“This is now a national moment of grief, a national moment of pain and searching for a solution. And you’ve heard in so many places, people of all backgrounds utter the same basic phrase. They’ve said “Black lives matter.” And they said it because it had to be said. It’s a phrase that should never have to be said. It should be self-evident. But our history, sadly, requires us to say that black lives matter.” – NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio
For two nights in a row, after the announcement of no finding to prosecute Darren Wilson for the shooting death of Michael Brown by the Ferguson grand jury, I went to bed to the sounds of helicopters hovering over downtown Oakland.
Downtown is about a 15 minute drive from my house on the Oakland-Berkeley border. Like so many other nights in our country: following the riots and demonstrations on the streets of LA in response to LAPD’s brutality in the arrest of Rodney King; the shooting death of Oscar Grant by BART Officer Johannes Mehserle in Oakland; the Ferguson, Missouri, grand jury decision; and now New York’s grand jury refusal to indict NYPD officer David Pantoleo for the choking death of Eric Garner.
It comes again like a bad dream: the choppers, the cries, the mass demonstrations. The justice that never seems to come. And from this dream, we can’t seem to ever wake up. This is the heartbreak that living and dying while black or Latino or a person of color has become in America. Heartbreak in that the one thing that could be afforded — justice — is the least given. There is no one and nothing, not even the law, that could be counted on to help you. And for most, it has been that way for generations.
Since Barack Obama was elected President in 2008, at the start of Uranus and Pluto’s square, America’s current events seem to be tying the ends together: from electing our first African-American president, to the infuriating ignorance and racism — in forms both direct and subtle — very much alive every day and pulsing underneath the veneer of President Obama’s America. It’s change that is coming, no matter how painful. This is our war coming home.
It’s in the striking news photo of the St. Louis Rams — an NFL team — showing solidarity with the people of Ferguson by coming out on the field with their hands up. A gesture remarkably like that of John Carlos and Tommie Smith, their fists up in the air in a Black Power salute at the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City (another time period affected by Uranus and Pluto’s conjunction).
It’s in the streets of Times Square, with thousands waiting for the grand jury decision. It’s in a time when parenting a black child — for parents like Mayor De Blasio — has the extra-onerous burden of making sure that child does not act in a manner that will trigger a policeman’s ill-judged trigger-happy reflex.
The chickens that have come home to roost during this Uranus-Pluto square are no longer on our doorstep. They are in our living rooms. And it’s a sobering, teachable moment of how much more work we have to do as a country, as individuals and a society. As Jon Stewart said last night: “We are definitely not living in a post-racial society, and I can imagine there’s a lot of people out there wondering, ‘How much of a society do we live in at all?’”
The work we thought we completed with the Great Society is not yet finished. There is so much else to do. Race matters. And the road ahead looks long. In response to the Ferguson decision, Atlantic Monthly columnist Ta Nehisi-Coates sums up our modern-day “post-racial” society in the age of our first African-American President this way:
“… the death of all of our Michael Browns at the hands of people who are supposed to protect them originates in a force more powerful than any president: American society itself. This is the world our collective American ancestors wanted. This is the world our collective grandparents made. And this is the country that we, the people, now preserve in our fantastic dream. What can never be said is that the Fergusons of America can be changed — but, right now, we lack the will to do it.
Perhaps one day we won’t, and maybe that is reason to hope. Hope is what Barack Obama promised to bring, but he was promising something he could never bring. Hope is not the naiveté that would change the face on a racist system and then wash its hands of its heritage. Hope is not feel-goodism built on the belief in unicorns. Martin Luther King had hope, but it was rooted in years of study and struggle, not in looking the other way. Hope is not magical. Hope is earned.”
It’s hard to feel positive these days with injustice rampant in our worlds here at home. Yet, I do not feel anger. I feel more like my friend and colleague, Rhodessa Jones, who ends all her correspondence with the words, “In the spirited struggle, life flows.” I feel resolved to contribute much more to the discussion and resolution of the wound of racism and sexism that locks us all together in a room, struggling through the rage, the guilt and the acceptance that must come if we are to move forward on a path to heal from the racial, cultural and social divides that keep us apart.
