Someone asked...

Someone asked me what I was up to in Milwaukee, what it's like, that kind of thing. I've edited and deepened my response to post here:


Hmm, Milwaukee. I would say it is a place of great oppression. It is one of the most segregated cities in the US. There are literally lines that split the city (for example, west of Holton is almost all African American, East is white. South is Latino). I'm working at a hospital called Columbia St. Mary's. It is located near the richest people who are literally all white in the city overlooking the lake. It's utterly disgusting to me that the richest people can walk to the biggest hospital I've ever seen, while the poor have to travel miles and miles to get here. Also almost everyone employed by the hospital is white, or at least almost everyone who has an office (the valet parking workers are primarily people of color. They are also some of the few people who consistently say hi to me. Most people in the office try to look away when I say hi).

I'm working on some of the projects/clinics the community services department has out in the communities. What I like about it is they put these clinics out where the people need it-- in neighborhoods and out of churches and into schools. I also really like being around other human beings. What I don't like is that there are so few, and while they do some limited good, it's not enough. Really, these programs are all bandaids for a deeper system of oppression that makes people sick. Plus, it allows the hospital to point to something "good" its doing in the world while maintaining its own system that continues to help and give priviledge to white people and rich people and ignore the rest. Even when their promotional materials are "inclusive," they are only inclusive insofar as the patients might be some people of color, but the doctors never are. The heirarchy is maintained, white supremacy prevails. The Black Panthers would call what I do a survival program, something that is needed because people are dying from oppression, but its only a bandaid, "survival pending revolution."

I've realized that the reason the infant mortality rate is so high for African Americans in Milwaukee (it is higher here than in 65 other countries) is because of the stress of racism. The oppression enters the body of the mother and makes the child vulnerable, and they die. Or their development is affected, etc. That's also the reason why diabetes and hypertension is so prevelent. So the bandaid programs I'm working for give prenatal and parenting education to black women, a program called Blanket of Love. What is great about that program is that it is completely tailored to what the women need, it brings them together for a meal when they are very often isolated, and provides some life skills and guidance for the women. I'm working on curriculum for classes to bring Blanket of Love into the public schools for pregnant teens in school, but I'm trying to maintain the lack of structure that allows for space for what is real and needed and wanted from the girls.

I'm working at a dental clinic and teaching kids how to brush their teeth (I got that gig because I ONCE taught kids how to brush their teeth in Mexico... resumes are so stupid). What they haven't been telling me, or telling the kids, though, is that you actually don't need toothpaste when you brush your teeth, you can reverse cavaties and root canals (though I don't yet know how). I don't think the toothpaste companies would be too happy is we told people they don't actually need toothpaste, nor will the dentists who make a living off of drilling your teeth.

I make appointments for people to come and get their blood pressure checked and get their free meds. That might seem like a good thing, but think of it this way: Human beings consciously created a system that benefits some and diminishes and dehumanizes others. Then within that system, those oppressors made it so that the oppressed are dependent on them for survival programs. Then the oppressor gives medication to the oppressed to "fix" the problem that they oppressor told the oppressed was "their fault" for creating, for not eating right, not exercising right, smoking too much, etc. The oppressor group makes money off of the medication, and can assuage some of their guilt, but they fail to heal anyone. Fail to provide the deep kind of healing needed after personal and generational trauma that makes the oppressed sick. Fail to provide the deep kind of healing needed for the oppressors who do not even notice that they are oppressors.

I hope for the day that a hospital as big as Columbia St. Mary's and with this many resources will be built in the poorest parts of town, and the outlying clinics will be for the those who don't need it as much and are able to get to the hospital whenever they want in their grand cars. More deeply, I hope for the day that a hospital will actually offer healing, not medication. Even more deeply, I pray for the guidance of how I can make that day now.

I'm stretching as a human being as I begin to oppose these systems of oppression. I do not yet know how to stand in my own truth. The real work is in me. There is this huge Occupy Wallstreet thing happening, but Wallstreet doesn't need healing, I need to heal the Wallstreet inside of me (-Adrienne Brown). I need to create sacred space inside myself. I think the rhetoric I have heard more often than not is this question of how we use our privilege for good, but I think that's not the real question to ask. The real question is which privileges do I use for good (the privileges that everyone ought to have, like shelter, clean water, and food), and which privileges do I give up (like having a car, having cash in my pocket?) to others in order to create more equality. More often than not, I should be giving up any privilege that I have rather than using them, because when I use them, I keep the same system of oppression and I steal people's voices away. So I must work on myself, both to heal from oppression and heal from the oppressor in me.

And here is the thing. People of color are never allowed to forget racism. The poor are never allowed to forget poverty. A function of privilege is that it allows you to "take a break" and forget about it for a while if I choose. So I must choose to think about poverty as much as the poor have to, if I am to be their ally and work for connection and love. I am no longer working for justice. Too often justice is still a part of the system. I am working for humanity, connection, and kinship.

What's more, I've been awakened to all this oppression while here in Milwaukee, but it happens everywhere. White supremacy is a global problem. I grew up in it, and so did you. It is a conveyor belt of oppression that we are all on, and unless we are running in the opposite direction, we are oppressors. You cannot be neutral on a moving train (-Howard Zinn).

That's what's been on my heart and mind and in my bones lately. And always.