Understanding Events in Baltimore

Today the news is dominated by what's going on in Baltimore. In response to still one more senseless death at the hands of police, despite the wishes of the family and local leaders, violence broke out. Police cars burned, several officers injured, businesses sacked and burned. Even as I write, it continues.

It occurs to me that it's so very easy for those of us who did not grow up in poverty, those of us not under constant scrutiny in the face of ongoing systemic racism, those of us who are not stopped regularly and often for "walking while black" or "loitering" when waiting at a bus stop, so easy for us to point and make snap judgements. I think doing that would be exactly the wrong response.

So last night, I was listening to a woman speak on a local channel about poverty. She related to her own experience. How she saw no hope herself because there was nothing in her experience to justify it. A community surrounded by poverty, people being incarcerated. She reflected how her mom never went to the PTA meetings. Not because she didn't love her children, but because she felt she couldn't tell them anything about education because she never had any herself. What changed for her was someone who intervened at the age of 26, and she completed her high school degree, then got college degree and her masters. In short, she had been offered opportunity. Not just basic assistance, but something greater that considered her larger situation. Most of our poverty programs don't do that of course.

Baltimore police have a long and tragic record in this neighborhood. Freddie Grey is not the only case of police overreach there by any stretch, and in local reporting, no one has to date among police offenders ever been held accountable. No, this sort of violence does not help, but hurts the cause, permitting the cops to carry out even more violence. But most of these offenders are in that crazy time between ages 15 and 18. I found myself reflecting back to my own teen years. Impulse control was not a strong suit, and looking back, it is by grace alone I did not get into some serious trouble back then. Toss in a sense that there is no hope and the system is stacked against you, and in the case of this neighborhood it really is. Factor in the commonly held judgment of people living in this area that they are somehow unworthy and guilty for their own poverty. Despite ample evidence of people who with opportunity have broken loose from those shackles imposed by their circumstance and the uncaring of a world outside of the hood.

Dr. King said that "a riot is the language of the unheard." I would add to that, unfelt. Where is the empathy that leads us to extend opportunity, to inform through love and compassion, and I might add, to openly listen to their own wisdom that comes from their experience for all of us have something to bring to the table. WE forget this is NOT a new story. Dr. King had to confront the tendency towards violence, especially among the young in his day. How tragic is it that the same young people disenfranchised back then, the same neighborhoods, are still feeling hopeless. We know it is not race and yet racism remains a constant contributor. We know there is nothing inherently wrong with people who are poor, no matter what the latest Republican talking points may be. We know that in study after study, crime occurs in various communities, but enforcement is overwhelmingly against communities of color. We know that studies show that children in pre-school and elementary school are disproportionately expelled in those same neighborhoods. I read an interesting report that came out here in Mpls recently where the majority of people arrested in drug buys in our poorest neighborhood (Northside) are from the wealthier suburbs. We know arrests for low level crimes like loitering etc happen in poor neighborhoods. We know that poverty in those neighborhoods are double the rest of the population.

So... Rioting is wrong. Police cannot stand by when it happens. But neither is this something new. We know why it happens and we understand that our willingness to continue ignoring the racism and poverty that surrounds us and is in fact growing at alarming rates will only ensure the violence continues. My dream and my prayer is a simple one. It's a dream of compassion, and a prayer for shared lives. Healing a society demands participation of all of us. We've got to learn to look into the eyes of our poor and see our own poverty within. Our systems often constrain entire groups, and we have to change those systems to work for all of us. It's not time for pointing fingers, but time for embracing each other. Imagine if we devoted anything near the energy that went to put people on the moon, or to fight in foreign wars like Iraq and instead worked to heal our neighborhoods and lift up our own people. I know this. As long as the hate and division is allowed to prevail, many good people will fall victim in the violence that ensues. It's time to remove our ostrich like heads from the sand and begin to heal ourselves, sooner rather than later.

Tragedy: Suicides of Young Trans People

I read a post by Monica Roberts of a third young trans person of color, Blake Brockington, who had taken his life this year. I shared here post and in the conversation, I shared these words that came pouring out from within. After I was done, it seemed I needed to blog about it as well.

Trans acceptance is not a national trait it seems. So here's the thing. Many if not most of us know we are not comfortable as the gender we were told at a very early age. I knew at age 3 (though we had no name for it) but in most families there is no way to deal with something like that. So we learn to stuff it and ignore it, and in some cases over excel in the gender we've been told we were as we try to run from something we've been told repeatedly is terribly wrong.

