An Email in Defense of Free Speech

(email sent to superintendent of Texas district threatening children for exercising their United States Constitutional Rights.)

Dear Curtis,

Your stance on children’s rights is in direct violation of the constitution.  I have copied the relevant passage here for you.  This is the 1st Amendment.  You may have heard about it, but maybe not, given your resident state, you may only be familiar with the second amendment

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.“

Let’s also take a MOMENT to consider what it is that these children are motivated by: the threat of being shot dead in their school. Like a war zone. Like Syria.

Hopefully you won’t make some fetal argument about safety, or rule of law or disorder, because I can promise you, that having an active shooter in one of your schools will cause a significant disruption to that day’s schedule.

“A school is a place to learn and grow educationally, emotionally and morally. A disruption of the school will not be tolerated.“

It is a continuing shame that the leadership children are currently witnessing, like yours, is that of what-not-to-do rather than a leadership of thoughtful, intelligent reasoned wisdom.

Though, perhaps a silver-lining from such abject failures will be a generation that  grows up valuing the qualities which make up the leadership of heroines and heroes, rather than base nature fear and regulation which results in loss of civil rights and the deaths of children sitting down to study math or eat their lunches.

“…we are here for an education and not a political protest.”

What a tragically missed opportunity to encourage civil engagement and help shape and guide its expression while empowering your students.  Your stance reveals everything about your limits as an educator, and a citizen, while saying NOTHING of importance about the second amendment or ‘law and order‘.

You have chosen a coward’s path and you will find, ultimately, that it isn’t as easy as it first appeared. What an absolute tragedy for your students and your staff to be governed by someone who leads from a foundation of fear, masquerading as respect for the rule of law and order, and an administration that has chosen the wrong side of history on which to fight.

The wonderful thing about life is that there is always the possibility of redemption and the opportunity to change one’s course.

Here’s to hoping you find your courage someday, the right side of history is always open.

Sincerely,

A fellow American

The Color of MY Privilege

It was light gray on Nov.7th.

When #therussianspy won the presidential election and I stayed in bed for 2 days.              Because the world that I knew disappeared. The ugly naked of my country finally seen, blinding.

Disgusting. Horrifying. Impossible.                                                    White.

While not the first time I felt my powerlessness, this was the first time I felt the hatred of my fellow Americans, personally.  ‘Hated‘ because the choice was between a lying, hate-filled scam artist, who never worked for, or earned, a single one of his life’s bounties; and objectively the most qualified candidate to ever, in 200 years of presidential candidates, run for office, who was also a woman.  My fellow Americans, my white sisters’ fundamental identities were so threatened by a WOMAN claiming her equal rights, boldly reaching for power, unapologetically ambitious: 52% of those who bothered to register marked x for

the dark rich iron of chains: links and cuffs, necks and wrists and ankles.

Those women voted to condemn myself and my daughters, themselves and their daughters, to the subjugation of our bodies for the pleasure of false prophets.  The institutional oppression of sexism limiting opportunities, and the never-ending crush of economic inequality.  They punished, with a casual cruelty, those who work for crumbs from the the table of the promise of freedom. The real, and now imminent, threat of a nuclear holocaust.  The conscious and dedicated destruction of their own country.

They voted not only to deny female ambition, but to send a very clear message of prohibition and punishment to anyone else who might be considering their own agency, their own equality, freedom and rights-

OVER. OUR. LILY WHITE.DEAD. BODIES.

Nov. 7th was the first time I have felt fundamentally unsafe in my own country- betrayed absolutely by my white sisters’ votes.

That was a cold, blue, high-gloss, pristine white.

I was invited to travel to Washington D.C., and supported by the generosity of a dear friend and her husband, we arrived safely.  Our plane filled to capacity with a sea of women and pink pussy hats.  Excited and nervous.  The opportunity to participate a

puffy white cloud in a sun filled blue sky color. The cotton-ball covered color

of freedom to leave my responsibilities: the time off from work expected and freely given, supported completely by friends and family.  Our trip and its intent, a soft and nonthreatening activity-

a white sand beach colored adventure.

D.C.

1 million of us, women and men. Resolute, clapping back at Nov.7th.                            Organized, permitted, ordered. NOT ONE MOMENT of violence. No tear gas. No hoses, no dogs, no police batons, no riot gear, no shots loosed into unarmed crowds.

A sea of pink protesters, signs of hard black truths, white wit, pink poems, yellow quips, red rally cries, rose colored glasses everywhere.

