Becoming an Accomplice

 How to start off writing. It's 2021, people stormed the Capitol. They're not being punished for it really, though the police are making a minimal show of doing so. 

So many thoughts. 

What is the overarching theme of the universe? Change.

We resist change because we are scared about what it will mean for us. We're not sure if we're going to be OK after the change has happened so we try to prevent it from happening, through spit and grit.

I've lived the reality of change at times being carried along with it and sometimes taking action. In 2020 I realized the reality that I had been living in was a lot different from the reality that people of color live in. That my local police seemed to be OK guys (although a lot of them seem a bit egotistical) but I didn't think for a minute that there was really a big issue with the police. I thought they were stopping bad guys from doing bad things. 

Sometimes they stop OK guys from doing stupid things, sometimes that turns into sending people to jail that shouldn't really be in jail.

I didn't know that there could be racism without overt racist comments and that we could be complicit in a racist state without understanding that is what was happening. 

So I'm going to educate myself, try to do better, help where I can. 

I just attended a meeting on how to be an "accomplice" vs. "ally" where the speaker, Marci Rizzi, was making a distinction between being supportive in the background and taking action.

Here's a list of things she mentioned (that I was able to write down).

1. Help create safe spaces - be like John Brown

Read John Brown - a Biography

2. Help reform the prison system - write your legislators

Be a pen-pal to prisoners

3. Harness the power and anger of Fred Hampton, Malcom X and the Black Panthers.

Watch every video you can of Fred Hampton speaking.

4. Be as stealthy and quick witted as Harriet Tubman

Support the work of black organizations. NAACP, The Innocence Project, ublac.org, The Conscious Kids.

5. Capitalism and Racism are conjoined twins

Buy from and support black owned businesses. www.officialblackwallstreet.com/directory/

bookshop.org

6. Be more like Dr. Martin Luther King

Be willing to put yourself in harms way to protect black bodies. Dr. King Center for training.

7. Be less like a "Karen." Stop being defensive.

You are a racist without your consent. By default. Everyone is.

Follow Stacey Patton and Son of Baldwin (James Baldwin)

8. Buy books and art

"Just Mercy" The Career of Bryan Stevenson

"Whoreson" by Donald Goines

"Bail-Bonds" White Man's Justice, Black Man's Grief

"The Blind Spot"

"The New Jim Crow" and then "How to be an Antiracist"

"The Bluest Eye" 

"Propaganda" by Jacques Ellul

Anything by Toni Morrison

"A People's History of the United States" by Howard Zinn

"Stamped from the Beginning" by Ibram X. Kendi

"Pedagogy of the Oppressed" by Pablo Freire

9. Watch Black TV Shows and Media

"Good Hair" by Chris Rock

Seeing "White on Scene" on Radio Podcast

Resources:

www.officialblackwallstreet.com/directory/

bookshop.org

Betty Sauer - Diversity Committee

Lobbyist training through https://www.lobbyschool.com/online-training/ 

Equalityutah.org