No One is Coming to Save Us.

I’m not really sure where to start. As I look around (on socials and in conversation with friends and family), it’s becoming more and more apparent that we not ok. Not only are we not okay, we’re doing really bad as a society (yes, I’m speaking about the United States, even thought I’m currently not there.). How is anyone feeling any sense of regulation or normalcy when the over-inudation of abject terror persists on a daily basis?

There’s been so much death and destruction around us. And it continues to make one thing abundantly clear: No One is Coming to Save Us.

My physical and mental well- being suffer at the constant bombardment of violence against Black, Brown, Arab, Trans, and Poor peoples. Violence that transcends the physical (though, let’s not understate the impact of physical violence) and moves into our daily psyche. The last *checks calendar* few centuries have been filled with slaughter in service to white dominance or capitalism (commerce/money) or patriarchy. Literally, everything can be linked back to one or two or all of those things. And this year, we’ve seen the attempted annailation of the Palestinian people. My heart can no longer take seeing babies being removed from their dead dismembered mothers or hearing the screams for help and sorrow from people finding the remains of their loved ones buried under rubble. But, I’m too human to look away. I won’t ignore it, I won’t sit in privilege and turn my eye from it because it’s too hard. I never want to be blind to the suffering that we, as a species, can cause one another. And now, while keeping my eyes on the Congo and Sudan and Gaza, I’ve turned towards Lebanon. Because the beast that is settler colonial power has set its sight on the consumption of another people, another land.

Then there’s what’s happening on the stolen land that is the United States of America. As a Black person, I’m so damn tired of constantly being exposed to the hate and death of Black folk. The public lynching, performed as a state sanctioned execution, of Marcellus “Khaliifah” Williams last week in Missouri continues to cement the reality that the United States empire is fed by the pleas, fears, labor, and blood of Black folk. To say that our lives, our histories, our futures don’t matter would be a gross underrepresntation of the absolute contempt of our existence. I understand that our presence is a reminder of the barbaric nature of whiteness and seeing that type of reflection everyday must suck. But, we are not here as some some twisted effigy for the most vile whiteness to be performed and expoused onto. American Black folk are owed everything by the United States (do not misinterpret that as saying other groups have not suffered at the hands of the empire). But instead of care and restoration we are continuously met with degredation and disrespect. In 2020’s A Reason for Riots, Kimberly Jones said, “they are lucky that what Black people are looking for is equality and not revenge”. Well, here in 2024, I think the needle has moved closer to revenge than the white, ruling class understand.

And, not 3 days ago, Hurricane Helene swept through the Southeastern United States; its impacts felt from Florida, to Kentucky, to Virginia killing at least 100 (at the time of pubishing), displacing thousands and leaving tens of thousands more stranded and without power or resources. During all of this, there has been silence by current administration, and the current candidates running for president, outside of promises to visit the devastated areas. But a visit and photo op is not what’s needed; resources and infrastructure are needed. A plan for recovery and then an even more proactive plan for how to handle this type of climate emergency moving forward. Because let’s be honest, Helene went from a category 1 to a category 4 story in 12 hours. That is because of the climate crisis which is exaserbated by capitalistic greed. But capitlaism continues win out, so storms and climate events will continue to happen in this way .

That’s not even mentioning the fact that the states that are most impacted, 3 of which are completely underwater, are filled with people of color, Black folk, and poorer folk. Peoples who are considered somehow less deserving and less educated based on the geographical location, and the accents we sport (I say ‘we” as I was born and raised in Atlanta, GA and spent a significant amount of my young adult life in the Carolinas). That’s right. It’s not just people who occupy a racial or ethnic minority identity. It’s poor white people, too. If this where anywhere outside of Appalachia, outside of the South, do you believe the lack of response would fly (maybe in some places in the Midwest)? Do you think that our federal government would be gearing up to send $8.7 billion dollars to another settler colony in the middle east, while allowing tens of thousands of people to watch entire towns float away if it weren’t in some of the poorest places in the country? Let me answer that for you: No. Both parties, in our system of government have failed us.

And never forget: there is NO WAR, but CLASS WAR.

The United States is a failed expereiment. From its inception, it was set up to fail. Because being founded on land acquired on the genocide of the Native peoples, while being built on the backs of trafficked and stolen human beings just isn’t a way to set yourself up for longevitiy and overall success. Our ‘greatest country in the world’ has successfully defunded education, packaged healthcare in the arena of profit making than helping people, divested from physical infrastructure in cities and towns, and allows 43 million of its citizens (roughy 12%) to live in poverty. All the while, having an overinflated military budget, enough money to fund police forces across the country that have incarcerated 1.9 million people nationwide. We can’t feed our families, we are locking up the unhoused, and demonizing those who expereince mental illness and substance abuse, but EVERYONE GET OUT AND VOTE (she says sarcastically with an eyeroll).

No one is coming to save us.

Me writing this isn’t to only cry gloom and doom. I’m writing this because I know that I cannot be the only person who is at their wits end trying to understand why we allow the rich and powerful and those with proximity to the rich and powerful to keep us divided. We have to save ourselves. And we can’t self-care ourselves out of this, no. We have to get aggressive with our community building and systems of collectivity and mutual aid. And that has to extend beyond the borders of the United States of America. We liberate us. We save us. From Indigenous Soveringty to Black Liberation to Palestianan Independance to Congolese Freedom. WE. SAVE. US.

So here’s my question for YOU:

What systems of community care, mutual aid, and collective binding are you helping to build, as the systems of white supremacy, caplitalism, and patriarchy continue to exploit and extract from us as a people?

I hope you get *serious* about answering that question. Because, there is no war, but class war and no one is coming to save us.

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