rooting and reflecting

i am not the kind of girl who goes 150% in on her new year's resolutions.  let me laze through January with the urgency of a sloth.  i work my ass off and i deserve to do nothing.  i swear i believe it about 75% of the time, which is a miracle from my roots of Catholic guilt and need to prduce to be useful and "good".  speaking of good, Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good were gunned down in Minneapolis by ICE this month and protests have erupted all over the country in response, as we see military training and weapons turned onto white citizens, another reckoning is happening within American whiteness.  this time, there is no George Floyd to see as a criminal; a mom, wife and poet, a VA nurse, both cloaked in whiteness and liberalism, in caring for others, and almost as vilified in media.  something is rupturing here, because many middle-class white folks are realizing that our whiteness does not necessarily protect us from where this regime is going.  as they buy up ICE properties in midwest states for detention centers, we wonder how long it will take for folks to notice that people in those centers are U.S. citizens. 

as all of this unfolds, we kidnap the President of Venezuela and claim their oil, we threaten Iran and play place-a-dictator in the same-old and in new places, because greed and conquest know no bounds.  we see this in the Epstein files, of which many were released this past weekend and people are poring over, becuase they're deleting files and telling us we're not seeing the truth with our eyes.  we have video evidence and we are being told we are not seeing what we see.  and now that we know new, depraved details, now what?  what does accountability look like for countless tortured, defiled, traumautized and many dead, yet leaders still leading, and rich, and free. 

i've taught dystopian literature for years.  honed in on criticality and the need to recognize patterns of fascism when they find us abroad, because they will be used at home.  if we can dehumanize anybody, we can dehumanize everybody.  we are remembering this in real time, in so many ways.  Octavia Butler taught us in Parable of the Talents that they will blame us for the brutality they unleash against us, and we do not have to hold their confession as our fault.  we remember our humanity and take care of each other, it is our birthright. 

it's also been a frozen, snowy winter, debilitating cold.  i am prone to hibernate and view the world like a snowglobe from my window, but my work keeps me connecting to struggle, holding space for breath, learning somatics, reading and learning still.  i have wild, activated kids who cannot be contained by the walls, and so we often bound outside into the snow, gyms, indoor playgrounds, wherever little bodies are allowed to move and scream and wail and dance.  i still live in my active wear, and crave quiet, silence, coolness.  i get loud, acrobatic, vibrant colors instead.  

reading this winter: 

- how to be free - shaka senghor

- zaftig - molly pershin raynor

- we will not cancel us - adrienne maree brown

- we do this til we free us - mariame kaba

- practicing new worlds - andrea j. ritchie

- unraveling harm, cultivating safety - lauren m. williams & angel mckissic

- the world we make - n.k. jemisin

- read this when things fall apart - letters to activists in crisis edited by kelly hayes

wishing you softness, peace, joy and the spirit to keep fighting toward liberation, for all. 

higher frequency of rest and care

i haven't written in over a year in this space, and i think i do that sometimes when life is tumultuous.  when the ground won't stop shaking, it's hard to find the time and space to reflect on where you are and what's going on.  there is a worldwide rise in fascism and authoritarianism, so much destruction of our land, environment, disappearing of people becoming normalized, militarization of police and guard on our own people, it's hard to even name all of the atrocities -- and all of them pale in compare to the genocide in Gaza and systematic, livestreamed decimation of Palestinian life.  and yet, Palestine will be free, and we will all be free from oppression, insha'Allah someday. 

i have also been weighing my words in the realization that speech is no longer free. i left teaching in april of this year, at the exact right time, because it wouldn't have been long until i was fired for my beliefs, in an increasingly repressive regime nationally that is looking to close the dept of education and defund schools.  my white privilege has saved me from tougher consequences and sanctions in my activism, and it is the reason that i must risk even more, because i can, and if i don't, i will be someone who sat passively on the wrong side of history.  i will not be quiet, and i will keep fighting.  i know what i'm fighting against, and this year i have been challenged to keep thinking more deeply about who and what i'm fighting for. 

it has been a humbling year, as i have become a student again.  a student of abolition, a student of transformative justice.  i was never an expert in anything, but being in a place where i am no longer convincing folks that more police and more funding for police is not the way... i am challenged every single day with deepening my commitment to abolition, with developing systems that care for and hold people, see their humanity and their genius. 

i am learning a lot from so many teachers, and feel exhilarated by all that i do not know, and the rooms that i keep finding myself in.  i am deeply holding grief right next to joy, and trying to slow down and walk with purpose, not run myself ragged the way i am famous for.  i deserve rest, joy and softness, too, and i have rarely found it in my life alone, but with my family, there is slow-cooked food, there is laughter, there is silly, there is lazy, and there is love.  i preach rest and don't practice, and i feel like i've blogged about this many times before, but the irony is done.  

i claim for myself and all of my community the softness and rest we deserve.  a break from the violence, a blanket of softness and care over us.  the time we need to care for ourselves, the ability to not rush, to raise our children with intention.  i was blessed this weekend to see glimpses of this beloved community at Alkebu-Lan Village in Detroit, where i held space for a learning institute that gathered justice-impacted folks from all over the country.  it was a powerful example of what people can build in community, and cultivate over generations of teaching liberation, African values and principles, providing gathering spaces, martial arts, drum and dance, youth development activities and so much more to the community. 

my point is that we need to continue building our hyperlocal focus -- stay connected or get connected to your community. find out what's happening, who's doing the work.  i feel no need to start a non-profit or a new organization, my role is to uplift, support and highlight folks doing the work, make connections, see how my work can propel or shine a light on.  and in the process, i've been reconnecting to the past and to beautiful folks who i love, and whose mission is in alighment with mine, and that is beautiful.  we need the positive energy to sustain the work.  

the sweet baby 3 year old has emerged from his sleep cocoon, so the corner i'm scrawling notes in, like gloria anzaldua taught me, has been flooded with light.  see you next year, dear readers.  i have a new zine out, and new work projects that are pretty incredible, too! 

the terror of almost

This I Believe:  America is a gun.  

I remember Columbine, the first mass shooting at a school, in Littleton, Colorado, in 1999.  We watched in horror from Jing Mei’s dorm room at Loeb Hall, in the East Village of Manhattan, and could not believe what was unfolding in front of our eyes.  Guns in schools, people who had been bullied getting back at their classmates in the most horrible way.  How could this happen? 

