“This country is broken.”
No.
This country is functioning according to its design. Founded upon the labor of the enslaved and the displacement of the Indigenous, this land we call united was fractured from its very conception. The current administration is not a mistake in the history of this nation but rather a product of it. And yet, amidst the knowledge that the citizenship we hold dear is a stolen identity or one that has been given to us by force, we still find ourselves dreaming, wishing the fires erupting with vigor, the red lines drawing blood in the concrete of our cities, were all mere accidents.
We cannot avoid the truth of what this country was built upon nor the values which anchored its inception. Acknowledging those histories will bring us to our crossroads, where the climate crisis culminates to a state of emergency, where censorship becomes law, and where our bodies continue to be properties of a state willing to break them to meet its ends. But as I said, we are at a crossroads. We are at a pivotal moment where yesterday cannot be reversed but perhaps tomorrow could open new expectations. Ultimately, it is our inaction which will cost us our future. So then, where to begin?
Let us begin right here, on this first page. Established in 1968, NOMMO was the first ethnic newsmagazine established on a public university campus. Its principles were anchored in an era where the rights of Afrikan peoples were virtually non-existent and in this critical moment, we find a specter of that movement reemerging. In that time when NOMMO was the space for our people to create with radical optimism and hope for the tomorrow, we persevered. And today, upon these pages, we ask you to do the same. Not to glance at news cycles without batting an eye but rather to sit in the discomfort and engage in our voice. Not to believe the work we have done is over but rather to understand that collective liberation is more than simply occupying spaces. We must interact with our environment, and question it to always keep the dynamism of change at the forefront.
We invite you to keep engaging with us as we question our environment and our roles, as we extricate ourselves from our positions of complacency and admit to our agency. We invite you to find strength in yourself, to pick up your tools of creation and express who you are as change comes from within. We invite you to rest as well, and to know that the fight lives on and we will welcome you to join us when you are ready.
There is no land of the brave or the free. But there are the people whose search for bravery and freedom inspire a vision that acknowledges our shared generational traumas and projects them into a commemorative work. We cannot change our past, but if we reclaim the principles justifying it we can alter the course of not only the next four years, but the next four hundred. So that the children of our children will know the Earth and their ancestor’s beauty and why they should protect it.