“I do not have time to carry your allyship.
I am trying to build a continent,
A country,
A home.”
—from Give Your Daughters Difficult Names by Assétou Xango
I awoke in my Maine home the morning of November 9, 2016, to the sound of diesel engines: lobstermen heading to work outside my window. Early morning sun was sparkling upon the sound—all bright. Only the slightest whisper of breeze among pine needles, ever-majestic trees everywhere. I awoke, and thought: “All is okay. Despite last night, all is okay.”
(I reveal my personal politics here: so be it.)
Not quite four years later, this morning’s sun casting shadows all around, I feel no longer sure.
On this, I am thinking.
*****
I wrote the above words Tuesday morning, June 2—the day after tear gas and rubber bullets allowed President Donald Trump a photo-op. It was a strongman moment, and terrifying for me to watch: is this America?
Ask Childish Gambino, and of course the answer is “yes.”
Good morning, people—it’s beyond time to wake up.
*****
It never begins at the beginning—there is always a prelude; a long lead-up of movement as sputtering as it is inspiring. Until something takes hold—some hitherto un-arrived-at tipping point when the arc bends.
People power.
The tumultuous Prague Spring ended with Soviet tanks entering the city in a violent crackdown in 1968. More than 20 years later and after countless and ever-expanding demonstrations, the Velvet Revolution finally overturned Czechoslovakia’s leadership and ushered in democracy.
People power.
In South Africa, oppressive segregationist policies (apartheid) existed despite
decades of popular resistance led by the likes of Nelson Mandela, who was condemned
to life imprisonment for treason in 1962. In June 1976, tens of thousands of
students took to the streets to protest the imposition of the language of the white colonizers in their schools. This sparked the Soweto uprising, a turning point in
the struggle, and South Africa increasingly became viewed as an international pariah.
Protests, massive strikes and international economic sanctions persisted for years, culminating in the release of Mandela from prison on February 11, 1990. Four years later, he became the first black president of South Africa.
People power.
Philippines President Ferdinand E. Marcos proclaimed martial law in 1973 and for more than a decade violently repressed any opposition. In 1985, ailing and facing economic pressures, Marcos called an election and was declared the winner against Corazon Aquino in a fraud-riddled process. Hundreds of thousands took to the streets in mass and sustained uprising, and within a week, backed by the popular majority, Aquino was inaugurated in a shadow ceremony the same day Marcos held his “official” one. A week later, Marcos fled the country, leaving Aquino in charge.
People power.
*****
“In August of 1619, a ship appeared on this horizon near Point Comfort, a coastal port in the English colony of Virginia. It carried more than 20 enslaved Africans, who were sold to the colonists. No aspect of the country that would be formed here has been untouched by the years of slavery that followed. On the 400th anniversary of this fateful moment, it is finally time to tell our story truthfully.”
So The 1619 Project was introduced on August 18, 2019, by The New York Times.
Just last year. And even this not until…
- 156 years, 10 months, and 26 days after Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation;
- 110 years, 6 months, and 6 days after the NAACP was founded to advance justice for African Americans;
- 104 years, 6 months, and 10 days after the landmark (pro-KKK) film The Birth of a Nation premiered;
- 65 years, 3 months, and 1 day after the Supreme Court desegregated public schools in Brown v. Board of Education;
- 63 years, 11 months, and 12 days after Mamie Till-Mobley buried her murdered 14-year-old son Emmett in an open casket so the world could see what a white mob had done to him;
- 63 years, 8 months, and 17 days after Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of the bus;
- 54 years, 5 months, and 25 days after Malcolm X was gunned down in Harlem;
- 51 years, 4 months, and 14 days after Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated (a week after delivering his I’ve Been to the Mountaintop speech);
- 49 years, 8 months, and 14 days after Black Panther activist Fred Hampton, 21, was killed without provocation by FBI agents;
- 28 years, 5 months, and 15 days after Rodney King was beaten almost to death by Los Angeles police;
- 12 years, 8 months, and 5 days after Walter Lomax (one of 534,200 black men in American prisons at that time), was released after serving 39 years for a murder he did not commit;
- 6 years, 1 month, and 5 days after Black Lives Matter was founded in the wake of George Zimmerman’s acquittal for the murder of Trayvon Martin;
- 1 year, 3 months, and 12 days after Childish Gambino released This Is America.
…and 9 months and 7 days before George Floyd was murdered.
It never begins at the beginning—there is always a prelude; a long lead-up of movement as sputtering as it is inspiring. Until something takes hold—some hitherto un-arrived-at tipping point when the arc bends.
The streets of America are alive. It began in Minneapolis and has moved across the country in numbers of people and protests heretofore unknown. Hundreds of thousands in the middle of a pandemic. “Black Lives Matter” now visible outside the White House from outer space. Hundreds of us socially distanced at (of all places) the Boothbay Common, “Black Lives Matter” signs aplenty, us each taking our knee.
People power.
*****
Tuesday, June 9, 2020, in Southport, Maine.
I wake to my country convulsed in social uprising amid a worldwide pandemic. Muted light filters through new leaves as a robin trills; a tree branch quivers in sudden shake as a red squirrel completes its leap.
What is my place?
Today, I cannot answer that question. I feel discomfort in my white skin, but I welcome it, for I recognize this as a teachable moment. I have something to learn.
This I do know: on bended knee on Boothbay Common, painted heart rock in pocket and mask on face, I made a start. In awe and amen, I bow before the tilting arc of the justly rising.
People power.