25 years later, it happens so often that elected officials offer “thoughts and prayers” for lives lost at school and forget about it in the 24 hours news cycle a few days later.  Multiple deaths in a school building has become something we’re desensitized to, and the gun laws haven’t changed much, as our 2nd amendment and the right to own a gun trumps the right to go to school, or the mall, or an amusement park, splash pad, concert, basically anywhere in America, and come home alive. 

Brian Bilston wrote “America is a gun.” Our obsession with firearms is well documented in Hollywood, in all genres of our music, and most importantly, framed as the 2nd amendment in our constitution.  But we shouldn’t have a right to semi-automatic weapons, silencers and bumpstocks that increase killing efficiency.  We shouldn’t have a right to military-grade assault rifles – nor should our military or law enforcement agencies – that have become more intensely weaponized to kill citizens for minor offenses, most of all for being Black and breathing.  

I don’t have all the answers, but I have a renewed sense of terror, as a lockdown happened at my daughter’s school on Friday, September 13th, 2024.  As we were picking up our kids from school, an announcement came over the external loudspeaker of the building to say there was an active shooter in the area and the building was going on lockdown.  Parents and students outside of the doors picking up kids were ushered into the building and I was walking up Oak Street, with Pape in his stroller, as people started running back to their cars toward us.  One dad said “fuck no, my kid’s in there!!!” and ran toward the building.  I didn’t know if there was a shooter on the street, so I turned around and ran with the stroller back to our car, pulling Pape out to get him to safety and leaving the stroller outside while I climbed back into the drivers’ seat and started the car.  

“What the fuck do I do?” I internally screamed as I dialed my husband, who didn’t pick up.  I called my mom and it went straight to voicemail. I called the school and got a busy signal.  People were walking toward the school, so I rolled my window down to tell them what was happening, and kept my window partially open to communicate with people walking by.  I had the baby to protect, so I didn’t want to go and see what was happening. “We could be a sitting target right here,” said one mom who walked back to the school looking for her husband.  “I hope your babies are safe,” I told her, tears fresh on my cheeks.  

Mulay’s friend’s mom, whose daughter goes to the same school called and asked if I knew what was going on.  I just got a Remind text from Sali’s teacher that said, “active shooter in the area, the school is on lockdown”, so I repeated the text back to her and she relayed her story of picking up her daughter and driving down the street when she heard the announcement of lockdown.   I burst into tears and told her I needed to talk to my husband and would call her back.   Her son called back a few minutes later to check on my daughter, and I told him she was safe, even though I didn’t know that myself yet.  

I started texting my friends whose kids went to the school, to see if everyone was okay and made it out of the building.  Dead silence.  F wrote back “no, I don’t have my kid yet”  Finally, someone called back, unable to get in touch with her husband.  I read her the Remind text and assured her that they were safe inside and had no signal.  Texted A to see if her daughter was okay.  Watched the Sheriff’s vehicles pile up on Prospect and block off all entrances and exits to the school, and burst into tears again.  

The minutes felt like hours.  Mulay called me back and said “I’m coming over there.” I said “don’t, there’s a shooter in the area” and he ignored me and drove over with Nas.  Mom said she was leaving her appointment and wanted to come to us, I told her no, we’ll come over there as soon as we get Sali.  We were supposed to be having a small birthday party for the boys, but that plan faded into the background as the reality of the situation came into scope. 

I don’t know what happened to time, but it took years before A texted me that they were releasing the kids.  Every single parent I saw had ghosts in their eyes as they hugged their child tightly and walked back to their cars.  Getting the baby in the stroller, I yelled across the street to J that I had talked with his wife and “I told her that you guys were inside and okay”, saw S with her son and gave her a hug, and finally, Sali came running out of the exit toward me and tried to keep my tears back while hugging her with all of my body.  Saw F from afar with their arm around their baby, hugged C and her son, and walked back down Oak with M and his kids, one of whom who was sobbing as we walked and told them “get it out, feel your feelings” as he called his partner. 

How do you turn off the adrenaline?  How do you come down after the terror of almost?  Everyone is okay, and we are still traumatized.  We will not be on the national news (this time), nor even a blip on the local news and yet an entire community has fresh, new trauma to heal from.  It is two days later and I can’t sleep or get my hands to stop shaking.  I have no appetite, I feel numb and overwhelmed, unable to move.  I am not grieving the loss of my child, Masha’Allah, my family is not grieving my loss at work, Alhamdulillah, but I am still not okay.  

I know what’s next.  I drink water, Mulay cooks up a storm to take care of us, I place my body outside, in the sun, in the forest, on the soccer pitch.  I rest my body as much as I can, and force myself to lay down.  I read, I laugh, I try to enjoy the small moments with my kids.  Buy them a special breakfast and the drink they like, to celebrate one more day of being alive in this dystopia.  I connect and thank my child’s teachers, parapros, principal, offer support to others, go back to work tomorrow, take the kids to school and hug them tight when I let them go.  Look into their eyes and make sure they know how much I love them, because tomorrow and today are not promised.   

This I believe:  Human lives are more important than the 2nd amendment.  The 2nd amendment is literally killing us.  Our attachment to other human beings has got to outweigh our love of guns. 

I am world-building right now, trying to make possible the world my children’s grandchildren can live in.  Trying to learn from Indigenous folks (the Haudenosaunee people) about thinking seven generations into the future, and honoring seven generations in the past, and knowing that we have to call our representatives, we have to keep pushing, fighting for background checks and bills that ban the sales of semi-automatic weapons, bumpstocks and the guns that nobody needs to purchase.  Pressuring local officials for gun locks and buy back programs and ways to get guns off the streets.  We need a weapons embargo to stop supplying weapons and funding genocide.  We need to keep putting the pressure on.  We need to rest, catch our breath, refuel our bodies and spirits, and get up to keep fighting one more day.  All we have is this day, and all we have is each other.  We must remember. 

overstimulation

today begins week 3 of summer, but vacation is hardly the word for it.  i have a 21 month old climber baby who inherited his grandfather's love of partying.  he does sleep in a bit, but life with him is nearly escaping harrowing situations many times a day.  i don't know why toddlers are laser focused on harming themselves, but he approaches life with zeal and fully sprinting toward everything, including water.  

