Social Awareness: How much? How Soon? Too Much?

I've been reading through old posts of mine on the topics of social justice and taking action. I grew up going to protests and being politically active. My parents talked to me about the world, or at least that's what I remember. When I was in first grade, my friend and I woke up early one Saturday and hand made as many flyers as we could with a six-year-old's attention span. Then we put 8.5 x 11 "Ronald Reagan Sucks" leaflets in all the mailboxes on our block. As an adult, I would refer to this as "canvassing for Mondale."

When I reached 5th grade, I really was canvassing. I spent two years working on the GE boycott with I.N.F.A.C.T. I spent two years setting up an ironing board, selling buttons, collecting signatures. I even flew out to a GE shareholders meeting in Milwaukee for a direct action. I spoke to the city council about making Oakland a nuclear free zone. I joined an environmental group that held a lot of meetings and a couple retreats and ended up hosting an arts event for kids in San Francisco, but I'm not sure we did anything for the environment.

By the time I got to high school, I was burnt out on political movements. I became a typical Gen X cynic. I marched against the first Iraq war and Prop 187, but if I'm being honest, I was just happy to be ditching class. Rodney King, OJ, I stayed home. I voted. I kept myself abreast of what was going on in the world, but I didn't get involved outside of going to a couple protests against police brutality in 2002 where I got hit by a rubber bullet and faced down police that charged the crowd on horseback. I'll admit, that felt pretty badass.

When we had kids we half made a decision to not shield them from the world or our lives. The other half is that I think we just can't help ourselves. T and I are not the quiet, reserved, stoic type of people. We talk a lot. Like, a lot. People used to remark that our kids were "so verbal." Well yeah, mom and dad never shut up so they hear a lot of words, and a great many of those words are about politics.
I've always struggled with finding the line between making sure my kids know about the world and about our lives so they won't be surprised by things that happen, and telling them more than their developing minds are ready to process. I don't know what the bigger trauma could be, the shock of having things happen without warning, or the anxiety of knowing too many possibilities.

Lou, 2015

We took the kids to Obama's second inauguration in 2013. We thought it was an important moment. Buddy was four, Lou was two. Neither of them remember it. The next year, we went to Ferguson. Buddy was five, Lou was three. They don't remember that either. In 2015, it was the Million Moms March in D.C. Each of these included conversations about why we were going, the precipitating events and the desired outcomes. We talked about race. We talked about policing. I taught them the things I had been taught about how to survive encounters with law enforcement, even after I realized that their inherited genetic whiteness would make these lessons moot.

Then came the 2016 election and the beginning of years of having to explain new uncomfortable things to the kids about racism and sexism and homophobia and hate crimes. There were marches for women and pride and detention centers. During this, maybe bolstered by it and our discussions of marriage equality, Lou came out as transgender. If this is the one benefit of over sharing with the kids, it'll all be worth it.

Now it's 2020 and we're in the middle of a pandemic and a period of civil unrest. T is back to taking to the streets every night to protest. Lou is back to making protest signs. Xe has a strong sense of right and wrong and all xe wants in the world is for people to be fair. Xe thirsts for justice, which makes sense as xir survival depends on a just and fair world. So we've talked about George Floyd. Just like we talked about Tamir Rice and Sandra Bland and Trayvon Martin and Philando Castille and so many others. Lou was excited to be able to ride in the Oakland Car Caravan protest. Everything seemed fine until that night. After the kids were in bed, T commented that maybe we've told them too much. She said that Lou and Yo now hated the police and were afraid of them and were afraid for us. They were afraid the police would kill us. They were worried about T going out to protest. Not long after, Lou emerged from xir bedroom unable to sleep, wracked with anxiety over police brutality. A few weeks later, a Black Lives Matter protest passed by the busy cross street near our house. The kids wanted to go down to the corner to hold signs and show support. As the main body of the march drew closer, police officers positioned themselves to block cross traffic ahead of the marchers. They were keeping the marchers safe. When Lou saw the police blocking our street on either side of the route, xe turned pale and started to retreat back to our house. Xe was convinced the police were there to hurt people. 

