$5 proves you care

.

"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.