Joy

Spots of joy are necessary and needed in the seemingly endless fight for justice. In Baltimore on Tuesday night, as the city reeled from how the death of Freddie Gray exposed the violence of a decades-long police occupation of the black population, I didn’t experience many moments of sweetness. But one came in the form of a parade of young girls and sashaying boys shortly before nightfall, who made it their business to fill the intersection outside the now infamous burned CVS in West Baltimore with dancing. The dancers fearlessly responded to the acute violence of the previous night’s events by prancing and voguing. These flamboyant young men and women used energetic dance and music to turn the void of black death into a space filled with black life - their spines were straight in defiance of a broken spine the police had severed.