HOW CAN WE WIN?
In 2019, I put out a call to action to my community. I made a Facebook event for a neighborhood cleanup where I was living in Bankhead, a community on the west side of Atlanta. Oddly enough the area was named after actress Tallulah Bankhead’s grandfather, John H. Bankhead, an Alabama Confederate war hero and US senator. But if the name rings familiar to you, it’s probably because of the song “Bankhead Bounce” by Diamond and D-Roc, and you may even know the dance of the same name. I didn’t grow up there like T.I. (I was born up in Bankhead, y’all remember me) but for many years I called it home. The Facebook invitation read:
The family-friendly event will begin at 9:00 a.m. Meet at the corner of Joseph E. Boone and Westchester on Atlanta’s Westside. Practice stewardship with your child. Picking up litter is a fun, simple, free activity that can have instant results for your child and your community. In two hours, we can make two blocks cleaner, free of litter, and a nice place for the residents to come home to.
As I walk through my community, I see wrappers, Popsicle sticks, newspapers and every kind of disposable on the street, sidewalk and gathered at gates or fences throughout the community. Even on a beautiful art installation we have. If you live here, you might get familiar with seeing trash. If you are visiting, you ask the question … “why?” Well, your initial response to that question may not be a correct analysis or it may not tell the whole story. So, as a resident here in Bankhead, I’m choosing to clean up my neighborhood, and I hope you’ll take two hours out of your time to help me. I will supply any cleaning needs, including gloves.
Environment is a place where humans as well as plants and animals live. Keeping it clean and neat is our responsibility. It is necessary to keep our environment clean because we get fresh air, reduce pollution, etc. An unclean environment leads to a bad condition of a society, arrival of diseases, and much more.
Four people showed up. Four. I had hoped that not just people who lived in the community but people who were from the community would care enough to participate in making sure our environment was livable. It was important to me because I understood the effect our environment has on us psychologically and physically. I wanted this to be the first step in taking back our community. I didn’t want to wait for gentrification to finally be the reason for a beautification effort. I had done the work. I had reached out to the city and gotten a big dumpster, and I had partnered with an organization that gave us all the cleaning supplies we needed. Four people. We did the best we could, and we got some things clean. But in that two-hour time, we barely finished three blocks, and needless to say, I was disappointed.
Fast-forward six months, after George Floyd’s death at the hands of the police. Protests had begun all over the country, and my friend Brandi, an Air Force veteran, and I decided that we should join the front lines of the protest because we noticed, in the news coverage, that there were a lot of young people, but we weren’t seeing our age—Gen X—out in the street. We’re both mothers, so we know what that energy is, and we felt like it would be easy for things to get derailed out there with all those young people, the anger and the media. We knew the way most of us are raised in the African American community, people are less likely to make destructive decisions in front of someone like an aunt, an uncle or someone their parents’ age.
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The first night we went out, we noticed strategically placed bricks that everybody was talking about. Images of piles of bricks at the sites of protests across the country had been posted on social media: from a suburb of Minneapolis to Tacoma, Washington, and San Francisco. Fact-checkers later claimed these were left by construction crews for building in the area and it was dismissed as a conspiracy theory. We saw a young man pick up a brick, and I just walked over to him and tapped him on his arm. He put the brick down. We were right in thinking that while most young people were out there for a good reason, with no aunties and uncles on the street, young anger was going to be the driving force to determine what happened. So Brandi and I decided to be the aunties at the front line who made it less likely a brick would get thrown or that there would be property damage. We made it our business to be at the protests as our way of protecting the kids from their wilder instincts.
I’m an activist. I’ve spent a lot of time protesting. I marched with John Lewis, right after the killing of Mike Brown. I marched with the Justice for Georgia mothers—particularly one mother I’m very close to, Monteria Robinson, after her son Jamarion Robinson was killed. So showing up for the issues that matter wasn’t new for me.
