"Sacrifice the Weak"

Let’s talk about sacrifice. We’ve been doing a lot of it lately with so many of us halting our regular, comfortable, predictable lives to address a global pandemic. Some days I happily and proudly make this sacrifice, thinking of my many loved ones and acquaintances who would very probably die if they fell ill with COVID-19. I am happy to let my life be interrupted so that their lives are not ended. On those days, it is easy to make that sacrifice. But some days, honestly, some days I am not thinking of them. I am thinking of my own personal struggles, of everything I am missing and lacking and losing. I am thinking of how very, very much I want my life back. Those are the days when the sacrifice is hard, and in terms of the spiritual and social meaning of sacrifice, those are the days when my sacrifice means the most.

Sacrifice is when you give of your own comfort, resources, or well-being for the sake of some other. Parents give up so much of themselves for their children – that is sacrifice. Soldiers and emergency responders willingly put their lives and physical safety at risk for others’ safety and freedom – that too is sacrifice. People squirrel away money into savings, foregoing immediate comforts for the sake of their future self being able to afford a house or a car or a degree or to repair a broken appliance. That too is sacrifice in the sense that they are giving up present joy for the sake of their future selves.

Another type of sacrifice is a little more biblical – priests standing at an altar with a lamb they will sacrifice to their god(s). The priest is making a sacrifice – giving of their time and spiritual knowledge and emotional strength to turn an offering into a divine prayer. The person who purchased or raised the lamb and brought it to the priest is making a sacrifice – giving their personal resources over for the sake of their prayer. The lamb is not making a sacrifice. The lamb is being sacrificed. The lamb did not choose to be there and it is not choosing to give its life. Rather, its life is being taken from it for the benefit of others, for the sake of the prayer.

When God asked Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac, Abraham was being asked to physically and purposefully kill his son. This was indeed an enormous sacrifice to ask – destroy this person you love, know that you will grieve and suffer while and after doing so. This was a test of Abraham’s faith, of his willingness to give anything to God, even the life of his beloved son. This was not a test of faith for Isaac. Isaac wasn’t asked to give his life. Isaac wasn’t asked anything. His life was to be taken from him by no choice of his own. Isaac was to be the sacrifice. Isaac was to be slaughtered. The sacrifice would have been Abraham’s alone, with Isaac no more than a casualty.

To be clear, it is not always sacrifice to be willing to kill or to let others die. People die across the world every minute of every day, and it is exceedingly rare that I a) even know about it or b) can personally actively do anything to stop it from happening. Those are not sacrifices to me. They are not really anything to me at all.

There are terribly bad people in the world, horrific dictators and war lords. When I hear of their deaths, I am not hurt by that – I give nothing of my heart or soul to mourning them. My country may have had a hand in their deaths. I may have petitioned for my government to intervene. The soldiers taking part in those operations may be sacrificing, but me? I give nothing and I experience no harm from their deaths. Those are not sacrifices to me. Their deaths may even be benefits to me if they result in a safer world.

Which brings me to this week’s viral image of a protester holding a sign that says, “Sacrifice the Weak.” 

This person is not actually talking about sacrifice. They are not giving of themselves for the benefits they seek. There is no sacrifice that they are making. And nor would the people who would be forced back to work be making a sacrifice. As has been widely reported, these poor workers would not have the luxury of choosing whether to continue social distancing or to go back to work because they will no longer be eligible for unemployment. They will have to go back to work, even if it is harmful to them or their families. If it is not a choice, it is not a sacrifice. When something is taken from you – in this case, your ability to maintain social distance for the health and well-being of yourself and your family members – it is not sacrifice, it is loss. It is theft.

These so-called “weak” are not even the sacrifice. They are not Isaac, because Abraham suffered greatly at the prospect of killing his son. They would be Isaac if the people calling for the economy to reopen were staffing the bowling alleys and hair salons and restaurants with their parents and grandparents, and others of their own much-loved, vulnerable family members. Nor are they the lambs on the altar, because the lambs were somebody’s resource that they gave away at a personal cost to themselves. They would be lambs if it were the wealth of wealthy people and corporations distributed to the care of our society – giving away their millions and billions at a personal cost to themselves solely for the benefit of others.

“Sacrifice the Weak” is an entirely false statement. There is nothing true about it. It is not a sacrifice. The people they are putting in harm’s way are not weak, at least, no weaker than anyone else in terms of their vulnerability to this virus. If all things were equal, it would indiscriminately and equally kill poor people or middle class people or wealthy people. Increasing the exposure of poor people means more poor people will die, not because they are weak, but because some are not willing to make any sacrifice to keep them safe.

What “Sacrifice the Weak” actually means is “I Am Willing To Take The Health, Lives, And Freedom Of Choice From Others So That I No Longer Have To Sacrifice My Comfort For The Greater Good.”

