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Delma Jackson III

Delma Jackson III · March 27, 2020 ·

Late last week, I was waiting for takeoff on a short connecting flight from Chicago to Flint. A middle-aged, heavy-set woman came aboard and sat directly across from me, while one of her companions sat with her and the other directly behind me. Immediately upon sitting, the woman pulled the top of her shirt over her nose and mouth and succumbed to a pretty intense coughing fit. It was at this point that I noticed how labored her breathing was. Her two companions were offering whatever aid and succor they could, while I found myself tensing. 

Their tone was compassionate and supportive, but it seemed as though they were outliers in that regard. The virus-induced tension, already palpable, increased dramatically. The guy just in front of her, who’d visibly winced everytime she had another coughing spurt, rummaged through his carry-on until he found something to wear over his face. As the flight took off, the woman began quietly sobbing. I only noticed when her friends began asking her what was wrong, to which she assured them it was nothing and quickly regained herself.

As a flight attendant approached her, a small part of me was hoping he’d ask her to move.  When he offered her water instead, I was both disappointed in his non-draconian response and ashamed of myself for wanting it.  

Fifteen minutes into the flight, I’m wearing my headphones and working on my laptop, when I heard something hit the floor and realized she’d dropped her bottled water. And in the space of a few seconds, I had my “coming to Jesus” moment. It felt as though what I decided then and there spoke volumes about how I would move forward during this crisis. 

Do I pretend I didn’t notice, and trust that someone else will help? Do I bend over to grab it and risk what feels like EVERYTHING? 

I liked myself in that moment, as I handed her the water bottle–and immediately sanitized my hands. I made a decision that aligns with my values…that time. 

I imagine I’ll have to confront such moments countless times as this pandemic continues to unfold. I imagine there’ll be times where I don’t like myself as much– where I make decisions that do not align with my values. I imagine we all will.

If history is any measure, (which I believe it can be), some of us will thrive while others will flounder.  Most of us will do a bit of both in the course of any given day. Overall, some of us will cultivate greater empathy, compassion, and courage while others will not only close themselves off to such sentiments in the name of survival, but will seek to do harm to others and/or to themselves out of fear. 

As individuals, communities, organizations, and other collective bodies, we’ll have a lot of decisions to make in the immediate future that will reverberate long after the current crisis has subsided. Decisions made in groups often result in policies, which once made, can be difficult to unmake. De-centering the stories of those who are historically marginalized in favor of “the bottom line”, or the imperative for rapid response, will further marginalize and harm those very communities. 

By the time these communities are again prioritized, post-pandemic, they’ll be all the more vulnerable, and we’ll be spending far more resources to compensate for yet another “inevitable systemic” failure which was, in reality, quite preventable and thus all the more insidious and malicious. 

The most vulnerable among us are bearing the brunt of this crisis, as history has always demanded. Scarcity begets scarcity. How we treat each other, advocate for each other, organize for each other–in this moment especially–will help define us for generations to come. 

If we are not mindful, fear can drive us to forget who we are individually and collectively. Fear can reduce us to people who steal medical equipment from medical providers. It can lead us to hoarding a plethora of household goods for what some suggest is, ostensibly, the “comfort in knowing that it’s there.” Fear can usher us back to old tropes about the “diseased other” in the hopes of laying blame. This is true for both individuals and institutions.

Meanwhile, the anonymity of the internet has already proven fertile ground for the trolls amongst us. As we move into this unknown territory, it’s easy to imagine this deplorable behavior will only increase as we become ever-more locked into our digital worlds.  A close friend suggested to me recently that if we stay in this digital place long enough, many of the ways we are currently used to interacting may change forever. 

This is a brilliant observation and I couldn’t agree more. This virus, and our response to it, could fundamentally alter who we are, and it’s very difficult to foresee those implications right now. However, one thing is clear: we could ALL stand to do some soul searching at this moment. While we could always benefit from taking the time to ask ourselves some foundational questions about our values, this is especially true in times of hardship.  

