"If I had my way, I would've been a killer!" Nina Simone once explained. Everyone loved the singer and classically-trained pianist for her art, and although music was her first love, she was willing to risk her life for this one thing under the right circumstances.
Her people! Simone was not a fan of nonviolence. In her autobiography, "I Put A Spell On You," she made it clear that although she respected her comrades fighting for freedom using non-violent methods like sit-ins and protests, she felt quite differently.
Simone never flinched at the idea of fighting for us. She was trying to make a homemade gun following the Birmingham Church Bombing but instead sat down at her piano and let her fury takeover. In under an hour, she composed "Mississippi Goddamn," – one of the most essential songs of the Civil Rights Movement.
We're still dying at the hands of police, white vigilantes, and a systematically racist criminal legal system. But white supremacy loves claiming that "violence isn't the answer" when they're the ones inflicting violence on us.
THEY come from a long lineage of using force and violence to oppress our people worldwide.
Like Nina Simone, we've all got to take up arms somehow. With violence or nonviolence. Music or community programs. There is more than one way to get our liberation!