Hatred is an Unbearable Weight

 It has been one week.

Sabbath to Sabbath.

That the world turned her attention to the place often in the periphery of being unless the news shatters the perception of innocence and assaults our eyes with the unseeable.

Last week, during celebrations for the Jewish people, Hamas hang glided intentions of destruction and rained down terror upon hundreds of young people at a music concert.  They indiscriminately killed people, raped women, snatched hostages, all in the space of moments that the Israeli government was unable to respond. 

It was a weekend.

it was a holiday.

It was planned.

It was barbaric.

It was evil.

It was inhumane.

It was terror.

I was offline last Saturday, my television not tuned into the prior week incessant wrangling about the American elections and the will=they-or-won't they of the Republican congress.  My husband and I were enjoying much needed respite.

Even Sunday, when I took a little road trip up to Vermont to just be, I was not fully aware of what had been going on. NPR wasn't playing in my car. I knew by that late afternoon there had been something, but not sure what the extent of it had been.

By Monday, the reality of what happened became more clear and after spending the night digesting the news, reading writers I trusted, and tuning in, I was stunned into near silence.

I had an interfaith coffee already scheduled for mid-morning and neither of us were Jewish or Muslim or Palestinian or living in the Middle East, each of us wore the realization of what was taking place on our faces.

Multiple times we were covering our mouths as we began to unpack what it was. What we needed to do.

Through our coffee chat - an African American woman of multiethnic and multiracial heritage and a Puerto Rican woman - shared our dismay, our shock, our knowing that we were called into saying something - and finding words for what there are no words.

It is the same thing I saw happening all week with the news coverage, from those expertly trained in how to tell us what is going on and guiding the sense-making of what makes-no-sense.

That was not what I saw most of the week.

It was pain, shock, knowing, bearing, stunned silence after more and more was told, stories were told, funerals were going on, evacuations were going on, bombs were dropped, water was withheld, my God!

I wasn't a Monday-morning rush to write. So many of us were in the same position.  I'm not an expert on Middle East conflict except what I know from a spiritual, Biblical perspective and intimate through conversations. It is decades, centuries, millennia long.

And yet, it isn't.

This recent spate of hate is grown from modern times.

Hamas is not the age of the land, they are an occupying terrorist organization bent on the destruction of the Jewish race, much like the American grown tiki torchers and people who murdered innocents in Pittsburg. They are the same thread of cold-hearted-evil.

Hamas works through fear and propaganda and gangsterism, they terrorize the un-landed people living in the Gaza Strip and other areas of Palestine. 

This was not a holy war.

This was not a holy ideological conflict between descendants of brothers.

This was not the on-going and necessary conversation of the need for a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine.

This was terror.

President Biden said it was not human behavior, far beyond even being inhumane. It was beyond animalistic. It was demonic.

They used women, children, girls, old women as fodder for their televised reign of bloodshed.

They murdered infants in front of their parents.

They raped girls.

Israel responded to all of it, from the first of it to the on-going with their state power of declaring war. They immediately did so. They dropped bombs and warfare on a stretch of land that is smaller than the state where I was just visiting. It is densely populated. 1.1 million people.

The latest news was the Israeli government told them they had to evacuate in 24 hours.

One of my esteemed biblical scholars posted on her instagram last night, "you can't move a city of people out of a hurricane zone in 24 hours. Evacuating 1.1 million people of out of Gaza in 24 hours is.not.possible. Just tell us you intend to massacre people without saying it." - Rev. Dr. Pamela Lightsey.

It is worse than imaginable.

And it is so very complicated.

No, not complicated to condemn what Hamas did, that is without question.

it is even understandable for Israel's response, the Jewish people have already suffered and this loss of life was more in one day than Kristallnaught. 

So there are parts of me that get their immediate response.

Except I also don't.

Over half the population of Hamas are children and half of the other half are women and old people. And not all of the people who live there are Hamas. They are invaded and overtaken, much like the gangs in my ancestral homeland have people living in terror in their own neighborhoods. Hamas has a sophisticated system of tunnels and weaponry and just barbarism. 

