" for injured players in the game of life." "let's continue to even the playing field."As of Sunday, August 9, 2020, brought-from-home portrait art and a banner announcing “We’re not going anywhere,” supported by traffic cones now adorn the largest Confederate monument on Monument Avenue, which bears the likeness of Confederate General Robert E Lee. Since the death of George Floyd on May 25 in Minneapolis, MN, nationwide street marches manifested here in Richmond, VA. All summer, the monument pedestal and cement barriers around have been tagged in layers by outbursts of racial justice protesters. If you are in town and unsure of what awaits you on this scene, take a chance! Visit the monument to appreciate what can’t be changed now; and pick up a basketball to support the parks that foster community growth. A drive around the wider city will have one noticing, on many empty facades, the graffiti from the Black Lives Matter protests, which tends to be more focused on casting slurs upon the Richmond district police department "12." But at the epicenter of graffiti art, on Monument Avenue, what has become this outrageous, colorful bubble of political amnesty, protesters have erected basketball hoops and built a garden. Since July, two new hoops have been added to the one with a shattered backboard, and now a collection of basketballs are available in many sizes. Mine was purple and black and spattered with red. And, happily, pumped up. I could bounce it on the packed and dry August dirt and grass as well as I could on the sidewalk, which has been hemmed in by concrete traffic barriers. This is the only form of city intervention -- more of an oversight, and as you will see, is only another canvas for the outpouring of emotion that has been temporarily permitted. When I put my stuff down to play, I noticed a pair of old baseball gloves. Later, I passed a soccer ball to a visiting 19-month old. A fresh round of fabric flowers – lots of red roses, adorn the laminated letter-size memorial posters on stakes that have held up OK in the blazing sun and recent downpours. All memorials represent African American people who have died in violent police altercations. Each memorial recounts the conflict leading up to death. People have made a pledge to care for the memorials like a family gravesite, and I even saw instances where a loved one had left a note or a personal item. Most deaths occurred within the last ten years, but all over the country. There is a roadside memorial by the entrance to my neighborhood, and several times a year, the family comes to replace what has been sun-bleached, to repaint the letters of his name that they affixed to the tree and pull the weeds. I think the same care is being exercised here, and the feel is a little like walking on eggshells at times. A women's group is picking around the memorials here and there, keeping the place neat and hopefully safe. It's Saturday morning, and broken glass - evidence of last night's mishaps with vigil candles and probably people mounting the pedestal to shout... It's a tenuous yet beautiful place. A furious flower. Sometimes roadside memorials are for hapless victims; sometimes the victims were in the wrong. On Monument Avenue, the candid stories -- some acknowledge the victims were drinking, possessed drugs; some victims drew arms. Visitors might question the angle of storytelling and what's missing from the stories. Some victims were reportedly unarmed but caught in gunfire. Some truly were hapless, unarmed victims caught up in a ballooning situation. Taken together, these stories coupled with protests point to underlying prejudice and ask: would this person be dead if they were white? There's evidence of a people's longstanding patience and historic frustration in the graffiti marks. As is true with those remembered at roadside memorials, no matter the circumstances, their families passionately grieve them. Passing drivers educate their children on the consequences of decisions and actions, and remind them how important and wonderful they are. Driving past roadside memorials, we learn to be tolerant and forgiving while we learn right from wrong, and when we lose someone, we learn to accept loss and to grow from it. There is an element of desperation and outlash underneath all of this protest that I think is written in the words and told by the form this protest has taken. Graffiti is permanent, fast-drying. The paint spews out of a compressed canister like a lashing tongue and leaves a permanent mark on this statue whose presence is no longer tolerable. The words of participants are opinions I have heard spoken and chanted. Over months their repetition has lent strength and impact. They ring in my ears as I read them, following them like scattered blossom petals up the blocks of Monument Avenue until I discover the tree-on-fire itself. And at the center of this memorial is an overlarge photo of a handsome, young successful black man who seemingly cracked under the pressures of society and had a mental health crisis that culminated with his death by gunshot on foot on 95, the dangerous fringe of our city- a frontier, a ripping curve that sends cars out and around and on to other places. Let this man's struggle ring true with those of any race or gender who have broken through such a - I'm going to be bold and call it a rite of passage or mark of age. A struggle of some kind happens for many of us, and how caringly we are shepherded through it all - those of us who are, we walk to the memorial, we see several stories that strike chords with that of Marcus David