Crisis holds a mirror before us. It forces us to pay more attention to who we are, and encourages us to ponder who we want to be. No matter our station, we will have a tremendous impact on one another. As individuals go, so goes our communities, organizations, and institutions. 

Fear around personal and/or institutional security during a crisis is real for all of us. However, giving in to the anxiety when you have plenty of resources and hoarding what you can means fewer resources for those with less. Such conditions breed desperation, vulnerability, and in this case, greater exposure for us all. 

We need shelter to shelter in place. We need clean water to wash our hands in clean water. If I can’t find basic needs at the store, I’ll keep going back until I do–further exposing myself and thus everyone else. 

This virus is a great equalizer. Ignoring the most vulnerable among us leaves us all more vulnerable. A pandemic is the great hall of mirrors.  Selfishness will be rewarded by a prolonged crisis, and who we are will be reflected back to us immediately–whether we want it to be or not. 

Buying ALL the toilet paper won’t save you. Stealing masks from health care providers won’t save you. Dumping your stocks while remaining silent about the looming crisis won’t save you. De-centering marginalized communities by discontinuing to engage in equity work won’t save you. If equity, community, and sustainability was a value before the crisis, it REALLY needs to be a value now. 

Otherwise, it never was. 


Delma Jackson is a Senior Fellow with CWC. His focus is on facilitating system change on campuses and in institutions through transformative practice and the power of story. He received his undergraduate degree in African-American Studies and Psychology, and his Masters in Liberal Arts with a concentration in American and African American Studies at the University of Michigan. He regularly lectures on a variety of socio-political topics with a special emphasis on intersectional approaches to social justice.

Delma Jackson III · February 28, 2020 ·

They say timing is everything. Being born in Flint, Michigan–in 1979–this axiom resonates deeply with me.

1979 saw the US gripped in an energy crisis. Global oil production was bottle-necked due, in part, to the Iranian Revolution of 1978. In 12 short months, oil prices doubled. Snaking lines of traffic lurched impatiently toward gas station pumps that often ran out of fuel long before everyone was served. 

Meanwhile, industrial centers like Flint were on the verge of economic collapse, as the auto industry and its auxiliaries which had once brought so much prosperity were seeing a sharp decline in profits. General Motors, which had once “shielded” Flint’s economy from “painful job losses” would no longer be the city’s savior. Roughly forty thousand jobs would be lost in the city between the 1970s and 80s. Not surprisingly, the city lost 20 percent of its population between 1974 and 1982.

If timing is everything, I was late. I was born into a GM family in a rapidly declining GM town. My parents were able to maintain their jobs (my mother on a GM assembly line and my father as a nurse in a GM auxiliary plant). As my neighborhood fell into rapid decline with the loss of employment and the rise of an illicit drug trade and gun violence, my parents sent me to one of the city’s private, Catholic schools for my K-12 education. 

It was during my early education that I became increasingly aware that many of my white, middle-class, classmates were living very different lives from the one I was navigating every day. School uniforms led us to take notice of shoes and coats as markers of economic status. For students who didn’t ride the bus, our parents’ cars similarly underscored our class identity.  Birthday parties hosted at various homes further illuminated an economic hierarchy. 

Racial hierarchy was likewise inferred through similarly passive observations. While black boys made up a small percentage of my class, we were the majority in the remedial reading group. All of our authority figures, from the faculty and staff to the administration, were white. Even Jesus was white–the crucifix adorning the top of every doorway. The figures in our history books were no different.      

Slowly, I began to form a story, as most of us are wont to do when no one explains what we’re seeing. The brain longs to make sense of the world it occupies, and if we don’t provide a story, the brain will make one up. So mine became: 

  • Black folks are inherently backward people and our widespread poverty is proof.
  • I am Black, so I am inherently backward.
  • My parents are largely to blame. If they worked harder, we’d live in a nicer place.
  • White folks are inherently the opposite of Black folks. 
  • There is nothing to be done about it. 

