If you’ve heard the phrase “fuck the police” you’ve probably also heard the quip “nobody ever says fuck the fire department.” It’s usually used to explain to people who don’t quite prescribe to tear-it-all-down tactics that there wouldn’t be such a clarion call to abolish the police if they were actually protecting and serving rather than harming and oppressing.

I’ve heard this interaction and these phrases in many iterations, without ever thinking too much about it. It makes sense, on the surface. But the other day, a thought came to my mind: I bet you they were saying fuck the fire department in 1963.

Picture this (it’s 1963 so picture it in black and white, literally and figuratively). But for real, picture this: it’s spring of 1963 in Birmingham, Alabama. You are a Black child and Jim Crow Alabama is all you and everyone you know knows. But, recently, hope is brewing. Hope of a new reality, a liberated reality, or at least a less oppressed one. So you and your peers muster up the courage to join the Children’s Crusade, to peacefully protest for your rights. No one expected the police to be kind. I mean, fuck the police, right? But not only do the police come to beat you with their fists and with batons, not only to the police sick dogs on you, but the Birmingham Fire Department rolls up and starts blasting people, children and teens, with fire hoses.

In 2025, we have the luxury of proclaiming, “no one ever says fuck the fire department.” But look around, so many of our “trusted institutions” are proving that when push comes to shove, they have no problem hooking the hose up to the hydrant, opening the valve, and pointing that torrent right at the most vulnerable. Is this our ancestors’ wildest dream?

In 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. referred to Birmingham as a symbol and asserted that if integration could be achieved in Birmingham, the rest of the South would follow suit. In 2025, we have no shortage of symbols: Congolese toddlers inhaling fumes in mines, masked ICE agents in plainclothes and unmarked cars, a streamed genocide in Palestine, massacred bodies lining the streets in Rio. These are all symbols of what humanity has sacrificed in the name of capitalism, or white supremacy, or the status quo. And while we’re currently in good standing with the fire department, what about the corporations, and the PACs, and the federal government? How long will we continue to let them slide?

How many times must history repeat itself before we start to employ a different strategy? Saving these institutions will not save us. Let’s get to imagining. We love to proclaim, “I am my ancestors’ wildest dreams.” What will the future say of us? We have to have a wildest dream for them to become one.

Signed,

N.A.