Peters, and we take a knee in silent prayer. Monument Avenue is more than a memorial. The public garden is maybe, to me, the most controversial addition to the graffiti, because the plum tree, the planter boxes, the sign renaming the circle all support the idea of permanent change on the site by people who acted on behalf of a community without permission. This is the bold, green and illegal part of the memorial that is just a little more brash and cutting than the words of the graffiti. Those just shout. The garden digs in and sits there and has the audacity to feed us. And the barbecue too! Celebration and growth right there at the sight of the revolt say so many things to me --- We are here, we aren't going anywhere. But also, this isn't new, and no one is shocked by the things expressed here. People generally support us. This is more like a party, and the insurrection aside -- the casualties of a burnt metro bus and a burnt museum? Spoils of a small section of a larger rebellion? There's violence here and it's got me thinking the violence comes second to the just cause. The just cause isn't revolutionary but more like overdue. And the garden just digs a little deeper than the overt issue of police brutality and into some of the contributing systemic issues -- poverty and hunger, food insecurity, homelessness. I choose to see garden not as a spit in the face at urban gentrification and the cruel-seeming, harsh sometimes stratification of society, because, according to historians at the site, the monuments commemorating the triumphs of the pro-slavery South came first, pushing the African American residents out from under their cold shadows to the fringe of the urban city developments. It's not a complaint against an urban system that plants sterile landscapes in its parks and on its streets. That fills the grocery store with sterile produce. It's not a violent shrugging against the chains of oppression in society but rather a gentle pledge of mutual commitment to caring for the site by and for the community members who volunteer themselves to the task. I chose to see a proposed vision for the circle. Yes, the park is growing pumpkins and tomatoes. No, that is not allowed in public parks, but this demonstration doesn’t fit in a box. Just like urban gardeners who reclaim unused city lots with optimism and a new vision, replacing rusty metal or broken glass, protesters intend to reclaim space from the Confederate memorials. The garden indicates desire for new beginnings. But in the wider scheme, as older facades, dingy city streets are reclaimed, and gentrification leads to new demographics, we still experience loss as society reshapes itself, and the sting of racism is still there. And as my experiences in the public sector go, interacting with public spaces only helps me attest to their power of influence. Last year, in a poetic and sad moment for me -- it was like a political crux, a rite of passage moment in my life that had me, a young woman in her late twenties struggling to define herself in a big and wild world, almost ready to chain herself to a tree. And I'm the type to sense these moments, to be self-aware in the moment, and turn from them, bearing a certain amount of regret and sadness for the thing that inspired me... I'm like a rebel without a cause, or -- a rebel who exhausts any direction. In this case, the cause was a beautiful 50-year-old Chestnut Tree which unfortunately was cut down this year in Church Hill on M St. There I was, safe after practice with my bike polo team to whom I was deeply dedicated, on a tennis court by an elementary school in Church Hill. We were beginning to clean the courts for our upcoming tournament (a bit of a rebellious pirate act in itself TBH,) when an elderly resident approached me. They remembered to me their childhood, when they and their parents or grandparents would wait for the chestnuts from this gnarly tree to ripen and fall every winter. It was me, with the merriment and youthful excitement faltering on my face for a moment, taking a second to talk to an old stranger who remembered a youth of dependence on a tree -- a tree that he said no longer reliably produced a crop in its age. This old man, this tree that was honestly significant in itself for what he said it was -- a rare tree after the historic East coast blight. And a surviving piece of history from before this urban area was developed like it is now and sort of the last piece of a collective memory of an older generation that remembers a different way of life. The tree was cut down when a new school was built. I didn't feel able to lend my voice and ask if the tree could be protected, and I sadly wondered how many other Church Hill residents would share the memory with this gentleman. It's a little frightening when a stranger approaches you and tells you a story when you are out at your team practice, not milling around at a party or function. It feels a little bit like a quest on a game or something, and I can't describe why I felt unequal to a task of saving a tree, and yet also like I had been offered the responsibility. I was an outsider. This wasn't truly my park or my school or my hill. I felt afraid to do what I knew I could -- put up signs, canvas the area for other residents who also loved the tree. Speak up! To build a meaningful protest. I trudged on and took on a little of the person's regret for the tree while minding my own business. But now, in August on Monument Avenue, when I’m tiptoeing around a squash vine, I feel I am being asked to consider people in a vulnerable class - not just the