The night we walk home past the grave of the first American killed in the Revolution

MMC :: in June 1, 2020 :: in Protests :: 1 comment

It was one of those moments that are such that I will never forget where I was when it happened: Sitting on the couch. I was on the left, Eva was on the right, and Matthias was in the chair playing Fortnite (killing it, obviously). I was scrolling through the headlines that are Twitter moments. It was Tuesday. 

I read the news and something about it just sucker-punched me in the gut. I couldn’t mask my response, and Matthias immediately picked up that something was wrong. I didn’t want to disturb Eva, so when he asked me if everything was all right all I could think to do was to say, ‘I just heard some bad news; we can talk about it later.’

Later, lying on top of the covers before going to bed, we grapple with the reality of living in a country where bad cops have yet again murdered an innocent Black man, where this serves as a constant reminder that Matthias isn’t safe on his own, that millions of Black men and women aren’t safe on their own, or even asleep in their own beds. Playing video games with their nephews on their own couches. In their own backyards. Where all of the signals say, ‘ You don’t belong here,’ even right in their own home. 

It was a long week, and I get to practice not being able to help. Not being able to do anything. Not being able to be there for Matthias when what he needs is to talk to another Black person, or at least to another non-white person. To practice looking like the enemy in his own house—in his own bed. Sitting with the shittiness. What can you do but apologise, but comfort and hold, but support in any desperate way you can, even when it’s not enough, can never be enough? 

I make it worse by just…crying…a lot. My mind wanders to this pandemic, to our racist leadership actively exasperating it, to racism and horrendous responses—and my emotions just sort of well up and spill over in the form of tears. I don’t know how to fix things. I don’t know what to do. I have no plan for this. It’s selfish and I need to learn to regulate my emotions better, or process them with someone other than Matthias, so that he doesn’t feel like he has to suddenly make me his top priory and comfort me, instead of me comforting him. It’s hard when we can’t go anywhere, when we’re just stuck here, together, alone. He should still taken priority regardless. I apologise for absconding with the attention. 

So on Sunday we dress in all black.

I pack accoutrements while he makes a stencil of a murdered George Floyd’s face to raise up as we march. I make a ‘Protest checklist’ shared note for us the same way we have a grocery list, a camping checklist, a beach checklist.

We take the T for the first time since February. 

As we walk the familiar sidewalk to the T, I turn towards Matthias and tell him, for the record, ‘I’m scared. I’m scared of getting COVID. We’ve been so careful, what if I get it and can’t take care of you if you get it?’

Everyone we’ve come into close contact with in this pandemic—everyone we know personally, at least—has been focused on taking the necessary precautions to reduce any risk and keep him safe. He’s immunocompromised and thus high risk. What other high risks should we take? What risks can we afford not to take?

I can’t keep him safe from the bullets of racist bad cops. 

‘I know,’ he comforts me as we walk. 

This is also keeping him safe. This is more important than COVID.

What excuse can I possibly give to our future children for not having marched against racism and inexcusable police brutality in our country? How can they ever trust me when I tell them I want a better world for them?

The T is surreal, in that way when the familiar becomes uncanny. Cordoned off fronts of cars. A hijabi woman who asks us if she can follow us so she doesn’t get lost. Women who ignore the cordons and talk about how they’ve been taking the T every day from their jobs at Whole Foods and this is more people than they’ve seen on it in months. Everyone in masks. Everyone keeping as apart as possible. I’m impressed with the efficiency with which we do this. 

At 18:32, 2 minutes late to whatever is starting at 18:30, we get off at Ruggles—my old stomping ground—and walk towards the protest. We join a crowd that fills the streets and both sidewalks. People we know are here, somewhere; people we know whom we don’t even know are here, are here. 

Where were you?

By the time we’ve marched all the way from Nubian Square to the State House, we’re at the front and’ve found a spot within hearing distance of the megaphone—no sound system—at the top of the steps down which Emily, Katie, Candace and I one roll-stepped on an afternoon in high school when we had come to town. It is impossible to socially distance, but everyone is at least wearing masks. Those who walk close by pass quickly. Sometimes I hold my breath hopefully. We listen to three Black women speak for about an hour before they declare the protest over and ask the crowd to go home.

