Race – Page 5 – Patricia Wild

Water: The New Oil?

Sunday afternoon as my Loved One napped, I took a delicious post-snowstorm walk around Fresh Pond. (Loved One’s long term care facility sits on the Fresh Pond Reservation, 162 acres of open space and nature trails protecting the 155 acre, fenced-in, Fresh Pond Reservoir, the City of Cambridge’s water supply.)

Until Sunday, my relationship with Fresh Pond had been mixed: Yes, I’d always relished joining the parade of dog walkers and bicyclists and strolling couples and joggers circling the pond. (It’s about a 2 mile walk). In fact, walking around Fresh Pond on New Year’s Day has become a hallowed tradition in my life, a contemplative (and usually freezing) way to begin a new year. Yet, inevitably, as a Somerville resident, I have also resented that in order to enjoy this urban treasure, I have to drive to Cambridge! Where, as a non-resident. I might easily get a parking ticket.

No more. My car now neatly parked in Loved One’s facility’s parking lot, Fresh Pond is mine!

So, on Sunday, instead of muttering “Why can’t Somerville have acres and acres of unobstructed space—maybe beside the Mystic River? Nature trails and woods and community gardens as far as the eye can see? Huh? Huh?”* or stressing about a possible parking ticket, I was able to appreciate where I actually was. To be present. To grok.**

So, of course, walking past Cambridge’s water supply, I thought of Flint, Michigan. And how black lives didn’t matter when it came to making viable, decent decisions regarding that struggling city’s water supply. How inexpressively outrageous! And how, more and more, we’re seeing water as A Thing. A commodity as precious as oil. (and, like oil, a liquid to spill blood over.)

So as I walked listening to the pond’s gentle lap lap with newfound gratitude, I was also sobered by a water-scarce future suddenly more clear and more fraught than it’s ever been.

“Is Clean Water The New Oil? “What am I called to do?

*So many things to love about my community but its long-term commitment to open space is not one of one.

** A verb meaning to really, really get it and used in that 60s classic, Stranger in a Strange Land—in which for the protagonist, a human raised on Mars, “sharing water” was a Huge Deal.

Beat Your Swords Into Train Tracks and Affordable Housing

Good news: a new subway station/light rail is probably coming to my neighborhood (Cost overruns are making important people like the governor look twice at the project). More Good News: Many car-repair and other businesses dependent upon the fossil-fuel industry which once dominated my neighborhood are, seemingly overnight, being transformed into housing. In other words, the status quo of living in a world dominated by cars, is shifting. Changing. VERY Bad News: This new housing is NOT affordable housing.

“If you want peace, work for justice,” has been my mantra since the 90s. So on Sunday, instead of attending the International Day of Peace on Boston Common, I am abandoning my Quaker peeps to attend a forum on the future of my community, hosted by Union United, a grassroots organization advocating for, you guessed it, affordable housing!

“Dangerous Optimism”

[“Rainbow Fountain,” Bryant College, Smithfield, R.I.]

This week, rather than writing something, myself, I’d like to share this wonderful and poignant excerpt from a speech Martin Luther King, Jr. gave at Bennett College, Greensboro, NC, in 1958.

After reading another piece I’d written recently that referenced Dr. King’s “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice,” my friend Katy sent this excerpt along. She had transcribed the entire speech when working at Boston University—Dr. King’s alma mater. Katy is responsible for the ADDED EMPHASIS.

“…This [after acknowledging that a lot of progress in civil rights had been made] would be a wonderful place to stop–be a great place to stop. But I’m afraid, if I stopped here, I wouldn’t be telling the truth, I’d be stating a fact. YOU SEE A FACT IS MERELY THE ABSENCE OF CONTRADICTION BUT TRUTH IS THE PRESENCE OF COHERENCE. IT IS THE RELATEDNESS OF FACTS. [laughter, then applause] You see it’s a fact that we’ve come a long, long way—that’s a fact—but it isn’t the truth. You see in order to tell the truth, you’ve got to go on and put the other parts in. If I stopped at this point, I would leave you the victims of a dangerous optimism. If I stopped at this point, I would leave you the victims of an illusion wrapped in superficiality. So in order to tell the truth, I must move on [laughter], say clearly that we’ve not only come a long, long way [applause]–so I must say that we’ve not only come a long, long way, but we have a long, long way to go….” [emphasis added]

Word.

“Progress Is Our Most Important Product”*

[Russian submarine from the Cold War era, Maritime Museum, San Diego, CA]

Saturday I spent some time at FirstBuild, a state-of-the-art machine shop cum high-tech appliance incubator in Louisville, KY run by GE. Talk about a layered experience!

