TODAY I AM tired as a bruise from too many years of too much explaining. Want to sink my mind into another kind of rising, which is a deeper form of rest, by remembering everything and everyone that got us here. Today I want to remember how we see the ones that came before, how we carry them on our backs and on our shoulders. In our arms. How the past remains a deep and bleeding wound in the present. And yet, a balm. Strange how we know this—that we have survived and continue to survive because as artists and activists, as storytellers and change-makers of all kinds, we know that no matter how crazy and deadly a moment seems, we continue to stare the future down in order to show the way to it. And like the visionaries gathered here—among them, the writers Nikole Hannah-Jones, Isabel Wilkerson, and Colson Whitehead; the activist-creators Ava DuVernay and Killer Mike; the cofounders of Black Lives Matter; and the congressional foursome known as the Squad—we will keep on keeping on.

You can see it in our eyes—that flicker. Did you see that? Did that just happen? Turn slowly. Look at us again. See it now? Do you?

Today, as always, I am also looking back. I am thinking about Nat Turner and Sojourner Truth and Harry T. Moore and I won't explain. I won't explain Ida B. Wells, Fannie Lou Hamer, or Medgar Evers. Merci Mack or Venus Xtravaganza. Won't explain Emmett Till or Edmund Perry. Look for the flicker. Did you see that?

Today the children of MOVE sit crisscross applesauce at the feet of the people marching across the Edmund Pettus Bridge as the ashes of Rosewood and Tulsa and Chicago 1919 silver the sky above them. I can't explain what happened on Osage Avenue or what it means to be the last surviving child of someone's revolution. Don't want to try. Don't ask me to.

Today I want to take a deep cool dive into the history of righteous waters— where Jacob Lawrence painted a migration that my own Southern family came through. My mother, only halfway through her 20s, knew that leaving was its own form of resistance. And so we grew, my siblings and I and every child that ever was raised in the crook of resistance's arm, knowing that too often the future resembled a past we had already lived. And so we grew, moving through it with the tools we already had. If this is you, I don't have to explain.

Don't have to explain how James Baldwin wrote about the language of Black folks decades before Ebonics was even a word. That nearly three decades ago, Octavia Butler wrote Parable of the Sower, which none of us can read without wincing, without shielding our own literate eyes. That others can't read without asking, How did she know? Today I want to look into the face of a country built on the bodies of Black folks as more than 400 years of rage and a balance long overdue bites it on its ass, paints a yellow brick road into Black Lives Matter plazas, topples its long-held beliefs, monuments, and Confederate flags.

Long before Billie Holiday sang a song that would become our lullaby, writers and poets, artists and activists, had stopped explaining. Turned those monologues into action—saw the future that is now and, right now, see the future already beyond this moment. Long before the rest of the world did, we fought because we knew Black Lives Matter would not always be considered a terrorist organization. We knew that if we acted up just enough to turn the world around, our HIV would not become the death sentence of our brothers, uncles, aunties, mothers, and sisters. We knew, as we sang of the River Jordan, I've got one more river to cross, that one was and still remains many rivers. But secreted away inside the DNA of our artists, queer, Black, and Brown selves, there is a knowing that is deeper and older than we will ever be. And that knowing keeps us moving. And that knowing keeps us here.

I won't explain. Just look for the flicker.

There it is again.

And there.

And there.

And there.

YARA SHAHIDI

Actor

In times of great social and political upheaval, the Grown-ish star and producer finds herself trawling through history for inspiration. "The movements we're witnessing now are direct descendants of the movements of the past," says the 20-year-old, commending her generation for rising to the occasion. "I'm witnessing so many peers create new tools to fight against social injustice. We are constantly evolving the ways that we move forward."

JOHN BOYEGA

Actor

The Star Wars star had no plans to speak at the Black Lives Matter protest in London. "I was masked up, anonymously protesting for a few hours," he says in an email. "One of the organizers asked if I would speak. I had no notes and just thought, Ah! I've gotta say what's on my mind. Might make some people angry, but whatever, man. Then the reaction itself birthed something in me."

ILHAN OMAR

U.S. representative

The congresswoman is the first woman of color to be elected representative from Minnesota. Asked to name one fact that demands more attention, she says, "Black women are up to four times more likely to die from complications related to giving birth. That this particular disparity exists for Black women in the United States, in one of the wealthiest countries in the world, is unconscionable."

RASHIDA TLAIB

U.S. representative

As the eldest of 14 siblings, the Michigan native has been looking after people her whole life. She ran for office for precisely the same reasons that crowds demand justice. "I see this movement on the street— that's where transformative change really starts, and it's hitting us right here in the halls of Congress."

AYANNA PRESSLEY

U.S. representative

The representative has served Massachusetts since 2019, working tirelessly for equality. "The reason there's unrest in our streets," she says, "is because there's unrest in the lives of Black Americans, and that's true across every issue."

ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ

U.S. representative

Only moments after a congressman verbally assaulted the Bronx-based Ocasio-Cortez on the steps of the Capitol, she sat for this portrait with the other members of the Squad. "People are really discovering their own power in a broader sense that we have not seen in a very long time," she says. "And it's incredible to see how people are really taking the reins for themselves in the direction of systemic change."

PATRISSE CULLORS

Cofounder, Black Lives Matter

"We are living in a moment where all communities throughout the margins have been impacted by an administration who has not cared for them, who has denied them their dignity," says Cullors. The artist, organizer, educator, and popular public speaker is also the founder of Dignity and Power Now, which fights for police abolition, as well as healing and justice for incarcerated people. "Nobody can argue that everybody who isn't white, who isn't male, who isn't able-bodied is under attack."

