I was having a rough morning on September 30, 2020. The Biden/Trump Presidential Debate the night before had pummeled its way through 90 minutes only to showcase a bully at the top of his game and a defenseless political veteran unaccustomed to the lack of basic respect characteristic of debate. After 20 minutes and a couple F bombs, my middle school daughter’s friends went scurrying from her bedroom past me in the living room, a fortuitous departure as my language declined on a trajectory similar to the debate-spectacle. No policy discussion, no strategy for public health, housing and employment insecurity, none of that to be discussed at all. Only bullying and bulldozing, the hallmark of any witless clown. Until the end, when it came time to denounce white supremacy and the president of the United States recognized (and essentially endorsed) a white supremacist hate group. I wrote it down because I wanted to make a record for myself. “Proud boys stand back and stand by.” He truly said that.
I didn’t sleep much that night and mostly tossed around until the sun came up on Wednesday. I walked outside and could smell the fires. Small bits of ash fluttered through the air while the sun, a dab of orange yolk, seemed to struggle in the east. I walked my dog around the block and got back to the house in time to make my daughter breakfast before her seven-hour day of virtual learning. I’d become more despondent as the day went on. And yet, despondent or not, I owned that many of the social support systems I wanted to see our leaders discussing, essential for so many in this country, are not as essential for me. I am a beneficiary of bell hooks’ “imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.” As such, my despondency includes a safety net woven by my whiteness, maleness and heterosexuality that so many people do not have.
T.S. Eliot wrote that the “only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an ‘objective correlative’.” When I first learned about this concept with an English MA in progress, I flung the term around literary discussions and assignments. One of my professors asked me what the difference between the objective correlative and metaphor was. Human emotion, I’d eventually replied. Metaphor is a comparison between two things, while the objective correlative is a representation of a character’s feelings. I don’t recall having that argument confirmed or denied, but I was able, from that point, to read the tension in Toru Okada as he travelled between the pastoral alleys and gardens, his vacant house, and a barrenly empty well. I reread The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle during quarantine and discovered a vastly changed text than when I’d read it ten years ago. Okada’s context is not a comparison of himself; they are representations of his character’s emotions that he struggles to finally calibrate.
And so, like climbing into the well to try to make sense of things, to calibrate my own life with its occurrences, I logged in to a virtual webinar titled, At the Heart of the Matter: A New Generation of Good Troublemakers, hosted by the Colorado Health Foundation, and paying homage to Representative Lewis’ tweet for activists to engage in “good trouble, necessary trouble.” A panel of four Colorado youth activists responded to various questions posed by Karen McNeil-Miller, president and CEO of The Colorado Health Foundation, and the webinar participants.
The webinar began with a poem written and read by the author, Xiuhtezcatl Martinez, which spoke of indigenous peoples’ colonization, environmental destruction, and a call to fight against systems of inequality and oppression, including the lines, “The power of the people / is more powerful / than the people in power.” The four youth activists, Mariem Dia, Rishika Kartik, Caleb Washington, and Kaliah Yizar, discussed the urgency for social change and the opportunity that technological platforms and continuous innovations present to influence such change. Each participant’s brilliance complemented the other’s. Kartik, when asked what question she would have asked at the debate, initially deferred to consider the question. After McNeil-Miller returned for her response, Kartik said, and I’m paraphrasing, that she would ask how each leader would honor diverse perspectives and intersectionality as part of the policy-making process. Dia spoke of the importance of education as a liberating journey, for self and to influence others, noting that “educate” is her favorite word. Yizar is the co-creator of the Know Justice, Know Peace podcast, which presents a four-panelist discussion of social issues related to black lives. Washington, when asked what politicians could be doing to better assist youth with social justice initiatives, referenced the famous political quote, “nothing about us without us,” to accentuate the diverse and collaborative grass-roots process that local political change entails.
90 minutes of debate-spectacle countered by 90 minutes of constructive, respectful social justice discussion conducted by youth under 18. It was a tonic for the national embarrassment I’d witnessed the night before.
It was early afternoon on September 30, 2020, and although I could still smell the smoke, the five youth I’d listened to challenged me to question my read of my own objective correlative. Was it the smoke of an apocalyptic environmental fire, or was it the dead wood leaving to be replaced by verdant new growth? If I were Toru Okada, I would have entered the well miss-calibrated, feeling the world on fire and our democratic system crumbling. But after climbing the ladder and emerging, I would be infused with hope and optimism.
Gloria Anzaldúa writes, “People who engage in alliances and are working toward certain goals want to keep their personal feelings out of it, but you can’t. You have to work out your personal problems while you are working out the problems of this particular community or this particular culture.” To me, this means that although it is important for me to know my truth and speak it as someone who has been the recipient of inequitable privilege, I also have a responsibility to avoid pitfalls that can inhibit or even derail the alliances I’ve formed. To be involved in social justice initiatives requires the terminal belief that change is always happening and relies on continuous support. In this sense, the trees are never burning to the scorched earth; they are making way for stronger growth.
There’s a scary part of Toru Okada’s story when the rope ladder he uses to enter the well vanishes, he thinks at the hands of his mischievous, young neighbor, May Kasahara. Donald Trump, a far worse character than May Kasahara, would probably do the same thing to me if he found me in that well. By the late afternoon of September 30, 2020, I imagined five young leaders’ heads, backlit by the sunlight, peering down through the top of the well to lower the rope ladder. For that, I owe these leaders and all of the many other social justice leaders more than just gratitude.
