For as long as I can remember, I’ve felt, as Tarana Burke puts it, “hard-wired to respond to injustice.”
Long before I ever considered partnership or career or pay check, I was wedded to my community. Bound by an innate allegiance that sat at the core of who I was and how I moved through the world. Before I had degrees, jobs, or titles, I knew I wanted to serve. That was the root.
I grew up with stories of women who made justice their whole world. Assata Shakur, exiled for daring to fight back. Angela Davis, who stood trial with the full weight of the state against her. Winnie Mandela, locked in solitary for over 500 days—separated from her babies, her life—because she refused to be silent.
These weren’t just stories to me. They were roadmaps. They showed me what was possible. They taught me that one voice, when committed, could shift the world.
But as I grew, so did my apathy. The roots of my activism were deep, but the soil got crowded. Bills. Expectations. The day-to-day mess of surviving. And slowly, seeds of apathy started to take root—planted not just by fatigue, but by the comforts I didn’t want to lose.
The freedom to travel—Assata never got that back. The safety of my cushy bed—where Winnie didn’t have one. The steady paycheck that funds the soft things—candles, brunch, therapy. The right to speak freely without being flagged, fired, deported.
That’s what fear does. It takes root in comfort and grows wild.
So somewhere along the way, we made a quiet trade. We bartered our courage for convenience. Our clarity for safety. Our collective voice for curated silence.
We tell ourselves, it’s a different time. We point to progress, post infographics, justifying why it’s okay to sit this one out. We say “not all lives matter,” but what we’re really saying is: Our lives matter more. More than the 14,000 women and children buried beneath the rubble in Gaza. More than the six million lives lost in eastern DRC since 1996. More than the trans people who are over four times more likely than cisgender people to experience violence, simply for existing.
More than the Black women who are still dying in childbirth, incarcerated at disproportionate rates, whilst carrying entire movements on their backs for a sliver of justice.
We are not all free. Not even close.
We were taught to believe freedom was a destination. A peak. A prize. But the truth is, it’s a constant tending. A rooting. A re-rooting. A decision made every day—to grow toward each other, or to grow apart.
The question isn’t if you care.
It’s what you’re willing to lose for someone else’s freedom.
James Baldwin once said, “If they take you in the morning, they will be coming for us that night.”
Well, the night is here. And they’re still coming.
