compassion

continuing to live and learn

| Sheree
Studio Practice Journal, 2023-4

“On the afternoon of May 16, 2020, about a week before George Floyd was killed by the police, twenty-one-year-old Tye Anders was accused by the Midland, Texas, police of running a stop sign. He pulled over in front of his ninety-year-old grandmother’s house.”

Excerpt From
We Refuse
Kellie Carter Jackson

There’s Anders pleading for his life. There’s many policemen with guns drawn pointed at him and there’s bystanders filming it all. One woman who’s filming this is also pleading for the police to not shot Anders saying he’s scared. Hasn’t there been enough killing of unarmed black people, killed just because of the colour of their skin?

Still no guns are lowered and Anders is on the ground clearly empty handed but the situation is just escalating as the police continue to train their guns on his body.

Anders’ ninety-years-old grandmother steps out of her house praying. With cane in hand she walks towards her grandson even though guns are trained in her direction.

There was still panic still bystanders screaming for the police to put their guns up. Some do but still one cop is walking towards Anders with his gun raised. Trying to move and push her out of the way, his grandmother doesn’t believe that her grandson won’t still be shot so she falls onto her grandson, protecting his body with her own body. Not longer after this with the police and crowd pushing and pulsating around her , she loses consciousness.

Anders is arrested for fleeing the police. His grandmother is taken to hospital.

Reading this story this morning made me cry. Not because of the police brutality or the disregard for human life, black life. But because of what the grandmother in the story did. She’s ninety-years-old, frail and only has her prays and body, but used both in protection, in an act of love.

“Her collapse was not a coincidence. Protection is powerful, beautiful, and sacrificial because protection is love. But she should not have needed to put her body between the police and her grandson to protect him.”

Excerpt From
We Refuse
Kellie Carter Jackson.

Protection. She should not have needed to, but she did put her body between the police and grandson to protect him. This act of courage broke my heart this morning. Had me weeping. Maybe it was the last straw that pushed me over the edge into the breakdown. Maybe it was my imagination seeing this playing out.

Maybe I’m just sick and tired of living in a world where white violence is justified and black violence is really self-defence but is never judged that way.

I’ve always been a supporter of care work but even more so now. As care work, along with rest are forms of protection. Through the way I {BE} with myself and others, and the work that I do for self and others, I’m tending daily to the mental, emotional, and physical needs and health of black people, so we are better equipped to survive and thrive within a hostile, brutal, grinning world.

A Summer of Reading – a refusal of productivity

| Sheree

With the warmer weather and the slower pace, I’m so ready to lean into the lazy, easy, light and breezy days of summer.

My six weeks off the clock summer holidays are just around the corner. I can taste the sweet sweet honey of rest. But I’m not quite there yet. Still things to complete, anniversaries to celebrate and forms to send off.

But it’s close. I can smell the cut grass and strawberries and syrup already. The long drawn out of days of doing fuck all. Hell to the yes!

Reading is top of the agenda. Summer self-study of topics and issues that are making me buzz. I’ve already started my crime fiction reading as I get back into the DCI Ryan Mysteries Series from L J Ross, all set in the north east.

And now tonight, with an hour to spare before pick up I dive into We Refuse by Kellie Carter Jackson. This is just what I need coming off the back of completing my black mothering and fugitivity chapter. But it also is adding fuel to my fire of refusal and divesting from racial capitalism.

I’m only a few pages in and my heart is singing and I’m thumping with energy in the recognition of finding my space, my safe place where my desires and wants for freedom on my own terms is not weird or unachievable. But is very much necessary.

#onwards

Where to start …

| Sheree

At the same time as trying to break free, create and embody a life of my own making, on my own terms, I’m still embroiled within this insidious society called white supremacy culture/ racial capitalism.

At the same time as trying to get free, and so spend my time doing what I want to do rather than what I’m expected/supposed to do/be, I waste energy in pulling away which I’d rather spend in pushing forward, pushing on.

At the same time as trying to be free, breathing deeply, resting and dreaming of other possibilities, I’m still meshed into the lives of other people, who are not interested is taking flight or even dropping the protective cloak of scoring victim.

At the same time as I take flight into the unknown, I realise my resolve and reserves have been depleted in the fight, in the pleasing of others, in trying to fit in, in trying to be loved on my own terms.

At the same time as trying to save myself, I know now that I have to let go of my hold of you. The hold on what could have been instead of what is that is crying through my bones and blood’s knowing.