“Well, that ain’t hardly her fault,” Mrs. Bell says. “You know her mother; Rosalie is too busy worried about Harlem to tend to her own child’s soul. She never makes Ayo go to church.”

Mrs. Bell and Mrs. Curtis are sisters. They both have light eyes and fine features. My mom says that’s the reason they act like they are closer to God than anyone else.

“I don’t know why your mother insists on holding the How Much? march this Sunday. Don’t she know that’s God’s day?” Mrs. Bell says.

The march she’s referring to is the biggest protest march ever organized by See Us. There are thousands of people expected. The march came about because earlier this year, yet another routine traffic stop turned deadly and a Black man was shot. The cop claims he thought the driver was reaching for a gun. The driver’s name was Davis Brown, and he had just become a dad a week before.

In the weeks that followed, there was a frenzy in Harlem. Everyone was looking to my mom and her organization to speak on their behalf. I thought Mom was going to jump on the issues right away, but she took a different approach. Instead, she organized a massive campaign where thousands of Monopoly dollars were sent to various government buildings in New York City. Soon, Monopoly money was all over Harlem, and each bill had the same two words written over it: How Much?

And for over two weeks, people wondered what it meant. The ultraconservative media outlet Sly News kept trying to guess what it meant. They have nightly guests on that speculate what Black folks could be up to.

But my mom wouldn’t comment until everything reached a fever pitch. Then she held a press conference at See Us headquarters. She looked out onto the sea of reporters and, in her usual poised and fearless manner, she addressed the cameras.

“A few weeks ago, I was out with my daughter, having dinner. There was a table nearby with two white men enjoying their meal and recounting how their day was to each other. I overheard one man say to the other, ‘I was in such a hurry to get there, I drove like crazy and got pulled over.’ The other man groaned and said, ‘That sucks, what happened?’ And his friend replied, ‘I got a two-hundred-dollar ticket!’ Both of them sighed and moved on to other happenings in their lives.