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Black Lives Matter

    SOCIAL JUSTICE

    Covid Halts Wellfleet’s MLK Walk

    Voices and artworks will still speak out on racism

    By

    WELLFLEET — Following months of racial reckoning inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, this was supposed to be a big year for Wellfleet’s 18-year-old Martin Luther King Day observance — the “WalKING celebration” — on Jan 18.

    But the MLK Day planning committee has decided to pull the plug on the traditional march, and on any live events at all, except for making a few SUVs available in front of Wellfleet Preservation Hall to collect nonperishable foods for the Grace Chapel pantry. The food drop-off goes from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.

    Sofi Yin Blandford’s work from last year. Making art is an annual MLK Day ritual for the Blandfords and many other Outer Cape families. (Photo Sara Blandford)

    The decision was wrenching for the six organizers and followed many debates. Last week they decided that the outdoor walking meditation, which has attracted over 300 people in the past, would be too risky.

    “Of all the years,” said playwright Candace Perry, a founder and organizer of the event. “It would have been a real celebration, and we would have had a wonderful choice of speakers.”

    The traditional MLK Day breakfast gathering will this year be virtual, at 10 a.m. on Jan. 18 on Zoom. The speakers will be “dynamic and very relevant,” said the Rev. Wesley Williams, retired pastor of the Orleans United Methodist Church and the convener of the MLK Action Team, part of the Nauset Interfaith Association.

    The hour-long Zoom (Williams promises it won’t be longer) will feature Cape Cod Voices, a coalition of young people of color and their allies who grew up on Cape Cod. They will talk about the modern-day racism in their lives. (Register for the breakfast at nausetinterfaith.org.)

    “They are the heart of the program,” said Williams.

    Williams, who is African American, came to Cape Cod 15 years ago from Cambridge and has found that the main issue here is “a lack of contact and experience with people of color,” he said. “It’s almost 99 percent white, and even the washashores did not grow up in close contact with people of color. So their main image is formed through media.”

    Nothing can replace prejudice better than forming a relationship with a person of color, he said. And, Williams added, it’s okay to approach a person of color whom you are not close with and ask them to talk about their experiences of racism.

    It will not be regarded as rude or intrusive, Williams said, if the question is asked with respect and humility. Then, he added, let the person answer in their own way. Don’t try to control the conversation, he advised, just listen.

    Daniela Chianciola and her sister Alannah Chianciola, of Eastham, here with last year’s #chalkwalk drawings, are hoping the rain will go away so they can get started on their 2021 works.

    “Don’t sound like you want to learn about an animal in a zoo,” he cautioned.

    As repetitive as it can be for people of color to explain racism to white people, most understand honest communication is important in order to create meaningful change, he said.

    “Cape Cod Voices will point out that we cannot use the excuse that there are no people of color here,” said Williams.

    The MLK Day tradition in Wellfleet began in 2003, during the invasion of Iraq, when anti-war activists decided to hold a full month of events to protest war and inequality, said Harriet Korim, a founder and organizer.

    For the kick-off event, organizers held a silent meditative walk on Martin Luther King Day. James Kershner of Dennis, a follower of Thich Nhat Hanh and a longtime activist, Korim, and others were among the short list of participants. But it quickly grew, with music, food, and art, first at the Wellfleet library and then — when it grew too big for the library in 2012 — at Wellfleet Preservation Hall.

    The point was always to attract all age groups, Korim said. Children and their art quickly became a central theme. Rudelle Falkenburg’s preschool students were among the first; now many local schools contribute art and posters. They brightened the windows of closed shops along Main Street.

    Early on, when the event was still small enough, the walk ended with people entering the library as a film of King’s “I Have a Dream” speech was shown. Many children saw and heard it there for the first time.

    Sofi Yin Blandford and her brother Isak Blandford, of Wellfleet, have started an artwork that makes a statement about what Martin Luther King Jr.’s teachings mean to them. (Photo Sara Blandford)

    The participation of children was what brought Joe DaLuz, the founder of the Cape’s NAACP chapter, to Wellfleet every year until his death at 87 in 2016. He would drive from Hyannis even during blizzards, Korim said.

    “He would say, ‘I come for the children’s art,’ ” said Korim.

    This year, the organizers plan to “share the recipe” and invite people to hold their own “small-but-mighty” walks, make posters, meditate on the movement, and go for a walk wherever they are.

    Send photographs or art, posters, or poems to ArtPeaceMakers on Instagram and tag posts with the hashtags #earthjusticemarch, #MLKwalKING2021, #MLKlives2021, #BlackLivesMatter, and #BlackLivesMatterToCapeCodders.

    #BLM

    Fighting Racism With More Civic Engagement

    At a peaceful protest, a call to go beyond policing reform

    By

    BLM
    Protesters in Wellfleet on Sunday showed their support for the Black Lives Matter movement. (Photos Saskia Maxwell Keller)

    WELLFLEET — About 100 people marched from the pier to the First Congregational Church in support of the Black Lives Matter movement on Sept. 20. The crowd on Sunday was a little smaller than at previous Wellfleet marches, held May 31 and July 4, but not by much. Four months after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, protesters were still energized, and signs and speeches expressed anger, frustration, and demands for reform.

    The march and rally that followed were organized by Janae Tompkins, Sam Giamatti, Teddy Ment, and Sara Blandford. Tompkins had attended the May and July events as a protester, but Blandford, her neighbor, suggested she should get even more involved.

    “I liked the fact that there were protests more locally,” said Tompkins, who lives in Wellfleet and is a junior at Nauset Regional High School. “I originally wanted to go to the ones in Boston, but my parents didn’t want me to go because they saw all of the crazy things that were happening in other cities.”

