Black metropolitan areas Detroit, ATL, and Philadelphia are SAVING DEMOCRACY.
Which will give us the first Black WOMAN VP.
If you feel a sense of relief that 45* will not get a second term to drag this country into full fascism, thank Stacey Abrams.
But don't think you get to IGNORE US ever again.
Thank us by changing your policies. Thank us by electing us. Thank us by paying us. Thank us by standing up against racism, sexism, homophobia, anti-semitism, Islamaphobia, ableism, & every other form of systemic bias.
I'm Black.
You're welcome.
We're coming for what's OURS.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
Yesterday the world celebrated as if we'd ended WW2. We danced, sang, cried, laughed. We screamed and howled, unclenched our jaws and unslumped our shoulders for the first time in four years.
Last night we slept. Today we'll brunch.
Tomorrow y'all are gonna consider just how close we came. Because Biden's win isn’t a spectacular victory:
It is a very narrowly avoided catastrophe.
Tomorrow we're going to talk about 70 million people who clearly want to go back in time to a point where their abhorrent behavior wasn't just tolerated, it was celebrated and embraced.
We'll talk about men in general, and white men in particular.
Four years ago yesterday, I woke up believing this country was ready to elect its first woman president. I challenged anyone who'd listen not just to defeat her opponent, but to defeat the conditions that gave him rise.
I admit: I underestimated the depth of US misogyny.
The current administration wasted no time slathering insults on political injuries. In the past four years, the breathless whispers through clutched pearls of "that's not who we are" can be matched only by the wails in the past 24 hours of "I thought we were better than this."
This is who this country has always been.
It has never been better than this.
If you are Black in the US you are ill-afforded the luxury of racial naiveté. We know this country better than it knows itself, because we've had to.
It's been going on for centuries. You may be new to The Fight, so you need to know:
The Fight isn't about you.
You are part of a larger story. Yes, you have a role to play.
You are a steward.
As previous generations fought to make your world better, so it's incumbent on you to do what you can for those who pick up The Fight when we are gone.
Yes, you will be impacted by The Fight, win or lose. Your life matters.
Right now matters. However, the sacrifices you make and the examples you set will become the platform for future generations.
The last time the United States was as divided as they are now was over the abolition of slavery. We couldn't agree on some very basic human rights, so we went to war. Over 600,000 Americans were killed, more than in WW1 and WW2 combined. /1
When the North won, they knew they couldn't impose punitive damages on the South, because the United States was still an agrarian society, and so economically dependent on the South.
With this in mind, provisions were built into the 13th Amendment, and the concessions of The Reconstruction were established.
These concessions led immediately to peonage, Jim Crow, segregation, and finally the current age of mass incarceration.