Matthias wants to stay around. We’ve linked up with his friend Kai, an insightful thespian who fills the air with good energy wherever he goes. I am always elated to see Kai. Together the three of us walk through the Common toward the Park Street T stop and Tremont St. 

The air is full of electricity; we are waiting for a spark. Even during the women’s speeches, there are white kids trying to tear down some temporary fencing or other that is part of some kind of construction site; there are white kids climbing fences and lampposts. I don’t trust them not to destroy everything we are working towards and focusing on here; I don’t trust them not to make this about themselves, as we white people are wont to do. 

We stay for about an hour, long enough to witness a lot of uncanny. 

Even before the right to bear arms, we are guaranteed the right to peaceably assemble.

Congress shall make no law…abridging the…right of the people to peaceably assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. 

United States Constitution, First Amendment

And the Executive branch shall neither. 

We stand near the Park St T stop—somewhere each of us has stood multitudinous times over the past couple decades of our lives. We look to our right, down Tremont, and see the air yellow with dispersing tear gas, down near the Loew’s. Suddenly we hear the boom of a flash-bang in the not-so-distant distance and flinch before scattering with others.

This is where the uncanny really slapped me in the face.

This is my Common. This is all of our Common. This land has stayed here, underfoot, for 400 years belonging to all those Bostonians who walk across it, uncomplaining grass.

There are police officers in riot gear with patches on their upper arms that declare the year of the city’s founding: 1630. There were words on their lips that said they would serve and protect.

Their word is mud.

We are unarmed; they are a military, organised and armed with military-grade weapons.

Think of that: military weapons deployed on American soil against unarmed American civilians, standing on their own land, exercising their first amendment right to peaceably assemble. I can only imagine how much worse it will be once we start exercising our second amendment rights as well.

They are not here to protect us, but to antagonise us; they are not here to serve us, but to sever us.

We find a raised area on which to stand, but move when I point out advancing SWAT teams coming across the Common towards us from back near the State House.

These are our streets; this is literally our common land and has been for 390 years. To be dispelled off it agitated Anne Hutchinson, cast out of Boston for being better than her contemporary men. It does feel good to stand up here and bear witness. 

Once we move, we watch two white boys with skateboards bust open the windows of a cop car, which is eerily satisfying. The police car had been abandoned in the middle of Tremont—perhaps as a decoy, perhaps not. The kids jump on top of it, stomp, trying to break things. Bystanders are apprehensive, not wanting the boys’ selfishness to detract from protesting police brutality, the murder of innocent Black men and women, the unjust justice system. Why is it always white boys.

After an hour we head home. Kai departs for his car; we depart for State only to find the T closed. This seems…counterintuitive…given that authorities are urging everyone to just go home. We’re trying; you’re stopping us. What do you want? We walk all the way to the new North Station, the next station on the Orange line going north that’s open. Fuck elected officials sometimes. I would never trust a man in a crisis.

The Orange line is fairly empty, and we walk the sidewalks back from Malden Center jittery with post-protest energy. Once we get home—safe and sound—we turn on live news for the first time…ever to watch coverage of our so-called violent protests, of our so-called violent protesting. There is destroyed property, sure, but how can that possibly compare to destroyed lives? At least for me, this is an important turning point in witnessing firsthand how the police are the HR of our society: they exist to protect those in power, not those aggrieved; they exist to ensure white comfort, not to protect and serve people of all skin colours. 

Eventually we go to bed, both thinking of what we can do next. It’s never enough. It has to be enough to be able to find peace and equilibrium in living our lives—in our existence being enough, in our existence existing to make things a little bit better for Black people in America, for women, for non-straight people, for non-binary people, for Black trans women. For everyone, but mostly for those for whom we haven’t shown up enough.

Until everyone is equal, as was promised by the cis straight white male slaveowners who founded our country.

Self-evident truths are sometimes so stubbornly not so evident. Of course all people should be treated equally, should have equal protection under the law. It should aggrieve all of us that we are not. An attack on one should be treated as an attack on all, but unfortunately white people and men—and cis straight white American men in particular—are so uncomfortable having their privilege checked that they would take up arms against their fellow citizens to perpetuate their own system of power. 

I cannot wait to dismantle it.