There was a Black Lives Matter demonstration in Crab Orchard (population 832) last Tuesday evening. Nick Lacy was there and captured these photos. Plus, a friend of Nick’s, Joanna King, posted this account of the evening on her Facebook page, and said we could share it.
Y’all, Crab Orchard. There was a pretty good turnout – a couple dozen people I guess. A pretty great young woman, Journey, set it up, and this is not her first service to her community. On her own, she has served over 6000 meals to those in need, and each one included a note of encouragement to let the person who was nourished by the meal be fed in all the ways. (She didn’t tell me any of this – others did.) Her mother was there, and also her grandmother, who has roots she knows about back into antiquity. It is clear where Journey gets her sense of self.
Others from Crab Orchard came to stand in the sun and under the glare of those in their town that know where they live. That is real courage: to stand up when you are white and could very easily send “thoughts & prayers” and watch TV instead.
A big mouthed man showed up — like they do — and parked across the street. He was shouting something about statistics and looking at his phone — Faux News App, I’d wager — but what he was really trying to do is the same things big men in little towns are trying to do right now SO HARD: make people hear him insist black lives don’t matter.
We declined to give him any attention. He came over and kept getting in our space waving his phone and just dying to start his script. We were not there for that. I saw him see the only black girl there and he made a beeline for her. You could almost see the wheels turning as he did the math in his head. He was being denied the attention he demanded and is used to having as a white man, but he could force a black girl to let him in her face.
I have no doubt Nisa could stand for herself but those days are over. For her and for every mother and grandmother in her lineage into antiquity that had to stand for a big white man making her let him say whatever the hell he wanted to her, it is our turn to take the space he intended to occupy in front of her and push his ass back.
He beelined. We swarmed. He shoved his phone in her face. We screamed at him BLACK LIVES MATTER. Fuck his statistics. A little intuitive thought came to me and I yelled “Get thee behind me, satan! ” Others joined in. I saw it land on him. Maybe he was suddenly not telling himself the story of him as part of a round-table with Limbaugh and Trump and whoever else they are performing for in their minds. Maybe he saw himself the way his mother would see him. Maybe he had one second of clarity and shame, and it was enough to break the spell and send him skittering away across the street and off into the night, like demons do. My girls said the cops rolled up too so that may have been it as well but I like my version better, in which we cast a demon out of Crab Orchard because we are — together — doing that in America now.
Then another big white guy showed up and parked. He had a piece of cardboard. I tried to get someone to take my bet for $100 that it was misspelled but, sadly, no takers. You can guess the rest: white/all lives matter, etc. He was simply unfortunate though. Any time anyone said anything to him that required thought, he just rebooted. He threatened to call 1,000 friends, but only one strapped guy showed up who made a gun hand like on the playground and pretended to shoot only one of us. Who would like to guess which one?
That guy left soon enough. I guess his show was coming on maybe. Unfortunately, big white guy hung in, though. I half wondered if he just didn’t have anywhere to be. When we were leaving a solid black kitten slinked down the sidewalk and then into the road taking its sweet kitten time, but we helped it and said “black cat lives matter” and then asked the racist fella across the way who had been yelling white lives matter and all lives matter if he had fucking learned anything since god obviously was trying really hard to give him the visual or if he’d like to yell “all cats matter” but I don’t think he was actually comprehending a whole lot, to be honest. Bless his heart.