Shill

I'm going to shill another post of mine today on all the social media but for those who follow on RSS feeds or directly through Google, I thought today would be a good day to reblog Why Others' Stories Matter.

I live in Oakland, so last night instead of writing, I watched the protests. I don't mean I watched them on television either. I just looked out my window.  (At one point I had live coverage playing in the background and I heard a siren out my window and on my computer at the same time with that weird distortion effect--like when someone is talking to you on the phone from the same room. That's when I realized they were basically HERE.) Dozens of cop cars parked on my block and riot police jumped in and out of white vans to form lines as the Ferguson protests came within a couple of blocks. The Walgreens you may have seen with the smashed in door is a place I go once or twice a week. I often throw my sandwich wrapper from Genova's Deli into the trash can you saw on fire. The protestors set a trash fire on MLK (which local residents put out). I could see that from my writing room. I spent most of my writing time either watching the police form phalanxes and shift their fleet of cars or glancing at the baby and wondering if the feeling somewhere between helpless anxiety and wondering what the best makeshift weapon in the house might be.

There might be a Ferguson post in me, but I would just end up making a lot of the same points I've made recently about listening and empathy and not getting to tell people who feel betrayed by a system to sit down and shut up and love it. So I don't know. But I teach on Wednesday night and I spent last night hoping for the better angels of our nature to win among a people who have every right to be enraged enough to burn it down

So this rambling bumble is the best I can do today.