Black boys are being targeted, and those are ours . To be clear, the enslavement of Africans in America was not simply about labor exploitation. Chattel slavery actually transformed people. Welcome to Project Linked Fate! Project Linked Fate brings together milestones along my journey to understand structural racialization and its implications. This website makes resources and learning tools (case studies and. It is that universal mothering that moved us to mourn, to wail from the deepest parts of our Souls. That ancestral cry was the cry of our African mothers, whose children had been stolen by white- faced men who invaded their homelands; it was the weeping of enslaved women who were denied the sacred ties of mother and child as babies were ripped from their breasts and sold away; it was the screams of mamas who were held back and beaten as they attempted to stop lynch mobs from abducting, terrorizing and killing their adolescent sons in the most savage ways; it was the sorrow of mothers left to search for their children.
After the court acquitted Zimmerman, there was no time to allow ourselves to be paralyzed by trauma. Through our tears, we straightened our backs and planned our defense. That night, as I made my way home from weekend errands, I methodically outlined what had to be done: feed my three small children. I arrived home and through the fog of despair I performed these perfunctory motherly duties. Now well beyond evening, I called three other mamas, who joined me at my home. We held each other for a moment, breathing in our shared pain, acknowledging the humanity that the world was trying to deny us. Then we went into defense mode. Into a sea of grieving mamas, a groundswell of rage and pain. We filled and poured out of Leimert Park. Plans and directions were whispered and then shouted, rippling through the assembly of people determined to make our despair felt beyond the psychic walls of South Los Angeles. For three days we marched. We jumped yellow tape, bypassing the lines of police cars parked to barricade us into our hoods. These new- millennium slave- catchers wielded their power most brutally at night. The day brought some cover; the media and non- Black allies offered a semblance of protection. A broader array of demonstrators found the risk minimal enough to be present for daytime marches, and many of us mamas brought our children. Like our Ancestors freeing themselves from bondage, there was only one direction for us. Our people pressed so far north on the second night that they arrived at Hollywood and Highland, the great tourist mecca. There protesters stood audaciously, feet firmly planted on the names of the Hollywood stars whose memorials peppered the sidewalk, and yelled . First a few people entered, then in an instant the thousands of Black people who had been marching down Crenshaw Boulevard poured out onto the exit ramp. The most powerful among us were our young lions, the boys. They had names like Jamal, Michael, even Trayvon, with eyes that squinted like his and an energy dancing between joyful boy and proud warrior. I paused, clutching the hands of my daughters, holding tightly to the shoulder of my son. He was three years old now, no longer a baby, old enough to breathe this in. Thandiwe, my nine- year- old pulled me. I shook my head, placed her hand on the wall of the overpass, told her to hold on, and retrieved my vibrating phone from my purse. It was a text message that whispered simple instructions: meet at 9 p. Elmo Village, a local community art center. It felt like a message from the Underground Railroad, just a few words that pointed the way to freedom. I shared the clandestine plan with the dozen or so.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
January 2017
Categories |