Why I Was Willing to Be Arrested on My Birthday

It is 3am and in a few hours I will be arraigned in West Roxbury Court. I am one of 24 people who was arrested yesterday for standing in the way of the construction of the West Roxbury Lateral Pipeline. After years of fighting to keep my young people out of prison, I feel the need to explain why I made a decision to break the law yesterday. There are three key reason that I must explain.

1. I believe that the actions of Spectra energy and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission are a violation of democratic law.
Around the country Spectra is installing new high pressure methane gas lines. They claim that we need them for our energy supply. The Federal Energy Regulation Commission (FERC) is supposed to oversee Spectra, but this agency is funded by the fossil fuel industry and its commission is full of former energy company executives. FERC allowed this project to go through and granted eminent domain to Spectra without dialogue get with the City of Boston. The City is currently working to stop this project in court and to make Spectra submit to the city's permitting process. I fundamentally believe it is wrong for the federal government to allow a project like this to go forward without listening to the needs of the people who are directly affected. If you want to understand more about what FERC is doing, I highly recommend this video. It is about the work Spectra did in New York. (http://www.indiewire.com/2016/03/watch-josh-fox-gets-arrested-in-exclusive-new-short-from-the-anti-fracking-documentarian-crusader-42873/)

2. I feel called to be a bridge builder that helps unite the climate movement into a larger social justice movement. 
To stop the worst outcomes of climate change will require a massive global shift in the way we live. Those who will be most directly affected by climate change, already face the injustices of poverty, racism that lead to disparities in health, educational access, food supplies and every basic human need. Those who will suffer the most hated to be at the center of decision making about the road forward. The climate movement is mostly white and mostly middle to upper class and rarely led by those who will suffer the most. This must change not only because it is morally wrong, but because there is no way this movement can work if it does not embrace and support the masses of everyday people who are disconnected from this work. Having been an activist on so many other issues of racial and economic justice, I hope I can play a unique role as a Black woman of faith to help the climate movement to connect with other movements to unite for change on a much more global scale.

3. I hope that my demonstration of commitment will cause the people who know me and love me to also take action.
I have been deeply convicted about the dangers of climate change since 2005 when I watched people suffer and die in the face of Hurricane Katrina. In the last two years my commitment has deepened and if you know me then you have heard me talk about climate change. It is always on my mind. When I walk through my neighborhood I worry about how the elderly will survive in a storm. Yesterday I watched the sunset at Carson Beach with my family and I considered how sad it will be when sea level rise eliminated the Boston shoreline. I look out on Thompson Island and recognize that future school children will not be able to go do the ropes course because it will be under water. We need a mass movement right now to avoid the worst climate impacts and most of the people in my life are struggling to even recycle. I am hoping that putting my own body on the line will help them to wake up and to join this struggle. I don't have enough capacity to do this on my own. I feel like I am pushing a rock up a hill and I need my people's to help me. I am hoping their love for me will make them pay attention. A little more.

It is 9am and I have to walk into the courthouse, but I hope this will awaken awareness in all the people who are wondering why the heck I got arrested on my birthday.

NOTE - A few weeks after our arrest, my friend Karenna, who also got arrested, published this great peice which summarizes the reason for our opposition of the West Roxbury Lateral Pipeline. Please take a moment to read it - Why I was arrested in West Roxbury

A Birthday Reflection on Life and Death

Today is my birthday. On this day I celebrate the amazing gift of life. I celebrate my parents, my sister, my husband, my extended family, my community and my God. On this day I am thankful for my life and the amazing support network that allows me to live with deep purpose and conviction.

On this day I also mourn. I mourn the death of Kareem Burey who was killed on this day in 2005. When I met Kareem I instantly felt the warmth, charisma and passion that he had. His life was taken before he was able to demonstrate the fullness of what God placed within him. Today I remember Kareem and I remain committed to supporting the young people that God has placed in my life. I pray that neither racism nor sexism nor homophobia nor trauma nor depression nor insecurity nor any of the ills that snuff out the lives of young people, will take the lives of any more young people.

My birthday comes just as young people are getting out of school and the summer is heating up. I have often dreaded the youth violence that often comes with the summer months. For the past two years the end of June has also come with a mass shooting, last year in Charleston, this year in Orlando. The warming season that should be about trips to the beach, cookouts and family reunions has become increasingly associated with death.

