Covid, Racism and White Supremacy did not happen in isolation in 2020 and they are very much in the present as 2021 arrives. If you are reading this, you have survived and for that we are grateful. In whatever ways we were able to afford our survivorship (masks, working from home, home deliveries, unemployment and etc.), this is a reality not shared by all. Holding both the grief of 2020 and hope for 2021, we cannot hold only wishes, we need to be holding collective demands for the New Year.

We fight by continuing our work unapologetically, by naming and addressing institutional and structural racism, and by organizing for impact. A confluence of events in 2020 has brought a one-in-a-lifetime awakening for justice. If we are collectively serious about making change, the resistance against this movement cannot scare us into submission.

Black people don’t deserve to die because white people need a lesson in humanity. Black people don’t deserve to die because they resist arrest. Black people don’t deserve to die over twenty dollars.

We are not a helpless nation! We have unparalleled economic resources; we are ingenious and innovative; we have the power to change the dangerous trajectory of this virus. But do we have the will? Can we set aside our short-term individual interests and temporarily relinquish some of our conveniences and comforts to save those who are most vulnerable — the elderly, the disabled, the underinsured, the ill-housed, communities of color and frontline workers?

Graduates should be looking forward to continuing their education, traveling, and entering the workforce. But Jada and other Black youth, like the lyrics of 12-year-old Keedron Bryant’s song, just want to live. The cap and gown for our youth are face masks and signs. Their graduation stages are the capitals and police stations where they protest.

We need co-conspirators willing to use white skin privilege to work for systems change. We need white people working for racial justice to support our demands for transformation or replacement of broken institutions like the police and the criminal legal system.

This was written on Wednesday, May 27, before the protests in Minneapolis and other cities across the U.S. reached full steam. To this I would add that the protests are righteous and necessary, and that we should all be devastated, not by the damage done in protest, but by our nation’s abject failure to Black Americans.

After the first month sheltering at home, people and organizations in our network started deciding to give virtual conversations and trainings a try, and to all of our surprise, they have been just as meaningful, impactful, and connecting as the in-person sessions.