As a young person, I developed a special defense around police violence, an extra layer of numbness. My mother was a civil rights attorney who specialized in police abuse. She always drove a non-descript car. “I sue cops,” she said. She didn’t want to make herself a more visible target for retaliation.

In high school, my family was active in fighting police violence and also in the anti-nuclear movement. I knew that the peace movement was mostly white, and the people my mom was defending were mostly Black. There was no movement like Black Lives Matter at that time. Black communities were struggling under the crack epidemic and mass incarceration was on the rise

I grew up with a mom who talked about her work, and the details were pretty terrifying at times. In high school, sometimes my mother and her boyfriend would discuss police abuse cases at the dinner table. Pro-tip for activist parents: don’t do this. Now that I’m a parent, I can see how busy parents finally get a moment to talk to each other at dinner. But us kids would complain that we didn’t want to hear about it while we ate. Like so many activist parents, my mom and her boyfriend thought the cause was more important than our delicate kid feelings, and they dismissed our objections. I had to armor myself to get through dinner when they would share some of the more brutal details of their cases.

Block it out. Think about something else. Take a bite. Chew.

So when I started seeing outraged social media reports about the most recent cases of Black people getting killed by police, my old defense mechanisms kicked in. Block it out. Think about something else.

But I can’t block it out. The nation has been burning with outrage at the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and Tony McDade. The killing isn’t new, but the callous disregard for Black Life, the emboldened white supremacy, harks back to the Jim Crow South 100 years ago. Officer Derek Chauvin knelt on George Floyd’s neck for more than 7 minutes as Floyd—recorded in multiple videos—was clearly not resisting, and said he couldn’t breathe. This white officer felt confident that he could take a Black man’s life in broad daylight, with multiple witnesses–and video recordings–without expecting any sort of consequences. In this context, many have called it a modern lynching. Like the lynchings of old, the audience was part of the violence. But this isn’t the Deep South, this is Minneapolis, MN. This could be anywhere in the US. In response, protesters set a local police precinct on fire. The officers were fired, and after the massive public outcry, Derek Chauvin was finally arrested and charged with third-degree murder. Anne Branigin of The Root sums it up here:

Across America…thousands of people marched to their state capitols, their public squares, their police precincts. Across America, they shouted “I can’t breathe”—a dying plea turned rallying cry. Police took arms against demonstrators—dressing in riot gear, shooting at the citizens who employ them with rubber bullets…Across America, protestors …demand[ed] justice too long delayed. They wore masks, knowledgeable of the pandemic that still grips this country, but pushed to act because of a more pernicious, more terrorizing epidemic: the ongoing, state-sponsored, state-enabled assault on [B]lack lives.

When I was in the numbness, I saw the above photo of the officer several times in my twitter feed. But as I scrolled, I didn’t realize what I was looking at. I saw the face of the cop, but not the face of the Black man on the ground. My mind couldn’t process the violence I was witnessing. I didn’t see his face because it was located where a face shouldn’t be. In a casual glance, the officer is kneeling on a dark object. A rock, a tire, a fallen tree limb. But George Floyd’s head and shoulders only read to me as an object because Officer Derek Chauvin was treating him like an inanimate thing. An unfeeling mass. But he wasn’t an object. He was a living Black man, with a mind, a body, lungs that took in air and filtered oxygen to his beating heart. Until Derek Chauvin used the power of the state–of his police badge–as entitlement to choke off George Floyd’s air supply and slowly, sadistically–almost pornographically–murder him in front of witnesses. I choked up with tears when I realized what I was seeing. George Floyd looks like the men in my family. He could easily have been a cousin. This death hits home.

*

As an activist, I still cross color lines in my political life—organizing for racial justice and now organizing for climate justice. I have committed myself to prioritize climate this year. I hold a vision of organizing Black people, in particular, for the climate movement. The pandemic lockdown has derailed my initial organizing strategy, but I still hold that vision. And of course, racial justice and climate justice are connected.

But this kind of police violence is also why it is so difficult to organize Black people for the climate movement. The threat of climate catastrophe is not as tangible as black and white cop cruisers that prowl our neighborhoods. When my kid was in preschool and learned about Black Lives Matter, every sighting of a police vehicle would lead to a frightened question: “are the police going to hurt us?” It takes a while for a small child to understand the idea of risk. Every time we cross paths with the police, we Black people are at risk of being harassed, stopped, falsely arrested, brutalized, shot. The kid is ten now. These days we can pass by cop cars without a scene. Does this reflect an integration of the concept of risk? Or just a level of numbness?