That is not sacrifice. It is not noble. And it is not moral. There is no high ground in demanding others to suffer for your comfort. And I am not asking you to sacrifice your freedom for my fear. I am asking you to sacrifice your comfort for the thing my fear is based on – the reality of this pandemic. Because oddly enough, this sacrifice doesn’t take away my fear of the pandemic. The only thing that will end my fear is the passage of this pandemic into the annals of history, long after we have stopped being called to make this sacrifice.

AND NO ONE IS TALKING ABOUT IT

New pet peeve: Memes and headlines that say “XYZ News Story/Social Issue Exists and No One Is Talking About It.” 

People share these on Facebook or Reddit or anywhere, really, without adding a comment regarding the thing that no one is talking about. And then comments pour in about how the commenter knows about this thing but nobody else knows, or how the commenter agrees this is important but no one else thinks it is, or even just shame on the news media and on society for not talking about this important issue.

And I hate it. So much. Because in all of the talk about how no one is talking about the thing – NO ONE IS TALKING ABOUT THE THING!

This pet peeve has developed over years I'm guessing, but I wasn’t fully aware it had become a pet peeve of mine until just yesterday when I saw some random meme a friend shared bemoaning some truth that no one is talking about, and I felt a comical sort of rage well up inside me and an internal voice screamed at the top of its imaginary lungs, “DON’T SAY NO ONE IS TALKING ABOUT IT – EXPLETIVE TALK ABOUT IT!!!!”

I started de-meme-ifying my communications a while back. I still enjoy reading memes and clicking ‘like’ when I experience enjoyment or satisfaction or agreement. I’ve learned that sometimes it is nice to just surface-level agree without deep thoughts. I still read headlines and don’t follow up by reading the story far more often than I do follow the link and read it through. I’ve learned that always there are too many news stories to read everything, so I have to pick which to give my time to and which to let slide.

And also.

Since de-meme-ifying my communications, I am less likely to jump on a “Yeah!” “This!” bandwagon. I am more likely to get annoyed by memes that say things I agree with but that use judgment words or inflammatory language or that seem to dismiss the complexity of an issue with some boiled down truism – even if I agree with those things. And this past year, I find myself thinking, “I agree with this... but what if it was created by a Russian bot? Is this the sort of meme designed to increase the division between me and those with whom I disagree? Is this useful? Is this helpful? Does this help increase understanding of this issue or does it just polarize the issue?”

Since de-meme-ifying my communications, I am also far less likely to read a shared news story if the person who shares it doesn’t articulate why they think it is worth my time to read. “Seriously, read this” or “OMG THIS” or “I couldn’t have said it better” doesn’t add to the conversation, doesn’t tell me why the person thinks it was important to share, and doesn’t give me any insight into my friend’s perspective or experience or understanding. Unless the article is something I am already predisposed to be interested in, I’m going to need a sentence at least that says “This topic is important to me because of this reason, and I think it is insightful that the article takes this perspective.” THAT is the motivation I require these days to follow a link I wouldn’t normally follow.

And, it turns out, since de-meme-ifying my communications, I want people to talk about what they have to talk about. That is, I get kinda pissy when they don't. And seriously, I get it, we can’t talk about everything. But I want to know what you have to say. And as of yesterday (or possibly months ago and I just didn’t realize it until yesterday), I officially cannot stand it when people talk about how people are not talking about something... rather than just talking about the thing. Just talk about the thing! Tell me what you have to say. I want to know. I’ll listen.

Standing

I'm in mourning right now. It's kind of a figurative mourning, but it doesn't feel figurative. I have apparently reached the stage in trauma processing where you mourn. You mourn what could have been, what should have been. For me, I'm also mourning humanity. Well, my idealistic notions of humanity -- that has died, to be replaced with something closer to the reality of humanity.

The thing is, I'm an activist, and pretty much always have been. My mom and I got pepper-sprayed at a counter-demonstration against the KKK when I was 18. I've gotten into honest to goodness physical altercations with neo-Nazis. I've marched on Washington. Michael and I once made the decision to go through with a protest even though it had been made known that anyone who showed up would get arrested; we made the decision to get arrested. It didn't happen, but still. I've worked with rural poor and urban poor and third world poor. I've seen first hand the devastation that can be -- and has been -- wrought by humanity upon other parts of humanity. This is not new to me.

And yet. And yet. Some part of me maintained this idea that at the core of us all, humanity is inherently good. People hurt each other accidentally, or systemically when the systems are too big for people to realize and own personal responsibility within it. People get led astray and hurt others, but can later find their way to redemption and kindness. Some part of me held onto that.

But what about those people who hurt you? Eh, that's different. Well, it felt different. It felt different because I was traumatized and I hated myself and I believed that I deserved it and therefore any harm that came to me fell into the exception rather than the rule.