1 million people, mostly women, potentially angry, and we didn’t make people afraid.  Cops hugged us while some friends made shitty comments on Facebook.  No one was killed.

My soft ivory colored peace march.

I came home and freely joined a group, easily started by a white man.

Assumed the red-dirt-covered-baseball-with-red-stitching-white-colored

right.

There was one man of color at the 1st meeting.  I don’t know if he ever came back.

The luxury of my

soft white suntanned skin colored ignorance.

Free to proceed ‘without’ allies of color.

The moment when driving to work, listening to Rachel Maddow describe the suffering in Puerto Rico.  Tears of impotent rage drip dropping, clear and sweet, into my mouth and onto my lap, while I contemplated giving up, because I am so uncomfortable. I am so deeply weighted down by my sense of powerlessness.  I long to choose the

blizzard-blinded white oblivion

of so many people, continuing on their daily routine; untouched by the furies of hell let lose from their usual territories.

The faint white, tinged-green, that peaks between the designs on the dollar bill

of the freedom to be blind.

The color of my white privilege,

ubiquitous and opaque;

do we send this work out in our political action group newsletter?

Do we make it possibly uncomfortable for all the other white people?

Do we claim the right to color here?

I stand. Silent

 

I stand silent

  Beside you

Not to help, to fix or ease,

But To Bare Witness.

I stand silent

  Beside you

Not to explain or defend,

But To Bare Witness.

I stand silent

  Beside you

Not to ease my pain or wish for the weight of my whiteness, so deeply stained with the blood and tears of millions, to be lighter,

But To Bare Witness.

I stand silent

  Beside you

Not looking for a safer place or offer comfort,

But To Bare Witness.

I am silent

   Beside you

Waiting for Grace,

Baring Witness.

2.7.17

The Rapist and his Judge

Commission on Judicial Performance
455 Golden Gate Ave, Suite 14400
San Francisco, CA 94102

To Whom It May Concern:

You may have found that Judge Persky did not engage in bias under the procedure of law, but I would argue that there was bias and your ruling is as flawed as Judge Persky’s.  You all live in a society with along rich history of oppression and exploitation.  What your ruling tells me personally, is that you, as a body, as a group, have yet to become aware that we are no longer living in the time when the responsibility of the rape belongs to the victim.  The responsibility has actually always belong to the rapist, we as a society, are just now catching up to that ‘truth.’

That rapist man-boy should have been sentenced to years in prison. Period.

“A prison sentence would have a severe impact on him. … I think he will not be a danger to others,” the judge said, citing Turner’s youth and lack of criminal record, the Guardian reported.  Would this severe impact on the rapist be anything equivalent to the impact on the woman who was raped?  The belief that he will not be a danger is quite cavalier. I am wondering if any of you on this commission are willing to entrust your relatives to this experimental judgement to find out?…

I also can assume, from your ruling, that you all, as a commission of functioning adults, don’t understand that you cannot be too drunk to avoid raping someone.  It is always possible to avoid raping someone.  Just like you can avoid killing people when you are blind drunk, or hitting people, or taking a bath in a toilet.  While someone may have any or all of these urges, the ‘drunk’ factor does not immediately act as a permission or encouragement.

I am sure you have a comforted yourselves with your ‘precedents’ and all the glorious hours you spent in law school and all the ego strokes you’ve gotten over the years.  I am, again, assuming that you have had time in practices, some successes in law, and a political will to be on a jury which judges your fellow judges.  So I can imagine how effectively you have buffered yourselves, and this decision, in the damping cotton of self-righteousness that strains out the cacophony of ‘wrong’ and ‘unfair’ cries over this ruling.  Let me do my best to make it through:

“You were wrong.  You are wrong.  You will always be wrong.  Judge Persky was wrong.  You sit on the wrong side of history and that is how you will be remembered and judged.”

The victim is not the burden.  The RAPIST bares the burden in its entirety.  The RAPIST is ALWAYS the complete failure of all the parts of our society which make rape so common and in the act of raping, makes the rapist—the criminal.

Your ruling is, at its core: outdated, disgusting, offensive, unjust, and again, the wrong side of history.

You should all be as ashamed of this decision as I am to know that you are the judges of my state law; and that your committee and Judge Persky have failed, in this matter, abjectly.

With deep sorrow and disappointment,
Citizen
Aptos CA

We Are at War

This is not a new war.

