In order to unharm we must tell a fuller truth

I'm so honored to share my comments from the STL Women's March for Truth on Saturday Jan 20, 2018. It was an amazing experience, and I'm so glad I brought my daughter. We've got to start growing our courage young!


Good Morning!

I’m Adelaide Lancaster and I’m so honored to be here.

And to be here with my sweet Eloise – who at age 7 ½ has been to more marches and protests – probably in this year alone -  than my entire first 35 years combined.

How lucky we are to be here – in this place, at this time, led by these amazing women, and with all of you!

What I want her to see today is PROMISE.

It brings me to tears to know that this is HER NORMAL. This is what her introduction to feminism and womanism looks like. This is her America. This is her St. Louis.

Look at what a beautiful, powerful, and promising view she has!

But as a white mom, and a white feminist I know that I cannot just feed her a diet of promise.

I must also feed her a diet of TRUTH.

You see, promise can only ROOT IN TRUTH. And promise can only BLOOM IN TRUTH.

In that spirit want to share with you today the words of one of my favorite poets, Nayyirah Waheed.

She shares:

“unharm someone
by
telling the truth you could not face
when you
struck instead of tended.”

These words make me think particularly about the work that my white sisters and I face.

I think about

How often we harm. 

How easily we strike.

How little we tend.

And the role of truth in all of that.

So my ask today is of white women in particular.

My hope is that we can learn to tell fuller stories.

In order to UNHARM we must tell a fuller truth.

When we tell a story about under-resourced schools and city services, we must also tell the story of white flight and redlining.

When we tell a story about school segregation, we must also own the role that white moms have played in creating and maintaining that.

When we tell a story about suffrage and voting rights for our mothers and grandmothers, we must also tell a story about exclusion and false promises and how often we say to our black and brown sisters - “next time it’ll be your turn.”

When we tell stories of our own resistance, we must also tell the stories of our own defense, distance, and denial.

When we imagine ourselves part of the solution, we must also see ourselves as part of the problem.

I’m so glad that when I hear stories about last year’s march that it includes stories about learning.

And when we tell the story of today I hope it includes stories about followership, kinship, and how we are learning to honor our fuller community.

I believe that our greatest promise still lies ahead, but first we must start with truth.

What Would it Take to Believe?

I'm clear that Im asking a whole lot of my fellow white people right now.

I'm not trying to convince you that I'm right or that I have better facts or the best words or even that black people aren't treated with the humanity they and we all deserve (they aren't.)

What I'm asking from you is to suspend your understanding of the rules of engagement and your knowledge of "how things work." To ignore your past experiences...to silence the "well I just would haves"...and the "I don't thinks"...and resist drawing inferences from the time something sort of seemingly similar happened to you or someone you know.

Then I'm asking you to put yourself in another persons shoes. Someone who hasn't been afforded the many privileges that you have - privileges that are so reliable and broad and sweeping that it's nearly impossible to see or imagine your life without them.

Then I'm asking you to imagine how you might feel and act in the face of grave and life-of-your-children-threatening injustice that's been present and willfully ignored and denied for generations. And I need you to imagine how you might feel in these circumstances AFTER you stripped away much of the (unknown to you) race-related socialization that you've been bathed in your whole life...socialization that likely encouraged you to value conformity, individual perseverance, conflict avoidance, and faith in systems and processes.

What would you do then? What would you feel? Could you even imagine? If you can't...or if you can even just see how complicated all that is...what would it take for you believe someone else who can imagine or doesn't have to?

Also what does it mean for us all that what I've just described really only speaks to our limited ability to engage in perspective taking...This doesn't even begin to address the real internal damage and soul-warping that racism does to both us and people of color.

This work is big and foundational and it is a lot. But it's also really necessary.

This is what it takes for us white folks to really listen to what we don't and can't know but have to begin to believe for us to move forward.

To the Beneficiaries of Protest

to clarify:

If you are a white woman who votes, a member of a union, or a citizen of this country you benefit from protests that were disruptive, and during which people were brutalized...for the rights and protections and freedoms that you enjoy.

The vast majority of white people did not support the actions of the civil rights movement, nor did they think of Dr. King favorably. Only now is he memorialized as a hero.

