Too consumed by the capitalistic instinct to build brands and empires, rather than planting seeds and creating safe and sacred places for our people to call home, much of today’s activism overexposes and weaponizes traumatic events. It pedals trauma porn and virtue signaling as a means of cover, rather than a means of change. If, as Octavia Butler once wrote in her prophetic novel “Parable of the Sower,” “God is Change,” then where is God in the movement for Black lives? As artists, we have the distinct privilege of architecting new worlds. We have a uniquely intimate understanding that words matter and affirmations have power, yet this is the very reason why much of today’s activism leaves me scratching my head—specifically, the constant begging for them to stop killing us instead of divesting in systems that were literally and figuratively built on our backs. Don’t let the noise fool you, all of this begging, pleading, calling out, dismantling and diversifying of white institutions is reactionary. And reactionary resistance is only supremacy in disguise; it continues to reinforce an axis of power which places a higher value on whiteness. Affirming “I can’t breathe.” Affirming “We see you.” Affirming the amount of time to the second that George Floyd was choked under a knee while ignoring the decades of humanity that he lived. Too much value is placed on these grand public gestures of reactionary resistance that actually depend on us believing we are powerless. These gestures thrive on us hating ourselves and each other, and fool us into believing that Black death is more valuable than the lives we are living right now. Most insidiously, it centers them! As a generation of Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome survivors, we have adapted and adjusted our movement to the limitation of their imagination and value of us. I would go so far as to argue that you do not even realize the severity of the bend in your back. Or all of the twisting and contorting you have done, yet mislabel as a “stance.” We are so inoculated and addicted to their validation of us or so busy strategizing around their humanity, that we can not recognize how sick we are. When I agreed to participate in this powerful project, it was suggested I write about healing as a powerful component of the revolution. But it is hard to have this conversation when we as a people have not yet made a meaningful decision to be well. Few novels challenge the dichotomy of healing and activism as well as Toni Cade Bambara’s “The Salt Eaters.” In it, she asks us, “Are you sure, sweetheart, that you want to be well?…Just so’s you’re sure, sweetheart, and ready to be healed, cause wholeness is no trifling matter. A lot of weight when you’re well.” If the weight we want to carry now is that of real sustainable change, it is time we ask these questions of ourselves.