This is the July 12, 2020 speech I gave with NOHO4BLM after attending the 9am services at St. Paul’s First Lutheran church.
I am going to express myself. For an opportunity to process my experiences & a chance to be seen & understood. My message is still for you. If there is anything you don’t understand, I hope that an ally you know will learn from my patience and make efforts to help you comprehend my pain.
This is a request that the church step down from its pulpit to listen to the congregation of the world. It’s a world of the oppressed. The church as an institution has been an oppressor. The church is also completely capable of redemption, but Only in an actively AntiRacist society.
It is possible to live in a world with justice & mercy. But until there is justice there will be no peace because citizens of the world have been abused. So, I encourage us to actively commit to changing that.
I would like to breathe freely in a world where no matter where I go I can enter a church, and know that god’s house was also my home. I want to feel safe in all churches while existing in my blackness here in America.
I invite the church to build initiatives to help the community. I hope they are more aware of how their fear of me was the product of a church sanctioned tradition of sending the homeless and mentally ill away - those most in need of their care.
I also invite local communities to build more resources for this church, so that those who may not feel supported within the congregation can grow with someone beyond those walls to ask difficult, potentially shame-inducing questions, and know they will be received with love. There will be someone here that they can lean on.
I want to build a bridge that links every church with AntiRacist initiatives that bonds them more with their community.
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THE ADVENTURE
A week and one day ago this nation celebrated its Independence. I had recently moved out of my North Hollywood home and travelled to Oxnard to distantly visit with family. Given the rising Covid-19 numbers and in concern for all of our health, they kindly put me up in the Residence Inn down the street. On the evening of the 4th of July, I was learning about the failed revolution of The Reconstruction era & how The Lost Cause of the Confederacy was designed to erase & negate the black experience by corrupting America’s educational system. I relearned all of this in a post-Floyd-Pandemic-world from my room as firework bombs burst in the air all across the privileged greenery of my hotel golf course…