Venerating Martin Luther King Jr, Rejecting All Other Kings

In the first line, let’s get out of the way that we are no strangers to fear.

All funds know fear sits alongside our beds when we wake, slithers along corners of state houses and in the undertones of police sirens and the voicemails of closed warmlines. Fear’s zip code is in the gap between the antis and the clinics where the buffer zones should be. Fear is in the legislation crafted against our bodies in place of for our safety and autonomy. Fear is in the bubbling of intake questions and the respelling of our names in new offices, in the casual conversations about neopronouns. Fear is in the air, and no, we are not immune.


What we have maintained is what we cannot let go of, not out of principle but privilege and that is our hope, armed with our utter dedication to funding abortion, to keeping reproductive and gender affirming care in the south, and to flat out loving our people day in and day out.

A militant hope is a Black political ethic handed down from activists to organizers that has sustained our movements for generations; Reproductive Justice depends on hope to breathe. We are here hoping in spite, hoping despite, hoping even as it’s contested.


There is nothing we can say no one hasn’t said better or over and over by now. The bad news is that if you want a better world you have to fight for it. The good news is we heard the revolution is catered by grandmas and uncles who love administration long cookouts, and rumor has it we will see justice in our lifetime no matter what they say. There is no better day to ground in this; no better day to venerate this. Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day from your local abortion fund*


*who isn’t going ANYWHERE.