Black People, We Have to Show Up (LOCHEARN – May 30, 2026) – Dear Family, Do you remember where you were on Tuesday, November 4, 2008? I do. That morning, around 7 a.m., I walked around the corner to my polling place and saw something I had never seen before. The line was out the door. For a little perspective, I live in Sandtown. Zip code 21217. A community that has endured concentrated poverty, undereducation, addiction, violence, and mass incarceration. Baltimoreans make up 40% of the state’s prison population, while the city represents only 9% of the state’s population. Yet on that morning, the people showed up. DO YOU HEAR ME? Simply unforgettable. It reminded me of another historic moment. April 27, 1994. The first free election in democratic South Africa. Lines stretching for miles. Black South Africans — many voting for the very first time in their lives — standing for hours under the sun because they understood what was at stake. That election ended with Nelson Mandela taking his rightful place in history as the first democratically elected president of South Africa. Two nations. Two historic lines. One undeniable truth: When Black people show up, history changes. My pundit buddy over in DC later called the 2008 election an anomaly. I still struggle to see it that way. What I saw was Black people participating in democracy because they believed their vote mattered. Whatever the explanation, that day ended with the election of President Barack Obama — and echoed the same spirit that swept Mandela into power fourteen years earlier. My point is simple: Black people showed up. A lot has changed since 2008. Yet some things remain stubbornly the same — both in the United States and in South Africa. We still wrestle with poverty. We still struggle against educational inequities. We still face mass incarceration and economic disparities. Too often, progress for Black people feels like one step forward and two steps back on both sides of the Atlantic. And right now, it is war. I need you to understand that. Not metaphorically. Not as a figure of speech. It is war against Black political power in this country. The Voting Rights Act — paid for with the literal blood of civil rights marchers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge — is being gutted by the Supreme Court in real time. Conservative justices are systematically dismantling every legal protection our ancestors bled and died to secure. And it’s not just in the courts. Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett — one of the boldest Black voices in Washington — just got bumped in Texas. Thank God Jim Clyburn survived in South Carolina. But make no mistake: they are coming for our seats. They are coming for our districts. They are coming for our power. And they are organized, funded, and focused. Black people cannot afford to be entitled. We cannot afford to be privileged about this. We cannot afford to assume our seats are safe, our votes don’t matter, or…