Not Gonna Lie

At a coffee shop yesterday, there were a young man and woman sitting together, planning an event. A couple of times, the young woman started something she said with the words, "I'm not gonna lie..." 

I know that's a common phrase these days, occurring often enough that it has an abbreviation in text-speak and on social media: NGL. I hadn't thought about it before that moment, but those are words I would never use in a spoken or written sentence.

I realize they're just filler, an updated version of "honestly," but I would never use them. Come to think of it, I also never use the word "honestly" in that way. 

I do use "really" — probably way too much. And "actually." But those are not statements making a claim about the internal truth of what I'm saying: they're attempts to attest to the external veracity of an aspect of something I'm saying. 

According to a 2024 post on the University of Pennsylvania's Language Log, "not gonna lie" began to enjoy its rise in usage after 2000, with a big ramp-up after 2010. 

That big increase begins to look small, however, when compared to the much more common phrases/words "honestly" and "to tell the truth":



It's notable that all three usages have experienced significant increases in this era when overt lying by public officials is the hallmark of our age.

Rosa Lee Ingram

Today I learned at least these two things.

This is the 100th anniversary of Black History Month. That's something to celebrate!

The other one, a part of Black History, is not something to celebrate, though its aftermath has elements that are. 

The Equal Justice Institute posted that on this day in 1948, a Georgia woman named Rosa Lee Ingram was convicted of killing a white man who owned the farm where she was a sharecropper. He had hit her in the head with his rifle and threatened to rape her. 

Her two sons, 14 and 17 years old, came to her defense, and in the struggle, one of them killed the man. 

Even though the local sheriff admitted that the sons acted in defense of their mother, all three family members—Rosa, Wallace, and Sammie Lee Ingram—were sentenced to death by electrocution. Their execution was scheduled for February 27, 1948. Though Wallace and Sammie Lee were both minors, they were eligible for execution under the law at the time; the U.S. Supreme Court did not ban the execution of children until 2005.

Because of pressure from nascent civil rights organizations, their death sentences were changed to life in prison, and eventually they served prison sentences until 1959. 

But I never heard of this gross injustice until today, did you?

I also learned, via prison abolitionist Mariame Kaba, that it was a main cause of one of the earliest marches on Washington, in fall 1951, The Sojourners for Truth and Justice, who issued a Call to Negro Women. 

Kaba created a limited-edition anthology called No Selves to Defend in 2014 to put the Marissa Alexander case, then happening in Florida, "within a historical context that criminalizes and punishes women (particularly of color) for self-defense and survival." 

Rosa Ingram is just one of the women covered in the anthology. I am familiar with two of the names listed, Joan Little and Cece McDonald, and what happened to them. 

I looked up Lena Baker, and after reading her story, I'm afraid to see what happened to the other women included in the anthology: Inez Garcia, New Jersey 4, Cassandra Peten, Bernadette Powell, Juanita Thomas, Yvonne Wanrow, and Dessie Woods. It's all too predictable, though.

As I said, the story of Ingram and these other women are not something to celebrate, but Kaba's work — both in the anthology and in bringing the 1951 march back into view — is an important part of Black History Month.
 

All in a Day

I woke up to the University of Illinois College Republicans "Only traitors help invaders" vile graphic story, and their attempt to back-pedal on it. 

As I write this, I'm seeing the Montreal Canadiens hockey team — who are in the Twin Cities to play the Minnesota Wild — have been told to stay in their hotel, only go out on the team bus, and make sure they have their passports on them. Sure, the U.S. can host the World Cup and the Olympics! That's how international sports events work. 

Later this morning, I read this post by local writer Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl, who happens to live in the middle of South Minneapolis. She describes what it's like to live within an economic blockade in 21st century America. And what it's like right on her own block, day after day. The broken glass of car windows everywhere.

The supposed pivot we've all heard about from national media pretending to be duped by the thinnest of head fakes it is not real. 

ICE/CBP, as Dara says and I heard from several other people, was at the Powderhorn Park building yesterday (Sunday), "throwing tear gas where we used to do Family Pottery and the kids would smoosh clay into lumpy adorable cups." I took DN3.1 there for an art activity during preschool. It's next to a playground. 

And ProPublica has revealed who shot Alex Pretti: CBP agents with years of experience. Between these two and Ross, who shot Renee Good, they have 40 years among them. So it's not training. It's bad culture, bad at the root, and it starts at Customs and Border Patrol. 

They operate like this all the time at the border. "Regular" people didn't realize it before now, and didn't care. But CBP has expanded the behavior into the 100 mile perimeter within any border, including all the oceans. And somehow now, that watery edge includes the Great Lakes all the way to Chicago... and mysteriously, the Twin Cities, too.   

CBP is lawless and this government appears intent on destroying this country. 
 

On a Lake

A college friend of mine and his husband were just part of the Bay Area's large-scale Abolish ICE lettering formation that was done a few days ago.

Locally, people made letters out of candle-lit luminaries, reading ICE OUT, on Lake Nokomis, near the Minneapolis-Saint Paul airport to be seen by people flying over.

Then other people assembled on Lake Bde Mka Ska in Uptown, South Minneapolis, to spell out SOS, and photographer Jeff Schad managed to take drone photos, creating these bits of beauty in the face of this ongoing federal attack:

Send help. standwithminnesota.com  

BlueSky, January 2026, Part 2

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