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“… the most urgent, the most disgraceful, the most shameful and the most tragic problem is silence.” – Rabbi Joachim Prinz, March on Washington, 1963
IT’S SATURDAY, August 16 2014, a sunny afternoon in Center City Philadelphia. The air is thick. I lie face down for hours, motionless and bloodied, a red ball cap in my left hand.
I’m beneath Robert Indiana’s iconic LOVE statue and there is yellow police tape surrounding the area around my body.
The area is saturated with the usual suspects – tourists – who step up to me, step over me to get that perfect selfie capturing their visit to the City of Brotherly Love.
They move about as if I’m not even there. Much the same way police officers stepped up to, around, and over the body of Michael Brown who, one week earlier was shot dead by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. Michael’s body was left in the street where he lay face down for hours – four to be exact – motionless and bloodied, his red ball cap spilled out beyond him on the hot asphalt.
Unlike Michael, though, I wasn’t really dead. I wasn’t really bloodied. Hours before, I’d woken up in my North Philly home thinking about him though.
I sat at my computer and typed an artist’s statement, and biked three miles from my house to the city centre, stopping to “borrow” police tape from a construction site, and to purchase fake blood from a grocery store.
This is how I began my spontaneous and silent protest against police brutality. When it was all over, I grabbed my cap, removed the police tape, put on a clean shirt, and biked home.
Within hours the protest had gone viral. Overnight, I became “the guy who always talks about race.” Soon, media outlets and others wanted my thoughts and opinions on racism, racial inequity and possible solutions in the fight for racial justice.
‘I had to educate myself’
As my protest had been organic and sort of knee-jerk reaction to the epidemic of police murder in the US, I had to educate myself, and do it quickly because what they didn’t understand was that my burning desire to react to this pressing issue didn’t come from readings in books or academic pondering.
It came from a deep fear and disappointment in my lived experience as a black person in America, and I had come to a point at which silence was no longer an option.
The truth of the matter is, I was devastated and that kind of helplessness is debilitating; it’s crippling. Having to face the harsh reality that exists in America: that black people are not safe.
We are not afforded the opportunity to laugh, play, explore, cry, grieve, or mourn the way our white counterparts are.
Instead, we have to daily police our behaviour and in the wake of tragedy, traverse through pain and devastation, “fighting the good fight,” seeking justice, continuously having to prove that our pain is valid, palpable, real, and RELEVANT. What are we supposed to do with all of that?
I thought of the vicarious trauma that I, and so many people of colour in my life experience daily. The panic and terror I feel every time I see a police car or uniform, akin to being called to the principal’s office or breaking your mother’s good china.
I imagined the phone call my mother or sisters would get if I was the next unarmed victim gunned down by a trigger-happy cop who couldn’t look far enough past the colour of my skin. I imagined what dirt the media would dig up, the stories they’d run, the pictures they’d use.
This inability to hold my pain led me, in 2015, to create The Bitter Game, a play that addresses head-on the issues of racial inequity and the trauma it inflicts upon minority communities in America, and black men specifically.
The sleepless nights and mounting anxiety I felt while writing – attempting in my own way to address such a polarising topic as excessive police force – was paralysing. My heart broke daily for the families of the victims whom I used as source material.
But I was lucky: Like my silent protest less than a year earlier, I’d found an outlet, a way to express myself, and to encourage others to find healing through conversation and more importantly, action. Touring nationally from NYC, to LA, to Philadelphia, to DC, to Baltimore to Boston and many other cities has allowed me to engage several communities where this issue persists on a daily basis.
The performances at Axis Ballymun as part of Dublin Theatre Festival will mark the international premiere of The Bitter Game and we couldn’t be more excited.
It’s especially encouraging to know that we have the ear of the world on an issue that’s so specific to American culture and race relations. That engagement and solidarity and the opportunity that the arts creates to hold that kind of space is valuable and necessary. In addition to performances, a part of the work we’re doing in Dublin is engaging with secondary schools and youth groups around issues of racial injustice that they encounter on a daily basis and what can be done to disrupt those systems.
The two truths
Today, I am reminded of these two truths: For the artist, heartbreak is a rite of passage, and that the thin line between art and activism must be traversed with courage. This is my truth.
My country, our world is erupting. With this play I implore you to act now because the sobering reality is that in order to affect change, the majority must be willing to admit hard truths and listen with compassion.
We need all people to speak truth to power but also to listen with rapt attention and openness. Empathy is a choice and it is the responsibility of each of us to exercise it with diligence and unwavering commitment. It’s time to get focused and come together to demand as much for the other, as we do for ourselves, so that my black brothers and sisters can be seen, heard and most importantly, understood.
Don’t wait for another Philando Castile headline. Don’t wait for a phone call of your own.
Be on the right side of history. Seek justice. March. Protest. Have the difficult conversations you’ve been avoiding. Educate yourself. Educate others. Be an ally for those who need it most. Be a shoulder for someone to cry on. Demand justice and equity from your legislators. Speak. Listen.
But whatever you do… don’t remain silent. Fight.
Keith Wallace presents The Bitter Game at Axis Ballymun as part of Dublin Theatre Festival from Thursday 5 to Saturday 7 October. Tickets 18/16e.
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So healthcare workers should have to put their lives at risk when there has been a warning for people to stay indoors? I’m sorry, I don’t think so. Why didn’t the person try to organize family to come or else organize to go to a care facility for the said time? I’m sorry but people were instructed to stay indoors.
@Greeneyes17: I’m sorry but who said healthcare workers should put their lives at risk? I’m sorry but that’s a touch of a straw man.