After a few days of being on the front lines that June, a filmmaker named David Jones asked me to do some man-on-the-street interviews with him for his documentary. He had been at the protests, but in different places than I was. On this day, there was a protest planned for later, but we went out early to do our man-on-the-street interviews because people were outside, ahead of time, setting up signs. There was one young woman who was making a beautiful flower art installation in honor of George Floyd and what was happening in the civil unrest, so we interviewed her. We were in downtown Atlanta, and we started at a corner where the CNN Center is located. The College Football Hall of Fame is on the opposite corner, and there are a lot of high-end restaurants in the area.
I noticed a bunch of middle-aged Black people—aunties and uncles I had not seen in the street (except for Brandi and me)—cleaning up. When I asked them who gave them the cleaning materials, they told me they’d bought them out of pocket. They had supplies to remove the graffiti and were sweeping up glass and boarding up broken windows. When I asked if they lived in downtown, most said no. They had seen that downtown and Buckhead, another upscale neighborhood, had been damaged, and they had taken it upon themselves to clean up. Historically, when there’s civil unrest, the destruction happens in the communities where people live. In response to George Floyd’s death, people had taken their anger downtown where protests had been coordinated. There had been looting and rioting, and these Black aunties and uncles had decided it was their job to clean up. To clean up property they did not own.
When I asked them why, one person told me, “This is not the way we handle things.” A woman added, “I don’t want them to think we’re all like this.” Them, meaning white people. You can see why I would be upset, right? I plan a community cleanup in a Black neighborhood, and my people won’t show up for that, but they will come downtown and spend their time, money and labor to clean up damage they didn’t do, so they look better to people they don’t know? This is what slavery looks like in the twenty-first century. They wanted to show massa they was the good Black folks. It’s appropriate that we stand for our rights and stand against police brutality, but some Black people are so concerned by the white gaze—what we look like to white people as they regard us—that they would try to undo the effects of the real and righteous anger the rioters expressed. But standing there, listening to people my age, who look like me, speak their concern about the white gaze and the way we respond to our own oppression, it made me mad. They seemed more concerned about the white man’s property than they were about their brother—dead on the street.
Two years before, I’d stood on that same corner, after walking miles holding up the autopsy photo of Jamarion Robinson, a college student with mental health issues. Jamarion had been killed by police when they fired seventy-six rounds into his body, while serving a warrant for a crime Jamarion did not commit. I already had an emotional association with the place where I was standing. And I could not for the life of me understand how Black folks could be so concerned about the white gaze that they would spend their own money to clean up spaces where, historically, we haven’t even been welcomed. Jamarion Robinson was dead, George Floyd was dead and these people were more concerned about buildings that are insured, that can be replaced and that they don’t own. The police have gone rogue and are killing us, but qualified immunity protects the police from prosecution, and we keep dying. But they were worried about buildings?
How crazy is it that it took the whole world falling to a pandemic for a wide range of Americans to react and take action? It took us having to endure watching a man press his knee on another man’s neck for nine minutes and twenty-nine seconds for the world to wake up to the atrocities that Black people have been living since our arrival in this country? If you are Black in America, none of this is new to you. And yet, some people were more concerned about property, as if we haven’t been shown over and over again that the social contract is void when it comes to us. That was the most ridiculous bullshit I had ever heard in my life. It set me off, and I started talking. David turned on his camera, and if you’ve seen the video “How Can We Win?” you know that this is what poured out of me:
So, I’ve been seeing a lot of things—talking and people making commentary. Interestingly enough, the ones I’ve noticed that have been making the commentary are wealthy Black people—making the commentary that you should not be rioting, you should not be looting, you should not be tearing up your own communities. And then, there’s been the argument of the other side that we should be hitting them in the pocket, we should be focusing on the blackout days when we don’t spend money. But, you know, I feel like we should do both. And I feel like I support both. And I will tell you why I support both. I support both because when you have a civil unrest like this, there are three types of people in the streets: There are the protesters, there are the rioters and there are the looters. The protesters are there because they actually care about what is happening in the community, they want to raise their voices and they’re there strictly to protest. You have the rioters, who are angry, who are anarchists, who really just want to fuck shit up, and that is what they are going to do regardless. And then you have the looters. And the looters almost exclusively are just there to do that: to loot. And now, people are like, “What did you gain?” “What did you get from looting?”
