imagine and fight

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“There are years that ask questions, and there are years that answer them.”
— Zora Neale Hurston

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I spent the last seven months of my life in intense listening. The voices were varied: unemployed, first-time voters, undocumented, perpetually ailing physically, economically, socially, politically; those who felt empowered and those who’ve been socialized to believe they lack any; those who are hopeful, cynical, and joyful, fearful, and optimistic, determined, and uncertain, fighters who sacrificed their comfort, their time, and their energy to get busy creating the world they imagined through personally-invested action. These people and the conversations left impressions on me and gave wind to my life boat sailing toward an understanding of what Toni Morrison describes as the personal use of a compulsion.

I was 16 when I felt changed by the dangerous weight of the American criminalizing system on my life and the lives of black men, the black nation. I continue to be angered by the American government’s enduring issuance of life-ending and life-depriving practices that are often paired with a lackadaisical reactionary reform attempt. I struggled with this anger to arrive at a question I’ve now been pondering for five years: Why is society manifesting its present way?

My guiding philosophy is informed by believing in fairness, honesty, transparency, just and wise practices, as well as redemptive responses to systemic injustice and violence — violence that is often perpetuated by racism, misogyny, xenophobia, and other socialized concepts that dehumanize to justify injustice — whether it be at the country, district, or town level and especially regarding social institutions like policing, healthcare, and education. I further believe governance is innately noble. A function to not be trivialized or misused, but rather undergirded by society and held ethically and morally accountable toward its citizens, protecting access to education, health, art, shelter, and safety, especially in the face of actions by those in positions of power that work to destabilize these vulnerable areas. When government behaves in this way, when government errs from their holy vow, I feel its impact in my soul. The rumblings of my compulsions.

The United States of America is a direct product of two particular yet unified narratives of exclusion, genocide, and dehumanization of the Mattaponi, the Eastern Chickahominy, the Pamunkey, and so many others — who lived, and loved, slept, danced, created memories, traditions, and faced murder some on the land they respected, and cared for, and relied on, and were good stewards of, many on lands foreign to them (many that continue to live on today); as well as slaves, not because they were, but because through fear they were made to be, who never internalized their condition (to be broken), but persevered, persisted not despite, but to fight against the purveyors of violence, a tradition that has been leading this nation morally since its inception. With this history, America has a unique role to play globally that has deterministic potential in setting people free across the world.

Three months into the year, the decade, and 2020 is already proving to be a historic and peculiar time. Today tens of hundreds of thousands of people are infected and dying upon contracting coronavirus and it’s disease, COVID-19. Domestically, we are witnessing in a daily and more direct fashion the impact of bad leadership — a phenomenon more clear in times of crisis. College students have been displaced, many into housing insecure situations; elementary, middle, and high schools have shut down and resorted to online teaching (this is terrifying); local businesses have closed their doors with no certainty of reopening; thousands have lost their job and people are suffering mentally with being physically isolated from their support networks; hospitals are lacking staff, equipment, know-how and lies are so readily available that fear and anxiety are ruling many hearts, to name a few. America is dealing with an entirely preventable situation, where poor decision making has led to at least 68, 534 people infected and 990 people dead*. In such a crisis as this, it is understandable for people to seek leadership, but that act today seems to only further mass-confusion. The current occupant of the White House is consistent in using racist and xenophobic rhetoric, now targeting Chinese communities, and distracting from his own incompetence and ill-prepared actions to handle today’s public health crisis. Consider that the previous President’s transition team advised the current administration about the perceptive belief of an oncoming pandemic. Consider that this meeting was held prior to the occupant’s inauguration three years ago in 2017. Although the noise (and often distraction) arising from crisis can be blinding and deafening, nevertheless 2020 is proving to be a historic and peculiar time.