I never told anyone this story. It was too painful, and even at an early age, I understood that it would not be popularly received by the people I cared about the most. I carried this story with me in some form or fashion well into high school. When I entered undergrad, I had to be persuaded to take my first Afro-studies course, because I was thoroughly convinced there was nothing I could learn of value. 

By the time I finished my first day of “Intro to African American Studies,” my story had taken a 180-degree turn. I was suddenly THAT guy on campus. Forever angry. Zealous and jaded. Mistrustful. Spending time as an exchange student in Western Europe a couple years later helped balance me out a bit. I wanted the experience of whiteness that Malcolm, Zora, and James had described in their travels and I had something akin to that. 

I came home ready to do the work of racial justice. However, issues of gender, sexuality, Islamophobia and the like, would remain largely below my radar for several years yet. Funny how often a universal concept like justice can take on such a narrowed lens. 

In 2009, through a chance encounter, I was introduced to the practice of story through a weekend retreat hosted by the Center for Whole Communities (CWC). It was during this weekend that I synthesized and articulated my narrative for the first time. It was during this weekend that I came to glimpse the power of story for the first time. Listening to the journeys of my fellow participants, seeing the ways they were impacted as both tellers and receivers, proved transformative.

When a longer retreat was offered, I jumped on it. I flew out to Vermont of all places, and spent a week with leaders and thinkers from all over the country. These were people who had committed their lives to various manifestations of justice–from environmental, to economic, to racial, and beyond. While I loved the content of our time together, I was even more smitten by the process. Within a year I was training to join the facilitation team, and have remained an active facilitator ever since. Over the next decade, I bonded with my colleagues and traveled widely, meeting some of the most brilliant and dedicated folks I’ve ever had the pleasure to know. 

And now, in 2020, I have become a full-time staff member at CWC. For the first time in my life, I am being charged with developing mechanisms for cultivating, curating, and sharing…stories. Be it blogging, podcasting, live-streaming, or other platforms, I will be reaching out to those who have a story to tell. Which, if I’m being honest, is everyone. 

My grandmother taught me that our story never ceases to evolve. She assured me that, even in her early 90’s, she was still in the midst of evolving her story. She gave me permission to learn for life. My story has reflected her admonitions, evolving to include the ideas that: 

  • Story is transformative and we each have one.
  • Social identity and the phrase “inherently” don’t mix. 
  • Malcolm X was right. “It’s freedom for everybody or freedom for nobody.” 
  • White supremacist patriarchy is real and impacts us all.
  • One should never be “proud” of one’s beliefs. Pride hinders evolution. 

In each of our stories lies a piece of the larger trends we see in the world. In our individual struggles and triumphs, we glimpse another component of this mosaic we call life. Many of us struggle at the soft edges of justice, the places wherein the question “what would love do now?,” offer no easy answers. Many of us fixate on what we feel “clear” about, and set aside stickier self-inquiries for another, less complicated time. My first question is: how’s that been working for you? 

Come here for a minute, I beg. Let me ask you to pick those sticky questions back up. Dust them off. Let’s shine the light of scrutiny upon them.  We don’t have to answer them. But, for a short time, can we grapple with them? I stand poised to reach out and press record. I stand poised to ask heavy thinkers some heavy questions. I stand poised to hear your version of that elusive, “truth.” I stand ready to hear you surprise yourself by what comes out of your mouth–when the brain steps aside and lets the heart take the lead. 

You have a story to tell. And we at the Center for Whole Communities happen to think that what you have to say is important. Come breathe life into your story and thus breathe life into all of us.  Come on in. Tell me yours, I’m listening.



Delma Jackson is a Senior Fellow with CWC. His focus is on facilitating system change on campuses and in institutions through transformative practice and the power of story. He received his undergraduate degree in African-American Studies and Psychology, and his Masters in Liberal Arts with a concentration in American and African American Studies at the University of Michigan. He regularly lectures on a variety of socio-political topics with a special emphasis on intersectional approaches to social justice.

