take heart
before diving into the issue, please match my $20 for the following folks’ crowdfunds. if you can’t, send $10, $5, $1, whatever you got, and then share with your networks, especially if they have disposable income to spare:
Jari Bradley: @sojari-bradley (V) / $sojari (CA) / ko-fi
a Black trans person tryna avoid eviction: $w4termoon (CA)
take heart
love fuels courage.
courage,
cœurage,
heart as the throne of emotions,
the valor of an inner strength sourced from the truest center,
the fire in the breast that propels even in the face of fear-worthy circumstances,
the blood that courses hot and vital
when action is more necessary than reticence.where we are our most courageous is also where we are our most loving;
we do not waste our courage on things that do not stoke the hearth of the heart…- Diana Rose (@ddamascenaa)
it is the first of November. i squeeze a dropperful of sweetened hawthorn under my lifted tongue and follow up with a thick spoonful of turmeric-and-pepper infused honey. later, surrounded in yes please’s garden by friendly strangers, i snip hibiscus rosettes and toss some into my basket. others, coated with powdery mildew, i toss back into the center of the bed. offerings returned to the soil. after the harvest and before the bonfire, we shovel compost into the beds and write down our intentions for the lunar cycle on handmade paper. i bury mine so they may take root with the seeds we just planted. at the end, my palms and fingertips are mottled with earth and crimson dye, visible proof that i had taken my dose of new moon medicine, all to soothe a bruise-tender heart.
each departure begets a return, and each death a rebirth. so here i am, coming back to breathe life back into my public writing practice, in a time of my birth season no less. there was a point where i began to feel some shame or embarrassment about not producing like i used to, but my good friend Dion transmitted a timely affirmation: “The good thing about [rituals and studies] is that [they’re] right there to pick back up again… Those practices are your practices for a reason, and I hope that you have some more space to settle into those in this fall season.”
i’m happy to say that the space is now available, and i’m taking it. in my time away: i've moved into a new home, risen higher in love, worried over my bedridden grandmother, greeted the Atlantic from novel shores, lost a lover with hopes of keeping a friend, lost a friend and kept my distance, welcomed my auntie home from prison, stayed in touch with dear ones familiar and new, gave up drinking alcohol, stretched into forgiveness, swirled in the eddies of isolation, joined an organization, done my best. there’s much more i could say about the last ten months of my life’s journey, but threading each of my experiences is the expansion of my heart and an attunement to mortality.
two days before my time in the garden, i officially completed my death doula training with Going with Grace (GwG), exactly one year after doing green candle magic to secure the scholarship funding for my participation. it’s a beautiful thing when a journey’s trajectory takes the shape of a full circle. i’ll soon begin providing volunteer hospice respite care for a sweet family near me to complete GwG’s 10-hour deathwork requirement, but there is still so much for me to study and practice in the meantime, like drafting my own advance directive or researching body disposition options that are kinder to the earth. most importantly, i’ve been consistently asking myself the question Alua Arthur posed at the beginning of the program: What must I do to be at peace with myself so that I may live presently and die gracefully?
one activity that stood out the most to me from my training was one of noticing (and perhaps assuming). in one of the first modules, we were instructed to set aside 15 minutes to devote our attention to our surroundings and identify where dying was occurring. i completed this activity in my old backyard at the dawn of spring, a time known for when the planet comes alive. but of course, in order for new life to emerge, some things must die off, must yield themselves to cyclical rhythms of nature. through my eyes, i tried to find things that were weeks to days away from their death (nothing i could observe); days to hours (nothing i could observe); hours to minutes (maybe the fly i swatted once it landed on my leg, i felt it under the sting of my hand but the body did not remain); and the recently dead? (the earthworm on the ground next to me being eaten by a fly smaller than the one i may have killed, perhaps the pinecone that had just dropped from overhead)
aside from the "obvious" deaths, there is so much mystery woven through the natural landscape that prevented me from making assumptions. i also understood how the course of a life can be altered by patience, by intention, by trying something different. before leaving my childhood home in june due to my mother’s blatant COVID denialism and thinly-veiled ableism, i submerged a lychee seed in water, not expecting it to grow at all. imagine my surprise when a sprout cracked the smooth brown seed casing mere days after i moved into my new crib, both of us ready to be grounded anew. i transferred it to some soil and watched as it grew to the length of my index finger. naturally, i messed up along the way: i went out of town for a few rainless days without making any arrangements for someone else to water the plant, and the leaves shriveled into brown, papery tendrils under the Georgia sun. thankfully, the magic and miracle of nature worked once more: just when i accepted defeat and began planning to empty the pot, another shoot erupted from the soil, even surpassing its predecessors in height.
