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About Portland observer. (Portland, Or.) 1970-current | View Entire Issue (March 22, 2017)
March 22, 2017 Page 7 edition CAREERS special Opinion articles do not necessarily represent the views of the Portland Observer. We welcome reader essays, photos and story ideas. Submit to news@portlandobserver.com. O PINION Best Intentions and Solemn Commitments Portland’s safety pin campaign r onault ls C atalani I was bone-tired. I was slouched at the exhausted end of one of those nights when your workday just won’t quit. Not with so much still undone. I pulled on my boots, believing a walk would help, but Oregon rain was falling straight and hard from clouds not half as high as downtown’s Wells Fargo tower. Then, as if on cosmic cue, a Facebook no- tification buzzed my sleepy iPhone. Kath- leen D. Gunnell Saadat was posting on the safety pin campaign. Wearing a safety pin, if you haven’t heard, lets anxious families who fled cruel states, failed economies, or rising oceans, know they’re safe near the pin’s wearer, a symbol of solidarity. “Safe” from our su- per-nationalist leaders and their suddenly enabled followers. Saadat, if you haven’t met, is living his- tory. One of our River City anchor elders. On this moody night she was using social media to set out what her muscular gener- ation expects from the next one. From us. In her post, Saadat wrote about a couple gathering her in their arms when an angry by man yelled all kinds of racial awfulness at her. It happened before our current turn toward societal instability, well before Portland’s safety pin campaign. “No one helped,” she said, “until I called to a passing couple and asked for help. They were white. They did not hesi- tate.” “People who choose to wear a safe- ty pin” Saadat continued in the tone characteristic of all elder aunties on count seven decades of fumbled foreign policy promises, our Constitution’s amne- siac episodes, local civil society’s silence, even gentle Jesus Christ’s urgings – living in the broken hearts of Native and African America – chilling the broken bones of our Nikkei, Korean, Khmer, Lao, Hmong, Iu Mien, Lao, Afghani, Iraqi, and Kurdi, neighbors. These families asking for help again, from Anglo America, is big. Sharing a nation made of our best in- Drawing a crowd to protect a Mexican or a Muslim from an immigration officer or an ugly bigot, is good. Good also is civil disobedience in the tradition of don César E. Chavez and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King. all continents and on every lovely island in between “ – should understand the commit- ment they make to get directly involved. “I took my chances that whoever I asked for help, would in fact help.” Long pause. And inside her pause lies the solemn social compact of our times. Inside this moment, must reside both your promise to act and her trust in your sincerity. Saadat’s gamble that night was big. The biggest. Indeed, ask any ethnic stream elder from the community and they’ll re- tentions, has never been enough. Portland ideals will not do. This year we sorrow the 75th anniversary of Japanese America’s forced removal from their homes. From their homes. President Franklin D. Roos- evelt’s Executive Order 9066 sent 120,000 elders, parents, and their children to barbed wire compounds. Portlanders’ babies were born under the guard of US Army riflemen. Only those of us committed, as Saadat said, “to get directly involved” can mend these neighbors’ hearts and bones. Pro- nouncing policy statements is not enough. You and me gathering to cheer them, is not enough. President Donald J. Trump’s authoritarian ethos has already turned into hard hits. On us. On Native, settled, and new Americans, alike. How each of us acts on the safety pin’s promise, is a personal commitment. Drawing a crowd to protect a Mexican or a Muslim from an immigration officer or an ugly bigot, is good. Good also is civil disobedience in the tradition of don César E. Chavez and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King. Mastering a simple jujitsu trip is good. Those of us safe in our households and work floors telling our elected officials that declines in public services in exchange for protecting vulnerable families, is nec- essary. Bottom line: The pin requires some pain. Commitment is like that. But there’s a big prize. The biggest. At the end of Saa- dat’s posted essay, she says the five sweet- est words you’ll ever hear during your short stay on our shared little blue planet. – “I will never forget them,” she said. Meaning that kind couple who embraced her fears. Meaning those lovely Portlanders ready to close the awful distance between best in- tentions, inspiring words, then sudden, si- lent withdrawal from all that. Seventy-five years of this. Ronault LS Catalani (Polo) is a long- time activist and community lawyer. Powerful Truths in Top Film ‘Moonlight’ A story to open hearts and minds M arian W right e delMan Everyone should watch the film “Moonlight,” the film that won for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. Why? Be- cause