***
Here's what I want everyone to know about protest:

1. Protest is Part of Our National Identity – and Always Has Been
Protest has been a part of our national fabric and national identity from the very beginning. Specific acts of protest, from the Boston Tea Party on, lead to the very creation of our nation. Protests have continued to be a part of every single social change and advancement across our national history, including civil rights. Our founding fathers protected the act of protest by including these two important rights in our constitution: the right to “peaceably assemble” and the right to “petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

2. Protests are Intentionally Disruptive – and Always Have Been
Disruption is often the explicit purpose of protest. They can disrupt narratives, process, the economy, or even traffic. Their disruption is rooted in the principle of non-violence. The disruption serves to not only garner attention but also to represent accountability when it’s perceived to be missing from the system. It’s a method to share the burden of the injustices being protested when no other consequences are available.

3. Direct Action is One Form of Non-Violent Protest
Other forms of non-violent protest include economic boycotts, organizing collective buying power, awareness and advocacy campaigns, storytelling through art and dialogue, particularly those that lift up stories that are not often heard. Sometimes an act of protest can be sitting where you’re not supposed to, or kneeling when you’re expected to stand.

4. There Are Usually MANY Leaders
Protests are usually part of movements that include many leaders and many, many different people. Often movement leaders are memorialized differently later, usually in a way that supports a “hero” narrative. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X worked together. They also had different approaches. They were not rivals. Martin Luther King was surrounded by other leaders, like John Lewis, Ella Baker, and Fannie Lou Hamer whose participation was essential but who are often left out of the full narrative. Our familiarity with “hero” narratives sometimes causes us to miss the leaders in our midst because they have not been memorialized yet.

5. How Movements are Memorialized Often Doesn’t Match What Really Happened
Our understanding of history also shifts as time progresses and citizens’ perspectives change. Martin Luther King Jr. was not popular in his lifetime. Many of us know that he was assassinated, under constant death threat and that his home was bombed. We often attribute that hatred and dislike only to the white supremacists at the time and forget, or don’t learn, that the majority of the country didn’t hold a favorable view of Martin Luther King Jr. A 1966 Gallup poll showed that only 36% of people had a positive view of him. Yet, in 1999 he was second in a list of Americans that other Americans admired most.

6. Social Change Movements Take a Very Long Time
The seeds for Brown vs. Board of Education were planted decades beforehand. There were 8 years between the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the March on Washington. The complex nature of social issues and the this long-term view can make it difficult to recognize crystallized moments of “success” even if there is movement and shifting happening in many places.

7. Protest Movements are Intentional, Purposeful, and Organized
Sometimes stories about protests push forward a narrative that they are spontaneous or develop organically. While there are certainly moments that are unplanned, protest movements tend to be intentional, purposeful and very organized…even if you can’t see it. Sometimes the organization, plans and decision making is intentionally not made transparent in an effort to protect those in leadership roles. Sustained protest campaigns take a lot of pre-planning and are often a part of larger change strategies.

http://www.westories.org/…/parenting-in-a-time-of-protest-p…

***
If you are getting stuck in conversations about so-called "black on black crime" you're getting off topic.

If you are getting stuck in conversations about what rights alleged drug-dealers have, you're getting off topic and may be misinformed about what is actually known about Mr. Smith.

Knowing what you know, it's important to consider where you stand...and what protections you will want available to you when you want to petition your government for grievances.

I'd rather your heart hurt when you see the images of Rev. Karla Frye and her grandson. I'd rather you believe the reports and stories and pictures that demonstrate the depth of racial injustice here in St. Louis. I'd rather you want to join us in the fight for a more equitable city and for our own humanity...but at the very, very least you should be very worried about the threats being posed to your own rights as citizens under our constitution.

Rethinking Perspective in the Time of Protest

If you’re inclined to think the justice system works, then you’re likely under the impression that the facts were known, weighed and ruled upon. You might be missing the systematic ways that the justice system tends to favor those who created and uphold it while harming those most marginalized.

If you’re inclined to pull from your own personal experiences to consider how you might have behaved differently than a particular victim, then you might also be missing the long-held truths from communities of color about how their experience of the justice system is vastly different from that of white folks.

If you haven’t done a lot of first hand reading about the civil rights movement and Martin Luther King, then you’re likely to “remember” him as a leader quite different from those of today and you might be wondering why we don’t have leaders like that anymore. You might be missing leaders of the same ilk all around us, the civil rights heroes of our day and age.

If you’re stuck on the monitoring whether or not the protests seem “peaceful” enough, then you might not be considering the distinctions between non-violent and peaceful and you might be getting only a partial story.

If you’ve found yourself concerned about a window or a cancelled concert today, then you might not be fully appreciating the tragic, unnecessary, constant, and abrupt violence that is occurring to real humans in our community daily. You might not be able to imagine what it is like to be stop, frisked, roughly handcuffed, knocked about, strip searched, jailed, beaten or shot. You might not have heard enough parents tell first hand stories about these real fears and experiences with their children.