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Delma Jackson III · September 20, 2019 ·

As many of us contemplate what action we will take to demonstrate our solidarity with the youth of the world and nation leading today’s climate strike, I urge you to think about what voices are not being heard. As the young people leading this day of action themselves articulate, part of the reason they are striking is because “marginalized communities across our nation —especially communities of color, disabled communities, and low- income communities—  are already disproportionately impacted by climate change.” 

In some cases, those may be the people least able to take time off of work, join marches, or even find the time to acknowledge the impacts of environmental destruction in their lives. But those impacts are there. And they are certainly here in Vermont.

We often think of those most impacted as the global downtrodden with failing crops and rising sea levels, or our brothers and sisters in cities who face higher rates of asthma and heat stroke. Their struggles must be uplifted. But so must those of rural Americans. We don’t often think of those who face rural environmental injustice, who often struggle in isolation and silence. 

Here in Vermont, those most impacted by climate change are mobile home park residents, who make up eight percent of the state population, but forty percent of those who experienced flood damage and loss in Hurricane Irene. Low-income families especially are still struggling to rebuild their lives after being displaced. Those most impacted are the indigenous Abenaki communities who are witnessing the land that their families have stewarded for thousands of years change irreparably. Those most impacted are migrant farmworkers who are seeking dignified, safe working conditions on our dairy farms and make up the backbone of our rural economy while lacking basic access to transportation and health care. 

Many of those most affected may be unable to attend the strikes today, but their voices and their stories need to be heard  — and I encourage you to listen. In fact, in Vermont, as we lament the lack of overall action and legislation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, we are also woefully behind on identifying and rooting out environmental injustice. We are one of just eight states left that has no policies to specifically address inequities in how environmental regulations and land-use planning affects low-income communities and communities of color.

In a partnership between Center for Whole Communities, Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity (CVOEO) Mobile Home Program, Toxics Action Center, the University of Vermont Rubenstein School, and Vermont Law School, we are endeavoring to identify those environmental injustices in Vermont and uplift those most impacted through a rural environmental justice initiative called REJOICE. REJOICE stands for Rural Environmental Justice Opportunities Informed by Community Expertise, and this collaborative is working to advance community-led environmental justice policy in Vermont. 

Over the summer our partnership traveled the state — from Bennington to Canaan — surveying Vermonters about environmental injustices and interviewing community experts. But this is just the beginning. While reducing barriers to providing public input is often discussed in the halls of government, it is rare that the resources are there to compensate participants for their attendance and insights, provide food and childcare, and host meetings at a convenient time and place for working families. Our first Community Conversation in Rutland provided all of those things thanks to a grant received through Vermont Law School. These supports made it possible for a cross-section of participants that the political and regional leaders who attended had otherwise rarely seen. We recognized that the participants are the experts in their experience from the air they breathe, to the streets they walk, the food they can access and afford, and the neighborhoods where they live. The feedback was powerful. As one participant wrote: ““Food, childcare, requests for information…liked small table communities, accessible language, and inclusion of timeline feels like we are in it together.”

We are working to bring the wisdom of community to the Department of Environmental Conservation to help craft the beginnings of an environmental justice policy for Vermont. In order to be “in it together,” however, it is important that we not just take our work and recommendations to the halls of power, but back to the communities whose expertise we have incorporated. They need to know how these policies will work for them. And they need to be met in their neighborhoods where the real work begins.

In the lead-up to the youth-led global Climate Strike today, my friend and 350 climate leader, Jamie Henn, is sharing moments from some of the most significant hearings of the 21st century. Young people on the frontlines of climate change are speaking in the halls of Congress about the urgent need for political courage and action. One such moment highlights Greta Thunberg putting her arm around Tokata Iron Eyes of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. 

Image: Students gather at VT Statehouse for a rally to demand action on climate change. Photo by Mike Dougherty, Vermont Digger

Delma Jackson III · January 21, 2019 ·

There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives. 

