate of Los Angeles), choked by exotic air plants, all set against stately Art Deco buildings.

Yet, this entire scene was fenced in by ironwork-- a tangible barrier I was forced to interact with daily. If I woke up too early, the streets would also be adorned with the bodies of unhoused people sleeping in groups (presumably for safety) in front of the closed storefronts. Again, stay with me here because I’m not pathologizing the unhoused for surviving. Their presence didn’t threaten me; it just spoke to the silences of the opulence of Rio.

Bom dia (Good morning)

Boa tarde! (Good evening)

Obrigada/Brigada (Thank you/thanks)

These were phrases I learned quickly because I needed to use them in my exchanges with service workers, as well as the door person who checked our passports and visas upon check-in. They used a concealed button at the desk every day to automatically open the doors for us. We never touched a key. Our apartment door was equipped with a keypad lock that required a code.

One of the Ph.D. students I work with, who is studying facial recognition technology here on a Fulbright Fellowship, tells me that many of these buildings require Facial Recognition Technology (FRTs) for entry. His dissertation research focuses on the ubiquitous use of FRTs in Brazil and what the failures of these systems can reveal about our impending future in the States as we attempt to normalize them there as well.

While in Rio, we went to a futbol match and two concerts. At each event, we noticed drones scanning the crowds, and we were forced to interact with FRTs. In fact, when we purchased our tickets for the match, we were required to upload images of our faces and passports as part of the ticketless entry process. We simply walked up to the gate and scanned our faces to enter the stadium.

I know these surveillance tools are supposed to make me feel safe, but growing up in Inglewood, CA (a mixed-income, predominately Black and Brown neighborhood) means that it does the opposite-- I feel like a “mark” in the colloquial and traditional sense-- a target or object of aim, an intended victim.

Our Airbnb is steps away from Flamengo Beach —one of the nicer beach neighborhoods in Rio, which caters more to locals than tourists, unlike the nearby Copacabana or Ipanema. So on Sundays and Saturdays, our beachside brunch is peaceful. It’s not disrupted by the sight of militaristic police who appear at night in Ipanema and Copa to blockade the street corners to manage the mass exodus of sunset watchers. They also won’t pass you in their mini SUVs on the beach like they do in Copa, where they tend to ride around with automatic weapons peaking out of the windows. Though the barrels typically face upward toward the iconic, hazy Rio sky, I can’t say it wasn’t jarring to see, especially knowing that this isn’t a typical sight in nearby Botafogo, Flamengo, and Gloria neighborhoods. It’s a telltale sign that tourists are prey, but important prey whom the state has deemed are in need of protection.

I walked by an open-air restaurant in Copa and saw a woman sitting with her back turned to the street (a no-no in any city) and her purse placed carelessly on the floor under her seat (a cardinal no-no). In my mind, I juxtaposed this with a necessary habit of vigilance: I know better than to fixate on my phone on the street, lest it be snatched by a passing biker boy. While it sounds dramatic, this is a common crime here, and they move quickly to clone the eSIM to access financial accounts.

Suddenly, the opulent Art Nouveau (?) Art Deco (?) style gates outside of our walk-up appear less elegant and more like function meeting form. The ground-floor fortification, which climbs up to the upper level of opulence, is a big tell, too. Sure the bars are beautiful in the sense that they bear markers of elevated craftsmanship-- hand-forged ironwork, geometric lines, floral motifs, and the stately sense of weight and permanence that comes with a set of decorative metal bars but they honestly remind me of the utilitarian, heavy duty steel burglar bars on the houses in South Los Angeles that don’t pretend to be anything other than what they are.

The difference here is that my Beverly Hills back home doesn’t have iron bars. Ring cameras are abundant, but facial recognition technology is lacking. Rio’s version of security is visceral and inescapable in ways I’m not used to seeing. It’s not a discreet camera on a porch; it’s a barrier you have to touch, a gilded cage you see through every time you look out your window. “Defense” and “security” are permanent parts of the city’s aesthetic, and as a visitor, they seep into your daily awareness.

From this perspective, Rio’s beauty doesn’t simply belie its risk, but the depths of its inequality. The iron bars serve as a physical barrier, shielding wealthy residents and tourists alike from the economic desperation that underpins the very economy they enjoy.

More thoughts to come, especially since we were still in Rio on the day of the largest military political mobilization in history, and we have some thoughts about how this event was covered versus how the people of the impacted communities felt about it.

OK, now that we’ve cleared weekend two, I think it’s finally time to discuss some things we didn’t like about Sinners (2025). At the risk of y’all calling me a hater (even though I loved the film, so much so that I’ve seen it three times already), I’ll go first: *inhales*

1. Why did that lady pronounce “griot” like that in the opening voice-over? Am I tripping, or are people pronouncing the T in “griot” now, and I just missed the memo?

2. I know y’all claim to love that scene where Preacher Boy sings and conjures up the ancestors, but am I the only one cringing heavily during it? Like what were the crips and bloods doing there? Are we not going to discuss their presence? I understand that the crip walk and blood walks are things that exist in the world but I need y’all to know that most crips and bloods are not dancers so to tie them into the griot tradition annoyed me more than a little bit. What were the Chinese ancestors doing there? Make it make sense because it felt like aesthetics for aesthetics’ sake, and I kind of hate that.

3. Michael B. Jordan and Michael C. Jordan had the worst “southern accents” I have ever heard! It truly kept taking me out of the film, and I kept counting down to the point where he would inevitably drop the accent entirely (as he does in all his films) and turn back into MBJ from L.A. This moment (hilariously) came in the scene where the newly-revived Vampire Stack reminds his brother, Smoke, about being down in the trenches, “Chicago Gangways!” I couldn’t help but giggle at his accent peaking through.1

*exhales* Ok, that felt good. I needed to get that out. I was imploding under the pressure of wanting to critique this film without sounding like a hater.

In 2025, publicly dissecting a beloved work feels risky. Nuance is flattened into binaries: you’re either a ‘Stan’ or a ‘hater.’ But critique isn’t disdain—it’s engagement. Loving something means holding it accountable. And truth be told, the film had more than a few glaring opportunities for improvement:

(1) The women characters and their development beyond objects of desire and aid left a lot to be desired-- many of them only appeared as objects of desire and assistance, or were blamed for the downfall of the characters in the film.

(2) The film also fell into that trap of masculinist revisionist history, akin to works like Django Unchained (2012) or Posse (1993), where directors retrofit hyper-masculine, ahistorical ‘badass’ heroes into brutal historical contexts like American slavery or Reconstruction to craft cathartic tales of Black defiance. While such narratives aim to reclaim dignity and agency for marginalized communities through such portrayals, they risk reinforcing patriarchal myths of individual male exceptionalism, overshadowing systemic oppression and collective resistance.

(3) Is it just me, or does the film’s third-act shootout with Klan members—reminiscent of Tarantino’s signature style—feel like a blatant ripoff? Think of the final shootout scene in Django Unchained (2012), the movie theater fire scene in Inglorious Basterds (2009), and the final home invasion scene in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019). Maybe I’m just such a huge Tarantino fan that I’m over-reading the homage, but the chaotic violence and cathartic revenge tropes seem lifted straight from his playbook.

I could go on, but if I’m being honest, I’m always engaging in a negotiated reading of Coogler’s films, because I desperately want to see something in them that’s not always there.

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I read this film as a commentary on freedom-- all of the characters seem to be seeking freedom from white supremacy in various ways-- via economic empowerment, religion, through passing or assimilation, through moving up north, or to the nearby free Black town, etc. However, freedom seems elusive for them all, except for the few hours between the end of the traditional work day and the beginning of the escapade with the vampires. As the characters remark in the mid-credit sequence, this was somewhere between the best day of their life and the only time they truly felt freedom, and it came because they were together, in community with one another.

However, I got online, and the first bad take I saw was, “Did anyone else get that the film was about not trusting allies?” Many folks read Grace’s (the Chinese storeowner) action as a betrayal of the group, especially since she quickly reminded her husband, “We came here to help with the party, not with this,” once it was revealed that there was a dead body in the venue. In my reading of the film as being about freedom through joy and communal solidarity, I read Grace’s actions as selfish, yes, but also a byproduct of her survival instincts kicking in. Not excusing her actions, but also not using her actions as an excuse to generalize all allies or asian people.

I posted a note on Substack that lamented “I hate that people are walking away from the Sinners with the message, ‘you can’t trust allies’ and not ‘white supremacy and individualism hinders solidarity” but I believe that’s my own personal politic of not blaming people, especially for how they survive under white supremacy, but instead focusing on the harmful mechanisms that create these situations. I wish more people shared this political perspective, but I recognize not everyone will interpret the scene as I did. As a media studies professor, I emphasize that all media is polysemic—open to multiple, often conflicting readings. How we interpret a film, show, or image says far more about our own ideologies and biases than about the media itself. What you see (or don’t see) in that scene reflects your political orientation, not some universal 'truth' embedded in the work.

I will never forget learning this lesson big time with Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther (2018). I walked out of the theater, solemnly reflecting on the death of Killmonger and his final lines:

Killmonger: “My pops said Wakanda was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. He promised he was going to show it to me one day. You believe that? A kid from Oakland running around believing in fairytales… It’s beautiful.

T’Challa: “Maybe we can still heal you.”

Killmonger: “Why? So you can just lock me up. Nah. Just bury me in the ocean with my ancestors that jumped from the ships because they knew death was better than bondage.”

I initially found Ryan Coogler’s subversion of hero/villain tropes in Black Panther brilliant: Killmonger, the film’s ostensible antagonist, resonated as a morally complex ‘good guy,’ while T’Challa, the protagonist, seemed to embody the flaws of a traditional villain. To my surprise, this reading wasn’t widely shared. Instead, I watched as audiences—particularly Black viewers—celebrated Wakanda’s Afrofuturist vision, cosplaying in African-inspired regalia and adopting the ‘Wakanda Forever’ salute. For many, T’Challa remained an unambiguous hero, his leadership and sacrifices overshadowing his contradictions. It was a stark reminder of how media interpretations reflect our desires: some saw liberation in Wakanda’s isolationist pride, while I saw tragedy in its refusal to reckon with Killmonger’s radical critique.

T’Challa was an apathetic, spoiled, entitled brat who didn’t care about anyone besides himself. Recall the scene where he interrupts Nakia’s humanitarian work to invite her to his coronation. He completely trivializes what she has going on to redirect attention to himself.

Compare that with Killmonger’s critique of the Wakandan royal family:

Killmonger: “Y’all sitting up here comfortable. Must feel good. It’s about two billion people all over the world that looks like us but their lives are a lot harder. Wakanda has the tools to liberate them all.

T’Challa: “And what tools are those?”

Killmonger: “Vibranium. Your weapons”

T’Challa: “Our weapons will not be used to wage war on the world. It is not our way to be judge, jury and executioner for people who are not our own.”

Killmonger: “Not your own? But didn’t life start right here on this continent? So ain’t all people your people?

T’Challa: “I am not king of all people. I am king of Wakanda and it is my responsibility to make sure our people are safe and that vibranium doesn’t fall into the hands of a person like you.”

Is Killmonger framed as violent and irrational simply because he challenges Wakanda—a nation we’re primed to root for due to its wealth and technological prowess? Or does T’Challa’s role as the film’s protagonist automatically cast him as the ‘hero,’ despite his complacency in Wakanda’s isolationism? These conflicting readings expose how audiences are socialized to equate power with virtue. Wakanda’s glittering Afrofuturism and T’Challa’s royal title trigger an unconscious bias: we align with dominance, even when its actions (or inaction) harm marginalized communities. Because, like, how do you watch this scene and not declare Killmonger your anti-colonial hero?

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Killmonger: “Now, tell me about this one.”

Museum director: “Also from Benin, 7th century. Fula tribe I believe.”

Killmonger: “Nah.”

Museum director: “I beg your pardon?”

Killmonger: “It was taken by British soldiers in Benin but it’s from Wakanda and it’s made of vibranium. Don’t trip. Imma take it off your hands for you.”

Museum director: “These items aren’t for sale.”

Killmonger: “How do you think your ancestors got these? You think they paid a fair price? Or, did they take it like they took everything else?

Museum director: “Sir I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

Killmonger: “You got all this security in here watching me, every since I walked in but you ain’t checking for what you’re putting in your body.”

Well for starters, I had to ignore the part where he murders his girlfriend and accomplice for no reason. That action was apparently placed there to pain a picture of Killmonger as violent and irrational, which I think is dangerous because aside from this one action, everything he does is completely rational. He is working toward a goal of Black Liberation, and painting the picture of him as only using violence to achieve this, is dangerous because it delegitimizes the goal of Black Liberation. So I ignored that and chose to continue to read the film as subversive, despite these dangerous parallels because T’Challa as villain felt so obvious. He was SO apathetic which I would argue is way more violent. When he’s not being apathetic, he’s being xenophobic. Take this scene where T’Challa and W’kabi discuss refugees.

T’Challa: “Nakia thinks we should be doing more.”

W’Kabi: “More like what?”

T’Challa: “Foreign aid, refugee programs.”

W’Kabi: “You let the refugees in, they bring their problems with them and then Wakanda is like everywhere else.”

The commentary on Sinners is all over the place. However, it’s no where near as cringe as watching a ton of Killmonger’s cousins take pics at the theater doing the Wakandan cross-armed salute because they couldn’t see themselves in Killmonger. I didn’t think Sinners was about culture vultures or reminding us to not let allies in. As I mentioned before, I viewed the film as being primarily about freedom, specifically from white supremacist racism and the different ways that people seek to pursue it. However, I also see this interpretation as potentially a willful misreading that derives from my personal politic. It’s hard to read the film the other way because I truly believe that collective resistance is more powerful that anything else and skin color does not determine that. I know that I can only build and organize with people who have done the work of unlearning the harmful value systems that keep us apart.

The saying goes, ‘All skinfolk ain’t kinfolk,’ and it’s a reminder that shared identity alone doesn’t guarantee shared values or trust. Building true community requires discernment—not blind exclusion, but a commitment to working with those who’ve actively aligned themselves with liberation. This doesn’t mean shutting out everyone who hasn’t yet done the work, but rather meeting people where they are while prioritizing collaboration with those who’ve demonstrated a willingness to dismantle systems like white supremacy and individualism. Revolution begins in the mind; it isn’t bound by race, but it does demand political education and accountability.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand the skepticism of outsiders who want to come to the cookout—you can’t collaborate with everyone, nor should you. Trust must be earned, not assumed. Just as I reject being judged solely by my race or identity, I refuse to reduce others to those same reductive categories. History shows how such biases harm collective progress. Instead, I let actions speak: Who has done the work to decolonize their thinking? Who prioritizes solidarity over individualism?

