Dear my Seniors, 2020

June 10, 2020

Dear my Seniors,

               We are living a moment so broken and so full of raw pain and danger that entrenched failures have become, finally, un-trenched. For those living my many privileges, family is wide open and present in a way I’ve missed, and I have a work-life balance I’ve never had in America before. And for all of us,  white complacency that has allowed brutalities against African Americans and Latinx to occur repeatedly and overtly—the white complacency that has allowed institutions, laws, stories, and ignorances to nurture destructive biases and inequities in wealth, safety, and health—is finally being shaken. The re-imagining of community health is loud enough to reach city halls; and many whites, however halting and awkward, have finally joined people of color in a reckoning of the racist bones of our country.

               How we meet this moment depends on you.

               My own generation and class and race have worked hard to protect freedoms. We’ve been about individualism and freedom and achieving personal comforts, successfully ripping away taxes that my parents’ generation paid and stoking profit margins against unions and workers, eating the climate and wrapping guns in a banner of freedom. But in this broken moment, the ethos of individualism and personal freedom is being tested: failure to mask up, wash hands, and stand apart can cripple and kill our neighbors; white safety is being shown in connection with the brutalizing and killing of black bodies. The ethos of individualism is being tested by both pandemic and by racism, and by its successful fulfilment in our dunderheaded president, and so we find ourselves in a communitarian moment we have not seen in half a century.

               The Great Depression left a deep impression on its generation, who were frugal, coupon pinching people to the end, appreciating family, tradition and stability. This era will certainly shape your generation as well: You’ve already had to be so adaptable; you’ve leaned into friendships and social connection in creative, soulful ways; you’ve recognized mental health challenges my generation stigmatized; and you’ve embraced understanding and supporting people not your selves; you’ve been shaped into a more activist, generous, compassionate and outraged thoughtful citizenry, open to sharing and receiving anger, to standing together when we are called to stand together, and to sacrifice personal comforts and easy silences for a common good.

               I said this to Hands for a Bridge on our last day, but I’ll say it again here. I believe your most important quality is kindness. If you are also smart and funny, that’s a bonus; but when it comes to the room I want to be in and the people I want to sing with and how we heal the world, kindness is paramount. If you put two people of opposing views together and they are both kind—no matter how intelligent or how ignorant—those two people can learn something together. The good news is that most people can be kind, and the ones who can’t are wounded in ways that can use our compassion.

               You have demonstrated such good hearts over and over. You’ve shown repeatedly your thoughtfulness, kindness and grace, your love, tenderness, vulnerability, and care. I’ve seen it in Amelia, and how easy she is to express joy, how fast to express grief; I’ve seen it in choices she makes and the company she keeps—the big hearts that sustain her own and bring her to her best self, and I’ve certainly felt it in what you bring me. I so miss what it means and what it does in my classroom. Just as I’ll miss you.

               Dear my seniors, this moment can be one of reconstruction and healing, but you must keep up pressure, continue to witness and share, and, to my white Seniors, over the ignorance, careless silence, and comforts of my generation’s brand of individualism, you must continue to privilege the lives, spirits, and bodies of your brothers and sisters, yellow, black, brown, white. And to all, if and when you can do this with love in your hearts, our world is that much a better place.

               I’m too sorry I can’t hug you in celebration and farewell. I zoom hug you.

Love,

David Grosskopf

Dear Derek Chauvin's knee

June 8, 2020

Dear Derek Chauvin’s knee,

               You have been blamed for cutting off the air of George Floyd, of leaning on his neck while he begged for breath and his mother, and Derek Chauvin now stands accused of murder in the second degree. We are now entering the third week of growing protests to what your uninterrupted eight minutes and fortysix seconds mean in this country, the long minutes of “I can’t breathe I can’t breathe” ignored by Derek Chauvin and three officers who didn’t stop you from Floyd’s neck as bystanders said you’re killing him you’ve probably killed him get off do something, a kneeling that would later call to mind Colin Kaepernick’s knee protesting uninterrupted brutality of police that absurdly and eventually lost Kaepernick his job after the President said Get that son of a bitch off the field right now he's fired, and later, Derek Chauvin’s knee, after you stopped George Floyd’s breath, the President and his approving 42% angrily decried movement on the streets saying Why can’t you protest peacefully, and the protesters say to the police but also to you, I can’t breathe.

               I learned about unarmed Michael Stewart being strangled by transit police who were acquitted of his absurd murder. I learned about unarmed Amadou Diallo who was caught in a hailstorm of 42 bullets by police acquitted of his absurd murder. I learned about woodcarver John Williams who was shot multiple times by police never charged with his absurd murder. I learned about unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin shot by neighborhood watch who was acquitted of his absurd murder. I learned about unarmed boy Tamir Rice who was shot playing in a playground by police who were cleared of his absurd murder. I learned about unarmed hands-up Michael Brown who was shot six times by police who was acquitted of his absurd murder. I learned about handcuffed Freddie Gray who died from a rough ride delivered by police who were acquitted of his absurd murder. I learned about armed but not reaching Philando Castile who was shot seven times by police who was acquitted of his absurd murder. I learned about unarmed Charleena Lyles shot in her apartment by the very police she called and who were then cleared of her absurd murder. I learned about unarmed Botham Jean who was shot in his apartment by police who at last was charged with his absurd murder. I learned about unarmed Breonna Taylor who was shot in her apartment by police in a no-knock midnight raid under current investigation. And I learned about unarmed Eric Garner who begged the same fucking thing we heard six years later from George Floyd when police didn’t let up and killed him and who were never indicted for his absurd murder, even after he said, and George Floyd said, and thousands and thousands and thousands of African Americans on the streets begging for air said, I can’t breathe.

               That was you on George Floyd. That was my knee on America’s neck, for far longer than eight minutes and forty six seconds, Black America gagging as I did and said nothing.