Audre Lorde

Forward:

The Civil Rights Movement married the principles of social justice with the sensibilities of the Southern Baptist Church–which included, among other social norms, the idea that while “the Negro woman has done so much to bring the race so far…” but was “done at the expense of the psychological health of the Negro male” who is “frequently…forced by circumstances into the position of a drone.”  (C. Eric Lincoln, 1966). In remembering the legacy of King, we must not shy away from the ways in which various forms of social oppression remained part and parcel of the movement he helped bolster. In fact, even as King did the work, his colleague, the Rev Bernard Lee noted that King was “absolutely a male chauvinist. He believed that the wife should stay home and take care of the babies while he’d be out there in the streets.”

This spirit of patriarchy was not confined to the Civil Rights Movement, but carried on into the Black Power Movement as well.  Elaine Brown, the only woman to lead the Black Panther Party noted that, “A woman in the Black Panther Movement was considered, at best, irrelevant. A woman asserting herself was a pariah. If a black woman assumed a role of leadership, she was said to be eroding black manhood…”

In the spirit of justice, solidarity, King’s legacy, and contemporary conversations around the “voiceless” masses of girls/women during the age of #metoo, and renewed interest in the accusations against R. Kelly prompted by Dream Hampton’s work,  we present an ongoing “conversation” between two members of the CWC team. One–a survivor of violent sexual assault. The other–a contributor to the very rape culture that makes such assaults possible. While this conversation began three years ago, and continues to evolve, we humbly present this submission as a peek into the intersection of toxic masculinity and the resulting, collective, ongoing assault against half the earth’s population…  

-Delma Jackson III


Samara and Delma

Delma:

I’d love to write a pedestaled, puff-piece pontificating about the moral failings and penile perversions of other men—implicitly extolling my own virtues for the world to see.  I’d love to write a piece that attributes the lack of sexualized controversy in my life to an inherently industrious; well-oiled moral compass. Truth-be-told, it took a huge village, with an “all-hands-on-deck” approach, to consistently turn this boy-child away from the more popular, hyper-patriarchal pitfalls and toward an adult who didn’t regularly harass half the planet’s population.  

Half.  

The herculean effort it takes to make one less harasser? Imagine a city-wide effort to guide a single, blindfolded person safely across town—every day—for decades.  Sexual assault and/or harassment is that pervasive and dangerous.  In fact, it’s the stuff of nightmares…


Samara:

It’s every woman’s worst nightmare.
We’ve been prepared for it since we were young.
Children barely bleeding rehearsing for the “what if“ that we all know too well.
As a girl child, I lived in the woods.
I was terrified to get the mail after dark, but I did it.
Each time, I imagined him behind a tree, in the shadows, waiting for me.
This man of my imagination.
This nightmare that we are always prepared for.


Delma:

Most of us become monsters to be feared proportionate to our fear of the monsters we’ve had to face….Many of us have only known the monstrous from a distance—a 3rd party…the tv, a side comment, a parade of locker-room lies because what actually happened just isn’t risqué enough…

However, some of us know the monster more intimately…we’ve been assaulted and seen those we love likewise attacked…known the helplessness and shame of our “masculinity” proving insufficient to protect ourselves and/or those we love…Some of us heal…the rest of us become the very monsters we feared and our nightmares survive as we impose them on others…


Samara:

I saw him in the lobby as I turned my key to the heavy door with already broken locks. He was pacing with a nervousness I didn’t trust. My intuition told me to turn around. My pride and kindness told me to shut up and go home. Don’t be silly. There are no monsters under your bed. No nightmares hiding in the shadows of the ancient oaks. I turned my key. I’m not a girl any longer. I smiled at him and said good evening. It was almost morning actually. That hour where night turns to day. Almost midnight. He averted his eyes. The elevator finally came, the smaller one I tended to avoid with the loud gate that slammed you in. And my gut screamed don’t get in there with him. But that would be rude.

As women we never want to be rude.


