Author: wlsnyder66

(Inspired by William Burrough’s “Color Walks”)

On Friday, spring came back after playing peek-a-boo. After school, I met a friend in Berkeley for a drink and after we part, I decide to take a walk. The bright sunlight gave my spirits a lift and seemed to have a similar effect on the people on the streets around me. To amuse myself, I decide to follow orange.

In various non-European cultures, orange stands for joy, creativity, enthusiasm and even revolutionary ideas. I learn that in Hinduism and Buddhism, it represents fire and purity.

I walked up Parker following the orange zinnias to the orange Prius,  orange trim on the bungalow. My orange reverie is interrupted by my husband who calls to say that the U.S., U.K., and France are launching airstrikes against Syria. We wonder what bloody hell will come of this neverending war the U.S. is engaged in on our planet.?!

I then cross over to Regent Street and spy an orange pylon next to an overflow of orange nasturtiums. Back in the Eighties when I was a student at Berkeley I first learned that these vibrant, showy blooms could be put in salads and eaten.

By the time I see the orange van I’m almost to Williard Park, also affectionately known by community activists as Ho Chi Minh Park, after the bold and powerful leader of the Vietnamese Worker’s Party. Ho Chi Minh, I learn, is the name he gave himself and means, “bringer of light.”  Ho Chi Minh succeeded in leading his people against French colonial rule in Northern Vietnam in 1945 and then against U.S. aggression against his country.

“There is nothing more precious than freedom and independence,” is the Ho Chi Minh quote that I’ve learned through my political education from the Uhuru Movement.

It’s worth learning about the Ho Chi Minh trail, which was really a network of tunnels and trails that extended from North Vietnam through Laos and Cambodia and into South Vietnam, providing logistical support to the Vietcong and the North Vietnamese Army.

I think about students in Berkeley in the Sixties and Seventies, who were not just standing against the U.S. war. They also stood with the revolutionary struggles of the peoples on the planet.

I think of the many people today who are looking for real heroes and leaders, who want to see beyond the lies and fabrications.

The next morning I woke up early to listen to the Black is Back Coalition’s press conference calling for an end to the U.S. Colonial War against Syria. Omali Yeshitela is wearing orange in the video, lighting the way with revolutionary fire.

Afterward, I continue to look for orange and find a connection here. I looked up “anti-war murals” and the one pictured above comes into the search results.  It’s called “Vietnamese” (1975) and is on Bryant and 24th Street.  According to Community Murals/FoundSF this mural is “one of the few anti-Vietnam War murals nationally, and perhaps the only one painted in San Francisco. It reminds viewers that the war’s effects, and our country’s conduct in it, remain with us—infuriatingly true nearly four decades after the mural was painted. A new building (housing World Pioneer Video in 2011) now stands up against the mural’s wall, covering it completely.”

Maybe this is hidden now because the Vietnamese defeated the U.S.?
Yes, she is running, but she is strong as hell, determined and is carrying a baby through the fire (the image in the mural).

Everyone at our school is a bit restless after spring break.

I’m a college and career counselor at a school. My job is all about helping students talk about, prepare for and carry out steps toward their futures. It’s also about helping them deal with the present, which can be heavy at times and other times full of humor and excitement.  I love talking to students, particularly when they are discussing things that light them up – debating issues around social justice, composing meaningful songs, writing plays, playing jazz.

I also know that there is value in just listening and occasionally being able to steer someone in the right direction. Most often once they have talked things out they find that direction for themselves.

The aspect of my job that I like the least is looking at a screen, sending documents, answering emails, printing out transcripts, looking up information, communicating with parents, students, teachers, other counselors, admissions directors, and scholarship coordinators.

On a good day, I can balance these different aspects of my job and come out in one piece.  The days where I’ve spent too much time on the screen drain me. I’ve sat too long, my wrists hurt from clicking and typing and my shoulders and neck are tense.

As my son says, “We’re monkeys.” Meaning monkeys aren’t meant to sit at desks all day. I wonder how other people stay creative and interested while doing tasks that involve typing and staring at a screen? How do we keep our creative vision, our curiosity, our passion? 

I’ve got spring fever and I’m ready to monkey around, just like my students.

“I can’t believe it!  I’m so devastated! My heart is melting right now!  I’m telling you! This guy used to come to our home. Everybody loved this guy…He and my daughter used to go to school together. Ok? I used to cook and I used to feed this kid. I can’t believe it!!”

“I’ve lived here for years. What happened?! NYPD killing people over here now? Talk to us people. We want justice man. We want to be able to walk outside peaceful.”

