As demonstrations unfold across the country in defense of black life and in protest of racism and police brutality, 433 is offering our site to people who would like to use it as an avenue of expression and a space to process their understanding of the tragedy with which we are all wrestling.
We have reserved the first week of June exclusively for these voices, but we will continue to add to this series as long as we receive submissions. This is not a crisis with a determinate beginning and end, but rather a heightened moment of awareness of a systemic tragedy transpiring over generations.
And Then Comes a Lynching
Gabriel Noel
“This image of terror, and the thoughts of terror that circled it, brought back to me the conviction that here I was witnessing another manifestation of the tragedy of the United States.”
Why We Can’t Breathe
Regina A. Bernard
“It’s becoming murky. The names, the incidents, the actual meaning of our liberties and our injustices and our existences, all muddled.”
Dispatch from a City in Flames — Seeking Silence in Minneapolis: Day 5
Elexis Trinity
“The helicopters overhead have syncopated with the birds, but all I can hear is the music of my community peacefully chanting:
I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I (still) can’t breathe.”
“If he’s not ready to clean his house…it should catch on fire.”
Malcolm X
“We have to go to the root. We have to go to the cause.”
The Playground is Burning
Sage Ravenwood
BINGHAMTON, NY: Early in the morning on June 1, 2020, someone set fire to the OurSpace Playground in Recreation Park.
Watching You Sleep
Kay Bell
“I pray your America won’t be whitewashed in self-hatred
and your dreams more than clichéd metaphors
I also pray I haven’t disappointed you”
It Is Still Monday
Gabriel Noel
“That anger says that it will always be Monday, that the pattern I’m seeing will repeat in perpetuity, that there is nothing to be done but to smash everything in the house and be tied to a chestnut tree.”
Marching Down Gravier Street
Clarise Quintero
With Mardi Gras over and the second lines on hold, New Orleans marches on in defense of Black life.
Fruit Flies
Schroeder Barteaux
A sudden eruption dislodges a parasite from its host, but for how long?
Memories of Henrietta Butler, Formerly Enslaved
Henrietta Butler
On Juneteenth, remembering the history of slavery through the words of Henrietta Butler, formerly enslaved.
