a thought from How It Went Down by Kekla Magoon

As I watch all the civil unrest unfold before me, I have so many questions about what is right.  What is the right way to fight racism?  What is right for black people?  Is there really one answer to this question.  I am reading today How It Went Down by Kekla Magoon.  It is the story of a black boy killed by a white man in a black poor neighborhood, and it is told from many different points of view.  One of the characters is an older black man, fairly well educated and rich, who has married a woman from the poor neighborhood and is step-dad to her son.  One of his thoughts is this:

 "The footage of the church [for the funeral] shows all manner of people coming and going.  Leather-clad gang members, community leaders, young parents with small children in tow.  The gang boys throw up signs and fists, looking tough and projecting a sense of power.  There are all kinds of power - gang-type violent authority, sport-type physical prowess and social prestige, material wealth and economic dominance, power that comes from leadership, intellect, scholarship, knowledge.  It's what you buy into, in a sense.  The kind of power you seek depends on your worldview - what is necessary to survive, what is most important."

Third Mailing Letter to my friends

My friends,

This week I am just hurting.  I am missing everything.  I feel disconnected from the things I love.  I feel powerless to do anything to stop the hurting.  And that was before the riots started…

I don’t really have more words for what this weekend brought, and the interfaith poems I had intended to send today just seem too intellectual somehow.  Too careful.  Not raw enough to help with all this hurt.  So I decided to try something different.

A few weeks ago I was having a bad day.  I don’t even really remember what was so upsetting, but I found myself crying at odd moments and my children were all huddled around me at different points trying to comfort me.  Emma, of course, found a way to help.  While I was out on an errand, she made these little slips of paper with the word “hug” on them and she placed them everywhere around the house.  By everywhere, I mean EVERYWHERE.  She taped them to the inside handles of the refrigerator and the oven.  She left them under my hairbrush and my toothpaste.  She slipped them in books and taped one to the inside of the dog’s food container.  She put them under shampoo and conditioner bottles and on top of the washing machine.  I eventually found one folded into some laundry in my closet and another under my pillow and one on the bottom of the salsa container in the fridge.  I think I was finding them for a week, and every time I found a new one I would smile and my chest would loosen a little.  I have asked her twice if she is still hiding new ones, which she says she is not.  I have my doubts.  :))

So my friends, today I want to share hugs with you.  I can’t sneak into your homes and hide them for you, but I can at least send them out to you.  Maybe you can hide them yourselves to find later, or tuck them into spots to be noticed again when needed.  Tape them to handles, slip them into books, slide them into the edge of mirrors.  My hope is that whenever you see one, you will smile, and your chest will loosen, and the pain will take a small step back, and you will know you are loved.  You are loved, and every one of us is loved.  Everywhere.  May this be the simple, powerful message we hear, may it be a living thing in our hearts, and may it be the message we bring forward.  Everywhere.

From mine to yours.       

        

Fear

Glen is going to work tomorrow.  For the fourth day in a row I am watching protesters move through the city.  The police chief says the hard part is that these protesters have decided not to register and they keep moving, which makes it hard to protect them or stop them if they get violent.  Also they keep sending off splinter groups, which seems to be on purpose to divide the police numbers.  For two days in a row they have overcome the highway through and out of town and yesterday they had to deploy teargas to stop them.  Glen says he knows different ways out of the city but I wish he would not go in at all.

People in and around the city have begun arming themselves.  The mayor is calling for people to not be vigilantes.  A gun store owner this morning shot and killed one of several men who deliberately and clearly with forethought broke into his store.  The men had a gun and pointed it at the owner, but he fired first.  I am afraid for what will happen to that man and his shop and that neighborhood tonight.  Will this get worse if people fight back?  The mayor is mourning the loss of another life, but it seems to me like it was going to be a loss either way.  Other guns stores today were flooded with homeowners and shop owners buying guns.

Today a synagogue that our church partners with frequently held a peaceful protest out here.  Our pastor said he was going and invited all of us.  I want to stand with them, but I was afraid to go.  I used the excuse that Alex had her math placement test, but it ended early enough that if I hustled truly I could have made it.  I don't trust any of these protests anymore.  How long until it begins to move to affluent areas if it is not stopped?  I am not saying we are better than anyone.  I don't want it to be happening to anyone, anywhere.  I don't care about our stuff, but I worry for our safety.  I do worry about the stuff in the neighborhoods they are burning.  Those people don't have any other stuff or means to get more stuff.  They need every inch they have.  I just wonder how long it will take to begin to cross the distance.

