If you’re looking for me because you want to ask me the same questions I hear every anniversary of the Kenosha protests, I hope you read this someday. 

For one, let me be clear, I don’t give a shit about fame. I didn’t like being known. 

Naturally, I’m an anxious introvert. Even picking up my phone to do interviews every day — to have to regularly have conversations with anyone — caused me to panic. I, honestly, could not even express adequately how much I am uncomfortable with attention and the spotlight. 

What I did was never about that. 

If you’re even thinking about looking for me, you might also assume that my proudest moments are the ones YOU think they would be — marches, my face and voice everywhere, the money, the accolades. 

Wrong again, my friend. 

I immensely appreciated all of the acknowledgement people gave me. However, as I stated, I am so uncomfortable with attention that I greatly downplay it. So, in the moment, I probably acted like kind words, donations, gifts and just even a friendly ear given to me meant nothing. 

But if anyone reading this gave me any of that, you personally kept me from killing myself at least a dozen times between when I quit my job in 2020 and when I finally started finding my way again around 2023. 

That’s not me being dramatic, either. I have drafts of random final notes I had planned to be found with my body littered throughout my Google Docs storage through those years that I try not to look at anymore. 

But what I did wasn’t about being praised or accepted either. 

If you know me well, you’d also know there’s this, I guess, unique experience of being a biracial (or really multiracial) person who grew up in the time period I did, the ‘90s. 

There weren’t a lot of Black heroes I knew about back then. And I certainly wasn’t taught about them. Even more, what biracial Black historical figures do you remember hearing about in school if you were raised in the same time period? 

Let me guess who you thought of: Booker T. Washington. 

Name a second one. 

…..

Ah, there’s the rub. 

Quite literally, most of my life the world has made me choose between being white or being Black — even in the legends and heroes it presented to me.

And it’s not until I was at my current age that I can acknowledge the incredible cruelty of living in a culture that would do that to a child. 

Since the day I was born, I have never been one thing. 

Dear God, even me touching myself is technically an interracial affair. 

I am not one or the other. I am both. 

And despite what people try to make me choose, I always will be both. 

But again, I never really lived in a culture that would let me be both, or honestly even Black most of my life because I’m not “dark enough”. 

However, that all changed right after I quit my job. 

Suddenly, I got to be Black. 

All it took was, you know, giving up everything I had ever built before. 

BUT not even that acceptance I had craved and longed for literally my entire life was the point of what I did. 

And eventually, I was back to again having other activists question my “blackness” whenever I tried to be a logical voice of reason. 

So my stint as a recognized “Black man” died prematurely, I would say. 

But that’s not what I’m really getting at either. 

In fact, the answer to the question you probably want to ask me is so damn simple I am surprised most of you didn’t have the guts to see it and do it yourself: It was just the right thing to do. 

Despite what the people who bow down to the orange king or the ineffective politicians on the other side of Congress (which apparently isn’t even necessary anymore) would have you believe, right and wrong still exist. 

And they do not move even an inch for political lines.

The truth also doesn’t care if it hurts your feelings. 

Suck it up, and be brave enough to swallow it down and let it change you. 

I did what I did, partly, because the right thing was to call out a newspaper for being reckless with their headlines because they were leading their entire corporation in pageviews around the country. 

And they got all those views because of covering the protests that they wouldn’t even listen to me pitch being on the front page just a week before everything happened, by the way. 

That’s right. Read that again. All true. 

They seemed to care a lot about everything after Jacob Blake, though, didn’t they? I’ll let you finish my thoughts on that yourself. 

And yes, I’m still disappointed they never owned it, or apologized. Not because I needed them to. I just still wanted to be able to believe in the newspaper I had dreamed of working for and planned on retiring from. 

But, I guess I did get to do both of those things anyway, just without that faith remaining intact.

However, I was even more disappointed to see the national media’s reaction to everything, and all of the national figures who came to this city and used it as a prop for their own agendas. 

( Note: I just want to take a beat to let you know that the next thing I’m about to say, I don’t want you to read it as an angry yell; instead, read it in the calm voice of someone who just isn’t your fan.)

If you were one of those people, sincerely, fuck you. 

 I mean that. 

I don’t care who you are. You knew what you were doing, and I think you’re a horrible human being. 

You used us, and you didn’t even give anything back even though you had the means to help. What good were you to us? 

Because in the end, the other part of what made me quit my job — the other basic truth that everyone missed because they were too riled up and angry to see it — is this: it’s the people that matter most, not the city. 

I looked out at my city, and I saw how broken we all were. Good people yelling at other people because they could hide behind a mask. Other people coming in and intentionally manipulating anyone who would listen while they chased clout. Our local government decided to really just do anything but actually help with the situation, and honestly did unconstitutional things that made it worse.  

