Black August 2025: Recognizing Crisis and Shifting our Response

Study. Fast. Train. Fight.

Our therapist recently reminded us that in moments of crisis, our bodies default to the learned behaviors that help us cope or navigate the crisis. At every turn, we are running into moments of crisis. Every time we open social media, turn on the news, hear about the news from someone else, read a headline; in the words of my grandma ‘nem, if it ain’t one thing it’s another.

I was talking to friends recently about “rest as resistance”, and the discussion led to real investigation of the level of trauma and crisis that we are in. And the point wasn’t to question whether we the people are overly traumatized or weaponizing therapy speak in our lives, but to question why the hell so many of us are in crisis if we’re all “in therapy” and “doing the work”?!

What I am realizing daily, on a spiritual level, is that we the people have done a lot of the brain work. We have done a lot of reading, theorizing, learning, reading the room, using the right words, being gentle, holding space etc. but we have not done the skill building work necessary to get into our bodies and into this world in ways that not only react to or resist crisis but build viable and [tested] alternatives that will exist on the other side of it.

In my world, relationships are collapsing, including some of my own. In my world, the elders are missing. In my world, the elders are on fixed incomes and having to drive for DoorDash instead of being on deck for those of us who desperately need their wisdom. In my world, there are so many damn podcasts and so few offline spaces where those same conversations could take place. In my world, there are many tired and stretched people who are giving their best effort to tend to their life and responsibilities and at the same time, so many of those people have little time to be about that skill building work. Not out of lack of enthusiasm or interest, but out of the exhaustion of crisis.

This Black August, I see and know that as a reality for so many of us. We have been tapped out for decades, let alone since that man got inaugurated and stacked the deck to continue and expedite the crisis we are in. AND, in honor of the Black August tradition, I share the quote of George Jackson which tells us plainly, “Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved, that generations more will live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution.”

We cannot fail to act. I invite you to commemorate Black August with me, us (Black Men Build), and other folks remembering our freedom fighters in the black liberation struggle. This year, I will recommit to movement through focused effort on skill building, dedication to training and taking care of my physical body, and fasting from some things that are in the way of my personal and political transformation. Black August is not a celebration, but a call to action. I hope that these times of crisis lead you to join a movement, action, or justice organization fighting and working for the liberation of humans from capitalist, patriarchal, imperial forces.

Ase.

George Jackson, political prisoner, organizer, author, revolutionary.