Back to last Sunday in a
minute, but this morning in church, we had a guest speaker, an organizer and
woman of color who said we should push outside our liberal boundaries and
realize that those who hate might do so because they don’t have enough love. She
wanted white folks to use our identity as a way in, to go back to where we’ve
left and try again.
Disarm, she said, and
listen.
 |
| Unitarians are like that. |
Though I generally prefer
to spend my energy on targeted communities rather than their/our attackers, the
speaker did give me a chance to reflect on the compassion I DO feel for white
nationalists and others who don’t have the benefit of diverse lives. Amy always
scoffs/admires when I talk about how sad I am for racists, but I am. Anyone can
empathize with the feeling of being trapped inside what one already knows, with
being afraid of those unlike us. I do feel sad for those 25-or-so men on the
other side of the fence last week in Lafayette Park. It would be lonely and sad
to rely on superiority for a sense of worth, to be so scared they turn to hate.
But I’ll probably always be the one to yell, fight, and turn away while others with
more people skills reach out to those in hate groups. I think both approaches
are necessary and okay.
Back to the wonderful
yelling. Craning our necks. Chanting “Shame! Shame! Shame!” Police on horses lined
up facing us. The crowd startled and seemed to retreat about something and I
smelled something bad. The nightmare sequence activated in my already-altered
brain. The smell might have been a confederate flag burning, or just a funky cigar,
but my brain read it as tear gas, which to my knowledge I have never smelled. I
grabbed Amy amidst the (she said later it was very mild, if any) chaos and said
“I have to get you out of here.” By the time we found a friendly tree a few
feet away from the crowd, I’d started to return to normal. I breathed. I ate
peanut butter and jelly and hoped no one nearby had a nut allergy—back to
regular everyday protest thoughts.
“I’m DONE WITH THIS,” I
said, but as the food entered my system and I could see that everyone around me was doing okay, I knew I
could stay a little longer.
Possibly it was thunder
that had startled the crowd. The sky opened up and poured rain into the humidity,
onto everyone’s signs. Watercolor colors dripped down onto my Disarm Hate
shirt.
Amy wanted to see the
other side of the fence and my curiosity took over from my fear, so we waded
all the way into the crowd, trying not to poke or be poked with umbrellas or
dripping signs. We sang:
“Na na na na, na na na
na, hey hey hey, goodbye.”
We sang “We Shall Over
Come.” We sang “This Little Light of Mine” Then more na na na nas. I decided
that all this singing meant that it qualified as church.
The police horses were so
beautiful. I stood there feeling outraged on their behalf. Why should they be
wearing riot helmets? They never did a thing to anybody, why should they be
dragged into our mess? I guess it’s too late in human history to be mad about
the domestication of animals, but sheesh!
I didn’t stand there
fuming about the horses for much longer. A police leader came out with a
bullhorn and told us that Unite the Right had gone home, and now we needed to
go home too. It was the first time I’d ever felt like we’d won a
protest. Dance parties broke out! Whoops
of joy came up from the crowd. It was right around the time I’d told my
check-in person that we would hit the road. I put my waterlogged sign into an
overflowing recycling bin and felt free without it. We did it. We won.
On the way home, Amy
drove and I scrolled though news story after news story. While most of them
acknowledged that the counter-protest had far outmatched the hate rally, they didn’t
show the images of the march the way I saw it. News videos showed the most
armored Antifa members and they showed Jason Kessler draped in the American
flag.
On our neighborhood
thread, one guy told me that my personal experience of the day was “fake news”
and a lady told me that I was wrong because my perspective didn’t match those
of the mainstream news.
Part of the reason I’ve
written this down in so much detail is that people are already trying to
convince me that it didn’t happen. The way so many on our team tried to erase
Hillary’s primary win. Tried to erase the fact that she won the popular vote
and so would seem to be, on some level, likable. Like people try to erase
pretty much all of the work that women do. Ever. Like I teach my tutoring
students—we’ve got to give ourselves credit for every step of the way. It’s the
only reliable way to get it.
Speaking of 2016, amidst
this liberal love-fest, this celebration of (momentary but no less important)
unity, it’s important to remember that we on the left have our OWN white supremacy
problem. (I mean, in addition to Mass Incarceration. Please watch 13th) There’s still a small
but loud minority of people (mostly white men) on the left what say that “Identity
Politics” don’t matter (please listen to Kamala Harris lambaste them for this
on Call Your Girlfriend: https://www.callyourgirlfriend.com/sen-kamala-harris/)
and who undermine the work and contributions of not just Hillary Clinton but of
her supporters, which means women, especially women of color, LGBTQ folks,
disabled people—there are those in our party who want to silence us/them. (Amy
just explained to me that the silencers are known as the alt-left. I had no
idea that was a real thing!)
THERE ARE PEOPLE ON THE
LEFT WHO BOOED JOHN LEWIS! NOT IN THE SIXTIES! TWO SUMMERS AGO!
So I’m glad we teamed up
against the nazis on the right and won this round. But we still have to keep
pushing back against the sexism and racism of our own party if we want last
Sunday (AND THE BLUE WAVE) to have the lasting effect that we want.
Thank you for listening
and being on my team. Love you a bunch.
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