i just returned from Denver and Colorado Springs with the Ypsilanti Youth Choir (with Sali!) , where we got to visit cultural, scenic and scientific sites and perform at Red Rocks (in the stands during the day, flash singing mob style), Flying W Ranch (Back to Ypsilanti was the song we sang!) i spent my 44th birthday studying Indigenous art at the Denver Art Museum, touring street art in the RiNo district and at Meowolf Denver.  Then we toured beautiful rock formations and dinosaur bone excavation sites and took the train up to Pikes Peak, for the summit of our trip.  Sali got to sing, hang out with friends and explore art and culture in a new city in the mountains, building her confidence in public performance and her love of music.  

meanwhile, my mom took Nas and Pape up north for a cabin experience, so they got to have a summer exploration, even if much different from ours.  time and space always makes people see one another in a new light.  sometimes the people we love the most, we struggle to get along or see eye to eye with.  on Father's Day, it brought me great joy that Jude, Chris, Ben, Amy and the girls, my mom and my boys were on Torch Lake, with my dad.  

it has been a tough year and i stay overstimulated.  i crave quiet, peace, Sadé ushering in stretching, yoga, journaling.  i get none of the things i want, and feel pulled, demanded from, vilified all of my days.  i've written before about the idea of summer and reality of summer are different coasts:  one with a supple beach and warm breeze, one walking the frigid homelands of my last ounce of patience.  

i don't know how, when or where to find quiet, what she looks like anymore.  i struggle to know myself.  i found a copy of my first zine the other day and someone noted my poems were sexy.  where is that version of myself?  where is the love for myself that i used to feel?  how has motherhood and work stripped me of my ability to see myself as young and curious?  

i feel worn and withered, wrung out like a dishrag.  i am not nearly done resting, seeping in quiet, color, sunlight, breeze, water and sand.  i will find the energy to live loudly, to bring my own kids the brightness of my face and not just the dark shadows of my exhaustion.  i will turn toward the light of their love in the darkness that seeps into every day in this world.  we must keep holding our humanity up to the light, especially when powers that bomb don't see humanity or civilization under the places they hollow out. free palestine, and apartheid everywhere it exists.  we all deserve home, self-determination, education, health care and basic needs to be met.  

taking suggestions on resting styles, places, ways and wonders.  keeping myself at the forefront, not an afterthought anymore.  meditating on place, on home, on uplifting history and connecting ourselves to others.  we need each other, and we ALL collectively need rest and ease.  join me. 

love, lolo

                                                    (a highlight of my school year, Nov '23 - 

                                                  presenting Humans of Ypsi at the PBE Con)

International Day of Peace

Back in college, I went through a particularly rough breakup and decided that the logical solution was to go and get a tattoo from my dear friend Tanya at Medusa Tattoo on St. Marks Place.  Tanya asked me to write in her book about why this tattoo and why this day, and I wrote "Because it's the International Day of Lauren, celebrating in 75 countries worldwide!"  Thus began a tradition of annual self-indulgence and self-care. 

This year, it looks a lot different from when I was 19.  Woke up with a migraine, tried to sleep a little bit more, took the kids to school and have been folding laundry and watching Gracie's Corner with Pape, who just turned 1.  We went for a walk in the park and moved our bodies, and have been trying to care for our space.  Amazing how different seasons of life greet you, but anniversaries of something call you back to your former self. 

I have been beating the drum of self-care for so many years, even pre-COVID, and now I feel like it's been co-opted by capitalism and become an industry.  How can you take care of yourself by buying something?  I consciously resist this, and am actually sorting and preparing to give things away: kids' boots, sports equipment, winter coats and sweaters that fit last year and will not this year.   I take care of myself and our space by letting go, organizing, making space for ourselves. 

About 10 years and 5 tattoos later, I learned that September 21st is also the International Day of Peace.  It seems a fitting day that I chose to claim for myself; as I work in peacemaking and helping young people see the beauty of peace as a way to begin the healing process.  We have difficult conversations with the intention of ending drama that stems from miscommunication.  We aim to have a community where folks can be their true, authentic selves and co-exist across difference.  

Even as I type this, I find myself on the slippery slope of talking parenting and talking job when I explore what's going on with myself.  I wonder how 19 year old Lolo would feel about how decentralized I've become to myself, and how it's sometimes necessary; I can still love myself, love my life and what I've built, celebrate the song of myself, even as I make it daily practice to care for others and build community. 

May you find peace in your heart today, and space to breathe. 

trying to carve space

 i led a writing workshop last weekend inspired by women writers of color, Gloria Anzaldúa in particular, and thinking about all of the ways in which women create magic from the ordinary.  but i cannot find a small moment of exhale for myself, a crack in the surface to begin creating.  maybe someday soon... until then, i'm breathing in inspiration: 

Mumu Fresh - Practice

Nas feat. Hit Boy/Shaka Senghor - Composure

Chika - Crown

Joey Bada$$ - Make Me Feel

Kenyatta Rashon - I AM

Formula 734 feat. Buff 1/Rod Wallace - Billfolds 

Che Noir - Fruits of My Labor

Athletic Mic League - Hold My Hand

Koffee - Lonely

Enny feat. Jorja Smith - Peng Black Girls Remix

the irony of this workshop was something I had to name: I too struggle, I am no expert at this, we are co-creating this space together.  we came up with a list of strategies for finding space for writing, but even as I led the workshop, the baby squealed from the other room, the kids came to visit/interrupt and I struggled with the time and space to truly focus.  

still, the dedication of 20 minutes to alliteration, rhyme and rhythm makes the difference, and I need to put it into practice.  making dirty the pages of the journals that are too pretty to write in, just a few lines of a blog post is better than nothing at all.  i know that I exist somewhere, under motherhood, beneath teaching and grant-writing and all that I do.  i am not my production, and I am valuable even and because i choose to rest and enjoy life.  

how many times do i have to say this out loud before i believe it? 

21 years

 I was 21 when 9/11 happened, and on this anniversary my life is literally sliced into perfect symmetry -- I lived half before this day, and half my life afterward.  In terms of pivotal moments, I can always pinpoint this day as a clear change in trajectory in my life. I was already on the path to becoming a teacher, a writer, an anti-racist thinker, an activist -- but this day propelled me into a passion for always learning more - about America's role in the world, about imperialism, capitalism and global power, about nationalism and its role in dividing and conquering people who have more in common than different from one another, across the world.

