This Is The Year

     What's happening right now is a distinctive pivotal point in the history of humankind. And why is it happening now? It is happening now because in order for it to have taken place, we, as a collective race, needed to be shaken and sat down. Shaken by death, by horror and sat down by isolation. Which is exactly what has been happening since the beginning of this year. Distractions are gone. Everyone is forced to sit down and to feel things. When George Floyd was killed we all felt that, because all the clubs are closed and we have no parties to attend. We felt it hard. And then we thought "why is this still happening?" Then we started to do something. We started to do something in a way like we haven't done it in a hundred years! We started to get loud, and then louder and then louder! Then we joined hands and we all became frontliners in a war that requires us to all become a new kind of human!

     It takes white people to break away and say, "I can't breathe". And I deeply hope that this is a domino effect right now, because, it takes Chinese people to break away and say, "I don't eat cats and dogs", "Set Tibet free", "Down with communism." And it takes Christians to break away and say, "Gay people should have the same civil rights as anyone else in this country", "Trump is not right", "We are not the only ones that are going to Heaven." And it takes Muslims to break away and say, "Down with the Taliban", "Down with Abu Sayyaf", "End the ISIL." It takes a breaking away from a conformity and a sense of self identity and belonging, on behalf of what is beyond ourselves!

     I hope that George Floyd becomes not only the martyr of the Black Lives Matter movement and not only the martyr for black people everywhere, but I hope George Floyd died for the entire race of humankind, because I want this to be the year when everything got different. When everything wasn't the same again. When we became The New Human.

🎨 Ani Castillo