A little background: My beloved father, who died in 2010, worked for GE for many years in war time and peace time, inventing both the butter conditioner (the little box in your refrigerator that keeps butter at its optimum temperature) and the computer used as a machine-gun defense system for the B-29; “the plane that won World War II.” He also sold GE television equipment in the earliest days of TV and as a “Cold War warrior” (and self-labeled “merchant of death”) negotiated contacts between GE and the military. So wandering through GE factories or TV studios some random Saturday to stare, stupefied, at work benches and machinery and dials and gauges and fancy, mysterious equipment, carefully stepping over jumbles of wires as my father excitedly explained The Latest Thing/GE’s newest project was something I did as a kid.

More context: A couple of weeks before, I’d given a talk re Way Opens and my own experiences during the Civil Rights Era to a group of bright, tender middle-school students at Cambridge Friends School. Who were “heavy,” as their teacher put it, Freddie Gray’s death much on their minds. Their collective heaviness stays with me.

So there I was, gobstruck by the cool, nifty appliances in FirstBuild’s showroom and my first look at a 3-D printer and, knowing how much my dad would have loved every single moment, desperately missing him. And aware that despite all this progress, just blocks away people of color were living under pretty much the same conditions as they had during the Jim Crow era.

See what I mean by layered?

* GE’s slogan during the 50s and 60s, i.e. the Civil Rights and Cold War era.

“A Thousand Tongues Can Never Tell”

[“A Thousand Tongues Can Never Tell,” a spirit root sculpture by Bessie Harvey]

Mother’s Day, I woke up to a mockingbird practicing a song unlike anything I’d ever heard before from a mockingbird. Sleepily I remembered a Mary Oliver poem.* Sleepily I wondered if I might be hearing the theme song from “the Rockford Files.” (Especially that doodle-doodle-dee-dah-do-do bit at the end of the first phrase?) But then, more awake, I realized I needed to get a grip. “Unlike Mary Oliver, you do not know what music that bird’s been listening to!” I scolded myself. “You do not know all the songs, human and bird, to identify what you’re hearing! Only that bird knows. All you can do is to appreciate that lively, inventive music.” So I did.

Later that bright, sunny morning, wearing a “Black Live Matter” sticker on my Mothers Out Front tee shirt, I joined thousands of people in Boston for the 19th annual Mother’s Day Walk for Peace. Although I was walking with other Mothers Out Front folks, the groupings and clusters of people and baby carriages and dogs snaking our way through the streets of Dorchester were pretty fluid—so at one point along the 5K route I walked beside a young African-American woman I’d never met before.

“What brings you here today?” I asked her after we’d chitchatted about the gorgeous day and how the crowd seemed bigger than ever. (An estimated 10,000 marchers participated this year.)

“I have a son,” she said. “And I want him to grow up safe.”

Such simple words! But a thousand tongues cannot tell all that her stark statement encapsulates, all the stories of all the mothers and all the sons in Dorchester, in Baltimore, in Ferguson; every place and every time since time immemorial. Like that sleepy moment earlier that morning, I was humbled by all I will never know.

“I want your son to be safe, too,” I replied. Because that was all I could say.

*The Gift

I wanted to thank the mockingbird for the vigor of his song.
Every day he sang from the rim of the field, while I picked
blueberries or just idled in the sun.
Every day he came fluttering by to show me, and why not,
the white blossoms in this wings.
So one day I went there with a machine, and played some songs of
Mahler.
The mockingbird stopped singing, he came close and seemed
to listen.
Now when I go down to the field, a little Mahler spills
through the sputters of his song.
How happy I am, lounging in the light, listening as the music
floats by!
And I give thanks also for my mind, that thought of giving
a gift.
And mostly I’m grateful that I take this world so seriously.
Mary Oliver

“They Are Our Kids”

[19th Century Young Girl’s Grave, El Campo Santo, San Diego, CA, soon after Dia de Muertos, 2014]

Don’t get me wrong: I love my daughters, I love my grandchildren. I loved sitting in my Quaker meeting this morning watching Meeting children happily search for Easter eggs outside. I love Christmas, I love birthdays, I love making any child happy by buying just the right gift.

Here’s what I don’t love: The disparity between children like my grandchildren and those happy children I watched this morning and the poor children of this country. As a recent “New Yorker” article put it: The American dream is in crisis, [Robert Putnam, author of Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis] argues, because Americans used to care about other people’s kids and now they only care about their own kids. But, he writes, “America’s poor kids do belong to us and we to them. They are our kids.”

Here’s what deeply moves me: That on October 31, 2014, someone placed those plastic necklaces and those two dolls on the grave pictured above. A Mexican-American child decorated that child’s grave for Dia de Muertos, I’m guessing. She swept the dirt, she arranged those bricks as best she could, she threw away—God knows what that child discovered in that gritty, surrounded-by-bars-and restaurants cemetery in the heart of San Diego’s Old Town. That generous child is very likely one of those “poor kids” Putnam wrote about.

