Oh to be young again! Rarely have I experienced this particular regret ... yet ...

In listening to the hearings of the Judiciary I'm finding myself chewing the draperies and licking the wallpaper!

Unfortunately, in the middle of the testimonies I received an email that was blasted by Rev. Paul Sawyer to a broad list of Unitarian-Universalists across the country. It sounded so "reasonable;" didn't fit my rebellious mood one bit. I wanted more outrage! Couldn't resist the temptation to respond from the place of anger that has been eating at me here where there is little distraction given the fact that I'm home from work with Dorian suffering from a severe upper respiratory infection. Dorrie is developmentally-disabled so that the level of conversation is somewhat wanting. I was in no mood for "reasonable!"

So-saying, I sent off a flippant reply -- blasting it to the entire mailing list -- and felt better for a few minutes there.

In no time at all came a cautionary reply from a former president of the UUA, with more than a hint of annoyance and a curt bid for patience and fortitude on my part; inciting more resistance and defiance from a little ole lady who's earned her stripes and isn't ready to back off one iota.

How on earth can he or anyone know that I'm speaking from a body of experience that does little to encourage a rational response to an irrational world?

1. I was born an African-American woman to a world that appreciates neither.
2. Was 27 years-old when my slave ancestor died at 102 (whom I knew), so slavery is no abstraction but a living-breathing continuing factor of my being.
3. Lived through a young adulthood scarred by Jim Crow and blatant racial segregation after a childhood of relative acceptance (WWII migration into California),
4. Lived for 20 years as the mother of a young black family in an (all-white) California suburb where fighting for rights was both personal and collective, and sometimes perilous.
5. Raised an openly gay son to adulthood only to lose him to his inability to survive that world of physical abuse, social rejection, and alcoholism into a thinly-veiled suicide.
6. Spent 10 years as a university faculty spouse of a European professor -- and learned new levels of discrimination.
7. ...then another ten or so years as a social activist and black merchant in a welfare community followed by another ten living and working in the belly of the beast ...
8. ...as a field representative to one then another of two powerful members of the California State Assembly.
9. I'm still working fulltime with racial discrimination a continuing factor in my everyday existence. I'm working with the National Park Service in a newly-created park that enshrines Rosie the Riveter/Home Front of WWII, another era of overwhelming racial segregation. The sensitivity with what such enterprises must be approached is critical to our not supporting that which we have outlived, painfully, as a nation. I'm fine-tuned in ways that most are not, I'm sure, but have a sense of being quite able to work with those elements in ways that serve the greater cause of unity with a team of people who are sensitive to the needs and make every day worth rising for.

Having said all that; it felt right to express my impatience with the charade that I'm seeing on CSPAN this day. Those who are clearly challenging this appointment and demanding direct answers to direct questions are comforting to witness. The patronizing drooling cheek-patting Alito supporters on the Judiciary are infuriating and give me that familiar old feeling of being the only grownup in the room. I want to shake these powerful men until their teeth rattle and their wigs fall off!

Maybe demanding that room be made for those of us who've lived differing realities is not "reasonable." But, to be an aging grandmother who will leave behind progeny who will inherit this awfulness does little to encourage a rational response. I've given much and sacrificed much pride in the interest of social progress. Now age has brought a sense of urgency that will not be denied. There's no time to do it over. There isn't the time to try to convince those not already on the path -- so -- as it was during the Black Revolution of the Sixties -- I'll trust my anger to those with whom it may have some effect. The silent promise of our nation's founding documents plus those of a denomination where much of the work has already been done is seductive, indeed, and tempts me to continue to prod and poke ever in the hope that -- just a little nudge here or there ... (we've come so close at times in the past).

But patience wears thin, and voices become harsh and rasping as years go by and ... .

and ... time will not permit hesitation if my grandchildren and yours are to inherit the benefits of the just society we've worked and fought so hard to achieve, and for which so many are continuing to die.

Photo: Mel and Betty Reid (moi) photographed in front of the Oaks Baseball field in Emeryville. At that time he was playing for the Oakland Giants professional football club (circa 1943).

Discrimination in the labor unions interview (KPFA) ...

Appeared at Pacifica's flagship station late on Sunday afternoon for the agreed-upon interview. The interviewer was held up elsewhere and I found myself with an hour's delay before we could begin the work. Maybe it was during that time that I lost the intensity I needed in order to fulfill my self-expectations.

