Delma Jackson III

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.

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.

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

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.