Around the globe, particularly in the warmest parts of the world, the onset of summer is also associated with death from heat waves. In Syria the summer heat meant a lack of rain and the death of crops. Hungry people fled to the cities increasingly destabilizing an already weak economy and increasing the conflict between resistance groups and the government. Syrians became the world's most visible climate refugees.

In Pakistan the heat wave from last summer was so bad that it killed more than 1,300 people. The young, the elderly, the sick and the poor were most vulnerable and many perished. This year one cemetary started digging mass graves in advance of heat waves. This is the reality of summer as climate change becomes more common in our world.

On the day when I celebrate the gift of my life, my only desire is for a world that honors and protects all life. I want for us to care about the lives of little Black girls in Roxbury whose asthma keeps them from trying out for sports teams and men who are languishing in the prisons because a lack of opportunity led to a life of addiction. I want to live in a world where the indigenous people of the Amazon are allowed to protect the land of their ancestors and where children in India are not forced to beg on the street because of economic inequality. I want to live in a world where Congolese bonobos are no longer endangered and where the water in Flint Michigan is not a source of danger.

I am the hope and the dream of people who were stolen from their land and not even considered human. Their prayers and their sacrifices made my life possible and I must do the same from the next generation. For years I worked on issues of youth development, education and criminal justice. Now folks see me active on climate change and it seems like I have changed my focus. I actually see my work now as deeply connected to what I was doing before. Right now I am trying to save the lives of future generations of poor people, people of color, indigenous communities. I am also trying to do that in a way that transitions us to an economy that is not about sucking up all the resources for the benefit of a small group of people.

As the temperature continues to rise I am also committing to turn up the heat on my organizing. I refuse to believe that we cannot turn this situation around and I am willing to marshall all of my resources of human development, creativity, strategic thinking, and spiritual discipline to work for a transition away from the broken economic, political and social system that we have to one that values the life of all of God's creation and that sets us on a path to honor the lives of every human being. This blog will be a place where I share my journey and challenge you to join me in this quest to save our species.

On this my birthday I ask you to consider taking 3 actions -

1. Subscribe to my blog so that you can follow my journey and find more ways to get involved. On the right side of the blog screen there is a space to "Follow By Email."

2. Watch the movie - How to Let Go of the World and Love All the Things Climate Can't Change. If you have access to HBO you can get it On Demand or with HBO Go. If you don't have HBO stay tuned because I will be organizing a screening. For those of you who feel you need to know more about climate change it will give you a crash course. For those of you who work on climate change it will give you hope for the future.

3. Learn more about a dangerous methane (natural gas) pipeline that is being built in the Boston neighborhood of West Roxbury and which is 2 miles from my church. It puts my church and many of our members in danger and I want to sound the alarm about this. You will definitely hear more from me about this, because it is one of the ways that I will be stepping up to fight climate change. To learn more visit Resist the Pipeline.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. It is one of the best birthday gifts you could have given me!

Loving Nature and the City

            It is Memorial Day weekend and like so many people I was rushing to get out of the city for the weekend. I put a load of laundry in the wash, and on the way to water my garden I returned a plastic crate labeled l “Live Animals” to the post office. On a cold day in February they used it to leave a delivery of 2,000 worms for my basement compost. I planned to feed them all of my vegetable scraps and paper to fatten them up for a few of months before giving 1,000 of them to my dad for Father’s Day in June.

            Some are scrolling up to check the blog description because you can’t believe this is about a young Black woman living in a dense neighborhood in Boston. For those who know me, you are smiling because you have gotten used to hearing about hay in my trunk or me bringing a pot of greens to a potluck made with kale and collards from my garden.

            I am straight urbanite. I cringe at the idea of living in the suburbs. I ride the subway daily and I can tell you the routes of half of the city’s buses. I love the boom of sound-trucks going down the street for cultural festivals. I am writing this while wearing my Red Sox shirt because I represent for my city.

