Future in the Making: Black Lives Matter
Artist: @gohomejerome
“Ok Maddy, listen to me. I need you to be prepared to be arrested.”
My two daughters called me from the Manhattan Bridge, in a sheer panic. What had been a peaceful, fluid protest, had quickly become a fretful kettle suspended above the East River when police had blocked off both ends of the bridge. As more and more protestors were funneled up against the road block and realized they were trapped, the crowd grew anxious, and the cops got twitchy. I was at home, watching the aerial footage from the chopper hovering over the ominous scene. I saw the cops unloading bags of zip-ties from the vans.
“The NYPD and Black Lives Matter protestors are in a stand-off.” said the TV. No - “stand-off” is not the right word for it, I thought. That term implies some sense of equity; of two sides proportionate to one another. This was not the case. The reality was that the NYPD were pointing loaded machine guns at a fenced-in coop of civilians.
“Keep your hands in the air. Make sure they can see your hands. And walk back to the Brooklyn side. Dad will be there.”
My daughters and I often power-walk the bridge for exercise, gossiping about the latest boys of interest, friend dramas or school work. It’s a place of calm above the craziness of the city; the glittering skyline in one direction, and ocean in the other. A place of stillness, perspective, and conversations. Now my children walked it with their hands in the air, towards a blockade of armed police in no mood to listen.
This experience really took a pint of blood from me. But I know that the fear I felt that day was just a glimpse at what black mothers face every time their children leave the house in this country.
I grew up in Yemen, where the majority of prejudice and division was based on religion, not skin color. When I moved to NYC aged 9, I was shocked to see how black and brown people were treated in the land of the free; how they were systemically disenfranchised and underserved. But when we learned about slavery and the civil rights movement in school, it was taught to us as history - not as news and current events.
I didn’t fear for my children’s safety at the women’s march. Armed police have never barricaded climate changer protestors on the Manhattan Bridge. Racism isn’t just the past of America, it’s very much the present.
The depth of pain and trauma that runs through the black community is inescapable, inexcusable and unimaginable for those of us who have the privilege of only imagining it. My children came home to me safe. There are many mothers out there whose children never will.
People talk about the civil rights movement as if it’s over. It’s not over. But right now, we’re on a bridge, suspended - between the past and the future. It’s taken 500 years to get to this point - and we can’t go back now. We have to keep moving forward, towards equality, for a better tomorrow.