It doesn't feel different anymore. Because of therapy. Because of the outpouring of voices of other people who have experienced traumas like mine. It wasn't just me -- there is a deeply rooted culture of men making claims on women's bodies. I wasn't an exception because I deserved it. I wasn't an exception, and I didn't deserve it. It's just that -- in large and small ways -- many people believe that they can and do own women's bodies, that they have a right to our time and our attention and our love and deference and bodies.

I keep hearing arguments that men just don't know better; they don't realize how their actions or words fall into this spectrum of ownership. And sure, I'll grant that misplaced jokes and comments and flirting can happen. But that is not what I'm talking about. That is not what we're talking about. I had people come after me with purpose and malice. One person in particular set about trying to break me. Malice. Purpose. Ownership. An entire lack of regard for my humanity.

That's the brainspace of realization I have been occupying.

Dawnland is coming out. (This is not a non sequitor.) It's a feature length documentary about the Maine Wabanaki-State Child Welfare Truth and Reconciliation Commission that was recently concluded. This TRC was focused on the taking of children from Wabanaki families. Maine and other states have a disproportionate level of taking for Native children. This follows centuries of other types of taking of children -- the boarding schools, adoptions programs, and massacre.

My country, my people, we have a long history of malice against Native peoples. Claiming ownership of their land and their water and their children. Setting about with purpose for hundreds of years and thousands of strategies to take their lives, and their futures, through their deaths or through the taking of their children. Malice. Purpose. Ownership. An entire lack of regard for their humanity.

Watch First Light -- a freely available 13 minute mini-documentary preceding the release of Dawnland, for a brief introduction to the Maine TRC.

Watch The Canary Effect -- a freely available 1 hour documentary about ongoing history of genocide by our people against Native people in our country.

I got to attend an early viewing of Dawnland because I have been involved with Maine Wabanaki REACH, specifically as a volunteer educator of white/non-Native people about our shared history with the Wabanaki. The idea is that it is not the job of the oppressed to educate the oppressor. We have a responsibility step up and educate ourselves and each other.

My government instituted yet another policy of taking children. This time at the border. People seeking asylum are having their children taken from them and are then being criminally charged for crossing the border to seek asylum.

We keep wanting to claim that it's our ancestors, not us, who did those things. But here we are doing them. Here we are standing by while our people do these things. Whether or not you or I are there, this is us doing this. We are letting it happen. There is no 'them' doing this. This is America. We are doing this.

We did this when we bought and sold Black people in our country. We separated children from their parents. We worked people to death. At the Whitney Plantation Museum this summer, I learned that adult slaves had an average lifespan of 7 years once they were put to work on the sugar plantations. I learned that once the Transatlantic Slave Trade came to an end, we bred Black people like animals to keep up with the demand for stolen bodies to work the industries that could only be sustained with the work of stolen bodies. Once slavery came to an end, plantation owners set up debt cycles similar to our modern day payday loans that kept Black workers basically -- but not legally -- enslaved.

The Thirteenth Amendment ended slavery and the coercion of labor except for prisoners. Our first period of mass incarceration of Black men occurred immediately following the Civil War. We are seeing it again. Black prisoners are a commodity. Watch The Thirteenth (link to trailer) on Netflix to learn more about the systemic, purposeful taking of Black bodies over and over and over in our country, including today.

***

This song I wrote this week, when I first sat down to write it, was going to be a song about my mental health in a world where people claim ownership of others, where people have made that claim on me. But I couldn't keep it within myself. We are taking people's children. Just like we have taken people's children before, like we have taken their bodies, taken their labor, taken their land, taken their water, taken their liberty, taken their lives.

I fully recognize the privilege of my position, and what I am doing placing my own experience within the same spectrum of humanity's worst hits like slavery and genocide. My intention is not to exalt my suffering nor to downplay others. Rather, my intention is to speak to the truth that large and small violations of humanity occur when we (human people) place our own humanity above that of others. That small kernel of bitterness that anyone might feel toward someone else, delighting in their suffering, justifying to ourselves that they should suffer so that I can have mine... that is not unique to "the bad people." That is us. Human people.

Malice. Purpose. Ownership. A lack of regard for others' humanity.

It is hard to see the ways in which we dehumanize others, but I would argue that it is easy to see the ways that others have dehumanized us. Starting from that place of our own experience of being dehumanized, we can cultivate our empathy for others who are being dehumanized. We can stand with them.

And taking another step forward, we can cultivate an awareness of how we benefit from, participate in, and stand idly by the dehumanization of others. It's okay to feel shame for that; it's shameful. But don't stay there. White shame hasn't solved racism in all these centuries. White shame is ultimately self-indulgent. We self-flagellate without taking the actual steps we need to take to dismantle this dehumanizing tendency in ourselves and in our society. I don't fully know what all the steps are to dismantle dehumanization in myself and in my society. But I'm working on it. And I hope you'll work on it with me. We have a responsibility to try, and to keep trying.

