September 2025 has been a lot. Every time you turn on the news, it seems like there’s been another tragedy, another act of mass violence that leaves us all shaking our heads and holding our loved ones a little tighter. From Michigan to Colorado, communities are being torn apart.
In September, we’ve seen a wave of violence across the country. There was an incident in Michigan involving Thomas Sanford. Another in North Carolina linked to Nigel Edge. Situations unfolded in Dallas with Joshua Jahn, in New Hampshire with Hunter Nadeau, in Pennsylvania with Matthew Ruth, in Utah with Tyler Robinson, and in Colorado with Desmond Holly. These events, one after another, show a crisis that is national.
When we look at who’s carrying out these worst attacks—the ones that stop the whole nation in its tracks—we know the truth. It is not us. The faces on the news for these large-scale tragedies are almost never Black faces. Let’s be real about that.
This is where the conversation about common-sense gun reform has to come in. How is it this easy for people to get their hands on weapons that can cause so much harm so quickly? We need to talk about making it harder for people with hate in their hearts or a history of violence to get a gun. This isn’t about taking away rights; it’s about protecting lives. It’s a national issue that requires a national solution.
So, where does that leave us? It leaves me with a complicated feeling. I’m upset, I’m protective, and I’m also tired of the entire burden being on us to fix everything.
So I’m putting this out there: It’s time for everyone to do their own work.
We are going to do what we’ve always done: stick together, heal together, and build together. We have to. Our survival depends on it.
And for everyone else? Your work is in your own house. Your work is to have the hard conversations. These are the conversations within your own communities that we’ve been forced to have in ours for generations. Your work is to address the anger and the ideologies that are fueling this violence where it actually exists. And it’s to demand that our leaders pass sensible gun laws that protect all of our children.
We are not the problem here. We never have been. And before you comment with statistics without a source about crime in America or comment with “black people kill their own, what about that” mess…yes our people do kill our own, no different from Cain and Abel. The gang culture you see that is fantasized (and sadly often romanticized) is not ALL of us. Many of us Black people really be to ourselves minding our business taking care of our families…like myself.
I believe in a future where all communities can be safe and thrive. But that future requires everyone to clean up their own backyard. So let’s do that. Let’s all focus on our own houses, support our own, and heal our own wounds. If we can do that with honesty and courage, then maybe, just maybe, we can finally find a way to live in peace together. And if not, then we need to be left in peace to take care of our own.
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