Thread by @TheTinaVasquez

Over a week ago, I went to a #FamiliesBelongTogetherMarch in North Carolina and I'm 99 percent certain two young, white people there were white supremacists surveilling communities of color. Which I'm sure sounds totally nutty to some of you.

A young white man with a shaved head, without any press credentials, had a professional camera and he was filming the speakers and laughing when they talked about children in cages.

He kept making eye contact, but never verbally communicating, with a young white girl who was at the march alone. When we marched to the second location, she was taking pictures not of what was happening on stage, but of immigrant mothers in the audience and protestors of color.

I found it very jarring, of course, but I kept it moving. I was there to cover the march for something I was working on. But I'm learning that as journalists, and journalists color in particular, this shit will seep into our brains and demand we reckon with it.

I already have tons of anxiety when traveling because of the ways I'm routinely fucked with by TSA. I ALWAYS get a pat down, I ALWAYS get my hands swabbed. Every time I travel it's just a matter of how aggressive of a pat down I will get.

So this morning, before my travel day, I had a dream that a group of white men in a yellow van circled my father's house when I was there visiting, stopping in front of his house, staring at me, taking pictures, and driving off only to return.

The van was flying a confederate flag and had signs posted to it that included hashtags. I told my dad to get the fuck in the house. As we're inside, and my partner closes the blinds, we see the men getting out of the van with guns. And then my alarm went off.

Keep in mind I live in NC where I see confederate flags on cars at least once a day. The HTs on the van in my dream were actual hashtags people tweet me when they tell me I should die or that immigrants are animals, etc. And of course, the recent incident with the surveillance.

All of this just swirls in a toxic cesspool in my brain and then comes out randomly in the form of anxiety or fear, felt for seemingly no reason. But there are reasons of course. I'm low-level scared for myself and the people I love all the time.

I'm scared of what cops will do, what white supremacists will do, but I'm also scared of the institutional racism that will rob people I love and care for of their ability to make a living, take care of their families, etc.

A friend came over for dinner this weekend, a Black woman, who explained she has a plan in place for when she gets fired - down to the attorney on speed dial, who will escort her from her place of work, the journalists she will call to tell all of the racism she has experienced.

And all night we talked about similar things. Because that's another thing I realized: I need the women of color in my life so desperately to feel human, but when we are together we can't help but talk about all the ways in which we're in pain. Because we are in so much pain.

And what do you even do with all of this? There are so many WOC journalists I think about constantly but I don't even know how to reach out and say, "Are you OK?" Because if they're not, I wouldn't know what to do. I don't know what to do for myself when I don't feel OK.

ANWAYS, that dream really rattled me and I guess I should end this by saying let's look out for each other, but I don't even know what that looks like right now. So I'll just say: Take care of yourself to the best of your ability and when you're willing/able, reach out to others.