A Parade is a Protest
[Pictured: A Next Gen Trekker is welcomed into the movement by an OG. NBA All Star Weekend San Francisco]
Sister, you can listen to this message while you walk here, or read it below.
“The very function of racism is distraction.” – Toni Morrison
There’s a boycott being planned for Friday.
The information has come through my inbox and across my newsfeed several times. And I’ve been conflicted about sharing.
Not because I don’t believe in boycotts.
Montgomery is now GirlTREKs new headquarters, and Bricklayers Hall—where Dr. King and the Montgomery Improvement Association organized—is now the staging ground of our movement, for a reason.
Boycotts, work, and collective economics are our power.
But I was conflicted about sharing the boycott because, last week, I did not share with this community the beautiful photos and stories from the walk we organized in San Francisco in partnership with the NBA for All-Star Weekend. I didn’t share the photos of the walk last week because last week was joyful. It was fun. There were celebrities, laughter, and sunshine. It didn’t feel like the anger or urgency of a boycott—and I wasn’t sure if sharing that joy would seem out of step with what people are feeling right now.
I wasn’t sure if people had the capacity for our stories of healing in the midst of so many necessary stories of rage.
I wasn’t sure if people had an appetite for the joy and levity the hundreds of women who came out to walk with us in Golden Gate Park experienced.
I wasn’t sure if people would understand the power and significance of so many Black men coming out to support us—NBA superstars, the 100 Black Men of the Bay Area, the partners and spouses.
Would that feel revolutionary enough for people? Or would they be looking for GirlTREK to organize a boycott or a protest instead of a walk.
[Pictured: NBA legend Muggsy Bogues, represents the movement while taking a photo of current NBA All Star, Jalen Williams of the OKC Thunder]
The questions around our strategy are daily conversations with our team:
How do we stay true to who we are and what we know works, without simply reacting to what is happening around us?
How do we build from a place of vision and abundance for what is possible?
[Pictured: WNBA legend, Lisa Leslie and Jalen Williams get ready for the Victory Bridge]
Those questions have intensified as we’ve been on calls with our attorneys—navigating what can be said, what can’t, and whether speaking truth to power could threaten what we have spent years building. They’ve intensified as we gear up for Harriet Tubman Day and our annual membership meeting on March 10th.
You see, we decided pre-election that, regardless of the results, the most important thing we could do was to make sure every woman in this movement was walking to save her own life—and that you never feel like you are walking alone.
It’s why, at the end of last year, we took our mobile app, The Underground, off the market.
Just another fitness tracker didn’t seem critical. You already have every gadget and app imaginable.
But what you don’t have is a reminder that you don’t walk alone—and a way to connect with the women in this movement so we can walk and talk together.
So, we’ve spent the past couple of months with a dope team—working from deep inside the diaspora—to reimagine the app as a simple tool that will:
Show how many women are walking at any given time.
Allow women to walk and talk with us from wherever they are, right from the app. (We can’t tell you how many of you have said Black History Bootcamp saved your life or that the Saturday walk-and-talks were your lifeline.)
Let women record their own walks and track weekly streaks—not as sport, but as resistance training.
Because we know that walking five days a week, 30 minutes a day, adds seven years to your life expectancy.
And the strategies and solutions we teach while walking can lead to lifestyle changes that add an additional three years.
That’s 10 more years of life.
And what better form of resistance is there than to live longer?
On March 10th, we’ll invite you—our trusted members—to be the first to use this new tool: a beta version that will be built out in future versions to lets us celebrate wins, track collective participation, and easily welcome others into the movement.
But as we’ve been preparing for this launch, the world has caught on fire—literally and figuratively.
We’ve had to practice discipline.
We’ve had to stay steadfast in what we believe.
And that’s not easy.
Yesterday, as I prepared for a Sunday outing at the Black Joy Parade in Oakland, I logged online and saw that one of our members in Dallas had posted a picture of a white nationalist group trying to recruit at the park where they gather.
I assume the men who put it there wanted her to believe she wasn’t safe or welcome.
But she replied that she wouldn’t be intimidated—that she’d be back to walk.
Her crew said, “Bet. We’ll be there with you.”
Is that the right response? I wasn’t sure.
Until I arrived at the Black Joy Parade and saw a gleaming Cutlass Supreme on rims.
And the intricate braid patterns on Black girls in the crowd.
And heard Not Like Us bumping from the boombox of a crew of kids on bikes.
And ran into a crew of women wearing shirts that said “Nah - Harriet Tubman,” who told me they’re West Coast Trekkers and said, “We can’t wait for March 10th.”
And for the rest of the night, I experienced a Black resistance movement that was both covert and loud, ancient and brand new, effective and beautiful.
It reminded me that walking is resistance.
That a parade is a protest.
That a Black man on skates is a boycott.
That Black families coming together in the unapologetic, beautiful Black way that Oakland did yesterday is the answer.
Have you ever enjoyed something so much that you couldn’t fully enjoy it because all you could think about was how much you wished everyone you love could experience it too?
That was me—thinking about all of you.
There was hella love on the streets of Oakland.
A love that sustains.
A love that heals.
A love that will overcome this moment in time.
It reminded me of two of my favorite quotes, saved years ago in my drafts folder, written by Black folks whose names you might not know—but should:
“And yet, Black joy remains. In the words of Terrance Laney, ‘Undead, unchained, and fearless.’ It dances in the face of armed officers, sings in the presence of death, and shouts down systems of terror.” — Broderick Greer
And this, from Cherrelle Brown:
“Don’t let anyone separate your self-care from your liberation work. Black self-care IS liberation work. How wonderfully revolutionary is it, that in a world constantly telling us we are not worthy of life and joy, that we go on living anyway? That we dance, love, kiss, sing, rejoice—anyway? It is resistance. We can hold church at 2 a.m. in a bar, dancing across altars and freeing ourselves through radical acts of self-love. The personal IS political. So may our summer be full of baptismals on the front line, braiding battle plans into our Bantu knots while listening to Badu… or UGK. Just don’t forget that when you see us dancing in the middle of war, it’s not because we lost our way—it’s because we’re finding it, over and over again, in each other.”
Those quotes—and what I experienced yesterday—are the confirmation I needed.
Confirmation to keep moving forward.
To hold fast to a vision that has nothing to do with who the next cabinet appointee will be.
No, our steps are ordered by the ancestors.
By Huey P. and Fred Hampton.
By Too Short and every beat that moves our feet.
Our steps require us to keep moving forward.
To focus on what we know matters: uniting this movement in solidarity, supporting our members in walking, radiating joy, and expressing it boldly.
That’s what we plan to do.
Here’s what’s next:
The membership meeting is March 10th. On Friday, we’ll share a link for you to RSVP and invite your friends.
Throughout March: We’ll ask all of you to host Harriet House Parties—because what could be more radical right now than stepping away from the scroll, stopping the online conversations, and connecting in real life with the people we love and who love us?
It’s the recipe passed down from our grandmothers—and theirs before them.
It’s the antidote to the isolation many of us feel right now.
And it’s a solution they cannot touch or infiltrate.
If you don’t believe me, check out the Black Joy Parade’s Instagram.
Look at those faces.
See that joy.