"What can we do?"

What can we do?
Well, I am tired...
I don't know how it will come about.
it will be bloody;
it will be hard.
I still believe that we can do with this country
something that has not been done before.
We are misled here because we think of numbers.

You don't need numbers; you need passion.

And this is proven by the history of the world.
The tragedy is that most of the people
who say they care about it do not care.
What they care about is their safety and their profits...

To look around the United States today
is enough to make prophets and angels weep.
This is not the land of the free;
it is only unwillingly and very sporadically
the home of the brave.

James Baldwin
I Am Not Your Negro

"Our Weakest Spot"

And when you least expect it, nature has cunning ways of finding our weakest spot...

Right now, you may not want to feel anything, maybe you never wanted to feel anything...but feel something you obviously did...

We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster, that we go bankrupt by the age of 30. And have less to offer each time we start with someone new. But to make yourself feel nothing so as not to feel anything. What a waste.

How you live your life is your business. Just remember, our hearts and our bodies are given to us only once, and before you know it, your heart’s worn out. And as for your body there comes a point when no one looks at it, much less wants to come near it. Right now, there’s sorrow, pain. Don’t kill it, and with it, the joy you’ve felt.

Mr. Perlman
Call Me By Your Name

Mexico 68

I love the iconography for Mexico City’s metro system. This 99% Invisible podcast explores the history of these icons, their evolution from Lance Wyman’s work on the graphic design campaign for the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, and how local activists co-opted the campaign to bring attention to police brutality:

Between the logo, the typeface, the colors and icons, Wyman created a visual identity that saturated the whole city. It was everywhere…The 1968 Olympics were decreed “Los juegos de la Paz” (“The Games of Peace”). So Wyman designed a little outline of a dove, which shop owners all over the city had been given to stick in their windows…Students went around the city spraying a small burst of bright red paint over those doves in all the shop windows, to make it look like the dove had been shot. They were playing with the propaganda of the Olympics and hinting at a darker political reality.

Roma also brings this period to life in stunning and tragic detail.