May 20, 2023
Happy birthday Rohan!
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Happy birthday Rohan!
March On Washington 2020- A Photo Essay
Around this time a year ago, I was preparing for my return from Washington D.C. back to New York, with me, I was bringing back so many emotions and thoughts about the scenes that seemed to be on constant replay in my mind. My journey to this nation's imposed capital began a few days before what seemed to be millions of people flooding the streets of D.C. to take a unified stand against the continued brutalizing and murdering of Black souls and bodies. National Action Network led by #revalsharpton made a call for our Black nation to join together on the anniversary of one of the most historic moments in Black history, and it only seemed fitting that we answered the call during the current climate of universal civil unrest.
The days before, I spent with assisting community members of Washington D.C. in attending to the un-housed community which plagues the current history of Washington D.C.; a result of decades of red-lining which has become the extreme- gentrification. This action paired with other traditional acts of systemic oppression has left a residue of abuse to the very generations of people who helped make "Chocolate City" a landing point of national pride. Within the process of connecting with the community, there was a beauty in the love that was being spread. But there were still moments in which I looked around and couldn't help but feel the heaviness of the isolation and pain that is a result of being dismissed within this society. Anger even bubbled within me as I took stock of the many men and women who served this country left without any reward for the life that they traded for presumed protection.
Evenings were a bit different- often in these moments, my intent is to go out only to cover individual stories that are floating within this mass gathering. But clashes between Black people, police, and Trump/Proud Boys were scattered. To only stand back and watch these violent surges occur would be antithetical to the very principles I stand on in terms of always supporting my people.
Strolling down streets, with walls lined the outer rim of the white house, became the outdoor gallery of the people. Signs and art expressing their pains, fears, hatred, hopefulness, and dreams filled the boarded-up parameters. My heart ached each time I found a sign by a child coloring a world that loves one another, or a sign from an elder whose cries of liberty once floated through those very streets, singing songs of liberation and justice, now lamenting of disappointment and frustration. Shortly after, late into the evening when the streets have emptied, I cloak myself to blend in with the night and join in with radicalized community members who would take to the streets to stand against police brutality, demand answers, and be violently met in clashes with the police. The details of these stories will not be told in the national news or publicly unless you were there to witness them firsthand. That early morning I would go back to my hotel room and sit for hours in silence, awaiting the day in confusion.
On the day of the actual march on Washington, I found myself being able to find some joy and elation for what was awaiting me in the day filled with events. I couldn't help but feel as though I was about to attend a national family reunion, and the energy was electric flowing through my body. Upon my arrival at the Lincoln Memorial, the sea filled with shades of brown came in like waves from all across the world. Generations of Blackness filled the same grounds in which many of our own elders and ancestors once came, demanding the same justices and civil liberties. As beautiful as this moment was, I could help but think "HOW DID WE GET HERE AGAIN?". I saw a great grandmother,3 generations of family members, powerful and beauty rose from this living legacy, I listened to her tell her grandbabies about her presence and experience as a young woman listening to Senator John Henry speak and how it fueled her desire to commit her life to her people, a trait that seemed to be passed down to her lineage. I wondered if within her pride, did she too feel a bit defeated and anger by the cycle in which we seemed to be enduring.
Mothers who were daughters of BPP members now with their own daughters, standing against brutality from the system. Yes as beautiful as this moment was, wounds were being reopened and we were silently hemorrhaging in hurt. A disposition Black people have learned to manage all too well. The beautiful memories of love, connection, and pride will always live with me. For D.C. added to my desire to stay committed to the cause of Liberation FOR ALL BLACK BODIES. There were life life-changing changing opportunities to learn to heal, teach, and learn- many in which I took advantage of. Although the conflict or reasoning behind this journey still lives in my head, it is the love that sticks with me.
I have held on to these photos for exactly a year, oftentimes feeling a bit overwhelmed by the words that I should attach to these images; it isn't enough to just tell you of this experience for so many of us, these moments were more than just historic, they were life-changing.
Thank you D.C.
With Radical Love,
Phoenix
“How you doing, Sis? You OK? What's up? Can I sit with you?” Phoenix Robles, the activist, photographer and social worker could be heard asking as she filmed a lone, peaceful protestor, in a now-viral video.
I watched the entire video and it brought tears to my eyes. ONE Black woman peacefully protesting somehow required the attention of 10+ armed nazis with badges and 3 dumbass medics who were damn sure gonna send sis to jail, involuntary hold, or the morgue... those were the only three ways this was gonna end until ANOTHER Black woman stepped in to support her and together they made it thru. THIS is why I will only fight for Black women. ALL of those bitch niggas were standing around just watching more than happy to let the armed thugs with badges get at this sista. She’s protesting in the name of a Black men, yet none of the Black men out there gave a damn about HER life. It took another Black woman to step up... AS USUAL... because only Black women will defend Black women.
I swear there’s no one stronger than Black women. That’s why EVERYONE else works so hard to break us down and keep us down. They KNOW the moment we stand together and rise up, it’s OVER for their ass. When have you ever seen a person’s refusal to back down and another person speaking up on their behalf get 10+ armed terrorists with badges to RETREAT??? No shots fired, no handcuffs slapped on, no forced hospitalization... that’s what happens when you meet two Black women who are about that “FUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT” life. The way both of these sistas gave ZERO fucks about those hoes feelings and made it perfectly clear that they had the RIGHT ONE that day. That’s the power WE have. We gotta have each other’s back, when we deal with them we can’t show weakness, we can’t be submissive, we have to be in control of the situation.
