was like what is the point of this...then
“I had come so far, I thought, and now Feinstein won,” he says. “That’s when I ate some shrooms thinking they had won. While I was on the shrooms I came to the realization of what I had to do. I put on a suit because the walls in Congress aren’t real if you wear a suit. I had just bought some Jordans the day before. I was happy as f–k. When Instagram (banned) my post I was angry. But I knew what I had to do. I had one last thing I had to do. So I took off my Jordans, took off my hoodie. I ironed my suit. I felt like I was in a f—king movie. I walked to the Hill. I was standing in front of the Capitol. My heart is racing. I had a joint in my pocket. I’m talking to cops. It made no sense to anyone but me, on shrooms. I put on some trap music. I thought of my family. I looked at my sister—she’s my screensaver on my phone. She puts up with so much s–t as a Black woman. I knew no one would ever know the s–t Feinstein does to Black people if I didn’t make it impossible to ignore.”
Purley made it past security and into the Capitol complex.
“I was so scared,” he recalls. “I knew I had been fired but there I was, in the f–king Capitol on shrooms. I walked around for like two hours, having mental conversations about whether this was something I wanted to do. Then I kept looking at my screen saver, at my sister, and walked from the Capitol, through the tunnels, to the Senate. My hands were straight sweat. I cannot breathe. I get to the Senate, the building where I worked for five years. I still had the keys to my office. I get in there. I get into the office and I can’t breathe. I’m on shrooms in an office where white people touch my hair and do racist s–t. I put on my mom’s favorite song because I knew it would calm me down and make me comfortable. The euphoria-slash-panic keeps kicking in that I’m not supposed to be there. Then I started thinking again about all the things I had to do to get there in the first place. I went into the conference room which was the worst room for me because that’s the room where I knew what it meant to be Black in a white office.
“So I walk in her office, Feinstein’s office, which triggered a screaming white noise sound. I had only been in her actual office like twice in five years and I couldn’t figure out how to turn off the white noise sound. It was giving me so much anxiety because it sounded like when the cops show up. So then I was like, f–k it. I just gotta do something for 10 minutes and I can finally leave. So I’d brought my Bose speaker. I used her bathroom, then I go sit at her desk. I turn on my speaker and start the music. I start smoking that joint, an afghani, a heavy indica, because I knew I needed to be calm.[/b] I thought about how special my mom and Black women would feel seeing me dance to that song in particular, in a space where they aren’t welcome at all. Then I started the video.”[/i]
video is in the article