If you’ve found yourself imagining how you’d feel if you were a law enforcement officer at a protest, then you might be playing out the very real in-group bias which allows you to more easily humanize and personify the character you’re more likely to be (white officer vs marginalized protestor) in the given situation while continuing to disassociate from those who are in real and chronic pain.

If you’ve found yourself scared about the protests or protestors, their proximity to you, or worried about what they might do or what might be damaged, then you might still be burdened by the racist messages that accompany seeing a large group of black people. You might not have suffered from the same fear with regard to the women’s march or the most recent march in Boston or the protest at the airport about the immigration-ban. School districts cancelled school on Friday and cancelled all school and sports activities. Big box stores miles and miles from downtown or any location of significance also closed on Friday. This is an example of racism.

If you’ve thought of the protests as violent and imagined the protestors to be the aggressors, then you might not yet appreciate what it looks like and feels like to have hundreds of unarmed people, walking in public, loudly and proudly, carrying signs, kids, microphones, water, and little else strategizing about which pieces of pavement they can walk on met by a completely militarized police force or soldiers in riot gear, with vehicles and tanks, carrying semi-automatic weapons. Note how the militarized group is praised for using their restraint when chanted at. Was it really so tempting to shoot and hurt us?

If you’ve gotten fussy about the protesting tactics used, and extended empathy to those inconvenienced by waiting or not getting what they want when they want it, you might not yet appreciate that protests are meant to disrupt the normal flow of traffic and business in order to call attention to grave injustice…because that is what non-violent people are willing to continually do when they believe it is a matter of life and death.

If you have a picture of protestors in your mind OR YOUR MEDIA that doesn’t include artists, teachers, students, professors, the elderly, strollers, baby carriers, friends, families, mothers then you aren’t seeing the full picture.

If the injustice doesn’t bother you then protest is not the space for you and you should have probably stopped reading at the top. But if the injustice is making you crazy and yet you’re finding yourself getting stuck in one of these other places, you may want to consider joining and seeing for yourself. I don’t think I’m that scary. And I’m not violent either.

Commitments and Reflections on the Eve of a Verdict

ONCE…I was concerned about a black boy who lay dead in the street for 4 hours after being murdered by a white police officer who was so clear about his authority to kill that he had no idea at the time that THIS time it’d be different. I was concerned but SILENT. Isolated. Worried about who was safe to talk to. Frustrated. (increasingly) Suffocated by the silence around me. Unsure about everything…what to do…what to say...how to help. Uneasy. Fraudulent-feeling. Carrying the weight of seemingly-impossible change alone. I was wilted by seeming conventional wisdom that surrounded me: “This is the way it’s always been. It’s a shame but what can be done. It’s complicated and beyond reach. You have to look at “both sides.” You can’t really believe that? That’s naïve. When you’re older you’ll change your mind. When you have more money you’ll think differently. When you have kids, you’ll think differently.”

NOW…I’m clear. Black Lives Matter. Racism is killing us all…but the death takes different forms. I’m unavoidably part of the problem. I’m a necessary part of the solution. I know that my words, actions, and influence matters. I know it’s not for me to say what’s good enough. I know it’s not for me to say when we’ve arrived or even what liberation looks like. I’m listening and learning and believing and following. I’m clear that the history I’ve inherited is woefully incomplete. Even what I think I know has layers and layers of complexity that are resonate and relevant to today. I’m also clear that history is happening now and that everyday decisions make differences.

I’m still plagued by the mental tape that carries the messages of ONCE UPON A TIME because that shit is hard to un-program.

The people in our region have grown a lot since August 9, 2014 but our systems of injustice prevail. It’s likely that tomorrow begins another steep and painful growth curve for our region. I wish it weren’t so. I wish our community wasn’t conditioned to expect injustice. But we are, and for good reason. It’s also likely that the pain of tomorrow and beyond will present opportunities for more people to consider whether they can tolerate this status quo any longer…whether this is the reality that they want to give to the children of our region...and whether the benefits they are given are worth the costs they endure themselves and exact from others.

If you find yourself feeling silenced, suffocated, uneasy, despairing and unsure of what to do or say, please reach out to me. I would love to talk to you. It took me 8 months after Michael Brown Jr’s killing to find my public voice. I’m not going anywhere. Reach out tomorrow or 2018 or beyond. It’s never to late to take a different approach and start working for what could be. We need you. True change will take most of us.