They will not stop.

This will not be over in one week.

And there are changes that must come.

Last night, Jewish people in New York, at the start of their sabbath, did a sit in at their senator's home to demand that there be a solution for the Palestinian people, that Israeli stop being an occupying, colonizing, terrorizing force against these people. This is something that has been going on along that part of the Middle East since the 1940s when settlers started taking land that had been in Palestinian families for centuries.

Many had already been displaced.

Gaza was a place of displacement.

The Israeli government has been currently taking a hard-line, ultra conservative stance, much like the MAGA republicans in this country, and were also bent on taking more, leaving a minoritized-people with even less than what they were existing on.

We have seen over the years news reports of Israeli troops that indiscriminately killed civilians, their atrocities against Palestinian women and children, their reign of terror. 

My daughters and I marched for Palestinian independence. Nine years ago, Ferguson and Palestine were understood in an intersection way.  The Palestinian-Americans were teaching the African Americans how to deal with tear gas. Israeli troops had been using that tactic for years.

I mourned with my Jewish brothers and sisters with Pittsburg, we were in seminary at the time, and at on-going acts of anti-semitism happening in this country.

That is what my father taught me.

That I was connected to everyone, he taught me first about the Jewish people. I remember being nine and asking him why he was telling us this and making us watch movies or read books about the Holocaust. He said our plight was intertwined, that we were brothers, and that human beings should care for human beings and should stand against hatred, regardless of race, creed, or skin color.

Over my lifetime, I've tried to teach the same thing to my children.

Before this news hit, I was reading and posting my support of the Haitian dam-builders because water is a human right.

I was listening about the African nations banning together to oust colonizers and realize their economic power is un unity.

I was reading and listening about the ongoing assaults against the heritage, presence, and being of African-Americans that have dominated the atmosphere. Whether it was a Black boy with locs in Texas being banned from his public school or the white guy suing Black women for giving money to Black women or the non-stop book banning, the airwaves were filled with one form of hatred after another.

How do we shed this weight?

This unbearable weight?

When is enough enough?

How many bodies that are too many to count, no place to bury, and tears from loved ones?

Will they ever be satisfied with the "other" being gone? Much like that Great Replacement Theory of the far right MAGA folks in this country that have a deep-seated fear of a browning nation, their satisfaction will never become because their hatred finds new targets.

They came for so many and so many were silent and then they came for you, who will speak?

I don't have words.

I'm sorry.

I mourn.

I weep.

And I hold onto love.

To love you like my brother and my sister.

To see you in your brokenness.

To hold you in your pain.

That is what we are called to do as sojourners on this earth.

Because the alternative only gives us what we have seen over the past week, and it is unbearable.

To Be Awake and Aware

 America is in trouble.

America is in trouble.

America is in trouble.

I remember sounding an alarm about what was coming when I was still a budding-reluctant-activist after a shooting happened in my new town of Kirkwood, Missouri.

February 2008 was when the shooting happened.

That was also an election year.

I joined with other community members to talk across race, ethnicity, age, gender, and location.

Oh those days of people still innocently thinking the good.

When African American kids were marginalized in what looked like a literal Mason-Dixon Line in the high school. The Atlas kids, the ones who needed more educational attention despite growing up in this somewhat affluent suburban school system. Well, they mostly came from Meacham Park and their parents may have been tired of fighting the then all white school board. 

White and claiming to be liberal, but white still.

With one Black woman principal who had her little kingdom of this program and the Black Achievement Awards.

Then along came me, idealistic, hopeful, insightful, prophetic, actionable.

There were community groups that I became engaged with that examined the redlining history of the town, the ways that historic African American land - Kentuckytown and Tennessee Town, for example, had been swindled away with the annexation.

Resentment still filled the air of the few remaining families who were able to eek out a deal to keep a semblance of their family heritage where generations had grown.

Meacham Park should have been a town, but it was unincorporated.