What then does that mean? An early life lived dishonestly, a huge amount of confusion and often intense separation and loneliness because people instinctively know when you are not being "real."

So comes the day you come to face yourself and decide to be true to that self. People you were close to feel betrayed by what they perceive as your dishonesty. Some, myself included lose families, friends etc. I was lucky. I got to keep the job I had, though I caught no small amount of crap in the workplace. You learn early on that there are some people who fear you so much they will attack and even kill you. Institutions including certain churches, and cities, states etc create roadblocks to stand in your way. There is no lengths deep enough or depraved enough that some will not go to express their discomfort with your very existence. The streets are filled with trans kids kicked out of their homes, sometimes forced into sex work or begging just to survive. But even if you are lucky enough to get to keep a roof over your head, I cannot understate the level of pain that lies ahead.

Some seem to do okay for awhile, but may then suddenly encounter a barrage of hate they simply are not equipped to deal with. I know and have written about people who reached that place where death seemed the only true way out.

You know, I'm reminded of something that happened with me when Robin and I were getting married. Houston Hate Radio devoted two full hours to "discussing" the two of us, providing an open forum for those with hearts filled with hate to call in and trash us and our lives together. You know, I was older and better equipped to face this kind of hate. Plus wise enough to know better than to listen to the barrage of negativity over the air. There's a pain that never really goes away that people can muster so much hate for being who I am. On our wedding day we had protesters as well. How is a kid in high school or even college supposed to negotiate such an emotional mine field? Besides age, I had a community to fall back on. People who would listen and understand. That simply is not the case everywhere. Now there's social media to serve as another means to bully.

I weep for these young trans souls. I weep for the lives they will not be able to live. I also weep because I know I came perilously close at one point of being one of those statistics, and why I did not pull the trigger is still one of the great mysteries. We can't change the world, but I do think that each of us, myself leading the charge, can make ourselves an instrument of love, of compassion. If enough of us do so, just maybe we really can change the world.The constant loss of lives, whether by suicide or murder, simply must end.

Stop Killing My People!

Anyone who reads this blog knows that I'm transgender. It's a piece and parcel of who I am, along with gay, a writer, blonde hair, dog lover, all those traits that form who I am as a person. Frankly, there are not a lot of transgender people in our population. Most estimates for those who are transsexual number between .3% and .8% of the entire population. Yeah, not even a full percent. Toss in the broader terminology gender variant, that is, those who are not entirely comfortable with being either extreme in a fictional binary of male and female, and our numbers go up from 3% to 5% of the population. Hardly a threat no matter how you define it.

Yet today I read where the pope says people like me are comparable to nuclear weapons aimed that his (in his mind) natural order. Modern day Herods he calls us. Politicians wring their hands in consideration of some sort of transgender menace. Okay, I'm chuckling. I used to have a t-shirt with that on it, but anyone who knows me could hardly call me menacing. I'm more the "didn't even see you were here" sort of person.

Yet these shrill voices of hate are doing a huge harm. Here's why:

1-19-2015 "First name unknown" Edwards Indianapolis, Ky Died of gunshot wounds.
1-17-2015 Lamia Beard Norfolk, Va Died of gunshot wound
1-26-2015 Ty Underwood Tyler, Texas Shot three times in her car
1-31-2015 Yasmin Vash Payne Van Nuys, Ca Repeatedly stabbed, then burned
2-1-2015 Taja Gabriella d Jesus San Francisco, Ca Multiple stab wounds
2-10-2015 Penny Proud New Orleans, La Multiple gunshot wounds
2-14-2015 Bri Golec Akron, Ohio Stabbed by her own father
2-15-2015 Kristina Gomez Reihold Miami, Fla stabbed to death

These are the cases we know about, some only thanks to reporting from local trans communities. Eight souls snuffed out, most people of color. People who only wanted a good life, living with what nature has dealt them, and me. Eight souls and the second month of the year is not even over with yet. But get this. These are only the people we know about in the U.S. Worldwide the same is happening. Please stop the killing!

Thoughts about Loving Community

Okay, first to folks who read my blogs. Don't run away with this one! I am NOT going to evangelize or proselytize. Friday night I attended a program with Bishop Carlton Pearson, himself a figure who has been through a number of spiritual transformations in this life. I'll speak a bit about that, and my own experience as well. But the heart of my message here is about forming Loving Community. Through my experience of the evening, it touched the heart of something that's been stirring within me for a very long time.

