The Appetizer
I walked up to the march only a few minutes before everyone arrived at Malcolm X Park. The chants of “Black Lives Matter” and “Black Trans Lives Matter” were echoing through the streets, and I could tell that people had been going for hours because the drum rhythms were picked up in the chants, polyrhythmic music made in real time.
This is my neighborhood. The place where I’ve been called slurs and had objects thrown at me. This is the park where I had my first surprise birthday party. This is the street where my father got shoes as a child.
I metabolize this moment by altering the timeline, letting myself believe that my present time can also be my future. That these chants will echo off the trees for years to come. And that I get to celebrate while having attention toward the long haul.
The Long Haul
Cultural moments when streets are painted with Black Lives Matter and Confederate statues are removed do not give people jobs, change economic inequality, or get anyone released from prison, but they do alter the timeline of what we believe is possible.
Recognizing an alteration in the timeline is critical for time travelers aka organizers for justice because these aberrations reveal that our goals are not just dreams. Our goals are realities in present time that we are working to make more visible to all.
Like with any food that can nourish us, these cultural moments only give us nutrients when we choose to slow down and metabolize them. Have you ever heard someone say, “Well when I was at the March of Washington.” That is a person remembering and still gaining nourishment from their experience during a cultural moment.
The Main Course
“This is my story, this is my song. Praising my Savior all the day long.”
Listening to Monica, a Black trans woman sing her heart out, dedicating her song to Dominique Rem’mie Fells, a Black Trans Woman who was murdered, with Rem’mie’s family standing near by refines the narrative inside me.
Black Trans Lives Matter.
Black parents do love their children.
Black people get to grieve in public.
We get to hold each other as we grieve.
We get to see each other as we chant.
We get to pause, cheer, and soak in the song.
In this moment, we know whose voices are centered. We get to hear a Black Trans voice sing in Malcolm X Park, not letting Malcolm get frozen in the timeline. Letting his memory and awareness grow so that we can accept his love and support in this moment.
Dessert
Capitalism teaches to consume cultural moments, chewing, swallowing, and excreting quickly without digesting. But to metabolize these cultural moments, find a way to remember them in the present: share a story so that the timeline doesn’t default to what it used to be.
As I walk away from Malcolm X Park away, I get honked at on the street. The targeted sound is familiar in West Philly, but it’s this woman in her car seeing me and my partner, cheering for us. Can life can get this sweet? Can I let myself not need to jump when the car horn beeps. I try to think too far ahead, until I remember the alternate timeline. Then I relax and say, “Yes for now.”