These are the voices of the people in the Brooklyn community after NYPD officers shot and killed 34-year-old Saheed Vassell on yesterday, the 50th anniversary of the U.S. government’s assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

They could be Black community members anywhere in the U.S., where the police kill African people in epidemic proportions.

And yes, MLK was assassinated by the U.S. government. Omali Yeshitela taught me how King had stepped out of the parameters the government had set for him and was about to take the lead for the Black working class. He’d already spoken out against the U.S. government’s war on the peoples of Vietnam. And if he led the people to build programs by and for themselves like the Black Panther Party was doing, then what would Mexicans, Native Americans, Chinese, Filipino and disaffected white people try to do?

And Saheed Vassell was part of that despised Black working class. And no, he didn’t have a gun. Just like Stephon Clark didn’t have a gun when was shot at 20 times by Sacramento Police in his grandparents’ backyard a couple weeks ago didn’t have one. And back in 2014 12-year-old Tamir Rice had a toy gun on a playground in Cleveland, Ohio. And 16-year-old Kimani Gray was adjusting his pants when NYPD shot and killed him in 2013. And before that, Oscar Grant, who was flat on his belly, didn’t have a gun either when BART police officer Johannes Mehserle murdered him. Amadou Diallo was holding his wallet when NYPD fired on him 41 times execution style.

16-year-old Kimani Gray

So maybe we can conclude that these police officers aren’t being trained to think since their thinking seems to turn out to be wrong every time.

Maybe we should start understanding how counterinsurgency works because so many have been killed by the police. In addition,  many leaders are showing up dead for the stand they have taken. From Sandra Bland in Hempstead, Texas to Edward Crawford and others in Ferguson, Mo. and Muhiyidin Moye, just recently in New Orleans.

And what makes this all possible is white America. While we focus on other things, the crux of the matter is that there are two Americas, the Brooklyn that Saheed Vassell experienced, and the Brooklyn white people think we want for ourselves.

In Oakland, S.F., New Orleans, Detroit. Again and again, all over the U.S, the people who make these cities so hip are being erased and displaced.

There is no unity except through reparations. This will give us some purpose other than to just consume other peoples’ cultures. Reparations from white people including artists, business people, executives, entrepreneurs and regular people can start to detonate a society founded on slavery and genocide which is imploding right before our eyes.

This is the primary message I want to get out to the world, that it’s time for white solidarity with Black Power.

There’s a white solidarity with Black Power convention happening in St. Louis, Missouri next weekend if you can make it. And there will be more. See more about Black Power Blueprint and how to support here.

Today the sky is various shades of white and grey with a tiny splotch of blue that can not promise to break through. My son and I are in Santa Monica on a short road trip.

While he’s sleeping, I take a walk down Pico Boulevard past Woodlawn Cemetery bumping paths with students heading to class, their black backpacks propelling them forward. A young woman wears fuschia leggings and the color stands out against the grey of the sidewalk and sky.

“Hope the sun comes out,” Ron Dad texts in response to yesterday’s grey pics of the Pacific. It hasn’t, but since we are on a trip to look at the college here, the less than perfect weather seems like a good thing. Get used to the everydayness of things in this new place.  I want to tell my son that there will be days like this. Days when you feel sad and isolated. But then I remember that my son actually likes the overcast weather. He says it helps him focus on creating things. Like mother, like son.

I continue following the colors. I find orange and yellow hibiscus and elegant magenta bougainvillea popping through the cyclone fences, pastel and royal blues on the community mural on the building by the library, a bold gold, brown and white geometric Aztec dancer posed against a crimson backdrop, an orange monarch butterfly, red poppies and a blue and yellow sunrise painted on an apartment building decorated in sections of orange, pink, blue and yellow like an extravagant party cake, lowered onto its side.

Since he’s our second kid, and in a year and a few months he will move out to find his way on his own. And we will have an empty nest. The tinge of melancholy I feel is overwhelmed by excitement for him, all that he will experience, all people whose paths will cross and all the colors he will see.

This is our backyard, now wild with crocosmia and lavender. The hummingbirds and bees are going crazy with these flowers.

Springtime has brought a full week of much-needed daylight but fitful sleep. Co-workers and students on edge from the internal changes at our school, high school students in motion to challenge gun violence, this week’s police killing in Sacramento of a young black man behind his family’s house. News about the “Austin bomber” targetting African people.  Then there was the couple who had fought and who both ended up dead drowned in the Lake Merritt.

No wonder our kids are depressed and anxious. No wonder we feel depressed and anxious and have trouble sleeping.

Not always, but mostly I know how to put the depression and anxiety about our world into some type of context.  I am able to find beauty, joy and sometimes even peace even while staying attuned to the chaos and destruction all around me.  But it is wild.