I keep thinking about Yeoman Wilder, the little league coach in New York who stepped between ICE agents and the kids he was coaching. When he recounted what happened, what seemed to break his heart most wasn't the agents themselves—it was the bystanders. No one else intervened. Nobody said anything. People went about their business. Some watched, but nobody else helped.

I think it broke his heart because in that moment, he realized he was surrounded by what Mobb Deep called "cowardly hearts and straight up shook ones"—or people who are simply okay with watching others be hurt. It was the moment he understood how atrocities happen: not through the actions of a few, but through the inaction of many.

This is a symptom of something deeper—a widespread lack of values that now touches almost every institution. Nothing has integrity anymore.

I can tell you the exact moment I realized our institutions lack integrity. It wasn't as extreme or life-threatening as stopping a child from being trafficked while everyone else looked the other way, but it was eye-opening nonetheless—a real "oh shit, y'all really don't give a shit about anything" moment.

It happened during my last semester at FIT when another student copied three of my designs. The student was white and half my age. Without going into all the details, the administration did absolutely nothing about it. My thesis professor was more concerned with making sure he didn't get blamed for not catching it than addressing the plagiarism itself. The acting department chair whom I had respected before this happened, did nothing more than question the student. Despite privately admitting to me that she agreed the student had copied my work, she took no action. Not even when I worked a corporate job have I experienced such backstabbing. At least at work when you're gonna get stabbed in the back, you can sometimes see it coming and prepare youself. In this case, I was a student in need of protection. I won't say the race of the administrators involved because I don't think it actually matters. You see, I think they acted the way so many people in institutions behave. I have been there myself.

When I escalated to the Dean, the gaslighting began. I told them their program had no integrity, and I refused to attend my graduation despite graduating cum laude. They were all full of shit, as far as I was concerned.

I think they expected me to just accept what happened and move on. The student who copied my work faced no disciplinary action, not because they didn't think my grievance was valid—they didn't discipline her because they didn't think I was worth protecting. It was humiliating and depressing, made me question myself in ways I hadn't expected.

Fabrics from my thesis collection, Reverberations. May 2024.

And I think that's exactly why she did it. She was an honor student who always got A's, but deep down she knows she lackes real talent and will never have the range. She copied my work knowing full well that if caught, she'd face no consequences. She'd gone through her entire life facing no accountability, and she understood that the least protected person in that room was a middle-aged, fat, Black woman. She was counting on three things: that I wouldn't be believed, that the administrators would be cowards, and that her privilege as a white woman would protect her. Meanwhile, I was left carrying the entire emotional burden of being wronged with nobody willing to do anything about it.

I have never felt so disappointed in people—both my peers and those older than me. I was embarrassed for them. What a horrible existence it is to live as a coward. And I say this a person who has had cowardly moments.

Before FIT, I'd worked at a private school that, while not perfect, took academic dishonesty very seriously. I expected the same from FIT, but I finally learned I might as well wipe my ass with their academic integrity policy because it meant nothing. After I graduated, it became even clearer how rampant copying was throughout the textiles program. When I was in school, I deliberately avoided Pinterest for my mood boards, which made them pretty terrible, but it also meant I wasn't being fed designs to copy like my classmates clearly were. The number of stolen designs I could point out today is staggering—motifs ripped off from major brands I didn't recognize then but know now, countless pieces lifted from designers on Spoonflower, ...and Other Stories, Farm Rio, Timorous Beasties. There's no way the professors didn't know.

It was an education in more ways than one.

This incident made me reflect on my own time as an administrator at a school and my own failure to protect a student. It hit me that the reason things don't improve is simple: we allow it. People with the authority to address problems choose not to act. Everyone below them learns they don't have to do anything either. There simply aren't enough people actively working to make things better for everybody. And again, I say this as a person who has had her own moments of not living up to values while being part of an institution. I lost my values for a moment, but I got them back.

