I wanted to kick off Jam of the Week with something fun and vibrant, something that felt like getting into the full brightness of spring and the excitement of summer coming, but that's not where I am mentally this week, to be honest. Where I am mentally has a lot to do with where I am physically, which is where I was born and raised, which is Baltimore.
You know a little bit about Baltimore by now. You know the darkest parts of it, or at least how that darkness appears on the surface, because it's been everywhere this week, it's been unavoidable. God fucking help me, you might have seen The Wire and think that qualifies you to talk about my city like you know it. In a way we all know this story now, because it's been daily, for months and months. Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, Rekia Boyd, Walter Scott, Freddie Gray. It's getting hard to keep all the names in our heads because, as well as we know this story, we apparently haven't learned yet.
I've been so angry this week, so sad, so proud, so lost. I'm angry that national media cares about Freddie Gray now that this incident can include a goddamn CVS on its casualty list. I'm angry that the city officials would rather spend untold money bringing in and arming and feeding hundreds of cops and National Guardsmen and fucking terrorist consulting units from the NYPD than spend that money helping a community they were elected to serve. I'm angry that this curfew (which by the way, is not being enforced in Mt Washington, Roland Park, etc) seems like an easier thing for the police department to pull off than taking responsibility, than explaining how a man died in police custody for doing nothing more than looking at a cop in a way he didn't like.
I'm so sad to see my city on fire. I watched Ferguson on my phone, on my television, and I was furious and sad then too, but this is my home. It's something fucking else to see your home on fire. Knowing your city is broken and seeing it manifest like that, feeling the heat of it, smelling the smoke of it, that's something else. That's so much. I'm having trouble processing it. I'm so sad that the first time people are treating West Baltimore like someone's home is to say condescending bullshit like "why are you destroying your own community," as if the city hasn't abandoned and neglected West Baltimore for years, for decades.
But I'm also proud. I'm proud of how my city has turned out to protest and demand justice. I'm proud of how many religious leaders, gang leaders, elected officials, athletes, teachers, parents, kids, business owners have come out to keep the peace, to repair the damage, to be here, to be part of this, to tell the world how much we love our city, how much we want to fight to make it better. It's weirdly emotional to see solidarity marches in other cities, even though it's about so much more than Baltimore, than Monday night.
I feel lost because I struggle with how to respond to this. As a white person, I am a recovering racist. White people spend our whole lives benefiting from this system. We are benefiting in ways we don't even see, in ways we don't realize. It's been explained to me that the best thing I can do, as a white ally, is to sit back and shut up when people of color are talking. To hear and then to speak up when my fellow white people won't listen.
This song is one of the things I've been shutting up and listening to this week.
and they hide their faces
and they hide their eyes
'cause the city's dying
and they don't know why
oh, Baltimore, ain't it hard just to live
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