This is why political alignment—not skin color—is my litmus test. I don’t inherently trust anyone, Black, white, Asian, or otherwise who hasn’t proven their commitment to the work. Organizing demands more than good intentions; it requires dismantling internalized oppression.

Anyway, I prefer the real Black Panther’s to the fictional ones anyway. So I’ll close with a word about solidarity from slain Black Panther leader, Chairman Fred Hampton:

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The entire third act is so gratifying because it is so utterly creepy. The creepiness seems to stem from the vampire storyline and how they played on race and racial identity in the film. I’m assuming that by the end of the week, there will be many other thinkpieces about this incredible film, especially the racial politics. However, I will share my thoughts because it so closely ties to how I teach about the social construction of race in my classes. Making Remmick, the primary vampire, Irish was a clever choice because vampire mythology has roots in Celtic culture (Bram Stoker’s Dracula was allegedly inspired by Irish folklore and Celtic stories). But what made this decision truly brilliant was the connections made to the social status of the Irish in early America, who were not considered white.

When I teach Omi and Winant’s Racial Formation Theory/the concept that race is a social construct co-constituted by various social and political factors that evolve over time, I do this through the lens of whiteness before I discuss any other racial groups. This framing resonates more with my white students and everyone else because we do not often discuss the histories of how, in early America, some groups — Jewish people, Irish and Italian immigrants, most Eastern Europeans, etc., were not initially considered white when they came to America.

When I lived in Illinois, I used the story of Chicago’s immigrant communities as a teaching aid and cultural touchstone because so many students can trace their family history back to these immigrants or are familiar with Irish culture because they grew up in Chicago. We read things like this New Yorker piece, “Noel Ignatiev’s Long Fight with Whiteness” [Noel Ignatiev is the author of How the Irish Became White (1995)], and watch videos in class like this one:

(My apologies in advance for how the host mispronounces Illinois, I know that makes natives cringe)

Now that I’m teaching in New Jersey, I talk about it through the stories of Irish and Italian immigrants who came through Ellis Island and landing in the tenements of lower Manhattan. I do a virtual field trip to Tenement Museum and because it’s a media class we watch (and analyze) some “Sopranos” episodes, like this one:

Many students are a little taken aback by this approach especially those who identify as Irish, Italian, and white, because most have never heard this history. I remind them that that erasure is by design. To assimilate into whiteness, you have to completely shed whatever was there before and (some) white folks have done this so well, they don’t even grow up learning that they were ever anything else but white.

As Black folks, our physical features (skin tone, shape of nose and lips, hair texture, etc.) have barred the vast majority of us from this kind of assimilation but as outsiders we’ve always clocked it. When Black folks fled the South en masse for Chicago and the rest of the midwest during the Great Migration, we ended up renting in areas with high Jewish, Italian, and Iran populations. That close proximity fostered a passing familiarity (that Black spaghetti didn’t come from nowhere!) but in some cases that familiarity bred contempt especially when it came to the workplace (both before and after slavery’s abolition). We often fought over the same scraps and the white power structure pit us against each other over and over again. All of us were racialized.

Now I’m not drawing a false equivalency here between anti-Black racism and so-called “cultural racism” against the Irish people who were slightly elevated above us in the racial hierarchy, I’m just saying that they were racialized as “other” in a different way.

Like consider the “simianization” of Irish caricatures in the late 1800s/turn of the century:

[Source]

Stereotypical tropes of “Paddy” (a slur for an Irish man) and “Bridget” (a stereotypical representation of an Irish woman) featured harsh stereotypes. “Paddy” was a violent drunkard who has an affinity for trouble. Hence why police vans in early America were offensively nicknamed “paddy wagons.” Bridget was big, brute and angry. Both stereotypical caricatures were depicted as apes. Coincidence? No.

The typical first step of dehumanization is rationalizing why a person is sub human, perhaps by comparing them to an animal. Hence the antisemitic tropes about Jewish people as “vermin” and that they would “contaminate the pure white race.” Or the simianization of Black folks. Dehumanizing language or animal-like caricature often lays the groundwork.

I read the film as being about the pursuit of freedom from white supremacy and racism, something that the Remmick character knows something about which is why he tries to lure the Black folks into his vampire cult of “fellowship and love.” Vampires are tricksters who know how to appeal to someone’s sensibilities to get them to befriend them or “let them in” (literally and figuratively).

Remmick knew (from experience) the purpose of the juke joint. Not only was it a space for joy, but he intuitively knew that the Smoke Stack Brothers were trying to make money and be free with their people. They wanted to foster a little bit of joy and freedom outside of the harsh living conditions, but at the same time they wanted to monetize it. Remmick’s pitch was all about empathy and getting “what they all really wanted” love, fellowship, and freedom from white supremacist racism. His entire pitch to them is one of empathy— Remmick expressed that he knew what it’s like to work in harsh conditions for little pay because that was the plight of the Irish too in early America. The haunting song “Picked Poor Robin Clean” is about starvation and poverty so dire that a person kills small birds to feed his family.

When I was a kid, my granny would tell me about people who ate water rats in Mississippi. Like most things my elders from the country tell me, I didn’t initially believe her. That is, until I read Quincy Jones’ memoir, which opened with him talking about catching and eating water rats. I later learned more about the history of impoverished eating practices in America. There’s a reason all those folks in the South still have those recipes for cooking raccoons.

Remmick’s deceit is obvious in the light of the historical understanding of Black Irish relations in early America. Particularly how Irish folks did not engage in solidarity but rather chose to lean into anti-Black racism as a mechanism to distance themselves from Blackness and ascend into whiteness.

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After leaving the theater I sat with the eerie presentation of race in this film. The first truly scary scene is the sight of the three white people appearing at the juke joint door in the cover of night, in the middle of the woods in 1930s Mississippi is actually terrifying in and of itself. No vampire backstory required. If three white people knocked on my door in the middle of the night right now, my stomach would drop into my shoes and there’s no amount of “nice and friendly” that could subvert that for folks who have been socialized to be fearful of white intentions. Especially not in the 1930’s American South.

I’m bracing myself for weeks of listening to reductive takes on this film. I’ve already seen folks draw on themes of “cultural appropriation” or “why we can’t trust allies,” reminders to me that film readings tightly reflect one’s own personal ideological lens—not necessarily the filmmaker’s intent or the text’s full complexity. Art is inherently polysemic, and while critiques of power dynamics are vital, reducing a layered work to a single interpretation often flattens its potential for dialogue. This goes for me too.

If the film is, as I understood it, primarily about seeking freedom from white supremacy and racism. Then the film provides insightful commentary of where freedom is and where it is now. Mary seeks freedom through “passing” or assimilation but is miserable because she can’t be who she is or be around the people she loves. Preacher Boy’s father finds it through religion and offers the same to his son, but he finds joy in his art and wants to make music. The Smoke Stack brothers seek it out in Chicago only to find that the big city is just another Mississippi up north, commenting that “Chicago ain’t nothing but Mississippi with skyscrapers.” So they hatch a plan to find it via Black Capitalism, only to be foiled by the plantation money. The next routes for freedom are through death and ascension to heaven (which one of the twin brothers chooses) or the hell on earth that Remmick tries to sell (the trap that the other brother fall into). They search for happiness everywhere but at the end (in the mid credit scene set in 1992) they recount that the only time any of them ever new freedom was during that infamous day, when they were all in community, working together to build something.

For me, the message was that freedom can’t be found in a place, a bottle, or a bank account, it’s found in the fleeting moments of love, joy, community and solidarity. The biggest hinderance to community not the people themselves but white supremacist racism and individualism.

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Also found this film review that touches on the solidarity angle. It also introduces some thing I didn’t know about the connection between the Choctaw and Irish folks. Fast forward to 22 minutes:

I have so many thoughts about Ryan Coogler’s new film, Sinners, that I couldn’t get everything in one post, so I guess this is the first entry in a miniseries now. For me, the film was about searching for freedom from white supremacy and the limited opportunities in the early 20th-century South. Each character sought freedom in various ways: Mary through assimilation into whiteness, the Preacher through religion. However, true freedom proved to be elusive for all, even the twin brothers Smoke and Stack (played by Michael B. Jordan), who first saw freedom through escape to Chicago and now sought it through the myth of Black capitalism.

Anyway, in this piece, I focus specifically on the reverberations of historical exploitative microcurrencies such as plantation cash (which foiled the plans of the Smoke Stack brothers in Sinners) with contemporary forms such as cryptocurrency. While it’s certainly true that all money is a socially constructed ideal, and in that regard, crypto is as real (or imagined) as federal currency, the difference comes in how the money is backed and the level of investment in the mythology that undergirds each.

And there are spoilers, so bookmark this for later if you plan to watch the film.

In Sinners (2025), one of the characters played by Michael B. Jordan said something my father used to tell me every day before I went to school-- “Don’t take no wooden nickels.” Although I heard this almost every day of my young life, it wasn’t until Smoke (or Stack?) said it that I ever even considered that “wooden nickels” were more than just a figure of speech. The term clearly conjures up a notion of fake money, false promises, or items that appear valuable but are ultimately worthless. I recognized the phrase as my dad’s way of telling me to stay alert, stay on your toes, be aware. I never considered that this was also something he may have passed on to me because he grew up hearing it, too. I never considered wooden nickels in any literal sense.

This ignorance came despite the fact that I love the little coins they give you when you check into the Moxy hotel. The circular tokens with the hotel’s name engraved on them entitle the holder to a free drink at the bar. I know that I’m ultimately paying for this “free drink” in the hundreds of dollars I’m spending on my overall hotel stay, but it gives me an excuse to visit the “cool” bar in the lobby. I also know that I can’t go to the bar down the street and use the token because, outside of the context of the Moxy, the token has no value, just like those leftover Chuck E. Cheese tokens and tickets that we brought home as kids could never be redeemed for cash, only for prizes that were tantamount to junk in retrospect.

Though these tickets and tokens are trivial examples for such a serious topic, I use them because they help underscore the ridiculous premise of these microcurrencies that were presented to Black folks with few other options but to participate. [See the cruel and unevenly enforced vagrancy laws and Black codes that had all of Delta Slim’s homeboys on the chain gang]. I also use these trivial examples because these are sites where we typically encounter “wooden nickel” -like economies today-- in low stakes places where you kind of know you’re not only getting something for free, are likely paying much more for it than you would it other currencies, but you’re getting some secondary satisfaction out of it-- an excuse to hit the bar for a “free” drink at a “cool” hotel or the entire experience of game play and take home toys or prizes as a child.

Wooden nickels and plantation cash are not the same thing. Wooden nickels might have been used as souvenirs or issued by banks as notes, but they also recall a time prior to the FDIC and federal currencies where money took on a lot of interesting forms.

Sinners reminds us about how plantation cash was used during the era of sharecropping as yet another mechanism to keep black Americans tied to specific plantations as laborers. Plantation cash was paper, notes, or wooden or tin coins that were branded and could only be used at the plantation that issued them. So imagine if the Moxy hotel or Chuck E. Cheese were your employer, landlord, grocer, etc., and paid you in wooden tokens that were only redeemable for their products. Yes, you could trade the currency locally with friends and neighbors for other goods they produced, like how prisoners sometimes use cigarettes as currency. However, in either case, the “money” is worthless outside these microcurrencies' context.

I first learned about the existence of “plantation money” when I visited the Whitney plantation outside of New Orleans some years ago with my husband. In school, we learned about sharecropping as an alternative economic system to slavery that was equally exploitative. From my understanding, then, Black sharecroppers operated under an exploitative system where they leased all necessary farming equipment annually. After selling their harvest and settling accounts, they would typically owe their entire earnings-or even fall into deeper debt—to the landowners or merchants who provided the supplies. It was a predatory practice that afforded black folks only a semblance of freedom. Laborers earned a wage and had free will to buy whatever they wanted, albeit at marked-up prices, from the same person who paid their “wages.” Plantation currencies assured that money would continue to circulate within the community. It also prevented sharecroppers from ever acquiring enough transferable wealth to leave the plantation altogether. As the Smoke Stack brothers made clear, participation in this economy entrapped people.

The Whitney plantation store was built in the 1890s and sold everything from medicine to groceries to clothes on a credit system, and more importantly, at extremely inflated prices. The store was burned down in 1968 after news of Martin Luther King’s assassination reached the plantation workers. At the time, it wasn’t a surprise to me to learn that plantations still operated well beyond the abolition of slavery. My father, after all, who was born in 1942 in Waycross, Georgia, told me so many stories about picking cotton on the plantation in what would’ve been the 1950s. As a child, I thought he was making up because in my mind, plantations went away when slavery went away, but that was simply not true. My father talks about picking cotton as a form of day labor. He said that folks would come by in trucks transporting workers to the fields. Once there, they would pick as much cotton as they could, which would, in turn, be sold to the plantation owners. I wish my dad were here now so I could ask him if he got paid in cash or a local micro currency like the plantation money in Sinners, but his little morning saying “don’t take no wooden nickels” reminds me of how not-so-far-removed he (and I?) were to a time when “wooden nickels” were primary currency for people.

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Look away, Dixie Land.

There is no official consensus on where the term Dixie land comes from, but my favorite story is the one that centers on the Citizen Bank of Louisiana in New Orleans’ French Quarter. In the pre-Civil War period, when we didn’t have a national federal currency yet, it was pragmatic for banks to distribute paper notes rather than gold specie, which the banks only had in limited supply. The paper notes worked just fine as long as confidence in the bank’s currency remained high.

The Citizen Bank of Louisiana issued a paper note with the word Dix on it, which was the French word for “ten.” Colloquially, the paper notes became known as “Dixie’s.” So the story goes that Dixieland originally referred to Louisiana, where the Dixie note was prominent, and later used to refer to all of the South.