My kid. Our kid.

This Old House

Years ago, before I moved to (then) working-class Somerville, I lived in an historic district in central Connecticut; most of my neighbors lived in lovely, expensively-preserved, eighteenth century homes. I did not. But even though I did not own an old home I somehow absorbed enough knowledge of Old School architecture to be able to spot historic houses in my new, gritty, densely-populated neighborhood.

Back in the day, I could also easily spot whenever one of my Somerville neighbors did any kind of home improvement. It was easy! Just as carefully as my historic-district neighbors worked very hard and spent lots of money so as to not reveal that anything about their historic house had been changed and that every colonial detail had been carefully preserved, my new neighbors made darned sure everyone knew when a window or porch had been replaced by not making the slightest attempt to match style or color or materials. “I’m brand-new!” these home improvements seemed to shout.

Nowadays, Somerville is upscale—which means, among other things, that plenty of people with deep pockets have bought homes in the ‘ville and, you guessed it, have spent oodles of $$ to restore their homes to look like what they’d looked like when they were new. (In most cases, the 1860’s) And, yeah, It seems I’ve retained an authentic and historically accurate sensibility from my Connecticut days because, I admit it, I admire what these folks have done.

But: there’s an old, old house around the corner from me, probably built about 1825, that is currently being renovated and, I’m guessing by the sloppy workmanship—leaving windows open or broken for weeks, propping sheets of plywood against holes in the walls, for example—is owned by people with not much money and who’ve spent no time at all researching that house’s history. (I could be totally wrong about this, of course.) And those homeowners will, I’m guessing, put in fancy new windows and doors, paint it in a color never seen in the 1825, make it into the home they want, a home that reflects their 2014 taste. (Or, perhaps, what they imagine will sell in the current super-hot real estate market in this neighborhood right now.) So who cares what it looked like when it was new?

But maybe that history—American history—never did and never will mean much to these homeowners. Besides, history does not equal holy. Let’s not forget that when that house was built, for example, slavery was the status quo. Indeed, a block away from that house is “Bleachery Court,” now a park and skating rink, but in 1825, that land was covered with a factory that bleached, yes, cotton. (The North has plenty of slavery-related history, of course.)

So, yes, I’m sad that an historic house has been gutted and its charming roofline radically altered and its story, to to speak, silenced. I’m sad that a daily reminder of the people who lived in my neighborhood so many years ago has been destroyed. I think reflecting on that past every time I walked by that house made my own life a little richer. I also know how expensive preservation is. And that holding on to the past simply because it’s the past is nuts.

So I’m hoping that, like a pay phone turned into an art installation, something just as delightful as that historic house will take its place.

(But I’m not counting on it.)

“Dear White People”; Part 1

[Climate March, NYC, September 21, 2014]

An overheard conversation between two white college-aged men in Davis Square Friday night after a protest march re the Eric Garner and Ferguson grand jury decisions—an eight-mile, thousand-people-strong march organized by Tufts students: “Yeah, well, if you’re going to be an ally, be an ally!” Exactly!

Last week, thousands of Americans took their collective grief and rage at this nation’s pervasive, insidious racism to the streets. And the media/social media responded. On Friday night, for example, four news-channel helicopters whirled over Somerville and Cambridge taping the march! Four! (Although maybe one helicopter held the police?) Today’s New York Times features a photo of a “die in” at NYC’s City Hall. Tweets? Facebook posts? Hell, yeah.

Okay: Let’s talk about what happens after these protests are no longer the flavor of the month. Let’s talk strategy. And, dear white people, let’s talk about being allies.

Okay, so here’s the moment when I risk being: a) Preachy b) Patronizing c) Smug d)Holier than Thou e) All of the above plus other unattractive and off-putting characteristics so much a part of who I am that I can’t even see them

Here’s what I want to tell other white people about being an ally:

Be humble. Prepare to be horrified at how often you’ll mess up, no matter how much you try, you care, you’ve read and discussed and understand.

“Dear White People”; Part 2

Show up. Strategically. Be that white face in a black crowd, especially when it really, really matters. Sad But True: when I showed up at a racial-profiling trial for a group of Somerville teenagers, one of the defense attorneys told me that my presence had an impact on the jury. Horrifying? Yes. Absolutely. But, hey! If we’re to dismantle racism, brick by brick, let’s use the tools that work!

Be in community with other white allies. Don’t do this work alone. And don’t ask your friends of color to hold your hand or give you advice. (Or, for that matter, thank you.) Download soon and often. And, supported and cherished for the wonderful person you truly are, keep on keepin’ on.

Be in community. Work local. Work one-to-one. Keep in mind Mother Teresa’s “We can do no great things, only small things with great love.” (Love, compassion, forgiveness; they’re in our dismantling racism tool boxes, too.)

