Because Thanksgiving Day of 2014 fell just three days after a grand jury’s decision not to indict Ferguson, Missouri’s then-officer Darren Wilson for killing unarmed human being Michael Brown, and because just six days later another grand jury decided not to indict New York Police Department officer Daniel Pantaleo for choking to death unarmed human being Eric Garner, I found myself unwilling and unable to celebrate the origins of this country with the traditional gestures prescribed for the holiday.

Instead, I performed a catharsis of my grief online—writing through my thoughts and concerns about my homeland’s lack of love for itself via the publicly shared Google Doc available at bit.ly/1pr4yPC, a link I shared on my Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts Thanksgiving morning.

Thinking and creating publicly within the same channels and devices that conveyed this news to me, and alongside other grieving and reportage, the performance was chiefly concerned with the potency of immediate publication, and the power of baring once-secret grief.