Right now, I sit in a 100+ year old building, in the old
offices of the 1930s CIO, in the office of Mr Dick Law, a Finnish lawyer and organizer whose wife Laura would be murdered in the wake of both
of their activism over half a century ago. Her murder was never solved. By happenstance, that office is now rented by Chaplains.
I am looking over a tired old town, one of many in these
United and divided States. Dozens of people living on the streets are visible,
walking up and down the streets. It was a cold night last night. The pharmacy looks
almost new and some of the houses of the hill look passable, but the rest of
the town is full of gutted buildings and tired projects.
The people here are not really what they are stereotyped to
be by the AP newspaper articles and national pundits. They are mostly working
class and poor, sons and daughters of union workers, in a blue dog democrat
town turning red for lack of better options. They are Native and majority
white, but our children are increasingly brown as immigration continues to the
area. Our opinions are diverse and often, we are thrown together for survival,
whether we like it or not.
We are stubbornly stuck in the crosshairs of global
capitalism; abandoned by an extractive industry that still owns the majority of
the land, with no replacement economy except for drugs and prisons. The forests
are young after years of overharvesting, the coasts have been overfished
(although we still bring in sizable harvests), and we are all a little bit
tired. Environmentalists love to visit the area to take pictures of its amazing
beauty, but care little for the people who also are part of the ecosystem.
While a few Seattle based bands mock the town of Aberdeen, not many people
think of the place beyond “the city you drive through to get to the beach.”
We have been abandoned by capital; we have been abandoned by
politicians; we are mocked by pundits.
We have also been abandoned by organizers.
The left loves to mire itself in constant self reflection.
Constant facebook posts about intentions and who did things right. Constant
one-upmanship around identity politics.
Constant critique of anyone doing anything. Constant arguing around protest: is
it good or not, who should lead it, how should you
get arrested, and the list goes on. Constant smug comments critiquing every
single thing. Everyone is vying to be the expert while everyone agrees that
movements should be ‘leaderless.’ Everyone wants autonomy, no one wants to
follow. Everyone wants individual expression, everyone needs to be right. We
argue endlessly about language and tactic.
And here in the old office above Heron Street, I am tired of
listening. To all of it, honestly.
Because while all the pundits and self proclaimed experts
and leaderless movement builders are talking and arguing and endlessly
extrapolating, my people are dying. I’ve buried 15 people or so in the last
year. The oldest was in his 50s. The youngest was 24. Poverty and the drug
economy and abandonment have created generations of trauma and death in my
community. All of the kids I work with are in and out of jail, and many started
their jail career at 10 or 11. The
native nations of this community are mired in deep poverty and camps of the
forgotten and addicted grow along our riverbanks. White kids in my generation
turned to white power gangs and ran drugs; the next generation are joining well networked gangs to find some sense of survival and way forward
on the street. The opiate crisis has slammed this community and too many of
those I bury are from overdose; after all, we have twice the state average of
overdose death.
So to the white, liberal, urban organizers:
Do something.
Anything.
Don’t pretend that your identity crises and critiques and
endless self reflection are helping anything, are building anything.
Ground yourself in a real community; a flesh and blood one,
where people make mistakes, where white power gang members and Surenos meet and
shake hands, where homophobes go to their daughter’s gay wedding and clap,
where Trump voters and anarchists build homes together.
Shut up. Please.
In my community, and in communities like mine all over a
nation that is now nearly 50% low income and poor, there are leaders. They are
raising kids and they are in jail and they are stocking the supermarket and
they are in all the places that no one looks for leaders. Because all those
terrible things I listed above are true, but not the whole story. Out of the
pain and darkness, leaders are arising and they will change the world.
Listen to them.
They really do have something to say.
Step out of your silos—whether those silos are universities,
hipster coffee bars, an institutional church—those places meant to be white and
cultured and upper crust. Stop talking to each other. See the world around you.
Listen to the people you are used to talking about.
And, and, there are some things we could really use from
you.
Remember how the right built up to the moment we are at
right now for 35 years? Remember the jail ministries and the protests and the
coffee table conversations and the popular books and magazines and the devotionals? (I do) We’ve got some catching up to do.
Start doing some of those things.
We need Bible commentaries—popular ones that can go on the
shelf in the local bookstore and in jails—that tell people that Jesus was on
the side of poor and struggling people. We need devotionals that address our
trauma and our loss and our pain and tell us God is on our side. We need to
hear from others who have dealt with trauma, addiction, and homelessness, but
we also need Bible scholars to tell us that there are ways to read the Bible
that can give us hope. We need to hear that God is against racism, materialism,
and militarism. We need to hear about a God who takes sides. We need think
tanks, people, think tanks of scholars (ones educated in universities and ones
educated by the hard knock life) who can write magazines and who can put out
solid web information, who can analyze our political and economic situation. We need some external acknowledgement of our collective trauma.
Sometimes, we need you to show up to let us know we are not
alone. Build relationships. Sometimes, we need you to help fundraise for local efforts, or to assist us
with your expertise in law or science or economics as we seek to build a better
world, as we seek to transfer wealth back into our community, as we seek to end
the street to jail pipeline. If you are from a small, abandoned community,
consider returning to one, stymying the brain drain poor communities face when
all their brilliant lawyers and doctors leave town for better fields.
Protest when you want, but don’t stop there. Continue your
internal dialogues on facebook if you need to, but please, please, do
something. Listen. Write. Come. Act.
From here in the office on Heron Street, in the long shadow
cast by ghosts of radical, murdered organizers, surrounded by poverty and
death, surrounded by new leaders and abiding hope, we are asking you to stop
talking to each other for a moment, turn and listen, and act.
