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.
PLEASE SUPPORT FLOMM
TIPS + DONATIONS DISCREETLY ACCEPTED