on the opposite hand, i’ve seen how impatience, indifference, or cruelty can shorten a lifespan and trouble one’s arrival to the hereafter. i think of my maternal grandmother Julia, who i met for the first time as she lay dying in the hospital from metastatic uterine cancer. after her death, she was buried in an unmarked grave far from her hometown of Castara, Tobago because her children (save my mother) thought it would be a more “convenient” option than honoring her final wishes. she came to my mother in a dream after her death, asking for bread. a hungry, misplaced spirit who deserved far better in her last days.
and if i zoom out, there are many around the world surrounded by scores of the recently dead, with the pages of their own calendar flipping rapid and uncertain. many who have been consigned to d/Death, largely assumed that their only fate is to perish or disappear. many who have died by suicide because they found more dignity in their choice instead of waking once more into the depravity of their living conditions. what fortune it was for me to be unsure of what has recently died around me in my environment, to have to focus intently to find vessels vacated of spirit.
as i’ve deepened my capacity for love (and simultaneously courage) alongside my capacity for accepting the truth of death (and therefore grief), i’ve had to think more about 1) how to live the kind of life that i and my ancestors will be proud of and 2) what a “good” (or graceful) death might look like for me.
i don't want to die yearning across a wasteland for some familiar touch. i don't want to die excavated of my dreams, or devastated by the magnitude of what has been destroyed around me. i want to die unhurried. i want to die warm and war-less. i want to die empty of all the i love yous i could have ever said. i want to die with the windows open, a passing breeze to caress my skin. i want to die with my palms upturned, or resting against those of someone(s) kind enough to witness me in my leaving.
for this to come to pass, i must work for it with every unpromised breath i’m given because empire wants us all to die without dignity. it will take immense grit and vulnerability to defy the fearsome conditions that we are up against, to force the Death-dealers to ouroborize themselves instead of our bodies and the planet.
as you may well know, when not within my reach, tarot is on my mind. the suit of swords is associated with the element of air: communication, thoughts, intellect, teaching & learning, conflict, ungrounding. since swords are tools as well as weapons, i think about the following questions when they appear in a reading: how do you enact your will? how do you wield your word (against others and yourself)? how do you protect yourself? and perhaps most importantly: what are you willing to fight for?
in the deck, the foremost image of the heart appears pierced by three swords. when our life force — our seat of feeling! — is ruptured so completely, strife is immediately summoned into the space.
now, i also think of how Alua Arthur makes the distinction between pain and suffering in Module 2 of the GwG training: “Pain is the response either in the body or in the emotions to a stimulus which indicates an event that is difficult. Suffering is our thoughts, ideas, judgements about that pain.” the two experiences collide on the three of swords. the rupture is present, but what stories are we telling ourselves in response to that heartbreak?
the three of swords is a place for pause to assess who inflicted our wounds, how grounded we are within our principles and boundaries to steady our stance, and how much power and support we believe we have to fully remove the blades. healing from their removal is a whole other story, word to Malcolm X, but identifying their source may well prevent new blows from landing.
for those of us living under the crushing weight of late-stage capitalism, that pain may well morph into suffering if we allow ourselves to believe that there is no escape, no life-giving alternatives to how things are. and for those of us living in the heart of empire specifically, turning away from our responsibility to dismantle the state from the inside out will yield more pain and suffering for colonized masses living under the boot of u.s. imperialism.
it is the fifth of November. i avoid the ballot box just like i did in 2020. despite the near-constant neoliberal wheedling and shilling being done on Kamala Harris’ behalf, i spare myself the indignity choosing the “lesser evil” in a christofascist duopoly. instead, i go up and down my street to pass out greeting cards and COVID tests to my neighbors, most of whom i am meeting for the first time. the following day, the final (re-)election results come in, and i am mostly unmoved. not because i’m callous or willfully obtuse, but because the outcome was predictable, for starters. Kamala Harris did everything in her power to alienate herself from swaths of rightfully-skeptical voters, making it clear through her bid for presidency that the “aisle” separating Democrats and Republicans is a figment of propaganda crafted to convince the masses that both parties aren’t colluding in our destruction.
