Four Thursdays ago - and what seems now like a lifetime - I became an accidental activist. If you read my first diary here, you know what happened. I made a post on Facebook inviting friends to join me for a moment of solidarity, mourning and commitment at the Worcester Common, put on a red ribbon and arrived to find that nearly 100 people - most of them strangers to me - had accepted my invitation. I would have been happy with that, but what has happened since then has left me humbled at the smallness of my vision. I'm sharing the story of the last four Thursdays because I want people to understand the absolute power of taking a public stand on an issue - any issue that you care about.
Fair warning: I'm probably going to get preachy somewhere in this missive. I can't help it because there is so much to preach right now. I truly believe that there are moments in history where change is ripe and ready to grow, and that the right actions can bring it into bursting, beautiful life - and inaction can leave it to wither and die, leaving us with more firmly entrenched stasis. I truly believe this is one of those pivotal moments where people, hungry for change, will coalesce around those who are taking action and force those changes through the power of numbers. And I believe that if we miss this moment, the myriad wounds and injustices will once again be covered up and left to fester, and that things will get worse, much worse, until another spark ignites the tinder box and the whole damn thing explodes around us. Again.
I wrote I Didn't Mean to Organize a Rally on the first Thursday after my accidental rally. I had just returned from a second rally, this one organized by a woman who had been on the Common the previous week. Like me, she had seen posts in her FB feed earlier about gatherings around the nation to be held that evening. One had sparked a conversation in the comments about trying to get rides to Boston to join the rally planned there. "Why go to Boston?" she asked. "Meet me on the Common and we can do the same thing right here."
And we did. We marched and chanted and agreed to meet again to keep the energy alive. At the same time, another young man - the man who had, in fact, inspired my resolve to act that first Thursday - had started organizing an event to highlight the issues of state-sanctioned violence in our own city, with the intent of drawing attention to the connections between global violence, racism and our own local problems between law enforcement and community. When we got home from that second rally, he opened a Facebook chat that included many of us who had been at one or both of those rallies to solicit ideas and help for his march.
For the last three Thursdays, our small group has met face to face in a small room at a local college campus. Originally, our purpose was to firm up plans for the rally - which will take place this Saturday evening here in Worcester - but our plans have grown far beyond one march and one rally and one issue. On Saturday night, we'll be announcing the birth of the Communities United Collective, an open membership group for any concerned community members who want to help bring about real, lasting, positive changes in our community.
We'll also be announcing our first two workshop events for community change, already scheduled for the two succeeding Thursdays. Two community-based organizations have stepped forward to offer us space for meetings and promised support for our actions. At the first, we'll examine the current police complaint procedure and start formulating a new framework for investigation and oversight of the complaints process by an outside agency. The second will be a workshop on deconstructing racism. We have plans already to support communities working on reforming school policies that lead to the school-to-prison pipeline, how to bring about change at the ballot box and many other issues that all intertwine to make our community unsafe for far too many of our people.
Last night, at our last meeting before Saturday's march, the woman who organized the second rally on the Common said something that resonates so deep within me that I'm still vibrating with it.
"I'm nervous, y'all," she said. "I have a feeling this is going to be much bigger than we imagine, and we've got to get it right."
She was talking about our Saturday rally, but there is so much more to it than one march in one city on one mid-September night. There's a hunger for change in the air. The seeds of it are blowing in the wind in cities across the country. Now is the time to nurture those seeds and grow them into change. I'm hopeful - so hopeful it hurts. But I'm also afraid that if we miss this opportunity, it will be a long, long time before we get the chance to get it right again.