I think that as long as we are focusing on the what, we’re not focusing on the why, and that is my issue with that. As long as we are focusing on what they are doing, we are not focusing on why they are doing. Some people are like, “Well, those aren’t people who are legitimately angry about what’s happening. Those are people who just want to get stuff.” Okay, well then, let’s go with that; let’s say that’s what it is. Let’s ask ourselves why, in this country, in 2020, the financial gap between poor Blacks and the rest of world is at such a distance that people feel like that their only hope and only opportunity to get some of the things that we flaunt and flash in front of them all the time is to walk through a broken glass window and get it. They are so hopeless that getting that necklace, getting that TV, getting that change, getting that bag, getting that phone, whatever it is that they are going to get, is that in that moment when the riots happen and they are presented with an opportunity of looting, that is their only opportunity to get it. We need to be questioning that why. Why are people that poor? Why are people that broke? Why are people that food insecure? That clothing insecure? That they feel like their only shot—that they’re shooting their shot by walking through a broken glass window to get what they need. And then people want to talk about, “Well, there are plenty of people who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps and got it on their own. Why can’t they do that?”
Let me explain something about economics in America. (And I’m so glad that as a child I got an opportunity to spend time at PUSH, where they taught me this.) It’s that we must never forget that economics was the reason that Black people were brought to this country. We came to do the agricultural work in the South and the textile work in the North. Do you understand that? That is what we came to do. We came to do the agricultural work in the South and the textile work in the North. Now, if I right now—if I right now decided that I wanted to play Monopoly with you, and for four hundred rounds of playing Monopoly, I didn’t allow you to have any money. I didn’t allow you to have anything on the board. I didn’t allow for you to have anything, and then we played another fifty rounds of Monopoly, and everything that you gained and you earned while you were playing that round of Monopoly was taken from you. That was Tulsa. That was Rosewood. Those are places where we built Black economic wealth. Where we were self-sufficient. Where we owned our stores. Where we owned our property. And they burned them to the ground. So that’s four hundred and fifty years, so for four hundred rounds of Monopoly, you don’t get to play at all. Not only do you not get to play; you have to play on the behalf of the person that you’re playing against. You have to play and make money and earn wealth for them, and then you have to turn it over to them. So then for fifty years you finally get a little bit, and you’re allowed to play, and every time that they don’t like the way that you’re playing or that you’re catching up or that you’re doing something to be self-sufficient, they burn your game. They burn your cards. They burn your Monopoly money. And then, finally, after release and the onset of that, they allow you to play, and they say, “Okay, now you catch up.” At this point the only way you’re going to catch up in the game is if the person shares the wealth. Correct? But what if every time you share the wealth, then there is psychological warfare against you to say: “Oh, you’re an equal opportunity hire.”
So, if I play four hundred rounds of Monopoly with you, and I had to play and give you every dime that I made, and then for fifty years every time that I played and if you didn’t like what I did, you got to burn like they did in Tulsa and like they did in Rosewood. How can you win? How can you win? You can’t win. The game is fixed. So when they say, “Why do you burn down the community? Why burn down your own neighborhood?” It’s not ours! We don’t own anything! We don’t own anything! There is … Trevor Noah said it so beautifully last night. There is a social contract that we all have that if you steal or if I steal, then the person who is the authority comes in, and they fix the situation. But that the person that fixes this situation is killing us! So the social contract is broken! And if the social contract is broken, why the fuck do I give a shit about burning the fucking Football Hall of Fame or about burning a fucking Target? You broke the contract when you killed us in the street and didn’t give a fuck! You broke the contract when for four hundred years, we played your game and built your wealth! You broke the contract when we built our wealth again on our own, on our bootstraps in Tulsa, and you dropped bombs on us! When we built it in Rosewood and you came in and you slaughtered us! You broke the contract! So fuck your Target! Fuck your Hall of Fame! As far as I’m concerned, they could burn this bitch to the ground. And it still wouldn’t be enough. And they are lucky that what Black people are looking for is equality and not revenge.