The Dixie was a strong currency among other currencies from smaller banks, because the Citizen Bank of Louisiana was a “property bank.” This meant that their funds were backed by not only gold specie (solid gold coins) but the many plantations and enslaved people they “owned.” Both the land and the people were considered property that could be leveraged as collateral if needed. In pre- and post-Civil War days, trust in the exploitative practices of slavery and sharecropping on plantations was highly trustworthy. Similar to how banks used paper notes as currency, plantations issued their own paper notes that held meaning but only in the context in which they existed. There was no property backing the plantation money or gold specie. However, trust in the boss’s money was high because folks knew the tokens were redeemable at the boss’s stores and amongst locals in the community, if they weren’t redeemable anywhere else.

Blind faith in currency is necessary because a piece of paper is generally worthless unless we have affixed meaning to it. This reminds me of a key point in the book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Yuval Noah Harari attempts to articulate what makes humans distinct from other species. He argues that many people will say it’s our ability to communicate or something like that. Still, he refutes this by arguing that other species are able to communicate audibly as well, albeit on a less complex level. Instead, he argues that what makes humans distinct is our ability to mobilize large-scale networks of others through communication and our unique capacity to imagine. We can not only build and create things in the physical world, we build and create things in the realm of the imaginary. We can also persuade others to go along with these mental constructions as well. Harari uses the example of an LLC or a limited liability company as a way to illustrate how a concept can become a reality, though not tangible. If I organize a business via an LLC and you sue it, you’re not suing me, you’re suing the company-- the imaginary entity that shields me from liability. But where is the actual company? The business is tangible-- it has products, workers, records, etc., but what is a company?

Many other social constructs have traveled down through time and space to meet us where we are. Because they’re so ubiquitous, we tend to believe they are immutable or unchangeable elements of society. The notion of race and racial difference is a primary example. Race is a socially constructed ideal, or a story that white Europeans in power told repeatedly and indoctrinated people into so that they would fall in line with the racial hierarchy that positions them at the top. Eugenicists tried for years to prove a biological basis for race, but to no avail. It’s an idea. However, it’s an idea that has been so embedded into society that it becomes real-- but it only becomes real because of the massive buy-in.

American currency today is backed by the Federal Reserve— a collection of 12 banks that are responsible for controlling our economic system in the United States. I’m sure there’s some ultra-technical way that I could describe how and why we trust it. Still, aside from this unwavering trust, it is an opaque system of paper money in digital numbers exchange that works because we are all invested in it. Like I think about this a lot… I work around the clock, and my job sends a note to my bank twice a month that changes some digits in my accounts. Now, I can use that to purchase things such as food, shelter, and housing.

Now I’m not trying to conflate Dixie bank notes, plantation money, Moxy drink tokens, and USD because they all operate in very different micro and macro economies. I just want to highlight their major differences: context, mythology, and trust. When I think about ephemeral currencies, I couldn’t help but think about the proliferation of cryptocurrency about a decade ago and the way that it easily exploited so many poor folks because it sold them a myth of financial empowerment and wealth when it was essentially/effectively worthless. Those most susceptible to this scheme were those who had the most trust in the perpetrators of the mythology, the wealthy men who pushed it.

Around 2022/2023, a bunch of studies and news articles123 started coming out about how the cryptocurrency collapse disproportionately impacted Black community members and “investors” in negative ways. It seemed that the creators and earliest investors in crypto made all the money, and then left Black folks holding the bag. In its earliest iterations, white men-- mostly tech bros, libertarians, and the economically-minded class of people heralded cryptocurrency as “the future,” and folks who look up to these people as visionaries believed them.

I remember being in graduate school, trying to explain to an acquaintance that crypto was a glorified Ponzi scheme that operated like the early American “wildcat” banking. Regardless of the technicalities of how crypto is supposed to work (intricacies I don’t care to get into-- but I do understand), I know that all money is only as strong as the buy-in, and the sellers of cryptocurrency were groups of people I didn’t trust. However, the mythology they sold was potent to people who believed in them and the myths of capitalism writ large. Because of the way that patriarchy socializes men to equate their value and self worth with the ability to be good product of capitalism, I would guess that this is why, so many poor men were taken in by the crypto mythology. Either way, it was very clear that there was a push to offload crypto onto young, poor, Black, and Latino people.

I can still remember my stomach turning when I saw the AI young Lebron crypto commercial. It was an undoubtedly cool concept, but the message behind it was sickening.

The Tech bros who made millions off digital assets and now needed to offload them before the value tanked any further found unwitting participants in their scheme— folks who have traditionally been marginalized by the economy and barred from wealth building opportunities. They captured them with the lie of economic empowerment and recruited some of their favorite highly visible trusted messengers to do it.

Snoop Dogg, Jay-Z, Jamie Foxx, Floyd Mayweather, Ghostface Killah, etc. were among the many Black celebrities who peddling digital currencies to Black folks during post-peak times. Jay-Z even held a workshop along with Twitter founder Jack Dorsey called “Bitcoin Academy” for the residents of the housing project in Brooklyn that he grew up, which speaks to the depths of his investment in the mythology of cryptocurrency. The mythology is simple-- this is what the rich people are saying is a good investment, so I trust them. Even though the best financial advice I can give anyway is the reminder that all great wealth is built through calculated exploitation of large groups of people, especially an underclass.

According to Pew Research, by 2021, 25% of Black investors mentioned that they owned cryptocurrency which accounts for the disproportionate impact. Many argued that the issue was just that Black folks were entering the market too late (right before or at it’s peak) and many often invested without being able to really afford it. However, none of this accounts for the intentional marketing toward Black people in 2020/2021. However, it does fit a common trend of racial capitalism-- building wealth by exploiting Black people. A lot of white wealth is built at the expense of Black folks, especially due to historic predatory tactics i.e. redlining, housing clauses, discriminatory insurance companies and their policies etc. White wealth typically comes at the expense of Black folks and to be fair, poor folks in general.

In the year of our lord 2025, when you think every single person on this planet would know better than to invest in cryptocurrency if they don’t have the money to lose, the President of the United States, Donald Trump, announced the release of his own commemorative digital currency $Trump, a meme coin that has been accused of enacted the “rug pull” strategy of digital currency, that is, getting a well known or recognized entity or person (such as Trump) to back the coin and selling it via that hype. After things are sold, the value of the coins taken out.

In the same way that slavery and sharecropping blatantly exploited poor people under various mythos, the crypto trend followed the same pattern. In their transparent mechanisms of exploitation, all three systems-- slavery, sharecropping and offloading of crypto to poor folks-- can be understood as “capitalism with it’s clothes off.” They were just too transparent to anyone with a sober view of how capitalism is dependent on an exploitation of an underclass.

The idea for this practice came shortly after the release of Judas and the Black Messiah (2021), the “biographical” crime drama about the betrayal and assassination of Fred Hampton, the 21-year-old Chairman of the Chicago chapter of the Black Panther Party. Although I enjoyed the film, the best critique of it was encapsulated in a quote from a fellow Bruin alum, George Turner, who said something to the effect of “This movie is like if in 60 years someone made a movie, not about Nipsey Hussle, but about the guy who killed him.” At the time, Hussle’s tragic death was still very fresh in my heart and mind, so this analogy really resonated with me.

The stories we choose to tell and the vantage points we choose to prioritize are so important. Media texts have such a profound capacity to shape or frame how we view history, culture, and politics, and I firmly believe that this power can not and should not be taken lightly. This film is billed as biographical, but what do we make of a biographical film that not only decenters the presumed star but also shifts our animosity from the people who carried out the assassination to the people who look like us who were hired to carry out the sinister plans? Media texts are able to enact these subtle shifts just below our awareness, and that capacity to quietly promote revisionist history is dangerous.

After processing the film, I vented to my friend Kenyada about how Fred Hampton was lost in all of it. At the same time, Jay-Z, who contributed a song to the soundtrack and was involved in the film’s production and marketing somehow (I can’t remember), was, in my opinion, engaged in openly defaming Hampton and his legacy.

In an older song, “Murder to Excellence” (2011) with Kanye West, Jay-Z raps: “I arrived on the day Fred Hampton died, uh/Real niggas just multiply/And they say by 21, I was supposed to die/So I’m out here celebrating my post-demise.” This reference, coupled with other interviews where he talks about the divine timing of his birth and Hampton’s assassination, comes across as Jay-Z alluding to himself as being a continuation of Hampton’s legacy— a crazy proposition if you know as little as the first thing about Fred Hampton’s politics. Hampton, as well as the rest of the Black Panther Party, were staunch anti-capitalists, and Jay-Z is extremely pro-capitalist. Around the same time as this film’s release, Jay-Z infamously mentioned in a Twitter spaces conversation that the term “capitalist” is being used like a “slur” and is akin to the “n-word.” He also tried to tie this presumed “injustice” to social justice issues by making the claim that the term “capitalist” wasn’t used in this defamatory way until Black folks started getting money. Not only is this completely incorrect and ahistorical, it is disrespectful to the words and work of our ancestors. However, the ever-prescient Fred Hampton, at just 21 years old, forewarned us about this phenomenon in his words about why political education is so important:

“There has to be an educational program-- that’s very important. As a matter of fact, it is so important to us that a person has to go through six weeks of political education before we can consider himself a member of the Party, able to even run our ideology for the Party? Why? Because if they don’t have an education, then, they’re nowhere. You dig what I’m sayin’? They’re nowhere; because, they don’t even know why they doin’ what they doin’. You might get people caught up in the emotions of the movement. You understand me? You might get them caught up because they’re poor and they want something. And then if he’s not educated, they’ll want more and before you know it, they’ll be capitalist and before you know it we’ll have negro imperialism.” -Fred Hampton.

We live in a universe where Black capitalists and imperialists not only exist and thrive but also attempt to present themselves as the legacy or continuation of our activist ancestors. They falsely equate racial and social justice with their own wealth-driven insulation from society, trying to convince us that this is the only—or perhaps the best—path to freedom.

My friend Yada reminded me that these kinds of blatant yet popular distortions are why she tries to stay rooted in the words of our ancestors-- whether that be written or verbal. She mentioned having a YouTube playlist of revolutionary Black activists and political thinkers that she watched like TV as another way to stay grounded in reality.

In the wake of the 2025 Super Bowl halftime performance, I am reminded of why this practice is so important. During the show, Gil Scott Heron’s quote “The Revolution Will Not be Televised” was invoked but in a way that was completely counterintuitive to the original meaning. I’m unsure of how Kendrick intended to use it and do not wish to try to interpret it but the quote “The revolution about to be televised. You picked the right time but the wrong guy” doesn’t seem to be related to Gil Scott Heron’s meaning at all. It just seemed like a “powerful” thing to say in a moment of spectacle but I want to leave this video here for folks to sit with his thoughts on the meaning of the phrase:

The invocation and reinterpretation of the quote itself, on the Super Bowl stage, is a reminder of the limits of entertainment spectacle, especially when they’re not coupled with political education/awareness. It’s how a quote gets presented out of context, and then popularized in a way that devalues its intent and original meaning. Some might argue that the use of the word and the remix were symbolic but if “symbolism,” “going over people’s heads,” and “political undertones” is the bar, then the bar is on the floor.

Please don’t get me confused here, this is not a critique of the artist because Kendrick Lamar is going to do what Kendrick Lamar does-- make good music and art within the confines of what’s commercially acceptable. He’s going to edge on a boundary here and there but not rock any political boats. He literally keeps reminding people that he isn’t this person you’re elevating him to be. However, this is meant to open up a conversation about his starved fans who desperately want something to give them hope. They’re grasping at straws with a sanitized, pre-screened, pre-approved Super Bowl show because it’s what they’ve been conditioned to see, acknowledge, and recognize as having political depth.

This gray area is just as dangerous as letting Jay-Z tell you that the deal he cut with the NFL to clean up their image post-Colin Kaepernick was an act of racial/social justice.

A high school friend, Kashif Davis, messaged me about this today:

“We should be collectively boycotting the NFL but that isn’t going to happen.” In response I joked, “This is Jay-Z’s fault. Can’t wait until we get to the point where we can discuss that man’s politics openly.” He responded by saying“Even without Jay Z sports and entertainment is something collectively, we’re just not willing to give up. But I agree we need to get into his and hell Beyonce’s politics or lack there of.”

This resonated with me because I’m certainly guilty of enjoying the things I want to enjoy because why not? My rationale has always been that I just can’t go through this world joyless, I need something. I need the distraction and sometimes, I feel that my awareness of that it is indeed all distraction clears my guilt for engaging in it. Deep down, I know it really doesn’t. But I followed up with an even more pressing question I’ve had on my mind:

“You know I’m going to defend Beyonce here but… serious question… what do we do about all these less than educated artists who truly think they’re making profound political statements? Because I think Beyonce really thinks she’s pulling important/impactful political stunts… Kendrick too with the Uncle Sam Jackson/American flag “subversion” like… is their room to meet artists where they are and bridge that into something real? Because throwing them and their fans away for what they don’t know doesn’t seem to work either.”

I asked this because I exist in so many spaces-- academic spaces where the many of the people who look like me are hostile toward lower class Black folks (whether they openly admit it, realize it for themselves or not), Far leftist spaces where the pressure is real to disengage from the “bread and circus” spectacle of “The Culture Industry” (and for good reason!), and the neoliberals who populate my timeline who often share the same disdain for lower class folks but also engage in the superficial, egocentric “representation matters” brand of politics that’s so vapid its comical.

“I hope that’s clear what I’m asking” I followed up after a beat of thinking.

“I think I get what you’re saying,” Kashif responded. “Fred Hampton, at 21 years old, was able to unite folks with vastly opposing views by finding common ground, and I believe that’s all we need to do. From short and long-term strategic alliances. Even with our own people. I feel like a lot of times its an all or nothing approach when we’re talking about Black liberation.”

We talked more about my frustrations and desire to figure out what this looks like practically. To which my friend responded: “We already got the blueprint. BPP. Just needs revision.”

“You know I kind of hate and love that I always arrive at this answer.”

“Niggaz want something new and fancy lol. We already got something old that works.”

I’ve been told that there is no potential to engage commercial artists in producing revolutionary work/art because of the confines of capitalism but my hearts wants to hold out hope that there is some way. Would love your thoughts on this below in the comments section. -Brooklyne

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As I mentioned in my previous post about New Orleans writing portals, I stopped by the Treme coffee shop to write while my husband went to the Backstreet Cultural Museum for the first time. Afterward, we walked down Treme, a residential street, en route to Louis Armstrong Park. Before we made it to the side gate we spotted some small tables, chairs, and umbrellas in the street, set up like a sidewalk café. My curiosity always gets the best of me, so we headed over to see what was going on. We were greeted by the owner, a Black man, who said he was selling coffee and something called calas.