i’m so very grateful for the principled thought Dr. Brendane A. Tynes shares through her platform Black.Loved.Free.. both of the videos she released after the election explore the coercive nature of the voting discourse, how electoralism is at odds with true self-determination, and the importance of knowing oneself and finding legitimate community/co-conspirators so we may collectively pose a formidable threat to the state.
“[these systems] are literally tools of the state’s coercive control that cannot meet your needs… just think about us a collective, the lies we tell ourselves, the self-betrayal that we continually participate in by participating in these systems thinking that they’re going to save us…[resentment] is what self-betrayal ultimately leads to. and folks are calling it grief, and i think that’s a little bit of a misplacement, or a pathological kindness.” (emphasis mine)
- Dr. Brendane A. Tynes with Black.Loved.Free., on Black women "divesting from liberation"
therein we find another aspect to the three of swords: being honest about if you’re experiencing grief or self-betrayal. there is a major difference between losing something (or someone) in a way that may have been out of your control, and cutting away parts of yourself so that you may attempt fitting in a place you could never belong. once you realize that you intentionally picked up the master’s tools and plunged them into your own chest, will you then point your finger at someone who’s trapped in the master’s house with you and blame them for your bleeding? or will you find the bravery to adjust your grip and aim the blade at those who actually wish you dead?
Trump’s last win in 2016 drove me not into despair, but rather into organizing on the grassroots level to build power with Black queer and trans people (and thus BQIC was born). things are no different now in that regard, especially considering how much of the present-day precarity and violence were consolidated under Biden’s presidency. make no mistake, i understand the threat that the incoming War-Criminal-In-Chief presents. we may be heading towards a period of austerity, hypersurveillance, and violence the likes of which we have never seen (because agents of neocolonialism love to outdo themselves), but the silk-pressed alternative would have likely lulled the american public into a false sense of security for another four years while she laughed her way to the bank for a border wall and bombs. this time around, i'm only moved more deeply into my commitment to my people, to the land, and to our futures.
We have leaderless, non-targetable movements when we all step up to carry larger parts of the work. To have such movements means we must steal hours from our day jobs to give to our lives and the lives of our children. We will need to rest, but I think we've got that rhetoric down. We will also suffer, forget to eat, and lose sleep. It is this suffering in struggle that necessitates we set up actual mutual aid and care networks that support our movements and nurture our comrades. This is the work required of us, and not that of exhausting ourselves doing charity work alongside people with whom we share no common conditions. And yet, we keep finding ourselves building mechanisms that ensure the survivability of state infrastructure and dependence on capital rather than building relationships.
- Miliaku Nwabueze, “HOW TO BUILD THE END OF THE WORLD: In Defense of the Chaotic Protester”
in 2025 and the years to come, we all gon have to lock the fuck in or else. this will mean getting creative about how to alchemize disillusionment into imagination into meaningful action. as Nwabueze suggests, we are called to build flexible yet sustainable mutual aid networks beyond sporadic and depoliticized donations, especially considering how mutual aid, along with dissent, has become increasingly criminalized. we must devote ourselves to staying dangerous, to legitimizing underground/militant action, to cheering for the violence that the colonized masses can direct at heads of state and their bootlicking foot soldiers. we must study then practice methods of evading surveillance and nurturing security culture, especially as 80+ cop cities yearn to be born on stolen, desecrated land.
and for those of us living within the death cult called the “united states,” we must also be honest with ourselves about our mortality. death is always certain, but in resistance, its prominence grows in size. the carceral system has already worn down the hearts of too many movement elders who were captured or exiled decades ago, and the stakes have only risen against those of us poised to take similar risks. from the still-deadly COVID-19 pandemic to COINTELPRO 2.0, we cannot abandon care or common sense for the sake of complacency, desirability, or the status quo. our lives and deaths — yes, yours and mine and those who have been disappeared — quite literally depend on it.
“You died.
I cried.
And kept on getting up.
A little slower.