It was interesting to find myself here -- with others waiting to tell their stories. I didn't know quite what to expect, but to find myself taken to an upper studio to be not only audiotaped but in front of a camera for videotaping was something I wasn't prepared for. I'd not worn makeup (except for a little darkening of eyebrows that have mysteriously begun to disappear(!), and a little blush on cheeks. Womanly vanity would have dictated some thought be given to the shape of my neckline or earrings, or something ... .

The interviewer asked reasonable questions but I couldn't find resonance within myself so the words felt dead leaving my lips. It's all beginning to feel warmed-over now -- too-oft-repeated, and I felt a little embarrassed to be here at all. Not sure why that is. The truth is surely worth expressing and the history lived by those in our age group is fast-disappearing into a past that was tumultous at times -- and surely worth making note of. We are the carriers, the grios of our personal histories and those histories express universals -- we're not as different as our egos might suggest so -- in a way -- my story is one related to all stories of these decades.

Maybe it's the differences between written and spoken words that best explain my reactions to the experience at the studio. It was the last entry here about the Bancroft Library interview in this journal that made me aware of those differences. Is this the way this will sound -- that will go out over the airwaves next Monday to casual listeners? Will the words spill over themselves in a torrent of meaningless noise? Am I not far more comfortable here writing in a proper sequence where these symbols of meaning can't get lost in the utterance of them?

Maybe I'd far rather write ... yet there is an awareness that there is some arresting quality that I sense in the audience when I speak the words. Wish I better understood ... . What is the "x" factor that I'm missing?

There is the memorable experience of speaking before the audience at the National Women's History Project conference at Mills College last summer. It effected me profoundly -- and apparently did the same for those listening.

Maybe it is truth that has a life of its own -- and that the carrier is only incidental to that. I truly don't know... .

Photo: Speaking at a Starr King School for the Ministry commencement at the Oakland UU Church while serving as a member of the Board of Trustees.

The Bancroft Library Oral History interviews ...

After writing that last post I spent much of the afternoon reading back through the binder that holds the oral history done in October of 2002. I found the affirmation I was looking for -- some place in the re-telling of my life story that confirms a high place. I noticed immediately the huge difference between the written and spoken word. There is little coherence -- the words spill over themselves in the telling. Interesting:

2-00:1506:
Wilmot (interviewer)

So when you were in high school, do you have any memories of teachers who especially influenced you? You told me that at one time you were reading a lot, I'm wondering ---

Soskin:
This one teacher would light up. I could see his face light up when we'd meet in the hall and he would ask me challenging questions. And to this day, I can remember a long exciting debate in his public speaking class -- about euthanasia -- and I remember that the kids went off -- as people do -- into that fine line between euthanasia, murder -- the risk of people being intentionally eliminated. I remember raising my hand and waving it wildly to get his attention and having him ignore me for a long time and knowing that he knew that I knew but that it wasn't time yet to let my comment into the room. And I was aware, even as -- I guess I was a sophomore at the time -- I can remember being -- having a sense of being on the same level with this teacher -- because somehow we both knew that I knew. Also that I was cooperating with his game about not saying it yet, and finally toward the end of the debate of having him--or maybe it wasn't a debate but rather a discussion -- and having him point to me so that I could say, "...but you're no longer talking about euthanasia. You're talking about murder," and having him grin and say (finally!) "Ah-ha!" And having this sense for the first time of being at an adult's intellectual level and how freeing that was for a kid. I looked for these moments in time with my own kids; those moments when they hit something that we could relate to as equals; that were new for me and breakthroughs for them. I wonder sometimes -- in teaching -- how often people are aware of how great that is when you hit it? Mr. McLaughlin was probably the only high school teacher besides my drama teacher that I remember now. I'd know him today were I to meet him in the hallway. I remember her because she was too fearful of criticism from parents if she allowed me to play Maria in Maxwell Anderson's Winterset with a white male student playing the lead. She kept me in after the bell rang to apologize for her lack of courage but lauded my reading of the scene.


Found myself grinning silently as I read this today -- realizing that my face had softened and that somewhere inside that little girl still has a sense of knowing ... and that most of that comes through intuition -- a kind of sixth sense that came into the world with me. The confirmation for even the most seemingly outrageous and risky civil actions comes from that place inside. The only time I feel lost is when the world crowds out the sounds of my own heartbeat... the drumbeat to which I've always marched .. even when I can't see those who march with me.

