white supremacists (broud poys) attacking *and* looking for protection from white supremacists (police officers) should make clear the fact that white supremacy itself is destructive, it has no creative potential, no capacity for care and love and joy.

(also, care and love and joy are not easy. they are commitments. they take work and courage and a kind of fortitude and resolve that must be cultivated and renewed continually.)

white supremacy isn't a kind of violence that is a struggling to make a world otherwise, that recognizes something being birthed in this moment of upheaval; it is the violence of the attempt to hold on to what has become normative, it is an attempt towards ongoing racist control.

these were not people attacking each other as much as they were underscoring the ways white supremacy necessitates violence, and will turn that violence on anyone for its sustenance.

and i am concerned, quite honestly, because this violence will undoubtedly be enacted on marginalized folks ... it will be the antiblack violence, settler colonial violence, border violence, misogyny and misogynoir violence, homophobic and transphobic violence.

this is why i want to make things, to form things with sound and color and light and canvas, because white supremacy doesn't want me, doesn't want us, to create.

because to create is to remember our breath, that there are reasons to live, and that we might have joy and beauty and delight, and that we can fight for these things.

i am concerned about what is to come. which is why i will try to make things, beautiful things. and i will remember that it's ok to be afraid and uncertain and concerned. and i will remember to breathe. and i will plant flowers and food. and i will laugh and love.

and bloom