    Tompkins said she thinks it’s important to acknowledge that racism exists in smaller towns. “I feel like it doesn’t go as noticed as racism and police brutality in cities,” she said.

    With protesters arriving on foot from the Wellfleet pier, speakers addressed the crowd in the field behind the Congregational Church. Many were young Cape Cod activists and people of color. Blandford said she thought the crowd was younger than at previous events.

    Karleena Corey, a leader of Cape Cod Voices, a community organization created to combat institutionalized racism and highlight the challenges facing marginalized people on the Cape, according to the group’s website, spoke of white “allyship,” and knowing when to take a step back and listen. But she also implored the crowd to call out casual racism.

    “Say something,” said Corey. “Make them uncomfortable. Be uncomfortable.”

    BLM-Cyr
    State Sen. Julian Cyr addressed the crowd on Sunday. In the background are two rally organizers, Janae Tompkins and Spencer Milagros

    Spencer Milagros, 16, spoke about his experience of racism on Cape Cod, saying that when he moved here from Brooklyn, it was like a “culture shock.” Other speakers were Tara Vargas Wallace, founder of Amplify P.O.C. Cape Cod, which seeks to promote equity by bringing attention to businesses owned by people of color on the Cape, and Karen Lee, of the Nauset Interfaith Association’s MLK Action Team.

    State Sen. Julian Cyr’s speech touched on why he believes racism is at play in local opposition to affordable housing. He also discussed the need to change racist iconography on town and state flags and seals.

    “Our inaction on housing has racist and classist ends,” said Cyr. “Because our communities have turned a blind eye to addressing wastewater, and have put up barriers time and again to building affordable housing, we have turned a blind eye to the places that folks are living.

    “I can’t do anything about this as your state senator on Beacon Hill,” continued Cyr. “These are local decisions. It’s before your planning board, your zoning board of appeals, your select board.” Cyr told listeners to attend town meetings to enact positive change.

    “We’ve got to accept nothing less than a paradigm shift in policing,” Cyr said. “But if we confine the change that we demand to law enforcement, we are completely missing the mark. This needs to be in our schools, our financial institutions, in how we support entrepreneurs and businesses, who we raise up and who we don’t.”

    Several speeches mentioned the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg two days earlier. Corey said that, for people to say “We’re doomed” and stop fighting is an affront to women, especially black women. “May her memory be a blessing,” said Cyr, “but may it also spur us to action, with the fatigue, worry, and angst that we feel.”

    Following the rally, organizers offered post cards for those present to send messages to members of the Mass. Senate committee who are negotiating a police reform bill. Sara Blandford said that 210 postcards were signed, though some people signed more than one.

    THE YEAR-ROUNDER

    The Summer of Our Discontent

    Whose heart does not ache in these fearful times?

    By

    PROVINCETOWN — Nothing in life is perfect.

    I woke up this morning unrefreshed. The weather has been too damn hot, even at night. I ran out of full-strength coffee and had to drink decaf: it did not do the trick. I wish I could get the shade-grown coffee that we should all be drinking (not just organic, not just fair-trade, but grown-in-the-shade-save-the-canopy-and-thus-the-birds coffee) but I am too lazy to order it online.

    The blueberries on my cereal are from New Jersey, and have undoubtedly been sprayed, but I won’t spend the extra dollar for the organic variety. And what does “organic” mean, anyway? How do we trust what we are told? I throw the plastic container in my recycling bin and will dutifully haul it out to the street for the DPW to pick up, but will it really be recycled? Who knows? Indeed, who knows anything for sure?

    Breakfast over, I take the dog to the beach. I (again) dutifully put on my mask — the mask I referred to in an earlier column as “better than nothing” — but is it really protecting me? I live in doubt and exasperation. Oh, the tribulations….

    Then, I watch the news. What do I have to complain about?

    Yet another black man, this time in Wisconsin, is shot in the back, seven times, in front of his children, as he turns from the police. This, after all the other incidents that have been so publicly protested over the last few weeks (and months, and years). How can this go on? Already, pollsters report that white voters are increasingly fatigued with the Black Lives Matter issue. How can this be? Injustice ignored is injustice encouraged.

    While I can’t imagine fearing for my life whenever I see a police officer, I do recall a time in the late 1960s when I was officially harassed because of my appearance (long hair, beard, scruffy clothes). On trips down Cape, I was often pulled over and questioned, and once briefly jailed. My friends and I considered this treatment a badge of honor. We quoted Norman Mailer’s 1957 essay “The White Negro”: “Any Negro who wishes to live must live with danger from his first day, and no experience can ever be casual to him…. The hipster has absorbed the existentialist synapses of the Negro….”

    We were “hippies” (hipsters) and proud of it. But (Kent State aside) our lives were never in danger.

    These times are different. And it is not only police brutality. The stress of being black in America has been statistically correlated with disparities in health status and mortality rates. I do not often, or ever, think about my race; apparently, the average African American does so throughout the day.

    But it is not just race. As I write this, there are people — families, children — being evicted, hurrying off to sleep in their cars or under overpasses, or looking to find public shelters. I can’t imagine the indignity of it. There are people obliged to line up for free food. I have never done that. There are women and men who cannot find work to provide for their loved ones. I have never been in that place either. There are businesses, built with years of effort, now going under, taking jobs with them. There are people now without purpose or hope. This includes even the persons who defaced the BLM sign and sent an ugly letter to our own Barbara Rushmore.

    Who can pretend not to be affected by these events? Whose heart does not ache? Who does not fear for the future? We must recognize the humanity in each other. That is all it would take. We must see that our destinies are shared.

