Hair New Era

He was unarmed, walking from his house to his grandmother's down the street, when the officers in plainclothes attacked him. Later the police claimed they had thought he might be armed and on drugs. He was neither.

It seems his only crime was being Black and outside at night.

This case has garnered much local and national press, because Jordan Miles happens to be a straight-laced honors student at one of Pittsburgh's most prestigious arts academies. There are no ambiguities here: police were the criminals that night.

The city has largely ignored the issue. The policemen involved are on a temporary suspension during which they are being paid more than they make on duty. (Nice punishment, huh?) The Feds have stepped in, but still nothing has happened.

Sadly, this kind of thing isn't all that rare. Most people know this. As a recovering country bumpkin, I am still baffled when I hear of it, especially when it happens less than 5 miles from my house. So this weekend I attended a rally/march to demand justice for Jordan. And I've chosen "writing against injustice" as a central theme for the two writing classes I'm teaching this term. My students will read about the case (in a media packet I've put together--you may read/download below) and write about it.

These are but small things. Tiny steps to conquer an issue that seems too big. But together with others fighting for peace, may we scale the mountain.


May a better day come.
JordanMiles_MediaPacket

Yesterday I attended a gathering/protest in Garfield sponsored by a faith-and-social-justice organization called Pittsburgh Interfaith Impact Network. Garfield is a mostly minority neighborhood that has been plagued by violence for I don't know how long--too long. At the protest, people from the community--young and old--shared testimonies of what it used to be like growing up in the neighborhood, what it's like now, and what they hope it can be one day. Several mothers talked about losing sons to street violence. (Leaving how many wives without husbands and children without fathers?)

Then came a call to action directed toward the police force (2 officers were in the audience), asking for more police presence in the neighborhood.

At first I was skeptical. More cops does not always equal more safety. We all know stories of police misusing their power in minority communities--consider Jordan Miles, a Pittsburgh honor student brutally beaten by police while walking home, or Oscar Grant, an unarmed Black man shot by BART police in Oakland last year. Reminders why Connie Rice's work against police violence is so important. She once told Sun Magazine, "to create a movement, you have to have alliances." And at this meeting I began to see a community building an alliance with police.

Neighbors stood up and requested specifics--"two security cameras installed at key points in the neighborhood," "at least 3 K-9s patrolling with officers," "more officers walking the streets" and therefore engaging with, and being part of, the community instead of simply marshaling from afar. I realized these tangible, specific, and not unreasonable requests, given in a compassionate manner, are what really had the potential to affect change. And the hope behind each voice. The officer responded to each request, saying that they had secured security cameras and they're working on getting more K-9s. Speakers acknowledged that it's not the police force's fault, but more the city's fault for not providing enough funding to hire more cops.

At the end, the police officer said he had heard, he had listened, and the police will not ignore or forget them. He asked that the community give them time to work toward these goals. Perhaps the police won't forget them, but will the city continue to do so? I hope not.

Like ghosts of my Christmas past, the guys who moved in across the street appear to be smalltown folk, bordering on red necks. We often see them standing on their back porch, shirtless, beer in hand, screaming curses at a raggedy blonde woman who comes and goes at all hours. There's even a shitty car in the driveway constantly blaring John Mellencamp. I don't know what motivated these guys to leave the country and buy a home in urban Pittsburgh, but they seem so absolutely out of place I'm not sure they're real. Are they figments of my imagination? Muses to help me conjure the past for my memoir?

That's right. I said "home." It really is starting to feel that way.
After a week of jet lag in Columbus, hanging out with Brandon, checking in with work, I moved to my new apartment in Pittsburgh and was once again thrown into the flurry of a new school year. Preparing to teach Freshman Comp (the materials for which I did not receive over the summer by some administrative mistake), unpacking and setting up the new place, buying books for the classes I'm taking, preparing for the upcoming retreat, preparing to start the Fuel and Fuddle reading series, trying to find a moment to write. I almost cracked on Tuesday. Literally. I then decided that with the extra load of classes and other things going on this semester I simply do not have time to worry about the following fairly-usual concerns:

Reading every possible book that could in some way be related to my manuscript
Money spent on food
Money spent on entertainment
Responding to e-mails immediately
Responding to phone calls immediately
Stressing about doing the absolute best in my classes--I'll just have to do what I can
Stressing about writing the absolute best manuscript by April
Working out 3 times/week--it will probably end up being once or twice
Thinking about everything that's on my plate right now (just ignore it, or as Brandon says, "Don't look down.")

So far this has helped me not over-stress the past week. Stress is such a natural part of how I deal with things that I feel a little fake, like something is missing. But it's also kind of nice. Perhaps this can be a small improvement that will outlast the semester.