$5 proves you care

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"Oakland is my home: there's too much killing going on." Jay had stopped to read the white banner, slung between a row of recycling bins along Lakeshore Ave. The pictures beneath it are sadly familiar to anyone who has lived in Oakland for at least a year...the homicide spread of the Oakland Tribune (complete with names and pictures) for the last few years.

It was a strange sort of contrast, the California blue sky, brilliant and perfect like Crayola makes colors, cloudless. The sun shone down brightly, gently warming me in my jeans and t-shirt, the breeze whispering across Jay's legs.

"Do you have someone on this list?" an older black man with a few wrinkles and a speckling of gray walked toward us and nodded his head toward the sign.

"I don't," I responded, "but I work in violence prevention at a non-profit."

He didn't respond to that intersection of our missions but continued to speak. "I've lost too many people. I put this banner together myself, " he paused for a moment, "with my own money. My son and I put together a CD and we're selling it for $5 so we can buy t-shirts and a billboard with the same message." He paused again. I waited for what I knew was coming.

"Do you want to buy a CD?"

Not right now, I answered and smiled.

"That's the problem," his voice changed from genial - if distracted - to harsh and his expression hardened as well. "White folks pass by here and hear what I'm doing and they give me $20. They don't even take a CD they say, 'give it to someone else' but black people- black people don't care. We don't donate. That's the problem."

At this point he had already raised my hackles, and he continued.

"I'm going to give you one of these CDs. You take it. Take it. That's the problem..." he continued to mutter. Jay had begun rummaging through his wallet just as the man began his diatribe - but having nothing smaller than a $10 he'd declined to hand over he pasted a bland smile-like expression on his face and took the CD I refused to accept.

Livid.

I was cursing mad.

Who the hell was this man to tell me what I cared about? To lump me into a category of mythical people who don't care about Oakland because I don't want to fund his t-shirts and a billboard? Who wasn't even listening to the work I was involved in that intersected with his mission?

I cursed all the way to Arizmendi. I cursed in Arizmendi. I cursed to Jay, whose bland expression shifted into amusement.

"Just because I don't want to buy into his theory of change all of a sudden I'm the problem?" I spat. "He doesn't know me. I am involved with this work every day and we do more than make t-shirts."

Jay laughed. I wasn't amused.

The situation reminded me of the charity trolls on the same stretch of sidewalk. They hold clipboards and try desperately to make eye contact and lure you into a conversation. "Can you spare $5 for [insert enormous international aid institution whose work I'm either unfamiliar with or not particularly impressed with - especially if they are hiring charity trolls]?"

"No thanks," I'm polite.

 Someone asked me once, in the same emotional guilt inducing way as the violence man, "you don't care enough to spare a few dollars?"

Immediately I was irritated. Never mind a bout with shisto and several bouts with malaria while I was working in the countries they have pictures of, but the implication is that I don't give a crap.

And it shouldn't matter. I know it doesn't matter. But it still gets under my skin. It still irks me. I'm still irritated that people have the audacity to think that the only way to help, to care, to make a difference, is their way.

On the violence front, I know the other component at work is trauma. Losing someone to homicide is traumatic and the ways trauma impacts people are often mistaken as character flaws rather than symptoms. It isn't unusual for people with trauma symptoms to be angry, irritable, distrustful, to be short with people who care about them or are on their side, to be sad. I don't know that that man has trauma symptoms but I wouldn't be surprised if he does. I should interact with him...with everyone really...as if they might. Give people the benefit of the doubt and deescalate wherever possible.

And I did...kind of. I didn't curse at him. I didn't even engage with him after he began his tirade about my lack of heart. Instead I walked away, cursing only loud enough for Jay to hear me. And when I finished cursing and venting to a bemused Jay I located my center again and was reminded that the man cares too...in his own way.

The Paper Principle

I view a lot of my world through a travel lens. I am prone to packing up and being gone for a while and I learned long ago that if I pack it I have to be able to carry it. That often means I only take a few books because books are heavy. With only a few books in tow, it isn’t unusual for me to be finished reading them by the time I land or shortly thereafter. That sucks. But physical books allow me to trade or barter with them. That rocks.

I don’t really do resolutions. I often make lists, but in my brain they are different from resolutions. My lists usually excite me. My first stint in Africa I had a to-do list that included things like seeing the big five and going to China. They were things I wanted to do not things I thought I should do. It is a small detail but that detail makes me eager to complete my list rather than feeling guilty if I don’t. 

This year I didn’t make a proper list but I decided I wanted to write and read more. “More” in terms of writing is still a little vague but I was specific in my reading: two books a month. 

