We Will Not Go Back

March for Eric Garner

Staten Island, New York, USA

You may have heard various accounts of the march and rally organized by Rev. Al Sharpton and the family of Eric Garner. When the Racial Justice Initiative at All Souls decided to march, I went, too.

It wasn't that long ago that I was teaching in Canarsie, Brooklyn. All of my students were black, Latino, Caribbean Islanders, and other minority identities. Many lived in Brownsville, East New York, Canarsie, Flatbush and other designated high crime neighborhoods where police presence was strong and stop-and-frisk was a fact of life. Any one of my boys could have been Ramarley Graham. Many lived in low-income housing where armed NYPD are authorized to walk the halls of high rise buildings seeking out infractions. We didn't talk about it, but I knew that, statistically speaking, most of them had been stopped-and-frisked multiple times. They all distrusted the police.

Even at school, all students were subjected to full-body scanning each morning as they entered the building, and school safety officers in the hallways who are employees of the NYPD. Even excelling, well-behaved students were not exempt from these indignities. I know how insulted and degraded I feel taking my shoes and belt off for screening at the airport. As a white woman speaking in an educated register, I know that I will never be profiled and chosen for "random" additional inspections, even with 20 pages of Arabic in my passport. I could only imagine what it felt like for my students to know that they were subject to this treatment every day, in school and on the streets, regardless of their academic, athletic or other achievements.

For this and for so many other indignities to the inherent worth and dignity of people of color in this country, I marched. I listened to this group and that chant, bearing witness to their anger and needs. We carried signs from SEIU 1199, the health workers union of which Eric Garner's mother is a member and organizer.

Kelly was interviewed on camera about why a white person would march for black lives. In part she said that, as a school social worker, these are her children who are being stopped-and-frisked, profiled and harmed. She acquitted herself with exceeding grace, and made the cut for the evening news.

At the end of the march, there was a rally hosted by Rev. Al Sharpton and the extended family of Eric Garner. I was very impressed that every speaker began by thanking the NYPD for the graciousness with which they greeted and shepherded this march, and for the important service they do for our city. And then they all called for reform of the bad apples in the service, and for legal action against officers who take a life like Eric Garner's. Every member of Eric Garner's family spoke, and they all encouraged us to make our voices heard, but urged us to do so without violence. We also heard from city officials, religious leaders, the Nation of Islam, and my hero/girl-crush Debbie Almontaser of the Arab American Association of New York.

It was a powerful day. A beautiful day for a march, a powerful crowd to march with, an important message to tell.

And we all got our picture in the Village Voice online and on Facebook.

Living Our Values

I had the great good fortune to attend the Unitarian Universalist United Nations Office's 2014 Intergenerational Spring Seminar, organized around the recent passage of the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). It was an incredible experience you can read about in the article I wrote for the All Souls Beacon.

On the final morning, there was an opportunity to participate in a poetry slam, which is a fixture of many Unitarian Universalist (UU) youth conferences and events. I was not initially intending to participate, preferring to leave it to the youth. I have written perhaps 3 decent poems in my life, only 2 of them are in English, and I'm not much for performing my work. However, over the course of the seminar, I kept thinking about a poem I had written as a college student and once performed at an open mike at my UU fellowship in Maryland. Eventually, I signed myself up to perform it.

I wrote Wor(l)dpower as an English major's anthem back in 2003, a hymn to the proud history and broad etymology of the language. I saw English as encapsulating literally a whole world of diversity. Over the years, I've come to learn more about the legacy of European colonialism and the complicated nature of American neo-imperialism. As we learned more about UNDRIP and the problems of the Doctrine of Discovery, I began to understand my old poem with new ears. On that last night of the seminar, I was up till 2 a.m., pecking away at my little smartphone screen, refashioning it into the poem I would read that last morning:

WOR(L)DPOWER

I have the language of old white men,
Of ivy-ed dons and lords and kings
Ambitious, adventurous queens,
The psyche – and psychoses! – of an ancient patriarchy
In an unfinished, evolving Mother Tongue;

I speak the rhythms of Angle children
And sing a song of Saxon churls;
Mine the speech of Middle Earth
Twixt Grendel and a variable God;
The spoils of Vikings are mine
And the toils of Britons;

My father is a Norman,
Francois Vikingson,
My mother a Celt
With Germanic mother tongue;
Raised in Oxbridge
On perfect inflection
By Geoffrey
Johnson and
Julian
Milton;

Ours a language of adversity and adversary,
Of dominion and destruction, industry and capital,
The imprisoning web and the interdependent.

Behind my lips: Tragedies. Comedies.
the human experience,
Poetry and romance,
Illusion,
Persuasion,
Coercion,
Denial,
Destruction…
And a long, illustrious history
Of hope and concern,
Of optimism, wisdom;

My pen is poised to change the world,
For where there is progress,
Invention,
Intellect,
Creative determination,
Hopes & fears, losses and loves;
dreams…
There I am,
—There!—
I may speak;

Flawed and unbalanced,
Syncretic, adaptive,
Organic summation of my people’s history,
In thought and deed and family tree,
Prepared to learn and grow
Like dreamers and druids,
Professors and poets,
Warriors, politicians, wand’rers and essayists
Who are the roots and the trunk,
the branches and boughs
Supporting the flowers of culture, of hope, of memory and promise
Into the eternally returning
springtime
of humanity;

Mine is the language of unformed babes,
Still in the dust, in the womb, in the waters

Seven generations and seven more
Whose language dwells in houses
we cannot imagine
can only leave space for—
flexible, respectful—
In the language we’re living into today.

Neighborhood Beautification

Brooklyn, NY, USA

Yesterday, I was trying to fathom why there was a legion of Bobcats in my street digging up chunks of sidewalk.