Here’s your homework: Connect the dots. How are Racism, War, and Climate Change inexorably intertwined? (Hint: it’s complicated. And fear and A strongly held belief there’s not enough are definitely involved.)

Got it? Feel it? Great. Now: let your deep and powerful understanding fuel your passion and guide your actions, especially in those moments when you’re overwhelmed.

We shall overcome.

Keepin’ It Real

My route to yoga class takes me along one of the saddest blocks in my neighborhood. On one side of the street is a sprawling auto-body shop; busted-up, smashed vehicles, each mangled hood or bumper or smashed-in door telling a terrible story, wait their turn outside its multiple, side-by-side work stations. Across the street, next to a couple of derelict, abandoned buildings, lies a beery redemption center where the poorest of the poor redeem cans and bottles; a nickel per’s the going rate. (A tow truck company shares a driveway with the redemption center—not so much a poignant feature of the street as menacing, threatening. God forbid you’re walking past when one of their drivers pulls out of the driveway without looking or stopping!) No matter what the weather, leathery, bloodshot-eyed Hispanic men crouch between the waiting, mangled cars or in the doorways of the abandoned buildings to pass around a bottle of whatever their pooled nickels could buy. Haitian women, Asian women, scarfed women, mothers and grandmothers of every ethnicity push brimming shopping carts past the drinking or passed-out men; some sling giant-sized, bulging plastic bags over their shoulders as they maneuver the crowded sidewalk.

Last night, while at an evening yoga class, an idling car at a red light right outside the studio window played “gangsta rap”so loud our teacher felt compelled to apologize for the intrusion. As she were responsible. As if we, her white, affluent students, might be upset or offended by the rage and grating sounds outside—which lasted as long as it takes for a red light to turn green. As if none of us might be enraged that another unarmed black teenager has been shot dead. As we aren’t perpetually grated, horrified by the obscene gap between women like us and the women who tote bulky plastic bags to a redemption center (!?) to feed their children. As if being yoga students automatically means we’ve earned the right to ignore the reality right outside.

Ha!

“To know and not to act is not to know”

[A fountain in downtown Boston]

Just finished Nadine Gortimer‘s Burger’s Daughter; she’d used the above quote by Chinese philosopher, Wang Yang-ming (1472—1529), to introduce Part Two of her amazing and painful and gorgeously written anti-apartheid novel. It just might be my new credo.

If I know that climate change is real but do nothing, I don’t know.

If I know that my country is riven by racism and the dregs of slavery yet do nothing, I know nothing.

If I know that the criminal justice system isn’t just but don’t speak out, I know nothing.

If I know that men and women have equal rights yet fail to act on behalf of my oppressed sisters, I’m an idiot.

if I can remember when water fountains and swimming pools and schools and buses were segregated but fail to exult when I notice that arc of the moral universe has bent a little closer towards justice—in my lifetime!—I remember nothing.

Limited Visibility

Sunday, waiting for a bus in the New York City Port Authority’s (poorly lit and oppressive) waiting area, a scruffy young man dragging a long-handled suitcase approached me to ask for money. I turned him down. “Happy Mother’s Day,” he sneered. “Thank you very much. Have a nice day.” And immediately walked over to another woman and went through the same routine; so did she.

After he’d moved on, a third bus traveler who sat next to the second woman—from her accent I’m guessing this third woman is Haitian—spoke up: “He only asked you two,” she noted. “He didn’t ask anybody else.”Just the two white women in the waiting area, she meant.

Reader: I hadn’t seen that.

Last night, as a potential ally,* I sat in on a parent meeting at Mystic Housing, a Somerville public housing complex, to listen as a racially diverse group of mothers grappled with the best way to begin recycling at their complex. (Single-stream recycling bins available to households throughout the rest of the city had not been distributed at public housing. After much pressure from Mystic residents, especially children from the Mystic Learning Center, the housing authority agreed to begin a pilot project there, starting this summer.)

Reader: I’d forgotten what it means to live in public housing ( For many years, back in the day, I’d taught GED classes at Mystic Housing’s community center). I’d forgotten how debilitating, how oppressive it could be if your neighbors scrawl graffiti onto freshly painted walls or defecate in the hallways—stories told last night. I’d not anticipated how a bright and shiny idea like “Let’s recycle!” might land on poor, overwhelmed, working-multiple-jobs mothers.

Sadly, how I “see” race and class sometimes looks a lot like last Friday at Brooklyn Botanic Garden: my daughter, two grandchildren and I sampling different scents from different lilac bushes on a pea-soup foggy and drizzly afternoon as La Guardia-bound jets flew right over our heads, close, loud—yet invisible.

* Somerville’s Mothers Out Front wish to connect with the women in public housing; I embodied that wish.