Editor’s Introduction

The image that undoubtedly captures the embodied reality of living in the ‘post-pandemic’ world as a Black grad student is the viral blurry Mr. Krabs meme surrounded by an angry mob[i]—yeah, that one! I have no idea what’s going on academically—I haven’t fully recovered from the plague of Black death that has become ‘the newly designated disposable bodies of the pandemic’ –my world has shaken. This meme encapsulates the disorientated state I currently occupy. The once urgent and ignited public discourse regarding systemic police reforms are now stagnant, thwarted by state and public debates of the vaccinated vs. unvaccinated that places responsibility on BIPOC to stop the spread of COVID-19. In the ‘post-pandemic world’, death and freedom are immutably interwoven; the freedom to die is set above the unfreedom of containment and ‘forced’ vaccinations—and the freedom to live longer; relatively free, is through the unfreedom of mobility. So, what does life feel like as a Black grad student navigating social media/public feeds that choose to strip colonial, racist, and imperialist histories from strict biopolitical regimes of COVID-19 containment in Canada and at York University? It feels suffocating—it is violent. - Beatrice Anane-Bediakoh, Chief-Deputy-Editor These days, COVID-19 is consistent background noise, while the movements for racial justice are distant memories. We’re so distracted by technology; we don't hear the stories of tragedy or hear the politicians lie casually when they promise change passionately – do those ideas ever really come to life? Time passes and the masses’ attention turns to the next day, but the next day brings Black, Indigenous and People of Colour dying in daylight. So much pain, too many emotions, and just to listen, is a fight. Time is life and these days that’s a luxury. So today, I sit here daydreaming and realize that tomorrow brings the best yet to come. So tonight, I lay here dreaming of an otherwise that fights the tragedy of reality. All while thinking of my son, holding him close, so I don’t let him drown, so I don’t let him down. - Giovanni Carranza- Hernandez, Chief-Deputy-Editor I don’t know what time is. I have long joked that “time is a construct.” It’s an occupational hazard to make such philosophical declarations. But now, I feel the words in my marrow. Was it not a minute ago, that everyone cared about the state sanction killing of Black and Indigenous folx and PoC? Was 2019 not last week, a few sleepless nights away? When was it, that my home went from a mundane reality to an uncanny fact of life? When did today stop being tomorrow? Being Brown, a grad student, queer, enby, femme, it’s always timeless, but now, time is the chokehold of staying still and propelling simultaneously. I am me tomorrow, yesterday, today. I am the construction to which I used to attribute time. - Jade Crimson Rose Da Costa, Founder/Editor-in-Chief

Editor’s Introduction

Being online during a pandemic in the climate of black death is absolutely triggering. To let the pain out, I’ve had to tap out—had to let those who love me pull me out of this trigger. We, as Black women, carry the heaviness of anti-black/misogynoir policing and anti-black violence with COVID. As Brand contends, ‘we’ve been living in a pandemic all of our [black] life; it is structural rather than viral; it is the global state of emergency of antiblackness’. #SayHerName, #ICantBreathe, #Blacklivesmatter, sigh, I’m so tired. I don’t want to live this pattern time and time again. I want to harness this anger/energy to build alternative possibilities for Black life, but I’m.just.so.drained. So now, with this weight on my spirit, I am required to uphold my scholarly duties in addition to tutoring and mentoring the future of tomorrow, guest lecturing, hosting anti-black workshops, all whilst navigating an anti-black world that is determined to script my ancestors, descendants and I out of this narrative of life. It’s a lot. But I’m managing. - Beatrice Anane-Bediakoh, Chief-Deputy-Editor This year, I have felt simultaneously stuck in stillness but also surrounded by chaos. I feel frozen in time, trapped by the same mundane four walls that I call home, unable to think beyond their ontological restrictions. I feel time speeding past me as I stumble, fumble, and watch helplessly as it slips through my outreached fingers. My stuckness has forced me to rely on technology to marginally satiate my visual and auditory senses. So, I, the cyborg, use my new digital eyes and ears to escape these walls and find myself in chaos. I watch stewing in my impotent anger, but not shock, as the structures that make up our society continue to function as intended and wreak coordinated havoc on the world, committing gratuitous violence on people of colour, but especially Black people, around the world. I’m tired, and my weariness builds as I attempt to support my community, family, and friends in any way I can. My mind becomes more chaotic by the day as the ‘need’ for productivity builds and sits immiscibly with my awareness that productivity makes me implicated and complicit in reproducing this shitty system. But I the half-person, half-machine, must keep on keepin on, so I suppress and compartmentalize my emotions to continue producing during my ‘free’ time and stand idly by and watch as the academy squeezes every last drop of value from my body, too tired to think of an otherwise. - Giovanni Carranza- Hernandez, Chief-Deputy-Editor My head feels like a bottomless container of all the things I have to get done. Grade midterms, conduct interviews, read, email, coordinate mutual aid project, do mutual aid – cook, deliver, repeat, speak on panels, email, coordinate this journal, manage our social media, manage social media for mutual aid project, email, edit articles, submit articles, revise articles, find articles, try to have a life…I’m always doing something, and yet, the list never gets smaller. I’m productive. Always productive. Friends say: “I don’t know how you do it.” It bothers me. People mean well when they say it, but it’s intended to celebrate my seemingly endless ability to output, to keep up, and the thing is, I’m not keeping up with anything. I feel like my body is disintegrating on a cellular level. I’m not even tried, I’m just exhausted. I don’t want to sleep, I want to rest, to sit, to breath, to stop. That’s what endless, uncompromised productivity really looks like. You don’t actually keep up; something has to give. Nobody keeps up with academia and feels OK about it, especially not us. Something always gives, or breaks. I think I’m breaking, or something. - Jade Crimson Rose Da Costa, Founder/Editor-in-Chief