interstate 5 blockade, sacramento

Sacra­men­to, you have some amaz­ing black and brown lead­ers here and we are lucky to have them. Lis­ten to them. There aren’t words for to­day. It was beau­ti­ful to see the city come to­geth­er to take a stand for Stephon Clark. It was also a sea of tan­gi­ble pain like I have nev­er felt. I’m proud of us. I’m pray­ing for us. I love you.
—An­dru Defeye
 

I want to be care­ful not to make what I con­sid­er a vic­to­ry of the Black Lives Mat­ter move­ment about me. That said, I still want to ac­knowl­edge my van­tage point. I’m a firm be­liev­er that true fac­tu­al neu­tral­i­ty isn’t real, and it helps you find your be­liefs to know how some­one writ­ing to you ap­proach­es theirs.

With­in the year of Trayvon Martin’s mur­der, I was in­volved in an ab­surd in­ci­dent of po­lice authority: 

For rid­ing in the bed of a truck,
I had a gun pulled on me,
sev­er­al back­up units called,
a semi-le­gal at­tempt to search me, and was detained.

Be­cause the per­son­al and the po­lit­i­cal hap­pened so close to­geth­er, it im­pact­ed my ac­tivism. Up to that point, I had main­ly worked in re­sponse to Prop 8 and its pass­ing, along with some at­tempts to get in­volved with a fee­ble lo­cal Oc­cu­py branch. But pret­ty much every­thing I worked in af­ter that was a re­sponse to po­lice bru­tal­i­ty and fa­tal po­lice racism. This is to say, I’ve been to many a protest, and I’ve nev­er re­al­ly had the abil­i­ty to feel de­tached. I guess I’d call it survivor’s guilt.

The protest on March 22 was pow­er­ful in a way I haven’t re­al­ly ex­pe­ri­enced be­fore. The shoot­ing of Stephon Clark is al­ready one of the most out­ra­geous in the re­cent his­to­ry of black mur­der at the hands of police. 

In his own back­yard, cops not even both­er­ing to look around the cor­ner, be­fore shoot­ing him an ab­surd amount of times, over a phone. 

He was a fa­ther and a good man. And to be sure, racists are sure as shit try­ing to paint him in a bad light; but it seems pret­ty hard for them to pull it off. 

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, this wasn’t a sol­i­dar­i­ty march. This wasn’t just a protest or­ga­nized by Black Lives Mat­ter. This was his fam­i­ly and his friends in his city, as many if not more than the out­raged citizens.

I think if you haven’t spent a good amount of time in Sacra­men­to, it’s hard to un­der­stand the cul­ture. There’s ab­solute­ly an up­per crust that loves brand­ing us as a farm town, as a love­ly place to eat like a food­ie, a whole­some lit­tle riv­er city. Sure, you get that side of Sacra­men­to if you have the money. 

But to me, Sacra­men­to is scrap­py. It’s tired peo­ple, rough around the edges, work­ing their ass­es off to main­tain with­out a lot of up­ward mo­bil­i­ty. Es­pe­cial­ly when you step away from the white-dom­i­nat­ed spaces, step away from the feigned manners.

To para­phrase what I over­heard of a fel­low protester,
“they killed the wrong [man] in the wrong city.”

I’m sure with­out doubt that or­ga­niz­ers sat down be­fore the event and said, ‘we want to dis­rupt these things.’ But there was a ge­nius in that it didn’t feel that way to us. 

For us, it felt like a con­stant test­ing of the bound­aries. How are the po­lice re­act­ing to us around city hall? When we cir­cle the block? When we go to the park? Oh, what a co­in­ci­dence, we have to block this road to get there. How do they han­dle us block­ing the road? Let’s cir­cle city hall in the street. Fuck it, let’s march J street. Oh, hey, I mean, there’s a free­way here … it just so HAP­PENS to be 5 o’clock traffic …

It was ge­nius be­cause it demon­strat­ed some­thing for all of us there: Vic­to­ry for Black Lives Mat­ter – the vic­to­ries that save the fu­ture Stephon Clarks – comes in NUM­BERS. You reach a crit­i­cal mass, and the po­lice can­not ar­rest you all. You reach a crit­i­cal mass, and you must be heard.

You can’t reach that crit­i­cal mass if you sole­ly state your be­liefs in iso­la­tion where it’s safe. (I say that know­ing there are folks with dis­abil­i­ties who can’t be out in the world protest­ing. It’s okay to know your place in these move­ments. Even I have tak­en many steps back with age. But for sure, there are many able and avail­able peo­ple who con­sis­tent­ly choose com­fort over the greater good.)

Speak­ing of ar­rests, I’ve heard time and time again that there were no ar­rests at this protest. That is ALSO a vic­to­ry of the protestors.

I left be­fore they in­ter­rupt­ed the Kings game. I do want to speak to it, though. I want to risk veer­ing out of my lane, in an at­tempt to ex­plain some­thing to fel­low white people:

It is a huge cri­tique placed on us again and again, that we are hap­py to con­sume black cul­ture and prod­ucts with­out a will­ing­ness to care for black peo­ple. Sports are a rare venue for black up­ward mo­bil­i­ty in this coun­try. It was ab­solute­ly in­ten­tion­al to block that game. If you had a tick­et to that game, and were mad that you were pre­vent­ed from see­ing it, or just de­layed, you are hap­py to con­sume black cul­ture and prod­ucts with­out a will­ing­ness to care for black peo­ple. It makes you an asshole. 

And I’m sure it makes you an­gry to hear that. Be­ing wrong is a phys­i­cal­ly painful sen­sa­tion, I get it. But a man is dead. A fa­ther, a son, a grand­son, a part­ner, a friend. A hu­man. For ab­solute­ly no good rea­son. In or­der to pro­tect a vi­o­lent, op­pres­sive so­cial norm. That, be­lieve it or not, also threat­ens you. If you love go­ing to bas­ket­ball games, if you loved Black Pan­ther, if you love lis­ten­ing to hip-hop on your way home from work, it’s time to take some of that love and give it to the peo­ple themselves. 

Imag­ine some­one you love, shot 20 times in their own back­yard, cops not even both­er­ing to look at them while they do it. Imag­ine com­plete strangers ar­gu­ing that they de­served it. Imag­ine know­ing there would nev­er be jus­tice for that per­son you loved. You don’t have to give up the me­dia or the en­ter­tain­ment, you just have to be will­ing to give some­thing back.
 

—mel­ony ppenosyne

Flom­mist Mel­ony Ppenosyne is a writer and weird artist type. In the last year alone, she’s trav­eled to Vir­ginia as a com­pet­ing poet, co-writ­ten a play on men­tal ill­ness that is present­ly be­ing pro­duced, and craft­ed a pub­lished es­say check­ing the priv­i­lege and scope of art gal­leries. Copy­right © 2018 Mel­ony Ppenosyne.

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