In that way, paraphrasing Filipino writer Carlos Bulosan’s book America is in the Heart, I say Ferguson is in mine. And I keep it there, like I do Oakland, South Central LA and New York. The wound of racial injustice caused by racism — subtle and not so subtle — must be worked out through our thoughts, interactions and deeds. A lot like when the body works hard every day when injured or sick — cell by cell, antibody by antibody — gradually healing an illness out of the system. Now more than ever in the struggle for justice, everything we do matters.
Thank you, Fe, for weighing in on this developing wave of awareness and outrage. Always good to hear your thoughts. And I have to say, the widespread protests blocking traffic in major cities across the country seem to me like the kind of direct action Dr. King may have had in mind. It also echoes for me Len’s take on this full Moon brewing: that so many are standing up together to say, “this has gone far enough.” Time for the balance to swing back toward equilibrium — and actual justice.
Amanda:
Justice is the key. The current implements of justice have been militarized, here and abroad. Our cities are battlegrounds, our people enemy combatants. I found myself wondering, with the use of excessive force, the shoot to kill policies, and the NRA’s grip on Congress, if we have, step by step, ratcheted this deliberately with the aim of killing US civilians in our own country. The system of Might abetted by a vast Department of Homeland Security. We’re going to need to dig deep and fight hard to find the balance we so desperately need.
Thank you, Fe. From my heart to yours.
Back atcha, Len Wallick.
From a post tonight on Facebook (Dispatches from Entitlementistan):
101 & University (Palo Alto, CA)
Tonight on the way home from an event in San Francisco, 101 slowed down to a stop right around University Avenue (named for Stanford University, in case you’re not familiar with the area).
That in itself is not a noteworthy event — life is booming here these days, and traffic slows & stops all the time.
But this time was unusual: it was stopped because maybe 200 protesters were on the freeway, chanting “Don’t shoot”, “I can’t breathe”, “Let go” and other similar things, protesting the decision of the Grand Jury not to indict the police officer in the Eric Garner case, and coming so soon after a painfully similar decision in Ferguson.
Traffic was stopped for 10 minutes or more — people got ticked off and honked. We just watched and listened. For the record: I wasn’t unhappy at all to be stuck; I was just trying to watch and understand. And I think, for whatever it’s worth, that the protesters have a point: our system is not working.
It’s a little surprising to me that this happened on 101, but not all that surprising — weird things happen all the time in Silicon Valley, and Palo Alto is a university town, after all.
But here’s what did surprise me: I felt not at all comforted by the arrival of the 8–10 police cars that came. I saw the officers get out of marked & unmarked cars with batons drawn. Putting on bulletproof vests. Holstering their guns at the ready. I felt, viscerally, for one of the first times in my life, that I didn’t really think that these officers were on the same side as we were. I didn’t feel that they understood the situation and how to appropriately respond.
Because look: at the end of the day, this was, very obviously, a mildly frustrating but exceedingly peaceful protest. There was nothing resembling violence of any sort. It was a group of people who don’t feel like their voices, like the voices of so many underrepresented in our country, are heard. And they wanted people to notice.
For the record, I never felt unsafe. Or even really inconvenienced. And I don’t think the Palo Alto police acted in any inappropriate ways at all.
But when you see a couple of dozen cops arrive, armed, to deal with an obviously peaceful protest, well we as a country have obviously lost the plot. When we start arming ourselves against our own citizens as a routine matter, things are pretty goddamned broken.
And I felt that way as a pure bystander, with no fear at all. I can’t imagine how I would have felt if I were protesting. Or black. Or Latino.
For me, and for most of us driving on 101 tonight, 15 minutes lost on our way home from working.
But for those without voices, and for all of us over the long haul, we have to figure out how to reverse this. To get back to when peace officers really, truly took care of those who couldn’t take care of themselves.
We can’t keep going this direction.
This is perfect — here is “the story.” We need lots more stories, so we can begin to connect to one another … as Len sez … heart to heart.
Bless you, Sister Fe, for your passion, compassion and faithfulness.
thank you, jude.
It looks as if something will have to give, and soon. Murder is murder, a life is a life. May the awareness of these horrific deaths be a step towards justice and truth.
Thank you, Fe. Blessings upon you and your good fight.