My Wonderful, Magical Day of Yelling at Nazis, Part Two

               

We got to DC by 11 AM, just in time to visit the National Gallery of Art. I was excited to see the Dutch Masters’ paintings of ships, but frustration and horror about colonialism put a damper on my fascination with the beautiful, intricate model tall ships and dramatic, almost photorealistic maritime paintings. In the modern and contemporary wing, the Calders gave me such a sense of buoyancy as the light streamed in over the mobiles at all sorts of I.M. Pei-designed angles.

Voyager by Kerry James Marshall (https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.159651.html) gave me a sense that goodness and rightness were possible. So did (to a much less transcendent degree) the strong coffee in the museum café.

Detail: Voyager by Kerry James Marshall

Our Lyft driver was happy to hear that we were on our way to Freedom Plaza to yell at nazis. He was African American and a veteran, so the idea of anyone carrying a nazi flag offended him on a deep patriotic level I could probably never fathom.

“That’s not a nazi in the trunk,” he said, “Just a water bottle I keep forgetting to unload.”

“A nazi in the trunk would definitely be five stars” I said, and we promised to yell some extra for him as we jumped out into the humidity to join the crowd.

One of my goals for the day was to really pay attention to what it feels like to be around Antifa members. I knew lots of people were afraid of them, maybe more afraid of them than they are of white nationalists for some reason (racism), so I wanted to figure it out.

Though one of our local anti-fascist groups does seem a little bit like they might be funded by Russia for protest-trolling purposes (Refuse Fascism Philly is almost exclusively white, seems to have a very big poster budget, and has engaged in “both parties are the same” voter suppression rhetoric—could be suspicious, could just be young and rich…) I’ve also felt grateful to see covered-faced anti-fascists take the periphery of the Philly Trans March, seemingly to act as a protective front line in case anything violent might happen. That’s an act of risk and service that means something to

me.

Although the media portrayed it differently, the rally in Freedom Plaza was populated with all different kinds of people. BYP 100 and Black Lives Matter activists, young punk kids handing out “ally cookies” that I didn’t realize were a pun until later on, and at least two two middle-aged ladies carrying signs about the ERA:

           

Though I have a deep distrust of young white dudes (Okay, white dudes. Okay, dudes in general. Okay, almost everyone because I have anxiety and PTSD and it’s 2018.) I felt a deep wave of affection for a scrawny bespectacled twenty-something white guy standing atop a planter holding an Antifa flag aloft.

And, as at every protest I’ve been to, there were adorable kids being adorable. I put on my teacher voice and told them they were doing SUCH a good job.

What a School Lockdown Feels Like

What a School Lockdown Feels Like

At the time of my ill-fitting classroom stint, I was so busy hating the School to Prison Pipeline that it never even occurred to me to hate guns, but looking back, they were always in the background of my anxiety, hanging over my head with the other million things that hang over teachers’ heads.

I had a class full of third graders the first time I experienced a lockdown. It was almost lunch so I had that next-level needing-to-pee that teachers know so well. We were just getting ready to line up when the announcement came. They said there had been gun activity in the area. They told us that we were supposed to lock our doors, but mine didn’t lock. I’d never been trained for the proper procedure, so I sat the kids all down and told them to be as quiet as they could so we could be safe if we needed to hear directions.

I pictured what I came to always picture in those situations: the bullet coming through the glass and hitting me, or hitting them. I never forgot that I while at that moment I was trapped, on a daily basis I was choosing to be there, and the kids were not so lucky. Poverty would keep many of them in an unsafe neighborhood, the law and a racist system would keep them in unsafe schools that violently opposed their individuality and development. They might someday know a life without the penny taste of adrenaline in their mouths, but the odds were stacked against them.

We sat crisscross-applesauce at the back of the room, as removed from the window glass as possible. They were preternaturally calm and docile, and I had an uncharacteristic command over myself that I can only attain at times of deepest crisis. We played Whisper-Down-the-Lane and The Quiet Game until the lockdown ended and it was time to line up for lunch.

I experienced maybe ten school lockdowns, for all kinds of reasons—a lost kid, a panicking parent, mostly they were unexplained and I never asked because I didn’t want to know. But the helpless bullet-is-coming-for us feeling did not fully go away. Those left me with an unshakeable knowledge of the vulnerability of all life, but especially the lives of African American children. The confluence of guns, poverty, and racism put the lives of my students at risk every day.

I understand, in a cursory Hamilton-infused way why we have the Second Amendment, but the cost of the way it is currently interpreted is much too high. Those kids, those classrooms, along with the children I currently serve at the library, are part of the driving force behind why I feel so urgent about this election, so moved by John Lewis and other who stand up for gun control and against injustice. Enough.