This war began on the day when the Constitution of the United States of America was ratified, July 4th, 1976.  Embedded in the words, “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal…” are the seeds of an endless conflict.  The context for these words was a time of land-owning white male power but it could not remain there because these words reflect the power of Truth and Truth has its own impulsion, its own force.  It makes its way in the world of its own accord.  Equality is a righteous idea.  It levels people and demands attention be paid to the space where it can’t be seen.  Inequality in a land of Equality is egregious.  Truth, manifested as Equality, demands visibility.  Women clearly understood their position in these words.  Man meant mankind, the generic term, not men exclusively, but all people, created equal.  “So God made man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them.” Gen 1:27  The attempted corruption of Truth as Equality is not in the foundation of this country any more than it is in the foundation of the Bible.

This war then, is not between individuals as such, rather this war is the age-old war of good and evil, right and wrong.  This war is about the right to define the good and evil, right and wrong– the Truth of America. Who we are, what we stand for, die for, what we hold dear.

The Truth of our American Equality is as real as the blood we’ve poured out on every continent and every state of our union.  Equality was once understood to reside only in the person of a land-owning white man, but that was a limitation of understanding, not Equality.

The bumbling lumbering twists and turns along the path to the Civil War were the forces of opposition in action.  Slavery is evil and is antithetical to Freedom.  Freedom is also Truth-manifested.  Freedom cannot be denied, it will always find a way to be expressed.  The violence of the Civil War was at heart, the violence of a Truth large enough to push out a deeply rooted evil.  The pain and devastation of the manifestation of Truth are equal to the resistance it confronts and the opposition it encounters.  There were many forces pushing and grasping for power leading up to the Civil War and while not every body was in accord with every force, the positions were too far apart to reconcile.  Freedom and slavery cannot occupy the same space at the same time and so choices must be made and sides chosen and a war was born.

There exist today those same forces pushing and grasping for power.  Fear as fundamentalist religious dogma, greed as unrestrained capitalism, dictatorship as politics, and a nihilistic sensibility in the votes toward the election of incompetence.  These extreme positions are incompatible with Inclusion, Equality, Freedom, Justice, and Hope.  Sides are forming and choices are being made and we are giving birth to the next Civil War.

If we have as robust a democracy as we have been telling ourselves we have, then this war will be fought in large measure without bullets; but in court rooms, voting booths, institutions and the press.  However, as in any war, people will die.  There will be violence and cruelty and profiteering.  Even still, we are being called upon to make a choice, pick our side, and fight.  In war, appeasement and cooperation with evil is a failing short-term solution and usually ends in an execution for treason.  The might of Truth as Equality, Inclusion, Freedom, Justice and Hope will not be stopped.  The right side of history has never been without deep sacrifice, steep personal payments, and commitment beyond the individual moment.  The reward for choosing the right side is a role in the shape and definition of our Truth- what is our America?

Ray in Colorado

Ray,

There is in politics, an acceptable level of combat and conflict, especially in a two-party system.  Your response to an article in the CJ Sentinel as ‘fake news’ does not fall in between the levels. Let’s begin with the actual definition of ‘fake’ from the dictionary:source 

verb (used with object), faked, faking.

1.prepare or make (something specious, deceptive, or fraudulent):
to fake a report showing nonexistent profits.
2.to conceal the defects of or make appear more attractive, interesting,valuable, etc., usually in order to deceive:
The story was faked a bit to make it more sensational.
3.to pretend; simulate:
to fake illness.
4.to accomplish by trial and error or by improvising:
I don’t know the job, but I can fake it.
5.to trick or deceive (an opponent) by making a fake (often followed byout):

Given these definitions in the context of the actual article written, see here, you are the one actually guilty of the quality of being fake.  Now I would take it a step further and in the context of your tweet and the article written, I would call your tweet a lie.

What would be the purpose of your lie?  And why in particular did you feel it was necessary to use such an associated and hackneyed phrase, ‘fake news?’

It may come as a surprise to you that having a robust, critical, independent and healthy media is a pillar of a healthy democracy.  The other pillars include: an independent judiciary, a thriving and fully funded public education system, a clear and distinct separation of church and state, a regulated and transparent business climate, a standing army whose budget is no more than 1/3 of the Federal Budget with a small but effective and efficient administration.  It has become VERY apparent from this election that the Republican Party is not interested in having a healthy democracy. The GOP has revealed itself to be working actively to deconstruct and dismantle our current democracy.  Your use of the term ‘fake news’ about an article that wasn’t even highly critical of you is a small, simple-minded example of this activity.  As a currently elected member of a party which is working to dismantle the United States and an administration with clear ties to Russia and daily unfolding lies about actions which carry the strong and distinct whiff of treason, you would be smart to stop bleating the GOP line and start acting independently and with honor.  Be the party of fiscal conservation and social progressivism. It would also behoove you to remember that when a person is elected to a district, that person is actually the representative of the ENTIRE district and all the people therein, not just the representative for the same party which voted in the highest numbers.  I can see from your voting history and political comments that most of what I’ve said in this email will fall upon deaf ears.