But the city has also been a source of great pain. In the summer of 2008 I was running a youth program in Dudley Square. There were conflicts between rival neighborhoods and we were doing everything we could to keep young people safe and to engage them in productive activities. I will never forget getting a call at 5am telling me that one of youth had been shot and killed. Less than a week later I was standing in front of the emergency room praying that another one of our youth would survive surgery after he had been shot eight times. That summer was full of long days and nights of broken sleep as I tried to be there for the young people with little time to process the pain that I was experiencing.

Each morning as I prepared for the day I would go to my living room and check on the small phalaenopsis orchid. When I bought it there had only been one open flower, but each night the buds would open just a bit as the flowers began to emerge in all of their glorious beauty. That little flower gave me so much joy and was the first in a collection that now has eight orchids. From the orchids I graduated to flower and herbs boxes on my deck, then pots in the back yard and finally my own plot in a community garden.

It took me years to realize that the orchid was a sign of life and growth in a time that was filled with death and fear. I did not know if I would lose another young person or what the day would bring, but I was happy to know that the orchid would have made just a little bit of progress overnight. It seems so obvious now that gardening was my response to trauma, but at the time I thought it was just another hobby I was picking up. The hours I was spending in the soil, the time that flew by without my even noticing it was a healing balm for my broken heart. Every day I would work with young people surrounded by conflict, and then my gardening time would help to connect me with the beauty of life.

My garden awakened me to the beauty of the natural world. Through a love of plants and the natural world I have come to a deeper appreciation of God’s creativity and the infinite wisdom that is demonstrated in the complex design of the creation. Before my ancestors were converted to Christianity they believed deeply in the power of the land. Often they were told to abandon their earth-centered religion to take on a “civilized” religion. Increasingly, I am wondering if they understood something powerful about God that modern Christianity has lost. I do not believe in worship trees or dancing for rain. At the same time I do believe that the Holy Spirit is present in the breeze and that she causes the trees to stretch their branches towards the heavens. I believe that nature is part of God’s message to us and I want to learn to hear more deeply and I am committed to saving this gift for generation to come.

This morning as I went to water my garden before getting on the road, I found one of my irises in full bloom. I had to take a moment just to marvel at its beauty and it reminded me of how far I have come since that summer in 2008. At that time I was focused on the roses that grow from the concrete (if you don’t understand this reference then you are probably not from my generation so just google – Rose from Concrete Tupac), but now I am wondering if we should bust up a little of the concrete to make more room for God’s creation. I still love the city, but I am also aware that I need to surround myself with growing things and that I can’t be so focused on progress that miss the chance to plant my feet in the soil and marvel at the beauty of an iris.  

How this grassroots activist came to support Marty Walsh

I am tired of the media implying that all of the people of color who are endorsing Marty Walsh are "old school Boston" and that John Connolly is getting the "new" “diverse” Boston. I resent that the voices of lots of grassroots folks, like me, and many others are being discounted. I grew up in Roxbury and I live in Dorchester. I love this city and I know that we have a long way to go until we are One Boston. In the first round I was with John Barros, but when he lost – I had to decided which of the two remaining candidates would best support my hope for Boston.

After the election I talked to colleagues and we decided that in this round we wanted to come together. We were mostly in our 30s and 40s and we work on issues from affordable housing to immigration to youth development. We represented Black, Latino and Asian communities from around the City. We are proud that Boston is a predominently people of color city, but we know that those numbers will mean nothing if different communities of color cannot unify to stand on the issues that are affecting us. Some wanted to just focus on issues and others wanted to make a collective endorsement. We created a process to do both.

First we looked at the previous questionnaires that they had submitted to the NAACP, Oiste! and Right to the City. Those were great but didn’t give enough detail. So we asked both of them to submit their plans for the 1st 100 days, 1 year and 4 years of their administration. We asked for concrete measurable outcomes by which we could evaluate them. We called a meeting to look at those plans and decide which was stronger.

In the end Marty Walsh’s plan scored higher because he got more specific. They only had 4 days to turn these around, so we didn’t expect them to be perfect, but we wanted to see them make some concrete commitments. We questioned whether Walsh could complete all of the things he talked about, but we thought that was better than Connolly who talked in broad terms about his vision rather than saying what he would specifically get done. I suspect the difference was because Connolly’s piece seemed to be compiled by cutting and pasting things from previous writings. I later heard that Marty reached out to leaders of color like John Barros and Linda Dorcena-Forry to get their perspective. Connolly talked a lot about reaching out in his submission, but Marty did it to create his submission and it made a difference in the quality of his answers.