If I Could Find Love and Acceptance

In the past week, I've heard this sentiment from no fewer than four separate people, not including myself. In the course of my life, I couldn't even begin to count.

We accept the love we think we deserve, and of course, what we think we deserve is born from our experiences in the world. When we have experienced harm at the hands of others we often come to believe that we deserved it -- even when we know that some people are just shitty and the harm they cast out into the world is about them and not about us.

Having been hurt, and then coming to believe we deserve that hurt, can also lead us to distrust care. We expect the care to be conditional, or temporary, or fake. We wait for the other shoe to drop. How can there be care for me when what I really deserve is harm? When we believe we do not deserve care we often distrust the care that others show us -- even when we know that some people are good and our feeling of distrust is about us and not about them.

I've had a hard week in terms of physical pain, but a good week in terms of taking a break from life and recalibrating my mental health a bit. This morning I find myself in a place of self-acceptance for once, and I also find it easier to believe that others may really truly indeed think well of me also. I penned today's poem hoping to capture this feeling, this lesson, that I will no doubt need to learn and relearn again and again throughout my life as my self-acceptance ebbs and flows.

And here I offer it to you.

If I Could Find Love and Acceptance
11/4/17, #31

if I could find love and acceptance
within myself
then I could share it with you
accept it from you
trust it from you
believe it from you 

it has never been that I reject you
or your love
the trust I withhold from you
expecting your love to fade
your regard to dissolve
is not about you
but me 

if I could find love and acceptance
within myself
then I could trust myself
that I deserve
this love and acceptance
from you

#NotOkay

Last week, the #MeToo campaign, started a decade ago as a way to quietly but adamantly show solidarity with people who had been sexually harassed or assaulted, went viral and swept across social media. In this moment in time it became less a statement of individual solidarity and support and more of a statement of scope to everyone and support to everyone and solidarity with everyone. People, women and men alike, vocalized their experiences publicly. People with small and extensive experiences of harassment and assault were given a socially accepted opportunity to speak up where so many of us walk through life silent about these experiences.
When I added my own Me Too online, a friend and former student responded #notokay.

It was a simple statement, but it meant a lot. Many of our experiences go unnoticed or are silently accepted by others. It's time for us to speak up when we see people being jerks to each other, harming each other, harassing each other, assaulting each other, taking rights from each other...

Small and extensive experiences demand both small and extensive responses.

So, men, speak up. And women, speak up. And white people, speak up. And non-white people, speak up. And Christians, speak up. And everyone speak up. We all have the capacity to not be dicks and to say out loud to each other, "You may or may not be a bad person, but what you are doing right now is not okay." This is especially, especially, especially important when it is someone else who is being harmed (though, obviously, stand up for yourself as well).

End serious thoughts and conversations that have been revolving in my head and life this past week, and which led me to the poem below. I'm still writing a poem every day. Some of them are quite good, and I'm already thinking on compiling another book of poetry from them to publish next year. So I won't be publishing all the good ones here, because I don't want to mess up my future publication opportunities.

But this one. This one I had to share.

#NotOkay

Last night in a dream
I got to yell
     FUCK YOU, BILL COSBY!
at Bill Cosby
and others joined in
He slunk away in shame, or fear, or conflict avoidance
And the party organizers turned up the music
to drown us out
But we continued to shout
It was a very cathartic dream

1979

It's been a hard day, and there have been many hard days. I closed this hard day by reading the essay "Poetry is Not a Luxury" by Audre Lorde. And I agreed. Poetry feeds the soul, and allows it to breathe. In the spirit of healing, and growing, and being, I'm going to try and write a poem every day for the rest of the year. I won't share them all; I anticipate most won't be worth sharing. But here is the first.

1979
by Kati Corlew, 10/14/17

"Poetry is not a luxury," she tells me.

     Audre, my current Lorde

     Black. Woman. Lesbian.
     Dead -- the ultimate of intersectionalities, 

     so easy to be dismissed, 

     overlooked, forgotten.

"It is a necessity," she says.
     For women, it is our skeleton structure
     built of our feelings, our experience, our strength.
     It is our path to live, to not dismiss
     to not dismiss ourselves
     to not be dismissed
How many times have I said that the strength of women
     is that we endure?
How many poems have I written, illustrating just that
     with words, with metaphor, with the contours of letters
     and the shape of each line
Thirty-eight years later and I am beginning to wonder
     if maybe I am a woman after all?
If the queerness and fluidity of my gender
     are steps away from poetry
     steps into the rigidity of masculinity,
     buying into the lie of strength
Each new version of myself grown deeper, yet harder
     In search of recognition, of legitimacy
     In search of safety
Because that too is all a lie 
     taught to us by a Patriarchy
     that
     dominates and victimizes the feminine in women
     casts aspersions and violence against the feminine in men
What, exactly, could be so terrifying as to provoke such violent reactions
     If not power?
     The power of women
     of feeling
     of femininity
The power of poetry.
     The power to feel, and to experience
     The power to understand, to truly and fully
     live
And with these powers
     an ability
     a necessity
     to be free
Could it truly be world-changing?
     System-breaking?
     Patriarchy-smashing?
Is it not a metaphor?
     But an actual necessity?
They wrote Female on my birth certificate in 1979
     A clinical observation
     A poem to a future iteration
     of me
It is not a luxury.
     this experience,
     my life,
     it is a necessity.

