In Solidarity

Today I read an article that reported 72 people were shot in Chicago during the 4th of July weekend and 12 of those people were killed.  That weekend of staggering violence prompted an emergency summit on gun violence in Chicago: http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/07/25/gun-violence-in-chicago-black-leaders-convene-emergency-summit/.  As of Wednesday (7/24/13) there have been 226 murders this year in the city of Chicago.  As of today there now have been at least 227 murders.  For those of you familiar with National Public Radio’s This American Life (TAL), you may have heard the story documenting the lives of students attending Harper High School, where last year alone 29 students were shot.  TAL reporters spent... “five months at Harper High School in Chicago, to get a sense of what it means to live in the midst of all this gun violence, how teens and adults navigate a world of funerals and Homecoming dances.”  http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/487/harper-high-school-part-one.  This evening TAL reported, “a sophomore named Darryl Green was found dead behind an abandoned building just four blocks west of the school. Chicago Police and the medical examiner’s office say he’d been killed by a gunshot wound to the head. He was 17. “  

When I left work tonight, I stopped by a neighborhood barbecue hosted by the on-line school located on the other side of the building from my office.  Several students I work with also attended the event.  Additionally, there was a baby-faced 16 year old student who looked like any other teenager, except for the nervous energy he exuded as he paced back and forth in front of the school.  A rival gang in the area, has put a hit out on him.  They’ve ordered him dead.  While people were eating hot dogs and eagerly waiting to see if their raffle ticket would be drawn for a gift card to the nearby grocery store, I noticed it.  We were being stalked.  In all my years of working with youth in communities with a high concentration of gangs, this was the first time the hair on the back of my neck stood up from the danger in the air.  For the fist time ever, I briefly felt the uneasiness that most of the young people I work with feel daily. Older teenage boys slowly walked by in groups of 2 and 3, from all sides of the block.  Cars rolled by, pausing for long dramatic stares.  Students I typically only see in leadership roles were on high alert applying their leadership skills in a different way, scanning the streets for approaching enemies without missing a beat in conversation.

I surveyed the scene, people were sitting at tables, old and young.  Many of them looked weathered from a life of struggle.  There were young children running around laughing, several of whom were younger siblings of students I’ve known for many years. I often make lunch for these children for during the long summer days and I’ve grown to care about them like family.  Then, as if I didn’t have control of my own thoughts, I imagined it, I imagined a shooting breaking out, right there on the corner where I was standing, where a community was finding respite from the heat and I wanted to leave.  The risk of violence was so close I could taste it and yet the only thing I was swallowing was my privilege.  I could get in my car and drive away.  I would be safe and I could focus on my plans to run in the mountains and go climbing over the weekend.  Instead, I chose to stay, at least for a little while, and stand in solidarity with a community that can’t leave.

I don’t understand a world where the lives of young people are not all valued. I don’t know how to reconcile the national coverage mass shootings in white, affluent communities receive that inspire waves of overwhelming support while shootings that occur en masse in low-income black and latino communities are normalized.  I feel helpless, sad, and angry.  This kind of violence is a direct consequence of white privilege, economic privilege, and institutional racism.  I don’t understand why we are not all in the streets, outraged and protesting until young lives are no longer a casualty of this war.

A Tibetan Heart

I was gone just 3 weeks, but I lived a lifetime during those 3 weeks and returned home with peacefulness rooting from the center of my core.  My days were filled with getting reacquainted with old friends, meeting new friends, monasteries, Tibetan farmhouses, monks, festivals, children, hard work, and momos.  Returning to Tibet feels like coming home.  Yet, being in Tibet is a paradox. It is the most spiritual of all places, but the fear of oppression is palpable...

After the Chinese invasion, more than 6,000 monasteries were destroyed in Tibet. 

I didn’t need to speak Mandarin to understand the cab driver was belittling my friend in the front seat, who had quickly become like a sister to me.  Outrage began to rise through me, but I resisted the urge to step in and say something.  I sat silently, not because I couldn’t speak the language; I was confident I could convey my indignation with just the tone of my voice.  Instead, I sat silently because the law was not on our side. I felt like I was bound and gagged in the backseat.  Confronting the cab driver would only create problems for my friend.  

She looked over her shoulder with an apologetic expression and explained, the driver took us to the wrong destination and insisted it was her mistake.  First he told her, “you minorities shouldn’t take cabs...you should get out and catch the bus because you don’t have the money to pay for this,” insinuating my friend was trying to manipulate the driver to avoid paying for the cab ride.  After speaking with the person working at the front desk of our hotel, who gave him the same directions as did my friend, the driver said, “it’s your tones...you don’t speak clearly enough. I couldn’t understand you.”  In the same breath he insisted she would have to pay the full fare, more than double the rate it would have otherwise cost because it was her fault he got lost.

   

It is estimated that one million Tibetans have died as a result of the Chinese occupation, through imprisonment, torture and executions. 

When we arrived at or hotel, we got out of the taxi and my friend paid the driver.  I offered to cover the fare, but she wouldn’t allow this, explaining she would get reimbursed by the NGO that employs her.  I was frustrated and uncomfortable with my inherent helplessness.  I am not accustomed to being a bystander when witnessing racism. I asked my friend how she copes with being passive and silent while encountering prejudice daily.  I was trying to understand another way.  My friend surprised me by saying, “this makes me so angry.”  I had not previously heard my Tibetan friends discuss their anger.  They all seem so good at letting go of attachment, I just assumed they had mastered not feeling angry.  My friend explained that in spite of her anger, she finds compassion for the Chinese cab driver because reacting to him will not create change, particularly in China’s political climate. 

She went on to tell me a story from her childhood about her mother, who she described as “hot headed.”  Her mother was gathering water in a bucket when a Chinese man walked by kicked the bucket over.  Her mother was so angered by this, she went to his home and confronted the man in front of his family.  The man called the police and she was arrested.  My friend learned at an early age the consequences of standing up for her rights in China.  She admitted she doesn’t want to stay “here,” in Chengdu.  She would rather return to her home in Lhasa to be with her mother; in a place that feels more welcoming, but for now she says she is gaining experience.

My friend has travelled a great distance for this "experience."  She walked across the Himalayas at age 8 to get an education in India. She went back to Tibet by walking across the Himalayas again at 18, and she was locked up after getting caught crossing the boarder home.  Yet along the way she did not lose her Tibetan heart.

“It is lack of love for ourselves that inhibits our compassion toward others.  If we make friends with ourselves, then there is no obstacle to opening our hearts and minds to others.”