After we scored their plans, we looked at their track record. We had tried to create a list of their voting record in advance of the meeting, but getting info on City Council votes was challenging. So we decided to go with the wisdom in the room. I knew that there would be people who had worked with both candidates on a number of different issues. So we posted up two pieces of butcher paper for each candidate. One sheet was for posting positive positions and good working experiences and the other sheet was for negative positions or negative working experiences.

Each leader focused on the issues that mattered to them the most so we had a diversity of things on the papers. A picture was worth a thousand words. Folks had a series of concerns with Connolly’s stance on issues and the way that he worked with people – in particular they were concerned about the way he had handled education issues and particularly the school assignment process. On the flip side people pointed to positive stances Walsh took on issues like CORI, immigration and recovery services. The one key concern with Walsh was whether he would be too defferintial to the unions.

Based on his plan and record people were leaning Walsh but could not move forward without hearing from him directly. So the group met with Marty and challenged him around our union concerns. He apologized for the impact that racism in the unions has had on communities of color. He also talked about what he has done in the past two years (that is how long he has been leading the building trades) to try to shift the culture in the unions and make more space for women and people of color. He went on to talk about housing affordability and other issues that were important to him. By the end of the conversation our group felt like he understood where we were coming from and that he was willing to work with us not just to get elected but to continue the dialogue after he got into office.

So if you want the process in a nutshell – Walsh put time into the details on his questionnaire and Connolly only shared a broad vision, which is not what we asked for. When we looked at their records, folks seemed to agree that Connolly says the right things but felt that he didn’t always take a stand in the end. Marty is less eloquent, but he has been willing to take a stand on the key issues.

We backed Marty based on his platform and his record and his willingness to work with us. I need to be clear – I am not hating on anyone who is supporting Connolly – if the group had collectively chosen him then that is who I would have been backing. But I am proud to have been part of a process where people came together and made a choice collectively based not on what was good for us individually, but what we thought would be best for our collective communities.

If I had my choice of who I really want to lead our city I would choose Jesus Christ. Ghandi would be a great backup and I would love to see Cesar Chavez or Michelle Obama run our city. But since none of them are on the ballot, I have to choose the person who I think has the best chance of moving this city forward. I don’t care about who has the slicker ads who the more polished accent, I have already learned that those things mean little.

I AM NEW BOSTON - AND I AM SUPPORTING MARTY WALSH.

Connolly - Please honor the teacher code

Like many Bostonians I was watching the mayoral debate last night. There were lots of issues discussed and at the end of the day I am not sure who really won. However, there is something that happened last night that I was still thinking about this morning. I started a blog about the crisis in DC, but this issue was more pressing to me.

So I want to start by being transparent. I have decided to support Marty Walsh in this final round for mayor. Because I knew that might make me biased, I almost didn’t write this blog, but I have to speak my heart.

For the majority of this race John Connolly has been talking about his experience as a teacher. Within the teacher and youthwork sector there is some controversy about that because he only spent 18 months in the classroom; but I am not going to wade into that debate.

I take Connolly at his word that he became invested in the youth that he worked with and that he, like many teachers and youthworkers, wanted to see his students succeed. However, last night I was really disturbed by the fact that in the middle of his talk about education he cited the first and last name of a student who dropped out of school and had a child as a teenager.

I was shocked that he had named this young person. I imagined what that young man would think if he was watching that show. How his family would feel if they happened to be tuned in? Then I wondered what it would have been like to have my own life story reduced to a political point for a bunch of people who don’t know me.

The reality is that this was just an obvious case where a politician had crossed the line. Yet everyday our young people get reduced to statistics. A blip on someone’s graph or a data point lost within someone’s analysis. The poorer you are, the black you are, the less “educated” you are, the more it becomes okay for people to reduce you to a caricature.

The other day I had to sit down with a young man who has gone from being a superstar to unraveling before my eyes. He has been through so much in his life, but for months I watched him be fueled to excellence by the thought of overcoming what people thought of him. Then a month ago I saw his world start to come crashing down. We talked about how there were two versions of him in a struggle to see which one would win out. He looked me in the face and said, “What if the bad side is who I really am.”

