This past weekend our girl Lexi got hit by a car while hustling on International Boulevard. She was hospitalized for over a week with a fractured skull, broken nose, broken collar bone and broken ankle. The doctors say she will make a full recovery, but the journey is going to be rough. Lexi is a full time SWer supporting her grandmother and siblings, and a wreck like this is physically, spiritually and financially devastating.

One of the wild things about amerikan culture is how we treat car crashes like they are natural phenomena. They are imagined as politically neutral, like an earthquake or a hurricane. O wait, but remember Katrina? So I guess maybe hurricanes aren't so politically neutral. And neither are car crashes. Tricks be driving down E14 like sex workers lives don't matter. Like Black women's lives don't matter. The blade up through 34th has more car crashes than anywhere else in Oakland, and it is overwhelmingly Black women who are being put in danger. Kids are raised playing GTA and then grow up and act that shit out, and we act all surprised like they are just bad apples or something. I'm sorry, are we seeing the same picture here?

The police don't do shit to help. Of course they don't, their off duty asses are the ones tricking in the first place. We don't expect anything different from them. We are not asking for more cops or more cameras or any of that shit. It will all just be used against the people who are most in danger, to criminalize SWers and their families and target Black folks living their lives.

What we need is real community support and mutual aid. We are shooting to raise $10,000 to cover her medical and living expenses while she recovers. Her entire ability to earn a living has been shot to hell, and this will not be a quick recovery. We need to create a community where SWers lives matter, where Black women are loved and valued and held in community.

I could write an appeal telling you how beautiful Lexi is. How funny she is, how smart and vibrant and full of life, how she fills up a room with her presence. I could emphasize how she is supporting her grandmother and her siblings, how she is a loving sister and granddaughter who is needed by her friends and family. But the truth is, I shouldn't have to. I shouldn't have to prove her worth to you, to make her into the "good sister" or "good daughter" or whatever category you need her to be to validate her existence. She is all of those things and so much more, more magnificent than you could imagine.

I know everyone is on struggle right now. Please think about what you can afford, and then give a little more than that. And please share as widely as possible. If we want to be worthy of the word "community" in these wild times we need to show that we can actually hold each other in community.