9/11 — present.

9/11 is kinda the big bang that led to Dump. We let our collective PTSD fear spoil into hatred after the attack. Along with green-lighting the insanely murderous oil wars, it gave already overt racists a mainstream platform to be anti-Muslim (i.e. any brown-skinned person who worships and/or dresses differently). It gave countless covertly racism-supporting ppl (AKA nice Nazis) permission to play along. It deepened our since-slavery tradition of anti-Blackness, and at the same time took the focus off of that tried-and-true systemic racism with all the rah-rah ‘we’re all Americans’ bullshit — as if becoming ‘American’ doesn’t go hand in hand with learning to hate brown skin (the darker the skin, the deeper the fear/hate). That’s an essay for another day. Today, I mourn everyone lost in those towers, everyone lost since, and the wounds that our country never took care of. They are now gangrenous. Time to amputate — and hopefully, someday, somehow heal.