We had apparently stumbled upon Calas Cafe.

The owner, Brandon Pellerin, described calas as a kind of beignet but insisted they were entirely different. Made from rice and slightly sweet, they had a unique lemony flavor. According to his website, calas are “a rice dish prepared with notes of nutmeg and vanilla, served with lemon curd, pistachio curd, and dusted with a gentle coating of powdered sugar.”

What drew us in, beyond the enticing smell, was the story. Calas, he explained, were made by enslaved African women in New Orleans, who sold them on the streets to save money to buy their freedom or the freedom of their loved ones.

Apparently, the dish was a carryover from the rice-growing regions of Africa where rice was abundant and was:

“Once sold by enslaved women and Creole street vendors, known as ‘Calas Women,’ these delicious treats were a familiar sight in the French Quarter. Carrying covered baskets and bowls on their heads, the vendors would chant, ‘Belle Calas, tout chaud!’ (Beautiful calas, still hot!). It is believed that the earnings helped vendors to purchase their freedom from enslavement. At Calas Cafe, we are celebrating calas not just as a dish but as a symbol of resilience, cultural significance, and a testament to the role it played in history.1”

Brandon explained that the dish had waned in popularity, and he wanted to make sure that its history was not forgotten. And just like that, our little pit stop turned into an unforgettable cultural experience. This is what I love most about New Orleans: the way its culture and history come alive in unexpected moments, transporting you to the past. As the oldest Black neighborhood in America, Treme holds stories in its streets, food, and people.

If you’re visiting New Orleans soon, stop by and taste some history.

Location: 1010 Treme St. (next to Armstrong Park)

Hours: Thursdays to Sundays, 11 AM to 4 PM

Their Instagram page is here @calas_cafe

Also, if you want to learn more about calas from PBS: “Calas The Beignet’s Surprising (And Sweet) Predecessor”

Links to the other stories in this series:

“Notes from New Orleans (Part 1): Writing Portals”

“Notes from New Orleans (Part 2): Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs as Mutual Aid”

I wrote most of this New Orleans series back in November with the intent to release it in batches but the end of the semester got the best of me. I delayed the final touches until December when I scheduled it to post in January. At the last minute, I unscheduled the series. I’m not all the way sure why, but as it turns out, I did so just a few hours before the attack on Bourbon Street. I went to bed on New Year’s Eve and woke up to the news, telling myself I’d repurpose the post at some point. At a more appropriate time. A week later, the fires in my hometown (Los Angeles) started, and I was stuck in doom scroll mode for four days straight.

If all of this isn’t a reminder to stop holding on to my writing and just press send, I don’t know what is… but I’m publishing now because both tragedies have reminded me of something that is at the core of this piece— strong social bonds and mutual aid networks have been and will continue to be extremely necessary for our survival. As we continue to cycle between terrorist attacks, climate catastrophe, and economic collapse, I hope that we don’t wait until tragedy is at our door to lean into these historically beneficial networks.

Last year, I finally accomplished a goal I’d been holding onto for a while: getting my husband to a second line (parade). We’ve been to New Orleans so many times, the first time together being for our wedding, which we held under the Tree of Life in Audobon Park. Our reception was at the nearby historic Opera Guild Home in the Garden District. However, timing was never quite right for the parades which happen almost every Sunday throughout the year. They’re open to anyone who wants to come but you have to be tapped into community to know where to find them from week to week as the hosts and routes change each week.

“Second line” refers to the group of revelers, dancers, and community members who follow behind a parade’s leading band or “first line.” It is a New Orleans tradition rooted in Black culture, so if you’ve seen the folks coming from a wedding holding drinks, umbrellas, handkerchiefs and following the band down the street in an unseasoned, Zombie-like fashion, that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the original tradition, which is what they’re pantomiming and it looks something like what these kids have going on here:

It’s fun, it’s exciting, it’s raucous. There are no rules. My favorite element of the second line tradition is the locals only vibe and the fact that it’s blickity black black. I saw a shirt once that said “Everything you love about New Orleans is because of Black people” and it’s so true! From the music to the food, to the revelry, all of this is rooted in Black culture of the region but so much of it gets watered down to cater to the sensibilities of the tourists and all the people who love New Orleans, but do not love Black people.

The history of second lines is about as Black as it gets. Like most things in New Orleans, the tradition originates from a hodgepodge of cultural influences and regional trends but the most primary historical fingerprint comes by way of the tradition of enslaved Africans in New Orleans, gathering at Congo Square (currently within the confines Louis Armstrong Park) to participate in traditional circle or ring dances they brought over from West Africa. The festivities typically occurred on Sundays-- the one day a week enslaved folks were given time off to party with the free Black folks, many of whom were of Haitian descent. As time went on, the brass band was incorporated into these celebrations, which morphed into two separate music and parading traditions— the somber jazz funerals and the upbeat celebratory second-line parades. Both mirror the respective moods of the occasions and answer the identical call to look toward the brighter days to come. They were also a great way to bring the various classes of Black community together (enslaved Africans, day laborers, free men, etc.) once a week, to foster solidarity and community.

As I mentioned before, on this most recent trip, I spent some time in one of my favorite writing portals in Treme while my husband visited the Backstreet Cultural Museum, which I highly suggest visiting if you want to learn more about the second line tradition. He came back bursting with so many stories from the museum, including the revelation that the social aid and pleasure clubs that maintain the Second Line parade tradition were originally mutual aid groups, providing support and resources to their members in times of need.

During the eras of Code Noir and Jim Crow segregation, Black people were particularly vulnerable to economic exploitation. While many laws dictated where they couldn’t go and what they couldn’t do, none provided them any affirmative freedoms or freedoms to. Code Noir, or Black Codes, was the name for a decree passed by King Louis XIV of France in 1685, which outlined the rights (or lack thereof) of enslaved Africans within the French empire, which at the time, included New Orleans. Under Code Noir, Black people were not only considered property (objects) but were counterintuitively required to convert to Catholicism to save their souls (subjects after all?). The racist laws also codified second-class citizenship for enslaved Africans and provided restrictive guidelines for how others could interact with them.

The Code Noir remained in effect until 1803 when France sold the Louisiana Territory to the United States. Enslavement of Black people continued under American rule, and even after emancipation, via Jim Crow laws—an American variation of the Code Noir, These laws enforced racial segregation and oppression for technically free Black people.

During Jim Crow, Black folks in New Orleans created benevolent societies, or Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs, to meet community needs, i.e., to support the elderly, help during health crises, pay for funerals, etc. This is distinct from the forms of privatized insurance that most of us recognize and rely on today. It was an alternative to the capitalist model of privatized insurance altogether and, contrarian to what pro-capitalist propaganda might want you to believe, it operated just fine.

In the piece I published about the cultural significance of the Nickerson Gardens Housing Project, I mentioned that the property owner, William Nickerson, founded Golden Mutual Life Insurance Company in 1925. At the time, it was the largest and first Black-owned insurance company offering insurance to all people, including Black Americans. Prior to this, he had been run out of Houston for his work as a co-founder of the American Mutual Benefit Association (AMBA), which sold insurance policies to Black Americans when other companies refused. Of course, this was an important feat in Black entrepreneurial history, but it also foreshadowed how Black Americans would come to signify success in capitalistic, individualistic ways. The security of privatized insurance felt like a step in the right direction, but in many ways, it has rendered some more economically vulnerable than ever before. Especially since, we’ve moved away from out communal roots and toward more individualistic mindset. Case in point, the social media talking point of “I’m tired of people starting a GoFundMe every time someone dies.” Many regurgitate talking points like this because they have been desensitized to how callous and uncaring it sounds. Shaming poor people has become so normalized in our society because we’ve been taught to equate poverty to moral failings.

Privatization welcomes the uncaring, unfeeling logic of individualism.

The political assassination of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson called attention to the routine injustice of private health insurance companies who routinely deny claims for life-sustaining procedures and hospital services. In the wake of the California fires, social media was abuzz with discussions of how (just four months ago) State Farm Insurance cut the fire insurance policies of many of the residents in the Palisades neighborhood that was destroyed. Many folks have also called attention to the ways that these are twinned issues-- the privatization of mutual aid and insurance was perhaps not a great idea after all, especially in the era of late stage capitalism, where climate crises are ramping up and so too is the weathering of body and mind that come with laboring under capitalism in toxic environments.

A hundred years before Nickerson offered these policies to Black folks in California or via AMBA in Texas, Black folks in New Orleans figured out a low-cost way to provide a social safety net for themselves via Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs. Whenever a person in the community faced hardship, these groups would come together for the parade to raise money or offer services/resources to those in need. This phenomenon was not distinct to New Orleans or even the United States, where decades later, “rent parties” would become a popular trend in the Great Depression-Era Harlem, New York City. In West Africa and the Caribbean, a similar tradition of rotating savings and credit is called “Susus;” in East Africa (especially Kenya), it’s called “Harambee,” which means “all pull together,” and there are a variety of other cultures both African and not that follow similar mutual aid traditions.

Today, the app GoFundMe is a digital iteration of the Harambee, Susus, rent party, and mutual aid societies. It is the number one crowdfunding platform and has raised millions of dollars for countless causes. Between January 7 and January 14, 2025, GoFundMe raised over $50 million for victims of the Pacific Palisades and Eaton Canyon fires in Los Angeles.

In “Watch Duty: The App Doing What the California Government Can’t,” Monica Sager profiles the Watch Duty app, the “non-profit, nongovernmental organization” that is stepping in “to assist people in California by providing up-to-date and accurate information on the ongoing fire situation” in the absence of a useful, trustworthy government notification system. The current government system falsely alerted the county of Los Angeles to evacuate multiple times over the week. According to its website, “Watch Duty is operated by real people, not machines or crowdsourcing. We are active and retired wildland firefighters, dispatchers, first responders, and reporters. We collaborate in real-time, gather information from official sources, and radio communications to distill just the facts. If an incident we are monitoring has a threat to life or property, we notify the public via the Watch Duty app.Vice President of Operations Nick Russell maintains that the app will always remain free and ad-free, as its main purpose is to keep people safe, not garner profit. Amidst questioning if he would sell the app.

Both of these services represent the crossroads we are at with the promise of technical solutions technosolutionalism and the burden of capitalism, which necessitates profit accumulation for everything. GoFundMe makes its money by taking a small cut of each transaction that happens on the app. Watch Duty is a free service but accepts donations to keep it up and running.

In the wake of the fires, I’m sitting with how our individualistic, capitalist ethos hinders mutual aid and assistance. How police use their absurdly large budgets to stand around and protect evacuated homes from the handful of looters that are alleged to have been targeting neighborhoods. I think about the inability of the government to quickly come to support the victims of these disasters. I think about officials impeding rescue and restoration. I think about the canceled insurance policies, denied healthcare claims, and the cultural shame many experience when it comes to asking for help. I think about the second-line parades in New Orleans.

During the second-line parades, there are typically stops at local social clubs in the community. In the past, people following the parade could go inside and purchase drinks. However, now the parades are so big that even though they still make stops at these social clubs, people typically buy from the numerous street vendors selling everything from alcohol to desserts, to smokes (which we call hot links in Los Angeles) and other street foods like yaka mein (beef noodle soup popular at Creole restaurants in New Orleans). In the same way that stopping in the club, supported local business, buying from these street vendors at the parades, support individual families and folks who do not have physical locations for the small businesses that they run.

I heard two troubling things at the Second Line I went to this past November. The first is that the New Orleans police are starting to crack down on the vendors who sell drinks and other street food at the parades without permits. A reminder that the police’s primary job is to enforce the desires and norms of the capitalist class, whose interest in “order” has more to do with hoarding power and wealth among themselves than individuals wellbeing.

The other point is that my husband mentioned the tour guide claimed much of the history of the second line has been lost, overshadowed by the tradition of turning the event into a "fashion show," which was evident. Attendees are typically super dressed up for the event, which I think is an element of it at this point-- folks want to see and be seen. This isn’t necessarily bad all on it’s own, but again it’s a sign that a few things are getting lost in translation, namely, a beautiful history of communal care.

But I’m still more enamored with the history of why they gather and how money spent with those vendors has kept folks afloat for so long.

Since the election, I’ve seen many memes reminding us that our ancestors have had to do much more with less and under harsher conditions. These reminders are not to shame people for being afraid about what’s to come under a second Trump regime, but a reminder that we will survive it, especially if we lean further into community.

I’ve seen (and reposted) so many appeals for folks to get involved with the community and leave the individualist mindset behind. Being at a second line and experiencing the afterlife of that tradition was a great reminder that we’ve been through some things, we got through some things, and most importantly-- we will get through some things.

Share Echoes of Elsewhere

Photo: Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP file via NBC News

Many of us have played a game called “Mafia,” “Werewolf,” or “Assassin” before. Its rules are simple: A moderator secretly assigns the role of “killer” to two or sometimes more players in the game. The moderator sits out gameplay, but they assure that the killers in the game know who the other killers are by asking everyone to close their eyes, then asking the killers to open theirs to reveal their identity to their secret allies. The game typically cycles between two modes, “night and day.” In night mode, the killers perform certain actions, including “killing” players or eliminating them from gameplay. In day mode, all players discuss and vote to eliminate one person whom they believe is a “killer.” The goal is to eliminate the threat in the group. So, everyone uses reason or logic to deduce who they think the killers are. The “villagers” or the “innocents” win when they successfully identify and eliminate the assassins, werewolves, or killers. The game cycles between night and day until all of the killers have been eliminated or they reach numerical parity with the innocent people.

The game is best played as an immersive experience where there is plenty of downtime for side conversations and lots of group debate. This allows room for the killers to use rhetorical techniques to shake suspicion. For example, side conversations can be used to gain allies. Open group diatribes rationalizing why someone else in the game is the actual killer, double as persuasion. You would think that these diatribes would be a dead giveaway (of course, the killer would want to divert attention from themselves), but in active gameplay, there is so much finger-pointing going on that it all feels natural. I use this game in my classroom to teach about asymmetries of power.

