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HOW TO CONTINUE THE FIGHT (A 2020 Archive)

Updated: Sep 23, 2025

For those of you unfamiliar with Michael Render, or Killer Mike, he is a rapper, actor, and activist from Atlanta, Georgia. Killer Mike delivered a heartrendingly powerful speech to his home town a couple weeks ago that you can view here. After hearing that speech, his call to action stuck with me.

"It is time to Plot, Plan, Strategize, Organize, and Mobilize."

It wasn't just the big names and businesses. It was everyone. Lighting a newfound fire in me that can no longer be put out by comparison, judgement, the unknown, and most importantly my oppressors. Today I have decided to share my perspective on what that quote looks like to me for my family, my peers, and my community.

How to Plot, Plan, Strategize, Organize, and Mobilize:


Plot

The first step to plotting is to begin in a rational head space. It is so easy to get angry, sad, furious, feel betrayed or disrespected. However, oftentimes when we are feeling these intense emotions it is difficult to convey a message that is able to be heard and understood seamlessly. Mental health is a vital cornerstone in this process, don’t overlook it.

  • Identify issues in your local community that affect you, your friends, or your family. Write these issues down, talk about them within your team or among your friends.

Police brutality and racial profiling, individual and systemic racism, prejudice, bullying, poverty, homelessness, lack of economic opportunity or adequate healthcare, voter suppression, gerrymandering, and unfortunately, the list of oppression our community faces goes on.


While writing these issues you observe, try to understand where they started, why they began. How long ago do these issues stem back to? Is it because of a lack of equal allocation of educational resources, not enough black people in the job position, not enough awareness about the issue, or is there too much power in the wrong hands? Work towards creating SPECIFIC, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely goals (SMART goals - qtd).


Resources




Plan

Plan steps toward this overall goal of yours as a direct correlation to change. Going back to SMART goals, maintain the specificity of your goal, remain focused. It is easy to begin with a broad mindset and get lost along the way with the great and massive ideas that we get so quickly. However, it is important that we incorporate the idea of the quality of our work, over the quantity of our works. In my opinion, planning may be the hardest step of this process, requiring patience yet extreme and delicate urgency in the same breath. In the words of civil rights attorney Fred Gray, the attorney behind landmark cases such as Dixon v Alabama, “[The Boycott] took meticulous planning and thought. It wasn’t something that came together overnight. It took discipline and smart people.” To reach our continuously underlying goal of true equality and a new system to remain in place for future generations, it’s going to take just as much discipline and planning and people. Plan by doing research, asking questions, forming teams, making posts and spreading awareness. Research your community leaders, who’s in charge and what work are they doing to push this agenda? Knowledge in power. Who needs to be in charge and how can we work together to get them there? Our predecessors created groups, clubs, initiatives. Combined with our power of the ballot, we can create extraordinary change. Research your local black businesses and organizations; restaurants, blogs, stores, and artists. They did not do it as individuals and we can not either. It is so important to build and support from within. As said before, planning requires patience and urgency in the same breath. And as said by another before, a goal without a plan is just a wish.



Strategize

Strategizing is where the action words come in. Where do you plan to donate your money? What are the best ways to effectively reach your target audience? Through the media, flyers, phone calls, petitions? How can we make a difference? What do you see working vs not working? The most beautiful and advantageous thing that is happening during this stage is everyone answering differently to those questions. More specifically speaking towards your SMART goal, strategizing is the art of planning, directing, and executing a well thought out process that incorporates the most beneficial tools, markets and audiences to aid in achieving success. Strategizing could be trial and error after trial and error after trial and error. As said by Millennial Black, “if it a choice between not doing at all or doing and getting it wrong, GET IT WRONG. LEARN FROM IT. DO BETTER NEXT TIME.”



Organize

Our predecessors created groups, clubs, initiatives. Combined with our power of the ballot, we can and will create extraordinary change. Organizing includes the media as a tool and our communication as a tool. With the research we have constructed from our plans and plots, we can use these facts while boasting about our community’s businesses, we can use these facts to speak about our community’s leaders, we can use these facts to spread awareness about who is truly pushing our agenda’s policies and who is keeping their knee on legislation that is for us or by us.

Organizing uses everyone equally and just as importantly. Organize those protests, those donations, those small businesses that work to give back. Organize those clubs, those groups that work to teach younger generations a different way of thinking or that work to implement the change themselves. Another important part of organizing is that we will have different ways of doing it. Everyone brings something different to the table allowing us to strike in very versatile yet equally necessary positions. Don’t worry about your idea looking different than the person you scroll past on or Instagram or see outside the state building because both of you can be equally necessary and impactful.



Mobilize

Go out and do! This is what we’ve been waiting for, making those donations, those phone calls, those actions all while still posting, tweeting, and writing. Continue to do all the work you did before, all the work you did during, and upkeep your SMART goal of the future.





By Carley V. | @carleyveal

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