    In this summer of discontent the shadows in my life are pale in comparison to the real suffering around this country and around the world. How do I connect to the pain of all these others? How do I put myself in their place? How do I make a difference?

    OP-ED

    Walking the Cape Cod Camino

    An exercise in reflecting on systemic racism in a privileged community

    By

    WELLFLEET — In the middle of the current racism pandemic, many of us who are not black or brown — who do not worry that our sons will be murdered while jogging — are wondering what we can do.

    One white woman from Brewster, Peggy Jablonski, spent eight Wednesdays this summer walking all 15 towns of the Cape on a personal journey to reflect on racial injustice. Beginning at the Canal on July 8 and concluding in Provincetown on Aug. 26, she welcomed others to join her on the “Cape Cod Camino,” fashioned on the Camino de Santiago, the “way of St. James” pilgrimage in Spain.

    I joined the Wellfleet portion in week seven, walking five miles from the bike path parking lot in South Wellfleet to Ocean View Drive, then along Cahoon Hollow Road, across Route 6, and up Main Street, ending at Preservation Hall. Though I was drawn to the idea of the walk, an opportunity to spend time with like-minded others and an exercise challenge, I worried that a stroll along beautiful Cape Cod byways smacked of white privilege. Black men were being shot, Covid deaths in communities of color continued to soar, and we were going for a walk?

    But the intentions of the walkers moved me. We were to think about the places where we walked, to reflect on the systemic racism built into our communities of privilege, to educate ourselves, and to commit to change.

    Carmen, a mixed-media work by black artist Aaqil Ka of Brooklyn, N.Y. (photo courtesy of the artist)

    Each week had a different theme; week seven’s focus was black, indigenous, and people of color in the arts. We learned about Robin Joyce Miller’s fabric art and Pamela Chaterton-Purdy’s mixed-media icons of the civil rights movement, on display at the Zion Union Heritage Museum in Hyannis. We heard poetry by Joy Harjo, the first Native American Poet Laureate of the U.S.  We were introduced to visual artists Shirin Neshat of Iran, and Aaqil Ka of Brooklyn, when our youngest walker displayed their work via her phone. We acknowledged the Wampanoag land over which we were passing.

    We were also asked to pay attention to our bodies. Before LeCount Hollow Road turned left to become Ocean View Drive, my breathing became labored when I talked and walked at the speed of the others. The oldest in the group, I was humbled to realize I was the slowest.

    When the walk ended, we were encouraged to participate in follow-up reflections on the pilgrimage. To my surprise, this was where the work deepened.

    I grew up in the South with racism I couldn’t accept but which I certainly understood. What surprised and saddened me was the racism I discovered when I moved to Cape Cod. The Mason-Dixon Line didn’t divide attitudes in the past, just as it doesn’t today. The Cape’s history, like the South’s, is America’s history, rooted in slavery.

    The deeper work of the Cape Cod Camino was finding these historical truths. Provincetown benefited from the salt cod industry that fed enslaved people on plantations in the Caribbean. The mansions of ship captains, today charming bed-and-breakfast inns, were built with shipping wealth directly tied to slavery. After slavery was outlawed in Massachusetts, a strong anti-abolitionist movement took root here. During an 1848 anti-slavery convention in Harwich, 2,000 people stormed the meeting and ran the abolitionists out of town.

    Times changed, and, 12 years later, the Cape Cod Anti-Slavery Convention in Harwich Exchange Hall insisted on “immediate and unconditional abolition.” Historian James Coogan has noted that the Cape’s history of slavery and its changing attitude towards abolition remains an “ambivalent legacy” whose scars are still felt in our communities today.

    My husband and I have a sign in our yard, “Black Lives Matter to Cape Codders,” distributed by Indivisible. Someone tried to remove it from its wire holder, but, unable to pull it loose, simply tossed it onto another part of our lawn. Did someone want it for a souvenir? Probably not.

    Our challenge remains to have conversations with our friends and neighbors, and even our families, about the need for racial justice. Maybe taking a walk is a good place to begin.

    Candace Perry writes plays, short stories, and essays.

    RACISM REPORT

    Black Lives Matter Signs Provoke Vandals

    Wellfleet police warn of ‘zero tolerance’ for spray painting

    By

    When Barbara Rushmore’s “Black Lives Matter” sign was stolen from in front of her house on Commercial Street in Provincetown’s East End around July 4th, she assumed that someone from out of town had done it. She replaced the sign, and it has remained there all summer.

    Then, last Friday, she received an unsigned, handwritten letter in the mail.

    It read: “Dear Black lives matter. Look on line, read what that sign of your’s [sic] stands for. If you keep it up, your [sic] telling every one in this town its OK if they come here and Break in to all the store’s [sic] and steal what they want. Please take your sign down. I know you know better.”

    Rushmore, who is disabled — “I don’t see too many people,” she said this week — was philosophical about the letter.

    “Where did the letter writer get the wrong ideas?” she asked. “Who knows? I’m 95 years old, and I marched into Selma, Ala. with Dr. Martin Luther King. I want the writer to know they’re wrong, and our dark-skinned Provincetowners aren’t stealing or breaking into stores.”

    Two other instances of vandalism of Black Lives Matter signs took place last week in Wellfleet, the police reported.

    Both signs, one on West Road and one on Old Truro Road, were defaced with black spray paint.

    Vandalized BLM sign.
    Carolyn Tacke’s vandalized “BLM” sign, photographed on Friday. (Photo courtesy Carolyn Tacke)

    One sign had been put up on Thursday, Aug. 20, by Carolyn Tacke. She discovered the vandalism the next day.

