The other day I realized I had more of a conversation with the new crossing guard than with people who have been in my life for decades.

After my run, that same crossing guard brought me a Kit Kat and gently reminded me that if I ever needed someone to talk to, he’d be right here. He told me I reminded him of his daughter.

 Let me give you some context,  yeah , he struggles with addiction and naw he’s not a real crossing guard…

That is community.

And I need people to understand that before you read anything else.

I been praying for discernment and what I received came in the form of discipline. I had to be disciplined to see yall mfkers are not real.

I prayed for protection and the very next day I had a dream with my mother. Ashé.

I woke up with this overwhelming feeling that regardless of what’s happening around me, I am covered. I speak to god in public. He comes to me in many forms.

Recently, I decided to become quiet, to observe and to practice my writings. I went back in time in order to go forward. Like a sling shot. But I’m not a rapper,just  intentional.

I decided to pour only into what pours into me, to consider only what considers me. Because one thing life has shown me lately is that lack of consideration and lack of empathy are some of the ugliest traits a person can carry. Don’t be ugly

On a Bronx night me and my friend brought these $4.50 cocktails ( they used to be $3) and I confessed  I actually love who I am. 

Not because life has been easy, not  because everything worked out.
But because despite everything, I remained soft, loving, I remained community oriented in a world that rewards selfishness. 

Don’t get it twisted I definitely got that dog in me but thanks to where I’m from I can sit on my block, go to yo block or go to the board room and I’m still good. Clock that.

I still see the beauty in my neighbors being family, in needing a shoulder and sitting outside listening to others vent, that’s the power of the mind. Be grateful.

I don’t want to change who I am just because of people.

I got approval from the most high to continue. 

I want to pour all this love, all this effort, all this creativity back into the Bronx.

Which brings us here.

I stood up rereading The Properties of Perpetual Light. My copy is covered in annotations, bent pages, random thoughts written in the margins. MY books are not for decoration, I’m an avid reader. I need to read to heal.

One line stood out to me more than anything else:

“To write as though everything you love is on the line.”

And maybe that’s why I became exhausted trying to finish this last article the one that never made it to publishing. 

I kept going back and forth with myself.

 Is this shit  political? Is this even my realm, still? Do I want to go this route in the middle of my own breakdown?

But if you know me personally, if you know my work, then you know this isn’t random. I been had this idea. This merch wasn’t just a trendy thought, there was passion behind it. 

This obsession with why I HAVE to build in the Bronx.

Take one:

Are “they” slowly pushing us out of the Bronx?

(Who is they, I don’t know but a lot of people use that, let’s roll with it)

And before anybody starts yelling at me in the comments talking about conspiracy theories, relax. I’m asking genuine questions.

Because what even is affordable housing anymore?

They told me I qualify to pay 2,400 a month…

After years of living here and researching a bit of the history of my borough, I’ve come to the conclusion that the Bronx almost feels manufactured sometimes. Like an experiment. 

I can guarantee you 100% after spending months in the South Bronx distributing pantry, occasionally kicking it…

The South Bronx is NOT a real place. Don’t go over there.

It’s all vibes but you have to understand the vibe to vibe. Are you vibey?

Everybody talks about us but nobody fully protects us, maybe that sounds dramatic but what else am I supposed to think?

Lately I’ve noticed an increase in fires, evictions, visible substance abuse, arrests, and shootings. 

Save the bullshit about it “now being on our phones, so we have more access to info”

kids I’ve lived in the bronx and only had a house phone. 

I BEEEEN OUTSIDE.

We can argue the economy after COVID pushed people to the edge. 

We can talk about inflation, unemployment, lack of mental health support, overcrowding.

But I also don’t believe in coincidence.

what’s happening in the Bronx right now feels eerily similar to what happened in Brooklyn before gentrification transformed entire neighborhoods.

Everybody is moving north. 

They got the hookah on the sidewalks. 

When I first got uptown something immediately stood out to me. During MY era, my side was predominantly Jamaican, African, and West Indian. Lower North Bronx held Irish, Jewish, and Italian communities. Now suddenly it feels like everybody is here all at once.

And honestly?
it’s tew much. 

Why’d yall put the Pattie shop on tik tok?

And to be clear this is not because diversity bothers me The Bronx has always been multicultural.

This is because it feels like the people who built the culture here are constantly being displaced while being told displacement is “development”.

At the same time, nothing substantial is being done to help the people already here.

Are you following me?

The Bronx remains one of the most underserved boroughs in New York City while simultaneously carrying some of the city’s biggest burdens. 

We have some of the highest poverty rates, housing insecurity, overcrowding, and public health disparities in the city.

We are not asking for more police cars parked on corners, or walking around harassing our children.

We are asking for equal opportunities.

This is a real event that took place:

I’m in the store and these kids are a dollar short. The man behind the counter starts yelling at them, so I say “Boy, give that kid his chips and let him pick up what he wants.”

The kid says thank you mam ( first off I’m just a girl but thanks) when he walks out, the bodega guy tells me, “You don’t want it to become a habit.”

Actually, I do.
The same way I can spend two dollars on a few loosey, I can spend it on a kid.

That bodega guy was white. Strange but real.

That’s not a habit I’m afraid of I’ll call it creating safe faces. 

Small moments where a child is met with care instead of correction.

That brings me to something people keep getting wrong about Bronx kids.