it’s a very powerful story of a poor black boy’s struggles to reach adulthood with countless odds stacked against him. Because it’s a relat- able story for children and youth struggling to make it to adulthood without being de- railed by sexual orientation, violence and drugs. Because it’s my or your story if we faced perilous hurdles to survive, learn in school and have a safe place to sleep at night. Because it’s a too common Ameri- can story — one not everyone wants to tell and too few want or are ready to hear and do anything about. Moonlight is not only a moving coming of age story but much more. It’s a window into the terrors bred by pervasive struc- tural poverty and racism in our boastfully rich and still unequal nation. It is also a story about homophobia and the struggle of gay children to grow up in the midst of that fear. It is the story of strength despite daily threats petrifying a skinny, dreamy, scruffy-looking eight-year old who can hardly understand all the harsh realities he faces and how he will overcome them by alone. It’s a painful story marked by pa- rental neglect, abuse, fear, and despair. Yet Moonlight is not a sad story but one of hope, of resilience, love, redemption, and second chances. It’s a story that frees all Ameri- cans to lift our veils of convenient ignorance and scorn for gay black boys and children, youths and adults who face terrible choices struggling to survive and grow up all across America. That so many do with their bodies and humanity not in complete tatters is an example of fierce will and hu- man resilience. When my husband and I saw and dis- cussed this brutally honest portrayal of a young, poor, gay black boy struggling to grow up in Miami’s Liberty City, we decided to go back to see and experience it again. For me it brought back a flood of memories growing up as a black girl in a small South Carolina town and time when Jim Crow and homophobia reigned but before drugs saturated and poisoned our nation. Most black children back then were surrounded by caring black adults in our close-knit community and faith congrega- tions who buffered us against the segre- gated and hostile outside world that told us we weren’t worth much or were differ- ent or inferior because of our skin color. But there were a small group of black children and adults who were pariahs and shunned by many in the black communi- ty — labeled “sissies” or “faggots” or bad people. Some gossiped about and exclud- ed them as abnormal because they were gay and treated them as “others” which too many still do in our nation. Although we have seen a sea change in protections for the LGBTQ commu- nity we must finish the struggle, and ac- cept and respect and protect all children regardless of their race, sex, disability or sexual orientation. Like Moonlight’s Chiron, countless children still are being “othered” by too many leaders, schools, faith congregations, communities and politicians who refuse to accept, often bully, ostracize or discriminate against them. Moonlight captures the impact of the soul-scarring experience of being bul- lied and the hidden layers of pain a child born poor and black and gay often en- dures. I hope Moonlight makes all of us see ourselves and our children in Chiron and so many like him. The film captures the despair of our vulnerable child pariahs grappling not only with their sexual preferences on top of their compounded daily burdens of racism, poverty, parental drug addic- tion, and violence. Moonlight does not sensationalize Chiron’s life, play with audience emotions, or make a political statement. Instead it allows his story to unfold from boyhood to manhood with a powerful simplicity in many scenes re- quiring no dialogue. How wonderful to see Chiron finding moments of revelation and joy amidst neglect, abuse and torment at home and school. How sad that he be- came a drug dealer as an adult after seeing drugs ravish his own mother and that his mother’s drug dealer and girlfriend were his lifelines of survival. Chiron grows up to sell drugs too because it is one of the only pathways he sees as available to him — a tragic story that plays out daily for so many poor black boys who end up in prison or dead because equal education and jobs don’t exist and all the odds are stacked against them in our economically rich but spiritually anemic nation. Moonlight’s director Barry Jenkins and screenwriter Tarell McCraney grew up in the same Liberty City neighborhood in Miami as the boy in the film. They were able to capture and share this extraordi- nary story of struggle towards manhood for the many fragile and invisible children like Chiron still there struggling daily to survive and reach adulthood in our too heedless nation. Moonlight opens our eyes and hearts. I hope more serious mov- ing films will continue to open our eyes and hearts to our country’s past and pres- ent child abuse and neglect and move us to affirm the humanity of all our children and their right to a fair chance to grow up safely and hopeful. Marian Wright Edelman is president of the Children’s Defense Fund.