poor but the destitute. There is that much power of thought surrounding this protest. You can choose to be offended by the old man or the graffiti or the squash vine, or you can be humbled by its message. Earlier in June, the necessity of the concrete traffic barriers was illustrated to me as I drove around the roundabout, gawking at what was only the beginning of a graffiti onslaught. I kind of took a wrong step and was dragged into an interaction I didn't really want to be in. I faced what I felt was the unnecessarily self-righteous affront of a pedestrian I hadn't seen as I drove through a pop-up, un-official crosswalk. It was another thing, like the garden, that citizens had imposed upon the site -- a crosswalk for visitors who wanted to pay homage to the memorials, and yet another symbol of the caring and healing the site aims to create, and underlying obstinance, rebellion, and though I insist upon seeing the former over the latter, when I had to brake suddenly and my adrenaline rushed, I experienced immediate and powerful defensiveness that came up through what soul and determination was suddenly very viscous inside of me. I know I shouldn't have felt angry because I was in the wrong. And, I know I always get very upset at anyone who nearly hits me at any crosswalk. I learned this at college where my black friends never failed to remind me that they were more likely to be struck, and drivers were less likely to stop for them than for their white peers. My friends of all kinds prodded me to assert myself as a pedestrian. It was part of my rite of passage as a freshman, being taught that sometimes it behooves me to step out, to defend my right to the solid white lines around the zebra stripes, to the right of way, lest automotivists should begin to slip and degrade that rule, washing it away like waves washing away a band of seashells. My cyclist friends always push me to be assertive in the same way, for the good of all cyclists. My tendency is to be defensive and cautious whether I am on my bike, in a crosswalk or even waiting for my turn in a car at the four-way stop. I am not one to engage, I am quiet, and learning how or why people do make civic protests has been a journey. I know it's lame, but when I get pulled into situations where I have to defend myself, I usually feel like my peaceful state has been violated, and whether I made an error or not, I'm terribly offended for strangers not giving me the benefit of the doubt in those drive-by moments. As a rule, I experience this defensiveness any time anyone calls me out for a driving error, especially when I know they are right. It feels like I am being asked to make a complete concession to someone else as we drive away, and I never get to defend myself and the indelible grain of self inside me that knows of my inherent beauty, inherent goodness and therefore inherent blameless part. When they drive away, they leave me with an incomplete reflection of myself that I rebel against, that I want to fling back in their faces. I am not a jerk! I am not foolish and careless. My error was an exception to the rule I live by. You saw the opposite of what I strive to be. And in that moment in June, it was more than I wanted to be that day - a careless driver, but even more-so, when I was confronted by someone who was calm and serious, and someone who was rather stately, with beautiful black dreadlocks coiled in a crown on her head, I felt my race politics, my previously settled qualms on the legality of the crosswalk surge to the surface. I just came to look. I was awestruck by the beauty of the whole graffiti project. At the time, the graffiti was new, and the crosswalk was too. I had used it. It was spray-painted, and there were signs up asking that people respect the "citizen's crosswalk." It felt practical, necessary, constructive, but also a little dubious and forward, maybe a tinge of intimidating, righteous anger hovered around it. I had confronted that feeling. I had peacefully meditated on my thoughts. I had made peace with my feelings of offence. Because just using the crosswalk was one thing, and stopping at it was one thing too. Would I be acceding to citizen militia rule by stepping upon it or respecting those using it? One felt a little more happenstance, the other more committal. One - intentional, the other forced on the general public -- drivers who need to use the road regardless of the protest. For those people, I felt a tinge of violation. Everyone was driving extremely slowly due to the many people coming and going, and barriers had been erected for people's safety. The circle was already an established and from what I saw, a non-violent demonstration site. The crosswalk was a small provoking issue. One that I was pretty unwilling to take sides about, because I didn't want to acknowledge two sides existed. I wanted to see the art as a manifestation of the collective wish of more than half of this community to see change in the world cemented by statue removal, but I happen to reside on a side of the race line that kind of designates me as.. ya know, never gonna be more than an ally. Kind of an outsider. And when my blood rushed, the buffer of sympathy, the communication and cooperation of generations that make this site a peaceful community effort that it is, just kinda fizzled away into the anger and truth of the situation. I came too close to a pedestrian and even though I was there to admire and find my own small way to participate in the events, in that moment I was a careless white person and she was a queen, the crosswalk her carpet. I was all