Gone are the days of corporate Black History Month, filled with Target collections, Malcolm X and Angela Davis t-shirt drops by your favorite brand and red velvet fast food desserts. There have been no Martin Luther King, Jr. quote-laden statements from businesses, no empty diversity pledges and black box campaigns on Instagram. 

Instead, we are seeing DEI used as a wrecking ball to dismantle our government with the scapegoating of our people – Black, brown, immigrants and queer and trans kindred– to accelerate the rise of a fascist government. 

Fires are burning, both figuratively and literally, and it feels like we are living in the “predicted future” of Octavia Butler’s parables. 

Our people are no strangers to the shifting tides and the waves of backlash to progress—from Reconstruction to Jim Crow, from Civil Rights to mass incarceration, from Obama to Trump. And while the pendulum swings, we find steadiness in ourselves, in the strength of our memory, and are reminded that we have survived hard times. We have survived not only through the grit of resistance but also the sustaining power of joy. 

So be like Toni Morrison, braless and dancing in the club. Be like our moms and aunts at Freaknik, and the grandmothers who snuck off to smoked out juke joints. 

Be like the young SNCC members who circled around to laugh and be, like the icons we love when they were young organizers, dreaming and scheming over smoke sessions.

Be like our beloved queer and trans folks that came before us who hit the streets and the clubs, who resisted and loved, who found joy where they could. 

Be reminded that in all the hard times, there is joy. 

And like the old choir used to sang, “this world didn’t give it and the world can’t take it away”.

*Photos by Waring Abbott