@Greeneyes17: Well this comment shows your level of ignorance on the topic. First of all most of those people with care packages don’t have family or family close by. Second of all what care facility do you suggest ?,These don’t exist. There are nursing homes for elderly people which are usually are full with waiting lists to get in. There are no care facilities that people can just go to. No one expects people to travel when they can’t but measures have to be introduced for national weather emergencies. Temporary live in carers would be an answer but an expensive one. Bottom line is just not as simple as you say and you should stop blaming the disabled for not being able to look after themselves.
@Greeneyes17: you are missing the point care providers can avail of help from the civil defence and defence force to go to there client in a emergency when code red is declared when the weather is bad
@Catherine Sims: excellent Catherine you go and temporarily live in with a vulnerable client juring the next red weather event????????
The health services and army and Gardai did a great job. But the volunteers in the Civil Defence who are volunteers did a fantastic job, on their own time. Often forgotten.
@Porterkev: “volunteers in the civil degence who are volunteers”…. wow thanks for pointing that out
@Porterkev:
One ambulance had to be dug out 6 times
https://www.dublinlive.ie/news/father-son-ambulance-team-praise-14381478
You know what one of the problems was? Too many people didn’t believe it was going to happen. Look back at the Journal comments. This narrative that joe public knew more than the scientists and meteorologists who have studied these things for years, was common.
@Dermot Lane: The cold bite was always coming but there was an admitted real possibility of Storm Emma changing course a few days before coming to Ireland and diverting from the course of going over any part of Ireland at all.
@Shane Corry: people were saying met E had it wrong the evening it hit because it didn’t come at 4pm On the button
Plans should be put in place for those needing care like mentioned above and halls made available to those who need it.
Spending millions yearly on ploughs etc is not viable once in a decade weather.
@Pilib O Muiregan: Dont agree. A snow plough is just a truck that can be used for other purposes. Just bracket on front 2 hold v shaped piece os steel. snow tires not v expensive.
@gregory: in Warsaw they put ploughs on the front of the bin lorries when it’s snowing.
Im supported by clarecare twice a day. Clarecare told their workers to just go to emergency cases on thurs morning but many workets chose to stay at home. All services in Ennis and surrounding areas were fine up til about 6/7pm that eve. No one checked in on thursday no one checked in on friday Saturday or Sunday ie even a phone call.
There was no contingency plans what would have been really useful was phone contact with people who were vulnerable. Many had no one from Wed to Monday.
Conditions were too bad to travel on friday or Saturday but Alternative plans to check in with people would have been better.
The National Standard, even if this exists…, for burying water pipes underground needs to have the depth increased.
@gregory: there is a national standard but it was ignored during the boom. But it never got cold enough for pipes to freeze, this time.
I think the publicity for the emergency services is over done during the storm. There’s very good stories of great work no doubt but if you’re working in this area it’s just part of the job we don’t need to heap praise in them just pay them more where they should be.
1/2 What will become of people like my brother when they are forced out of their residential centres into dispersed housing in rural communities (where many roads were not even treated during this weather event)? Unlike the people with disabilities who were able to pick up the phone and ring Tom Clonan, my brother now 41, cannot speak, pick up a phone, dial a number, call for help, walk, feed or get himself a drink or change his own nappies – his intellectual age is 6 months to 1 year. Yet ‘disability advocates’ gung ho on independent living and wiping out ‘institutions’ insist even those with severe and profound needs should live an ‘ordinary life’ in an ‘ordinary place’ with ‘no special treatment’ – just because that’s what the majority of people with disabilities want for themselves.
A formal buddy system needs to be set up by HSE for all vulnerable persons where a designated person such as a neighbour can volunteer to check up if a carer doesn’t turn up it. It might simply mean making a quick phone call during the crisis or looking in for 10 minutes.
2/2 Once the HSE’s Time to Move On from Congregated Settings policy is fully implemented, the 76 residents who occupy ten houses (mainly large chalets) on my brother’s beautiful campus will be scattered here, there and everywhere in small houses of 3 or 4 with agency staff coming and going. Whereas during this storm they had a continuation of care thanks to a well staffed campus where nurses and carers could stay with them, in the future they will be in the very position those who contacted Tom Clonan were in this time around. Only unlike them, they won’t be able to call him or anyone. There are people with disabilities who fully rely on others for their survival – leaving cold food & drinks next to my brother’s bed would not work for the same reason it wouldn’t work with an infant.
No mention of other voluntary agencies that have been doing great work, the likes of Order of Malta, St Johns and Red cross, who mobilised vehicles and personnel all over the country during the bad weather! IT’s not just the civil defence you know!
Global warming causing Sudden Stratospheric Warming’s hasn’t really kicked off yet and when it does then these things will get more common and WORSE.
@Alois Irlmaier:
Please define “Global warming causing Sudden Stratospheric Warming’s” as even google struggle with that one.
I fully expect that the Gestapo will issue a curfew for a future weather event.
This will be the inaguration of the new Irish Communist State.
It is up to the government to make sure that there is enough of a supply of crack, mack, cocaine, heroin, alcohol etc for those who refuse shelter.
What a kip of a country, we are great for meddling in other peoples business but cant mind our own, I’m a pensioner &recently got a bill from my electric company for almost a thousand euros? I know I don’t owe that money as I live in a one bed apt & i’m seldom home, the bill was for eighty four days, The company are saying that I do owe the money so I asked them to prove to me that I owe them the money but they haven’t come back to me, My point is that there are a lot of unqualified people in jobs that they are not qualified to be in, In other words they are chancers, God help us & save us from the vultures
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