Let us be wise in perceiving the chaos we are now in. Leaders are chosen, yes even bad ones, irresponsible ones, however we must not lose sight of our enduring ability to choose and act as good leaders in the wake and in the midst of bad ones. Maturing from elementary school to college, I can remember repeatedly hearing an emphasis for the country and the world needing leaders. What is concerning is that we are moving quickly and are busy-ing ourselves as a populace cultivating followers, the potency of this frustrating followership strong where we purport to produce leaders — so-called elite institutions which provide great education largely enabled by inhumane and morally irresponsible financial practices, financial investments into the industry of slavery and the prison industrial complex, into the housing market and the fossil fuel industry.

When I think of great American leaders I think of Angelou, Hughes, Morrison, Baldwin, and Hurston—I think of leaders who pushed the bounds of thought and theory in America, truth tellers of the 20th century who laid the groundwork for groundbreaking freedom struggles in American history and for the African American. This tradition, this nation of people inspire me as I return to the question living in me for five years. It looks a little different now, informed by more context, focus, and purpose: What are the common challenges associated with trying to enter an imagined state of existence (something not presently manifested)?

In February 2020, I traveled back to my high school to give a workshop in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. We read exceprts from “Beyond Vietnam": A Time to Break Silence” (1967) and one of the questions I prompted students to consider is: “What world do you imagine?” At best I was hoping to prompt someone on the brink of hope, the student needing another question to ponder that they may arrive at their own calling for freeing others. What I did not expect was admitted non-imagination from many. I was taken slightly aback, though maybe my ignorance provoked this feeling. Although a five-word question, I was in a literal sense asking them to look outside their reality to a world they may not even believe can or will exist and to identify it. One student imagined “a world without guns.” I am encouraged by knowing that weapons of construction prove to be full of undeniable power the more we entertain them, the more we practice them. I now see more clearly the terrifying impact of a country where art is losing priority in schools around the nation, and fast.

Imagination — a weapon of creation — is critical to the fight for equity and justice. To move forward imagination cries to be demystified, cries for us to deny the popularly socialized understanding of her — that ‘living in reality’ and ‘imagining reality’ are mutually exclusive; the false equivalency drawn between ‘imagination’ and ‘not-true’. Growing up, I loved reading fantasy. This practice of living in imagined worlds became easier to transition between as I read more, and what I know now is that my excitement for the plot was less about its content and more about the author’s context. The concept that a person created the literary language I was reading, created the fantastical world I came to each time I opened to a page. Where there was nothing or remnants, they made something new. Fiction is derived from imagination. Growing up, I was taught that ‘non-fiction’ meant real and ‘fiction’ was not-real or more plainly fake (and if fake then not-true). Toni Morrison’s Beloved was a watershed in my understanding that truth is not simply bound to non-fiction, but that fiction is the place where our creativity meets real questions — questions concerning lives. Especially, when it comes to writing about slavery, a story that has been desensitized to quantifiable measures and minor qualitative detail, a history that has been under attack since its American chattel practice, who holds the facts? How do we answer these serious questions? Why — in a holistic sense — did a loving mother kill her child? A question Morrison followed through imagination to its arrival, an answer which produced a question with added depth that among many things pushed the world’s understanding of America’s sin and restored more agency, centrality, and clarity to the storytelling of our own black narratives in the 20th century — a rememory for us, a rememory by us.

Imagination is the peephole on the door of unencountered possibility through which hopes and dreams live; we imagine all the time, now we must accept its place in our function. In many ways, people dare to step toward, fewer dare to look into and even fewer have the courage to open this door. However, imagination is the uncircumventable silver bullet that issues justice, establishes equity, frees freedom to rise. Without imagination, we die. However, when we embrace its power, a cleansing death occurs that burns away our old understanding of our human condition and gives birth to freedom. Without imagination, we die; but with imagination, we ultimately live. And so to imagine is critical to the tradition of truth telling. The stories of the people around us contain the answers to the questions society has been asking, in their stories, in our minds lies the inspiration for the work we need to do. Like fire, we live or we die. It is time to live.

*The U.S. now has at least 34,310,126 cases and 610,027 deaths. (New York Times; July 23, 2021)