This week, I’ve been thinking about Malcolm X. Not just the man, but the urgency in his words, the clarity in his fire. After Charlie Kirk’s assassination, I found myself remembering Malcolm’s response to President Kennedy’s death: “chickens coming home to roost.” It wasn’t celebration—it was recognition. Recognition that a country built on violence will eventually taste its own blood.
Malcolm’s Message to the Grassroots was delivered in 1963, to a room full of Black leaders. His warning was about division, about how the system keeps oppressed people from uniting. I’ve been wondering: what would that message sound like if it were spoken to us now? To the whole spectrum—the alphabet, the rainbow, the grassroots—everyone the system depends on but does not love?
That’s what brought me here. What follows is my re-envisioning of Malcolm’s speech, shaped for this moment, for this coalition, for us.
Message to the Alphabet Rainbow Spectrum
Family. Kin. Community. To everyone across the alphabet, the rainbow, the spectrum, the grassroots — I’m not here to talk about dreams. I’m here to talk about survival. About struggle. About the system that was built by white men, for white men, and that still shapes the laws we live under today.
This system has a thousand faces. Prison and police. Boardroom and bank. Poisoned water, stolen land. The algorithm that watches you. The law that cages your children. It does not care if you are Black or white, queer or straight, trans or cis, disabled or abled, citizen or immigrant. If you are not at the top, you are fodder for the machine. And if you are at the top, it teaches you lies to keep you guarding its gates.
The system thrives on division. Cis against trans. Black against immigrant. Worker against worker. Poor against poor. It tells us our neighbor is the problem, the person beside us is the enemy. That is the lie. And while we fight each other, the system grows fat on our labor and rich on our silence.
And understand this — the system doesn’t only silence the poor, the queer, the immigrant, the disabled. It silences anyone who dares to speak truth into the airwaves. Those with platforms — the Jimmy Kimmels, the Stephen Colberts — find themselves gagged by the same machine, because they use their reach to call out what it wants hidden. The system will always try to crush the voice that refuses to bow, whether it comes from the block, the picket line, or the late-night stage.
But we are not silent. We are here. We are many. And we are learning to hear each other again, and shutting out the noise of the oppressor.
Do you see what happens when a system like this breeds in isolation? Each generation grows more extreme. Just as bodies bred without diversity grow frail, so too does power passed from hand to hand without renewal. The result is a sickness of the soul. A distortion of what it means to be human. Violence becomes instinct. Greed becomes inheritance. Fear becomes the only prayer they know.
That is why the system cannot save us. It cannot even save itself. It rots from the inside, but it will try to drag us down with it. It thrives on our exhaustion. It feeds on our despair. It demands that we forget our power. But when we name it, when we face it together, something shifts. The same fire that burned us can light the way. The same chains that bound us can be broken, link by link. The same system that was built to divide can be dismantled by our unity.
It is time to pick up the mantle of Martin. Of Malcolm. Of Fred. Of the countless others who gave their lives in true service to humanity. They taught us that freedom is not inherited, it is claimed. That justice is not given, it is demanded. That dignity is not granted by the system, it is built by the people who refuse to bow to it.
So hear me: this is not freedom for some. Not justice for some. Not dignity for some. It is freedom for all, or it is freedom for none. And once the alphabet, the rainbow, the spectrum, the grassroots move as one, nothing — nothing — can stop us. Because we are the spectrum. We are the fire. And we are the future.💎
Malcolm X didn’t just describe the world as it was—he demanded that we face it and choose what comes next.
So I want to ask you:
What systems do you see breeding sickness, generation after generation?
And what would it mean for us—not just some of us, but all of us—to finally move as one? To stop playing the system’s game and start building something of our own?
Because as Malcolm said, and as our ancestors lived, freedom for some is no freedom at all.