With Radical Imagination
I grew up on the South Side of Chicago.
The kind of place that teaches you early: survival is not just a skill — it’s a rhythm. It’s how we move through a world that wasn’t built for us, and still dare to laugh, love, and dream anyway. It was also a city of beauty and joy — of block parties and front-porch laughter, of murals that told our stories, of music spilling out of open windows and kitchens that smelled like somebody’s love. I came up in community — raised by a city and a people who believed in showing up, even when they were bone tired, and in finding light even when the days were heavy.
And every step of the way — from kitchen tables to union halls to rooms they never meant for us to walk into — I’ve carried one thing with me: radical imagination.
The kind of imagination that whispered to enslaved Black people: Freedom is on the other side of this pain. Keep going.
The kind of imagination that moved farm workers to organize in fields under a punishing sun — because they dared to believe their children deserved more.
The kind of imagination that pushed queer youth out of closets and into the streets, chanting and marching and throwing bricks, not just in protest — but in possibility.
Radical imagination is not a luxury. It’s not a daydream.
It’s a survival strategy — and a blueprint for liberation.
We are at a critical turning point. And let me call a thing a thing.
This moment we’re living in is bigger than Donald Trump.
Because Donald Trump didn’t break the system — he is what the system was built to produce.
This isn’t just about one man’s cruelty.
It’s about the machine that made space for him.
That machine is anti-worker.
Anti-Black.
Anti-queer.
Anti-immigrant.
Anti-truth.
Anti-care.
It’s the same system that locks our people into poverty, and then punishes us for trying to escape it. The same one that criminalizes Blackness, erases queerness, and calls exploitation “the economy.” It rewards cruelty, silences dissent, and insists we shrink to survive — or disappear trying.
And I don’t know about you, but I’m done with it.
Done begging for inclusion in a world that was never built for us.
It’s time to pay dust to that old world.
Not reform it. Not patch it up. It’s time to put that shit in the ground and build something beautiful and bold in its place.
Something rooted in justice.
Guided by care.
Powered by radical imagination — and the truth that we belong to each other.
That’s why I’m launching With Radical Imagination. To speak truth. To name what we’ve been through — and what we’re building next.
We’ll talk life.
We’ll talk culture.
We’ll talk labor and liberation and what it means to live with your whole heart in a world that keeps trying to harden it.
We’ll talk about the South — not as a region to survive, but as the cradle of change.
We’ll talk about working people — not as statistics, but as strategists of the future.
And yes, we’ll talk politics. Because even in a democracy, power concedes nothing without a demand. And we demand better.
Now, I know some folks want to spin this moment as a victory lap. And yes, we just came off an election that turned the tide. We pushed back fear. We stood in the gap. We proved — again — that when we organize, we win.
But let’s be honest:
It never should have taken this much.
Not this much energy.
Not this much harm.
Not this many lives put on the line just to secure basic dignity.
Spineless leadership has a cost.
We see it every day — in our schools, in our streets, in our paychecks, in our pain.
So no, this isn’t just about Trump.
We’re not just fighting a man.
We’re confronting a machine.
A machine that sells democracy to the highest bidder.
That turns faith into fascism and laws into weapons.
That tells us: This is the best you’re ever gonna get.
I call bullshit.
We are the descendants of dreamers.
We are the children of those who imagined freedom from bondage.
The students who imagined desegregated classrooms.
The workers who imagined fair wages and eight-hour days.
The queer and trans folks who imagined joy in full color.
The organizers who imagined power that didn’t come from fear — but from love.
That is who we come from.
And that is what we are carrying forward.
Radical imagination is how we move.
It’s how we organize.
It’s how we build a future we’ve never seen, but refuse to stop believing in.
With Radical Imagination is my dispatch from the frontlines. A window into the work, the wrestle, the vision, and the joy.
So if you’re tired of watered-down takes…
If you’re done with surviving and ready to build…
If you believe this world can be remade in our image —
Then you’re in the right place.
Freedom belongs to us. So let’s go get it.
Radical Imagination: I was born & raised on the south side of Chicago. Blessed enough to have parents who did not ask if you were going to college, but what college are you going to? You did not play video games when you came home - you studied. Don't come home and say you did not have homework, for Mom always had homework.
My mom was a nurse and, most weeks, worked 7 days. My dad worked at the steel mills (not there anymore), and with both incomes, we had a pretty decent lifestyle. My dad was a hustler. He made 5 types of candy, wine, and more to maye upper income. I was taught early in life that you can always create a way to earn an income. I realized how hard my parents worked to provide for my brother and me. I have a BA and an MA. My brother has a BA and was a CPA.
I say all this to say that knowledge is power and education is the equalizer. If you don't want a college education, learn a trade. When you look at what Madam C. J Walker, Robert Johnson, Booker T. Washington, Berry Gordy, Edward Gardner, Earl Graves, and more managed to accomplish, what is our excuse?
I know our history and know what great strategies white slave owners developed to pit slaves against each other. They pitted the house slave against the field slave. They pitted the dark against the light. They used big male slaves as studs to create big slaves with no sense of being a father. So I understand that we have been taught to mistrust each other. That has to stop. Fathers have to be fathers and be participants in the lives of their children, even if they do not live with the family.
Shaquille O'Neal got it. He did have money, but he paid for the education of some of his high school friends. They learned finance and business management, and more. They became his"team." They still work together, and we have to learn to do the same.
You can't be too proud to accept a janitor's job if you don't have a high school education. You can't be too proud to work 2 part-time jobs to make ends meet if you don't have special training or education. Do something and start your own business.
There is a Black lady in my city who bakes sweets. I saw her at every fair; she sold her products at the mall. She was a vendor at every event I went to. I understood that she travelled to conferences to see her products. People started asking her to cater their events. She expanded her products and staff. That's what I am talking about. Discover your talent. God gave you one, maybe more than one. Discover your passion and work with it. Just get up and DO SOMETHING.
My local Seattle book club that I started back in October, speculative fiction book club, which meets at Haunted Burrow Books, have just discussed Parable Of The Talents by Octavia E. Butler, a story which, while speculative fiction, mirrors what's going on in our nation in more ways than it should. It's hard to believe that we're arriving in this latest phase of dystopia!
I very much agree that it's the political machine that needs the work, so we don't have Democrats passing ICE funding just so that the US government doesn't shut down. I already know my local politicians who help support US national policy like Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal will do what they can to remedy our situation whether the government is open or not. Our leaders going on "strike" for as long as it takes to get all policies reset for the new centur(ies) is likely exactly what is needed for us to adapt to a humane future for everyone. They have to stop thinking short-term if we're going to survive as a species through another millennium.