Many people assume that I started learning about Islam when I married my husband, but it was in 2001 that I responded to the attacks in New York by wanting to learn more, wanting to understand why when classmates or family members said "they hate our way of life/our freedoms", who is the "they" and who is "us".  I wanted/ to understand a faith vilified by American media before but especially after 9/11. I never knew then that I would be engaged in a mosque, be married to a Muslim man and raising 3 Muslim kids; so it wasn’t personal then, the way that it is now, 21 years later.  I simply wanted to learn more so that I could teach more, about love and compassion, common humanity, as well as the geopolitical reasons why the U.S. is so hated across the world. 

I still don’t always know what to do with my hands, often I write first, try to reflect and make a plan for action and then I try to act, to move, to help, to push toward justice.  One of the hardest parts of the days after 9/11 is that everyone wanted to help, but we couldn’t find ways to be helpful, and we felt helpless, and hopeless.  We tried donating blood, the lines were 7 hours long on the first day, but they didn’t pull people out alive, and ended up not needing extra blood like they anticipated, which was a terribly grim reality.  We wanted to go downtown to volunteer somewhere, but the air was toxic and they wouldn’t let anyone unauthorized below Houston St.  We flocked out to the streets, to Union Square Park, Washington Square, any public space we could find, to see what we could do, to organize, to connect, to write messages to loved ones, to mourn, to hope, to try and figure out how we could act, how we could be useful. 

 

The first night, we took to the streets to chalk messages to our community.  It was a tangible action that Louisa, Jennie, Nicole, Emily, Eli and Eleanor came up with that felt important, would be visible, encourage critical thinking about the media we were all consuming and the immediate message of nationalism and unquestioned patriotism that seemed to be all around us.  In the face of the unknown in the morning, with tanks rolling down University Place outside my bedroom window, it felt like something we could control. We received a lot of supportive cheers and “right ons” and some haters, but it felt important and right.  After that night, we turned to focus on anti-war protests, and more locally, a teach-in at our college about Islam, using the opportunity to organize on campus about the anti-Arab and Islamophobic sentiment that was already spreading like wildfire around the city, and the country.  A woman in Hijab attacked in a grocery store parking lot in Queens.  Sikh men mistaken for Muslim harassed on the train.  The polarizing “us” (read:  white, Christian, straight, male = “American” 🙄) vs. “them” (read: non-white or racially ambiguous, non-Christian, queer, female/marginalized genders = “unAmerican”) in a terrifying throwback to McCarthyism of the 1950s.

One detail I’ve failed to write about very often in 20 years is the missing posters.  They still haunt my dreams to this day.  Photos of loved ones, wedding photos, people with their children and their families, on vacations, professional headshots from work, what floor of the towers they worked on (99th floor, 102nd floor, 86th floor) and how to get in contact with their loved ones if they were found.  Every available surface across the city was plastered with missing posters, starting Tuesday afternoon and multiplying throughout the week like viral locusts.  I would turn a corner and see a wall of scaffolding on a building covered in them, and immediately begin crying.  I would stop and read them, look into their faces, trying to hold space for each of them, since I didn’t have anywhere to go or be that first week while classes were canceled.  Each encounter a private memorial service, because I knew, as many of their families knew when creating them, that they were probably not alive.  But there were miracles of escape and folks delayed on the trains who never made it to work that day, and we heard these stories as we escaped to the bars for a sense of normalcy, comfort and release from the stresses around us. 

All this time later, I am thinking about the ways that we took action, the ways that we held space for each other to process and grieve, and the ways that we forged new community in the face of tragedy.  It is true that New Yorkers felt connected in a clear way, but we were not united under patriotism, as is often the narrative: rather many of us were united under the banner of being anti-war and NOT retaliating, though of course, this event led to a 20 year war beginning in Afghanistan and shifting to Iraq, where in response to the loss of nearly 3,000 lives, our military took over one million lives.  We cannot call out terrorism, then perpetuate it with millions of times of the military power, and still call ourselves the Land of the Free.  We cannot limit citizens’ freedoms with the Patriot Act, and insist that we are still the model of equality and human rights. Yet, this is America, and we are exactly this hypocrisy, as Frederick Douglass told us.

But we MUST face history to remember, we must look clearly at the past in order to make change in the present and NOT repeat what has been told to us as the truth.  We must critically question the media, create our own media, share our stories, write our own histories, so that history is not only told from the winner’s perspective (Orwell, 1942), or tainted with red-white-and-blue colored glasses.  

in avoidance of hard truths

i have been avoiding reading and writing all summer, and i'm a bit embarrassed about it.  i have touted writing as my go-to in terms of how i process and heal, and in a summer of proclaimed healing and resting from the tough school year that ended in June... it seems like i'm avoiding something.  i'm circumventing hard truths right now, i realized in therapy last week, and intentionally not-writing so that i do not look at myself in the mirror.  

now seems like a good time to unpack that, and i'll start with this:  there is going to be unprecedented school staff shortages in the fall/next month.  programs will close, departments will shift, schools will shutter, lots of things will shift to virtual, which is a hierarchy in the quality and personal attention of public education.  the institution of public schools is in the process of ending, and what it will become is what so many Republicans have been working toward for the past two decades of my life and work: voucher systems, private charters with no accountability, an exacerbation of the school-to-prison-pipeline which places our Black and Brown students online to self-navigate through computer correspondence courses, and calls that an education.  segregated schools have never left our national ideology, we know this. 

i don't know what this means for me.  how long can i exist inside of a toxic system that does not want to see young people as human beings with aspirations, goals, lives to build?  i want to work in a place where my contributions are valued, truly, not with awards and vague understanding of what i do, but in a way that uplifts our community, empowers our young people and encourages them to build long and lasting relationships with teachers, friends and family as they grow and understand themselves.  

we need to address the violence that has taken so many young people in our community.  how COVID-19 has ravaged and set grief upon our families at an even more accelerated rate.  how poverty and houselessness have impacted us.  we need to have spaces to process, grieve collectively and work toward healing, share resources and hold each other up.  this has always been my goal in working within schools: to use my location to positively impact the community, but it must extend beyond the schoolhouse to families and the community.  if we teach restorative practices at school, but they learn something different at home, who are they going to trust?  and why should they trust the school at all? 

i don't know what's next.  i do know that i've begun to put into the universe what i want, that i've spent time building relationships with other circlekeepers who i deeply value and respect, and that my love for my work is reaffirmed whenever i have the opportunity to be in circle with others.  i had such an opportunity this morning and i'm convinced it's the reason why the words are flowing out of me now.  i have to stay open, and willing to connect with others.  but grief and healing is really hard and ugly work, and i have to commit to it, for myself, for my children, for my students, for my husband and family and friends.  i need to be the best version of myself, and that begins with taking the time to rest, to unpack, to resolve, to heal, to dance and locate joy wherever life will bring it.  