So first, a bit about me, then I'll give some background on Rev. Pearson. I was raised a Methodist, but lived in a family where on my Mom's side there were evangelists and pastors galore in the Evangelical Pentecostal tradition of the Assemblies of God. My goodness at at the age of two my Uncle A.G. Calloway was carrying me in his arms preaching fire and salvation. The music was powerful and emotional as we surrendered our bodies to the beat of the music. Very similar to that found in the African American Pentecostal tradition. I had met Oral Roberts at the age of 5 and some years later Jimmy Swaggert before he became nationally known. I've drifted around a bit since those days. In the seventies a stint with UU. After getting sober, I became Catholic, finding the practice of confession useful for me. I also loved the Eucharist. One of those rituals that carries regardless of one's personal theology, at least for me.

Of course there was conflict with being gay and transgender so I wound up with MCC in Houston. It's a ministry that is inclusive, especially for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people. It was my first insight into what community could be. We were a multi-racial congregation with people from all walks of life. We had different choirs finding something for many traditions while becoming one community together. I still treasure my time there. Later after coming to Minneapolis I wound up at First Universalist, a Unitarian Universalist congregation that is currently my spiritual home.

Note I have not spoken about my personal theology. Each one of us has our own system of beliefs, and one of the things I've often complained about is the tendency of groups to create dogmas to exclude others. Here I found common cause with Bishop Carlton Pearson.

His journey was equally filled with twists and turns. A part of the Evangelical circles of folks like Oral Roberts and the Bakers, he had a mega church in Tulsa. He's an amazing singer and preacher in his own right. Then in his own growing awareness, he came to realize that instead of coming together, we were finding ways to divide ourselves. It was rooted in fear of an angry God and at times an egotistical exercise in being saved while those other souls were certainly going to hell. In his talk, he spoke of religion which separates and divides us vs spirituality where we find our common humanity. He paid a huge price for coming out with his new found Universalist belief, free of hell and rooted in our common humanity. In place he found peace and contentment.

So here we were listening to his story and sharing song. It felt really good to me. I found immediate kinship to the music so close to that of my own childhood experience, and considerable delight that I knew the songs. We talked about spiritual search in thinking and spiritual search in feeling, an how they both had a place. Here we were in this sanctuary, singing praise and waving our arms and moving to the sound and thinking deeply, and people from different traditions laughing at ourselves, even as in this moment, we were one. He spoke of the experience back at the Tulsa UU group. A regular UU service (think NPR), a service with elements of the music and tradition more common in the tradition from which he came, and a third service for those humanists that would rather not hear any God talk at all. More important, how they went to different services, and how all of these disparate souls, gay and straight, all races, all traditions, coming together in common community. Looking around, I saw a microcosm of this in the sanctuary Friday night.

We've spent all our efforts for so many years to create separations that divide us from each other. But oh how beautiful it was to see us all under the same roof, united in our common humanity. I did not necessarily agree with all that Bishop Pearson said. I know very few people who have ever believed exactly as I do. But I felt our common humanity, a vision of what is possible in this world. Our difference, our diversity to me was a beautiful thing. For me, with my varied upbringing, I also found some of my own roots, and that was an added plus. I really do believe Beloved Community can be formed. It's a goal worth pursuing. For me, the evening was a special one. Special enough to share here.

Please Stop Taking Transgender Lives!

Today is February 6th, 2015. Not really different from this past year, or the year before ad nauseum. The ticking of the clock brings with us once again the growing number of transgender people having their lives snuffed out because of hate and fear. I will never really understand that level of hate or fear, but I've known first hand its reality. Here's where we are so far this year,watching with anger and frustration as our body count grows.

January 9th. "Goddess" Edwards. The name Goddess assigned since we have not learned her femme name to date. Indianapolis, Kentucky, She died from a gunshot wound.

January 17th. Lamie Beard. Norfolk, Virginia Shot to death. Media added insult to injury by mislabeling her gender in their coverage.

January 26th. Ty Underwood. Tyler, Texas, the town where I grew up. Died from three gunshots as she entered her car. Friends are certain it was due to hate.

January 31st. Yasmin Vash Payne. Van Nuys, California. Stabbed then burned.

February 1st. Taja Gabrielle De Jesus, San Francisco, California. Multiple stab wounds.

This story of hate and murder goes on unchecked year after year. Police often criminalize the victim in early pronouncements. Dehumanized before AND after death. It bears noting that of the people listed here, all five are to my knowledge people of color. According to the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP), 72% of all people killed in LGBTQ or HIV hate violence are Trans Women and 67% are Trans Women of Color.

