Same Systems, Different Language

Twenty years inside, and the choice to end what won’t end itself

Today I give away 21 more days of my life.

And if I’m honest, it feels like I’ve been giving away pieces of my life for the last 21 years.

That is the clarity I’m walking in with.

Not confusion. Not avoidance. Not denial.

Clarity.

Because today I get on a plane to New York, and I go to court.

This is the day where a process that has stretched for years meets a decision I have already made. The day where something that could have gone on indefinitely finally has an ending.

And I chose that ending.

Not because I had no options.

But because I understood the cost of continuing.

I have spent the last four years in a fight that does not resolve itself.

A fight for my name. My reputation. My peace. My future.

A fight that escalated in October of 2024, when everything was splashed across media in ways I could not control. Seeing my name reduced to headlines. Seeing comparisons that should have never been made. Watching my life get flattened into something consumable.

And then living with the afterlife of that.

Every time I take a step forward, it follows me.

Every time I meet someone new, there is the possibility they have already been handed a version of me that I did not author.

A text.
An inbox.
“Hey, have you seen this about Dominique?”

And I am pulled back into something that refuses to release me.

Not because I choose it.

But because it lingers.

And I need to say something plainly.

I cannot live like that.

I will not live like that.

Because one of the things I have worked hardest for in my life is this:

To never have anything held over my head.

To be able to stand fully in who I am.

To hold my head high, without negotiation.

And this situation has disrupted that in a way that no amount of endurance could fix.

So yes, I had options.

I could have gone to trial.
I could have stayed in the fight.
I could have kept defending, explaining, proving.

But some fights do not end themselves.

And if you don’t create an expiration date, they will take everything.

So today, I am choosing the end.

Even if it costs me 21 more days.

Because I am not willing to give this another 21 years.

And I need to be honest about something else.

There are people who have reduced this entire situation to a number.

A headline.

A “100k fiasco.”

And I am trusting that this outcome, this decision, this moment, will make something clearer over time.

That what this was made to be publicly and what it actually was are not the same thing.

But I am no longer willing to spend years of my life trying to force that clarity in a system that is not built for nuance.

That is not where my power is.

My power is in choosing my life.

When I zoom out, I see the full picture.

Twenty years.

Ten inside the prison industrial complex.
Ten inside the nonprofit industrial complex.

Two systems that taught me the same lesson in different ways.

At nineteen, in prison, there was no illusion.

I worked twelve-hour days in a kitchen for $3.78. My labor was cheap. My body was controlled. The system did not pretend otherwise.

And because it was honest in its harm, I learned how to define myself outside of it.

I learned how to read a room.

Not socially.

Strategically.

At the spades table, I learned how to watch hands, read faces, calculate risk, understand power without it being explained.

Years later, I was sitting in rooms asking for a million dollars, using those same skills.

Reading the room.

Understanding what wasn’t being said.

Positioning myself so the ask would land.

That is continuity.

Not contradiction.

Prison also taught me something that shaped everything that came after.

People should not be reduced to the worst thing they have ever done.

I carried that into my work.

Into the nonprofit industrial complex.

And that space gave me something too.

I have to name that.

Because this is not just a story of harm.

It is a full accounting.

I remember writing on Facebook, “I just want a job in nonprofit. I will hand off the coffee.”

Ann Smolsky.
Kenny McMorris.
Charles Drew Health Center.

They gave me an opportunity.

I never passed out the coffee.

But I did buy a building and put a coffee maker in it in my city.

That matters.

The last decade showed me something I did not have in the first thirty years of my life.

That success is possible for me.

That what I carry works.

That I can build.

And I will build again.

But I also have to tell the truth about what I experienced.

Because this is where the nonprofit industrial complex revealed itself to me in a way I could not ignore.

My involvement with The Okra Project sits at that intersection.

This is not a definitive indictment.

This is a case study.

A lived and interpreted experience of how power, money, governance, and accountability functioned in practice.

I entered aligned with the mission.

Direct support. Emergency aid. Immediate care.

And as my involvement deepened, so did my access.

More responsibility. More financial movement. More proximity to decision-making.

And also, more ambiguity.

Because what began to emerge—this is my interpretation—was a structure that prioritized urgency over governance.

Money moved.

Real money.

For funerals. For people leaving incarceration. For gender-affirming care.

Real care happened.

Real lives were impacted.

That is true.

But alongside that, there were gaps.

Authority was not clearly defined, but it was enforced.

Funds moved without consistent structures that clarified boundaries.

Access was shaped by proximity and urgency, not system.

At the time, it felt like responsiveness.

But there was a moment that shifted something in me.

A young trans woman contracted HIV while fundraising for her surgery.

And I asked:

Why are girls risking their lives for this?
Why aren’t we just paying for it?

That pushed me further into immediate redistribution.

And deeper into a system that did not yet have the structure to hold what we were doing.

That is not accusation.

That is tension.

Because when governance is underdeveloped, power becomes informal.

And informal power is harder to name, harder to challenge, and harder to be accountable to.

By late 2024, that tension broke.

Relationships fractured.

Conflict escalated.

And instead of repair, it moved toward external systems.

Toward the state.

That matters.

Because when a system that claims liberation cannot resolve conflict internally, it defaults to punishment.

When I look at this now, I see the bridge.

Between the nonprofit industrial complex and the prison industrial complex.

Control without clarity.

Resource gatekeeping.

Labor extraction through mission.

Punishment as resolution.

Narrative as power.

And here is the tension I refuse to flatten.

All of this existed alongside real care.

That is what makes this complicated.

That is what makes this worth naming.

So I had to get clear.

Systems are always clear about what they want from you.

The question is what you expect from them.

I expected care.

But care as a value is not the same as care as a practice.

People can believe in care and still not offer it when it costs them something.

Shared identity does not guarantee shared commitment.

Solidarity that does not require sacrifice is alignment.

And alignment can disappear.

That realization brings anger.

It should.

But I am no longer turning that anger inward.

I did not do this wrong.

I was operating with values inside systems not designed to honor them.

That is a structural mismatch.

And still, I carry something forward.

I know how to build.

I know how to read power.

I know how to execute.

That is mine now.

And my understanding of power has changed.

Before, power looked like endurance.

Like proximity.

Like being needed.

Now, power looks like authorship.

Closure.

Discernment.

The ability to say, this ends here.

Because this situation has felt like a box.

And I have spent my life breaking out of boxes.

This is just another one.

Adjacent to all the others.

And breaking it requires something.

Sacrifice.

Fear.

Clarity.

Am I afraid?

Yes.

Does this feel surreal?

Yes.

Would nineteen-year-old me laugh at how much I am processing twenty days?

Absolutely.

And that is how I know my life has changed.

Because this feels like I am cutting off my own arm.

And I am still choosing it.

Because I am ready.

Ready for the chains of this situation, of these systems, to fall.

Ready to stop carrying something that has already taken too much.

So today, I give away 21 days.

But I take back my life.

I take back my time.
I take back my name.
I take back the right to define what any of this meant.

Because what I am no longer willing to do is spend years negotiating my truth inside systems that were never built to hold it.

And I trust something now that I did not trust before.

That the truth does not need me to exhaust myself in order to exist.

It will reveal itself.

It will stand on its own.

And I will meet it on the other side of this.

When I return at the end of May, I will tell my story.

Fully.

No edits.
No compromises.
No negotiations.

Just the truth.

On my terms.

Because survival is not the goal anymore.

Living is.

And my freedom, my peace, my future are waiting on me.

I am not going to be late.