I'm wary of most police officers, but I can't bring myself to hate the police as a whole. I spent the spring of 2017 trying to become a police officer. While I acknowledge the systemic problems of policing as a whole, though I have been a victim of police violence, I just can't hate everyone who wears the uniform. This inability to hate doesn't stop me from being wary of any individual officer. I still do all the things I was taught growing up to make sure I get through police encounters alive. I support Black Lives Matter and I'm terrified of the Thin Blue Line crowd. I also don't want my kids, who by the privilege of their complexions will never need to fear a routine stop, to hate the police or fear them to point where they won't ask for help when they need it. I do want them to understand when to call the police and when to just leave things be. I want them to understand everything that calling the police really means and everything that could result. I don't want them to come to me at 25, seeing an unjust world and telling me, "Daddy, did you even know this stuff happens?" And I would have answer, "Yes." Because if I know then why wouldn't I tell them. If not to keep them safe, then to raise conscious, aware white looking secretly Latino-Asian allies?

It took some convincing, but Lou was persuaded to stay on the corner with us. I wanted xir to understand a couple things. First, that the police were not there to hurt people. Second, that there are things are worth standing up for, even when there's danger. I admit, that's a hard line to figure out. Whether to stand in the face of oppressive force, how much and for how long is dependent on so many factors I couldn't begin to try to explain them. I don't want T or the kids to stubbornly allow themselves to be beaten or gassed or worse. I also want them to start developing a sense for when to stay and when to leave. I want them to recognize danger rather than presume it (or on the other side, presume safety when it isn't real). I want them to be brave without being foolish. I want them to be cautious without being afraid. I want them to understand the world so they're not surprised by it. 

The thing I'm still not sure of is how much, how soon?

We Still Have Work to Do

My in-laws are visiting, which is great for the kids. They are good people and adoring grandparents. They bring out the best in the kids. Like many grandparents they come bearing gifts. Usually things from the posh Goodwills of the Phoenix suburbs. Both kids, but especially The Boy, have been into little green army men and toys like that. They have sets from the Civil War, both World Wars, and even the Star Wars. This time grandma brought what she described to me as "cowboys and Indians." I'll be honest, I had mixed feelings about that, which were rapidly leaning towards uneasiness. We've been talking to the kids about the problems with the Washington football team's name and I wasn't sure how that message would jibe with plastic cowboys fighting plastic Indians.

Maybe he's an Arsenio Hall fan

Lucky for me, as often happens, the kid bailed me out. He looked at the plastic tube of figures and said, "Oh, it looks like Native Americans." I understand there's still some discussion among native people about what they want to be called but for now "Native Americans" seems like the safest way to go so I was relieved. Looking at them, and the sleeve of "cowboys" it struck me that it was really a set of "Pioneers and Native Americans" and not the traditional cowboys and Indians I had grown up with. I'm sure some of my native friends might tell me that's not really any different, and I understand that perspective. As a toy though the primary difference is that they were all in nonviolent poses. Some of the figures had bows or rifles, but they weren't pointing them at anything, so it was easy to label them as hunters. The one that looked the most war-like was easily dismissed by another observation from The Boy, "Hey, he looks like he's celebrating something." Indeed, maybe a touchdown? (No? Not funny? Sorry.)

I've written before about social consciousness being a moving target with kids. It seems like for every victory they soon show you where the gaps in their knowledge remain. Sure enough, The Boy's next comment caught me a bit off guard. He turned to his sister and said, "This is how we imagine them looking from a long time ago." Um...hmmm. Now of course these particular figures are to some extent the product of someone's imagination. They are labeled as "Powhatan Indians" but I have no idea how accurate the representation is, but I hope they're somewhat accurate. At least it's a real tribe. But that's not what The Boy was saying. He was repeating a line he'd heard from me when we saw depictions of cave men at the natural history museum. We'd identified a gap in his understanding of America's complicated and horrifying history with native people. "Well no bud, we actually know what they look like because they are still around. Also, there were photographs back then. Native Americans aren't gone buddy, they're still here today." He replied without looking up from his play, "Oh, OK dad. Cool."

Cool indeed. We didn't get into the plight or politics surrounding modern native people. We'll get into it another time I'm sure. For now it was enough to have him understand that Native Americans are not relegated to history. It's enough for him to realize that there is more to know and more to explore. For now I'm happy to see him playing with the pioneers and Native Americans as peaceful contemporaries in his make believe world. Even if he's playing out a peace that never really happened, at least he's able to imagine it thanks to a re-imaging of a toy that, when I was a kid, was one-hundred percent based on conflict. It's a step in the right direction in terms of seeing people as people and not as adversaries or worse, as fictional or extinct. It's enough that once again the kids were able to show me where I had yet to teach them about our world. We still have work to do.