John Lyons
Last Updated: October 3, 2020 by admin
September 30, 2020
I was having a rough morning on September 30, 2020. The Biden/Trump Presidential Debate the night before had pummeled its way through 90 minutes only to showcase a bully at the top of his game and a defenseless political veteran unaccustomed to the lack of basic respect characteristic of debate. After 20 minutes and a couple F bombs, my middle school daughter’s friends went scurrying from her bedroom past me in the living room, a fortuitous departure as my language declined on a trajectory similar to the debate-spectacle. No policy discussion, no strategy for public health, housing and employment insecurity, none of that to be discussed at all. Only bullying and bulldozing, the hallmark of any witless clown. Until the end, when it came time to denounce white supremacy and the president of the United States recognized (and essentially endorsed) a white supremacist hate group. I wrote it down because I wanted to make a record for myself. “Proud boys stand back and stand by.” He truly said that.
I didn’t sleep much that night and mostly tossed around until the sun came up on Wednesday. I walked outside and could smell the fires. Small bits of ash fluttered through the air while the sun, a dab of orange yolk, seemed to struggle in the east. I walked my dog around the block and got back to the house in time to make my daughter breakfast before her seven-hour day of virtual learning. I’d become more despondent as the day went on. And yet, despondent or not, I owned that many of the social support systems I wanted to see our leaders discussing, essential for so many in this country, are not as essential for me. I am a beneficiary of bell hooks’ “imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.” As such, my despondency includes a safety net woven by my whiteness, maleness and heterosexuality that so many people do not have.
T.S. Eliot wrote that the “only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an ‘objective correlative’.” When I first learned about this concept with an English MA in progress, I flung the term around literary discussions and assignments. One of my professors asked me what the difference between the objective correlative and metaphor was. Human emotion, I’d eventually replied. Metaphor is a comparison between two things, while the objective correlative is a representation of a character’s feelings. I don’t recall having that argument confirmed or denied, but I was able, from that point, to read the tension in Toru Okada as he travelled between the pastoral alleys and gardens, his vacant house, and a barrenly empty well. I reread The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle during quarantine and discovered a vastly changed text than when I’d read it ten years ago. Okada’s context is not a comparison of himself; they are representations of his character’s emotions that he struggles to finally calibrate.
And so, like climbing into the well to try to make sense of things, to calibrate my own life with its occurrences, I logged in to a virtual webinar titled, At the Heart of the Matter: A New Generation of Good Troublemakers, hosted by the Colorado Health Foundation, and paying homage to Representative Lewis’ tweet for activists to engage in “good trouble, necessary trouble.” A panel of four Colorado youth activists responded to various questions posed by Karen McNeil-Miller, president and CEO of The Colorado Health Foundation, and the webinar participants.
The webinar began with a poem written and read by the author, Xiuhtezcatl Martinez, which spoke of indigenous peoples’ colonization, environmental destruction, and a call to fight against systems of inequality and oppression, including the lines, “The power of the people / is more powerful / than the people in power.” The four youth activists, Mariem Dia, Rishika Kartik, Caleb Washington, and Kaliah Yizar, discussed the urgency for social change and the opportunity that technological platforms and continuous innovations present to influence such change. Each participant’s brilliance complemented the other’s. Kartik, when asked what question she would have asked at the debate, initially deferred to consider the question. After McNeil-Miller returned for her response, Kartik said, and I’m paraphrasing, that she would ask how each leader would honor diverse perspectives and intersectionality as part of the policy-making process. Dia spoke of the importance of education as a liberating journey, for self and to influence others, noting that “educate” is her favorite word. Yizar is the co-creator of the Know Justice, Know Peace podcast, which presents a four-panelist discussion of social issues related to black lives. Washington, when asked what politicians could be doing to better assist youth with social justice initiatives, referenced the famous political quote, “nothing about us without us,” to accentuate the diverse and collaborative grass-roots process that local political change entails.
90 minutes of debate-spectacle countered by 90 minutes of constructive, respectful social justice discussion conducted by youth under 18. It was a tonic for the national embarrassment I’d witnessed the night before.
It was early afternoon on September 30, 2020, and although I could still smell the smoke, the five youth I’d listened to challenged me to question my read of my own objective correlative. Was it the smoke of an apocalyptic environmental fire, or was it the dead wood leaving to be replaced by verdant new growth? If I were Toru Okada, I would have entered the well miss-calibrated, feeling the world on fire and our democratic system crumbling. But after climbing the ladder and emerging, I would be infused with hope and optimism.
Gloria Anzaldúa writes, “People who engage in alliances and are working toward certain goals want to keep their personal feelings out of it, but you can’t. You have to work out your personal problems while you are working out the problems of this particular community or this particular culture.” To me, this means that although it is important for me to know my truth and speak it as someone who has been the recipient of inequitable privilege, I also have a responsibility to avoid pitfalls that can inhibit or even derail the alliances I’ve formed. To be involved in social justice initiatives requires the terminal belief that change is always happening and relies on continuous support. In this sense, the trees are never burning to the scorched earth; they are making way for stronger growth.
There’s a scary part of Toru Okada’s story when the rope ladder he uses to enter the well vanishes, he thinks at the hands of his mischievous, young neighbor, May Kasahara. Donald Trump, a far worse character than May Kasahara, would probably do the same thing to me if he found me in that well. By the late afternoon of September 30, 2020, I imagined five young leaders’ heads, backlit by the sunlight, peering down through the top of the well to lower the rope ladder. For that, I owe these leaders and all of the many other social justice leaders more than just gratitude.
John Lyons
Category: Uncategorized