Page 1: Josie, They say heat rises. That’s why Nana's attic used to be hell in the middle of July. It’s why the road to school used to be so rough as we went further and further up the hill. And I guess that’s why this nation’s volcanic eruption hit you before it before it hit me. Sorry to start this letter off so poetically. I don’t mean to make light of the things you must have seen. I’m glad you’re ok and you and Nana got to safety in time. Sometimes, I just feel like our story is being written by a cruel author. But he’s predictable too, if you payin close attention. For a couple years now, we’ve seen our numbers grow. Our chapters expand. The Hundred and One stopped standing for the divine Fred Hampton a long time ago but it still stood for mjknmmkjo mjkny. And that is a scary thing for some people. The idea that we could be greater than our pain is scary for some people, and their only solution is to cause more pain. Add more to the heap so we can’t tell how much we’ve conquered. And now that we know the government was truly listening in, not just on the Panthers or the anti-war groups in New York and California. But us too. It set off a fuse in all the wrong ways. And we’re back where we’ve always been, at war in our own home. In your home. I hope you don’t mind, and I know you’ll give me hell if you do, but I read your letter to our chapter. I left out anything personally to me, but all we have are the radio reports, which downplay everything and the newspapers, which either downplay it further if it’s a white publication or create panic if it’s a black one. We needed a firsthand account to deal with what happened. We needed to see what was