For years, when the white-dominated environmental movement would posit climate as the greatest risk for humanity, it would enrage Black people in the US. You can’t organize people whose lives are daily endangered via living while Black by telling us that there is a looming future risk. Because what you are really telling us is: I don’t really care about the current risk to you, but I want you to join me in prioritizing a future risk to both of us. There was just too much racism embedded in that approach. For decades, most attempts to get the mainstream environmental movement to pay attention to race were met with complete resistance.

Until recently. There’s a new generation of climate movements rising. The Sunrise Movement is co-founded and led by a woman of color, Varshini Prakash, and uses an intersectional approach.

I received this email from Sunrise a few days after the protests: “If all of our lives were treated as having inherent and equal value — there would be no climate crisis….We won’t win a Green New Deal unless we address the deep trauma embedded in the soul of America: white supremacy. Here are some ways you can take action…with the Movement for Black Lives…We need everyone to speak up against racism and white supremacy…Thank you for standing with us and joining us in demanding and building a society where Black lives matter.”

As hip hop artist Coco Peila puts it in her song “Whose World?”

Same solutions to Climate Change could help end oppression/Picture no Racism, Sexism, Classism pressin’
down and separating Movements/Taking Lives of people
That World We could Build it/One that’s fully peaceful
We need a Green New Deal..

Another woman of color leader who connects these issues is AOC. She offered an important analysis of police violence in a recent tweet:

Ocasio-Cortez nails it here. This is the point where all our politics connect: we need to build powerful movements and elect leaders who are willing to stand up to these entitled, violent, extractive, terrorizing forces that are attempting to upend our democracy and dominate our society. Whether it’s killer cops or gerrymandering Republicans or worker exploitation at Amazon.com. We need to stand up for each other and we need to stand together. The Green New Deal is the most comprehensive piece of legislation our generation has seen that would change so many of the conditions of our lives. Voting blue in the November election is really just a long-game strategy to give us more room to organize the movement we need to take back this country: from white supremacist bullies, from fossil fuel bullies, from voting rights bullies, from police bullies, from billionaire bullies, from tech bullies, from misogynist bullies.

And Minneapolis continues to burn, with new cities going up in flames each day. Initially in Minneapolis, it was the police station, but after a while, community organizations–particularly those working with immigrants and people of color–have begun to go up in flames. It appears that white supremacists have begun to commit hate crimes–torching POC organizations–with the hope or expectation that the protests against police would be blamed. In Minneapolis, the majority of protesters arrested were from out of state, and there are widespread reports of white people traveling far distances to join the protests in order to commit violent acts. According to Ishena Robinson in The Root, in response to these examples and statistics, two theories are emerging: ” that far-right extremists may be driving much of the current protest violence in order to launch the so-called race war, or that police officers themselves may be causing the chaos on the streets to justify [using more extreme force against citizens].” Whatever the case, white supremacist terror is on the rise.

This past weekend, I was going to a socially distanced playdate with another family that has two Black children. I was alone in the car with my ten-year-old. My kid had the phone because we were getting directions and I didn’t want to be unsafe while driving. The other mom texted asking if I had talked to my kid about George Floyd yet. Except the other mom’s text had a typo, and the phone autocorrected it to “Goethe Floyd.” My kid asked, “Who’s Goethe Floyd?” My chest got tight, but I said I had no idea. Which was technically true.

When we got to the playdate, the other mom and I had a socially distanced check-in.

What do your kids know? I asked.

They heard about it on the news. The other mom said.

Did they get details?  I asked

No, we just said the police killed another Black man. By now, they’re kind of used to it. 

My heart broke a little bit then. At ten and eleven, our kids are already starting to get numb.

On the way home, My kid asked to put on an audiobook. “I want to tell you something first,” I said. “Remember that text we got? It was a typo. ‘Goethe Floyd’ was supposed to be ‘George Floyd.’ He was killed by police in Minneapolis.” I said. “But the people rose up.They wouldn’t accept it. They burned down a police station. The officer was fired and now he’s been arrested for murder.” My kid nodded, satisfied, and asked if we could go back to playing the audiobook.

Did I present a balanced picture so that my kid feels safe and confident that our movement is making progress? Or is that just numbness?

I don’t talk about activist politics at the dinner table with my family. But I must–especially in the pandemic lockdown–stay vigilant to fighting my own numbness. I can allow myself to connect to the terrifying realities of the world that is, to grieve those whom we have lost, but in that healing grief, I can also connect to the profound vision and authentic hope of the world we’re fighting for. Black Lives Matter. We demand climate justice for all.