Today we saw three black men on bikes on our street.  We don't know them.  They didn't look like cyclists (which we get all the time) and they were not wearing bike attire or even helmets.  They had random bikes, not cycles like they were on a real ride.  One had pants around his butt.  Is it wrong that I felt nervous?  Is that profiling?  I feel like I would have wondered about any color men who looked odd like that and out of place, but the reality is I can't know.   They were black and there were not other strange men passing through.  Most people passing through look like they are serious about their bikes, or like families or like they are exercising or like people I know.   

I do not pretend to know what they are going through.  I am trying to listen.  I watched a clip of looters running out of a store and getting in their cars.  When the police came up to stop them, they ran them over.  One of the cops now has 12 broken ribs, 5 broken vertebrae, a crushed arm and shoulder...  In two days he has had two surgeries.  I am trying.  Maybe they stole enough stuff to feed their baby and buy diapers for another week.  Is that worth the injury to the police officer?

Books for these times

As I watch the news, the words running through my head continue to be: what can I do? I'm not sure I have an answer to that yet, but I have read some books recently that have helped me understand a little bit of why. As many of you know, I mostly read Young Adult books. In the last few years, there have been some amazing new books in that genre dealing with racism and people of color. Dear Martin by Nic Stone is a book I feel like everyone should read, young adult or old adult! In some ways, I feel like these offer a different view than books like The New Jim Crow.  These are the stories of how people feel, right now, living ordinary lives.  These are what is being written by African American authors for their children today.  This is how our young adults are learning about what it is like to be an African American.  They are not abstract, they are not difficult to get through.  Although they are not non-fiction, in many ways I think it is just as important to listen to the stories as to read the history.  I'm Not Dying With You Tonight is actually about an African American and a white girl who only barely know each other that get trapped together and have to live through a night of rioting together.  It goes back and forth showing how dramatically different they see everything as they are literally going through it side by side.  Really hits home today.

  So, here is my offering.  It's not perfect and it's not complete by a long shot, but it is a start.  Love to all.  Karin

  

* Dear Martin by Nic Stone
* I’m Not Dying With You Tonight by Kimberly Jones and Gilly Segal
* The Stars Beneath Our Feet by David Barclay Moore
* Boy in the Black Suit, When I was the Greatest, and the Ghost series by Jason Reynolds
* Scrawl by Marcus Shulman
* The Hate U Give and On the Come Up by Angie Thomas
* This Side of Home and Watch Us Rise by Renee Watson 
* The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian by Alexie Sherman
* Bluford High series (mixed authors) and Urban Underground series by Anne Schraff

(books in verse)
* Brown Girl Dreaming, Locomotion and Peace, Locomotion by Jacqueline Woodson
* Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo 
* Crossover and Rebound by Kwame Alexander 
* Between the Lines, Bronx Masquerade, Ordinary Hazards, and Planet Middleschool by Nikki Grimes

(poetry)
* Mixed Feelings by Avan Jogia

Come Sit With Me

Come Sit With Me

We began this boldly

charging forward

all of us together

to do good

to save lives

with chants and cheers 

with singing from balconies

rainbows and chalk drawings to

guide us.

Boldly

to conquer.

Then as time passed

our steps slowed.

paced.

The Long March

the long march 

to where?

to victory?

to the top of the hill?

to dawn?

Heavier.

A stumble.

A recovery.

A pause to look around

take a breath.

Slow became slower

the breaks longer

the miles

became blocks

fields

yards

steps.

Will you sit with me?

Still we sang.

Voices mixing

through the magic of technology.

Each voice matters.

Each voice its place.

Rising up

We shall not be silenced.

We will not go quietly 

into this —

Those too fell away,

One by one.

Some fading.

Some turning.

Some caught, 

as if breath stopped, 

or a sob -

one by one

one less by one less

the singing

stops.

And there is only this.

Only this single candle

flickering

wavering

in our dark.

only this tiny

precious light.

holding.

neither growing nor dying.

holding.

through this night.

holding

us.

as we sit with it.

as we sit with it.

there is nothing else now.

we draw to it.

we gather, we shadows.

we wait

and it does not go out.

as we settle here

we begin to realize

that we can see 

after all.

that there is light

in this dark.

not beaming

not shining

no beacons or even dawn breaking

just this

light

gentle and tiny and 

enough.

Let us sit with it.

Let us wait with it.

Let us hope.

Let us know.

It is enough.

khfc