I can promise you this, the GOP is rotten and this current serge is not a return to power, this is the grasping of a dying beast.  Your dogmatic alignment with their selfish, discriminatory and sexist politics guarantees your inevitable defeat. Principle survives when it is a principle because it can be maintained and expressed in infinite variety.  The GOP in its current incarnation, is devoid of principles— they have been subverted and corrupted.  It is an empty shell, regulated to dogmatic slavery serving greedy masters and as such, without redemption and impossible to sustain.  The worst in the GOP will feed their full and fall away like the fat ticks, those with morals will leave or be pushed out, and those who take a stand will be run out of town, so to speak.  But as MLK famously said, ” The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. The true measure of a man is what he would do if he knew he would never be caught.”

You are serving in an historic time Ray, you actually have a chance to do something grand and honorable.  If you stay onboard with the racist, sexist and hate filled ideology of your party you will end up as a man who stood on the wrong side of history and your measure will have been taken, and you will have been found; wanting.

I encourage you to reach out to news sources you consider ‘liberal’ and read what is being explored because those ideologies are the future. They are the future because they are founded in the principles of freedom, liberty, justice and equality for ALL, not just a small select group of white christian men and the women who align with them.  There is room at the table for people of all parties to shape the expression of those principles.  There is NO room at the table for people who have no principle at all.

Sincerely,

A Very American Citizen

A cool, lost

Lost my cool. Sent this email. This is a battle I will never stop fighting. Just need to figure out how to get rid of the rage and hold onto the resolve. This is the Oklahoma Rep. who thinks women are ‘hosts’ when they are pregnant. Nothing more than body parts stitched together to grow a life…

Justin,
Your position on women’s health is beyond words. I deeply hope that there are still women (and decent men) in Oklahoma who understand they are not here to serve men, to be hosts, and are in fact, separate complete individuals with agency and power. I hope those same women make you accountable for your ‘hate, dressed as religious piousness’ and kick you out of office. I can only imagine the kind of women who would marry a man with such a deep level of disgust and disrespect for a woman. I hope your wife wakes up to her own value someday. The statistics below may have escaped your notice– THESE ARE ACTUALLY HUMAN BEINGS HERE ON EARTH, ALIVE. They are not a collection of cells with the POTENTIAL for life. You might want to put your sanctimonious energy and dogma into making them feel welcome, safe, and provided for… Maybe you could HOST a couple of them. Show us women how it’s done…
“There are nearly 11,000 children in state custody in Oklahoma.
Of the number of kids in state custody, between 55-65 percent coming into foster care are placed with their extended family and friends. The remaining percentage of children need recruited foster homes or higher levels of care like group homes or in-patient treatment.
There are more than 350 children on any given day who are legally free and waiting for adoptive families. More than 1,000 children in state custody have a goal of adoption.
More than 60 percent of children in foster care are under the age of 12 and most have brothers and sisters also in care.” source: http://www.oklahomafosters.com/statistics/

It is so very hard not to despise you and your tribe of hypocritical christian, with a lowercase ‘c’ on purpose, travelers. I am working hard to turn the other cheek, but rest assured, that does not mean you get free rein to drag women by the hair where you think they should be. The deepest comfort I take is the following:
You all are ABSOLUTELY on the wrong side of history and you and your false religiosity will fall.
The bible assures me that the tree bringeth forth fruit after its own kind and that your fruit is self-destructive, toxic, and unpalatable.
I am not yet at a place where I can wish you well, but I can wish you awake.
Sincerely,
A woman, in who’s uterus, you have NO BUSINESS