People talk about “respect” like it’s something kids are supposed to automatically give. But respect doesn’t grow out of nowhere. It grows from recognition,  consistency, adults actually showing up as human beings in their lives, not just authority figures in passing.

Bronx kids are some of the most resilient kids  I know. They take multiple buses, trains, sometimes walk long distances just to get where they need to go. They navigate systems that were not built with them in mind, and still show up every day.

We can launch thousands of workshops and programs, but if we’re not actually connecting with them,mentoring them, seeing them outside of paperwork, outside of sign in sheets, if we don’t then all of it disappears the moment the program ends.

This isn’t just about services,  it’s about presence.

Anddd lately, when people talk about the youths behavior in the Bronx, they bring up things like what happened at  Bay Plaza Mall, drawing police response and media attention, and leaving behind chaos that gets turned into headlines about “out of control kids.”

But headlines rarely tell the full story. 

What gets left out is what it means when young people are highly visible but rarely engaged. 

When they are seen as a problem before they are seen as people. When the only time attention comes is after something goes wrong.

They don’t feel a relationship with the systems that are supposed to guide them.

To be clear yes, programs exist. 

But access is not the same as availability.

In reality, sports and recreation are unevenly distributed, folded into larger after school systems that don’t always meet the demand in neighborhoods like the Bronx. And to be clear not everyone wants to join a program to continue learning like they wasn’t just in school for 8 hours. Let’s give them creative programs, programs that stimulate the minds, that exercise their bodies!

Fields are limited, programs fill quickly, and accessibility becomes a barrier before opportunity even begins.

So while the city can point to thousands of program sites and hundreds of thousands of youth served, the lived experience for many Bronx kids is still inconsistent access,

That means MOMENTS of opportunity instead of a steady pipeline of support.

I often think about how quickly we flatten all of this into blame instead of asking what’s underneath it.

The Bronx has always been labeled through crisis…

“The Bronx is Burning.”

Most people know the phrase but not the history.

I don’t own the famous photograph of the man walking through the Bronx in 1976, but every time I see it I feel him.

Again, I want you to determine what’s fact, what’s history, and what’s conspiracy.

Through my research one thing became clear:
The Bronx did not simply burn itself down.

During the 1970s, landlords, insurance systems, redlining, political neglect, disinvestment, and infrastructure failure all played major roles in the destruction of the borough.

Yes, arson existed, abandonment existed too.

However the people who suffered most were the residents.

Meanwhile, the people in power debated statistics while entire communities disappeared.

Coincidentally across that period, fire related insurance losses and payouts reached millions of dollars, figures that would equal far more today when adjusted for inflation.

Still, Bronx natives remained true to what we always do:
survive.

Did you know similar to back then residents on Wallace were unable to get back into their homes? 

It’s been a year since the fire, a year since the pay out.

Anywho, people stayed behind and rebuilt their own communities piece by piece. Families learned construction work. Neighbors protected blocks, Artists created culture in the middle of devastation.

And now here we are again in 2026.

Only five months into the year and there have already been 12 fatal fires in the Bronx. Twelve.

PLEASE don’t think 12 is a small number, that equals to 100s of displaced families.

Somehow, despite all of its history this borough still gave the world beauty.

The Bronx is literally the birthplace of hip hop.

DJ Kool Herc  a Jamaican American from the Bronx  helped spark an entire cultural movement during one of the darkest periods in the borough’s history. He was one of the founding fathers of hip hop yall! 

That matters to me deeply as someone who grew up near Gun Hill Road in a heavily Jamaican community.
Super proud one of us helped shape the world from right here.

That has to be said first. Because too often the Bronx only gets mentioned in crisis, never in contribution. 

And the truth is, it has produced thinkers, artists, organizers, survivors, and builders who’ve left fingerprints far beyond their times.

But even with all of that greatness, all it has birthed, we have to touch back on some of these realities because pride doesn’t erase pressure.

And boy are we feeling the pressure of this economy in the Bronx.

The median household income in the Bronx is roughly $49,000 a year while many apartments now effectively require incomes closer to $80,000–$90,000 to comfortably qualify.

Meanwhile, our poverty rate remains among the highest in New York City.

Every time a Bronx native moves to Harlem my ass itches. Sorry.
I had to throw that in there because I almost considered it myself.

The truth is rebuilding the Bronx has been heavily on my mind lately, maybe that sounds ridiculous coming from someone currently complaining about broken elevators, collapsing staircases, negligent landlords, and the daily frustrations of living here.

Weirdly enough, those things don’t make me want to leave. That doesn’t mean I settled, sometimes I wonder if I can have my chickens, laundromat right here, uptown.. 

That goal makes me want to change things.

Growing up in a borough everybody labels as dangerous, dirty, or hopeless taught me some of the hardest lessons of my life.

Run ins with police, Home invasions, Inadequate schools. Survival instincts I probably developed too young, which resulted in PTSD, then I had to be in therapy for 10years… 

But it also gave me resilience, humor, it made me resourceful.
It gave me discernment , Community.

The Bronx made me, when my parents left my side way too early, I had a community of people that I met right here on my block.  

So if you talk negatively about the Bronx, stick around.
Because this is only part one.

Wait until I tell you about the beauty here.
About the people who stayed and succeeded.
The joy that still exists despite adversity.
About the communities still feeding each other, protecting each other, creating art, creating culture, creating possibility.

Because if all you see when you look at the Bronx is struggle, then you are missing the entire point.

So tell me again:

Who’s really getting pushed out?

Ya don’t deserve the Bronx, only we do.