Today is my 43rd birthday. Two decades ago, this milestone seemed improbable, if not impossible. And yet, here I am, living in improbable, impossible times. Having survived what might have killed me, I sit upright and pour tears and laughter into a keyboard, which lets them loose upon the world.

Upon our burning, broken, beautiful world…

As I celebrate another year on this Earth, I am also taking a moment to lament life’s brevity. In the United States, Native people have the lowest life expectancy compared with other racial and ethnic groups. Diné organizer Klee Benally, who recently joined the ancestors, was only 48 when he departed. Time is so precious. It is our most finite resource, and we never know how much we have. We’re often told to make the most of it, but that means different things to different people.

I have the honor of sharing a birthday with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and, health permitting, I hope to mark the day by attending a protest. King was only 39 years old when he died, and he inarguably made the most of those years. Today, his legacy is often weaponized against protesters by white critics who would have condemned his organizing and his methods had they lived during King’s active years. Such people often point to protests they find objectionable or inconvenient and claim that Martin Luther King Jr. never would have engaged in such shenanigans – even when the tactic in question is one that King himself embraced.

Today, I am thinking about how King would have reacted to the ongoing genocide in Palestine. At the Anti-War Conference in Los Angeles, California, in February of 1967, King said, “It is not enough to say, ‘We must not wage war.’ It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it.”

As I revisit those words, I think about what so many protesters have lost and risked while demanding an end to Israeli genocide. Activists have imperiled their liberty, their employment, and even their lives to end this violence because they know the people of Palestine are losing so much more in real time. Protesters are making sacrifices for peace and justice, as King said we must.

I am also thinking about how many people now claim to have marched with King or to have........

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