In these troubling times, where the world often feels like a relentless broadcast of suffering, I find myself returning to the basics of survival: breath, rhythm, and the words of our ancestors. To be nonbinary and to exist loudly today is to live in a constant state of awareness.
This awareness, as Assata Shakur reminds us, is the first prerequisite for freedom. She taught us that people get used to anything, and that the less we think about our oppression, the more our tolerance for it grows until we accept the abnormal as the normal state of things.
When I get to DJ or play music on the radio, it is my radical refusal to give in to the over-curated, all aesthetics culture of our time. I am not here for the gloss; I am here to bring in the sweetness of the land and the heavy, holy presence of our ancestors through every selection. I stand for a world where we do not have to build up a callous just to survive the day. I play these records to soften the edges, to bridge the gap between our history and our healing, and to remind us that we do not have to be hard to be whole.
Music is the soil where I stay rooted. It is the reminder that we are not just machines for work or targets for policy; we are vibrating beings capable of immense resonance. We are blessed to have music that can say it for us or hold us when needed.
On the days that feel heavy and alone, I let 2pac’s Changes carry my weight; it creates a safe space for my tears to come out, reflecting a reality that has not shifted enough since he penned it. When the anger is bubbling and my heart is raging, Dead Pioneers provide the soundtrack for my fire. Whether it is their track Political Song or No Kings, they give me the space to scream the lyrics and release the pressure of a world in transition.
But our duty is not just to the struggle; it is to the joy. It is to the soulful house tracks like It Starts with Us by Dawn Tallman and Beaten Soul, which remind us that the pulse of change begins in the individual heart. And when the weight of the world gets stuck in our bones, we have the grooves to shake all that cucaracha energy out. Dropping a track like Aguanile by Hector Lavoe is a spiritual necessity; the instruments cleanse us, the words affirm us, and the frequencies realign our spirits.
This is the duty Assata spoke of: "It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win. We must love each other and support each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains." But how do we love in a world that feels so unjust? Bell Hooks provides the roadmap, insisting that there can be no love without justice. She teaches us that care and affirmation are the foundation of love. This means our resistance is not just found in grand gestures; it is found in how we renew our spirits. As hooks said, "It is not what you do but how you do it."
I believe we often over strategize our compassion until we are too paralyzed to act. We do not have to solve everything to change something. Resistance can be feeding someone who is hungry. It can be extending our compassion to all living beings, perhaps by choosing not to eat animals once a week, recognizing that justice is not a human only concept.
Most importantly, the change begins within the quiet architecture of our own lives. We cannot fight for a liberated world if we are recreating our own oppression through exhaustion. When we spread ourselves thin to the point of collapse for the sake of work, we are validating the systems that tell us we are only worth what we produce.
I am learning to pause. I am learning that refusing to be exhausted is an act of defiance. I am standing for a sweeter way, a way where we imagine freedom not as a distant destination, but as the way we treat ourselves and each other in the here and now. We have the right to be soft, and to dance until we sweat the cucaracha energy out. We have the right to love each other deeply, to care enough to stop and disrupt the avoidance we have been trained to do, and to give a damn, a deep one.
I stand for love, for gentleness, kindness, and clarity. I stand for having one on one time with our spirit and the spirit of the land. At the end of the day, they can never take any of these things from us. These are our rights, and all other things only serve to distract us from this truth. We must remember that our only purpose here is to love and care for each other, and it starts with ourselves.
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