If another white person talks to me (or, frankly, talks in public around me) about the problem with looting, how it isn’t helpful to the cause, I may just have to spraypaint Black Lives Matter on their body, throw them into a plate glass Target window, and walk off with some new electronic devices while I’m at it. I am blacker than you may think I am and I am tired.

Today, I learned that two black men were found dead, *hanged* *from* *trees* in Southern California. Hanged from fucking trees. I am tired.

There are more black people, protesters, and journalists being killed, assaulted, blinded, and maimed by cops and white vigilantes than I can keep track of on a daily basis. I am tired.

Black people are dying from Covid-19 by the cemeteryful while white people with guns protest their inability to get their hair cut and their nails done and those white folks’ first and second amendment rights are protected and the genocidal president that racism bought us is trying to sic the full-on military on people protesting the looting and destruction of black lives. I am tired.

Meanwhile, there are white busybodies in every corner of creation telling black and brown folks not to do shit that they ain’t got no business telling black and brown folks not to do, because said black and brown folks have every right to, but aforementioned white people can’t help but assume somebody black or brown in public must be doing something wrong and they’re going to be the ones to put a stop to it. I am tired.

Do you have any idea how often I am chastised in public by white people? If I had $100 for every time this happened, my student loan debt would be paid off. Most often, it’s white women who are older than me, who I would bet green cash money consider themselves liberal and anti-racist. I am tired.

Every day, multinational corporations put emails in my inbox talking about how much they are in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement and I am staggered by the lip service that is given to solidarity around a problem that requires both profound self-examination and transformational reparations on a scale the white supremacist mind cannot even remotely conceive of. The entire wealth of this country rests on the genocide of the indigenous and on the slave labor of black people. Black folks built the foundation for the wealth of America and don’t have shit to show for it. Unless businesses, corporations, banks, and governments, as well as average, garden-variety white folks are ceding power, property, land, money, and resources; abolishing prison and defunding the police; providing for safe, clean, comfortable (self-owned) housing and high quality education for all black people; providing for high quality healthcare and childcare and elder care; and providing generous retirement accounts (because generational wealth did not come to black America and that was not an accident – and most of us are flying without safety nets most of the time); and paying off and forgiving all debt (student loan, medical, incarceration-related, and personal) – because how in the hell do the descendants of slaves owe white people anything? – you can take your solidarity and shove it. I am tired.

Who has looted who?

You can send your thoughts and prayers to my Venmo @Ariana-Waynes (and the Venmos of any other Black people you know).

And for folks who want to make a big positive impact on a black life, I’ve got about $75,000 worth of student loan debt you’re welcome to adopt in whole or in part, a retirement account in need of funding, a whole lot of sorrow, grief, fear, and anger about the looting of black lives, and a chip on my shoulder about how many times a day I am still, *still* hearing about the problem with the looting.

Also, this video is excellent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sb9_qGOa9Go&t=335s