Everyone Has a Price: The Heartbreak of Realizing Most People Will Sell Their Souls

I woke up this morning exhausted. Not the kind of tired that sleep can fix. But the kind of tired that comes from disappointment. The kind of tired that comes from realizing something you didn't want to believe.I woke up this morning and I realized: Most people have a price.I've been doing community work my entire adult life. Educating my people. Putting us in spaces we've never been. Organizing events. Building coalitions. Fighting for justice. And I thought—I really thought—that the people I was working with shared my values. I thought we all had a little good in us. I thought we all had love for humanity at the end of the day. For people. For us.But I've been living life with rose-colored lenses. Because what I'm seeing now is that most people have self-served missions. And they'll sell their souls for anything. A title. A position. Proximity to power. A seat at the table.And I am heartbroken.In this episode, I break down the Faustian Bargain within the movement—what happens when the people who claim to be "for the people" sell you out. I connect my experience to Malcolm X's realization that the Nation of Islam was not what he thought it was, and to the story of William O'Neal in Judas and the Black Messiah, the FBI informant who betrayed Fred Hampton from the inside.