Friend,

White supremacists are just beginning their attempts to overthrow our government.

Emboldened by the assault on the U.S. Capitol, white supremacists are calling for more violence between now and Joe Biden’s inauguration, including threatening to assassinate government officials and expressing interest in civil war.

Their threats and calls for violence are based on conspiracy theories that Trump and his GOP allies have been peddling in attempts to overthrow our election and steal millions of people’s votes (primarily Black voters, including in Detroit).

This moment is the latest in our country’s long legacy of deadly white terror. And now, we have a chance to do things differently.

Up until now, we’ve dismissed and never truly dealt with our country’s deep inequities, rooted in white supremacy and anti-Blackness. So we’ve enabled the unjust status quo to continue.

It’s time for us to have a reckoning. We must accept that this IS our country. We need truth-telling and accountability before we can get to healing. We cannot do what GOP Congressmembers want: push this aside and ignore it. That’s just opening the door for it to keep happening. And it’s why we must hold Trump and his enablers accountable.

At the same time, we must root out the racist injustices built into our very political structures, which are less visible but no less insidious than white power marches.

One example is addressing housing inequities. I represent one of the most beautiful Blackest cities in the U.S., Detroit. But here, we have a Black housing crisis on our hands, due to intentional policy choices.

We have the highest number of property tax foreclosures in any city since the Great Depression—one in three Detroit homes—because of illegally inflated property taxes that hit Black and brown homeowners the hardest.

As professor Bernadette Atuahene explained in an interview we did together a few days ago, this racialized property tax administration is part of a larger history of racial dispossession and displacement, including racial zoning, redlining, and predatory lending.

And it’s not just a Detroit problem, but a national issue that has been contributing to the racial wealth gap since Reconstruction.

Check out more about the fight for housing justice and how it connects with white supremacy and accountability by listening to our recent Detroit Today interview.

There are many ways forward toward racial justice, but they all involve acknowledging and understanding where we are and how we got here. We have agency in this moment, even as the risk of more violent insurrection looms.

We must take the path of justice and equity, and people power. As Lecia Brooks, chief of staff of the Southern Poverty Law Center, said about the insurrectionists:

“You can wrap yourself in the American flag and call yourself a patriot and say you’re acting on behalf of the country, that you’re serving to protect the country. … But what America were you standing up for?

One that continues to support and advance white supremacy? Or one that welcomes and embraces a multiracial, inclusive democracy? That’s the difference.”

Let’s be clear about the America we’re working toward, with a hard look at the America of our past and present. It’s the only way forward.

In solidarity,

Rashida