It wasn’t unthinkable. My first week in my village when I was in the Peace Corps I read both Dr. Zhivago and Anna Karenina. I had a lot of time on my hands as I adjusted to my new home where I knew no-one and my job was on holiday until the New Year. Read so closely in proximity, those books are inextricably linked in my brain, depressing novels with snow where someone dies tragically. 

It didn’t stop there; I read Long Walk to Freedom, and the Power of One. I read Ishmael and the Alchemist. The list goes on. In Liberia I read the Gospel According to Biff (<3) Fountainhead and anything I could get my hands on. Anything. 

At various phases of my life I read like an addict because I love books. I love stories that unfold in unusual ways and learning about history through fiction or learning about humanity (or the lack of it) through non-fiction. I adore the written word. But somehow, in my adult years, comfortably situated with easy access to both libraries and bookstores, I read less.

Enter my 2014 to-do list. Two books a month. At least. And I’ve been so joyful in rediscovering books.

I’ll try anything, fiction or non-fiction, acclaimed or seemingly interesting.

Most recently I’ve finished the Fault in our Stars, Dwarf, and the Idealist. Now I’m in the midst of Mountains Beyond Mountains, Devil in the Grove, and Little Brother. I’m beyond the two books a month mark because I love to read. So it is easy. 

Rediscovering my utter adoration for the written word, I’ve been part of a lingering debate about books vs. eBooks. I am somewhat baffled by the often passionate debate because to me the paper or the kindle is simply a conduit. They are like bread while the unfolding stories are butter – I mostly eat one to make it easier to consume the other. Or maybe the better explanation is that they are both tools to the same end.

Meanwhile, I currently have 80+ books on my kindle. That rocks. But I have to be mindful if I’m reading near water. That sucks. Kindles have to be charged but handling 500 pages of Dune is cumbersome in paperback (let alone hardcover). There are always tradeoffs.

I love my kindle. It was one of the best gifts I’ve ever received and I use the hell out of it; but I don’t hate physical books. I still have a bookshelf with favorites I haven’t let go of.

Recently, a friend was urging me to buy paper books instead of eBooks to keep local bookstores solvent.

“They are community institutions. They employ people. You buying online is killing them.”

I think she expected a different reaction from me.

“Businesses have to innovate or they die.”

She shook her head but I was, I am, adamant. It isn’t that I believe that capitalism is the great equalizer or that businesses can do no wrong, but I do believe that innovation moves the world forward and trying to hold on to old paradigms – even for good and noble reasons – is short sighted. The typewriter didn’t win over the computer, the telegraph didn’t win over the telephone, and the stagecoach lost to the car. 

I say that even as I love to walk through bookstores and trail my finger over the titles, periodically picking up a book and thumbing through it to see if anything catches my attention between the covers. I say this even as I want small businesses, especially ones that build community, to succeed. I also say this as someone who loves the immediacy of downloading a book from the library onto my kindle and having it disappear on its own accord when the lending period has ended. 

Nostalgia won’t make the eBook go away.

 

The one other argument I hear about paper books over eBooks is censorship and control – very real concerns given governments and zealots’ continued attempts to control what people think and do. Books can be revolutionary, art can arm the masses with information or hope or a glimpse of the past that sheds light on a possible future. Books are powerful.

“E books are easy to alter,” someone told me, “there is no physical point of reference for the change. And it is true. When people decided Huck Finn was too offensive with its use of the historically appropriate use of the N word, and it was published with that adjustment, there were copies to compare it to. There was tangible evidence to contrast one against the other. Who hasn’t changed a document on a computer and lost the original content? I understand the fear that books will become those word documents, irrevocably changed. 

Still, when I think of the potential subversive nature of writing I also understand how important it is to get that message out. In the past people had to print copies (expensive) and distribute them physically. There are only so many places a person can go, there are only so many copies someone can print.  Meanwhile, Cory Doctorow (author of Little Brother) physically publishes his books and makes them available for (free) download.  What is more subversive than reaching the masses with your message – for free?

In all the ways that cyberspace can be manipulated, so too, can physical books. How many people have read the actual text of the bible without various translators’ interpretations of it? Whatever the vessel of dissemination corruption is possible. 

But the answer isn’t simply to cling to what we know, to what is familiar, even when other things emerge that compete or complement it. Neither is it to throw aside things that are familiar simply because there is a new novelty. Things have their places and their pragmatic uses and we use them according to need. Sometimes I need a power drill but sometimes a screwdriver will do. No argument necessary.