I’d like to share with my online community that protesting is exhausting and yesterday I found myself out of balance. Crying. Screaming. Cursing. Fuming. Yelling at the police. Sitting peacefully in the front line: legs crossed, hands out. I told myself both protests not to be a front liner and that’s where i naturally gravitated towards, feeling the need for the police to see us and humanize us. I don’t know what drove me to do such an act but it’s as if I gave no value to my life. Any order and the police could have charged and trampled me. I stayed the entire time and although my peers are well intentioned they left early. That’s emblematic of privilege. You choose when you can show up to places to demand justice. POC can’t choose when bc if they decide not to thats one more generation of the cycle. One more generation of: oppression, redlined districts, underfunded schools, unjust prison systems and sentences. The list goes on. This trauma is inherited. It is also shared in the community as we see each other get arrested and beaten at protests. When we see who populates a college classroom and who populates the prison system. When we see the conditions we live in. Not matter class background or the privileges black people face, the unrelenting truth of the American social system shows up at your door unboxed. showing up to the protests in Paris has given me a broader perspective. The police will smile to your face. They will say pleasant comments like “we are here to make sure everyone is safe.” They don’t immediately resort to the violent tactics as seen in the media by the American police, but their silence is even more violent because it occults the truth. Cut the sugar coating, behind that smile is the verisimilitude of a patriarchal structure they are upholding. I’m exhausted and on top of that Columbia University expects us to preform under the same caliber, as if there isn’t a pandemic & global civil unrest. I can’t do my thesis research. I cant do my hw. On top of that I am spreading myself thin by informing ppl asking me questions in my DMs. I am barely eating. I am tired. This is not our job.
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