Since it begins to appear that there are some other logical folks out there helping to hold up the sky -- I'm off to visit the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art with Tom for an afternoon of soul-restoring ...

Will report on my state of mind and heart later this evening. Have other ideas for just how I might do that. It came to me just before sleep. There are times when the only answers are inside, but can usually be accessed through some outside stimulus. Walking through the art galleries ordinarily takes care of part of it, but I think I'll spend the latter part of the day reading back through the transcripts of the oral history the university's Bancroft Library sent to me some time ago. I just may find some fragments of self therein that will re-direct me from this depression before it becomes too firmly-rooted to dispel without some hard work.

What is needed here is another Betty to bring forth -- to help to herd the rest of them into line toward some kind of inner peace. Reading through the transcript may turn up some parts of me that I've begun to lose touch with ... or I wouldn't be feeling such a sense of loss.

Do you think...?

Photo: This comes from somewhere in the late 80's, I think. This seems to have been a time of similar concern, doesn't it? Makes me wince to look into this face; a stark reminder of another place and time when the pain burst through to threaten my existence (see June 20, 2004 in the archives).

This arrived in today's mailbox ... just maybe ...

CALL TO ACTION
from the OFFICES OF OAKLAND CITY COUNCILMEMBER DESLEY BROOKS

Oakland Councilmember Brooks BACKS two-YEAR Moratorium on State Executions

- CITIZENS URGED to TAKE ACTION -

(Oakland, CA - January 4, 2006) The Oakland City Council voted unanimously to support Assembly Bill 1121 (AB-1121) which would impose a moratorium on carrying out any executions in the State of California until certain criteria are met, or, failing that, until January 1, 2009. The bill also stipulates that the state legislature consider all recommendations of the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice. The resolution was brought before the Council by Councilperson Desley Brooks.

One-hundred-twenty-two (122) people nationwide have been released from death row after being able to establish their factual innocence, six were Californians. Brooks said, “A civilized society should seek to ensure that no innocent person is ever executed, and should the state seek to impose the death penalty we should be absolutely certain that it is not done in an unjust or arbitrary manner.”

Over the last few years, serious concerns have been raised that the death penalty is not being applied fairly or accurately across the board to all death penalty eligible defendants. Many of these concerns have been prompted by revelations that innocent people in California have been convicted of crimes they did not commit, as demonstrated by new DNA technology, by documented racial and geographic disparities in the implementation of capital punishment in California, by erroneous eyewitness and false testimony, by prosecutorial and police misconduct, and by pervasive complaints about ineffectiveness of counsel in death penalty cases.

In late 2004, the California Senate established the bi-partisan California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice (“Commission”) to study and determine the extent to which California’s criminal justice system has failed in the past and why innocent people are being convicted, and sometimes executed, in this state. The Commission is required to make findings and recommendations for reform to the Legislature by no later than December 31, 2007.

Currently, there are 648 inmates on death row in California, more than any other state in the country. AB-1121 was authored by Assemblyman Paul Koretz (D-LA) and co-authored by Assemblymembers Sally Lieber and Mervyn Dymally.

The State Legislature is scheduled to vote on this matter early in the 2006 legislative session.

Councilmember Brooks also requests fellow elected officials to bring a support resolution before their respective jurisdictions, and that faith-based leaders forward letters of support to the state legislature.

Putting executions on hold can only happen with your help. Support the "California Moratorium on Executions Act" (AB 1121) by visiting www.aclunc.org, where you can easily and quickly submit a note to Governor Schwarzenegger and your state representatives. You can also stay in the loop by signing up to receive upcoming alerts on this issue.

Back to the prison gates and a growing sense of hopelessness ...

I'm not sure when it happened, but I found myself in a new place today ... perhaps heralded by the awful news of those trapped miners far below the earth; maybe by images on the news of nearby families suffering the storm-driven rising waters of the Russian and Napa rivers; continuing pictures of the devastation of New Orleans and of the many newly homeless newly deserted black families still wandering rootlessly in the wake of bureaucratic abuse of astounding proportions. For whatever reason, I found myself speechless today as the cameras and the microphones moved about as unobtrusively as possible during the vigil.