Like a lot of historically African American communities, they were taken over by the more powerful city government of mostly white capitalist. The principal of the high school was a member of the Chamber of Commerce. Conflict of interest, much?

But there was still somewhat a sense of community. All the schools had the same red & white color. People took pride in coming from Kirkwood. There were progressive, liberal whites who wrestled with the history of neglect and complacency. There is still a weekly protest on Tuesdays and Saturdays. Still standing up for Black lives.

I remember being in this atmosphere and looking forward, not just in Kirkwood, but the whole state and nation.  

There were efforts to get people engaged in the school board and not just for a crisis. I tried to start a couple after-school study groups to help African American students not just be marginalized to Atlas. Now, not all of them were in that program, like me, there were Black people who moved to Kirkwood who were without historical identity to Meacham Park. Most came from other cities and lived on the other side of the railroad track. African American people had always lived over there also.

Divide.

But that is also a tactic.

Efforts to get people to see their issues were similar were always met with suspicion of the other.

Perhaps that is the same as what is happening today in America, despite the strikes we have seen all summer, there are still groups that do not realize their enemy is not the Black or Brown or even White person who lives down the street.

It is larger and more nefarious.

When I was sounding the alarm and trying to get people to realize their vote mattered beyond just the Presidential Election, that, incidentally, had people literally walking to the polling place. There were lines around the corner at 6 o'clock in the morning in November 2008 when the nation elected the first Black President.

But I tried to get people to realize it was their local that made an impact in their lives.

People wore their "I voted" sticker, some even went to the inauguration...and...then...got...comfortable.

2013 happened and some woke up.

2014 happened and some took to the streets.

2016 happened and some paid attention.

2020 happened and some realized.

America is in trouble.

Deep, systemic, almost irreversible trouble.

Unless the collective We, The People, realize this.

Much like that idyllic town my husband and I moved to in 2007. I was in Mocha Moms, raising the last of the kids, the girls were just emerging from being toddlers. I was writing, taking on some consulting projects, but just settling in to this cute quiet place.

Waking up to things happening in the world around you is not always easy or comfortable.

Yes, I always voted in every election.

Yes, I was as involved as my former brand and marketing career allowed me.

But no, I hadn't been to a school board meeting. 

I was like a lot of working parents, just believed my children were getting the best of what they needed. Now, to be fair, I lived in a "good" school district and my husband, the university professor and researcher at the time, did all the interactions for the sons. One was in middle school, the other two were bookends in elementary school, and well, when we went there, the girls were just a dream. So we just moved and grooved.

There weren't book bans in 2000. Or crazy white moms trying to erase Black history. Well, to be fair, there wasn't Black history being taught in schools except for the obligatory mention of King and Parks.

But my family didn't worry about that, our sons were surrounded by Black history in our home.

We took the stance of what my late father taught me, we didn't rely on the schools to tell us about America.

Not everyone grew up that way.

This was long before the Internet took over every part of life and when phones were still flipping, still costing minutes, and a camera was one you held in your hand. I still have the VHS tapes of the video camera my husband used to document moments of our life.

I get the want of a simpler time.

Before 9-11.

When I was working at dream job making big money looking out on the horizon as a boy mom and wondering what this new century would bring. 

I understand the fear that some may feel about the way the world has been rapidly changing.

Technology accelerated that change when smart phones and social media brought instant everything into our homes. 

It was information overload and some of that information showed up in harmful ways.

The past twenty-three years have given us a terrorist attack on our own soil, a war that lasted throughout the majority of the lifetime of my two daughters, economic unrest, domestic terrorism, more Black and Brown people being killed by police, protest, political chaos, unaffordable rents, homelessness, desperation-as-crime, health crisis, a global pandemic, educational apartheid, and the never ending systemic racism, to just name a few.

I get it, it is exhausting to think about.

Makes you want to just get to a quiet cabin in the woods along the lake with a book and a latte and just wait it out. Or maybe that is just me.

Pining for a time of respect, honor, decency.

Not when a fraudster is on trial and still inciting violence like the violence he incited because his spoiled brattiness couldn't take losing.