Make no mistake about it. I take this extremely seriously. Two decades ago, a younger Jessica found herself while taking a walk, surrounded by a group of guys fully intent on making me a statistic. I managed to make a break and ran faster than I've ever run before the block and a half to the police substation on lower Westheimer in the Montrose neighborhood of Houston. Of course they were not apprehended. I remember with such clarity the fear in that moment. There but for grace I could have become one more statistic, one more trans life extinguished.

Here we are at an intersection of movements. Black Lives Matter. So do Transgender Lives. The majority of those lives lost are black and brown lives. I'm so grateful that Black Lives Matter In their public pronouncements include trans lives. We've reached a point where this constant assault on our lives, and the added insults to our memories when we are gone, SIMPLY MUST END!

Let me say this with clarity. I'm no damned target for your hate! I'm not the insult at your parlor parties. Yes, we even are at risk for fighting back. Look only to Cici McDonald here in Minneapolis who went to prison after she was attacked first by a woman white supremacist, then later her swastika bearing boyfriend. A bottle smashed in her face, then the boyfriend enters the fray. In the struggle, she stabbed the attacker (the guy) and Cici goes to prison. Self defense according to the law is not an option they are telling us.

We as a nation has a long history of oppression. The numbers of those oppressed are rising, and the numbers of the oppressors are decreasing. There is coming a historical "come to Jesus" moment. Either we deal peacefully to end these oppressive systems and bring true justice for us all, or we will rise up and overturn this system for one that does work. Take a glance out on the streets now. We see Black, Brown, and White, Trans, Gay, Bi, Straight and Queer folks marching arm in arm. Businesses are shut down, freeways closed, shopping hindered. Black Lives Matter and Trans Lives Matter, righteous anger is welling up, presently in peaceful non-violent but effective measures to send a message. Listen to that message carefully. Ignoring it will have a terrible price.

Beautiful people are dying. It is not acceptable and it must end. Hate must not win this time.

Owning My Heritage: Sins of the Father Part 2

In the last post, I spoke on my Mother's side of the family mostly, dating back to the 1600's and particularly the family in the following centuries. We were by no means innocent bystanders in those years where racism found the early beginnings to where we are today. For cheap labor and as a means to separate poor white and black people from each other, the stain of racism has been remarkably effective, then and now.

So let me turn to my father's side of the family. We know we were in Virginia before, but the earliest we can prove so far is James A Wicks (Weeks). He moved from Virginia with his wife to northern Alabama, then across the border into Fayetteville, Tennessee where he became a farmer, and we know he owned people as well. The old property is marked today by the Wicks Cemetery Road. He was well known apparently and in Alabama he had been a church leader we know. Then as now, we know that people and religion too often twist the bad and call it good. It's in my heart what I feel was happening here. Here's what I found in the Fayetteville Observer dated June 6, 1861, just two days before Tennessee would vote to secede from the union:

Just below that was this in the same paper:

I could not help but gasp at the audacity of that second part. They call on the people of Tennessee to choose freedom over slavery! Seriously? Freedom to you is fighting to protect your right to own human beings? What sort of moral, or perhaps immoral leap of faith can enable someone to speak these words and actually believe them? Aren't they the same sort of beliefs that allow white people today to say this was all in the past and we hold no special privilege as white people despite abundant evidence to the contrary? How are we less guilty today for our obstinate insistence upon living a lie as we were then?

In the same paper, my ancestor, James A. Wicks was named one of the representatives for the House Guards of Minute Men, appointed to help in common defense against the Yankees. Ready to stand strong in defense of his freedom to own human beings. Over time the family would spread, and my grandfather and grandmother lived in North East Texas. I remember Grandpa telling stories of the Night Riders. Not only black people were afraid of them. If they caught you out after dark and one of the members had a beef with you, you could easily disappear and never be heard from again. Still, there was clear privilege in being white. There's a story I like to tell that brings home that point.

My grandfather lost out on any inheritance, and was relegated to working as a sharecropper. White and black, they worked along side with long hours, back breaking work picking cotton, and always in debt to the boss man. One day the boss arbitrarily wanted the shack they were staying in so he could tear it down and grow on that land. So grandpa had to go look for other arrangements. Well about a week later, a wrecking crew shows up. They were supposed to have two weeks to get out, but they changed their mind. My Grandma, bless her soul, went into the house and came out with a shotgun in hand. She quietly aimed it at the crew chief and said they'd be out in another week, but if he made another move, he was a dead man. They left. So where's the privilege. They would be the first to tell you that if a black man or woman had done that, the night riders would show up soon after and the entire family would disappear. That was their reality.