If you have played this game before, you will know that the killers are often never discovered or only discovered later in the game. This is because they have an unfair advantage over everyone else. They have the power of knowledge of who is who and what is what. Therefore they can engage with the game very differently. Without fear of being killed, they can focus on shifting the larger group’s opinion on who the bad guys are to protect themselves. Everyone else is vulnerable because they can’t identify who is a friend and who is a foe. They are constantly being manipulated by people whom they may misrecognize as an ally.

I wish I could bring everyone into my classroom to illustrate how Silicon Valley is running a game of Werewolf on us and winning(!) because of the huge asymmetry in information (and, therefore, power) they hold over all the rest of us. Only they are aware of the full extent of the power of their social media tools, and they are in complete control of them. Since around 2014-ish we have been stuck in a perpetual cycle of political unrest and turmoil in this country, which social media has obviously played a role in. However, as long as we’re playing the game like a villager, getting lost in the rhetoric of the blame game-- it’s the feminists, it’s the government, it’s the Democrats, it’s the Republicans, it’s Trump, it’s Joe Rogan, it’s misinformation-- we can’t quiet the noise and look at the patterns to reveal the true villain.

I’m rushing to get these thoughts on paper before the inevitable announcement comes that Donald Trump (and most likely, Meta) has saved TikTok (as of 3:24 PM on January 19, 2025, TikTok is already back online). All of us know that this is where this is going. The error message that shows up on TikTok when users try to access it in the U.S. is an obvious tell.

But this, too, is a diversion. I see two main talking points on my feed right now in response to the TikTok ban: 1. Donald Trump just wants to take credit for reinstating TikTok (yes, obviously) 2. This ban is not about China having access to our data but about Silicon Valley owning all the big social media platforms (yes, also true). However, I don’t hear people talking about why TikTok is so valuable. The sleight of hand comes in us thinking that the story ends here, but we can go a level deeper.

China’s access to our data is perhaps a serious privacy and national security concern, but only because of TikTok’s instrumentarian power— that is, the power to mine data to manipulate people’s thinking and actions. In The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for A Human Future at the New Frontier of Power (2019), Shoshana Zuboff defines instrumentarian power as the power that undergirds surveillance capitalism. Now, I’m going to try my hardest to distill a 704-page book into a few sentences here, but surveillance capitalism is essentially a new form of capitalism in which the primary resources are not land or labor; they’re data. In this ecosystem, every individual’s behavioral data-- a bunch of seemingly insignificant data points-- who they talk to, where they drive, where they work, what they like, what makes them sad, where they live, where they shop-- is more valuable than other commodities because it can be used or manipulated to coerce people into actions (i.e., buying, voting, etc.), but most importantly it’s doing this by manipulating people’s thinking at an imperceivable level. Most people readily hand over this seemingly insignificant data because they falsely believe that the tech companies can’t do anything with it. This couldn’t be further from the truth.

Now I know how that sounds, and trust me, I’ve spent the better part of the last two years trying to keep my mother off YouTube to no avail. So, I know the uphill battle I face in getting everyone (including you highly educated folks) to understand how these highly sophisticated algorithms operate at a level beyond our human capacity to perceive. And that no matter how smart you are, you’re not smarter than the algorithm working in the background. However, I still have to say it and keep saying it because we’re all at risk. The tech bros have figured out how to manipulate us ideologically, and they aren’t as in control of the tools as you would think they are. I present Mark Zuckerberg’s alleged decline into Far Right toxicity as a prime example. He knows better than anyone else how the algorithms work to shift political ideology, yet he has still fallen prey to them himself. To repurpose the words of Roger McNamee, we’re all about to get Zucked.

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The tech bros don’t want to save us from China, and they don’t simply want to buy it and profit off the app themselves. That’s just a perk. This isn’t about money or fame alone. It’s about power. The Silicon Valley tech bros want to be the only ones who can colonize our attention and our thinking. I can’t put enough emphasis on the thinking part. The power grab happens while we’re being distracted by news stories like “Zuckerberg removes ‘fact-checking’ from his platform.” Y’all, this story keeps me up at night because it is their biggest diversion. The fact-checking never really did much. It was a rhetorical strategy to keep everyone thinking that tech CEOs were addressing the misinformation problem they did not intend to solve. The biggest issue we face with social media is not a lack of media literacy and bottom-up misinformation and disinformation anyway; it is how information is being weaponized against us in echo chambers from the top down. We’re beyond a simple, straightforward debate around facts. We’re at a point where people’s epistemic realities (the way people view the world and take in information) have been dramatically shifted by manipulation of behavioral data via social media and other IOT (Internet of Things) products (i.e., smart refrigerators, smart thermostats, etc.). We don’t need to reverse engineer the algorithm to prove it because the sheer fact that all of us know someone who has taken on some radically illogical niche (probably conservative) ideology is proof enough that something is going wrong. Something is broken, and it might be far off the rails.

If anything, shadow-banning-- the covert policy of tech companies suppressing the spread of certain types of content is more of a concern than mis and disinformation because, again, this happens outside of the view of most people, and it’s happening intentionally. The Silicon Valley tech bros have the sole power to choose to shadow-ban leftist ideology (which many claim they’re already doing… and I would agree). Why? Because leftist ideology is like the rare villager who figures out the patterns of the werewolves and tries to expose them.

Meta and Google run the biggest monopoly in American history-- a monopoly of behavioral data and information. This control is maintained by extensive lobbying of the U.S. government and very carefully laid rhetoric that redirects attention any time the werewolves come up in a negative light, i.e., the genocide Facebook caused in Myanmar was met with claims of ignorance: “We had no idea something like this could happen.” This was even after they watched it happen and ignored calls for help from experts on the ground in Myanmar; the proven fact that Facebook data was mined to produce targeted ads that were, in turn, manipulated to win an election for Donald Trump in 2016 has been completely glossed over in mainstream media. Most people don’t even know that this is something that undoubtedly happened; the mental health crisis that plagues American teenagers today has resulted in the proposition of a teenage-only Instagram that will undoubtedly have the same issues as before because the teens themselves produce the harmful content. They’re suffering from social comparison, not child predators.

This technique of diversion, which Zuboff defines as dispossession, was perfected by Google in its decades-long venture into trying to reach totality in collecting data and information. For example, Google Books was marketed as a library for all, but we now know this was used to train the large language modeling systems that now power Google Search and AI. As a college professor, I’m witnessing undergraduate students outsource their thinking to these products because Silicon Valley rhetoric has convinced them of their magical capabilities. These plagiarism machines fail often, especially when it comes to nuance or subjugated knowledge. They also severely impede a person’s ability to think because, as I learned in school, “writing is thinking,” and these tools eliminate the process of piecing things together for yourself and sell the theft back to you as “convenience.”

When you read the TikTok ban through this longer lens of power, you see that it’s so much bigger than Trump’s play for praise when he inevitably restores TikTok. It’s so much bigger than debating whether TikTok was a threat to privacy or national security. It’s so much bigger than Zuckerberg just wanting a new product in his portfolio. It’s about keeping our information ecosystems closed and primed for the inevitable continuation of the artificial amplification of Far Right ideology. The worst thing we can do is sit around and try to explain away everyone’s descent into the Far Right. Snoop Dogg isn’t performing at Trump’s inauguration because he’s broke or because he’s being blackmailed; he’s just adjusting his sails to the changing winds of the consensus within his social class. When Jay-Z, who has already reprimanded us for using “Capitalist as a slur,” follows suit, we shouldn’t be surprised either. Everyone is susceptible to coercion when they haven’t properly outfitted themselves with the armor of information. If you paid attention to their political beliefs, these guys were always one step away from the Far Right rabbit hole. On top of that, the trap was lined with the seemingly harmless bait of masculinist rhetoric (but that’s a story for another day).

For answers, we need to look to the source of the political confusion and social upheaval, and all signs point to the places where we get our information: Elon Musk was painfully transparent about why he spent a small fortune to purchase Twitter, and it wasn’t about making money, because Twitter makes far less money than it used to. He bought it because he wanted to fight the so-called “woke mind virus.” White conservative’s way of describing leftist ideology and progressive thinking. During the 2024 U.S. Presidential election, the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post announced that for the first time in its history, it wasn’t going to endorse a candidate. This is likely because the left-leaning editorial staff would’ve probably endorsed Kamala Harris, whom Bezos opposes because of her proposed platform of regulating the tech industry. Just a few weeks ago, Zuckerberg appointed Dana White, the head of the UFC and Donald Trump’s close friend, to the board of Meta. These aren’t coincidences. These are signs of a realignment of power and class solidarity that’s happening amongst the billionaire class who doesn’t want to be left out of what’s next.

And what is next?

A couple of months ago, I participated in a faculty research symposium where I talked about my work, which I love doing but is sometimes difficult because there are so many moving pieces to the puzzle of racialized disinformation. At this panel, a woman asked me a question that I hear often about where I think the problem lies, and she brought up Russia as a possibility. I told her that, while I acknowledge the long history of Russia interfering with our information ecosystem and especially the way they’ve targeted Black American media specifically over and over throughout the past century, we don’t actually have to go that far back or that far away. We can look at the very recent history of the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica, whom we know Trump hired to win him that election in 2016. It wasn’t stolen, it was purchased.

I wrote a little bit about this in a two-part series called “The Artificial State,” but the TLDR is that while using computer science and data to refine political marketing messages is an old practice (it’s been around for more than 60 years), the tools that we have available to do this now are more powerful than ever before. Beyond their uncanny ability to predict which messages will resonate the most, computer scientists have figured out how to coerce people into action. Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Christopher Wylie details the secret sauce to his highly coercive algorithms in M*ndf*ck: Cambridge Analytica and the Plot to Break America (2019) and most notably refers to the tools as “ideological weaponry.” This is an important analogy to draw because these tools, originally conceptualized and deployed via the military against other countries, have (since 2014-2016 ish maybe longer) been inverted and redirected to ourselves domestically. They’re being used in ways that impact much more than how we vote or don’t vote, as was the case of the highly successful anti-Hilary Clinton Super Predators talking point that very successfully kept many Black folks from voting for her in the 2016 election. It’s about how we think. And it’s increasingly hard to think in a space with so much noise. This is especially true when you are aware of how learning happens.

Everyone wants to think of themselves as smart or a free thinker, but the reality is that a lot of learning happens through social learning or imitation of what’s going on around us. It’s how babies learn how to talk or how our parent’s political beliefs often rub off on children until they get out of their hometowns, go to college, and start reading books. It’s why 74 million people are so utterly convinced that Donald Trump cares about them and their issues and will save us from the “evil Democrats” because all their friends in their social media echo chambers do, too. The psychologists would call this logical bias the “false consensus effect,” the cognitive bias wherein people believe that everyone thinks the same way they do, or that their beliefs are normal and competing beliefs are abnormal. Alarmingly, the tech bros have figured out how to hardwire the false consensus effect and other logical fallacies.

We keep looking for the problems outside of the country, when the call is coming from inside the house. In Werewolf, Mafia, Assassin, or whatever you want to call the game, the bad guys always reveal themselves in transparent moves, but the villagers fail because they second-guess themselves when things are “too obvious.” Sometimes, you have to call a wolf a wolf.

“If you can control a man’s thinking you do not have to worry about his action. When you determine what a man shall think you do not have to concern yourself about what he will do.” - Carter G. Woodson, The Mis-Education of the Negro (1933)

“This is not for lyricists, I swear it’s not the sentiments/Fuck a double entendre, I want yall to feel this shit/Old soul, bitch, I probably built them pyramids/ducking strays when I rap battled in the Nickersons/Where you from? Not where I’m from, we all Indigenous” -“Wacced Out Murals,” Kendrick Lamar

I think it’s because of the cadence in this portion of the song, but it inspired me to write what follows— a random post about the hallowed ground of the Nickerson Gardens Housing Projects in Watts, CA. After seeing the viral news story on social media about Rodney Nickerson dying in his bed in his Alta Dena home after refusing to evacuate, I thought to share it.

Nickerson, 82, was the grandson of William Nickerson, the founder and owner of the Nickerson Garden Housing Project in Watts, where my family lived when they were transitioning from Mississippi to California.

For the past few days, Los Angeles city and county have been battling devastating fires compounded by a wind event that has exacerbated the destruction. The Palisades Fire has received the lion’s share of media attention, and for good reason— it will go down in history as the fire that caused the most structural damage in Los Angeles history. It also impacted an iconic wealthy neighborhood on the shore of California where many celebrities live(d). However, the equally devastating Eaton Canyon Fire that ravaged Alta Dena is worthy of attention as well, albeit for different reasons. It’s desecrated one of the oldest historically Black working-class neighborhoods in the L.A. area.

I’ve just been sitting here thinking about this man dying in his home and what his thought process might have been when it came to not evacuating. This was a home he bought in 1968, and in it, he bore witness to countless natural disasters and upset in the city— the uprising in 1992, the Eaton Canyon fire of 1993, the earthquakes in 1971 and 1994, as well as countless other quakes, wildfires, El Ninos, and Santa Ana wind threats. I don’t know this man, but I can hear him saying, as his daughter Kimiko reports “If I need to go I’ll go, but I don’t need to go right now” and “I’ll be here tomorrow.” It’s haunting. I know there are folks who will rush to pathologize him for being stubborn or ignorant, but I think his words and his tragic death speak to the depths of denial about what’s happening in Los Angeles that we’re all experiencing.

If you're not from California or have not lived there for a significant amount of time, you may not understand how unprecedented these fires are. I lived in Los Angeles most of my life and have never seen a fire cause so much structural damage to the people who live in the city. Most often, wildfires happen “out there,” not “over here.” Meaning, that they happen in areas that are unfamiliar to most L.A. residents-- out on the outskirts of the city or county where there's a lot of dry brush and forest area. Usually, these fires do not take things that are familiar to the city folks. This fire feels different because there are so many happening at once and also because it's consuming the familiar.

*deep sigh*

Again, what follows is about Nickerson Gardens, and was written a while back and unrelated to the fires. It’s more a snapshot of L.A. history and the significance of Black Spaces in Los Angeles but I hope you enjoy it as we all continue to reckon with what is lost when buildings go.

