I would hate to know that what my ancestors died for was in vain. I remember I took my mother to Obama's inauguration and my mother shed so many tears, because she remembers marching and she remembers being a civil rights advocate along with my father (RIP) and how she wished he was there to witness it. But he was looking down on us that day. It's crazy to me. I really didn't think I would live to see this, because my parents really were optimistic and believed things wouldn't be so bad for me, because they remember the lynchings, they remember not being able to go to school, they remember having to go all the way out of town just to use the restroom. My mother pushed me to be the only kid in a all white college. I hated it so much, but she pretty much encouraged me to get educated to better in school so they couldn't use anything against me. It's time for everybody to step up. Let's stop with the hash tags, let's stop with the trendy "die ins", let's stop with the marches, and the shirts, and let's get together and use our voice as black folks in this country to work together. Lend your time to your local grass roots organizations, you'd be surprised how little things like volunteering 2 hours on a weekend can do for them. Work with the youth, mentor them, empower them. Let's donate to black community organizations doing their work, let's collaborate with them, and let's make sure the government works with us. It might be a pipe dream, but just doing something and helping your own community especially during a time like this is very important. If all us young educated folk got together and lent our expertise to organizations and community centers, you'd be surprised how big a change we could make. I spend some time working with high school kids, they're crazy and a nightmare sometimes, but I can see how excited they are somebody cares. That somebody calls them every week and asks them if they had breakfast and gives them a safe space to do their homework and vent their frustrations to me and discuss what their entire week was like. Helping their parents be able to keep their low income housing, advocating for them, and trying to create a community center in their housing project for them to be able to play extracurricular activities in. I bet a lot of us would've appreciated that as kids. I know a lot of us want to make good money and provide for our families, but we have to support our communities. We can't let this go on. I'm rambling. Sorry.