Let Me Tell You a Story: Nazis in America. Still.

Let Me Tell You A Story: Healing Our Relationships With The Earth, With Others, and With Ourselves

The following is a segment in the multi-part Let Me Tell You A Story series. This series is focused on identifying, describing, and understanding aspects of my culture(s) that are largely invisible, but that are traumatic to the earth, to outgroups, and to ourselves. I am not the only person to have noticed that our society is sick, and I am not the only person to explore this sickness in the hopes of healing. This series is as much a personal exploration as it is a critical examination of our society. This series is a starting point for consideration and conversation. You are invited to come along.

Come in, sit down. Let’s talk.
 

Let Me Tell You a Story: Nazis in America. Still.

Let me tell you a story. When I was 18 years old, my mom and I went to a protest on the steps of the Memphis courthouse. I’m from Memphis, but I was in college at the time. I drove back home for this event with a group of activists I was friends with. My mom went with a group of activists she was friends with. We were two very different groups of activists – college radicals and middle-aged church ladies – but we were there for a common purpose.

It was the weekend of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and the Ku Klux Klan had decided that that was the perfect opportunity to get a permit to demonstrate on the steps of the Memphis courthouse about white nationalism and the dangers of multiculturalism. This particular sect of the Klan was renowned for inciting violence at their rallies – which, they would then, of course, point to as evidence of how violent the counter-protesters are. And if the counter-demonstrators were Black? Oh man. You see? You see? Case in point. So violent.

I remember that Memphis had been talking about this event for weeks. It was 1998 for God’s sake! WTF were the Klan still doing here? This kind of racism was antiquated. Get with the program, KKK – you’re not supposed to exist anymore. Remember how we sorted this issue out decades ago? I mean, sure, we've still got a long way to go with racism, but as a country we at least had all agreed that the KKK was not who we are.

And so, for us, now, in modern times – Would it be better to show up? To show them and the world that we will not stand for this kind of hate? Or would it be better to ignore them? To show that they have no power anymore? To show that this kind of hate is not even worth our bother?

I mean, jeez, this particular group of Klansmen were regulars on the Jerry Springer Show. They were a joke.

But they were a hate-filled joke shouting their hate on a weekend commemorating one of America’s great heroes on the steps of the courthouse in the city where he was assassinated.

We showed up. A lot of us showed up.

Lay down. Go limp. Any sign of struggle will be taken as violent resistance. Attempting to stay on your feet and shield yourself from blows will be taken as violent resistance.

And Lord, we knew there was going to be violence. Everyone knew there was going to be violence. This group was known for inciting violence. It was their thing. There were cops everywhere. Security checkpoints at every street corner at a two or three block radius. Sniper-looking cops on rooftops and in high-rise windows (unlikely they actually had sniper rifles; I’m sure it was for vantage and reporting to folks on the ground) (but jeez, it was creepy). There was a chain of cops creating a barricade around the Klan, and further levels of cops reinforcing the barricade behind them. And yes, the cops were protecting the Klan. The Klan had a permit. Free speech is protected by the state.

Free speech does not mean that other people can’t shout back at you that you’re a goddamned idiot for what you're saying. That’s what we were there for.

The mood of the protest was actually quite festive. To this day, it is the funnest protest I have ever been to. My mom and her friends found a ledge on the steps of a nearby building where they could hold their signs and chant and sing, with a good view from the periphery of the crowd. My friends and I were in the thick of it – on the ground, right up in the front of everything. 

In the crowd, man, seriously, it was so much fun. Everyone, and I mean everyone who was down there was your friend. We were cracking jokes with strangers, singing songs together, dancing with each other, interspersed with turning around and flipping off the Klan and yelling ‘fuck you’ at their hate speech and giving advice to each other about what to do if the cops started beating protesters.

Lay down. Go limp. Any sign of struggle will be taken as violent resistance. Attempting to stay on your feet and shield yourself from blows will be taken as violent resistance.

And then we’d dance and laugh and sing and yell ‘fuck you’ at the Ku Klux Klan. Funnest protest? Heck, that might even be one of my top ten funnest events ever.

