I arrived at the party inspired, optimistic, and moved by revolutionary love. The gathering, however, was not what I hoped. It largely consisted of me shouting about the lecture I had just attended: a Columbia professor, and former Black Panther, speaking on the release of his new book documenting his coming of age with the black radical community-based organization.
I left the party fiending, unsatisfied, and alone. It was as if the entire evening I was searching for something that's time hadn't come. Quickly exhausting my options for a fix, I resigned myself to the fate of going home at 2 AM empty-handed.
Ahead was the public safety bus. At least I wouldn’t have to walk the short 12 blocks home. Accepting consolation in quick travel, I boarded the empty bus, greeted the driver, and took my seat.
Looking in her rear view mirror, she said, “Please flash your ID so I can see it.”
“Right on,” I said as I took out my ID from my wallet.
“Where are you going?”
“One-oh-six.”
“One-oh-six?”
“Right on.”
After some moments passed, she looked up and asked, “Are people saying that again?”
“What?”
“Is that something people are saying again? ‘Right on.’ Do a lot of people you know say it?”
“I mean, I say it all the time.”
“I know people from the ‘60s used to talk like that. I don’t hear people saying that anymore.”
I thought about what she said. I thought about what I had been shouting about all night –the need I felt to connect to the world around me. The fire I was trying to keep going in my own heart; the reminder that it was beating.
“Well you know, actually, I went to this event tonight,” I began. “I’ve been talking about it all night. You see, there’s a professor here and he just wrote this book. He was telling his story of how he joined the Panthers when he was 15 years old. After Dr. King was assassinated, sharing his grandmother’s tears. He spoke so beautifully about the struggle.”
She seemed to be listening. And I was just getting started. I continued on excitedly explaining the jewels of wisdom I had heard that evening. “There was an understanding of community and connection. It was about the breakfast programs and health clinics. In the face of infiltration and repression, the motivation was serving the needs of the people. It seemed so right –just before I graduate, to hear Jamal Joseph break it down tonight.”
She was silent. But by this point, I wasn’t expecting anything. After all, I had been telling the same story all night and except for a few friends, no one was really trying to hear me.
I stopped talking. She reached into her bag on the ground next to her and pulled out a book. There it was. The stories I heard and been trying to re-tell all evening. There in her hands I read the cover – Panther Baby.
“Were you there this evening?” I asked.
“No. I had to work,” she said.
As we sat there, parked in front of the gates of the University she asked, “How do you think you will translate what you heard tonight into your life?”
I talked about my student activist days and what the Ten Point Program meant to me when I was a teenager. How the journey that started somewhere with disrupting high school hallways took me to villages in India as a community organizer. I talked about how roots run deep.
And then, all of a sudden, I caught myself. All I had done the entire evening was rant and rave about human dignity and social justice and knowing history and where you are going. “What is your connection to all of this? Where does your interest lie?”
“The human condition,” she responded point-blankly as we drove down Amsterdam Avenue. “The way we choose to interact with each other.”
I left the party fiending, unsatisfied, and alone. It was as if the entire evening I was searching for something that's time hadn't come. Quickly exhausting my options for a fix, I resigned myself to the fate of going home at 2 AM empty-handed.
Ahead was the public safety bus. At least I wouldn’t have to walk the short 12 blocks home. Accepting consolation in quick travel, I boarded the empty bus, greeted the driver, and took my seat.
Looking in her rear view mirror, she said, “Please flash your ID so I can see it.”
“Right on,” I said as I took out my ID from my wallet.
“Where are you going?”
“One-oh-six.”
“One-oh-six?”
“Right on.”
After some moments passed, she looked up and asked, “Are people saying that again?”
“What?”
“Is that something people are saying again? ‘Right on.’ Do a lot of people you know say it?”
“I mean, I say it all the time.”
“I know people from the ‘60s used to talk like that. I don’t hear people saying that anymore.”
I thought about what she said. I thought about what I had been shouting about all night –the need I felt to connect to the world around me. The fire I was trying to keep going in my own heart; the reminder that it was beating.
“Well you know, actually, I went to this event tonight,” I began. “I’ve been talking about it all night. You see, there’s a professor here and he just wrote this book. He was telling his story of how he joined the Panthers when he was 15 years old. After Dr. King was assassinated, sharing his grandmother’s tears. He spoke so beautifully about the struggle.”
She seemed to be listening. And I was just getting started. I continued on excitedly explaining the jewels of wisdom I had heard that evening. “There was an understanding of community and connection. It was about the breakfast programs and health clinics. In the face of infiltration and repression, the motivation was serving the needs of the people. It seemed so right –just before I graduate, to hear Jamal Joseph break it down tonight.”
She was silent. But by this point, I wasn’t expecting anything. After all, I had been telling the same story all night and except for a few friends, no one was really trying to hear me.
I stopped talking. She reached into her bag on the ground next to her and pulled out a book. There it was. The stories I heard and been trying to re-tell all evening. There in her hands I read the cover – Panther Baby.
“Were you there this evening?” I asked.
“No. I had to work,” she said.
As we sat there, parked in front of the gates of the University she asked, “How do you think you will translate what you heard tonight into your life?”
I talked about my student activist days and what the Ten Point Program meant to me when I was a teenager. How the journey that started somewhere with disrupting high school hallways took me to villages in India as a community organizer. I talked about how roots run deep.
And then, all of a sudden, I caught myself. All I had done the entire evening was rant and rave about human dignity and social justice and knowing history and where you are going. “What is your connection to all of this? Where does your interest lie?”
“The human condition,” she responded point-blankly as we drove down Amsterdam Avenue. “The way we choose to interact with each other.”
My stop had come. As we shook hands and exchanged contacts on ripped out pieces of magazine paper I realized what I had been searching for all evening had finally been willed into happening on a ten-minute bus ride.
Throughout our lives we attract certain people. Sometimes in order to reach out across the abyss of our alienation, to share the stories that were shared with us, we need the frustration, the struggle, the persistence to find what we are looking for. And when we have nearly given up, in the places we least expect to find it, there is a reminder of what it’s all about.
Throughout our lives we attract certain people. Sometimes in order to reach out across the abyss of our alienation, to share the stories that were shared with us, we need the frustration, the struggle, the persistence to find what we are looking for. And when we have nearly given up, in the places we least expect to find it, there is a reminder of what it’s all about.