also, there is so much pain in our community, and i must heal myself so that i can help others be able to navigate their pain, and provide resources and empowerment to parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles just like i have tried to do with students over the past 20 years (and will continue to do with young people, no matter what path i walk).  real healing work does take the whole hood, and United Playaz continues to inspire as i figure out the next way forward to a Better Me, and a Better Us.  our young people deserve it, as does each member of our beloved community.  

titles change things

working on poems with my 9th graders, and just finished a poetry unit with my 10th graders, we've moved onto a Jason Reynolds book and i am finding the rhythm of back in the building, in a new system (quarters) where I must work hard to build relationships and pack content into 9 weeks.  it's challenging, and i appreciate challenge, but this year it almost seems like too much to do anything more than teach my classes.  the work life balance has shifted since COVID, and i want to be more present at home, especially as winter melts into spring (maybe sometime, right now we're covered under a fresh 6 inches).  by the time i get home from work, i have used all of my patience.  i feel anxious.  i want a clean, quiet space to help with my anxiety, and my home is the opposite.  i don't know when i will ever get used to a maladjustment of my spirit, but i do know that titles change things.  we wear the mask in our buildings, and we read dunbar, angelou's riff of dunbar and deonte osayande as we asked ourselves which masks we wear.  here's the mask i wear: 

at this point, 
i have become 
used to wearing
the villain mask.
I, terrorist of the
living room kingdom.

i am tired of the mess:
your worst storms, 
amplified by years of
desert island isolation.
i am under a spell 
of exhaustion. 
tempered and tan-toned,
i have become 
exactly what i said
i wouldn't.

i don't know how to unsee
the mountains, how to let 
the molehills slide,
how to stay quiet like breath
when you thunder-rumble.
i am tired of asking, 
and getting silence
in return.  you are tired
of talking, and i am a griot.

i turn off myself 
like a light switch.
taking rest and searching
for what i need in
wild dreams of turquoise
water on our skin. 
i have to be the hero
of my own life, even
if i'm always the villain
of yours. 

titles change things: 

(mom poem #893453495)

joy and rest

well, to answer my last post, yes, i do know how to rest.  but i have turned a corner and fallen from a steep cliff, my body needs the rest so much that i cannot climb out of bed.  it has been a winter where i've consciously been focusing on joy and rest, but it seems that the joy is centrally located in my classroom, and the rest happens at home.  to be clearer, i beeline from the front door to my "home clothes" to my bed.  this hibernation is normal for me every year, but it is not yet normal to my kids, and it's to a deeper degree than in previous years. 

i am trying to create spaces for joy and quiet during the winter, as a part of our practice.  we slow down, we read, we create, we connect, we gain inspiration from the stars, we are cozy, we sleep.  this is the counterclaim to their vibrancy, and they're not sure what to do with all this gray.  i promise i will get my color back, in the spring and summer. 

the winter is an important time to rest, and yet i've been struggling with the guilt around it.  i should be doing more, i should be cleaning this, organizing that, showing up at this event.  i am so, so tired, though, and i am struggling to hold space for the grief that has taken over my body.  i just need to be here with her, and let her wreak havoc.  we must break open to heal, and must trust that rest is what we really need. 

thank you for being with me as i break open, and fold over, and hunker down in the snow.  spring will come.  in the meantime, joy in the everyday and allowing the rest my bones need. 

Anxiety and a Break

I realized a few weeks ago just exactly how much I am struggling.  My house is a mess and I can't find the energy to correct it or care.  I miss people, but I feel so anxious each time I'm in a public situation (including work), that I cannot find ways to reconnect in person that make me feel safe.  I don't know when I will enjoy being at shows or at a bar or party again.  My kids are struggling to get along with each other at home, and with peers at school.  There is an anger seething on the surface of everyone, which of course is grief presenting itself with armor.  We are sad.  We are depressed.  We are grieving, and still unable to celebrate and mourn together in the ways that are most healing. 

I preach mental health all day, everyday, to anyone who will listen, and of course it has been hardest for me to take my own advice.  But in my daily struggles with managing my life, it's really hard to make the time and space for myself, and I need to see this as a fundamentally flawed way to exist.  I cannot sustain this anymore.  I finally got myself to the doctor last week, and asked for a referral to begin therapy again.  I started meds for the first time since I was in my early 20's.  I realized that as much as I've been holding it together, I am not functioning well, at home or at work, and I needed to take action to care for myself, truly... not in the vapid, consumerist ways that we talk about self-care, but in the deeper ways, the difficult ways, doing the things we have been avoiding for so long. 

So, here I am, fumbling in my anxiety and on my computer on the first day of break.  Do I know how to rest?  Do I know how to take care?  Let's find out. 

Reflections on Q1

        I don't remember any other quarter in a school being so tough.   We are understaffed, exhausted, and all meeting'd out.  We are trying our best as human beings stretched thin, caring for our own families and our school family.  This is the prime place for students to begin to have some ownership over their school, and where leadership can begin, but it also feels like we're always on the precipice of disaster.  Adults are in reactive mode instead of thoughtfully planning longterm, myself included, and I think what we need to do is quietly reflect and sharpen our craft, instead of create the turmoil of change, again.   

     Everyone wanted to return to school so badly, myself included.  We also knew, and planned for, the trauma and pain that students would be carrying when we returned, but it is a deluge more powerful than I have the words for.  I can't talk about resilience when there's still so many funerals, some for COVID, but many for the gun violence that our community is experiencing, daily.  We are hardest hit by multiple pandemics, and many students don't know how to navigate it all.  Adults don't either.   

    In week 4 of the quarter, we had a circle in the media center where a young person spit the truest game I have heard in 14 years of teaching.  She laid out a play-by-play narrative of why students don't engage in school and what they're actually dealing with during the rest of their day.  I will think about her often throughout my life, and her challenge to educators to build lasting relationships and actually be there for students in a meaningful way.  The rawness of her grief allowed me to share my own and to remind myself of why I'm here.  I placed myself here for a reason. 