    “It must have been done Thursday night,” Tacke said this week. “It felt like somebody hit me in the chest. It made me heartsick.”

    Wellfleet Police Chief Michael Hurley issued a press release about the vandalism on Monday night, in which he wrote, “The Wellfleet Police Department has zero tolerance for the destruction of any property and are currently investigating each case.” Hurley asked that anyone with information about the incidents contact Sgt. Geraldine LaPense at 508-349-3702 or by emailing [email protected].

    Tacke left the spray-painted sign in place, and on Saturday, when she came back from a trip to the transfer station, she found that the sign had been repainted, the letters “BLM” restored in yellow on top of the black. A note was attached to the repainted sign.

    “To our neighbor who made this Black Lives Matter sign,” it read. “I am sorry that a racist fascist person spray painted over your sign. I am sorry this type of hate exists in our town of Wellfleet…. I took the liberty of painting back the yellow BLM letters…. You can’t erase love!”

    It was signed, “Sincerely, Your Neighbor.” Tacke said she has no idea who left the message.

    Rushmore said she thought it was important for people to know there is prejudice here.

    “We have a big job to do,” she said. “I can’t tell you how ingrained it is into every white person that they’re superior. It’s going to take a lot of things happening. But I see great progress being made. The fact that we’re talking about it — I have to give credit to the Black Lives Matter movement. It’s a different world than I was born into, and I’m looking toward there being even more improvement.”

    Truro Police Chief Jamie Calise told the Independent this week that he had received no reports of stolen or defaced signs since June 1. Provincetown Chief Jim Golden and Eastham Chief Adam Bohannon did not respond to email messages about sign vandalism in those towns.

    LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

    She’s Not Backing Down

    By

    At least three Outer Cape residents who chose to make a statement about racial justice have found their front yard “Black Lives Matter” signs stolen or defaced (see story on page A7). Dispiriting as this news is to report, one can argue that our local vandals have done us a favor.

    Barbara Rushmore of Provincetown, whose sign was stolen earlier in the summer, assumed someone from out of town had done it. But last week she received an anonymous letter from someone who clearly is acquainted with her, expressing blatantly racist sentiments.

    We like to think of ourselves, here on the Outer Cape, as an enlightened community. But these events force us to ask, are we really all that different from the rest of the U.S.? Have the fearful, dark beliefs that led the nation to this sorry state simply been pushed out of sight here, to be expressed only in midnight spray paint and anonymous letters?

    Those beliefs clearly are out there, and it would be easy to feel a little paranoid about them.

    That wasn’t Barbara Rushmore’s reaction. At age 95, she takes a longer view of the struggle.

    “I think it’s important for people to know there are prejudiced people around us,” she told me this week. “We have a big job to do to convince them not to be so prejudiced. It’s very, very hard. I’ve fought against it for 80 years, easy. But I see great progress being made. We’re in a different world now. Because of Black Lives Matter, we’re talking about the problem.”

    The news this week includes several signs that fear is giving way to compassion and truth.

    Neighbors have demanded fairness for the widow and children of Joe Abbott, the beloved tennis pro at Willy’s Gym, and their activism appears to have moved the attorney general to take action in the case.

    Families are speaking out about what it is like to be living in difficult and vulnerable conditions with their young children. Working parents whose children are required to stay home are not happy with last spring’s failed distance learning mandate. Maybe that’s a starting point towards an inclusive solution to keeping children safe and cared for.

    Fishermen and scientists, who have not always seen each other as allies, are sharing the work of understanding sharks as an essential part of our ecosystem.

    A young Sen. Julian Cyr has shown courage in calling out a powerful member of his own political party for condoning, and perhaps even instigating, an appalling smear campaign against a gay challenger.

    The fight against injustice won’t be won easily, as Barbara Rushmore will tell you. She’s not backing down.

     

    OP-ED

    Racial Inequity in Our Back Yard

    Truro’s Cloverleaf project and the costs of systemic exclusion

    By

    TRURO — In early June, many Outer Cape Codders joined in our shared reckoning over the crisis of white supremacy and racial inequity in this country. After the protests, many of us put away our signs and returned to our summer lives on Land’s End. But this moment in history demands more — and that includes advancing the Black Lives Matter movement and addressing racial inequity right in our own back yard.

    A tangible step we can take to follow through on our collective public commitment to reverse decades of racial injustice here on Cape Cod is to commit to build more housing — especially affordable rental housing like the proposed Cloverleaf project in North Truro Center.

    Housing is American society’s most familiar form of wealth, and housing policy at every level of government that shifted resources and created generational wealth was either overtly or covertly crafted to keep black, indigenous, and people of color away from the benefits. Overt examples include Reconstruction, the New Deal, the G.I. Bill, and redlining. Covert examples persist today. In the midst of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, just 12 percent of black-owned businesses reported receiving loans matching their full requested amount from the Paycheck Protection Program.

    Housing is the primary vehicle through which white families like mine have built equity over generations and passed it along to their children. The high cost of entry into the real estate market keeps white families — who benefited from generations of inclusionary policies designed to build household wealth — separate from black families in practice, if not by decree.
    This systemic exclusion has a real cost, despite decades of denial. We see it here on Cape Cod, where working families — often people of color — live in substandard housing or are disproportionately displaced and must do the “Cape Cod Shuffle,” while most of the homes that dot our coastline sit vacant 10 months of the year.
    Are we willing to follow through on our commitment to racial justice in our own community? Will we put aside the exaggerated arguments that mask a persistent NIMBYism, understanding that those tactics serve racist ends?
    Truro has little to be proud of when it comes to affordable housing. Since 2000, we’ve built only 19 units; Provincetown, in contrast, built over 200 affordable and middle-income restricted units in the same period. According to a 2017 analysis by the Cape Cod Commission, Truro needs 723 housing units — including 154 rental units — to meet the demand for home ownership across all income levels. Truro clearly has a lot of work to do.