I know I’ve made being from Los Angeles my entire personality, and this can be really annoying for some people but I think it’s extremely important to note that I’m aware, and I really don’t care how anyone else feels about it. I love my hometown and am unapologetically enthusiastic about the things I love. I feel like one of God’s biggest blessings over my life was my grandmother deciding that she could not handle the cold in Detroit and needed to move back to Mississippi. Unlike her sister Kate, who stuck it out and lived in Detroit for the rest of her life with her children (my aunts and uncles), my granny Mae was free to try out a new city. That freedom and willingness to start over brought her to Compton, CA, in 1963 and shortly thereafter to Watts, California, and its Nickerson Gardens Housing Projects by 1964. This simple decision meant that a couple of decades later, I got to grow up between South Central Los Angeles and Inglewood, CA. Honorable mention to my daddy for figuring out how to make it out west from Waycross, GA (a story for another day).

“The Nickersons,” as they’re colloquially called, is the largest housing project ever built in Los Angeles, CA. Despite what anyone might try to say about its reputation today, it’s important to acknowledge that The Nickersons are hallowed ground as far as I and many other Black Angelenos are concerned.

The Nickersons were built as transitional public housing by the Texas-born Black businessman William Nickerson and designed by the renowned Black architect Paul R. Williams. The housing project officially opened in March 1954 as an experimental solution to the “problem” of insufficient housing for the influx of Black folks to L.A. from the south during the second wave of the Great Migration (1940-1970). The housing crisis was contrived of course— many L.A. neighborhoods had housing covenants that restricted black people from renting or buying in the area. William Nickerson envisioned his housing project as an easy place for Black folks to live while figuring things out.

The names affiliated with the housing project-- William Nickerson and Paul R. Williams-- signified the promise of life in Los Angeles for migrants from the South-- it was rumored that opportunities beyond the restrictions of the Jim Crow segregated South were abundant there. William Nickerson, the namesake for the housing project, was a prominent businessman himself and a testament to this. He owned and operated Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Company -- the largest black-owned insurance company west of the Mississippi and the first in the city to offer insurance to all people, regardless of race. At the time, many insurance companies across the country either did not sell policies to Black people or, if offered, did not honor them in instances of need.

Nickerson started Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Company with some of his business friends after relocating to Los Angeles. The Prairie View alum from the Coldspring, Texas area, came because his early success as a cofounder of the American Mutual Benefit Association (AMBA) put him on the radar of the local white power structure. AMBA made a small fortune selling insurance policies to Black Americans when other insurance companies refused. And although white folks were unwilling to sell to Black folks, they didn’t like the idea of Black folks setting up their own businesses either. They certainly didn’t like Nickerson using his money to start other business enterprises like the Houston newspaper he established (the Houston Observer) and the publishing house (Informer Publishing Company). Local Klan members communicated their disdain with a burning cross planted in his front yard, and Nickerson took that as good a sign as any to pack up his belongings and move out west to the seemingly more liberal California.

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The second name associated with “The Nickersons” is Paul R Williams, the first certified Black architect west of the Mississippi. Unlike Nickerson, Williams happened to be born in Los Angeles, but he also shared a migrant history, as the rest of his family had come to L.A. from Memphis right before his birth in 1894. They came to start a fruit business but it failed. Later, both of his parents passed away of illness. Despite ending up in foster care, Williams was eventually adopted and went on to study architectural engineering at USC, graduating in 1919. He would go on to have a remarkable career in which he became known as “Hollywood’s Architect,” building homes and other structures for many stars, including Frank Sinatra, Desi Arnaz, Lucille Ball, Cary Grant and many others. I think he might be perhaps best known for designing the LAX Theme Building -- the “futuristic” looking structure in the middle of LAX airport. His career flourished despite many people telling him that no one would hire him because he was Black and that there was not enough rich Black clientele to support his career. They were wrong.

Again, for Black folks newly arrived to Los Angeles in the 50s and 60s, these two men signified what was possible “out west.” Their names welcomed generations of folks who just wanted to make a decent living without dealing with the burden of racism pulling at the threads of everything they cobbled together.

Like Nickerson, my great-grandfather, affectionately known as “Daddy Carr,” had moved to Los Angeles from Mississippi for similar reasons. As a skilled blacksmith and small business owner, his poor white neighbors didn’t take too kindly to his success, but Daddy Carr didn’t wait for the cross to appear in his yard. He sensed the changing tide after a white neighbor came over to hire his daughters (Granny Mae and Aunt Kate). As I’m told, the neighbor didn’t like Daddy Carr’s response, “My girls don’t work.” Daddy Carr took that hostile exchange as his sign that it was time to go. He had an offer in hand to move out west to work on one of the ranches in the San Fernando Valley, out near Los Angeles anyway. Apparently, some white guys needed some good “cowboys” to train and tend to the horses that were used in film and television productions.

Like Paul Revere Williams, Daddy Carr was highly skilled. He may not have had an engineering degree from USC, but his skills as a blacksmith warranted him not only a job on a ranch servicing the movie studios but also an appearance on a television show (I so wish I could remember the name right now). He also got a short write-up in Ebony Magazine about the prop cars he designed for movie sets, that could “crash” on demand and like a transformer, reassemble after a string was pulled.

At the time, Compton, CA, was an affluent area in Los Angeles. Former President H.W. Bush, his son George W. Bush, and former first lady Barbara Bush, once called Compton home (in 1949). It was situated south of downtown L.A., and near Central Avenue-- a long pathway spanning from DTLA (downtown) to Compton. The street became the epicenter of Black life in Los Angeles.

Central Avenue was where many of the Black businesses were located. The Hotel Somerville (later The Dunbar Hotel) for instance, was built explicitly to house attendees of the 1928 west coast convention for the NAACP by Dr. John Alexander Somerville (USC alumni may recognize the name). It was erected at a time when no other hotels in Los Angeles would house Black people and was ultimately frequented by every Black celebrity of the day who visited L.A. (i.e. Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Lena Horne, Billie Holiday, etc.). It was also once known as “Little Harlem” because it was the west coast center for Black culture and life, especially Jazz music in the 1940s and 50s. It was home to the Central Avenue Jazz Festival and the Cavalcade of Jazz-- the largest outdoor jazz entertainment event at the time which was held at the long gone Wrigley Field. Nickerson’s Golden State Mutual Life building’s original headquarters were on Central and the 27th Street Bakery was not too far away. Most people today won’t recognize the name, but they will know their infamous sweet potato pies, which are sold all over Los Angeles at places like Ralphs and Louisiana Fried Chicken. And of course, Nickerson Gardens, was erected on Central in Watts.

Daddy Carr and Mama Carr stayed all the way down off the southern end of Central in Compton because the neighborhood was zoned for farmland (and still is to this day!). So they could keep their animals with no issue. The Nickersons were not far away.

Like any small child, my mother marks the time of her relocation from West Point, Mississippi, to Compton, CA, years later by the punctuation marks of certain earth-shattering life events that stood out in her young brain-- Mama Carr’s seemingly terminal illness, which brought Mae (her mother, my grandmother) and Kate to her bedside in Compton, California; and the following summer when Mae sent for her and her 8 siblings. She also clearly remembers a few months into the move, when President JFK was assassinated.

1963 was undoubtedly just the beginning of an extremely tumultuous decade in the lives of every American, but for Black Americans in general and my family specifically, it was a mixed bag-- things got worse, but at the same time, things were also getting a lot better. Please don’t get me wrong, conditions for Black Americans were mostly deplorable, and racism and poverty were ravaging Black communities, but folks had hope that things were changing and that meant something.

At some point, my granny had to find somewhere for her family of 11 to live. They couldn’t stay in Mama Carr’s home in Compton forever. While she scrounged up enough money for the down payment on a house, they temporarily moved to The Nickersons in nearby Watts. My mother barely remembers her time there, but says it was mostly good. The worst part being the uprising in 1965 because she had never experienced anything like it.

My grandmother was actually standing out on the street when the traffic incident that sparked the uprising occurred. I can’t tell how much of her eyewitness account is what actually happened or the rumors that were circulating on the street that day but the entire incident was a reminder that things in L.A. weren’t always so sweet.

Like the housing projects that were developed in major cities all over the country to accommodate migrating Black families, the projects worked for many at one point but ultimately created some unforeseen consequences. As an article from the Paul R Williams Project explains:

“The original intent of both Williams and the Housing Authority in designing and building Nickerson Gardens was to provide low cost, safe, transitional housing… Fifty-years later, it was generally agreed that concentrating so many poor people in a limited area creates a self-contained, isolated ghetto.”

My family was fortunate enough to reside in the Nickersons in some of its best years. For them, the Nickersons lived up to its promise. They were happy to make a home at 1221 E. Imperial (Unit 217) and the 1,065 other units that constituted the 156 buildings on the sprawling 69.6 acre complex provided the same for hundreds of thousands of Black people— their neighbors, those who came before them and after them. Many of whom, in those first decades at least, were brand new to Los Angeles.

My family didn’t live there long, but they were there long enough for my mom to attend 112th Street elementary for a year and complete a semester at Gompers. By the second half of the 7th grade she was enrolled at Horace Mann Middle School which was closer to the home my granny and grandfather purchased on Cimarron Street. When they moved in, they were the first Black family to live on the 8600 block of Cimarron off of Manchester Blvd. (the 5900 block would later be immortalized on film as the neighborhood of Tre, Ricky, Doughboy, and Brandi in the 1991 film Boyz N the Hood).

While writing this, I took a break to call my mom for fact-checking purposes. During our conversation, I asked her if she ever ate at Hawkins Burgers and she asked me how I knew what Hawkins burgers was. I grew up on the west side so the east side is like a taboo for us. Although my mother worked in Watts at King hospital for decades (you may remember it as the hospital Caine went to after he was shot in Menace II Society, 1993) she didn’t do anything else on that side of town and while growing up, I was told in no uncertain terms that I had no business being over there.

She confirmed that she had gone to the original Hawkins Burgers, way back when, before eminent domain demolished all of the houses behind it to construct the 105 Freeway. My mother said she knew the Hawkins family, who had been in the area since the 1930s. Everyone in the neighborhood did. She told me they used to own a funeral home and a few other businesses. She said that the current house isn’t the original structure. A lot had changed in the Nickersons since she lived there in 1964-65.

She described the Nickerson’s to me-- the courtyard in the center, the way the clothes lines were erected behind all of the units. I told her “They’re still there.” “How do you know?” she asked. So I showed her Khalil Joseph’s short film “Until the Quiet Comes,” a visual component to electronic music producer Flying Lotus’ album of the same name. It’s set in Nickerson Gardens.

Via FaceTime, I watched her watch the video in silence. She didn’t really have too many comments afterwards. I also didn’t press her about it. She only lived there briefly and even though she worked around the corner at King Hospital for decades, she never really returned to the Nickersons after the day the family moved out in 1965 just a few short months after the Watts Uprising rocked the city. Considering the fact that she hasn’t been back physically, I’m sure she’s not super interested in going back mentally either. So I let it be but if that complex could talk, the stories I think it would tell.

Thank you to the Nickerson Family. Your family has touched the lives of so many other Black families in Los Angeles and we are mourning this tragedy right alongside you.

With love,

-Brooklyne.

I turn 40 years old in a few weeks, but for the past two months, I’ve been using “40” as my excuse for everything: “I’m in my 40s. I can’t be out here in the cold.” “I’m 40 years old. I can’t be staying up all night.” Whenever I talk like this, someone corrects me, “You are not 40!” with a sly smile, I reply, “But I’m almost 40 though.”

People can’t figure out why I’m so happy about this or why I’m so ready to be older than I am, but this isn’t particularly accurate. I’m actually completely indifferent to turning 40 or getting older. I feel absolutely nothing about it-- neither positive nor negative. I do find it funny that everyone else seems so preoccupied with it, though. What’s the big deal? Chronologically, I’m one year older, so what?

That feeling of not feeling what I think I’m supposed to feel has been with me my entire life [and has also been the subject of many a therapy session]. I used to think something was wrong with me because I had no urge to join in on the chorus of angst about aging, although I may have faked it under social pressure a couple of times. I’ve found that being somewhat oblivious to time and completely at ease with aging has been a surprising source of freedom for me.

Remember when, as kids, many of us naively thought that “by 25,” we’d be “done with school, married, with a kid, and a house?” I was never that kid. I always believed these things would happen when they were supposed to happen, if they happened at all. Perhaps it’s my Christian upbringing (mixed with a touch of ADHD-related time-blindness, of course), but I am a devout believer in the notion that nothing is ever on my time. Everything is always on God’s time.

Age is really just a number to me. It doesn’t speak to anything other than chronology, which your birth date can actually belie! A 40-year-old who exercises a lot might have the health and fitness levels of a 25-year-old; the opposite is true for someone who hasn’t taken care of themselves physically. A 40-year-old who has crossed off most of the things off their bucket list will feel more fulfilled than the person who hasn’t prioritized this at any age, but also… and perhaps most importantly, life doesn’t have to (and shouldn’t) be a checklist!

This birthday season, I’m reminded of an article I read a few years ago— “The Strange Origins of American Birthday Celebrations” by Joe Pinsker for The Atlantic. At the time it really validated a lot of my feelings about the silliness of midlife crises, birthday anxiety, milestone dread-- or any of the other terms we use to describe the apprehension that comes with aging. The article highlights that the concept of celebrating one’s birthday is relatively new and (surprise, surprise) a byproduct of industrialization.

Before people were compelled to flock to cities to toil away on factory floors, birthdays were more of an upper-class elite occasion. Up until the 19th century, most people didn’t celebrate their birthday or even know when it was. Pinsker writes:

“The rise in birthday celebrations was also part of a larger shift in how people conceptualized the passing of time. Clocks in preindustrial America were ‘rare and seldom accurate,’ according to the historian Howard Chudacoff. As the 19th century progressed, the widespread production of household clocks and pocket watches made it possible for Americans to know what time it was constantly. And as more people followed the schedules of factories, streetcars, and trains, they had more reason to watch those clocks.”

In graduate school, I learned that time is a socially constructed (read: made up) ideal created to standardize work periods and train schedules. I took a class called Critical Theories of Race, where we learned and discussed the concept of racial capitalism and its connections to the concept of “modernity” or the “modern way of living, doing, being that is typically characterized by the common sense aspects of life under capitalism.” The professor invited us to think about the world before standardized time or time zones when people moved in alignment with the natural rhythms of nature. Can you imagine? My whole life is on a schedule. There is always a deadline looming. I walk around all day with the trivial yet pressing thought that if I don’t get to that third water bottle by 4 PM, I’m not going to complete that gallon by day’s end. Can you imagine a timeless existence?

Take a second and think about that for a second.