ALICIA GARZA

Cofounder, Black Lives Matter

An activist for more than 20 years, Garza has been heartened by the wide alliance of people demanding change: "When I see the protests happening on the streets, what I see is people of all backgrounds, all shades, all ethnicities, all fighting for the same thing: for Black lives to matter." She emphasizes one particularly endangered group, saying, "If we want to avoid the murders of Black trans women, then we have to invest in the lives of Black trans women."

OPAL TOMETI

Cofounder, Black Lives Matter

The Nigerian-American strategist and writer has done community organizing work for two decades. "Affirming our collective humanity and practicing love and mutual respect is a way of life. I often reflect on how I can behave in better harmony with people and our planet."

ISABEL WILKERSON

Writer

Wilkerson, the first Black woman to win a Pulitzer Prize in journalism, has published two nonfiction books that are instant classics, The Warmth of Other Suns and this year's Caste. "I get up every day inspired by what my ancestors endured, seeking to honor their sacrifices, and dedicated to a mission of shedding light on unseen truths about ourselves and our country."

BILLY PORTER

Actor

The first openly gay Black man to win the Emmy for lead actor in a drama series for his performance as Pray Tell on Pose, Porter says, "The public lynching of George Floyd galvanized the people all over the world to rise up. It's a wonder to see young people of all colors leading the charge. And.. .white folks are mad now, so maybe something might get done."

SHERRILYN IFILL

President and director counsel, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund

It's extremely rare for two Black women to lead a legacy civil rights organization, but Ifill and her deputy and right hand, Janai Nelson (below), have worked together for half a dozen years. Ifill was previously a law professor for more than 20 years and wrote about the traumatic echoes of lynching in On the Courthouse Lawn. "To work in the justice system and to be able to be proud of what I do and to stand for the rule of law means it actually has to be just," she says. "This moment has strengthened me and made me more ambitious and less willing to accept that transformative change can't happen. I know that it can happen, and I know that it must happen."

JANAI NELSON

Associate director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defen se and Educational Fund

Nelson fights for justice for marginalized communities. "In a society predicated upon Black subjugation and structurally positioned to perpetuate Black oppression, one of the most revolutionary acts is to have unconditional love and empathy for the most marginalized among us," she says, adding that Black women "simultaneously endure entrenched racism and sexism, the compounding effects of which often mean that their experiences of violence and racism are suppressed or overlooked."

BLACK THOUGHT

Rapper and lead emcee of The Roots

Tariq Trotter (better known as Black Thought) is an actor and artist, as well as an acute, poetic rapper. "Corrupt police," he says, "are a reflection of antiquated systems that have for too long been in place, resulting in a dynamic that has only ever further served the already privileged. Real shit."

NONAME

Rapper

Between her book club and social media presence, the Chicago rapper has done her political learning in the public sphere but with the poetic grace characteristic of her music. "We've seen state violence acted out time and time again," she says. "The mourning and hopelessness hasn't left me. Not sure if we'll see the revolutionary change we need to dismantle an American empire that demands Black death for its functionality." As Angela Davis reminds us, freedom is a constant struggle.

NIKOLE HANNAH-JONES

Journalist

The Pulitzer Prize-winning creator of the New York Times Magazine's "The 1619 Project" says, "The specter of a white nationalist in the White House who has overseen the collision of a global pandemic with a 400-year-old racial one has awakened many who were far too comfortable with the endemic racial and economic inequality upon which this country was built."

COLSON WHITEHEAD

Writer

The two-time Pulitzer-winning author of The Underground Railroad (soon to be on Amazon series) and The Nickel Boys stresses that the uprising needs to be sustained no matter what happens in November. "The protests feel different in their size, composition, longevity, and resolve," he says. "What is not different: the fact that any reforms enacted by a Democratic administration can be undone by a subsequent Republican administration."

AVA DuYERNAY

Director

She's made the searing Selma and When They See Us, and just launched the Law Enforcement Accountability Project. "Multiple realities are converging," she says. "Health and grief, race and rage, culture and fear, politics and theft, economics and desperation. The fact that 2020 has been engulfed by it all, so starkly and simultaneously, is the difference for me." 

EL-P

Rapper and producer

El-P takes a twofold approach to enacting change. The first prong is practical. When he and Run the Jewels bandmate Killer Mike (below) released their album RTJ4 in June, they asked people to donate money to the National Lawyers Guild's Mass Defense Fund, raising $180,000 in a matter of days. The second prong, of course, involves the music itself. "Through the art we get to be humans," says El-P. "We get to be silly and cocky and fun, and take stands where we feel we need to. [It's] my most powerful tool to do anything good in this world."

KILLER MIKE

Rapper, producer, and actor

Half of the Grammy-nominated hip-hop duo Run the Jewels isn't new to protesting. "This moment is a continuation of my activism since I was 15 years old," he says of the ongoing fight for equality. After delivering an impassioned speech in May urging protesters not to destroy businesses in Atlanta, he's now urging people to bolster their communities in any way they can: "I believe that very small and local acts are the foundation of effective activism."

DAMON WILLIAMS

Activist

"This current moment has expanded what is possible," says Williams, a Chicago-based organizer and codirector of the #LetUsBreathe Collective. "Redistributing resources away from carceral institutions and militarism now feels achievable in ways I did not expect to see in my lifetime." An artist, educator, and radio show and podcast cohost, Williams sees pop culture and media—along with consistent action—as crucial tools in the redistribution of power and eradication of systemic violence.

INDYA MOORE

Actor

The nonbinary actor, writer, and producer plays Angel on the groundbreaking Pose. Off-screen, they work to keep the conversation on systemic racism, police abolition, and the uplifting of Black life. "I know that to the world it looks like activism because so many people can separate social justice from their daily lives," says Moore. "But activism, as it's called, is my daily life."