    The Cloverleaf project is an opportunity to make long overdue progress. The select board’s approval of the application has been transparent, inclusive, and closely watched. The town received this property from the state for little more than closing costs. Later, Truro received a $1.2 million MassWorks grant to extend public water to the site. The Cloverleaf parcel and the Walsh property are once-in-a-generation opportunities for Truro, given how little buildable land we have left and how desperately we need housing for working people.

    The arguments for halting the project are troubling. If they had any basis, I’d consider their merits. But they don’t, so I’ll call them what they are: procedural tactics designed to perpetuate racial and class inequities under a thinly veiled guise of moderation and caution. It’s a tired playbook that’s worked too well for too long.
    While the Cloverleaf has been plodding through the review process, too many people in Truro have turned a blind eye to where many working families live, in cramped motel rooms, cottages, and other places that we conveniently don’t see. We don’t acknowledge that much of our essential workforce is people of color, most of them immigrants. We’re already grappling with the situation at Truro Motor Inn and the displacement that is causing.

    If we believe Black Lives Matter, we need to start with the hard work right at home. For Truro, dismantling structural racism starts by building affordable housing and calling delay tactics what they are. The Cloverleaf project has my full commitment and it deserves yours, too.

    Julian Cyr of Truro represents the Cape and Islands District in the Massachusetts State Senate.

     

    BOOK REVIEW

    The Contrasts and Convergence of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.

    Penial Joseph’s The Sword and the Shield examines the titans of black power and civil rights

    By

    The Sword and the Shield: The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr., by Penial E. Joseph, was published on March 31 by Basic Books.

    In 1972, James Baldwin wrote “The Shot That Echoes Still,” a painful and personal essay for Esquire magazine reflecting on the assassinations of Malcolm X in 1965 and Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968. Baldwin asserted that the two giants of the black power and civil rights movements, respectively, had begun “at what seemed to be very different points,” but “by the time each met his death, there was practically no difference between them.”

    Many historians have, in excellent works too many to number, thoroughly evaluated Baldwin’s observation of the narrowing between Malcolm’s and King’s tactics and visions. With The Sword and the Shield, Peniel Joseph returns to Baldwin’s claim. Joseph, a professor of history, holds the Barbara Jordan chair in political values and ethics at the L.B.J. School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas Austin.

    He is more than up to the challenge. Joseph has spent two decades thinking about the intersections of race, power, and social change, having written the lively Waiting ’til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America and accessible biographies of Stokely Carmichael and Barack Obama.

    In his latest book, Joseph offers “a new interpretation” of these two 20th-century titans by considering them together and by the metaphors of Malcolm as sword, King as shield. Joseph describes the men’s advocacy and activism as having transformed “the aesthetics of American democracy,” a fine phrase that is nonetheless hard to parse. If, in passages such as these, Joseph works too hard to make big claims, he more than redeems himself by using his masterful knowledge of the material to provide a riveting inspection of these two men’s intellectual and political trajectories.

    The first two chapters of The Sword and the Shield borrow heavily from previously published biographies and, though important, are in some ways the book’s weakest.

    Penial Joseph
    Author Penial Joseph, a professor of history at the University of Texas. (Photo Tom Kates)

    In the first chapter, Joseph provides Malcolm’s origin story: the early years in Detroit as the child of poor wage workers devoted to Marcus Garvey’s teachings. He focuses on Malcolm’s imprisonment in Connecticut, his self-education and radicalization as he joined the Nation of Islam (NOI) and emerged as an NOI minister and respected acolyte of leader Elijah Muhammad. The chapter ends with Malcolm’s exposure in 1955 to the Afro-Asian Conference in Bandung, Indonesia, which convinced him that American blacks needed to find solidarity with global post-colonial struggles. Joseph refers to Malcolm’s belief in black power and unity, and his rejection of integration, as “radical black dignity.”

    King, Joseph explains in the second chapter, was born into Atlanta’s black elite, which was made up of “big Negroes” — college-educated professionals and entrepreneurs. His father was the highest-paid black minister in Atlanta. After earning an undergraduate degree at Morehouse College, King was drawn to the ministry, studying at Crozer Theological Seminary and eventually Boston University, where he earned a Ph.D. At Crozer, King encountered a Christianity whose appeal was rational and political, worlds away from the emotional experiences of faith in his father’s Atlanta congregation. He finished at B.U. and married Coretta Scott. The two moved to Montgomery, Ala., just as activists engaged in a 381-day-long bus boycott. It was there that King learned the nuts and bolts of grassroots organizing, devoting himself to what Joseph calls “radical black citizenship,” an unshakable belief in the principles of democracy and the use of nonviolent civil disobedience to bring about change.

    But even as they laid out seemingly opposite stances, the distance between Malcolm and King was never as great as many assumed. While Malcolm was considering the implications of Bandung, King read Gandhi and Marx and visited Ghana to celebrate colonial independence with Kwame Nkrumah. In a sermon he delivered to 12,000 listeners in New York in 1956, King compared Exodus with the worldwide struggle for freedom from “colonial powers seeking to maintain their domination.” Joseph notes that this line “might have made Malcolm X proud.”

    It is in such points and counterpoints that Joseph’s scholarship and writing shine. He knows how to pluck nuggets from Malcolm’s and King’s speeches to great effect, providing context each step of the way. He shows that the media and historians have overlooked the more radical aspects of King’s speeches, while he lets Malcolm’s zingers stand.

