Last Sunday I was walking across midtown Manhattan to my jazz gig when I came across two people holding a sign that read in block letters “F*** Kamala”. I stopped to ask them why. They tried to make their points and I tried to make mine. They were slightly apologetic about the nature of the sign and said it was given to them and they meant to throw it out. I was flailing and flustered and said little of value but expressed my bewilderment over the coarseness of the sign’s sentiment. All of us struggled to maintain civility. They said Kamala Harris is “not Black” because she is Jamaican, at which point I said farewell and moved on to get to my concert.
That night as I lay in bed, I thought about what I wished I had said. That evening I had sung the most finely crafted of American songs, songs of love and longing originally composed and performed by Americans whose forebears had fled anti-Semitic pogroms in Russia or anti-Black terrorism in the Jim Crow South. I am inspired and fortified by these songs and the rhythms that drive them, born of the innovation, brilliance and resilience of those who make up the American melting pot and who strive towards the American idea.
The sign holders were African American. I wish I had spoken to them about how I love my country because of the African-European-Indigenous miracle of our music, and am continually moved by how our culture reflects the myriad places we have come from and the justice we strive for, most vividly manifested in the art of Black America. I wish I had said that I love our country for our ongoing struggle towards achieving a more perfect union, a struggle embodied most profoundly in the tenacious dignity and savvy strategy of the Black Freedom movement. I love our country for the values represented and articulated by Kamala Harris, values defiled by the coarseness of that sign and the coarse movement behind it.
But I didn’t say those patriotic things. The coarseness, the degrading lack of substance and misplaced outrage exemplified by that sign has left me and millions of others at a loss for words, or at least the right ones. Where to start in expressing our opposition to Trump, when the petty degradations and absurd lies pile on top of the multitude of crimes and half-baked, horrific policies? It’s very confusing and destabilizing.
But I am grounded when I think of my home, and my neighbors here on my block in Brooklyn. It’s a quiet block, with the quiet interrupted by occasional sounds of celebration; kids playing on the sidewalk, the melodies of men marching to celebrate Sukkot, nearby bands playing a Pakistani block party. We are musicians, social workers, parents, doctors, car-lovers, Muslims, Hasidic Jews and Reform Jews, Christians, atheists, Russians, Mexicans, lifelong New Yorkers and brand-new arrivals. Sometimes we look out for each other, laugh together or exchange simple courtesies, sometimes we complain about parking spots or the weather, and always we coexist. This is New York City where I have lived for almost 30 years, where I have ridden the subway at every hour, where I watched the towers fall and still, where I feel a deep sense of belonging and comradery. That Trump and his associates speak of this place as an apocalyptic hellscape would be comical if it were not so mystifying and dishonest. I live in a multi-faceted, multi-colored community of faith and tolerance, entrepreneurship and altruism, where people navigate the challenges of American life with decency and dignity. Don’t you live in such a place?
Where - what is this America that Trump speaks of, this place supposedly in decay, overflowing with violence and threat and hatred? I don’t see it. I don’t recognize it. Do you?
I am grounded when I think of my Brooklyn-born sons and the alert, accomplished and compassionate young adults they are becoming, so different from the entitled son of Queens seeking the presidency, who rose to prominence turning away Black tenants from his rental properties, refusing to pay his contractors, and creating an illusion of business acumen on TV that obscures the reality of paternal handouts, bankruptcies and fraud; who announced his first candidacy with the spreading of hatred, fear and lies and capitalized on disingenuous vilification of the corporate greed that he himself embodies.
As a mother, I am grateful that during what the medical system characterized as my “advanced maternal age”, I was able to obtain a safe and compassionate abortion to remove a lifeless fetus, and clear my uterus for a new life that became my second son just 12 months later.