Then, consider the impulse and desire to measure what was once only experienced intuitively.

And there you have science and technology’s origin story-- the unbridled desire to tame and operationalize (or put into operation or use) nature. Both science and technology have been used in the service of capitalism since the Industrial Age, and time standardization is one of the outgrowths of an insatiable desire to increase profits. Fordism is a prime example of how scientific management and technological innovation were applied to maximize efficiency and productivity in the service of capitalism. Fordism revolutionized manufacturing and cemented time discipline as a critical component of profit-driven industrial systems. We don’t turn a critical eye to time enough. At its core, time is fundamental to routinized labor extraction. At the same time, it is also a measuring stick for defining “success” on capitalism’s scales. So, forgive me if I refuse to be emotionally bound to its mythology as I used to be.

Pinkser writes that the birthday cake tradition likely originates from Roman birthday rites. The candles probably a carryover from aristocratic German birthday rites. The rest “are the products of good old Western consumerism” --purchasing and exchanging gifts, throwing over-the-top parties, and assessing your success in terms of chronological time.

Now, I say all of this while planning a ridiculously splashy birthday party in less than three weeks, so take my words with a grain of salt and understand my intention. I fully acknowledge that I’m a part of the problem. However, my aim isn’t to critique birthday celebrations, gift exchanges, or the concept of “milestone birthdays” as much as to highlight the peculiarity of these traditions— to make the familiar strange. When viewed through the long lens of history, publicly marking and announcing your chronological age with a grand display does sound a little strange.

Indeed, as Pinkser highlights, early resisters to birthday celebrations thought the notion of celebrating the date of your birth was “self-centered and materialistic, took attention away from God, and turned children into brats.” These naysayers weren’t completely wrong, especially when considering modern birthday celebrations. Especially those of the past 10 years, which have ramped up due to social media trends. How many pools of flowers spelling out “Happy birthday, XYZ” have you seen in Bali? How many elaborate photo shoots have you seen marking milestones or even in-between birthdays? How many extravagant birthday trips have you been invited to?

And how many people are silently pining over these impracticalities because they’re just out of reach?

More recently, I read Astra Taylor’s The Age of Insecurity: Coming Together As Things Fall Apart (2023), which discusses capitalism’s reliance on various forms of insecurity-- economic/financial, social, personal, etc. to keep all of us working as cogs in the system. At this moment, I am reminded (and reminding you) that the idea of being “behind in life” is a social insecurity that is manufactured by folks who want us to consume our way to youth and happiness. However, in that alternate, timeless, ageless universe’s grip, we all move through life at nature’s pace. We throw parties not to one-up the next but to bring our folks together under one roof for a good time (certainly what I’m hoping to achieve with my gathering).

In this light, maybe living my life off the clock is a cheat code. It’s certainly helped me turn what would otherwise be a Midlife Crisis into a Midlife Chrysalis.

Update: I tweaked a few lines of this on February 4, after my birthday celebration in Los Angeles. It was a chaotic weekend, but I left feeling so full that I got to spend so much time with my friends and family. If you’re reading this and you’re one of those folks, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you!

It’s too easy to step through time portals in New Orleans. On Friday night, my husband and I had dinner at Elysian Bar, tucked in the Marigny neighborhood near Frenchman Street. To get there, we decided to walk from the French Quarter. As we crossed Esplanade Avenue (a dividing line between The French Quarter and Faubourg Marigny), the world seemed to shift. The streets grew darker, quieter, and more intimate, lit only by the flicker of glass street lamps. Their gentle glow cast shadows on the Creole cottages, conjuring an old-world charm that made it feel like we had wandered into another era.

The Elysian Bar resides within the Hotel Peter and Paul, a space of transformation. Once a church and schoolhouse, it now stands restored, its past woven into every corner. I’ve never stayed at the hotel, but a quick glance at the layout of the rooms on the website illustrates exactly what I mean when I say that spaces in New Orleans bend time. Even though the rooms themselves are fairly updated and modern, the website notes that many were originally convent rooms. The history is always lurking in the details of this city.

We didn’t eat in the church (I didn’t even initially realize that was an option) but instead, in a quaint, quiet parlor that reminded us of our wedding reception venue— The Opera Guild Home in the Garden District (another New Orleans time portal). The food was so incredible that I ordered dessert (which I never do)— blueberry milk and cookies— and I don’t even drink milk! All dietary restrictions and my typical reservedness go out the window when I’m in New Orleans. I trust Nola to take me wherever she wants me to go. I think I might have clocked in 26,000 steps on Friday alone, just following her rhythms.

Anyway, this trip was half about attending a work conference and half about attending to my writing. So instead of over planning the trip like I usually do, I asked friends for writing space recos-- vibey coffee shops and co-working spaces. I wanted to step through time-- through history but also into an imagined, yet-to-be-realized future where all I do is write in shadowy, ethereal coffee shops in New Orleans. Here is a brief list of the portals I explored, but specifically the ones that related to my writing adventure.

1. Fourth Wall Nola - Coffee Shop and Event Space (Downtown Nola)

Fourth Wall Nola is housed in the Beaubourg Theatre building, which was built in the 1840s and once housed an Edison photography shop. The owner, a New Orleans art school grad, said he wanted to provide “the things an art-making culture needs besides the venue.” Although Fourth Wall Nola is a coffee shop by day, I noticed signs of its alter ego as an event space at night-- there’s an unattended full bar in the middle of the shop just before you get out to the courtyard. Coffee and wine… definitely two things every writer needs.

2. Treme Coffeehouse - Coffee Shop (Treme)

This wasn’t a new place. It’s the first coffee shop I visited in New Orleans and the one I’ve frequented the most. My mission was to go to all new spots, but my husband wanted to go to the Backstreet Cultural Museum for the first time, and I knew this spot was on the same block. So, I worked on my book while he visited the museum.

I love this place because it’s right in the heart of Treme, the oldest Black neighborhood in the United States. Every time I step foot in Treme, something absolutely magical happens to me, and this visit was no different. In another note in this series, I will share what happened on our walk back from the coffeehouse when we discovered the Cala’s Cafe and met an old man who told us a (somewhat) haunting story about Congo Square, but for now, suffice it to say that it was another magical walk through Treme.

3. Backatown Coffee Parlour - Black-Owned Coffee Shop (Old Storyville)

Though technically in the historic Treme neighborhood, Backatown sits right within the bounds of the old New Orleans Red Light District, popularly called “Storyville.” Storyville got its name from Alderman Sidney Story, who wrote the zoning rules for the area, which made it the only place in the city where sex work was somewhat regulated/tolerated. Backatown’s website states that the space “embodies the aura of the time where you could hear the sounds of Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong, and King Oliver and meet folks from all walks of life.” I noticed that it was near the site of “The Lost Sock,” a laundromat that now sits in the venue where America’s first rock and roll songs were recorded (More on that in another note because it’s one of the places the Congo Square guy sent us)

4. Baldwin and Co. coffee + bookstore- Black-owned bookstore (Marigny)

Baldwin and Co. sits seven blocks from the Mississippi River, not far from ports and slave pens that were once the epicenter of the United States slave trade. This is something that I absolutely can not stop thinking about any time I’m in New Orleans, especially when I’m near some sites like Cafe Du Monde in the French Quarter, which is adjacent to one of those ports; the Omni Hotel on Bourbon Street, which was a site of daily slave sales for decades, under its previous name— the St. Louis Hotel; or Esplanade Avenue, the street I crossed over to go to the Elysian Bar, which was a major port route once upon a time and also known as “millionaires row” (no question how those folks made their millions).

Baldwin and Co., a Black-owned bookstore, collapses time in a way that its presence defies its past. Esplanade Avenue intersects with Elysian Field Avenue, another broad boulevard that (according to Wikipedia) “originated in the early 19th-century placement of a sawmill canal on the Marigny Plantation.” A Black-owned bookstore that honors one of the most prolific Black gay writers of all time isn’t anachronistic, but who could’ve ever imagined back when this area was still a plantation that something that like could exist on land that was literally built to extract unpaid labor from Black folks?

I’m not suggesting that Black capitalist ventures are in any way revolutionary, but as a celebration of culture, learning, and history, it is a special place. The owner confirms that it was born out of a love for learning, literature, and community, and as a testament to this, there are literacy programs, free book giveaways, and author events where the writers are allowed to keep 100% of the profit they make off their work. Apparently, they also have an Airbnb on site, which is just asking me to book it as a writing retreat space.

I bought a copy of James Baldwins’ Notes of a Native Son, which I read on a sun-drenched patio until Nola told me it was time to explore some more.

[Thank you to my IG friends who sent me these recos. I listened!]

(Continued from The Artificial State Pt. 1)

As an academic, I had to listen to political scientists and political communication scholars repeat the party line over and over again that despite multiple studies finding that there was direct interference with Black information ecosystems during the 2016 presidential election (and the years leading up to it when Cambridge Analytica was still functioning openly) that this didn’t have any impact. By impact, they meant “outcome on the presidential or midterm elections.” I believe that this is flawed thinking because it reduces impact and harm to how Black folks vote. In the eyes of these scholars, Black people are only as important as their votes, or to the extent that they serve as data points that can produce a “finding” in a study or to the extent that they impact electoral politics.

Zero attention was paid to how some ideological discourses seeded during that time have impacted how our communities operate in the long term. The way Black folks voted in the 2016 election might not have shifted much, but the Overton Window of Black political discourse in the United States continues to edge toward extreme conservatism. We don’t need a political scientist to tell us that because anyone who inhabits social media spaces online can see it. Many of us have a similar, creeping experience-- the phenomenon of losing a friend, a co-worker, a partner, a parent, or other family member to the online rabbit holes-- the QAnons, the Great Replacement Theories, the Manosphere. If you’re Black, this may look slightly different. Maybe you don’t have cousins who are super into Joe Rogan or Andrew Tate, but you do have someone who used to spend hours watching Kevin Samuels videos or the Fresh and Fit YouTube pages a few years ago. Maybe you don’t even know what the Manosphere is. Still, it’s likely that you know the terms “Alpha male” or “passport bros,” or you’re familiar with the debates about $200 dates or the importance of women being “submissive” in relationships.

All of these feel like innocuous, unrelated topics, but the greatest trick the devil ever played was to convince the world that he didn’t exist.

There are so many pre-existing studies about how rhetoric from the Manosphere and masculinist ideology, in general, has been used to popularize not only conservative ideology but also co-opt leftist ideas. We all just watched the Republican Party win an election because they figured out how to covertly co-opt racist, sexist talking points and turn them into an acceptable political ideology.

These little cultural “debates” about $200 dates are so important because they are so trivial. No one suspects that these silly asinine conversations could be potent bait for mainstreaming conservative ideology, but you know who knew this very well? Steve Bannon, who often repeated the mantra, “politics are downstream from culture,” and who was the mastermind behind the Trump campaign’s employment of Cambridge Analytica. The same guy who was homies with Lee Atwater, Roger Stone, and the other Republican strategists who figured out that hatred and anti-Black racism were mobilizing forces for many Americans back during the Reagan campaigns. Those little asinine conversations strike cords with people’s deepest anxieties and fears-- loneliness and isolation (which also happen to be primary lures for spending too much time online, especially engaging in various forms of community). People are drawn into these conversations by an interest in making sense of their dating experiences and walking out with “fresh perspectives” that seem only related to dating and relationships but are also inherently political. We don’t consider these conversations political because we are not encouraged to, but the personal is always political.

There is inherent potential virality- they bring eyes onto certain pages and influencers, and online attention is currency.

As Lepore writes, “The artificial state is not a shadow government. It’s not a conspiracy. There’s nothing secret about it. The artificial state is a digital communications infrastructure political strategists and private corporations use to organize and automate political discourse. It is the reduction of politics to the digital manipulation of attention-mining algorithms, the trussing of government by corporate-owned digital architecture, the diminishment of citizenship to minutely message-tested online engagement.”

We keep trying to figure out why the election turned out the way it did, though the answers are there. We are in a space of extreme ideological manipulation that is unparalleled in human history. This reality is compounded by the fact that it’s so difficult to get people to understand how extremely persuasive these algorithmic recommendation systems are.

In Mindf*ck: Cambridge Analytica and the Plot to Break America (2019), Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Chris Wylie attempts to carefully explain how data-driven algorithms were used not only to market to voters but the data was manipulated in ways that were outright coercive. Wylie knows this first hand because he created the algorithms and, after the election outcome, felt guilty and tried to explain to U.S. government officials how this happened. Still, the problem was that folks just had a lot of difficulty believing how persuasive algorithms can be. I feel you, Chris, because I been trying to get my mom to get off conspiracy YouTube for years to no avail.

Of the difficulty of trying to explain the risk: “In my many hours of giving testimony and evidence, I came to realize that the police, the legislators, the regulators, and the media were all having a difficult time figuring out what to do with this information. Because the crimes happened online rather than in any physical location, the police could not agree on who had jurisdiction. Because the story involved software and algorithms, many people threw up their hands in confusion. Once, when one of the law enforcement agencies I was dealing with called me in for questioning, I had to explain a fundamental computer science concept to agents who were supposedly specialists in technology crime. ” (p. 19)

And he warns: “The story of Cambridge Analytica shows how our identities and behavior have become commodities in the high-stakes data trade. The companies that control the flow of information are among the most powerful in the world; the algorithms they’ve designed in secret are shaping minds in the United States and elsewhere in ways previously unimaginable. No matter what issue you care about most-- gun violence, immigration, free speech, religious freedom-- you can’t escape Silicon Valley, the new epicenter of America’s crisis of perception.” (p. 8)

I believe we are just at the beginning of witnessing the negative impact that Conservative, individualist ideologies have on our communities. As the manifestations of this gross negligence to infiltration in Black information ecosystems continue to play out, we will continue searching for the answers that might just be right in front of our faces.