Not when Nazi-types are walking the streets and running for mayors in cities - openly - and the media is trying to figure out if the current President, who is right-siding the economy and cleaning up the ineptitude of the buffoon, is too old to run.

Not when fear is stoked more than faith, hope, and love.

America is in trouble.

But she doesn't have to stay that way.

Like the town I lived in when the people who thought "we are not like that" found out that "yes, we are" and then set out to have difficult conversations to make changes, it is possible to get past this.

We have to see this for what it is.

We are far beyond 1930.

We are in deep danger.

This is the year to save the democracy and any semblance of hope for my grandsons.

It is just that dire.

To be awake and aware is exhausting.

I'm not in that small-ish town anymore.

But I am fully engaged and hope that everyone else wakes up. Especially for African Americans who are the ethnic group with the target on our backs because all of draconian policies they are coming up with are to erase any gains of the last sixty years.

That is why they went after Affirmative Action and why one dude has his life-intention to stop Black people from helping Black people.

That is why in Texas two oligarchs and multi-millionaires are buying up politicians, organizing PACS, and oh yeah, are pastors with a bully pulpit to push their great replacement theory rhetoric.

That is why in Tennessee they are stopping the Black elected officials from doing their job and have literally Nazi flags at a Mayoral town debate.

What do we do?

We use our voice.

See, the biggest thing about all this is that the bullies try to scare people into silence, into believing they have no power.

You do, we do, I do.

Use it.

You do not have to give in to the fear.

That immigrant, that homeless person, that striking union worker, that Black kids in school - they are not the ones trying to take anything away from you.

Look at the ones who are trying to amass power for the sake of power, for authoritarianism, for power, for control.

If they beat you, me, us down to nothing, if they stop you, me, us from learning and reading and thinking, if they take away the arts and creativity and wonder and joy - then all that is left are drones, robotic type people who just go along. Sounds like 1984 doesn't it?

We are in the times the historians, writers, scribes, thinkers, artists and others have tried to warn us about.

Wake up.

And then, do something.

Anything, one thing. Just one thing to more toward love and humanity.

Evil only has power if you let it.

We don't have to let it be so.

So if they call be bougie and radical or "just too much," so be it, I would rather be that than asleep and wake up one day to my daughters and sons and grandsons in a space that my ancestors fought to leave.

We can do something.

If we are brave.

In Praise of Jasmine "Tell It Like It Is" Crockett from Texas or Black American Women Just Tired of the Mess

 If you were like me, or maybe not, you were somewhat glued in to the ever-increasing-drama of a government shut down.

For days on end, weeks, months, even, the news kept giving us the drama of a "will they or won't they" about the MAGA republicans attempt to shut down the government in service of their overlord, the 91-indicted, commercial fraud, sexist, racist, empty vessel tyrant wannabe dictator who is only trying to save his own skin. They were capitulating over and over and their speaker was just the 15-vote weak-willed one who couldn't hold it together.

Well, except to try to blame the Democrats and the Senate when Civics 101 means that laws are passed in the Congress first and then voted on in the Senate before they are signed by the President. Didn't anyone else grow up with "It's Just a Bill trying to make it to Capitol Hill" Where is Schoolhouse Rock when you need it.

Then, instead of being the leader and not just a MWM with a title, McCarthy let these MAGAhattypes bring an impeachment hearing tying up precious hours that could have been used ironing out a budget deal.A hearing that even their own constituents said had zero evidence about wrongdoing on the part of President Joe Biden. 

Meanwhile, judge after judge was acting on behalf of the people of the country by finding fraud in New York and essentially ordering the dissolution of the inflated fake enterprise that had every tinymindedwannabe thinking that because they shared Wonderbreadskin, they would one day, hopefully, maybe, be a billionaire, except, he never did anything to earn it or be it. But they could hope, and then the judge after judge, from state to state, dashed those hopes to leave the only thing they could resort to - being keyboard bullies. Talks of "retribution" were uttered over and over, he was trying to stir up the same violence that led to January 6.

