They used our backs to build empires.
And still got the nerve to call us lazy.
Imagine putting in 1.693 trillion hours and still getting questioned about your worth.
Imagine your grandmother’s grandmother building the foundation for the world’s wealthiest corporations for free and her descendants still getting denied loans, jobs, housing, and peace.
This isn’t just history.
It's an inheritance.
Not the kind you get from a will, but the kind passed down in scars, in struggle, in unfinished missions.
12-hour days.
72-hour weeks.
Generations of breath, blood, and broken sleep.
And somehow, we are still here. Still standing. Still moving.
But we aren’t working blindly anymore more.
Nah.
Every hour we clock in now. It counts.
For our freedom. For our future. For the ones that came before us and never got paid.
We are not just employees.
We are the unpaid investors of the global economy.
Our labor was stolen.
Our culture was flipped.
Our truth was buried in books nobody wanted us to read.
We don't wait on permission.
We move in shadows; we turn daylight into a weapon and use every ounce of life to walk people into a future they couldn’t yet see.
We have to turn our pain into ownership.
Turn our environment into opportunity.
We have to learn how to turn hustle into equity, and name into legacy.
That’s where we’re at now.
No more working just to survive.
We’re working with vision.
Working with memory.
Working with ancestors in the room.
You see a job.
I see reparations in motion.
You see a paycheck.
I see bricks in a new foundation.
We’re still owed.
We won't wait on what’s just, but we will build what’s ours.
Together.
With clarity.
With grit.
With Resilience.