[Note: I broke this one into two parts because it was longer than I wanted. But the second part is coming Thursday, along with a much lighter series, “Notes from New Orleans,” that I wrote while visiting New Orleans last week]

The day before the U.S. Presidential Election, Harvard professor, historian, and journalist Jill Lepore published an article titled “The Artificial State” in The New Yorker. Although I didn’t read it when it first came out, it was perfectly timed. The piece attempted to pull the veil off a common yet invisible practice in electoral politics: using accounting firms, data analysts, and marketing executives to sway election outcomes. While their tried and true strategies are as old as the field of public relations itself, they remain mostly hidden from the general public, and understandably so. The people at the fair aren’t supposed to see how the hot dogs are made. However, in our current era of advanced and highly sophisticated AI-assisted technology, I think it’s about time there was a lot more transparency around these processes, as algorithms have now come to operate in such complex ways that they are opaque even to the marketers themselves. The integration of highly sophisticated data mining techniques, coupled with the strategic deployment of algorithmic recommendation systems, has pushed these once relatively benign marketing practices to the edge of ethical boundaries. AND I DON’T FEEL LIKE WE’RE TALKING ABOUT THIS ENOUGH.

Lepore traces the history of election marketing using machines back to 1959 when “the Democratic Party, desperate to win back the White House, considered retaining the services of a startup staffed by computer scientists, political scientists, and admen, whose ‘People Machine’ could run simulations on an artificial electorate and tell a party’s nominee what to say, to whom and when.” The 1959 “People Machine” was operated by Simulmatics, an early data analytics company that pioneered using behavioral science and computer modeling to influence voter behavior. They ran this machine live on television on Election Night 1952-- and this PR stunt marked the first time that many Americans even saw a computer.

Fast forward to today, and The People Machine is child’s play in comparison to contemporary artificial intelligence-driven algorithms that mine data and make independent decisions on how to market to people. Yes, independent decisions, as in all on their own… without human intervention or programming. Most people don’t realize that algorithms can make decisions independent of human programming, but it’s true, and that’s the precise reason Yuval Noah Harari, author of Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from Stone Age to A.I. (2024), argues that we shouldn’t call this artificial intelligence. We should instead call it “alien intelligence” because we have reached the point where algorithms reason on their own in ways that are not transparent to us.

Although the algorithms are NOT sentient-- they can’t feel emotion, nor are they alive-- the fact that they are the first communication technology in human history with the ability to make an actual decision and have an impact (that encompasses coercion!) without a human explicitly directing it to do so is concerning.

Consider the man who committed suicide because an AI chatbot encouraged him to. It sounds like something out of a horror film, and at the same time, it sounds like something too far-fetched to be real. How could a chatbot encourage a human to want to kill themselves? In reality, it’s both. We are creeping into dangerously scary territory with the coercive capacity of these unregulated algorithms in such a way that the adults in charge are in denial about where we are going because... how? It’s like we’re not only contending with unprecedented computational power but a pervasive denial about what these algos can and will do.

Consider the genocide that Facebook “accidentally” enacted in Myanmar (ANOTHER THING I CAN NOT BELIEVE WE JUST GLOSS OVER). The genocide was instigated by Facebook algorithms that pushed hateful messaging about the Rohingya people, a minority group in Myanmar, in ways that inundated people in the rhetoric and weaponized their fear and hatred, all under the guise of engagement. The algorithms kept feeding the content that people interacted with the most, which turned out to be the most sensational content, with no discernment for distaste, racism, or potential harm (obviously). We know this, yet journalists keep reporting on the rise in white supremacist rallies that keep happening around the country as if they’re either an anomaly or a byproduct of the “Trump Era” with no acknowledgment that the “Trump Era” is the online influence campaign era.

In her article, Lepore highlights the use of highly sophisticated data mining, data analytics, and political campaigning beginning with Donald Trump’s win in 2016, which many called a fluke but could probably be better explained by his employment of the now defunct Cambridge Analytica firm.

I read Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Christopher Wylie’s book on how sophisticated data mining, coupled with the algorithms, is less marketing and more direct persuasion because of how highly sophisticated these technical systems are. (If you have time to read a mindblowing expose, please do. It’s called Mindf*ck: Cambridge Analytica and the Plot to Break America, 2019)

And I just can’t believe there’s not more conversation about what happened in and since 2016. Actually, no. I know what the issue is… (Thoughts continue in Part 2)

Trad wife influencer Nara Smith and her husband Lucky, turning out to be Trump supporters, should be the least surprising revelation of the past two weeks, but somehow… it’s not? I’ve learned that some people are apparently… surprised? Perhaps I shouldn’t be so bewildered by this because 1. It took some people a really long time to realize that she’s Black, even though she has all the phenotypical markers 2. I have first-hand experience in trying to teach critical perspectives on propaganda to undergraduate students. And let me just say that they’ve taught me how difficult it is for the average person to clock modern propaganda, especially when it comes in a traditionally attractive package.

Every semester, I lecture on propaganda-- its ties to the U.S. before Nazi Germany; its ability to be either benign or toxic (or some mixture of both, usually both!); how it can be either overt or so covert that you don’t realize that you yourself have internalized it, and each year I get students who can not get past the way they have been conditioned to see propaganda as inherently bad, foreign or obvious. [Please pray for me as I trudge through grading my students’ final paper/project proposals.] 

I believe their confusion or inability to recognize propaganda when it’s right there in their faces is a byproduct of one of the most popular propaganda machines in the United States-- the K-12 education system. Many (but certainly not all) educators within this system will teach about propaganda via Nazi Germany but not connect it to its predecessors in the United States under Edward Bernays, who was touted as the “Father of PR.” He literally invented public relations as a field and refined age-old propaganda techniques to sell products, ideas, and political candidates.

Many K-12 educators don’t typically put propaganda into a socio-political context to illustrate how insidious it is and, therefore, can be. I think this is why so many people naively believe that they will always be smart enough to recognize propaganda when they see it. Yes, Nazi propaganda looks obvious TO US, we have 20/20 hindsight vision, but at the time, propaganda was fed to people via sporting events, political cartoons, films, social groups, and other innocuous cultural activities that normalized anti-Semitism so much so that around six million people lost their lives in a Holocaust because they got convinced that genocide was a good idea.

[I do not blame K-12 teachers. They’re doing the Lord’s work in educating our youth. However, I do believe that this is a place where the K-12 educators who uphold the value of critical lesson planning truly outshine all the rest, and I need the rest to fall in line].

This semester, I’ve been using Nara Smith as an example of the “quiet creep” of online influencers pushing their ideologies onto us via various online propaganda models.

For those of you who are not perpetually online (like myself), Nara Smith is an influencer who shares food-related videos, many of which feature her making something from scratch for her husband, kids, or a visitor. Each video starts off with Nara, in a full face of makeup and some very cute, probably ultra-expensive ensemble, making a meal or snack from scratch, and I mean from scratch, scratch. In one memorable (to me) video, Nara opens with, “My sister is in town and has been craving bubble gum, but she ran out, so I decided to make some for her.” This is one of the first videos I watched of hers, so I didn’t have much context for what she was doing. I honestly genuinely thought she was parodying the not-so-easy “easy recipes” trend on social media. I mean, because who has the time or energy, right? 

But that’s her racket. Like most online grifters, Smith strikes a chord with people’s insecurities (I’m overworked and exhausted) to sell them overly simplistic solutions (become a Trad wife; become a Mormon). Nara Smith’s wares are her lifestyle, which she sells to overworked, underappreciated women who pine for the time to play around in the kitchen and make things from scratch. Let me be clear: there’s absolutely nothing wrong with desiring this type of life. Who doesn’t want to sit around the house all day and engage with their passions? I sure do. But let’s be even clearer: the problem with her content is not that she’s celebrating a traditional lifestyle per se; it’s that the rhetoric that typically follows this (whether it comes out of Nara’s mouth or not) is a harmful, dangerous lie— that feminism created these problems/the pressures of having to “do it all.” Many who idealize this form of content also parrot the conservative belief that you can get out of the problems caused by capitalism (which forces you to go to work and be exploited for low wages) and patriarchy (which pushes the idea that you should be the primary caregiver for children you share with another capable human being even as you work a full-time job too) by leaning more into capitalism and patriarchy.

In reality, it is “Girl Boss Feminism” that pushes the “do it all” mentality. Girl Boss Feminism is rarely identified as a misguided, contorted version of feminism that many feminist will tell you is inherently contradictory because it tries to espouse feminist ideas while also upholding capitalism and patriarchy, two ideologies that are antithetical to the true feminist mission. In reality, capitalism and patriarchy are at the root of why most women are overworked and underappreciated, so these systems can’t be both the cause and the cure right?

Well, this isn’t reality. This is the upside-down mirror world of the internet, where up is down and left is right. Here, anything goes. This is also the space I spend a lot of my research energies because I try to make sense of what’s happening here. What’s most troubling to me here in upside-down mirror world, is how this leftist idea (works sucks and is unfulfilling, how can we fix this broken system of capitalism because I’m burned out and have no time to do the things that bring me joy) became a talking point for conservative recruitment?

In Collapse Feminism: The Online Battle for Feminism’s Future (2023), Alice Cappelle explains how the left loses in the online ecosystem, not because its ideas are bad or unpopular, “but because the left doesn’t lead, it catches up” (Cappelle, p. 177). She argues that to have a fighting chance in the ongoing culture war, “we must offer something different, and create our own forms of entertainment that align with our values and are not purely reactionary.” (p. 177) 

In Collapse Feminism, Cappelle also points out the fact that more progressive people have failed to capitalize on certain memetic narratives that fall in line with leftist ideology. For example, the movements surrounding anti-work, such as “quiet-quitting” or “I don’t dream of labor,” were reminiscent of leftist ideals but were co-opted by the right to further the work-domesticity binary that is imposed on women. Instead of using this moment to assess the current state of labor under capitalism, the masses were instead pushed to blame feminism for pushing the idea that work would be liberating (please note: the Black feminists never said this because we never had a period of time when we were afforded the luxury not to work). The primary issue is that capitalism pushes most people into low-wage, unfulfilling work, and we all would be happier outside of this system.

Reality check: Under capitalism Nara Smith’s lifestyle requires someone in the partnership to be ultra-rich-- so you can afford the fancy clothes but also so you have enough help with raising that kid (who is notably dead silent or not present when she’s shooting her content), keeping that house clean, staying in glam (as she clearly uses a glam team) and staying that thin (is it genetics, Pilates, Lagree, intermittent fasting? Let me know… either way, I know it’s pricey). If you’re ultra-rich, fine, but the reality is that capitalism will not allow everyone to be ultra-rich because wealth accumulation is dependent on some form of exploitation of an underclass somewhere along the line. The individualist dreams of ascending to the top and leaving everyone else behind, the rest of us dream of upending the system so we can all be free of labor exploitation.

In my class, we’ve discussed Smith’s content as a form of escapism, especially for folks who are tired and unfulfilled at their jobs. However, when we discuss the solutions she’s providing, that’s when things get tricky becuase many of my students view her content as apolitical. “She’s just making Coca-cola from scratch” [Yes, that’s actually something someone said and something she actually did], but when I bring up the other Mormon Trad Wives, who, unlike Nara, are more explicitly using lifestyle content to market their religious and personal beliefs, I start to get their wheels spinning. 

I recently listened to a great podcast episode of It’s Been A Minute on the topic of Morman Trad Wife Influencers on social media, titled “The Mormon Mommy Influencer Pipeline.” In the episode, host Britney Luse asks why so many of the TradWife influencers are Morman, to which her guest, expert Jana Reiss, author of The Next Mormons: How Millennials Are Changing the LDS Church (2019) responds,

“It is a church that, for decades, has taught its members, quote, ‘every member a missionary,’ unquote, that has been a mantra. And, you know, we see these missionaries who are going out into the world and they have their name tags, and they’re giving a year and a half to two years of their lives as volunteers. That’s one kind of missionary work. But even ordinary people who are just living their lives and raising their kids and going to PTA meetings they are supposed to consider themselves to be missionaries as well. And so one of the things that we could see happening 20 years ago, as these blogs start taking off, these Mormon mommy blogs that we’re talking about is in the little corner, you would see discreetly, oh, you know, here’s a link to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And it wouldn’t necessarily be overt. It wouldn’t be, let me tell you what I believe about Jesus Christ as lord and savior.” - Reiss

Of course, trad wives (especially the Mormon ones) are part of a greater ecosystem of a return to “normalcy” a la MAGA “Make America Great Again.” Smith and the like are a byproduct of nostalgia for a recent past that never existed-- at least not for all of us. And it won’t exist as long as we’re suffering under capitalism and patriarchy but engaging in mental gymnastics to convince ourselves that instead of dismantling it, we should lean further into it. 

What is particularly nefarious, toxic, or dangerous about this to me is that these traditional wives are offering their religion and/or hypergamy (the art and practice of marrying rich) as solutions for the failures of capitalism. 

These limited solutions (a return to traditional gender roles that had women popping quaaludes and jumping off bridges like no other in the 1950s) reflect the ways that capitalism and patriarchy have restricted our imaginations. We have to think bigger. There’s another way, where we all get free.  Because I’m not going to lie to you, I have no interest in making ginger ale from scratch, but I do want to sit on a wrap-around porch,  write, read, and do Pilates to my heart’s content. 

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I have a lot to say, and I don’t want to keep making my friends read the extra lengthy blurbs on my Instagram stories. 

No, that’s a lie. I’ll probably still do that. But I’ve been asked to put my random thoughts and ideas down on wax for years. I’ve been extremely hesitant to do this for many reasons: Imposter syndrome-- the most intelligent among us always knows someone smarter, and we’re also keenly aware of how difficult it is to know everything and get everything right. So it’s been hard to be vulnerable with the fleeting thoughts I consider throwaways, even when others insist they’re valuable. I already spend too much time online, and the thought of being a content creator stresses me out. I’ve been thinking about it as yet another drain on the time that I never seem to have enough of. My thoughts are also pretty scattered. My ADHD keeps my brain spinning on various topics and interests-- horror movies, history, travel, politics, technology, the meaning of life, etc. I kept thinking that if I were to do content in some way, I’d need a throughline to all my thoughts. B

ut I’ve since accepted that the way my brain works, though flawed, is perfect for a sometimes irreverent yet sometimes deeply serious social and political commentary. So here we are. 

Those were my obstacles. However, the short answer to the question of why I made the decision to push past all of those mental hurdles is this: I’ve been inspired by my own research that calls for more leftist content to counteract the deluge of conservative content and ideology that we are inundated with on a daily basis in social media spaces. What is theory without praxis? Leftists creating more leftist content actually begins with me.

A housekeeping note: I haven’t set parameters for this space. I want to post regularly, whatever that means, and see where it goes. Please chime in with what resonates with you, what doesn’t and what needs further explanation. Please share these posts as you see fit. 

Thank you. 

Brooklyne