Hi friends.

There are a lot of lists of educational resources and orgs to support floating around. Instead of pointing to some of those same things here, I wanted to share the social media accounts of eight Black people whose posts have expanded my perspective and provided starting points for more learning and action over the past week.

Some of these people are organizers who have spent years thinking about (and being affected by) white supremacy and so I consider it a privilege to learn from them, to be able to benefit from their effort.

You might find yourself disagreeing with some of their policy suggestions or interpretations, but I would like to kindly and earnestly encourage you to pause in those moments, to get Socratic on yourself, and to figure out why the friction exists. And then if it still exists after that exploration, not to let that friction dampen your commitment to help.

Eight humans
Indya Moore (Instagram)
Noname (Twitter)
Ric Wilson (Twitter)
BLMChicago (Twitter)
Eve Ewing (Twitter)
Ericka Hart (Instagram)
Earl Sweatshirt (Twitter)
Samuel Sinyangwe (Twitter)

Thank you. Please be safe. Love to you.
Spencer

From the State Street Bridge

• Driving with Casey in a caravan of protesters, from the Cook County Jail to Daley Plaza. [5-30]
• Making eye contact with a maybe ten-year-old Black protester in another car, offering her water, smiling at each other. [5-30]
• The viral video of National Guard soldiers shooting paintballs at citizens in Minneapolis on their own porch. The “Don’t Tread on Me” crowd, who fantasize about fighting against government imposition, celebrating that moment, telling citizens who don’t want to get hurt to merely obey. [5-30]
• Honking the car horn till it got hoarse and then silent. [5-30]
• Hearing horns as I fell asleep at night. [5-30]

In the neighborhood

• The pothole in a church parking lot filled to the rim not with rainwater, but with petals fallen from the blooming tree above it. [5-18]
• The joy of eating a crumbly cookie outside, where you can let the crumbs fall, gifts to birds, no cleaning up. [5-16]

On the beach

• The little kid sisters on the beach capturing a fish with their dad’s baseball hat and a flip-flop, and depositing it into a micro-pond they had just dug into the sand. [5-23]
• The rain drizzling so lightly that it made the air look like TV static. [5-19]
• Before bed, four drone sounds: [5-22]
  • The nearby highway.
  • The fan in Sammy’s gaming laptop.
  • The water pipes on the way to Casey’s shower.
  • The rhythmically sloshing dishwasher.

These were my picks from May. For the rest of the blog, click here.

If you like, you can reply directly to this newsletter.

Thank you again,
Spencer