     All I know how to do is to keep showing up everyday, and keep trying to build relationships, to show that I care, to check-in and be consistent.  All that I know how to do is infuse power into the young people I am blessed to be in front of, and I weigh this quarter as successful if they see that within themselves.  Maybe they won't yet, but I'm confident that we have planted seeds that they will sow later.  More than anything, I hope that they remember ACCE as a place where we tried to take care of their whole selves, while healing ourselves.   There is so much more work to do, but many hands make light work. 

20 years.

this year, we had an early soccer game, a play date in the open, breezy air at the park by the river, and it was rather lazy and uneventful.  i am grateful for the distance, and the reflection.  it truly feels like another life, but my body remembers each year.  

different details open up in the corridor of my memory, this year i am thinking about the ways that we tried to volunteer in the days afterward, trying to give our helplessness a job, trying to think of others instead of focusing on how we were feeling and doing.  with kids sleeping on my floor in Union Square, and dorms unable to access, with mental health on edge for each person in the city, we didn't know what to do with ourselves, with all the time of classes cancelled.  trains not running.  phones often busy and cell phones unreliable.  the smell of fire hanging in my nostrils for weeks, but blowing that first day toward Brooklyn and then uptown.  if we had open windows, we all had the silt coating our windowsills and mantles.  the ghosts were all up in our conversations that first night.  we were out in Union Square, attending vigils, rallies, there when the antiwar marches began, and through the next few months as countless families of those missing told us that they did not want retaliation, for more sons and daughters to die. 

a few panels from a zine that Jenna Freedman of the Barnard Zine Library unearthed for the anniversary this year. 

this is what i'm thinking about most this year, in a never-ending quarantine - what do we do with our hands?  we tried to give blood, they didn't need any.  tried to donate food/water/supplies for the rescue, everyone kept wanting to go downtown and i couldn't go there for years.  so I bought dog food for the rescue dogs. 

in 2003, taking the path train into the open carcass of the wreckage unexpectedly set off a panic attack.  20 years later, there is a haze over the direct route to the terror of that day, I have closed off corridors that are harder to navigate in my memory.  collective trauma brought us together, but I knew that I would need to write it down, because I forgot much of it.  still feel this way about ghosts, and they're still here. 

the missing posters are something i've seen in dreams for years.  the North tower falling, the plumes of smoke.  i keep wishing for a new revelation to surface, after 20 years of reflecting, and it's the same thing.  tomorrow isn't promised, we never know what tomorrow will bring, if it will come, so we have to be prepared to look death in the face.  take the afternoons to sit by the river and spend time with good friends.  keep fighting imperialism, oppression, terrorist tactics perpetrated by individuals or governments, systems that reinforce white supremacy. keep questioning the media, keep doing your own research, protect ourselves in the face of a ravaging pandemic, take care of each other.  envision what our world can look like if we take climate change seriously and act with urgency. 

xo

lo

groundhog day

we had two months, a sort-of-summer of maybe we can return to society, a small glimmer of hope, and now a new COVID variant puts cases at over 100,000 in the U.S. yesterday.  we hover around 50% vaccination, just crossing 70% in my county, a fairly progressive county in Southeast Michigan. we are in trouble, and in for more death.  school is happening in person, and while my district is mandating masks, many in Michigan are opening fully without mask precautions, quarantine or testing/outbreak mitigation protocols.  are districts making protocols for this year?  we are headed for another winter of outbreaks, and back and forth to in-person and remote.  again (for those who went back in person last year, we were virtual until May).  like groundhog day of last spring/fall/winter, which increases the trauma that students, teachers and families experience. 

this was preventable, and that's why the anger seethes through so many people.  data is showing that hospitalizations and deaths are over 99% people who are unvaccinated, and while children are less likely to contract COVID than adults, the Delta variant is more aggressive and transmissive.  i respect that there are many reasons people cannot or will not get vaccinated.  but the correlation of those who will not vaccinate and those who will not stay home and abide by mask mandates is evident.  let's value each other's lives and vow to keep each other safe, at the very basic level of common humanity.  this seems too much to ask in America.  

i don't know what this means for what my school year will look like, but i recall a meme about the first year of quarantine, and whew... am i feeling the weight of that today. 

last year, we tried to focus on joy and freedom dreaming toward what the future could be like.  i know that work and writing will continue this year, because to focus on the dystopia of our current world is too much, but it's hard to keep the positivity up.  i think it's worth it to spend the time with young people envisioning what the future could be, as well as giving them space to think, write, process and seek out more help if they need it.  normalize talking about mental health, telling stories, getting through conflict with words.  know that it's okay to not be okay, and that we'll try to be there for each other, but we will all have dark days.  these are dark times, and we must grieve.  we will have new leadership, so much of my year will be about navigating change, god is change, and how we go with the flow of that, and shape it to be what we want it to be.  if anyone can do it, it's the ACCE team. 

august is a monthlong Sunday.  i try to relax but feel the fall behind me, lurking.  i can't truly rest.  i get inspired, write things down, look for readings, songs and videos to play in class.  get excited about school and seeing students and colleagues (hopefully in person for awhile).  scurry to see people i love, miss and didn't see all summer.  run all the errands, avoid all the school supply shopping until the very last minute. it is easy to get caught up in the frenetic energy of Sunday.

this year, i will try to keep the priority on me, firmly, as it has been all July.  i became a master of not paying attention to work email and doing what i want to do more often.  i want to carry that into the rest of the year and make the space to love myself each day, separate from screens after work and truly be in the present moment.  there will be change, and we will keep winning, inshallah.  this is how i will get through the 2nd year of quarantine.

summertime sadness, part 4

if i were to scroll back through my blogs over the past 25 years, i'm sure that i write a post like this every year, or at least write it in a journal entry offline.  with summer always comes sadness for me, but especially these past few years.  in 2018, the summer after losing my father, i was intent on healing and focusing on myself, but my mourning continued long past September, as grief is an everyday struggle that continues to this day.  in 2019, i was just getting a handle on grief, and wrestling with adulting, so the sadness turned inward as i tried to understand why i was struggling with growing up and being responsible.  last year, COVID and the loss of so many folks i love strung the grief out, but i continued teaching summer school, even though i should have rested.  so this year, i have said that i'm not working this summer, truly giving myself the time and space to rest and focus on healing and myself.  