Delma:

As men, we never wanna be weak…

It’s why, at age 14, I carried a gun for a summer…the weight of it was comforting…everything I associated with manhood: control, strength, virility.  It was a promise that I could have what I wanted…because we never want to admit that the viscosity of our masculinity wasn’t enough to get us what we wanted —that thought is always accompanied by the idea that someone else’s brand is stronger—that they could’ve gotten the job done.  Giant boys, pining to be the Lord of the Rings—when most are not even Lord of the Flies…and we know it. Some of us deal…some of us lash out…


Samara:

My elevator came. The bigger one I’d always preferred. Pressed 5. Glanced up towards the streaky rusted mirror, the one I think that’s meant for safety, and saw the look in my own eyes. I looked different. Everything’s about to change, I said out loud. Surprised myself with the sound of my voice. The words that spilled out of my mouth in the midnight silence of my homecoming.

The elevator stopped on the 2nd floor. He pushed me against the back wall, coated with decades of yellow paint. “If you look at me, I’ll kill you”, he said over and over like a mantra. This was the day I didn’t die by the weight of his trembling finger on the trigger pressed against my temple.

My temple

Sacred

Despite his rage and grief and sickness

Desperate

Pressed against his suffering

The corner of the elevator

Piss stained and silent

On the second floor

Neck broken

Heart broken

Hovering above my own body

I watched as he robbed me

This stranger

of my safety

Sacred

A boy cloaked in the body of a man. Frightened. If you look at me, I’ll kill you.

I was one of four women. That we know of.


Delma:

I’ve masked my insecurity in sexual intercourse–telling women what I thought they wanted to hear in order to access their bodies and feed my ego. I’ve used sexist language to demean women whose comments made my flaws visible. I’ve allowed my homeboys to make jokes, passes, or unsolicited gropes at a woman’s expense. I’ve turned the other way when I knew a woman needed help, simply because I didn’t find her attractive enough.  When I was 17, I physically threatened a woman that dared to suggest I was “bad in bed.” I’ve made a lot of bad choices when it came to the girls/women in my life. From the time I was a little boy to well into my adulthood…#itwasme


Samara:

I tried not to cry.

Tried not to scream.

Tried not to die.

Whatever I had to do to survive –

To stay alive.

His lips were tight.

His face was cold.

His eyes were scared.

And I took care of him.

A figure clinging to manhood though his voice nearly cracked with his own trauma and shame. It was a full moon.  So bright. So knowing. I count moons now. It’s taken me a while to trust them again.

I wonder how many secrets live under those layers of paint.

I wonder if he has nightmares like I do.

Manchild locked in a cage as I grieve for both of us, for all of us.

His father was murdered on the same night he gripped that gun many moons before when he was only three. Shot to death on the very same night. He was only a boy.

I will never forget the weight of that gun against my head, my lower back, my waist. Perhaps it was that weight that comforted him.


Delma:

I was a boy carrying a gun…feeling like a man, because cold steel makes for hot summers replete with all kinds of false promises.  And at the end of the day…isn’t that what fragility is built on?


Samara:

It wasn’t supposed to go like this. Nightmares are supposed to stay under the mattress, in the shadows, unexpressed.


Delma:

I wonder why we so often straddle the fence–us heterosexual men…so many of us pretending like we could care less about the very people we often care the most about.  

I wonder what it really means to care–where is the line between care and narcissism–especially when that “care” comes in the form of coercion.  Nothing screams, “I’m overly invested in a patriarchal self,” quite like forcing others, if only for a moment, to bow down to those very messages…we are to be feared, dominate…enough.   

I wonder what price we all secretly pay for overly-investing in a sinking ship–over-polishing the furniture on the Titanic…even as we feel it sink?

I wonder what reoccuring nightmares go unacknowledged–playing out amongst our fraternity from California kings in penthouses to the comfortless cots in projects and prisons.


Samara:

I bet his cot is uncomfortable. I wonder if he stretches in the morning. If he prays at night. If the moonlight reaches his cheek as he sleeps. How many layers of paint coat the wall of his cell. If he’s been hurt like he hurt me.