It can be scary to speak up for yourself and other people and I have been made to feel like a troublemaker at almost every job I've ever held. At one of my early jobs, I asked for a raise and the boss wanted to give me a bonus instead. When I insisted on a raise, he wanted me to explain why a raise was better than getting a bonus. I was like 17 or 18 years old and my boss was twice my age. I was intimidated but I stood my ground. Instead of giving me the extra dollar or two an hour I was asking for this grown ass adult decided to make me feel like I needed to explain the ins and outs of compensation to him. He didn't ask me to evaluate my work. He asked me to pass a test. I was made to feel like a troublemaker for asking for raise but I got my raise. In the classroom, when the professors wanted to pile an unholy amount of work on us, I'd push back and remind them that we're still in school, not at a job and while we are capable of a great many things, what they were asking of us was an unreasonable request for students. The professors dialed it back.

The other day, I saw a post from Mayor Brandon Scott in Baltimore. In the video he plays a hateful voicemail he received from a white supremacist. It was terrible to listen to, but it was courageous of Mayor Scott to put that out there. It is one thing to know these things are happening, but it's another thing entirely to experience listening to a message like that. It takes courage to put people on blast and putting people on blast is what's needed because so much dirty is being done in the dark.

Early one morning this week I heard a man and a woman arguing outside my window. I could not see them, but I could hear them arguing and I certainly heard a slap soonafter. The pair continued down the street and I yelled out my window when they got into view, "Hey, I see you!" And the woman yelled, "Yes. He hit me." The man stopped and glared at her for speaking up and he looked like he was going to hit her again. Before he could raise his hand I said, "I see you. I see you," very sternly with some base in my voice. And he stopped raising his hand and they continued down the street. I asked the woman if she needed help and she said no. They continued walking down the street and he did not hit her again while I was watching. You know where I found the courage to speak up for that woman? Recently, from watching the footage of so many "white hippies" as Nosferatu Miller has labeled them — chasing ICE out of their neighbhoods. From years of watching countless Black people filming encounters with the police. From anyone in history who has born witness to evil and did not sit idly by and let it happen.

You can give a shit about something and hold people accountable. You might get labeled a troublemaker, but as John Lewis said, we should be making good trouble.

You might not be in the demographic of people being kidnapped and trafficked right now. You might not be in the demographic of people being pushed out of jobs. You might not be part of the groups this regime is trying to erase or thinks shouldn't exist—and that very phrasing should send a chill up your spine because that's the language of genocide.

But you need to find a way to get involved. Remember, we still have rights. The Constitution hasn't been nullified. But believe me, the people in power have plans to change that. They're showing us they don't give a shit about constitutional protections. When are you going to start believing them?

It's time to reach down deep and be brave. Being brave takes practice, though.

Start where you are.

If you're uncertain about where to begin, start with a boycott coupled with intentionally shopping at businesses that aren't investing in the erasure of people and the demise of democracy. Talk about it publicly. Divest from companies that invest heavily in policing marginalized communities.

Boycott Target, Meta, X, PayPal, Stripe, and Amazon and shop at small businesses — including Black owned businesses — that share your values and be intentional about it. Until these companies feel the pain in their pockets, they'll continue their harmful practices because they only care about how much money they can extract from you. Refuse to give them any more of your hard-earned money. This will not be easy to do because these companies have inserted themselves into every part of our daily lives, but make an effort to find alternatives, even if it means giving up some convenience.

For example, I recently learned that Spotify invests in surveillance technology. I'm not down with that, so I switched to Qobuz for music streaming and Apple Podcasts for podcasts. While I don't love Apple Podcasts and I'm looking for a replacement, Qobuz has been excellent. The sound quality is better than Spotify, they pay artists more, and for roughly the same price as Spotify, the switch was easy. I moved my playlists using an app called Soundiiz. It was free.

Divesting from a streaming service that supports surveillance creates a ripple that becomes a wave when everyone joins the boycott. Look at what's happening to Target after they preemptively dropped their DEI initiatives as soon as this regime took office. Black people have refused to shop there ever since. Everyone who cares about equality should join this boycott. We're simply not shopping there anymore.

My painting of Blue Waves in progress - May 2023.

There is power in collective action. Find a way to refuse. Small actions count. Encourage others to join you. Together, we will create a tsunami they cannot ignore.

The choice is ours: remain complicit through our silence and inaction, or step up and defend the values we claim to hold. The bystanders in New York chose complicity. The administrators at FIT chose complicity.

What will you choose?

I'll leave it to comedian Josh Johnson to explain the power of boycotts.