To the Black Veteran

November 11th used to be called Armistice Day in the United States. A day in which the end of world war 1 was commemorated. A day dedicated to the idea of peace.

It became Veteran’s Day. The so-called “global war on terror” (aka Global US War on Islam, aka Global War US on Brown People, aka Global US War Upon the Global Majority) morphed the day into a recitation of unquestioned patriotism.

With tens of thousands of Black people in the united states involved in active duty, with tens of thousands more Black veterans there is a deep fissure in my heart. Because I want a world in which Black people live freely without having to worry about holding up the empire that enslaved them — at the cost of their lives.

My heart breaks because I have watched friends waste away from agent orange exposure during the Vietnam war. My heart breaks because I watched two neighbors self-destruct as a result of that war. My heart breaks at the toll two wars took on my father. My heart breaks at a grandfather who did not live to witness my birth, a victim of the impact of war forgotten.

I read the daily reports of united states-made weapons used to end the lives of over 20,000 Palestinian people. I’ve read the reports and stories of Black people in Somalia, Iraq, Mali, Chad, Yemen, Sudan, Congo, Haiti whose lives have been upended or obliterated by the interventions of the united states. I know, as family history, the dearth of options that drive thousands to join the armed forces – out of aspiring to an education, an escape from poverty, or simply the need for “belonging” and “service” to some higher cause.

To the Black veteran.

More than anything, we need you to survive. We need you to heal. We need you to live a long and prosperous life involved in building and sustaining the families and communities here. In places like Atlanta, or Houston, or Miami, or Chicago, or Jackson. Places that were an always have been the targets of us empire. Of defunding and hunger and police violence and prisons. We need you there and alive and whole.

We need you singing songs, and dancing, and laughing, and teaching, and emoting, and holding hands and holding space, and giving love, and creating spaces where we can all live and feel precious.

I need you to know that the “freedom” of Jeff Bezos, or any other plunderer of our minuscule lands and spaces is not our freedom. We just want the freedom not to be hunted, the freedom walk any street, sing any song, the “freedom” to laugh, to exist without punishment for being too black or too light, or too country. I need you to understand that this was never the “freedom” for which those bombs were dropped.

I need you to think about fellow veterans Haki Madhubuti, Geronimo Pratt, Kuwasi Balagoon (the lead photo of this post), Dhoruba bin Wahad, Richard Harris, Kwando Kinshasa. I need you to acknowledge that Harriet Tubman, Assata Shakur, Afeni Shakur, and Safiya Bukhari were veterans of our struggle although there will not be a pension granted them, no state honors for those Black soldiers.

Black veteran, can you sit with this tribute to Balagoon for a few minutes?

I need you to think about David Fagen who gave his life fighting for Philippine independence against a genocidal united states empire. I want you to think about the 13 Black soldiers of the 3rd Battalion of the 24th Infantry, executed for defending our people against a racist pogrom in Houston.

But mostly, I just need to you survive. To survive long enough to imagine a world without violence. Long enough to imagine and work towards a reality where we get to (re)invent freedom on our terms. Long enough to be alive and well and healed and unanswerable to any white empire, free to be a part of those conversations and visions in which we breath freely and live. Freely.