How many secrets?


Delma:

From me, to Cosby, to Kelly…our secrets run deep…and our commitment to keep them runs even deeper. Peruse social media to see the fraternity that is masculinity in all it’s fragility…

So much healing needs to be done…so much. Unfortunately, for most of us, it’s not as simple as, “did I assault or did I not assault.” Unfortunately, there are degrees, and too many of us have graduated somewhere on the spectrum.

starting with me.  

If I’m being honest with myself, there is no pedestal for me to stand on…I’m right there with the next man.  I’m just as desperate for healing as the next man. And that healing is gonna have to come from…the next man…


Samara:

I hope he is healing. I am trying to heal.

May the little boy inside him find a place to cry.

May the little girl inside me find mine too.

May ancient oaks and full moons comfort us and remind us how small we really are.

A boy. A girl.

A man. A woman.

Healing.

“To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that  prisoner was you.” Lewis B. Smedes

Afterward:

Hurt people hurt people. This, we know. We also know that open people, open people. How, then, do we cultivate communities that are accountable to one another—engaging tension in courageous conversations as we work across our differences? At Center for Whole Communities, we acknowledge the limitations of language as we attempt to honor the many aspects of difference and intersectionality we embody.

Ann Pellegrini, Professor of Social & Cultural Analysis and Performance Studies at NYU, identifies the movement of the crisis—the outside event which shatters into the personhood of the ‘victim’—when she posits that, in trauma, what is outside has come inside, has been internalized. She acknowledges the importance of a witnessing community in regard to one’s telling of her story. To be witnessed is to move one’s story from the inside to the outside, where it may be held by more than just the teller. The witnessing community shares the responsibility of acknowledging and addressing the wound.

So as we find ourselves deeply entrenched in the epicenter of testimonies unearthed, may we consider that “telling trauma’s story (can) become the condition of coming to know it.” Cathy Caruth has configured trauma as that which lies beyond representation—that which was not experienced as it happened or when it occurred. Accordingly, “it is not available to consciousness until it exposes itself again.” Many of us experience feeling triggered as we are asked to hold the stories emerging at an escalating pace.

How do we both prioritize self care—tending to our own healing and honoring our own boundaries—while holding fast to Dr. King’s potent reminder that “(your) freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom”? As we bare witness to the stories among us and within us, perhaps we can lean into this opportunity to participate in our collective liberation.   

~Samara Gaev


Samara Gaev is a Brooklyn-based activist, educator, theatre director and performer who uses arts for anti-racist leadership, inclusive of youth development and restorative justice. Gaev uses performances as a tool for cross-cultural healing and social change. Her work examines and challenges constructions of race, class, the prison industrial complex, hetero-normative codes, and systems of oppression that not only excuse but enable cycles of violence.Delma is a senior trainer and faculty member at CWC. He received his undergraduate degree in African-American Studies and Psychology, and his Masters in Liberal Arts with a concentration in American and African American Studies at the University of Michigan. Her regularly lectures on a variety of socio-political topics with a special emphasis on intersectional approaches to social justice.

Delma Jackson III · August 18, 2017 ·

I’m sitting at home just outside Flint, Michigan, watching the violence unfold in Charlottesville, Virginia, while thinking about the work Center for Whole Communities conducted in New Haven, Connecticut less than a week ago. I’m trying to write and track the latest news at the same time.

I JUST watched footage of someone plow through a group of protestors and then drive away. One has been confirmed dead. I just watched the POTUS respond by practically refusing to respond. His brief statement was flaccid—rendered hollow by his obvious reticence to condemn his base—an ode to neutrality. In not choosing he yet again affirmed his previous choices.

So… the Stevie Wonder in my earbuds is life right now.