I was right up front, and I debriefed with some protesters from other areas of the crowd later on, including my mom, to figure out the full story of the event. And so here’s what happened.

A lady a few people up from me got into the face of some of the cops, yelling that they should take off their masks and own their shame if they were going to protect the KKK. Yes, some of the cops were wearing masks. In my memory, it was Black cops who were wearing masks. They were performing their duty as cops, but it was not where they wanted to be as human beings.

Some folks behind us heard the yelling and wanted to see what was happening. They pushed forward. The cops saw the push in the crowd, and they pushed forward. The folks behind us saw the cops were doing something. They pushed forward. The cops pushed forward. Etc. 

We were in the middle.

I fell to the ground in a crush of bodies, unable to think, unable to breathe. It was a surprisingly calm experience for me. “Oh,” I thought, “This is how I die.” Like I had always wondered and here it was. Question answered.

People were yelling. The force, the weight bearing down on me, was incredible. And then one, loud, clear, booming voice rose above the rest. “WE’RE TRYING TO PICK THEM UP!” People backed off. The pressure lifted. Air refilled my lungs. I didn’t die. Limbs and bodies got picked up off of me. A yellow-and-black-sleeved arm grabbed me around my middle and lifted me to my feet.

I never saw the person attached to that arm.

But at about that moment, I learned later, some kids were flashing gang signs in the back of the crowd and someone threw an empty coke can. The police thought it was a bomb. They stared firing off pepper spray and tear gas and mace into the crowd.

If you’ve never been pepper sprayed, let me tell you what. It’s like the entire world has become pepper. Every contact you have with the world, every thought and sensory experience, is pepper. Your skin burns, your eyes burn, your nose and mouth and throat and lungs and ears and brain burns. It’s gritty in texture and all-consuming in substance and painful everywhere. And then it burns again later when you take a shower to wash it off. Fuck the Ku Klux Klan and fuck pepper spray.

My mom got maced in her part of the crowd. She describes a different experience with that chemical.

But our reactions were the same, the same as everybody’s – RUN. A scream let up from the crowd. My god, the noise of screaming fear, that many voices ringing together with the burst of tear gas canons and the thunder of footsteps – people running away, police surging in. The noise was incredible. I will never forget it.

I ran.

I ran about a block and turned around to catch my bearings. A Black woman stopped with me, assessed me looking back, concerned.

“Did you lose someone?”

“My mom…” I started to say.

The line of cops was storming in our direction with batons and chemical irritants and heavy boots and gas masks.

“Honey, we need to run now,” she said, and she took my hand.

We ran together, hand in hand, for another four or so blocks until the crowd was suitably dispersed. We parted ways, ducking down different side streets. I still remember her face.

I didn’t know where to go. I wandered around downtown Memphis for a while, and eventually went back to the site of the protest once it was calm again. People were gathering in small groups to talk about what had happened. I heard a voice in one of these groups talking about what had happened when we fell in the crush. He was not among the people who had fallen. I looked over. It was the sleeve.

“Oh my god, it was you who picked me up!”

We talked for some time. I got different pieces of the story. I found my friends. Two of them had been beaten by the cops. One of them, a young woman my age and my size and my inclination toward violence (pacifist, and anyway kind of a chicken) was beside herself, holding her arm with a giant red welt.

“They hit me with a baton. We were running away. I don’t know why they hit me.”

That night at home my mom and I swapped stories with each other, with my dad, and my sisters. We both had so many funny, delightful, endearing, and ultimately heart-warming stories of what it was like in the protest, right up until the minute we got gassed and everyone ran away.

We watched the news that night, hoping to get some final answers about why exactly they had gassed us, and what had happened with the rest of the hate rally after we were dispersed.

Instead, the headline was “Protesters erupt in violence on the steps of the Memphis courthouse!” and the video clips were shaky two-second disjointed clips of people screaming and running away. “Just look at the violence,” the reporters said, shaking their heads. “Look at the violence.”

I’m still enraged when I think of it. And I think of it every time I see a news report about protesters being violent. That was not violence. That was screaming and running away.

...

But I’m not done yet, because let me tell you another story. This one happened maybe 8 or 9 years later, I think in 2006. I tried to google the event to find news about it so I could make sure of the date but… god help us, there are too many similar events in the past few years that I can’t find this one time it happened about a decade ago.

Fuck, fuck, fuck. This is so dismaying. 

Fuck.

And then the Nazis stormed in. I remember it like a feeling of dread pulled my eyes backward, but did the dread actually kick in after I glanced back? I don’t know. 

I did youth outreach in Chicago as a full-time volunteer from 2003-2007. I worked mostly (but not solely) with Mexican and other Hispanic immigrants. We wrote and performed plays, created art and comic books, played basketball and music, had study hall and computer lab and church events and community events and god, too many billions of wonderful instances and activities in these kids’ development into the community leaders they are today… I just can’t even tell you all of the wonderfulness. I’m still facebook friends with a lot of these “kids” (they’re still my kids even though they're grown adults with degrees and careers and kids of their own). They are amazing people and I am so proud to know them.