My Two Cents

Ok Jean. My two cents. Fear is a reasonable reaction to a threatening situation and this is a threatening situation. Fear solves no problems, generates no solutions, and prevents people from being successful if left unchecked to run the show. I believe there are several issues, but limited forces, at work right now. One of the forces at work is the very effect work of separating the citizens from their SENSE of government. This is our government. It is nothing without us. You and me. It literally does not exist without us. It is ours to affect. It is OURS to influence. IT BELONGS TO US BECAUSE IT IS A FREELY ELECTED GOVERNMENT. At the end of the day, do you truly believe that money erases human effort? I don’t. I know that if there is a consistent engagement and effort to communicate in person with our neighbors, money would be a factor, but not THE factor.  If we had 80, 90, 100% voter turnout would it matter how much $$ the Koch brothers spent? I say NO! So the system is in need of some fresh blood. That we can do. You and me Jean– WE can do that. We do that by buying the Government for Dummies or if you have a better education about government than that, the next level and you learn EXACTLY how shit works. Then we go to meetings. Maybe not every single one, but we go. To the city council meetings. To our representatives meetings. We join the groups that matter to us. We send money to others. We BUY SUBSCRIPTIONS TO REPUTABLE NEWS SOURCES AND WE READ. A LOT. Maybe no more TV, gasp.   Maybe we run for office? School Board? County Board? Statewide? Maybe we start writing letters to those who we elect, regularly. We go to their offices and introduce ourselves and let them know we will be watching and giving feedback.

The second force is REAL too: Patriarchy. You, unless you are french, given your name, are a woman. And women have internalized their oppression. It is a VERY effective tool for getting by in this world. I have done it too. You know what happens when you fight to overcome internalization of oppression? To walk, talk and speak as a free agent? You get called a bitch and it just goes from there. We all know what it feels like to step out of ‘line’ and how the finger-pointing-corrections of ‘get back to your place’ leave us shaken and afraid.  Look what happens to you when you dare to reach for the highest office in the land? THE MOST POWERFUL PERSON IN THE WORLD IS THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. Look at what Hillary has paid for resisting the oppression and reaching for power. So it makes a lot of sense, that your sense of yourself, your sense of your individual POWER is shaped in the restrictions of that oppression. NOW, this election is going to destroy A SHIT LOAD OF very important things. That is TRUTH. What if we also, collectively and individually, took this wave of destruction and turned it toward the white patriarchy externally– that looks like passing the ERA, marching as Allies in BLM rallies, and various other programs and laws. BUT MOST IMPORTANTLY, LET’S DESTROY THE SELF-IMPOSED OPPRESSION. How we talk to ourselves. How we treat our bodies. How we treat each other. How we discriminate against our own power and the power of the black and brown women around us.

(i’m going to swear now because it is relevant) THIS IS FUCKING-NOT- A MAN’S WORLD.

This is a world for all of us and we American women, are specially poised to bring about a wave of revolution like none has ever been seen, or heard, or felt and we are going to do it that way because we are women. Tools to defeat us don’t even exist because this kind of revolution, on this size and scale, has not been worked before.  All the fights have been leading up to this one.  Now this isn’t to say that we are going to lay this discussion to rest for all times, but I do believe with every cell of my being, that all the groundwork that has been laid before we arrived by those, bless them to infinity, before us, was so that we could move the entire world forward.  All of us.  Oppression kills everyone it touches, no one escapes the scars.  We are here, right now, to use our foremother’s foundation to build the house we want, asking no permission, taking no time for reassurances.

Bannon et al will not be able to stop it because they can’t.  This is a righteous Truth breaking on our shores.  This group can’t see women as empowered human beings and they make sure to surround themselves with the version of feminine power they are most comfortable and familiar with, subjected and employed. Too bad for them that this will be their ultimate undoing.

JEAN-You and I are going to be the change we want to see in this world. It’s ok-be as scared as you need to be to make shit happen. WE matter. You and me and your women and my women and all those Syrian women. WE ABSOLUTELY FUCKING MATTER AND WE HAVE ALL THE POWER WE NEED to make the world the way WE want it to be. No one is going to hand it over to us. We are the New Pirates, and we are taking for ourselves, that which we deem ‘ours.’ You and Me Jean. I am standing right next to you and I love the crap out of you. You and me and all us ladies, worldwide– we got some work to do but it is work worth doing.

I am in.

The March Runs Through Me

Like most profound moments in my life, the actual moment seemed commonplace.  I stood on a wall above a sea of pink pussy hats, signs of protest, and I was still just me, standing on a wall– witnessing a history that will be in books in middle school classrooms all over this country some day.  But in that moment, on that day, I was still just me, a middle-aged-married-with-3-children-white-lady.  The immediacy of the day was as blinding as the buildings on either side of Independence Avenue, hiding the ‘extra 250,00 people’ who had shown up.

I have been asked about my trip to D.C. a few times since I returned and I have been generous with my answers because I am learning from my responses to others, what the moment has moved in me.  My fundamental center has shifted and I am pretty sure it will keep moving in a very real and concrete way.  This blog is one such response.

