How it started.

 It all started long ago, but really, more recently when I read about Nia Wilson being killed, my feelings of rage, shame and disbelief drove me to act. I have felt shame and embarrassment for some time over the hate crimes being committed all over the country, and the rise in frequency of such crimes ever since the beginning of Number forty-five's reign. I have seen the most ridiculous things occur in the name of white privilege and the misguided white supremacist cults springing up all over the country, that I felt I could no longer live with myself for not acting.

I decided that if there is anything I would work for, it would be the eradication of the privatized prison system. 

So I decided to write Black Lives Matter over my shirt every day, until I saw change happening. The reasons I approached the project in this manner are:

• I am trying to speak to white people specifically who might not know that slavery is now cloaked in the guise of the privatized prison system
  
• By writing Black Lives Matter over the top of every shirt I wear, I am hoping to communicate that:
  

1. It is easy for me to take off a shirt any time I feel threatened or uncomfortable, but people of color walk around in skin that makes them a target, an experience white people don't relate to.
   
2. I want to make a clear statement that Black Lives Matter more than my clothes, or the clothes prisoners might make in jail for about 1.25/hour in order to bring profit to the companies that use this system.
   
3. I want to comment on the "branding" people pay to wear all the time. Wearing these items advertises and elevates the brand. I want to elevate an awareness of what is being done to People of Color and create a conversation around change.
   

• I am hoping to communicate to poor and not-so-poor white people that the companies they believe are saving them money are doing so on the backs of an oppressed people
  

I began this journey on July 30, 2017. I will add to this project in the hopes that I can help to eradicate the privatized prison system and in that way, abolish legalized slavery once and for all.