A group of them, still teenagers at the time, had helped organize a demonstration for the Dream Act, including a rally in downtown Chicago and a Freedom Ride to DC. Michael and I were there serving as peacekeepers with 8^th Day Center for Justice, where Michael worked as a full-time volunteer for those four years. Our role was to help people be calm if anything happened, to de-escalate any tensions or violence, and generally to keep the peace.

There was a barricade and a line of cops along the street on one side of the square, and across that street were the counter-demonstrators. This time, it was us being protected from the racists. We were the ones with the permit.

The counter-protesters had Confederate flags and signs telling us to go back to our country and to speak English and what not. So, two points about this. First, it always amazes me that people assume everyone who is supportive of a minority issue is part of that minority. We’ve all got brains and voices, and lots of people believe that equality doesn’t just mean equality for me. And the second point is that one of the signs about speaking English was spelled wrong! It’s always hysterical when it happens on the internet, but when it happens at your very own rally? Priceless.

The vibe was really different than at the KKK rally previously. And maybe part of that is the difference between being the ralliers and the people protesting the rally – like, we were there for our purpose, not to just dance and crack jokes about their purpose. I don’t know. But while there was certainly passion and rampant friendliness, it was far more subdued.

As a peacekeeper, I was standing near the police line that overlooked the hate speech signs. It was the most likely place for altercation. But really, the majority of folks I remember yelling at the counter-demonstrators were the skinny vegan white boys from Anti-Racist Action (ARA). These guys are anarchists (by which I mean, that is their noted political leaning) (I’m not an anarchist myself, but I actually really respect it as a philosophy), and part of the mission of their organization is to stand up to racism anywhere and everywhere it appears.

So of course they’re yelling at the guys holding up racist signs across the street. It’s their thing.

But like, the other folks from the crowd who would come over to look at the counterdemonstrators? There really wasn’t so much of that joy in disagreeing, that joy in yelling ‘fuck you’ that I’d experienced at the Klan rally almost a decade previously. This crowd was calmer. They’d walk over and read the signs. The younger folks might (or might not) yell back, but the older folks especially would just look… sad.

This again? 

Still?

One Hispanic man standing near me was reading over the signs. He noticed the misspelled sign, and – classic protest faux pas – one guy had his hate sign upside down! We caught each other’s eye and giggled, rolled our eyes, shared a moment. And then he wandered back into the main rally.

It was nice.

And then the Nazis stormed in.

So I want to be very clear about this, because that sounds like hyperbole, but this is what happened. I was on the edge of the crowd by the street that lined one side of the square, by the cops, across from the counter-protesters, and I looked back behind us. I remember it like a feeling of dread pulled my eyes backward, but did the dread actually kick in after I glanced back? I don’t know. All I know is that past the end of the police barricade, back behind the crowd, a group of 20 or 30 Nazis, full-on skinhead, muscly ripped, angry white men with an 8-foot swastika flag turned the corner of the building lining the back of the square, literally appearing from nowhere, and stormed toward us.

The crowd – including my kids, my teens that I worked with, and families with children and elders and strollers – did not see them coming. They were facing the stage to the front while a group of Nazis with hate in their bodies and faces stormed in from behind.

“Oh, fuck no!” shouted one of the ARA guys near me. They all took off to intercept the Nazis. Violence was imminent. The police were actually blocked from interceding by their own barricade. The Nazis were on our side of it. It was a nightmare.

Michael and I rushed in as well, doing our best to de-escalate tensions between Nazis and Anti-Racism Activists. I jumped in the way of swinging fists. I broke up fights. I pulled people off of each other and shoved people back. I later learned that my job as peacekeeper did not actually include breaking up physical violence and I wasn't supposed to lay a hand on anyone – whoops.

But the anarchists stopped the Nazis from storming into a peaceful crowd and we stopped the violence from escalating until the police were able to get around their barriers and escort the Nazis to the appropriate side of the street, where they were greeted like heroes. 

Fuck them. Fuck them for their hate. Fuck them for going after my kids. Fuck them for visiting violence into this world against people who had not perpetrated violence against them or anyone else. 

I get that people have fears and that these fears, through ignorance and lack of exposure, explode into blanket prejudices that tell them that all Mexicans are gang members and all Muslims are terrorists and all Black people are criminals but that is just patently not true. 

These things, these stories from my past, this legacy of violence and hatred in our country that we sorted out decades ago… they are not antiquated. They are not history. They are current. They are present. They are still.