    For example, when King expressed pride in activists’ ability to desegregate Southern spaces, Joseph shows Malcolm countering that any “Negro trying to integrate is actually admitting his inferiority, because he is also admitting that he wants to become part of a ‘superior’ society.” King led crowds on marches through Detroit and Washington, D.C., and Malcolm responded by calling the Constitution’s 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments “hypocrisy” and compared the demonstrations to sporting events such as the Rose Bowl and World Series.

    “While King was having a dream,” Malcolm said, “the rest of us Negroes are having a nightmare.”

    With time, Malcolm cooled his rhetoric and embraced the possibility of working with whites. And King, especially after Malcolm’s death, and as the Vietnam War accelerated, challenged the status quo with increasing rage. He described blacks as “living in the basement of the Great Society” and noted “the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools.”

    Joseph notes in his epilogue the names of those whom police have recently murdered, from Sandra Bland to Michael Brown, and the birth of the Black Lives Matter movement. It’s clear that both King and Malcolm would have anticipated these killings (and George Floyd’s). Whether one would have responded as a sword and the other a shield is ultimately less interesting or important than having been helped to appreciate that they both — had they been allowed to live — would have served not just as spokesmen but as statesmen.

     

    LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

    Letters, July 9, 2020

    From Michael DeVasto, Meri Hartford, Laurie Veninger, Dianna Morton, Jennifer Weiner, and Jeannette Kinzer

    By

    Parking and Elitism in Wellfleet

    To the editor:

    Your letter from the editor in the July 2 issue misrepresents the intention and impact of the policy to restrict parking at Maguire Landing in Wellfleet. The select board voted 4-0 to restrict parking to residents and taxpayers from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. through the summer of 2020. Lecount Hollow Beach itself remains open to the public at large.

    This policy was conceived to increase access to the beach for working people in the community, people who are working doubles, who are interfacing with the public during a pandemic. Access for people who work in stressful, high-risk environments, with no day care for their children. Access for grandparents who are watching those children and exposing themselves to the risk of transmission.

    Your narrative likens the policy to a form of racism. The letter states that there aren’t enough African Americans who come here to say the policy is about race, but that there is an elitism that extends beyond race to keep out the “unwashed masses.”

    The idea that this policy is meant to keep out the unwashed masses is preposterous. It is precisely for the unwashed masses of shellfishermen, landscapers, and service workers who can find the time to rinse their bodies between tides or jobs. Do others benefit from this policy? Yes, but who cares? Every taxpayer and resident has the same access.

    References to racist policies of the past suggest that the parking policy comes from those same dark impulses. Sentiment is important, as is narrative. The narrative that you chose to drive was one that mischaracterized the intent and motive. The sentiment of your piece is the reason that your letter received the response that it has, not just from me but from many in the community.

    Michael DeVasto
    Wellfleet

    The writer is chair of the Wellfleet Select Board.

     

    Editorials and News

    To the editor:

    The Independent shows its dedication to editorial content by placing its opinion section on pages 2 and 3 every week, not burying it in the back pages of the paper. Editorials clearly separated from the news are an important way for our free press to allow thoughtful opinions to be heard. When they spark controversy, they prove that they have made us think. The process of reading, reacting, re-reading, thinking, discussing, and writing responses is a way for us to hear each other and grow as a community.

    The pandemic has made us all a little crazed. We are all grappling with more loss and instability than we can really handle. The awareness of and, for many, awakening of the reality of systemic racism would have made us uncomfortable without a pandemic that has seemed to intensify our reactions. I believe this is a good thing, and I hope with all my heart that our intensity continues the dialogue that is necessary to effect change.

    Ed Miller’s letter from the editor last week, whether one agrees with it or not, is a bold attempt to keep that dialogue going.

    Meri Hartford
    Eastham

     

    Putting Profit Over People

    To the editor:

    Last week the Provincetown Select Board refused to protect public safety, citing the protestations in 300 letters from people who do not see the need for clear and mandated mask-wearing. This capitulation to a noisy, selfish few is short-sighted.

    Select board members who refuse to heed the warnings of experts or the shocking, hard evidence coming out of states like Texas and Florida about the dangers of returning to normal are trading the lives of community members in exchange for profit. Yes, our livelihoods depend on summer business, and this pandemic is a tragedy on many levels, but putting profit over people is unconscionable.

    The sacrifices we have made since March have made this a safe haven — for now. We bought ourselves precious time that has been squandered by stupidity and a denial of facts. There is hard science that shows masks prevent Covid-19 spread and that dining in increases it.

    Our tiny health centers, indeed, our entire country, are not prepared for what’s to come. We have not secured supply chains; PPE, tests, and testing supplies are running low again, and only now are some states making modest gestures to require masks or roll back re-opening.

    How many lives might have been saved if only they had listened to science? Recent reports say that 33,000 lives might be saved between now and October if we just wear masks. The select board can choose to save lives now. Instead, more people will suffer and die.

    Although I want to support Provincetown’s many businesses, I, and many people I know, will not be spending time or money in Provincetown as a result of its officials’ blatant disregard for the health and welfare of its year-round inhabitants and those who live in nearby towns.

    Laurie Veninger
    North Truro

     

    Social Justice Reading Club

    To the editor:

    The June 25 Inner Voices page of the Independent resonated deeply with me. Lee Wotherspoon’s essay, “Racism in My Body,” reflected a conversation I had just had with my brother. And Andrew Hay’s “Keeping Watch” sang to my teacher heart in addressing the reading of literature as a key element in breaking down barriers of otherness and growing empathy.

