I have premonitions of death. It’s a daily thing now.

On Tuesday night, a woman was killed in my backyard. (Not literally, but figuratively. I live behind Natural Bridge.)

On Thursday night, my family was afraid for me to come home. Someone else was killed right at the intersection of my home street.

I did come home. Every moment I inched closer to my home, my fear, my premonitions felt more real, less like an extremely distant future. But, I was high on the power of the people. WEPOWER had just completed day two of our power building cohort with 155 Black and Latinx St. Louisans. Amidst our grief, our depression, our questioning if Black lives matter to those in power, we chose to show up for one another, for our children, for our city. We all left that Zoom call filled with a hope so strong that we could one day activate the power to create a future where we have transformational leaders and a system where police aren’t our default for public safety.

High on life, I laid my head on my couch. Basking in the last three hours with the WEPOWER community and equally fearful of the violence that awaits me and all of my brothers and sisters, far and near, those who live on both sides of me and those who live all across the country. When the high settled, when my racing mind was too tired to conjure up the next scene of a Black body found breathless, I fell into a slumber. A well-deserved one after sleepless nights working with my team to hold space for Black and Brown folks in desperate need for space where we are free, where we can dream while awake, where we can plot a way to bring those dreams to bear.

10 shots. Not fireworks this time. Both are so common, I think I finally know the difference now. Different notes in the many songs that are the soundtrack of north city. Close enough to shatter my window. Close enough to kill me. The shots rang loud, making my premonitions less wild and more possible. They sparked my reflexes to drop to the floor. I crawled up the stairs to head to my bedroom.

When I came up the stairs, my mom was there to greet me. Calmly, a matter of factly, yet discretely, she told me she thinks it’s possible she could lose her only daughter, that I was not exempt from death, that there could be a bullet with my name on it. Instead of talking about the gunshots that were close enough to kill, we stood in the hallway as she shared a story.

“You heard what happened in Chicago, right? A little girl was performing a Tik Tok dance for her mother when a bullet came through their front window and went into her neck. The little girl laid on the floor reaching for her mom as she died. Two others were shot outside, but they didn’t die. Only the daughter.”

Instead of going to my bedroom, I went to the upstairs room with the couch. Clearly, I love me a good couch. Mind racing, I check on my cousin, more like my brother. He replies to my text, explaining he saw the whole thing. We meet on our balconies and watch as the cops put up the yellow tape, no masks, just guns and uniforms. This was at least 20 minutes after those shots awoke us all.

We are used to the police arriving too late for us to live. We are used to the police never coming when we call. We are used to the police killing us.

We are used to the food deserts that mean McDonald’s and Rally’s and corner stores not owned by folks who look like us are our only source of sustenance. We are used to systemic violence. We are used to divestment. We are used to abandoned buildings and vacant lots that look like an untamed jungle.

As we stood on the balcony talking, numb, no emotion, a bit aloof, we noticed a fire emerge as a backdrop to the scene. It seemed as though popping some fireworks had gone bad.

A block South were the remnants of the deadly car accident. A block North was a black and orange electric smoke, ascending into the sky. A block west was the scene of a robbery gone wrong.

This is normal for north city Black folks like me, but this isn’t normal.

On Friday, l had a call with a potential funder, a call with a friend and mentor, and a photoshoot on my front porch for a local news publication for an upcoming story. Then, I had an interview over Zoom to accompany the photos I had just taken. I shared my truths at least three times that day, my truths as a Black woman, as a north city native, as a nonprofit leader in a region where talking about race wasn’t okay until a Black teenage body laid dead for four hours for the world to see. The journalist kept asking me to talk about how race had hindered me in life and to share specific examples of times I experienced racism. I refused. A day like this after a night like Thursday, I was triggered. But, I went about my evening.

My boyfriend picked me up so we could try going out to dinner for the first time since the pandemic. We both wore our masks and even plotted how to keep them on as long as possible despite needing to eat at some point. I have asthma like many folks from north city. And it hasn’t been nice to me this spring and summer. As we waited to be seated, white folks walked up and down the block, no masks, no signs of sorrow or unease in their eyes despite all that is happening in our country. Things seemed to feel normal. I gazed at the tables and the people on the patio. It all felt too normal. I scrolled my Twitter feed. Something I rarely do. And I saw the video of our mayor, our fearless leader who is supposed to protect me, all of us, and lead us to a day where we are thriving, bustling, booming, alive!

I saw that she publicly and proudly broadcasted the addresses and names (of possibly my friends) who were demanding that she Close the Workhouse, defund the police, and invest in north city. The mask I had on all day, the mask I’ve been wearing for too long, it cracked, tears started to flow fast as I stood amidst a sea of white folks back to normal as Black folks are being killed by every system we engage with, we reimagine, and we try to make just and safe for us all.

No words. A knot in my chest. Sadness, rage, disgust filled me from head to toe. I rushed to the car. On the walk to the car, I thought to myself, this is a prank. It’s not real. The naive thoughts helped my tears dissipate a bit.

Then, my friends responded to my text and said, “It’s real”. Lyda Krewson, our mayor, did actually publicly, viciously call for the murder of changemakers fighting for Black folks to live and live free by Closing the Workhouse.

The tears flowed all the way home. I apologized to my boyfriend for abruptly ending our first night out in three months. He told me not to apologize. He drove us home with a quiet understanding and comfort, maybe finding solace in my tears that he couldn’t shed because he’s worn the mask for too long and too tight for his emotions to crack through.

I don’t think Krewson or the journalist will ever understand the danger of being Black. That it’s never a single moment that we can look back on in isolation and tell our children about it. Racism / racialized violence is the air we breathe daily. It’s in the water we drink, it’s in the paint of our homes, it’s in the food we eat, it’s in our school buildings, prisons, hospitals, and the conversations we have with journalists trying to dwindle this violence into a simple quote.

Krewson is the poster child for a city on fire, one that has been killing Black folks for too long and at an alarming rate.

If we tolerate and preserve the position of a mayor like Krewson, we are preserving the cycle of Black death.

If you want to stop killing Black people, we can start with our leaders. We can start with Krewson resigning. But, that’s just the beginning. Disrupting the normalcy of our death, of divestment in our neighborhoods will require sustained transformational shifts. To break the normalcy of our city, we need:

— new leaders

— different tables

— new education, economic, justice, and health systems

— a people-powered movement

These aren’t radical ideas, these shifts are necessary. This is a moral responsibility each of us has.

If you truly love your city, if you really want to preserve your humanity, and acknowledge the humanity of us all, stop killing us, help me get rid of these premonitions of death. Stop being complicit. There’s blood on your hands.

Align your resources, your votes, your voices, your ideas, your feet with Black liberation.