that offence inside me that I had come to privately face and tumble in my soul and soften and lay aside, and she was righteous and condemning. It was just a glance she gave me, and a chastising head shake telling me to slow down and be more careful. And there I was, all worked up. Trying to let go of my frustration, trying to stay focused on the road. Jealous knowing that as I drive away from my mistake, even if I elevate the situation and think of it in terms of the big protest, the conflict is not about me. And it never is. This protest is for the victims. And deaths impact a whole community. In a heated moment, I resented the other person for more than just correcting my mistake. I imagined they were playing a part, representing a big idea, bringing the weight of the whole protest down on me. Making me a bad white person. And frustrating though it was, I didn't have a right, I don't think, to try and justify myself on that day. Because at the heart of all those silent spray-paint shouts, the angry reproduction of slurs, the positivity and hopeful messages shone through like sunshine. I definitely wasn't the Rosa Parks of that moment. I think in this manner, this is what the demonstration asks all participants/viewers to do. To go, to feel something, to take part, to be respectful and to listen. And anger mingled soon with the acceptance that on that day. I get to be the second-place person. I left wondering if that woman would mind if that day, I let myself be transported to the past. Though it was selfish, to let myself examine my feeling of being forced to play a part in a story I'm not telling. And while a polite me had been taught to defer to her due to her age, to the fact that I made a mistake, and to the politics of the day, another optimistic piece of me imagined I was a girl in patent leather shoes and bobby socks, being shepherded along the sidewalk, watching this woman be forced by societal norms to make way for me, and wishing I didn't have to face such experiences. Wishing I could just hide from conflict and mind my own business. Feeling a cultural issue placed on my unwilling shoulders just because I walked on a sidewalk. Flaring up against an unfair representation of myself assigned to me by the time and place. Imagining myself in the shoes of her and my ancestors let me feel like me again, which was a little selfish. In my heart, I would defer to an older woman, and on this day, it was most certainly an African American woman I saw asking me to respect the crosswalk, and I hope she would let me, in my shame, see that part of her identity for a moment. To place upon both of us the trappings of society that help me understand the cause of my angry feelings. This demonstration tells us: "Examine your roots." I continue to see couples and small friend groups and families visiting the memorial. I met a young family on a road trip who made a stop on their way home to North Carolina. I took a picture of a beautiful, well-dressed couple under a rainbow we saw in the sky to the East, and a few minutes later, saw them taking a photo of their grade-school-age daughter. Senior portraits were taken here. Family pictures on Father’s Day. Art is blossoming, as some of the city’s talented painters have begun to place portraits of victims on top of the colorful graffiti. The last group of people I observed arriving was a family of four, and the dad told his kids, “OK, let’s read the stories.” When visitors enter the circle, from a kneeling position, they can read each victim’s story. There are at least thirty to read, so, from many angles, I turn my back to the traffic and milling pedestrians, and face the graffitied stone, taking a quiet moment to kneel and read sad memories that have been kept alive by loving family members who stand up for the story of African Americans achieving equal justice in American society. Since I last visited in July, some memorials have been added that dig back into history, like one telling a story of the 1940’s, when a young black boy didn’t get fair legal representation in trial and remains the youngest person executed by electrocution. A big portrait of Breonna Taylor with a halo and flowers reminds me of how enslaved African Americans adopted Christian faith practice, and how not all slaves were taught to write, but their art was powerful. Bible quote graffiti makes me feel like I can reach out and touch the past too. I remember how often I seek comfort in familiar words of others or of the Bible. And how the Bible describes a higher justice needed to answer in all matters of death. And sadly, how a death can fuel hope and help bring recognition to many. I think of leaders like Malcom X, who provoked African Americans to be fierce, to fight, to be proud and to question the foundation of their society. To waste not another moment in deference, when deference is not due. At the memorial, I found much more information about Breonna Taylor's death than from the hundreds of posts on my Facebook, and there are many women represented. Shantel Davis, Natasha McKenna, Rekia Boyd. I say loving family members keep these stories alive, because the pictures show these victims when they were at their best – dressed up for prom, in their favorite racing jacket, or just beaming in a family snapshot. When I take a knee, I think of Colin Kaepernick of the San Francisco 49ers, who was suspended from play when his being stubborn and outspoken was deemed a distraction from the professional game he played. I’m kneeling in the shade of basketball hoops, playing with a bunch of faded, pre-loved basketballs, and