    This summer of Black Lives Matter, with its immense and continuing uncertainties, offers us a chance to make great changes.

    A new Social Justice Reading Club invites middle school students (and their parents and guardians) on the Outer Cape to join in reading and discussing When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir, by Patrisse Khan-Cullors and asha bandele. The books are being donated by Sophie Yingling, who, along with Brett Plugis, designed #BLM shirts that have been printed by Rachel Harrington of Mom’s Print Shop in Provincetown.

    All three donated their time and resources so that 100 percent of the proceeds will go to local and global #BLM organizations.

    Those interested in joining the middle years Social Justice Reading Club can contact me at 774-840-0286. #BLM shirts are available at Spiritus, 190 Commercial St.

    This is a community endeavor in educating and activating.

    Dianna Morton
    North Eastham

    The writer is a middle years resource teacher in the Provincetown Schools.

     

    A Frightful Delight

    To the editor:

    I was sorry that Marla Perkel spent such a frightening night in the woods, but K.C. Myers’s story about Ms. Perkel’s travails [July 2, page 4] was a delight.

    There were many wonderful, vivid details in the piece, from Ms. Perkel’s previous occupation as a mounted policewoman to how she put her shoes on her hands to try to make her way to safety, from the sound of the singing birds to Ms. Perkel’s chattering teeth. Those details made the story come alive, and turned what could have been a dry police-blotter item into a fun and lively read.

    My family and I are all enjoying the Independent. Keep up the good work!

    Jennifer Weiner
    Philadelphia and Truro

     

    Letter From the Yucatán

    To the editor:

    It’s July 4th weekend and for the first time I am not living in the United States on its Independence Day.

    Truro seems far away here in Mexico, as I stroll the Paseo Montejo in my newly adopted city of Mérida, capital of the Yucatán state. This old colonial city is very tranquil in these days of the virus. It’s extremely beautiful, but I will never stop missing Cape Cod. Truro will always be home to me, but my health requires that I live in a place far removed from the chill of the New England winters. How sad.

    I miss my family and friends, I miss cranberries and fried clams, I miss the sweet smell of the briny Atlantic, I miss my daily walks to Ballston Beach past the brambles of the bog and the flowers of the beach plum and the deer feeding along the pond and river in the early morning.

    What a revelation, then, to have my subscription to the Independent. It brings me home in so many ways. It is hard to conjure up Truro in this land of Maya ruins, cenotes, and rich architecture. But your new newspaper brings home a little closer to me, so for that I thank you. Muchas gracias.

    Jeannette Kinzer
    Mérida, Mexico

     

    BLACK LIVES MATTER

    Racism in My Body

    Recognizing and weeding out a dangerous invasive

    By

    “Lock your door.”

    That was the first insidiously racist thing my body remembers hearing. There were other words, heard earlier. Subtle, belittling generalizations. Words that didn’t match up with what I knew about my few brown-bodied relatives and friends, who felt like family and classmates.

    I didn’t find the words funny, as they were often intended. I was unconvinced of the superiority the speakers of those words were attempting to claim with their digs. I thought the words were stupid. I was not afraid to say so. But I didn’t recognize them as dangerous.

    “Lock your door” is the first thing I remember hearing that created an intense feeling in my body. It was said to me by someone I thought I loved. He was a young white man — a boy, really. We were 17. And he was a scared child. I could feel his fear.

    “Lock your door. This is a bad neighborhood. This is a black neighborhood.”

    There was urgency in his voice and tension in his body, hands gripping the steering wheel. I asked how he knew it was a bad neighborhood. In hindsight, my tone was more meek than the moment deserved. He said something about his dad growing up around that city, or working there. I can’t remember.

    I remember only how certain he was that his fear was justified. And how his palpable fear became mine for a moment as I locked my door. Those words, in that adrenaline-fueled moment. What I heard merged with what I saw. Lock your door. Tightly packed buildings, concrete and brick. Cop cars. No open space, few trees. Black and brown bodies unknown to me.

    If I thought those words were stupid, I was too afraid to say so. I didn’t recognize the words as dangerous. I didn’t act to protect or defend their targets. Instead, I locked the door to defend myself. To protect the white boy sitting beside me. This racist fear rooted in my body for a moment, like an invasive plant. It was my job to weed it out.

    It wasn’t impossibly hard. I didn’t have to teach myself how to weed. I had guides. They had been with me all my life. They still are. Loving family. Generous friends. Wise elders. And wise youngers. Teachers, all of them. I benefit from their wisdom, always. That night in the car was the last time such an explicit connection was spoken to me: black neighborhood, bad neighborhood. I have chosen company more carefully since then.

    But it wasn’t the last time I have had to weed out racist fear. “Let’s cross the street.” (Weed it out.) “You should put your wallet in your pocket.” (Weed it out.) Friendly advice offered by well-meaning people. Perfectly timed in advance of a certain housing complex or upon the approach of a tall dark man.

    It is my job to recognize when words are racist and dangerous. Especially when they are shrouded in a story designed to make me feel afraid. It is our job to be each other’s guides. It is our job to prune out these invasive roots. To teach each other how to spot them and how to weed them out. Because people keep dying. And fear is the justification used over and over again to defend the killing of black people. It is our job to eradicate that fear.

    Lee Wotherspoon lives in Wellfleet, where she works in public health, teaches yoga, and writes.

