Just because I didn’t blog about it, doesn’t mean it’s not on my mind.
Fine. I’ll finally publish a post about some of the things happening in the US, strong-armed into it by having to watch a nurse being pepper-sprayed. I wrote half a post a while back, might as well dig it out, edit, say what I thought about saying months ago.
I am an American who has been living in Germany for 13 years. The former East Germany. I live in a place where fascism is fresh in the minds of people my age, where my friends remember what it was like when the wall came down, and what it was like before that.
When the media started reporting on “unidentified federal agents” in Portland, a German friend nonchalantly said “We called them Stasi.” He was not being facetious, just matter of fact. Unidentified agents taking people away for any extent of time == Stasi to an East German. A generation earlier, the Stasi were called the Gestapo.
I live in a place, am the member of communities, where fascism is met swiftly with a bodycheck and condemnation at all levels of public sector. Once, I was stopped by police on the street here, and within 45 seconds two citizens had come to my side to ensure that the police were not harassing me. If the police are anywhere, antifa is there too. Always.
It’s not to say that Germany has it all figured out, sadly, my town is host to the same kind of right-wing, anti-tolerance that I fight against with my words and my actions. The AfD and Pegida plague my city with anti-immigration, anti-POC rhetoric. We stand up to it. The crowds are still there, and when you talk to the mostly older citizens that attend these rallies, you find a thread of fear and misunderstanding that is often associated with a simple lack of education. There’s propaganda too. It came to my mailbox once and as I read it, I understood how very easily people can be fooled. Emotional narratives strike at emotional cores, and it can be difficult to see through it.
In the past couple of weeks, from my lucky position of “over here”, my heart has been breaking. The degree of incredulity I’ve been feeling in 2020 outpaces the shock and disgust I felt in 2016, when Trump became president. Call me a bleeding heart if you want, but I just don’t see myself as so very separate from the rest of my species. I do not understand racism, though I understand my privilege. I do not understand so much of what other people see as a reason to hate.
I do understand action, however. I realized that I haven’t been anywhere near as proactive as I should have been on the subject of race. And so in the last months, as protests have erupted around the world, I’ve been having a number of conversations with various groups, including my esteemed colleagues at We Are Open Cooperative.
As a six member collective, all of whom are directors, we wanted to make some sort of statement and stand in solidarity with people of color. We are, the six of us, all white. We must strive to be anti-racist. We are our members, and we didn’t want to make some sort of generic statement. Instead, we just started trying to do better.
- We are reviewing all our policies to ensure we are not whitewashing
- We will work to amplify the voices of POC, without adding our commentary
- Members have donated to 70 bail bonds as well as Black Lives Matter
- Members have been participating in protests in their cities
- Members took (another) course on anti-racism
In short, all of us are looking at the issue of systemic racism and committing to doing things individually. I believe it is our responsibility as a collective to ensure that our learning journeys are open and transparent, and so this post is just to say — I’m paying attention.