Am I saying fuck all white people? No. I am saying fuck those guys that came in to attack a peaceful protest. And fuck other Nazis who visit violence on others as a way of acting out their social and political impotence. And fuck the Ku Klux Klan that has perpetuated almost two centuries of hatred and violence on this country, and fuck those particular Klan members who got my whole city so riled up that the police pepper-sprayed me because someone threw a coke can.

And fuck them especially today. Especially today. It’s August 12, 20-fucking-17, and Nazis are attacking people in Charlottesville, VA. And you know what I have just had to realize?

Fuck me. These things, these stories from my past, this legacy of violence and hatred in our country that we sorted out decades ago… they are not antiquated. They are not history. They are current. They are present. They are still.

I had to realize today that despite all of my own anti-racism action and education and discussion and arguments and activism and purported understanding of reality, that I was still holding on to my own version of a progress narrative that this kind of violent hatred was dying out in my country. That, sure, it still existed in little pockets of activity, but by and large the Ku Klux Klan and fucking Nazis for Christ’s sake were a thing of the past. This resurgence we've been seeing is a last dying gasp of a fraught history and any time now that gasp would end and thank god we'd finally be done with this.

I was emboldened by my progress narrative because I have been telling the story of that Klan rally for twenty years and by and large, people have had a hard time believing me that the Klan still existed. Half of my story-telling was actually convincing my audience that the Klan still existed.

And I was emboldened by my progress narrative because those counter-demonstrators at the Freedom Rally were actually quite few compared to the people who turned out to support the Dreamers. They were a few dozen. We were many hundreds. And for that matter, at the Klan rally in January 1998, there were six Klansmen and zero people rallying in support. We were many hundreds, dancing and laughing and saying “fuck you, no!” to their hatred.

But in the past two years, my narrative has changed. No one looks at me with surprise when I tell them the Klan was still alive and well in 1998. The Klan, and Nazi groups, the alt-right, white supremacists, and others have come out of the woodwork over the past two years, showing me and everybody that they are not just some dying, antiquated fringe. Or at least, if they are, they are a loud and violent and persistent fringe.

The events in Charlottesville made me remember my own violent altercations against them. And I had to recognize within myself that pit of disappointment that it wasn’t over yet. That we weren’t going back to “normal” – a space where this isn’t a thing. It made me wonder if this was indeed what normal is now. If we weren’t indeed here again.

Or more precisely, still.

I’ve been thinking about videos and photos I’ve seen of the violent altercations of the Civil Rights Movement and wondering it’s not that the arc of history is long, bending toward justice, but that it’s a sine wave that curves back toward hatred if we get too complacent. And has it again become time for us to put our bodies between people filled with violent blanket hatred and those myriad diverse individuals whose lives they want to end.

I’m not 18 anymore. I am solidly middle-aged, much closer in age to my mom's church lady activist friends than my radical college activist friends, and I am very comfortable and confident in my pacifism and kind-of-a-chicken-ism. I do not relish the idea that we have let Nazis and the Klan back into relevance and power in our country. I’m kind of terrified of it. I’m terrified of speaking up. I’m terrified of putting my body in the way of it.

But what’s my fear when measured against someone else’s right to stay alive?

One more thing, because I want to be absolutely clear. Some of you – people I know and people I don’t – will read yourselves into this when I am not talking about you. Any post decrying white nationalism will ping into the identity threat fears of all sorts of white people who don’t want to be called a racist. I get it. Believe me. I get it. I’ve heard you, again and again and again. You don’t have to explain it to me anymore. I get it.

So. Let's be clear. Are you (or have you ever been) part of a violent faction of Nazis, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, alt-right, KKK, or any other literally terrorist hate group actively seeking to end the lives of basic American freedoms of people who have a different skin color than you? Have you ever participated in violence against peaceful protesters or other peaceful citizens just because you disagreed with them on something and/or their skin color was different than yours? Because this post is about those guys. Those guys are stepping up their terrorism of our nation. This is now and this is present and this is real.

Are you uncomfortable reading this because you’ve said or thought hate speech, or agreed with some of their things but not their methods, or you agree with some of the principles but really only if you water them down to a very moderate level of nuance but not outright hate, and so you’re worried that I’m talking about you because I mentioned something that is somehow similar to something about you? I’m not talking about you. But please have a good long think about why my talking about white supremacy terrorists makes you think I'm talking about you. Because I'm not talking about you. If you see yourself in this post, that's something within you. That's not coming from me.

And finally, if you have held up signs with hate speech, or clapped when those guys spoke up, or cheered them, or laughed at their antics, or welcomed them to your side of the protest like you were welcoming heroes, of have otherwise galvanized those violent racists who are currently terrorizing our country… I’m still not talking about you here. But I would encourage you to take a very long and serious look at your words and actions. Because you may not be them exactly, you may not exactly fall into the same class of white Christian terrorist that have wrought violence in our country again and again, and who are currently moving back into power and relevance in our country...

But you are helping them happen.