Happy Valentine’s Comets! And also, happy Black History Month! Even though Valentine’s Day is only celebrated one day out of the month, February will always be a season of love, the color pink, and cringy Hallmark movies. Hopefully, we won’t be seeing any Covid-19 themed Hallmark movies because most of the world still agrees that some aspects of reality should remain non-existent in our movies and tv shows. Also, not to dampen any Valentine’s plans you may have, but the current cases of the new Omicron variant are not going to make it easy to go out and celebrate. A lot of businesses are bringing back their mask mandates and restrictions due to the surge in cases, and some schools are even going back to teaching online. However you may feel about virtual learning, I think we can all agree this COVID era is 100% making life very difficult. There’s the constant stress of you or any of your friends and family members getting sick. Then, there’s a number of people (especially students) worried about their minimum wage job closing down, which will result in a loss of income. And even though it may not be as big of a deal as the last two things, a lot of us just want to go on vacation again. We want to attend parties comfortably, maybe even touch a public doorknob again without the immediate thought to put on hand sanitizer. That last one actually may never go away. Thanks to the diligent work of anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers, most scientists cannot give an exact “end” to the pandemic. Some scientists have said the pandemic will end this year and enter the “endemic” stage, and some scientists have also said cases are going to surge a lot higher in the next six months. All in all, continue to mask up and get your booster shots! 

Moving on from the never-ending covid updates, Black History Month is definitely a cause for celebration! Oftentimes during this month, people will post MLK or Malcolm X quotes, and oftentimes they’ll frame those two revolutionaries as two opposing ideologies trying to achieve the shared goal of gaining liberation. However, Malcolm X and MLK are more alike than our school system may have led most of us to believe. Malcolm X was perceived as the intense radical who supported a militant response to racism, and MLK was known for his desire to achieve equality through peaceful protests (it should be obvious which one the American government liked more). Even though MLK supported peaceful protests like boycotts and marches, he spoke on intersectionality and stated the ignorance of white Americans at that time. Here are some iconic MLK quotes that have commonly been left out of mainstream media: 

-“The evils of capitalism are as real as the evils of militarism and racism. The problems of racial injustice and economic injustice cannot be solved without a radical redistribution of political and economic power.” 

-“White Americans must recognize that justice for black people cannot be achieved without radical changes in the structure of our society.”

-“We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”