When They Call You A Terrorist

When They Call You A Terrorist

Adult nonfiction
"Like many of the people who embody our movement, I have lived
my life between the twin terrors of poverty and the police. Coming of
age in the drug war climate that was ratcheted up by Ronald Reagan and
then Bill Clinton, the neighborhood where I lived and loved and the
neighborhoods where many of the members of Black Lives Matter have
lived and loved were designated were designated war zones and the
enemy was us."
If I can get you to read one more book in 2018, make it When
They Call You A Terrorist by Patrisse Khan-Cullors and Aisha Bandele.
It introduced me to a nightmare world I've never entered or even
really imagined. It is so WRONG that even today in the 21st century
legions of our fellow human beings are being born into this world and
crippled or killed by it.
I remember how innocuous Nixon's war on drugs was made to sound
when it was accelerated by Reagan. Drugs are killing our children,
our families, and our communities. If we lock up the pushers of these
poisons and the remorseless tide of (black) superpredators, our kids
will be cleaner and safer. To a lot of people this all seemed
eminently reasonable and benign...
...except that it wasn't. Racism in America and American
leadership hasn't gone away. It's just become more covert, evolved to
not offend modern sensibilities. If you can't use the N word, make
blacks seem threateningly different.
At least some of the people at the top knew what they were
doing. One of Tricky Dick Nixon's top advisors, quoted in the book,
said, "We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be...black, but by
getting the public to associate the...blacks with heroin...and then
criminalizing [them] heavily, we could disrupt [their] communities.
Did we know we were lying? Of course we did."
Of course we did. And we're finding new ways to embody this
prejudice by preying on people's fears. Take the rising number of
school shootings. The shooters are usually from financially well off
families as white as me. But the reaction has been to turn low-income
black schools into militarized zones patrolled by armed (often with
military calibar weapons) officers. These officers, whose funding
often siphons money from already inadequately funded educational and
community services, end up treating growing children as potential
suspects and arresting many for normal kid behaviors. Can we say
school to jail pipeline?
Patrisse grew up in ground zero in the wars on drugs and gangs.
Her mother patched together as many as three jobs, working sixteen
hours a day, to afford the basics. The only local grocery store was a
7-Eleven. There were no after school programs, basketball courts,
playgrounds, or even green spaces. Streets and alleys were the only
places for kids to congregate and spend time together.
These streets and alleys were where the police (ever present in
cars and helicopters) violently harassed kids who often were doing
nothing to warrant suspicion. Patrisse was still a child when she saw
her preteen and just teen older brothers thrown around and half
stripped by those allegedly there to serve and protect.
Ironically Patrisse encountered drugs and their users and
sellers when she was sent to a white middle school without police or
metal detectors. Kids came to school high and smoked on campus. A
friend's brother could have garbage bags of weed without fearing arrest.
And that's just the first couple of chapters. Make sure you
read the book. If you know people who are trying to dilute Black
Lives Matter into All Lives Matter or Blue Lives Matter, recommend it
to them.
On a personal note, Penobscot County had our first sticking snow. We
had two wonderful events at Wells Dining Commons. Thursday we gave
our students an early Thanksgiving feast of turkey, salmon, and all
the trimmings. They sure were ready to celebrate. I had so much fun
serving them and seeing their excitement. Saturday brunch had a big
turn out thanks to an open house and a major home football game. I
served and then cleaned tables. I saw how our Wells team really came
together, especially the folks in the dishroom who were hampered by
machine break downs. People really enjoyed their dining experience.
Just about everybody on the UMaine campus is looking forward to our
five day Thanksgiving break.
Great big shout outs go out to my husband and all the others who
pulled all nighters plowing to make streets safe for commuters, my
awesome dining services family, our UMaine Black Bears football who
won the big game, and my fellow students to whom I wish safe travel
and much to be thankful for.
Tomorrow my class has a field trip to a nearby college. I surely hope
it includes a peek at their dining services.
jules hathaway



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