and that's ugly.  it sometimes means not caring about the everyday things.  it sometimes means ignoring others and hiding so i can attend to myself.  it sometimes means losing my phone, or not being reachable or reliable.  always, it means getting sick.  my body has held itself together throughout the year, and mask-wearing + quarantining has meant we haven't been exposed to illness in the same way.  but eventually, my body tells me when I need a break, and it is now.  (and it's just a cold, thankfully)

i've been struggling a lot, as the world opens up, with my anxiety around what that means for socializing.  after 16 months and, people really give no fucks about safety at this juncture. i am still wearing masks in public spaces because my children cannot be vaccinated, and i must vigilantly protect them.  i am wanting to be around people and missing them, but feeling paralyzed and unsafe when i do hang out.  i cannot imagine dining or being indoors at a bar for a long time, or seeing live music, and this is what i loved to do to relax before.  what new ways can i work on being together with people, and feeling safe enough that i can enjoy the time together?  for the summer it can be outdoors, but what about in the fall and winter? 

i also realize and remember every summer how terrible i am at not working.  i keep picking up projects and deciding to "do more", even in the face of an obvious need for rest and disconnection from screens.  my husband, my children tell me how much i am engrossed in a device instead of the people in front of me, and this needs to stop.  as work became digital this year and as i used social media for work and personal reasons, i am always finding new ways to work, and disrupting my own rest with a need to feel connected.  what will the cost of this addiction be, and is it vanity, or something else? 

in the midst of this sadness, i am reminded that these are "champagne problems" as Jerome Nichols of The Butters says -- or high class problems.  i have a beautiful community of people who love me.  i have a home, a vehicle that is reliable, a job that i love, a husband and 2 beautiful children.  paid time off.  my health.  so many amenities and beautiful things about my life.  it is okay to recognize this AND also sit in this sadness, contemplate its purpose, its location, its lesson.  

i will continue to find my way to heal in these ways: being around and fully present with people i love and miss (outside, masked up), connecting with water and letting it teach me about perseverance, basking in the sun, loving on my family, feeling unapologetic about the need to rest and set boundaries.  the sadness is necessary to recognize and appreciate the joy.  

archaeology of self

 I believe in dangerous women

 (a love letter to my favorite writers)

I am a sponge, and I try

not to appropriate, 

not to ‘eat the other’,

but appreciate, uplift

and amplify the work 

of geniuses that history

does not always name.

say her name.  

I believe in dangerous women 

who care for themselves and 

their community like Audre,

prolific poetry-theory of hooks,

I am screaming 

Teaching to Transgress 

from the top of Kilimanjaro

and traveling to new galaxies, 

freedom dreaming through

Binary Stars, with Octavia.

Black women will be the mule

no longer, as we cherish, 

and love you, Toni, 

from the margin to the center.

we have been doing a series of professional learning with Dr. Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz, and she challenged us to write yesterday an "i believe/i am" poem, using a list of everyday tools/objects, people who inspire us and things we believe in.  it was also mixed with a consideration of the continuum of whiteness, and i was drawn back to "eating the other", and how in college, that had been such an important concept to me as i listened to hip-hop, lived in NYC, went to shows, and engaged with the culture.  i wrote a lot in zines about wanting to be respectful and not appropriate, and i walk that line all of the time, still 20 years later.  i teach about hip-hop, and Black music, all of the time, and i have to be careful to appreciate and share my love for it, but not claim ownership over it.  talks of the self and others have been consistent in my classes all year, and all i can really do is be honest and transparent with my students, and with myself.  

as I dig deeper, in what Dr. Sealey-Ruiz has titled "the archaeology of self", I was talking to Sampson today about doing anti-racist work with white students.  I hope that my work is not construed as white saviorism, but I wonder, as I finish up year 13 of teaching, beginning in Detroit, then the Bronx, and now Ypsilanti, how can I bring this work to the people who need it most?  this is why I like to work with professional development and staff, as we know that teachers are mainly white women, but I also want to work with white students.  I've started to find small avenues, through trainings and side projects here and there, but will I make the shift?  and if not, why?   

today the New York Times cover is a visual of 500,000 American lives lost to COVID-19.  i commented "I don't know how we begin to recover from this magnitude of loss and Mulay reminds me of societies who have.  Genocide is not new.  Grief is not, either.  We must remember our old was of healing and forge new ways to collectively grieve.  We need each other."  this is where I am, coming out of the deep solitude of winter, into wanting to be safely together (still virtually, and maybe outdoors soon) to hold space for each other.  we have all lost so much, and the only way through is to feel it all, fall apart, pick each other up, take care and rest, and get up again.  we have to keep fighting, because we are alive to do so.

on white supremacist terrorist coups

this is what i posted on facebook on thursday, as i spent Wednesday evening on English teacher pages of the interwebs, convincing teachers that they should indeed talk about terrorists taking over the Capitol on January 6, 2021.  

educators, please talk about domestic terrorism at the capitol today. fuck a lesson plan. show an image and ask them to journal, or ask what they're thinking about. answer their questions, be honest, if you don't know something... look it up with them. (or say "I don't know" and then come back with an update later) model how you research. give them links and resources to research and process on their own. and just listen to them. young people need places to process the white supremacist violence they see.  

we must understand it to dismantle it.

 i understand the reasons that teachers, parents, white people may want to "continue as normal", but silence is complicity.  if you don't know what to say, at least say something before you continue with your lesson plan.  allow the space for processing.  tell them that you don't know what to say.  read articles together, and learn about it side by side, become a student with them.  show them how you research.  even if social studies isn't your content area, you should still acknowledge this event.  talk about why it happened, who lit the fires of white supremacist nationalism for the entire 4 years of his presidency and campaign beforehand. 

please do not rely on statements like "this is not who were are, as Americans", because it's precisely who we are.  present to them other moments in history in which white supremacy has been allowed to flourish and be violent; there are thousands of examples that we can access easily on the internet.  google is free. 

on this very same day, my aunt Reni (Maureen Flynn Sieminski) passed away after a fierce fight with a rare blood cancer.  i dealt personally with the overwhelming grief of loss as i watched in horror at Capitol police just opened the gates for violent terrorists, who ended up killing 5 people, and reports are starting to show, intended to do much worse.  Donald Trump should be impeached and removed from office immediately.  now Twitter finally decides to block his account permanently, and now he is finally blocked from other forms of social media.  too little, too late. 

i will post separately about my aunt, and grief, but i have felt numb these past few days.  trying to be a parent and remember to feed, bathe and love my kids.  checking on my mom.  leading healing circles, which is the only therapy i have right now, so i will utilize it as much as possible to reckon with my own losses and see my own humanity.  my colleagues in the Restorative Justice Collaborative of The DRC reminded me this week that we seek to hold a mirror up to ourselves and see each other, which is the only way we can seek to challenge white supremacy in our conversations.  we can, and we must, but as a white practitioner, i have less risk in terms of beginning this conversation. 