The reality is that so many of our young people have given up any hope that they can be more. They see that so many people have written them off and they figure that so many people can’t be wrong. As a youthworker, a minister and a person who believes in transformation, I always hold out hope that even in the darkest of places that young people can be transformed. That God’s plans are always better than my own and that until we are stone cold in the grave, that our story isn’t over.

I have long ago come to realize that I can’t “save” everyone. I have seen young people laid in the ground before they realized their potential. And yet, I will never reduce any of my youth to their mistakes. I will honor their lives, keep their confidence and hold out hope that the best is yet to come. That is what it means to be a youthworker or a teacher. I ask that if Mr. Connolly is going to call himself one of us, that he hold to this sacred code.

On Art and Cultural Organizing.......

A few weeks ago I did an interview about cultural organizing and the work we do at Project HIP-HOP. Don't know what cultural organizing is? Then this radio interview will give you an understanding of the three components of cultural organizing (or at least as I define it.)

I believe that art is a crucial part of achieving social justice and this interview shares some of my hopes for young people. So I hope you will take some time to listen to the entire show. The section that I am on starts at 12:40pm. The song that proceeds my portion is by some artists that I respect and work with, so there will be more about them.

Enjoy listening, and feel free to let me know what you think -

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/accbillbanfield/2013/09/23/acc--on-music-arts-project-hip-hop-film-post-review

A new table - A new playbook

After getting over the sting of my own candidate not making it to the final, I had to step back and try to understand the bigger picture of the mayoral results. What does Tuesday’s election say about Boston and where it is?

Last night Labor spoke. Many of the pundits had counted them out. For quite a few months, they thought that labor couldn’t beat out the more polished candidates like John Connolly or Mike Ross. With a city that is 53% people of color, there were those who thought that a person of color would be able to ascend to the final round. Others thought that women would make their voices heard and coalesce around the only female candidate.

No, last night it was labor. Last night the unions made their voice heard. From bricklayers to plumbers to fire fighters, labor demonstrated their its power. Without the strong-arm politics of the past, labor organized their base, mobilized them to vote and put their guy at the top. As a person who believes in the importance of a living wage, fair working conditions and good benefits – I celebrate the importance of the labor movement. They gave us the weekend, and for that I will be eternally grateful.

Marty Walsh is my neighbor and friend. While I respect him as an individual, I was concerned about the TV clips I saw from Marty’s celebration party. I saw a room full of mostly middle aged white men who probably don’t think of themselves as connected to me, but I bet they are feeling the pinch of the Boston economy just like I am. They were ecstatic to see someone like them make it to the final. I am sure they have hope that their next contract negotiation will go smoother. They hope that there will be more construction jobs for union members to feed their families.

However, as a young Christian, Black woman I know that there can be a huge downside to identity politics. You can get so focused on promoting someone who looks like you or who shares your experience, that you don’t get clear about what your vision is or how you want things to be run.

So my question to Marty’s base is – what is the point of having a construction job if your children won’t be able to afford the condos that you are building? If labor really wants to address the economic issues that are crushing them (and the rest of us), they have to start talking about affordable housing, inclusionary zoning, school-to-career opportunities, and other issues one which they have often been silent. Right now it seems like the traditional electoral structure just updated a page from their old playbook. I want to throw out that playbook and start with a whole new gameplan.

I haven’t figured out whom I will vote for and I have no idea who will win. I do know that I joined Team Barros because I believe in the issues that he raised and because I think it is time for a new day in Boston. I joined because I support a vision not because of one man. Our team grew to be a multi-racial, multi-ethnic, inter-generational team of people who believe that we can have “One Boston” where everyone has real opportunity. I am still committed to building that vision through elections but also through community groups like Right to the City.

Even as we were disappointed that it didn’t happen this round, last night many of us committed to continuing to build and organize for this fall, 2015 and beyond. Our table will be based on vision. We will elect leaders based on where they stand on the issues and for their ability to unite communities. I know that I will be getting calls from both camps to join their team. Instead, I want to invite them to join our team. We may not have gotten our candidate through, but we are still working and there is room at the table for white, working-class union guys, to sit with a Black, middle-class, activist gal to figure out how we make this city work for all of us!