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Frederick Douglass told us, “power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will… The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress”. This insight has never felt more incisive or timely, to me. As I write this – Atlanta and Flint go without clean water, the Key bridge’s corpse further pollutes the Chesapeake, and all the while the water is rising with global temperatures. The country is poised for another devastating surge of COVID after pretending the pandemic has ended, rent and groceries skyrocket in price, while our taxes pay for bombs abroad and cop cities at home.

It seems clear that our politicians have grown accustomed to denying, ignoring, or suppressing our demands. If historical precedent and the wisdom collected below are consulted, clearer yet is the truth. If we are to safeguard our communities and build a future true to the promise of “liberty and justice for all”, we have to make our demands louder, and more disruptive to the status quo. We must get our communities organized, uplift and support each other in solidarity, engage frankly with the reality of our political conditions, and work towards our liberation.

Sobering as the state of affairs can be, we cannot progress toward a more just world if we continue to defend the grim authoritarianism of the world we live in. The good news is that resistance and revolt are nothing new to our people – we have a long tradition of Black radicals fighting for liberation and justice to learn from. It is this tradition that we draw on within Part 2. In Repair we explored how we might heal the cultural, epigenetic damage we have faced as a people. Prepare is an attempt to envision how we might learn from what we have endured, and how we might work to oppose and end the systems of bigotry and oppression that put us here.

This section has more collected words of wisdom for each of the 7 concepts we’ve engaged with, and questions to start (or, more likely, continue) discussions in affinity groups and study circles. In engaging with this section, I invite you to reflect on what type of world you hope to leave your children and grandchildren, how different that vision is from the world we live in, and what you are prepared to risk or dare in service of that vision. We have long been conditioned to believe that we are outmatched and powerless against the powers that be – but no empire rules forever. If the situation were truly hopeless, we would not be seeing such urgent, almost frantic attempts to criminalize our freedom of speech, and our dissent.

Social collapse and civil unrest are timely, frightening concerns – especially for Black people. To address these realities calls for compassion for one another -as we discussed in Repair, and courage shared with one another, as we will outline in Prepare. It is my hope that what I have written, what those wiser than I have said below, and the discussions that emerge from each hearten and inspire you for the work ahead. It is time again to take up the drums of our ancestors, sing and dance to our coming freedom, and oppose our would-be masters.

All Power, to All the People.