Letter To My #MAPOLY Comrades

Don’t lose hope. We can’t lose hope. If we lose hope, we lose, And if we lose, what reason is there for us to be here.

Besides, that’s what they want. They want us to lose hope because they don’t want us to exist. And just as some see our lives as optional, many others see them as a threat to theirs.

I tell you as a rose wilts under the heavy heat of the summer sun, the sound of the morning will continue to echo a silence so severe that it mutes the songs of birds. It is in this quiet that we must stand together, even though we languish in great confusion, frustration, and trepidation.

I know you are hurting because I am hurting too. Many don’t understand our pain, the depth and deep, deep terror of it, the grief or the perpetual paranoia we feel from issues between MAPOLY ASUP and ogun state government

That’s why we’ve become so practiced at holding onto things—things we cannot hold forever like sand passing through fingers of the students of our great institution

They won’t understand what it feels like to prepared for exam twice and what we end up hearing was to use us as an instruments to get the government, they forget that the strategy was designed to kill every part of us—our heart, our soul, our body, our ambition, our memory, They won’t understand what it feels like to lose opportunity because our final examination has been postponed, they won't understand how it feels like when our House rent have all expire

Over the past few month, you have asked for answers to tough questions: “Where is God in all this?” “Will it ever end?” “How can I hold onto courage in a time of frustration?” My response is simple: Let’s not cast our pearls among swine. Our faith is an asset and so is our patience. The night will end. It must end. So that morning can come. Love will be our thousand suns.
More concretely you’ve wanted to know:

Some will lie to you by saying violence is courageous. However, it takes true, deep courage to deny the violent impulse so as to reason compassionately in a way that nurtures life. So I need you to know that violence won’t save us. It can only deepen our oppression; for the moment we choose violence, we become ensnared by it, and even if we win with it, we lose the promises of our freedom to the longing chains of vehemence. Then, in succumbing to violence (even if we win), we become the very thing we used violence to resist—instruments of destruction rather than creation, a force of oppression rather than liberation.
Audrey Lorde puts this best: “You can’t dismantle the masters house with the master’s tools.” Violence won’t save us because you can’t kill weeds by planting more weeds. You must uproot them.
Then let’s get to the root of the matter. I know that you have been praying, marching, sitting in, shutting down freeways, and so on. Keep up the fight! It has a purpose. It has incredible promise. Now it deserves direction. Indeed, we have protested and will continue to do so because our liberation requires a protest that is ongoing and relentless. Still, our true solutions are not behind us; they are ahead of us

#savemapoly
#cryofafinalist
#esteem Michaels