Memphis: Revisiting the Past

It's April 6th 2008, a couple of days after the 40th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination and it feels historic to be standing right in front of the Lorraine Motel where he was shot, the current site of the National Civil Rights Museum. I almost feel like I'm starting to get out of myself just a bit, breathing a little bit heavier, pulse beating rapidly with increase blood flow. I'm nervous and I pretend not to know why, but as I pay the $12 entrance fee and wished I was a student still as I wander through the exhibits with images of Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott. I imagine myself 16 years old again staring at the very same panels containing Civil Rights Movement imagery and literature. I'm nervous for the very same reason why an adult feel nervous at their high school reunion: it's a warped image of yourself that is reflected through a twisted mirror. The image that stares back isn't you, it's the same 16 year-old girl with glasses and crooked teeth wandering through the exhibits. And she is asking you as someone who has so much potential at the age of 16: have you lived up to her expectations?

A high school program called "Sojourn to the Past" brought me to Memphis eight years ago, during the 32nd anniversary of Dr. King's assassination. It also brought us across the South, starting from Washington DC, continuing through Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Tennessee--major sites where historic parts of the Civil Rights Movement happened. It was the first time that I ever learned what real organizing was: research, strategic planning, community engagement, and executing direct action. We met the families of local heroes who died because they agitated for the right to vote or equal protection under the law. We met volunteers who stayed up until 2am making sandwiches for the marchers on the journey from Selma to Montgomery. We sat on Medger Ever's driveway, contemplating how if wasn't too tired to take extra precaution in getting out of his car that night, he would've been able to avoid the fatal bullet. We met Congressman John Lewis, who back when he was our age, was an organizer and leader for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which drove many young people to be a part of the Civil Rights Movement. We travel with a member of Little Rock Nine, Minnijean Brown-Trickey, riding on the bus and leading us in songs. We heard stories of organizing against all odds in Birmingham (or "Burningham" as many Black residents called it at the time) with Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth.

I'm surprised I remember so much. When I was getting ready to go to Memphis, I barely remembered the name of the National Civil Rights Museum. After taking my first Sojourn trip, I made a commitment to myself to what I understood to be a "higher calling" in life: social justice. As Dr. King once stated, " A threat to justice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." And I took it to heart as I lived it like the word through my thoughts, my actions, my education, my career. I spent the next three years wanting my top three careers be a pro bono civil rights lawyer, a high school history teacher, and a community organizer. (What can I say, it's good to have specific ambitious goals). Each had it's own significant places of where I could see myself, and how I would work to not only fight injustice and empower those who are marginalized or disenfranchised.

It's funny how history is an arc, especially when you look at where you've been and where you end up. Never did I know my work would take me eight years later back to Memphis. Or that I would look through the lens of a 16-year-old self to evaluate my 23 year old life. Would she be happy? Was this where she saw me? When I moved to Maine 6 years ago, I began my work as an organizer on my college campus and community on issues like fair trade, housing, labor, or access to higher education. Very recently, my work in electoral politics have caused me to almost burn out several times. I have even gone so far to question my happiness and whether this purpose actually constitutes real "social justice".

Lucky for me, my purpose down in Memphis was to attend a conference called "The Dream Reborn" in order to revisit Dr. King's vision of broad economic and social equity for all people. The conference had a twist, bringing organizers, activists, scholars, and policy wonks together to share ideas and develop plans around generating a green economy strong enough to lift people out of poverty, providing good jobs to areas that need it the most. There were many inspirational people at the conference, but what impressed me the most was how many of the lesser known folks were already putting forward new, innovative, and creative models of solving environmental problems in their community. These people came from low-income, communities of color where necessity became the mother of invention, not just to address the growing climate and environmental crisis, but the burdgeoning economic crisis on all fronts.

Don't get me wrong, it's not that I've heard this all before. I've had Environment Maine telling me that transit is the new wave; I've had some of my best friends say that if we don't solve the environmental problems right now, then we won't have a future to begin to address other social inequities. But frankly, as a person coming from several marginalized communities where I hear that their positionality is the most affected by injustice, I can barely stand to hear how one issue can begin to solve all of our problems. (I affectionately call this the "oppression olympics" where race, gender, and class battle it out--leaving those who are on the disempowered side of it all, no room to join.)

What makes this discussion different is that poor people, people of color, and women aren't being told that the environment is an issue, we are the ones leading it. And they're integrating environmental sustainability with addressing social justice. I left the conference with new ideas about how to continue this work in my state and community, and even better with the growing budget crises, how to make this dream of a green economy fundable and sustaining. I know that the 16 year-old in me that weekend, left feeling proud of where I was and what I am doing. I do the greatest kind of work in the world: I strive to broaden our practice of democracy and leave our community better than I found it.