In all of this, the media was reporting on it and only a few were calling the card and telling the truth. 

We can't be numb to this, can't be exhausted by all of this, can't be anesthetized to the vitriol. We have to feel it, let it keep us alert. The democracy is on the line.

Just when some of us, well, I, was thinking that no one was paying attention...along came Representative Jasmine Crockett from the Great State of Texas.

This junior representative walked into those chambers with all the ancestors and the spirit of Sojourner and Ida and Mary and all the foremothers who shouted for justice. She wasn't going to demure to the chamber and the OWM in the room. Sista came in prepared.

So it was at the wasting-the-tax-payer-dime that she reminded them that there was a twice-impeached candidate who did commit actual crimes who had the nation's very secrets in the "shitter" because he had such little disregard to the rule of law, the full faith and integrity of the United States, and wanted to destroy this nation in favor of the little dictator he admires. She was fast and fiery in her speech, knew that she was there to fight for her constituency and not just capitulate to these in the power seats.

These are not normal times that we are living in.

Nothing about this is normal and we are way past the time of tip-toeing around anyone's bruised feelings for calling out the blatant racism that is behind literally everything that has been happening in the last year or so.

The book bans? Racism.

That Florida no-personality-joke? Racism.

The dude trying to stop Black women from giving their own money to other Black women? Racism.

The too-to-count-felony-charged-dude-out-on-bail? Racism.

Every safety net they wanted to end? Racism.

Their singular aim, even at the detriment of their own ethnicity is based solely on the original sin of this country and it is past time to call it what it is.

There are some brave souls who are standing up to the bullies and calling a space a space.

What they fear, after they realized they wouldn't make as much money as their fear could hold, they want to make an apartheid state of the fast browning nation. That is why they were salivating at the Texas governor's brutal chain-saws-in-the-river kind of tactics or the Florida and Texas governors bussing hundreds of migrants to New York City or Martha's Vineyard.

In all that they do, cloaked in their fear, they do with racism in mind. 

On the land they stole but are sure to have a naming-ceremony, they only want the people who look like them. That is at the crux of the mean-spiritedness of the actions of that fake-mogul-reality-TV-"star" whose tiny bruised ego couldn't take it when a Black man President ribbed him at the Press Conference dinner over a decade ago. He is vengeful and found some other tiny-hearted-tiny-handed-tiny-souled other incel-bully-patriarhy-types who would rally around him as their second-coming and storm the capital in hopes of restoring their milk toast vision of the nation.

It was more than enough of enough and finally, after so many thinkers, and people like April Ryan, holding it down in the Press Rooms as the only one, were writing, telling, talking about this danger, But after all of this, some are finally listening. 

The nation is about to implode if people keep thinking this is just politics-as-usual or just the other side of the aisle thinking or just liberal-vs-conservative. It is more than tat.

And it is people like Representative Jamie Crockett who is using all her tell-it-like-it-is Blackwomanhadtobetwiceasgoodandprepared self, to literally try to save this nation from itself.

So tonight, on this October 1st, this Sunday with the warmer-than-usual weather in the Northeast, I stop to sing a praise song to this young woman. 

She is not the only one, there are others in the wings, in law schools, in classrooms, in newsrooms, in all walks of life, who are working hard to try to make this country live into her promise of what she can be.

I have hope.

Hope that the rest of them will not give into the bullies who are trying to silence women and put mothers in jail for caring for the reproductive choice of their daughters. Hope that the people in this country will realize that it is not just the presidential election that matters but every last civil servant that requires our vote. That to be engaged matters, even if it is tiring, exhausting, and infuriating. 

Let that fuel us, in the areas of our work, let it makes us want to keep learning and writing and making it better and yes, if we have to, calling out the crap in the shitter, if that is what it will take.

Thank you, Representative Crockett, for not standing back and playing the demure-just-happy-be-here or not embarrassing the nation like others in the chamber. Thank you for fighting for the soul of the nation.

May it inspire the others to find their voice and use it.