Stayin' Alive
By Mercy M'fon Shammah One thing that I want most for our community is to be prepared. This year we have faced massive continent fires, 10 earthquakes in Puerto Rico in a handful of days, a volcano eruption followed by ash lightning, fifteen-foot snow drifts in Newfoundland, the coronavirus outbreak, a threat of WWIII… and the decade just started. Ready for anything As BIPOC, queer, and TGNC folks, we already feel like we are in survival mode. Our personal safety and well-being — particularly for systematically targeted Black, brown, and transgender bodies — isn’t assured. Existence is resilience. Being so used to overcoming adversities, it might seem as though we're naturally equipped for any situation. It might also seem like “prepping” is just a wacky hobby for a privileged population of people with not much to prepare for in their actual day-to-day. But unexpected events happen all the time, and though we may not be able to plan for or predict them all, we ca