Peep this- since RBAC began in 2014, we have been working with amazing young people and beyond in the Rainier Beach community! RB is and has been known as a super culturally diverse area, but for many years it was home to predominantly Black/Afrikan-Amerikan folx! This is true for many neighborhoods throughout the U.S. – they once were predominately Black, then they became “diverse”, then…you can probably guess what happens next. 

Constant displacement as a result of gentrification (https://www.rbcoalition.org/disaster-gentrification-series-part-ii/) should by now be considered an indisputable feature of this decadent Amerikan society. My point? When you’re living in and serving a community that is systematically under attack by the government, you are taking on a mission that has a strong legacy of resistors and freedom fighters! 

Shout out to all the folx of Afrikan descent who were born in, raised in, grew up in, went to school in, fought for, and fight for Rainier Beach! 

Rainier Beach is home to many folx who have connections back to the Motherland from Somalia, Gambia, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Kenya and beyond. With that said, we can never forget nor quiet down about the atrocities taking place TODAY in Angola, Congo, Tigray, and beyond. 

We also can’t forget the countless young Black folx who we’ve lost (Jayshawna Hollingsworth, D’Vonne Pickett Jr., Elijah Lewis, Aaliek Davis, and much too many more). 

In Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, a character says that “freedom is dangerous…but it’s precious too…” Many days, that is what it feels like to be Black in Amerika. It’s a joy, blessing and honestly, pretty LIT – and we’re also LITERALLY under attack, what feels like, everywhere on Earth. Those are some polarizing wings…but our people have never stopped flying! This Black Hxstory Month, take some time to consider the legacy not of celebrities, politicians, and athletes – but of the unsung thousands (MILLIONS?) of Black folx around you everyday who are probably flying with some broken wings and making it look so good that everybody wanna be Black! ❤️

– Jerrell Davis

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