But no one was looking. Oh wait. No, I was. But even then, no one was listening. 

And very, very few were standing to try to tell the people the truth of the situation so that they’d finally start talking again. So that they’d calm down. 

Because as sad as it is, pictures of a city on fire draw more eyes than even a photo collage of the whole world at peace ever would. 

And so many people made so much money off the ensuing suffering that, to this day, I wish I could still throw up at the thought to show my disgust. 

So, I made my choice. 

And after a brief extension of my time in journalism, I retired completely from it. 

Because — since I’m being so forward — I felt myself becoming part of the problem. 

I was irresponsible with the Jacob Blake case. I got too close. Because I felt outraged at what I was seeing and perceiving. 

But, I should have looked closer as a professional and not as a person. 

Make no mistake, if I could go back in time today, I’d still quit my job. Every. Time. 

Again, there is right and wrong. Remember?

However, I wish I had been less emotional. I just wasn’t capable of calming down. 

At that time, I felt myself wanting to become irresponsible. I found myself almost fixating on the same groups, same subjects and even the same politicians that I disagreed with. It started showing up in my reporting, watching their words like a hawk.

I was losing my objectivity the longer I let myself keep working like that. 

While I stand by all of my reporting during my career, had I stayed in the profession I probably wouldn’t be able to say that anymore. 

I didn’t want to become a hypocrite. 

I didn’t want to be that person who everyone knew lost his soul years before he finally retired. 

Because the industry, in general, is plagued by people who — instead of leaving at that crucial point, like I did — stayed.

And I wanted a better ending for myself. 

Right now, I’m getting that. I’m happier now than I ever could have been staying in your world, my former colleagues who may read this. 

So, now that I’ve been brutally honest, possibly offended you and maybe depressed you a little (which is my trademark mix of reactions, by the way), let me offer this thought, I hope, will encourage you:

They say that the truth goes on existing whether we believe it or not. While that is correct, it also really doesn’t make a noise unto itself. It doesn’t cry out and try to be as loud as possible like lies do. 

In fact, often throughout history, it needs a courageous lot to choose to speak it, to write it, to make it known among the masses. It craves someone to be uncompromising in keeping its integrity intact. 

Unfortunately, people have a distaste for truth these days. 

Most of them need it watered down, spun or outright ignored in order to keep going about their happy lives without using any critical thinking. The ones they spend huddled amongst all the other people ignoring the reality of things — all while each group of human cattle calls each other “sheep”. 

It is so comfortable to stay among the masses, and to report to the masses. Publisher or producer wants you to soften that headline so Republicans don’t get angry? “Suuurrreeee, why not.” 

Spin a roller coaster straight up failing and leaving people stuck for the third time in a month to make the article about how the security system works perfectly? “Okay, you’re the boss.”

By the way, that is not a random example. That is a real thing that happened to me in the fourth year of my career. 

The actual exchange with my boss at that time ended with him adding, “It’s not because they’re an advertiser.” In response, I turned his way and made sure my eyes met his with a look that let him know that I knew that was complete bullshit. Then, I said, “Sure it’s not.”

I could go on, but the truth is, any journalist has their own ridiculous examples. We’ve all probably had our own experiences with similar situations with a boss. 

You, if you’re looking for me, are most likely still in that situation. Because, quite frankly, I’m not even close to newsworthy anymore, and I actively try not to be. So, there’s no other reason you’d come looking. 

Let me just ask you:

Do you have a good life? 

Do you see your family? 

If you have kids, do you know how well they read? 

Have you been able to make it to all of their major life moments like you wanted to?

Does your boss or the higher-ups even know or care that you have a family? 

Are you happy with the answers you’ve given to those questions?

Cause if you’re not, it’s because you’re not doing the right thing. You’re compromising to maintain your status quo. 

Well, look around you: All of this that you’re seeing is what happens when we all just maintain the status quo. 

We can’t let things go on this way. Not now. 

And before someone flags me as an extremist or something, I’m nonviolent in my pursuit of change. 

Instead, I simply hope that one person who reads this some day will see the path that I saw.

I hope they walk down the road I found when I finally left all of the corporate nonsense and, really, the slavery of being at the mercy of such a cruel and controlled industry.

It’s better and more honorable to be the independent voice in the desert crying out the bitterest truths of our times and subsisting on the bare essentials, than to be one of those cowards who waters it down or changes it so that it’s something sweet and palatable and always oh-so comforting so that they can continue to enjoy their lavish, little lives under the sheltering arms of that ever-spreading chestnut tree — the kind Orwell once spoke about — that has become corporate journalism.