Michael Brown. Trayvon Martin. Tamir Rice. Emmett Till.<\/p>\n
When Skylar Wright, a recent graduate of Pacific High School in Sitka, was thinking of black people who died violent deaths in America, \u201cI couldn\u2019t use one name\u2026 there are so many people. It\u2019s always happening, and it\u2019s continuing to happen. It\u2019s a giant cluster of systematic abuse,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Those thoughts inspired \u201cHow Black Women Taught Me to Love,\u201d a poem Wright wrote a year ago for her father and performed July 24 at \u201cRacial Justice and Anti-Violence: A Creative Conversation.\u201d The event was organized and facilitated by friends Christy NaMee Eriksen and Melissa Garcia Johnson.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere has always been such a brevity in living an ebony life,\u201d Wright read. \u201cAll my life I\u2019ll write love letters to all the dead black boys I\u2019ve never met but have somehow always known. And black women taught me how to love like this\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
The arts-based conversation on violence and racial justice brought together a standing-room-only crowd of a variety of backgrounds, races, experiences and ages.<\/p>\n
At one point, every participant publicly shared their predominant feeling about the violence. Some said sadness; some said confusion; some said anger; some said fear; some said \u201cbroken-hearted;\u201d some said hope created by the conversation itself. One white woman said the reason she was there was because of a difference in language. She can use the word \u201csad,\u201d she said, because the color of her skin means she has the privilege of not being scared.<\/p>\n
One black woman said she\u2019s fearful of what a misunderstanding with her son, who is autistic, might lead to, but she also wants to trust the police and recognizes that \u201cwe rely on them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Juneau police chief Bryce Johnson attended with lieutenants Kris Sell and David Campbell. Johnson said he came to listen.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo matter how you look at it, it\u2019s important that we talk about this stuff,\u201d he said. \u201cLook at it from any angle you want \u2014 officer safety. If people don\u2019t know how to talk to each other and get along, it makes my officers\u2019 jobs more dangerous. You talk about community safety. If the community doesn\u2019t trust the police, then their interactions with their fellow citizens can become more dangerous, because they\u2019re not going to report things because they\u2019re afraid of the officers. So it\u2019s a matter of what angle you want to look at it \u2014 it\u2019s incredibly important people come together and talk about what\u2019s been going on.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Juneau Police Department July 20 hosted a barbecue, both to foster connections between police and community members and to celebrate diversity.<\/p>\n
Sol Neely, assistant professor of English and philosophy at the University of Alaska Southeast and founder of the Flying University, which offers classes to inmates at Lemon Creek Correctional Center, said \u201cWe need to foster a solidarity with each other\u2026 predicated not just on collapsing the differences between us, but really celebrating them. Art is a good way to focus that, because art works at something other than just rationality.\u201d<\/p>\n
Just as the history of violence towards black people in America is long-standing, so is the art reacting to and against that violence.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a great, sad, but glorious history of these playwrights putting these issues onstage, onscreen,\u201d said Julie Coppens, who introduced Juneau actor Lance Mitchell.<\/p>\n
Mitchell read \u201c#Royce,\u201d a work in progress by Darren Canady about a black man reacting to recent killings of black people. He\u2019s overwhelmed and finds solace on the dance floor. \u201cI will sweat the rage into every beat until there\u2019s none of it left,\u201d Mitchell read.<\/p>\n
Eriksen read \u201cWishbone,\u201d a poem she wrote about love, referencing the killing of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling. \u201cAre you afraid of love? I know I am,\u201d she wrote. \u201cLove is love is love but it is also terror\u2026 Love is ruthless. It is a nightmare. It is a lifetime of self-defense training\u2026 Listen, I want to love you.\u201d<\/p>\n
Toward the end of the event, people divided themselves into smaller groups for conversations about the cause of the violence. Some of the causes people mentioned go far back \u2014 colonization, slavery, the Homestead Act, and wealth accumulated by taking something (freedom, land, life) from others. Others mentioned racism, the need for \u201cdeep listening,\u201d an unwillingness to accept others\u2019 experiences; fear of change; and a reliance on retaliation rather than \u201cprocessing and figuring out how to move forward.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not everyone might agree with all the causes; that, Eriksen said, was OK.<\/p>\n
At the end of the event, people finished by committing to two actions they chose, one soon and one at any point in time. Some people committed to fostering connections between different communities, one to spreading awareness of the problems discussed through social media. One woman, a member of the Alaska Native Sisterhood, committed to bringing cookies to the Juneau Police Department.<\/p>\n
Participant Sarita Knull said her family is \u201ca crossroads\u201d of different races and experiences, and the event helped shake her out of a sense of paralysis about what she can do to move forward.<\/p>\n
This conversation is one step, Eriksen said \u2014 not the first, and not the last. Eriksen and Garcia Johnson plan other, similar events and hope to help others if they can.<\/p>\n
Garcia Johnson said she was \u201cin awe\u201d of the turnout.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like this speaks to the need for continued dialogue and continued discussion within our community about these issues,\u201d she said. \u201cI was inspired by the commitments that people are making and have made.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m feeling full of hope and strength,\u201d Eriksen said. \u201cIt\u2019s easy to get bogged down by the weight of those problems\u2026 Systems are born out of institutions; institutions are run by people\u2026 We\u2019ll start to move those mountains that we think are just so static, so large, so difficult to solve. I feel moved, literally moved right now, knowing that some of those relationships have been built today.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2022 Contact Capital City Weekly editor Mary Catharine Martin at maryc.martin@capweek.com.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Read an article about the JPD event here: http:\/\/juneauempire.com\/local\/2016-07-20\/juneau-police-seek-strengthen-community-ties.<\/p>\n
Read an article about the Flying University here: http:\/\/www.capitalcityweekly.com\/stories\/120413\/ae_1184397538.shtml.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Michael Brown. Trayvon Martin. Tamir Rice. Emmett Till. When Skylar Wright, a recent graduate of Pacific High School in Sitka, was thinking of black people who died violent deaths in America, \u201cI couldn\u2019t use one name\u2026 there are so many people. It\u2019s always happening, and it\u2019s continuing to happen. It\u2019s a giant cluster of systematic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":2894,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":7,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[74],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-2893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life","tag-arts-and-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2893"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2893\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2894"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2893"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=2893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}