My daily life experiences lead me to vote, as I did this past Tuesday, for a vision shared by Kamala Harris and my fellow global history teacher Tim Walz. I am fortunate to teach in a diverse high school that focuses on equity and seeks to eliminate the achievement gaps between our students of privilege and those whose outcomes are hindered by a history of discrimination, poverty or divergent learning styles. I am blessed to work at a school where I am free to teach facts of history and to encourage my students to critically evaluate the reliability of historical sources and to consider multiple perspectives. In my 10th grade Global History class, we study the Atlantic Slave Trade and how it fueled capitalism even as its capitalism’s eloquent proponent Adam Smith condemned slavery for its immorality and hindering of human creativity and potential. (That trade brought over half a million kidnapped Africans to Jamaica, the homeland of Kamala Harris’s father, who is indeed “Black”)
We study the opportunities and inequities of the Industrial Revolution and how it has brought us both miraculous innovations and terrifying climate change. We consider how the blindly “white” supremacist ideologies of imperialist rulers worsened famines in the British colonies of Ireland and India, and the devastation of Hurricane Maria in America’s colony of Puerto Rico in 2017. (The 1900 Supreme Court rulings that decided Puerto Ricans are “alien races” and “savage tribes”, to which Constitutional rights and protections do not apply, still stands, severely hindering efforts for freedom and progress on the island). We study the mind control and idiocy of dictatorships, propaganda and cults of personality like those under Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Mobutu that led to the deaths of millions of people across the globe. We study how those who seek absolute power, defy the will of the people, and subvert the peaceful transfer of power are doomed to fail and to bring down their countries with them.
As we studied the pros and cons of nationalism, one of my Russian students pondered how amazing it would feel to be proud of one's country, and noted that he is not proud of being Russian right now. We also study the pitiful but deadly small-mindedness of religious and ethnic bigotry, whether it be wrought by Ottoman Muslims against Armenian Christians, German Nazis against European Jews, Rwandan Hutus against Rwandan Tutsis, Indian Hindus against Indian Muslims or Israelis against Palestinians (and vice versa). We learn to beware of those “leaders” and movements that wallow in grievance and victimhood, as history shows they often claim it as a means to accumulate the power to victimize others.
We also study the moral and strategic brilliance of nonviolent noncooperation to oppression, from the massive mobilization led by Mohandas Gandhi to achieve India’s independence from India, to the brave youth mobilizing so that the Democratic Republic of Congo might live up to its name. And once a week after school, I supervise students in our new Climate Hawks and Sustainability club, part of an effort to preserve the environment which has been and should be non-partisan but is tragically stymied by the contemporary Republican Party. (It bears noting that the Biden/Harris administration’s groundbreaking and future-looking effort to address the existential threat of climate change is named the Inflation Reduction Act, as to placate the often short-sighted nature of our politics.)
And I am grounded In my musical life. I’ve mentioned the love I have for America’s classical music, jazz – the joyful product emerging from centuries of history, heartbreak, injustice and resilience, which resonates so clearly with the cultural and social consciousness of Vice President Harris and Governor Walz. I am fertilized by the legacy of my dad Harry and my musical family which comes together to sing and speak out about food justice, at concerts where audience members bring food donations for their neighbors even as we recognize that charity is not enough in a food system that demands systemic change. I am proud to volunteer with WhyHunger, a nonpartisan food justice organization co-founded by my dad that recognizes nutritious food as a human right and promotes community-based solutions to hunger and poverty. I am encouraged by the assessment of WhyHunger’s allies that Kamala Harris has been one of the “great champions” for food justice and is “about as good as they get” on fighting hunger. Like my father before me, my musical life has always been intertwined with my drive to seek economic, environmental, social, racial and gender justice, so that I am drawn to candidates like Harris and Walz who understand the root causes of injustice, and are driven to fight against it.
This intermingling gives me precious opportunities, like that I had in March to sing at a benefit tribute to John Lennon, whose widow Yoko Ono Lennon has been a steadfast partner with WhyHunger for food justice, driven by her own experience as a survivor of the hunger that ravaged post-war Japan. Last December, I got to perform my parents' legendary song “Cat’s in the Cradle” at a concert against gun violence, where I sang alongside the talented Mark Barden and his daughter Natalie, whose courage after losing their beloved son and brother Daniel led them to action through Sandy Hook Promise. Like the vast majority of Americans, Harris and Walz support legislation that would ban assault weapons and curb the scourge of gun violence that remains the great shame of this country. To live this life is to have great clarity on my values and my vote.
I am off from teaching today as New York City public schools celebrate Diwali, which one of my students explained is the traditional Hindu festival of lights. Her Indian great-grandfather was one of millions who worked alongside Gandhi to activate the profound power of basic empathy, non-violence, love for humanity and what Gandhi called satyagraha, or “truth force”. I used some of this time to call voters in North Carolina to help get them to the polls through a system which was streamlined, easy, and just a wee bit scary.
There is so much to be done. What grounds You? Which America do you recognize, in our shortcomings and dreams, our clearsighted-ness and optimism? What will you do in the days, weeks and years to come?
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