As soon as the last word came out of my mouth, I broke down. I felt a sense of relief as if the weight of carrying that message had been lifted and the only thing left was to cry out any remnants of the pain attached to it. My dear friend Brandi was off to the side wearing a matching George Floyd tee and immediately opened her arms to receive me. When I was talking about the social contract being broken, I was referring to something Trevor Noah had said on The Daily Show a few nights before. He was talking about the way white people weaponize and leverage whiteness against us. He said that they were breaking the social contract that is supposed to keep the society organized: we don’t hurt each other, and when someone does, society has a remedy to address the harm. The police killing of George Floyd, a man who wasn’t even accused of a violent act, breaks the social contract. The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s was our attempt to get this country to extend the social contract to us. To at least treat us with the same respect they insist on for themselves. Under the Atlanta sun, days into a protest that would rock the world, reality as I knew it ran smack into some people’s delusions, and I told the truth. Stronger people than me have gone off, with much less provocation.
There are moments when a force that’s bigger than you takes over, and this was a moment like that for me. I was mad, and the history I knew, the ideas I’d been teaching, and the presence of ancestors who had a lot to say, moved through me, weaving it all together with a clarity and power as big as my anger. I’m not sure I was in control of what came out of my mouth, but I do think it was more eloquent and truer than what I might have said if I had given it more thought. I knew I had spoken the truth. I just didn’t know what it might cost me.
When David posted the video, I was nervous. But at the same time, I felt like Black protesters and political commentators had been talking around the most important aspects of George Floyd’s murder and the uprising in response. I hadn’t planned to say what I said, but I managed to say everything I felt needed to be said: we were risking our lives to protest during a pandemic because the deaths of Black people reminded us that in America, we are not promised another day, even if we do everything right. Breonna Taylor was a model citizen. She was asleep in her bed when she was killed. We are not safe no matter what we do. And the other thing, particularly in light of the looting, was that, NO!, we don’t think property is equal to or more important than our precious, fragile lives. And really, how dare anyone act as though the insured property and inventory of a multimillion-dollar corporation is more valuable than we are. That is the voice of slave masters trying to tell us who we are. But we are not slaves. I’m not making a case for looting, but as I said in the video, why are people so food and clothing insecure that this is the only way they can imagine having what they need? Not want, need. When I hear people talking about rioting and looting, my response is: replace those words with “Dead Black People.” See which one hits harder. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “A riot is the language of the unheard.” America, I ask you, what have you failed to hear? What are you studiously ignoring?
After the video went live on YouTube, I expected to be canceled. I’m Not Dying with You Tonight, the YA book I cowrote with my friend Gilly Segal, had been out for a year, and it had even been nominated for an NAACP Image Award. I was sure our publisher was going to cancel our contract for a second book. I thought my writing career was over. Even with all the experience I have, working in TV and on movies, I thought I might be canceled there too. But at the same time, as an activist who has worked in my community for years (I was fighting food insecurity when I was an eleven-year-old using my allowance to feed homeless people in Chicago), I felt it was important to stand for the truth as I see it too.
I’ve never kept my opinions to myself when I’ve thought there was something worth saying. My mother liked to tell a story—she calls it the first time I went viral—about taking my sister and me to Washington, DC, when I was in middle school. While we were sightseeing, a news crew asked Angie for her thoughts on the conflict with Iran. Having plenty of opinions about US foreign policy, I interrupted to add to what Angie said and ended up taking the mic and giving President Reagan some advice. For days after, my mother was deluged with friends and relatives calling to make sure that was really me on the evening news.
