Brothers in Arms

If y’all have time, watch “The Truth,” which is episode five of season one of The Falcon and The Winter Soldier. I will only add this. Black people don’t fight for America because we love it. We fight for America because we built it and because it ain’t shit without us. I have a DD213 with Honorable Discharge on it. My Pops served in Vietnam and earned several medals for his service. My uncle, Curtis Edwards McInnis, was an Air Force photographer who barely survived an ambush in the rice fields of Vietnam. My uncle, Larry Dale McInnis, served in the Navy off the coast of Vietnam for two tours, helping to evacuate 2500 refugees. And, my uncle Robert McInnis, was a lifer who retried, like Uncle Larry, from military service. Additionally, along with his Vietnam service, my Pops was arrested multiple times during the Movement, including the day that so many black folks were arrested that the Jackson, Mississippi, jails couldn’t hold them. The police had to open the Mississippi Fairgrounds to contain the number of black political prisoners. So, watch “The Truth” episode of The Falcon and The Winter Soldier and know that real patriots don’t storm the White House because they are too busy on various battlefields—the streets, the courtroom, the classroom, and the legislature—cleaning up messes that white supremacists make as they have tantrums of privilege.