The moment that made me a radical.

Posted at The Root.

Chicago burned. The flames that were raging on the West Side were clearly visible outside of the school bus window that was carrying my high school jazz band. It was from this bus that I first glimpsed the insurrection and the grip of radical revolution took hold of me. Why call the “riot” an insurrection? Because to me that was clearly what it was. Chicago’s fate was being shared with over 100 sister cities throughout the United States — cities and neighborhoods not unlike mine— that had erupted in mass violence as word of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. swept the nation.