On August 6, I stood in an auditorium with several members of my CWC family, facilitating conversations for roughly 150 students. We invited the graduate students—many just meeting each other on their first day of orientation, to consider how their journeys, social identities, and vocation within the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies potentially intersects to create the greatest possible outcomes for themselves and the world in which they work. In other words, we spent 4 hours asking the students to consider who they are, how they became so, and what it all means for the communities they will call home. Where is the potential for growth? Where is the opportunity for pruning?

We invited them to bring their whole selves—to be both clear and confused. We encouraged them to be both confident and vulnerable. By striving to model the very behaviors we were asking them to practice, we welcomed them into our slice of authenticity—in the hope that they might repay us in-kind. In other words, we asked much of them. And they did not disappoint. For the third year in a row, a new class of incoming students showed up and showed out. I left feeling both exhausted and exhilarated. I felt accomplished and encouraged.

Yale’s campus has seen its share of contentious, highly-publicized engagements with identity politics. However, Yale is but a microcosm—one of countless spaces wherein centuries-old, racialized mythologies of meritocracy through rugged individualism are taken for granted as the meta-narrative of American exceptionalism, and more broadly, the American experience. A continuous thread within the mythology states—sometimes implicitly, and sometimes not—that the US was “built” by and for the betterment of white, cis-gendered men.

While some of these mythologies are etched into the very fabric of our founding documents—they continue to inspire, for they have much more to say. For the parts we prefer to commemorate are much loftier. Like Trump’s neutral response, the founding documents have something there for everyone—no matter what you prefer. Therefore, our preferences have power because stories have power. Which version of the US you understand, determines how you move with and around the people in it. It’ll inform whom you vote for, where you live, where you send your children for their education. It will inform how you view everything from criminal justice and law enforcement, to gun rights and Black Lives Matter.

When I’m on Yale’s campus, every ivy tendril, every hardwood floor, every student, faculty member, and custodian of color, reminds me of a bitter irony wherein schools from New Haven to Charlottesville are, at times, hotbeds of contention around ever-greater calls for acknowledgement—ever-rising calls for a different version of the story we tell. US demographics are shifting. Consequently, many are beginning to fear that the story we have told for so long may not be accurate. As the historically marginalized speak out, those who have enjoyed the spoils of our mythology feel ignored and oppressed. One interpretation of the founding documents is slowly giving way to another.

Perhaps there is pain in the realization that you were lied to for centuries—that any chance of a good life through meritocracy (a myth crystallized in post-WWII mass media) were rendered possible for the majority through the kleptocracy and resulting misery of the minority. Perhaps there is pain in watching everything you dubiously, yet tediously, and desperately hoped for be peeled away—slowly, painfully—like a stubborn scab. All of your John Waynes and Rocky Balboas can’t save you. The “dark others” are coming to take your country and White Jesus is nowhere to be found. Ronald Reagan is gone and as much as you try to believe it, you KNOW in your heart of hearts that 45 is no Reagan.

I suppose… there is… real pain… in the unraveling of a beloved mythology.

The folks most impacted by this pain are going to need help navigating it. Without guidance, there will continue to be those who lash out at the very people who may best understand the pain of living with double consciousness—two warring, seemingly irreconcilable ideas about self and place. In every arena of oppression—from race and gender, to sexuality and citizenship—veils are thinning and mythologies are crumbling. Without a new story to replace the old, equity will forever taste like oppression to those who have long enjoyed the benefits of their own hard work and the privilege of assuming that their experience must be universal.

As I continue to observe Charlottesville, and consider the bright faces and minds in New Haven, I am hopeful for the story we may yet tell. In all the pain, I have found my peace—at least for the moment. Those students are future decision makers. They are passionate. By their permission and engagement, they excavated that passion and brought it forth—hearing it reflected back to them from the voices and silences of their colleagues. They will make mistakes. They will likely, at times, fail themselves and each other. However, they will succeed where so many of us have failed. They have taken the time to see each other—to hear each other. And that’s what is needed now—if you’re interested in telling a new story. I dare to suspect that a few of these students will be the neo-griots—the keepers, tellers, and singers of a new story.

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