And a lot more deadly.”- Assata Shakur, Assata: An Autobiography
the work waits in the grieving and the getting up, in taking the “wet knives” we once used against ourselves to make ourselves more deadly not just to the state, but to the oppressors and vigilantes lingering in our midsts. our hearts may very well have to endure dimensions of pain that we’ve never encountered before, but if in the name of Life and liberation, sacrificing the comforts granted to us by the pain and suffering that the west engineers “elsewhere” will be so worthwhile. i know myself enough to continue discovering what i must do to be at peace with myself to live presently, my graceful death pending. i hope the same for you too, dear reader. and if not, may you find the courage to try.
i hope my shoulder finds a head that needs nestling
and my feet find a footstool after a good soaking
with Epsom salts
i hope I die
warmed
by the life I tried
to live
- Nikki Giovanni, “The Life I Led”
references
Maryam Alaniz, “Mumia Abu-Jamal Shackled to Hospital Bed after Heart Surgery”
Mohammed al-Hajjar, “In Gaza, you don’t only see death. You smell it. You breathe it”
Alua Arthur, Going with Grace End-of-Life Training (Module 2)
Mateo Askaripour, “Falling in Love with Malcolm X—and His Mastery of Metaphor”
The Associated Press, “Biden ends COVID national emergency after Congress acts”
Black.Loved.Free (Dr. Brendane A. Tynes), on Black women "divesting from liberation"
Black South Apothecary (they don’t have the hawthorn glycerite i was taking listed on their site but their other medicine may come in handy for U)
Crimethinc, “What is security culture?”
Dion, voice message from mid-October 2024
Ryan Fatica, “Over 60 People Indicted on RICO Charges in Atlanta, Allegedly Promoting ‘Anarchist Ideas’”
Nikki Giovanni, “The Life I Led”
Kamala Harris promising that she “Will Ensure America Has The strongest, Most lethal Fighting Force In The World” (video)
Grace King, “More than 20 years after killing abuser, Gwinnett County woman finally free after being released”
i omitted the word “alleged” from the title because fuck that.
Ellen Knickmeyer, “U.S. military aid for Israel tops $17.9 billion since last Oct. 7”
Left Voice, “Images Show Over-Crowded and Inhumane Child Detention Centers Under the Biden Administration”
Gloria Lucas, “Honoring the Legacy of Mutulu Shakur: A Revolutionary in Harm Reduction”
Laura Strickler, Julia Ainsley and Didi Martinez, “Both Trump and Harris say they'll build more border wall. In this county, the parts have been waiting, and rusting, since 2021.”
Miliaku Nwabueze, “HOW TO BUILD THE END OF THE WORLD In Defense of the Chaotic Protester”
Tunde Osazua, “Surveilled and Controlled: The High-Tech War on Working Class Black Atlantans”
Eric Reinhart, “Biden’s Plan for More Police Won’t Make America Safer”
Diana Rose, “love fuels courage.” (post on Instagram)
Assata Shakur, Assata: An Autobiography
Evie Shockley, “the way we live now::”
Dina Temple-Raston, “Lawyers Charged With Seven Felonies In Molotov Cocktail Attack Out On Bail”
True Leaf Press, Security Culture: A Handbook for Activists
Victoria Valenzuela, “As “Cop Cities” Spread to Nearly Every State, Activists Are Pushing Back”
Ian Wafula, “Women raped in war-hit Sudan die by suicide, activists say”
yes please bookhouse & carespace, a intentionally curated safe haven, garden, lending library, community gathering space, and “manifestation of our reverence for black women and gender expansive writers and readers who continue to show us the way forward”
post-script
“funnily” enough, it took me longer than expected to finish this issue because i started experiencing consistent heart palpitations and breathing issues while i drafted it. is that life imitating art? (thankfully i’m feeling better now, so i can make a lil jokey-joke)
my birthday is coming up in a couple of weeks! if you’ve been rocking with me and would like to make my new year more celebratory, i’d love for you to respond to this issue with sweet somethings about how R2TS has inspired you / taught you something / made you smile / etc.
if U want to support R2TS, U can do so by sharing my newsletter with others and encouraging them to subscribe. U may also send me coin through Venmo (@fuckallcops) or Cashapp ($dvadown)!