i am excited more about The Collaborative than anything else right now, because we are working together as practitioners of restorative (read: transformative) justice... where we break down systems of oppression and institutions that have harmed people in Washtenaw county.  Courts and schools are two places where we need to work, and this group will allow us to be in schools, in the court system, and in the community, which is where the values are.  we need to collaborate with other groups in our area to maximize our impact and i'm excited to watch our work grow.  

the vaccine has arrived, and i will hopefully be able to be vaccinated in the next month or so.  i am willing to wait my turn to keep our most vulnerable folks safe and vaccinated first.  both Amy and my mom have gotten their first doses.  Mulay will hopefully be able to in the spring, so that we can travel.  inshallah, when it is safe, we hope to finally bring him home this year, for at least a few weeks. we can't control when it will be safe, so we are preparing in the ways we can.  it would be lovely to get away, but we don't want to harm anyone else, and will not endanger our friends and family, but 20 years is enough and he needs to go home. 

stay safe and healthy.  wear your masks.  keep distanced.  limit travel and gather virtually.  hug the people in your circle and remember that tomorrow isn't promised.  and if you're tired, full of grief, unable to move much, as i am, rest yourself and take good care so we can begin the fight again tomorrow. 

xo, lolo

on dying for my profession

today, i woke up to a couple of pieces written about why teachers should essentially suck it up and go back to work.  it hurts my soul each time i remember that my profession has not only been intentionally decimated and defunded for the past two decades by government, but astonished at the 180 degree turnaround from us being heroes in the spring for literally flipping education around in a weekend and creating online programs for students, while we sheltered in place due to global pandemic.

police brutality reared its ugly head again (always) at the end of the school year, and we pivoted to teach about it, talk about it and help teach our white friends and family members about why their silence has not been okay for generations.  now is the time to wrench white supremacy from its throne, and burn it down. now is the time to deconstruct the systems that have long divided and segregated quality of life in this country as intricately connected to the color of one's skin.  but it has BEEN time, and white folks are just now listening.  we mourned with our students as we talked about George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Armaud Arbery, and Sean Reed. we embedded these discussions into our summer school curriculum and built our arguments about looting, terrorism and Black Lives Matter.  we refused to let the conversations die after the media coverage stopped.

i found out a few weeks ago that my husband knew Amadou Diallo and lived near him in the Bronx before he was shot 41 times by the NYPD in 1999. i recalled the protests that I attended afterward, holding our wallets in the air and demanding the officers be fired and charged.  I was enraged, and had never met Mr. Diallo.  Mulay helped his community grieve and family recover in the aftermath.  it has been so difficult to not be able to be in the streets this time, so i find myself asking myself, what is my role in this movement now?  i am talking with my students and my own kids all the time, discussing the pandemic, the protests, colonialism, racism, and mass incarceration.  when my daughter wants to "play police", we stop and talk about why not.  i donate and lift up the voices of Detroit Will Breathe and BYP100's Detroit chapter and have made my work my activism through restorative justice, but direct action is something i'm missing.  i'm tired of talking.

tonight, i listened to my colleagues and administration hold a "town hall" about re-opening, in which they assured our community that we will be safe in buildings.  i know that this is not the case.
the data we're seeing from southern states reopening is enough to tell me that we cannot do this safely.  students will get sick.  staff will get sick.  i love my students, i love my school, but i will not die for my job.  i will not send my kids to school to get sick, or carry the virus to their friends, or their teacher.  i will not bring it home to my husband and family.

there are so many complicated factors here -- but the articles i read today focused on teachers being essential employees, glorified daycare, and that like other essential workers, we just need to be quiet and hurry up in our dying. it reminds me of Langston Hughes' stark poem "Kids Who Die".  when we decided that Sandy Hook was not enough to legislate gun control, we told ourselves that our children don't really matter. as soon as we know that Black people were dying of coronavirus, we pressed on with "reopening our country", affirming that black lives don't matter to white Americans.  the higher impact of COVID on black communities is due to a racist healthcare system that created the pre-existing conditions with hazardous living environments and food deserts -- racism has so many insidious angles, from high-fructose corn syrup and cheap foods to schools reopening and exposing students to a deadly virus.  it is not random that these two pandemics are intertwined, and COVID has exposed all of the fictions of US prosperity.

i wrote a letter to our school board, sent a letter to my representatives and emailed the governor.  i am supporting the protest from afar tomorrow because i'm still teaching and can't be in Lansing, but more than ever, i'm wanting to be out in the streets, speaking up about how i would do anything to be back in a classroom with my students, but it is not safe. their lives matter, and their education matters. i will not sit quietly and let my students and their families, already ravaged by this disease, become the trial run for failed safety protocols that endanger people.

there is much more to talk about, and figure out.  how schools have become what keeps our society running, the safety net for all of our failings, but we have been defunded and demonized in media and by politicians, who should hold the teaching of the next generation in the highest regard.  how i get paid less now than i did in my first year of teaching, and this is year 13.  how i'm up at 2am planning and working on my next virtual classroom, even though i'm exhausted and need a three month instead of one week break between now and our next school year.  how companies should be paying folks a living wage and childcare should be free or affordable, and parents should get paid to stay home with their children this year.

let me be clear: i have lost enough this year.  i will not lose my life, or the lives of my children, my students, my colleagues. we must service our highest need students safely, from home and services that our community needs and we will.  educators always figure out how, with no budget.  we need to fund this work, and care for our children and our beloved community (John Lewis voice) and be innovative and creative in building community while apart.

love,
lauren


list of the embedded links, just in case you missed them:
I'm a Nurse In NY.  Teachers should do their jobs, just like I did - The Atlantic, Aug 4, 2020
Detroit Will Breathe - Facebook Page
BYP 100 - Detroit Chapter
Michigan Teachers Rally at Capitol - Lansing State Journal, Aug 6, 2020
Teachers and their Unions Have Been Anything but Heroes - NY Post, Aug 5, 2020
"Kids Who Die" by Langston Hughes, video by Color for Change, read by Danny Glover, 2015
Lauren Fardig-Diop - Letter to YCS School Board, Aug 3, 2020
Schools Aren't Opening. We Have to Pay Parents to Stay Home... Medium, Shayla R Griffin, July 30