#ThePowerOfBlackSisterhood👩🏿✊🏿👩🏿
... before heading to the recreation centre for Rohan’s birthday party!
(I put lilsimsie’s updated recreation centre in my game and there was a little room for kids birthday parties! Rohan invited some his friends from school, Orion had already aged up sadly)
EX|POSED: Breakthroughs & Rehabilitation, REVELATIONS & REBIRTH
Breakthroughs & Rehabilitation
The beginning of 2020 was a confirmation of what I had been feeling empathetically for months, maybe even years up until that point. There was an energy that allowed me to sense something that was potentially about to be grand scale shift and life changing within the whole World. No this was no hindsight bias- for weeks I had expressed this feeling which had become second nature to me, this feeling that comfort as we knew it was about to change. An influx of aggression had been bubbling up for quite some time, and there was no place else for this energy to go but to release itself back out.
Each time I went out there was a pressure sitting on my chest getting heavier and heavier, this pressure was the kind that only anxiety can bring. The change I was feeling was going to be an uncomfortable one. As I knew this was a universal shift, I was painfully aware of the revelations and breakthroughs that were approaching in the personal realm of lives.
Within my personal experiences within this shift, I also knew the time was approaching that I address situations I had neglected which was no causing extremely uncomfortable limits within my personal life; I call the pass 6 years of my life "Walking in Hysterical Blindness". Recognizing my own response (or lack thereof) to what has felt like a lifetime of neglect and abuse transmuted into precipitous rage and withdrawal, this 0-a million reaction I had generated as a protection mechanism was now prohibiting my ability to move forward. These emotional responses that appeared “negative” doesn’t negate the external afflictions that society has on the person with brown skin and a vagina. But at this point I recognized my inability to avoid this painful death and cycle I had subconsciously committed myself to, lead me to dig myself into a deep lonely hole of pain and isolation for at least 6 years. THIS COULD NOT CONTINUE TO BE MY NARRATIVE: so I chose to allow those calcified pieces of ugly pain begin to fall off of me. I had encountered a breakthrough within my own death.
While I was about to attend to my proverbial death, the rest of the world seemingly and unknowingly was about to attend to their own. COVID-19 was a physical representation of all the ills of the world coming to surface. Forced to come to terms to the inconceivable ugliness that the worldly society has allowed to fester into a cancer, we were quarantined, a form of rehabilitation within itself, forced to sit with ourselves, our uglies, unable to distract ourselves with the normal escapism we would implement.
Death can be simultaneously painful and beautiful, ugly and comforting. The idea of (re)birth being able to evoke the same emotions is not often considered in a common sense. Beauty often lies within the ability to come to some form of acceptance with yesterday’s occurrences and today’s outcomes, within the death and rebirth processes. Acceptance allows us to kill off expectations and the parts of ourselves that chose to live in the comfort of lies, and rid ourselves of the parts of us that are not useful for our new found truths. And then there are growing pains of being reborn into the truth and unknown.
I had been running away from my own truths and what I had known was true for so long, settling to fulfill myself on lies because the pain was too much- I was weary and tired.
In my path in this new universal shift and journey, I welcomed the solitude of rebirth. A few months prior to quarantine, I sat on the floor of a women's womb circle as seeds were planted in the soil for that new year. I heard the words say "..seeds have a dark, sometimes cold, and painful journey to get to their breakthrough..you are a seed being planted in the dark growing into your breakthrough.."
REVELATIONS & REBIRTH
And again, like the rest of the world, tailored along with my breakthrough were revelations that allow me to continue breaking through these calcified conditions we I seemed to be holding on to so tightly.
As I began to navigate the new pathways of my breaking through old pain, there are revelations that act as stopping points of reflections and truth. One revelation I've come to terms with is that I forgot the essence of myself attempting to force myself into being something I am not for this world who suffers from its own façade.
I had been running from myself for several years at this point; which version I was running from was unclear, maybe all of me (hindsight, it was definitely all of “me”). What was defined and clear is the fact that I was deeply unhappy with me, the life I was living, and had hit my wall of exhaustion and living in my own lies. The beginning of the COVID epidemic found me in the midst of yet another major transition. Five years of attempting to outrun this person and facade I had created to appease to the acceptance of loved ones, has left me exhausted and depleted. There had been a great rage and resentment that had grown in me, and finally it bubbled up like lava and erupted all over my life.
BURNED! DESTROYED! SCORCHED!
Everything that I had built around this facade of being a happy wife, mother, girlfriend, professional, had fallen apart.
In fact I wasn’t picture perfect happy with the terms, positioning, and social constructs that went along with having to be the person that fit into these roles.
And in fact these things didn’t actually belong to ME- this person I actually am, and what my essence needs to naturally thrive. But I don’t really know who I am , so this is the new path on this life journey- understanding who this person is and what it is she truly needs. Before I begin to traverse this new path, I needed rest. The continuous energy it takes to keep running in order to survive is devastating when you get the opportunity to stop. It’s like the tailwind finally catching up with you and knocking you down hard.
Homelessness had approached my threshold and somehow the universe presented an opportunity to reset.
I looked in the mirror and didn’t recognize me, and quite honestly I no longer knew who I was: that was the major revelation and theme going into 2020. My rebirth includes reminding myself of all the things that my soul essence loves, writing, music, exploring, solitude, LOVE...for now I know I am being born again, the sun shining through the cracks touching my skin feel familiar and heavenly again, learning to express through words again feels like an escape.
“Wait Let Me Fix My Hair”
10.2020
Harlem, NY
Phoenix Robles