    #BLM

    Truro Marchers Plan New Protest

    By

    A quickly organized protest sparked by the death of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis drew about 15 people to the Children’s Garden in Truro last Sunday. The group walked to Route 6, where they stood with signs for about an hour. “We got loads of honks and good energy,” said organizer Sarah Naciri. Another peaceful protest is planned for Friday, June 12 at 4 p.m., meeting at the community center in North Truro, near the library, and walking to the police station via Shore Road. Families and children are welcome. Photos by Nancy Bloom.

    Genevieve Morin is ready to rise up for justice in Truro on Sunday, June 7.

    Sarah Naciri of Truro and Milton Grant of Wellfleet at Sunday’s protest, which was organized by Naciri, a farmer, herbalist, and teacher.

    The group carried the message that Black Lives Matter from the Children’s Garden at the Truro Public Library to motorists on Route 6.

    CIVICS

    Moderator Defends FinCom Pick and Facebook Rants

    Says FinCom’s Mark Hatch has a right to offend

    By

    PROVINCETOWN — David Panagore, the former town manager, has been appointed as an alternate on the finance committee, raising the ire of part-time resident taxpayers once again.

    Panagore, the town manager for four years until April 2019, was appointed following the expiration of a one-year waiting period, as mandated in the town charter for former employees with a supervisory role.

    Moderator Mary-Jo Avellar, who appoints FinCom members, said, “He’s eminently qualified, having been the town manager. I’m obligated to appoint the most qualified person, and I think that is what I did.”

    Members of the Provincetown Part-time Resident Taxpayers Association had criticized Avellar for attempting to appoint him earlier this year, before the waiting period was up. A charter change recently allowed nonresident taxpayers — home owners who are not registered to vote here — to serve as alternates on nonregulatory boards, of which the FinCom is one.

    When the alternate position opened up months ago, Scott Van Hove, a certified public accountant who lives in Florida and Provincetown, put in his application. But Avellar said no thanks; she did not want to appoint a second-home owner.

    The finance committee has submitted an article on the town meeting warrant to be considered on Sept. 21 that would block second-home owners from serving on the FinCom. Avellar supports the article.

    “I think the finance committee is too important to have nonvoters on it,” she said. “It should be voters only.”

    Laura Rood, who also applied to be on the FinCom, complained about being passed over for Panagore. She recently became a Provincetown voter, though she is also a member of the part-time resident taxpayers association.

    But Rood’s complaints go beyond that. Like many others, she is calling on Avellar to remove  FinCom chair Mark Hatch from his position because of his posting what many find offensive and divisive comments on Facebook.

    Following a Black Lives Matter protest in Provincetown on May 31, Hatch wrote, “Oh I get it, white people driving through town instead of actually doing something for the disconnected and disenfranchised people of color in the town, who, mostly have overstayed visas and are basically living in the shadows in scummy places. But sure, I get it, it’s trending.”

    Hatch said he posts on Facebook out of frustration and he doesn’t mind being provocative.

    “The point of Facebook, I think, is to have discussions, and you cannot have discussions if all you’re going to do is only post what everyone agrees with,” Hatch said. “So having an opinion that is different is critical to the public discourse.”

    Avellar said she doesn’t always agree with Hatch, but it’s his First Amendment right to speak on social media.

    “Social media is a pain and I tell everyone not to be on it,” she said. “But I’m certainly not going to remove someone because of it.”

    BLACK LIVES MATTER

    We Should Not Have to Be Afraid

    Why sharing a black screen on Instagram isn’t enough

    By

    I am outraged and I am terrified.

    I am outraged by the deaths of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Breonna Taylor in Louisville, and so many other black American citizens.

    We live under a corrupt system of justice and law enforcement. Change needs to happen. Black voices need to be heard.

    Police officers need to understand that my skin color does not define who I am, that black people are humans, just like everyone else. Being black is not a threat. In just the same way, being a police officer should not be a threat.

    Jacob and Janae Tompkins at the Black Lives Matter march in Wellfleet on May 31. (Photo Wendy Tompkins)

    Officers should be better trained to do their work with humanity, not brutality. We know that the frequency of incidents of police brutality is much too high. That has to change. Black people shouldn’t have to worry that they will be the next victim. We shouldn’t have to worry about being framed for a crime we never committed. My little brother shouldn’t have to be afraid.

    I have lived in Wellfleet since I was five years old, and I have no complaint against the Wellfleet Police Dept. or against any Cape Cod police officer. And yet, even though I live in a town that seems so safe to you, I am still terrified.

    The reason for my terror is what I see on Instagram and TikTok, where people have been circulating messages that disgust me. Some mock the death of George Floyd, saying, “He deserved it.” It’s not clear who is responsible for these posts, but some of them have gone viral on social media. My friends and I have all seen them.

    Police brutality isn’t being taken seriously enough. People need to be educated about it, especially the young. We are the future. People should be more concerned about innocent lives being lost than they are about property damage. You can fix property, but you can’t bring back a life.

    America needs to wake up. Police officers who commit crimes need to be held accountable. They should face the same consequences that other citizens would face if we broke the law.

    People need to fight for what’s right and not just make token gestures. Sharing a black screen on Instagram isn’t good enough. Staying silent during a time like this isn’t going to fix anything. We must march, donate to organizations, stand up for political candidates who will change a corrupt system, and make our voices heard.

    We will not forget George Floyd and all the others who have lost their lives in this struggle.

    Janae Tompkins of Wellfleet is a sophomore at Nauset Regional High School.

    HUMAN RIGHTS

    At Protests Here, There Is Solidarity

    In a white corner of the country, a cry for justice ‘for those hurting now’

    By

    WELLFLEET — Protests against police brutality following the May 25 murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis were not confined to America’s major cities. About 150 people marched through Wellfleet last Sunday afternoon, and about the same number gathered in Provincetown that evening.

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