This is the urge to push...
One of my modern day heroines Erykah Badu has described the political crises of the United States as labor pains. She maintains, optimistically that we are however gradually collectively moving forward to a brighter and presumably more equitable future.
I am definitely no Erykah Badu… I’m pessimistic and way more inclined to possessiveness in relationships and jealousy. In fact I envy her reverse harem style situation of talented baby-daddy’s with whom she’s never been married and feels no need to apologize for and their free children, whom they raise collectively and without a trace of shame. But I like to think Erykah and I have some things in common: having gone to arts high schools in Texas (along with fellow club member Beyonce, although she and I both did not graduate from HSPVA in Houston), being certified doulas and harboring a keen interest in midwifery, quirky creativity and our own sense of style, a mysterious, persistent, and respectful but not obsessive interest in ancestral spirituality, a love others may never fully appreciate of rap music and its creators.
She made that statement about labor pains I want to say years ago. If that was the case then, now, in the year of Terence Crutcher, Keith Scott, Alton Sterling, Korryn Gaines, Philando Castille, Donald Drumpf and Hillary Clinton, as the Water Protectors of NoDAPL unite Native Americans and other Americans to numbers of strength such as this country has not seen in over a hundred years (if ever truly seen), as the Movement for Black Lives and Black Lives Matter only grows, to the fever pitch that even a millionaire professional athlete (so long the new slaves) has joined its woke ranks — then Now must be the time to push.
The term “protester” is a colonized term for standing up for what’s right.
