Add value to the conversation, or shut up and listen, learn

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#BaltimoreUprising, activism, add value, David Graham, DeRay McKesson, empathy, Feminista Jones, Freddie Gray, Goldie Taylor, Jesse Williams, Jon Stewart, listen, read writers of color, Ta-nehisi Coates, The Atlantic

In that order, and on repeat. Photo by Flicker user Steven Shorrock (Creative Commons license).

Privilege is me thinking, crap, I haven’t written a blog post in 13 days, while Baltimore burns and suffers.

What do I have to say this week about being a single writing mom while so many mothers are mourning their children, dead at the hands of unchecked police brutality?

What do I have to say this week about being a single writing mom while thousands are dead in a massive earthquake in Nepal and I’m shopping for a new convertible crib/toddler bed online?

What do I have to say this week about being a single writing mom who, while a survivor of domestic violence, is not being ripped apart on social media for outing the abusive behavior of an apparently feminist-supporting poet and publisher?

Not a damn thing.

Here’s who I’m listening to, though, at least on the subject of #BaltimoreUprising:

• DeRay McKesson. Follow him. He was a crucial voice during Ferguson, and he schooled Wolf Blitzer on CNN.
• Ta-nehisi Coates. His piece for The Atlantic, “Nonviolence as Compliance,” is necessary reading.
• In another piece for The Atlantic, David Graham considers the arrest and death of Freddie Gray: “Gray’s family said he was treated for three fractured vertebrae and a crushed voice box, the sorts of injuries that doctors say are usually caused by serious car accidents.”
• Feminista Jones. Always.
• Jon Stewart, who always reminds us to question what we see in the mainstream news.
• Jesse Wiliams. This actor took to Twitter to share insights I think everyone would benefit from considering. For example: “There is nothing “black” about rioting. How do you think we got all this land?” and “So Exactly What Kind Of Violence Don’t You Like?”
• Goldie Taylor, who wrote a moving piece on the “collective hypocrisy” of lauding the mother who struck her son for throwing a rock in Baltimore. I feel like if we’d seen that clip without any context on, say, Inside Edition, we’d have already condemned this woman as abusive. Taylor says #MomoftheYear probably fears more for her son’s life than deplores his participation in the uprising. “We burn bridges to meaningful opportunity then blame the people we isolate when they fail to embrace the ‘American Dream,'” she reminds us.

That old adage about not saying anything at all if you don’t have something nice to say? Replace “nice” with “of value.”