Another is my next-level awareness to the minority experience in my country, more specifically my perspective about being a black woman.  This is not my first experience with bumping up against the walls of my white priviledge and the internalized limits of patriarchy.  This in my next wave of awareness and understanding, my own struggles and scars allowing me to see deeper into the shadows.  I am by no means ‘woke’ but I understand the term’s refrences, implacations, and promise.  I am working out from an internal landscape shaped and grown in the acestorial law of “coverture, [which] held that no female person had a legal identity.”

I have woken up on a daily basis since the outcome of this election with a bone-deep sense of fear.  My first conscious thought is about this chaos and the uncertainty.  The back of my neck constantly prickles from the waves of hate and vitriol I feel flowing out from the self-satisfied voters who welcome this ‘change’.  I am sick to my stomach about the legal assult on my body.  I have been violated in the most public way, and all the while the crowd continues to murmor, “Burn her, Burn her, Burn her.”  What they are saying is, “I wanted change” or “He says truth” and my favorite, “Make America Great Again-MAGA” because it’s now a brand which fits neatly across a shirt, a hat, or my forehead.  I am in a country where my fellow citizens have made a political detirmination to separate me from my body, to rip my legal right to have control over my body away from me and keep it for their own use, their own twisted religious sense of righteousness.  To punish me for any signs of female independence in the form sexuality; to return me to the rule coverture.

“Burn Her, Burn Her, Burn Her.”

I have watched myself flail around to find a sancutuary. The first night, I lashed out on Facebook asking anyone, friend or family, who voted for this outcome to unfriend me because I was so full up with the pain of betrayal and loathing and despair that I could not breathe, and I could not imagine arriving at a place in my soul big enough for compassion and love–and them.  Then I cried for every single women in the entire world, including the ones who want to burn me.  I felt like the candle which I had been using my whole life had just gone out and I was sitting in the darkness and I was crushed by the immensity of the tragedy that we have chosen to self-inflict.  Sitting in that kind of pain invites all kinds of ugly into one’s soul.  Rage blossoms.  My Facebook wall has been a clear reflection of my continuous struggle, swinging between love and hatred, fear and the need to hurt and punish.  I have spent hours in discussions with people I trust who don’t tell me to stop whining.  I use their self-explorations to light my darkness, to search out answers in shadows, to find a sense of sanctuary.  I have joined groups, posted supportive comments, made a few hateful ones also.  I have subscribed and shared, tweeted and read and read and read.  I have cleaned out and reorganized my linen closet, I have reorgainzed my books by genre and author.  I have a lot of books so this is not a small thing, I have taken every item of clothing from my closet and folded it neatly, putting it back in place.

I have gone back to Martin Luther King from a brand new place.

The other day someone was telling me that they felt the ship had gone down, it was sunk, and they were trying to figure out how to live in this underwater reality. All I could hear was their Despair.  And it came to me to share one of my moments of seeing over the walls of white priveledge I had earlier in the week, so I said to them, “You want to know how to fucking live in this underwater world? Go find a black women and follow her because that is how she has been living her entire life. Look to those who have never been allowed out of coveture and they will show you how and where to stand.”   burn her burn her burn her is the drum beat when she watches her child, her husband, her father, her brother leave her sight.  Burn her burn her burn her is every fucking moment of every fucking day because every moment of every single day some white person could decide that her love doesn’t deserve life and just helps themselves.

I sit in my fear like a bath of shit and I refuse myself the priviledge of rage and violence and oblivian because who the FUCK am I to think I have that right to leave?  I have to stay until I find a place big enough in my heart for those who have betrayed me because he did it before me, and he set the bar.

“Now there is a final reason I think that Jesus says, “Love your enemies.” It is this: that love has within it a redemptive power. And there is a power there that eventually transforms individuals. Just keep being friendly to that person. Just keep loving them, and they can’t stand it too long. Oh, they react in many ways in the beginning. They react with guilt feelings, and sometimes they’ll hate you a little more at that transition period, but just keep loving them. And by the power of your love they will break down under the load. That’s love, you see. It is redemptive, and this is why Jesus says love. There’s something about love that builds up and is creative. There is something about hate that tears down and is destructive. So love your enemies.(from “Loving Your Enemies”)
― Martin Luther King Jr., A Knock at Midnight: Inspiration from the Great Sermons of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.

Who am I that I could walk away– while he and everyone else stayed?

No one.