Once, when I was in high school, I was riding on the train with my girlfriends, and an older woman stepped on the train, a few stops before the red line separated the North Side from the South Side of Chicago. She glared at us. “Why do you have to be so loud?” In all honesty our colorful train performance may have been a bit much for tired workers on a weekday afternoon. I think I was shocked because I had thankfully never been told to tone it down prior to this moment. My mom acknowledged very early on that I was going to be nothing short of a loud woman. She allowed me to own that and put me in environments where it was okay to express myself. When I talk to loud women and girls who tell me that growing up their big voices were frowned upon, we discuss how the narrative is spun against them to give voice to quieter ladies. It’s so unnecessary. You do not have to mute one group to create space for another.
That lady on the train all those years ago certainly missed out on an interesting trio. Tanji Harper is now the artistic director of the Happiness Club, a Chicago-based organization designed to encourage positive values and social change through the arts, and was honored in 2018 by the Obama Foundation. Leigh Peeler just finished a run as Deloris Van Cartier, the lead in Sister Act, the musical, with the Charleston Light Opera Guild. And then there was me.
After my video went viral, internationally, I saw many people saying they couldn’t get past how I delivered my message. If you attempt to judge a larger-than-life queen, you may miss your chance to encounter a glorious peacock. The people who tried to dismiss me as a loud, ghetto, angry Black woman did not see an award-winning filmmaker, community advocate and successful YA author. They could not wrap their minds around the notion that a hood girl could be a hero too.
In this day and age, there is still something intimidating about Black women who don’t code switch, have an opinion and own booming voices dripping with phrases that are unapologetically rooted in hip-hop culture. To clarify, the way we speak is cultural, not remedial. The question should never be “Do women like me deserve a voice in the world?” Obviously, we do. Black girls who come from nothing have been the architects of cool since the turn of the twentieth century. This is why I was proud to be the voice of the voiceless. I’m not saying we should make noise for noise’s sake. I’m just saying no one should tell us to shut up.
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As the hours went by, I began to see responses across Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and on YouTube. There were a few negatives:
The establishment don’t really cares what you have to say … Sorry good try though …
My dear-thank you for the truth-please next time you go public—please make your hair a different hairstyle—)to present your face(, wishing the Black civilization a great future).
But the comments were overwhelmingly positive:
My God! As a Black woman here in the u.s. she is speaking FOR my soul’s pain! Tears are in my eyes, from hearing someone so eloquently put the distilled simple truth of all Black people’s reality in this country! Thank you sis!
Hi, I’ve just finished watching this video of Kimberly here (first time hearing her speak): I started off thinking “yeah, it’s good” and finished it with “holy shit, wow.”
Her ability to be able to drive the point home with the emotion … just really powerful. I shared it with my girlfriend who said it made her cry a little.
If this video don’t make you see a clearer picture of what’s going on and why. Then you will stay sleep. Well said young Lady. I get chills every time I watch this.
Best explanation ever. There will never be equality. They want Black people to help them protect what they stole from them in the first place.
yas my Sista you are speaking FACTS!!!! Every word you said touched my spirit
I cried for the first time in 45 yrs.… I strongly share all sentiments sister.… Keep on educating us.…
Damn!!!! “They are lucky, that what Black people are looking for is equality and not revenge!!!!” What a powerful line.
This needs to be in schools.
I felt the spirit of the ancestors rising with this one
LeBron James tweeted:
I’m Here For You
I never expected the outpouring of support I received from all over the world. It turned out that people understood what I was saying and felt it was what they also wanted to say but didn’t know how. Suddenly, I was making appearances on late-night talk shows in the US, Europe and Australia. I was in conversation with Black members of parliament in the UK. In Belgium, there’s a 44-meter (144-foot) wide mural with the word “EQUALITY” and a quote of mine from the video. I was even GQ Germany’s 2020 Voice of the Year. It’s a surprise to find the world listening to this educated yet socially unpolished Black woman from the South Side of Chicago by way of Atlanta, Georgia. I didn’t expect the world to be ready for my long, bedazzled nails, colorful and ever-changing hair choices and masterful command of whatever the latest slang is. I have used this to my advantage as I travel the country with my organization, The People’s Uprising, where I serve as the entertainment and culture chair. I have always had something to say. I just haven’t always had the world ready to listen.
Copyright © 2021 by Kimberly Jones
