I keep thinking about when the first shot will be fired, the one that sparks the next Civil War.
Will it come from a trigger-happy weekend warrior in the National Guard?
Will it come from a fed-up community member staring down soldiers patrolling their block?
Will it come during an ICE raid on some unsuspecting family at Home Depot, where the wrong person resists, and the bullets fly? Or will it come from one of those crazy, trigger-obsessed white males who think it’s their patriotic duty to “make America great again”?
I’m not fearmongering. This is the reality of the climate we live in. Everyone’s on edge. This administration is hell-bent on purging his America of anyone who isn’t white—or orange. Martial law, Jim Crow 2.0, a prison system that mirrors slavery—none of it is off the table. What many white people want is simple: a country where Black folks “know their place” and Mexicans don’t exist.
Chicago is next on the list for the National Guard. I’ve said it before: these teen takeovers in downtown Chicago are a flashpoint. No, I don’t condone the wilding out, blocking traffic, or being reckless—but at the end of the day, some of them are just kids. And all it takes is one rogue guardsman, who will later claim he “feared for his life,” to fire a shot.
And then? The media will run the same tired script: “No history of violence.” I heard that today about the Minneapolis shooter. Instead of repeating the cover story, let’s talk about the shooter’s lineage—the real roots. Stolen land (colonizers). Murder of Indigenous people. Enslavement (unimaginable brutality). Rape. The phenotype. Don’t tell me America is “better than this.” Miss me with that bullshit; what we are we really talking about?
It may not be Chicago. It could be any city with a Black mayor or a blue state government. Funny how they don’t roll the Guard into red states—like Memphis, one of the top cities for violent crime.
And ICE? They’d rather flex in Home Depot parking lots than storm into the hood. You don’t see them deep in communities where the resistance might be real. They stick to the periphery—cowards hiding behind badges scooping up people at work. Somehow never on the block where the corner boys are at. Half of them are ex-military rejects, and pardoned insurrectionists. The bar for entry is low. But there’s one guaranteed qualification: whiteness. Add a mask and a gun, and you’re good to go.
The next George Floyd moment won’t be met with white-liberal Black Lives Matter yard signs. It’ll be met with bullet casings scattered like dandelions. Tanks on cracked pavement. Civil war in your neighborhood.
“There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down brothers on the instant replay…
The revolution will not be televised.” – Gil Scott-Heron
Who will fire the next shot heard around the world?
To be determined. But I can guarantee there will be a shot.