Peaceful pioneers and Native Americans. And a Samurai for some reason.

Mother's Day of Action

Over the years that we've been together my wife has become increasingly interested in social justice. We sometimes joke that it was dating a tan-man that started her on this path, but the truth is it was always there. Since the events in Ferguson last year T has felt a stronger pull to go out and do what she can to try to help. This has primarily manifested in attending rallies and marches.

I have tried to support her as best I can. This past summer we drove 17 hours to Ferguson to join a march. Most of my support has been less dramatic. Often I do not attend the rallies, instead I support her by holding down the fort at home so she can go out.

This year T said that what she wanted for Mother's Day was to join the Million Moms March. So we did. The march was led by a group of mothers who had lost children to police violence, and some who had lost children to other gun violence. We rallied in the park, then marched down to the Department of Justice where the mothers presented a DOJ representative with a list of demands.

As we marched back to the park we witnessed an interaction that presented a perfect capsule for the divide in race and class relations in America. An African-American woman who had lost a family member in a police shooting was marching and speaking into a bull horn. She was giving the world her vision for the future and her demands of the justice system. There were a few other rallies and gatherings downtown today as well, including one along our parade route that included ringing a bell and reading out the names of people killed in the Vietnam War. It was a coincidence of timing that our march passed by the war memorial during the reading of the names.

All of a sudden an elderly white woman materialized in our midst. Her presence wasn't odd because she was white, or because she was older, it was diverse crowd. It was odd because of how she was moving, in the opposite direction of the marchers, sometimes turning around as if looking for someone. She seized upon the the woman with the bull horn, imploring her, "Please! Please be quiet! Stop it! This is a memorial!"

The woman with the bull horn wasn't having it. Not today, not during this march where people held signs that read "White silence = white compliance." She turned on the elderly woman and said, "Don't you touch me. Don't you talk to me. I will not be silent. You are not a black woman. You don't have to worry about them shooting your son down in the street. They shot my family down in the street. You're safe. Your kids are safe. Now get out of my way."

I wondered if this woman from the memorial didn't have to worry about her son being killed by police because she's white, or because her son had already been killed in Vietnam. That's our problem. We often fail to see that the kid killed in Vietnam 40 years ago, and the kid killed in Baltimore last month were killed by the same system. What the woman from the memorial may not realize is that the interruption of her moment is exactly what people mean when they cry out "No justice, no peace!" That phrase isn't a call to riot. It is a reminder that the disruption of other people's lives is sometimes the only way to get their attention. It isn't callous disrespect, it's both the calculated and collateral disruption of things other people take for granted.

I'll admit that I'm not totally convinced about how much change these rallies lead to. Not that I have any better ideas for those of us who do not roam the halls of power other than the old stand by of making sure we get out and vote. But I do see value in my wife and my family attending these rallies.

Other than my wife being able to fulfill her obligation to her beliefs I think these rallies are great educational opportunities for the kids. It would be easy to read that statement with cynicism and say that I am exploiting these events for disaster-tourism-home-schooler-field-trips. I don't think I am. I want my kids to see what I saw when I was kid growing going to marches in Berkeley.

I want them to see that diverse people can and will come together to rally behind an issue they feel is important. I want them to hear the stories of people who have been affected by violence. I want them to meet the people behind the news clips. I want them exposed to political action that extends away from the ballot box. I want them to see that all of these people came together for a common cause. Black women from Missouri and Maryland and Illinois, a group of white mothers pushing strollers and carrying signs that read "Tykes and Dykes for Justice," people in wheel chairs and walkers, all joining together to support a cause.

Most of all I want them to see that on a day during a weekend when she could have asked to do anything, their mother wanted to spend her time trying to help others. I want my children to follow an example that she is providing that I otherwise would not, at least not in this way.  I want them to see that the most important things they can give to others is their time, and their presence, and their passion.

I want them to see that Mother's Day isn't just about thanking mom for what she does for the family. It's about following her lead in what she does for the community.