Peace activists gathered in Milwaukee last Thursday evening under a clear night sky, in a park named after a man named King, surrounded by tough streets where young men are routinely gunned down, in an area of Milwaukee hard hit by economic stagnation, a neighborhood where hope was evicted long ago. We gathered in remembrance of a teenage boy in Florida named Trayvon who was murdered while walking in the wrong place, of a young man in Wisconsin named Bo who was killed while hiding on a stranger's porch after escaping a police-raided party, of the named-ones and the loved-ones dying of violence in a culture of violence.
Dramatic shadows danced against the walls of the community center, cast by photo floods from a Fox News cameraman who collected images because now and then a popular tragedy renders Milwaukee's inner-city newsworthy. But this was a beautiful ceremony. PEACE signs were held aloft while libations were poured in reverence to ancestors and the soft yellow glow of candles lit up the faces of children. The gentle chants of pan-Africanism mixed with Christian benediction, call and response, call and response.
A woman spoke movingly of the hard tugs of motherhood, like when your teenage boy goes to the corner store for Skittles, and you sit in fear for sounds of his return. You beseech your son to never reach into the glove compartment if a policeman pulls him over for a brake light that worked when you last checked. You pray that your son keeps his hands visible at all times when the cops are around. You pray that he makes it home tonight through the streets, from the convenience mart to the porch. This woman cries hard and other women circle in to embrace her. There is strength here. You can feel it.
There are also lots of tears, bitter and angry tears. There are no jobs here. There is nothing here. There is no economy. The schools are in disrepair, and now after a year of unprecedented attack, despair. Litter lines the streets. Boards are as common as glass in windows. Where do we locate the problems that have led us here? Where do we find any solutions? There are young leaders of the African American community here. How can we help them?
A Reverend spoke of watching out for our young men and women, of acknowledging anger, but tempering it with care, with affection, with love. He talks of people getting gunned down like animals on the street, of a right to share this sad planet in peace. This is not for dramatic effect, not hyperbole. People murmur assent, talk of victims shot just up the road, of kids struggling against a dark future. This is not an America that many of us know. We need to know America.
I'm glad the Reverend is here. He is deep and wise. Some young men and women, men mostly, from Occupy the Hood speak. These guys are speaking of the absence of adults, the absence of people who might teach them, or help them, or love them. They're too tough to say it that way, but that is what they are saying. Lost boys make angry men. They are getting worked up. Public oratory does that. It is like a snowblower that is hard to start, but once it gets going, it is powerful, throws a lot of stuff, and doesn't stop even when you think you are through. Anger is a glowing thing, a righteous thing, refracting sparks and shards of light. It is a small animal awaiting the night when it grows in dream proportions.
According to the story, this Florida boy, Trayvon Martin, lived his last two minutes between a phone call and a gun shot. What kind of animal fear lay huddled as his stalker pounced and killed, mercilessly and needlessly? What lousy fear and soft clarity of spirit, intermixed and lifted from the body of the broken boy, arose into the shredded night? We ended the ceremony with two intense minutes of silence to parallel his last slice of time on earth. Two minutes. Utter silence except the sounds of the streets, the wind picking up in the trees, a smell of water in the night, the shuffling of bodies turned inward, thinking, praying, being. Two minutes is an eternity. Two minutes is over quick, like a broken stick.
I could tell the story of what happened next, of a couple of men wanting to talk, of a quick eruption of anger, of the bitterness of male rage, energy in the clenched muscles of frustration, force and aggression and a hardened hopelessness, anger like a fire, consuming, leaping overhead from tree to tree. There are no jobs here. The television crew is now long gone. There are prison beds waiting with open arms for the bodies of the dispossessed, the drugged, the wrong places at wrong times people habituating the fringe economies of the street. Police are armed or arming like international military forces. Their guns will always be bigger, their force always asymmetrical and overpowering. There are now laws aimed to escalate the ubiquity of arms: Castle Doctrine, Stand Your Ground, Conceal Carry… upright and proud sounding things, manly and powerful, secretive and protective. Deadly to boys. There is no economy here. This is no country for young men.
And the Reverend… he's seen it and lived it. Mississippi as a young man. Things he won't discuss because they are too terrible to hear. We talk for a while in the parking lot as people are leaving. I'm convinced that the only way forward with any meaning is in real political organization, but that is a tough sell when there is no trust - and very slim proof - that anything will ever matter. The Reverend would submit that this has to be tempered with a spiritual path. We agree that peace is essential, and that peace does not negate the smoldering anger, but tempers it with a sense of shared humanity.
The problems expressed tonight are so palpable, so intractable, the anger so real and justified and often misdirected. I'm heavy-hearted. I pack up my letters that spell out the word PEACE, and head home. It is only about 30 blocks. The houses get bigger, the windows are unbroken glass, the blocks shed no litter. There is architectural lighting and cascading layers of shrubbery. A light rain brings the smell of newly mulched landscapes. I pull into my driveway and think of my daughter and son, upstairs, asleep, protected by much more than I provide.
I sit in the garage, in the car. Two minutes of silence. I'm fifty-six years old. I don't know anything. I'll keep trying. We've got to keep trying.
Note: I first posted this two days ago. While it got some wonderful comments, it quickly fell down the recent diaries list into obscurity. A number of Kossacks suggested to me that I republish it this morning, with the hope of more people reading about the situation in Milwaukee. I have added a video and made a few minor edits.