people, get ready...

loving, righteous black revolutionary soldiers, too many of us are dying before we really get to fight back.

the matrix of an antiblack society has us. it has us doing its genocidal work on ourselves. we are dying of largely preventable diseases like heart disease and diabetes because we are surrounded by unhealthy food that also happens to comfort us in a brutal world. we are losing our minds from stress, alcohol and drug abuse, and smoking because we live in hostile environments where even our friends among the police, peckerwoods, and uncletom-ass negroes assault us at every turn. we are wasting away from obesity and lack of exercise because we can't find or afford safe places to exercise. we are depressed and we are angry. we are killing each other and ourselves. we are facilitating the genocide.

now, don't think i'm telling anyone what to do. depression is an honest response to living in a country that is not our country, no matter how much we have done to build it, no matter how much we do every day to sustain it, whether we want to or not. anger is an honest response to living with neighbors who aren't neighbors, loving lovers who aren't loving, doing for countrymen who do us like they do.

i have had my share of weeks and weekends (and even longer periods) when being black in an antiblack world had just taken so much out of me that i didn't feel that i could go on. we have all been slapped with such disrespect and scorn that the only reasonable responses were either implosion or rage. so please don't think that chico doesn't understand how and why it happens. and it happens to us all. we often cannot afford to admit this because it sounds like we are making ourselves out to be victims, but i think it is true.

no, chico is not here to judge. chico is here now, encouraging you, asking you to be ready.

get up and move around for at least 20 minutes. every day. there are good workouts that you can do in 20 minutes. even if we don't go to gyms or nightclubs, any of us can find a private space, put on some headphones, put on some really upbeat songs that get us moving (like Jill Scott's "Golden" or Cee Lo's "Jam" or Joan Armatrading's "Everyday Boy" or Vonyse's "Ain't Got No Someday" or Lucinda Williams' "Happy Woman Blues" or Nina Simone's "Mississippi Goddamn" or Tupac's "Picture Me Rolling" or all kinds of Beethoven or Louis Armstrong or whatever gets us moving), and groove freestyle to them for 20 minutes a day. we can do that. you can do that. and some really fit folk can do something like this here in 10 minutes:



there are good, healthy meals that you can make in 10 minutes with very little preparation.

and if you ever need human contact and can't find it anywhere in your immediate "real" world, just write something here on cosmic hoboes. we are not counselors. but we are an online community. we can share our stories.

we have to stay healthy in order to keep fighting. the point of afropessimism is to understand black life and its relationship to the world-- so that we will be prepared to change them. afropessimism is an analysis, not a cure. it implies a cure and opens the way for a cure. but it is not a politics. all it really involves is listening-- a really careful listening to each other and ourselves, a careful listening to the symptoms of life in an antiblack world. symptoms written on the body and the psyche and the geography and the community and our relationships to ourselves and to each other. we are not just here to sympathize from afar. we must empathize intimately. and we must organize. and we will respond and respond decisively.

cuz the depressing, angering truth is that they can kill us all at any time. at some level that most of them don't even know, they want to kill us all. we are kept alive, as all slaves and neoslaves are, only to the extent that they think that they might be able to use us. contained, scorned, ravaged by global capitalism. or serving and grinning.

but they can't kill us all without the hell we gonna bring em. we know that it doesn't get better until we fight. and if the world is going one way but we need it to go another, well then either the world can listen to us or else we are just going to have to fight the world itself.

but having to fight takes its toll.

so please, please, please, do something that you can start today. take some time to take care of yourself.

take some time to eat right.

take some time to get a good night sleep.

whatever weight you are, keep moving. and if you already moving, move some more. move with someone.

talk with someone. listen to someone.

have fun.

and get ready...