Archives - Ari Wolf

The criminal justice system doesn’t only exist to punish the accused. It offers victims an opportunity to exorcise our rage through a more objective, institutional campaign of state-sponsored violence.

I can take care of myself well enough. I’ve always believed that. But so often the people who are supposed to help me take care of me haven’t done so.

I’ve had pneumonia five times. I’ve had bronchitis more than a dozen times and typically for months on end. Last year I was sick for the entire time between August and January. My bronchitis was resistant to antibiotics, inhalers, and most treatments. It was all because, somewhere along the years, I’d started breathing in smoke instead of air.

Cry for your own life, but get mad about what happens to Black people in this country.

I made up a story to suit the silences of the family I was born into, and the non-truth I made up slid perfectly over the gaps in my own story of self.