My parents were a bit more progressive. Still they didn't really get the whole civil rights thing, and my Daddy talked about being a sharecropper and working as hard as they did, and after all, didn't he pull himself up by the bootstrap and become a civil engineer. Don't get me wrong. What he did was good. But in the real world, he had opportunities that others did not. I remember from my own childhood growing up in the Jim Crow East Texas, the poor shape of the schools, the lack of funding or support we took for granted. I remember sundown towns where a black person needed to be out of town by sunset. Or the separate entrances into one movie theater where black people could attend though separated from the rest of us. I have to look inside my own self. Why did it take me so long to see something was terribly wrong?

I do not think mine is a solitary journey. I am telling my own story of race, but there are others. Let the healing begin.

Owning My Heritage: Sins of the Fathers

Today we find ourselves in the midst of a new Civil Rights movement. My prayer is that we will at long last come to grips with our nation's disgraceful history around race, from Slavery to Jim Crow to Mass Incarceration. It also is abundantly clear that Four Hundred years of indoctrination stands as a massive barrier to moving forward. I think it is crucial that we people, especially we white people, face that history head on and own our past and our role in perpetuating that past. Only then can we really move forward to work towards healing. We too often are blind to our privilege and blind to the serious harm we are doing to so many others in our refusal to face this past. Here then is the first of several blog entries where I will face some of my own history.

Not all my family has been documented that well in early America, but one line has. My family on my mom's side has been faithfully documented ever since the Dedman's (Debnam's, Dudman's) arrived in Virginia as early as 1631. We see the first indications of owning slaves in the 1700's. In the will of Phillip Dedman Jr, we read in part from The Dedman Geneaology and Allied Families, Wanda Colvin, 1983:

"I give to my son Philip Dedman my Negroes, Will, Tom, and Mole, upon express condition the he suffer my wife to hold and enjoy the use of Tom during her natural life...and upon condition Mole be allowed to go and work upon my land"...(all to last until she passes.) He goes on to give to his son Samuel land purchased in Mecklenburg "my negroes named Diego, Jenny, Nanny, and Paul upon express condition that he suffer my wife to hold and enjoy the use of Nanny during her natural life." Then he proceeds to give his daughter Mary Dunn "one negro woman named Frank and two negro girls named Kabe and Edy, and Harry, a negro boy, upon express condition that my wife shall have the use of Kabe during her natural life." Daughter Susan also gets a girl named Phillis, Sarah and her child Mary, and Grace and her child Lawney.

So that's 16 human lives being passed off as property. What relationships were broken in this parceling out of human lives? Were they beaten? Are there some who never show up because they perished before the writing and probate of the will? We don't know those stories, but we know all of those things were possible. What follows in this genealogy is page after page of future generations, parceling out people like land. Later however they did not even bother itemizing the names of these souls, instead stating only "certain negroes."

So on it went. Many fought in the Civil War, defending a system of human enslavement. I found similar stories on my Father's side, though so far not so well documented. My family on Mom's side made lots of money in the lumber business, much on the backs of the hard labor of poor black and white men. I'll talk a bit more about my dad's side of the family in another post. I visited and even worked for a time in one of their sawmills. I heard the N word tossed about with such contempt.

I relate all of this, not out of any pride. No pride to be found there. Many of these people no doubt possessed good qualities. Very few are all good or all bad. But they by their action and I might by inaction as well, supported a system of inequality. They benefitted from it. Some were very well to do thanks to this system of inequality. It's hard truth by which each life must be judged.

So why drag out the dirty laundry? I think people like me have been conditioned to gloss over or relegate to the past a reality which still lives on. Look around all those who would see. Unequal education, policing and justice systems that preserve the advantages of whiteness. We cannot move forward until we own our participation in this injustice. We cannot continue to pretend the history most of us got in school is anywhere close to the truth. The truth will set you free. Only however if you face it. Our problem is NOT a black problem. It's not hoodies or naturals or any of that. Our problem is white people, and we as white people have to step forward and act. In the AIDS years of the early eighties, there was a saying. "Silence = Death." it's true here too. It's not South or North. It's right vs wrong. It's a white people thing. I've no power over what my ancestors did. I do however bear a responsibility, to make amends for the wrongs they did, but also for my own behavior as a human being in a society still structured around racist notions of inequality. Or as my church social justice arm says it, standing on the side of love. If we own it, perhaps eventually we can fix it.