From Beautification

This morning, when I looked out my window, not only were they at it again, but it became clear why. Between these trees going in, and the bike racks appearing all over the neighborhood in the last couple months, you can see the City hard at work here in East Williamsburg.

I'm a little conflicted about this. I know that trees and bikes are good for the environment, that providing these amenities may bring people, like hipsters, to the neighborhood who sign petitions about sustainability and outdoor spaces. All of those are good things. On the other hand, it's one more sign of gentrification in my neighborhood that the city is now paying for all these things, and while the fact that I live here is probably also evidence of gentrification, it wasn't so obvious when I first moved in.

From Beautification

When I first walked this neighborhood, I felt like the only non-Spanish-speaking resident in a neighborhood of young immigrant families with small children. Even at the Chinese owned and operated Chinese restaurant down the street, they speak better Spanish than English. It's part of the charm of New York City for me. And while progress is inevitable and in this case, at least, bears some desirable fruit, it leaves me surprisingly ambivalent.

Also, impressed. It's noon, and they've already completed one whole side of the street!

Cornel West: Whither America?

Unitarian Church of All Souls
Manhattan, NY, USA


We pulled out every chair in the building, and it was still standing-room only!

From Cornel West at All Souls

LDC (More) Like I Remember

Unitarian Universalist Congregation at Shelter Rock
Manhasset, NY, USA

From YA LDC @ Shelter Rock

With my family's busy schedule growing up, I didn't make it to many Cons in YRUU, though there was one amazing weekend at the beautiful Unitarian Universalist Church of Annapolis that may have changed me forever, and a singularly heartbreaking LDC (Leadership Development Conference) that embodies all the pathos that only a 16-year-old with an unrequited crush can understand....

Nevertheless, as I'm sure you can tell, the Cons that I did make it to had a profound effect on how I saw my religion/ spirituality and myself. To some degree, this is merely a reflection of being sixteen, when almost anything can be a fundamentally, spiritually life-altering experience imbued with life-long and global implications; I am only rarely affected that deeply and profoundly in my young adulthood. I've become more of a cynic, more likely to filter my experiences through rational, intellectual lenses that can steal some of their spiritual potency; or maybe I'm just more likely to deny and repress my deeper emotional responses.

I've been reflecting a lot on this since our last UU Young Adult retreat to Frost Valley, and I haven't been particularly comfortable with the conclusions I've reached. This weekend's Young Adult LDC, though, has lightened the load considerably.

No doubt this has a great deal to do with the wonderful people I gathered with at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation at Shelter Rock, friends both silver and gold. The purpose for which we gathered, too, helped to focus us on the challenges of inclusive, sensitive leadership in a generation of young people intensely engaged in the pressing issues of white privilege, racial and economic injustice, the New Jim Crow, and gender and sexuality equality.

I was struck by the fact that although, as is usually the case in UU circles, as a white woman I was in the racial and gender majority, I was also surprisingly in the minority as a straight person, which put an interesting spin for me on discussions of majority/ minority and empowerment.

More than anything, I think I took away from this experience and many other conversations post-Frost Valley that I am not the only young UU adult looking for deeper spiritual and religious connection to my community, and certainly not the only UU looking for a deeper connection between my religious and social justice convictions. I've gained new energy, thanks to the Shelter Rock LDC, to pursue further opportunities for training and congregation on these issues of racial, gender, sexual and economic justice and how they might be effected by my Unitarian Universalist communities.

Of course, the stunning beauty of the Shelter Rock campus was also a balm to my frustrations!

Recognizing White Priviledge

Bronx, NY, USA

We were just talking in class today about what Michelle Martin has been talking about all week on NPR's Tell Me More. To be honest, we've been talking about it all summer, with some in our program having to really restrain themselves not to let talk boil over into rage. Is there still racism in America? Is there racial inequality? Is there still (or again) segregation in our schools? Is it inevitable? What can we do about it?

Of course there is. More black and Latino boys are diagnosed with Emotional Disabilities and ADHD than white boys, certainly more than girls. More black and Latino boys drop out. Why? Is it because of the culture of their communities, or the culture of their schools? We used to think it was the culture of the communities. Kids in urban, ethnic, poor neighborhoods grow up with families that don't care about them, fill that gap with gangs and crime, and end up in prison or dead, right?

We watched "Waiting for Superman" today and we've been reading about the KIPP Academies and Uncommon Schools all summer long, and the reality today is that we cannot blame where they come from for the problems our kids have in schools. Schools across the country, many of them urban charters in low income, high crime neighborhoods, are proving that black and Latino boys, given the right instruction, can pass state exams at the same rate as white children. (Now, only about 20% of charter schools are more successful than your average public school, so I don't want you to think "Waiting for Superman" is right about that ... but he is right about a lot of things!)

Geoffrey Canada, founder of the Harlem Children's Zone, features prominently in "Waiting for Superman," and he's proven that schools and communities have to work together, from birth through college, to achieve wide-spread success. That doesn't discourage me, though. I'm more convinced than ever that there are things I can do in my classroom that will have far-reaching effects. (I'm thinking about Kawthar and her sister...)

It makes me see my own youth and young adulthood with a lot more humility. Yes, I was most definitely discriminated against in grade school because of my lack of religion and because my parents were from out of state. I thought I was such a persecuted teenager. (What teenager doesn't?) I had it so easy. I know this; I knew it before I came to New York City. I learned it in the Peace Corps, in Jordan, but all along I said, 'Being poor in those places is so different from being poor in America!' And it is. But I didn't really realize until this summer just how difficult it was to be a poor black or Latino kid in America. And I've no doubt I'm only seeing the beginning of what will be a very enlightening--and probably heart-breaking--journey.