By Mark W Johnson
It worked. Time travel works. Now I can deliver the message.
I wish I was here to thank you.
I wish I could say, “You did it.” That you held the line, protected the legacy, pushed the dream forward. I wish I could say the world I live in now—the year 2055—is better, freer, safer for us. But I can’t.
Because you didn’t do what needed to be done.
Now, I know that’s hard to hear. I know some of you tried. Some of you voted, marched, gave money, had those hard conversations at the dinner table. But not enough. Not nearly enough.
See, you thought the civil rights movement was history. Something already won. You looked back at the Selma bridge and thought, we crossed it. You saw Obama in the White House and said, we made it. You saw Black excellence on your screens and thought, we’re good now.
But you got comfortable. Complacent. Distracted. Divided.
And while you were posting and scrolling and waiting on someone else to fix it—they were planning. They were organizing, strategizing, writing policies with pretty names and poisonous consequences. Project 2025 wasn’t a conspiracy theory—it was a blueprint. And they followed it to the letter.
They tore it all down.
DEI? Gone. They called it “woke poison.” Made you ashamed of even saying “diversity.” HBCUs? Defunded, closed. Black history? That’s a thing of the past. We don’t even celebrate Juneteenth anymore. We couldn’t even say slavery in school. We had to call it “involuntary relocation.”
Housing programs? Dismantled. The racial wealth gap? Wider than it was in 1968. Black businesses couldn’t get loans. Black workers got laid off first. And our neighborhoods—those last bits of community—were bought, bulldozed, and renamed.
They took it all. And we let them.
Because you didn’t organize. You didn’t vote when it wasn’t sexy. You didn’t show up for local elections. You didn’t pour money into your own schools, your own banks, your own media. You let billionaires speak louder than block captains. You let memes replace movements. You waited for saviors instead of being your own darn cavalry.
And we paid the price.
Now I watch my child learn lies in school and wonder what it would’ve looked like if you’d fought harder. If you’d turned outrage into action. If you’d treated every election like it was Selma again. If you’d loved us enough to protect the future, you were building.
But here’s the truth.
I still believe in you. Because if you’re hearing this—there’s still time. Not a lot. But enough. Enough to organize. Enough to vote like your life—and mine—depends on it. Enough to invest in each other, in our communities, in our truth.
You’ve still got power. Don’t let it rot.
Don’t let your grandchildren grow up asking the question I ask every single day:
What would’ve happened if we hadn’t waited?
Do it now. Before the memory of freedom is the only freedom we hav