thinking about the magic moments in sports, not just in the pros, but in my own neighborhood, when kickball brings all the different little pairs and trios of kids together because the game needs at least five or six to be fun. And I ask myself why I’m comfortable kneeling down, what it means to me. Why am I visiting the Monument? I like the way it’s taken on the feel of an urban park. Recently, I watched an episode of the Netflix Drama, “All American.” Star-crossed lovers on both sides of a highly-stratified county line in Beverly Hills, California cope with social pressure. The lead male is football captain pursuing the opportunities afforded by his talent, but when he pursues his opportunities, he meets conflict in his local park, and stands up to make it safer at night, even though he has to get in a fight in the park over what he believes. I don't think I'm the kind of person who can take that step. Who can chain myself to a tree without feeling like I had been led to that moment rather than earning it. I hesitated, and that wasn't my moment of protest. But what occurred here -- this was, tough to swallow though it might be -- a righteous and earned uprising that became kind of undeniably beautiful in its culmination. For this football player, I think he probably felt a little led to the situation. His role as captain and the unresolvable issue before him -- he put aside his pride and took a stand, which was really really cool! His opponents support citizens carrying weapons to the parks at night, because they don’t feel they receive fair treatment from the police who don’t represent their demographic. They want to keep justice in their own hands as much as possible. In their own way, they feel they are protecting their neighborhood. By entering a new society, the protagonist draws criticism and loses the trust of some residents of his insular neighborhood. But his stance represents hope, the future, youth and growth. Some of his peers rally around him, and with their support, the protagonist decides to clean the park to promote safety. So, I’m happy to see more art, more sports equipment out on the lawn on Monument Ave. It's truly all here for one to see - the anger and the outrage, the holy space of the memorials, and the deference and movement towards healing. All of this is demanded by this protest. I finally played some basketball but have felt since June that the shattered backboard represented my feelings of sorrow for the loss of the young lives a lot better. Kneeling by Dontre Hamilton’s memorial (‘83-‘14,) a young man is pictured, grinning, showing off his tuxedo jacket with a rose on the lapel. I found a baseball to go with the gloves I had found earlier. It lay next to an open bible and some flowers that need changing, but I think that ball belongs where it is, because it’s a part of Dontre’s story. The protagonist of All American felt lost when he moved up to another school, and growing up can be scary too. When the world keeps getting bigger, our views adapt. According to Dontre's memorial, police officers had been informed by a parent of the victim's immediate mental health issues, and he was sleeping in a park, but the officer, new to the scene, who didn't know that trained responders were en-route also mishandled the situation.
Here, taking a knee amidst profanity and outlash balanced out by care, memories and creativity is a special opportunity. I think the many hands that have taken part in this memorial have “made real” a historical lens for me. I can kneel here and feel Dontre's fear, imagine he was afraid and seeking a safe place. Knowing that his vulnerability and youth were part of his identity, and giving him the respect he deserves. Kneeling amidst bigger truths about society and law enforcement that are scary and cannot be denied. This project is real, and it is also making peoples’ dreams come true. And since that wasn't my moment when the tree was cut down, and it weighs upon me now- for that's my lot I think -- to fail to act, to let the weight of the whole issue just crash down and smash upon me -- I try to bear it out in silence and watch the way the world behaves around the failure, the wound that festers... thinking it just wasn't my moment, feeling a little bit heavy over the whole thing... I am the one who carried something with me from that interaction, and regret is real too. The collective people who bore long deep suffering of irreversible loss of life, on the front lines of a clash of culture, bearing memories... I am a little bit like that with my small and simple experiences, with what I learned in my bubble of college education. I am the one who looks up to writers like Charles Chesnutt, an African American racial activist and storyteller who told stories of shameless old man tricksters, of urchins, of common people. I am one who regrets not doing more than just listening and understanding the sadness of the man in Church Hill and the tree of his memories, who failed to act in the moment, and wishes to redeem myself now, in the too-late, too-cautious wake of the protests and activity, saying, plant a fruit bearing tree in that circle that still sits and waits, empty now behind a violent looking chain link fence. Before that dark image sets in any longer. Plant a tree of hope, that feeds us again. That has overcome blight. That is brown and beautiful.
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AuthorWe are Kieran and Michelle, two 32-year-old William & Mary grads living in Virginia. Archives
March 2024
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