Paul Sawyer, Michael Delacorte, Joe Macdonald, and the others -- some whom I've met here before -- arrived at the agreed-upon hour, formed our prayer circle in the chill of a newly-gathering storm. Added to the mix was Fred Jackson, an old friend from North Richmond and a man who visited with Stan "Tookie" Williams in his last hours. He would speak of that at one point. It was cold. Raindrops pelted my face as I walked from my car on the narrow road to the prison gates. The sky was dark and grey and my spirits reflected the mood of the weather. There was little wind, only the occasional gust that was bone-chilling as it invaded every exposed part of my body that was unprotected against this untypical typical California winter series of storms. Even with the cameras watching, I found myself wiping my nose on the sleeve of my trenchcoat more than once. I didn't care. Our seasons are like our political and social climates; unpredictable -- ever-changing. Tomorrow could as well bring a springlike day with little hint that today ever happened. But today the weather was threatening and set the mood for an hour's worth of feelings I'd rather not have experienced.

The ritual was as always; about 18 stalwart protesters against the death penalty with assorted media people creeping around with their microphones and cameras. Two of the major television channels were present but there were no familiar faces among them.

A San Francisco poet who had been a part of the political Left (now "Progressive") Berkeley/San Francisco group to which both Paul Sawyer and perennial Berkeley city council candidate, Michael Delacorte, belonged had joined with us. He had come to read from the published writings of Clarence Ray Allen, the next candidate for execution. The works had been published in Italy and were read in both English and Italian. It was impressive poetry. I'm not at all sure what I expected, but surely not this lyrical and quite beautiful work. Ray Allen is otherwise known as "Running Bear." He is reported to be Native American, I believe, though didn't appear so in photos I've seen.

A Quaker woman in our circle spoke of "...the God in each of us that must be protected at all costs," and of how "... this redemptive spirit can be accessed by each ...". Her words sounded naive; out of step with the severity of the moment. I thought of Stan Williams and found myself wondering if, Allen, this legally blind and disabled man had found the same redemption in his prison life? Wondered if he, too, had experienced the isolation of solitary confinement and if his poetry was a reflection of the experience? I don't even know what he did to have been convicted -- a fact that had escaped me until that moment. Strange. I still don't know. Only the fact of capital punishment done in my name is of consequence, and the fact that I know that we are all diminished as we allow it to go on.

We must separate out for all time those who would do us harm. Life without the possibility of parole. That I know. That killing in order to deter killing simply makes no sense to me. That I protest against, and it is that which brought me to stand in the cold gray harshness of San Quentin this day.

But as I listened to each -- after Paul Sawyer opened the proceedings in his eloquent pulpit style -- and after Joe had sung his song taken from something he'd found having to do with chain gangs -- only when those around the circle began to testify did I discover that I'd lost something along the way. Normally I would have been listening with a part of myself while pulling together the words that I might share. I usually waited until many have spoken so that I would speak only if my thoughts had not been expressed by someone else. Today it was different. I listened intently. I felt no urge to speak. It was as though I were coming from another place and that I'd lost the sense of relevance. Was it the experience of Stan's execution so recently lived through? What had that done to my resolve?

I said nothing. Absolutely nothing. Was this coming from a sense of hopelessness? Will I spring out of this into some new level of understanding? Had I finally given up? Have I finally lost my sense of relevance? Is this then what getting old feels like?

The drive home was uneventful except for a continuing sense of nothingness ... a deadness.

Then it hit me as I descended from the Richmond-San Rafael bridge -- and drove alongside the huge Chevron refinery on Richmond's shoreline. It was that my frame of reference was so long -- attenuated by the years -- that I see that monstrosity of a prison as having every prisoner of every cell on death row predetermined into the system. I see the places where the Ship of State might have been turned around from this path of self-destruction now buried so far into the past -- that we can no longer see those relationships that might have made us sensitive to the little tributaries, the coves, the safe harbors that would have permitted the space and time to make the adjustments -- the fine-tuning in our course -- that would have allowed us to save ourselves as a nation, and as the hope of the world.

Just as I see Oliver North and the other Iran-Contra co-conspirators as the co-creators of the Crips and the Bloods, I see the inevitability of our young men of color having to become a part of a leaderless revolution misnamed "crime in the streets" for their own survival. I see an entire industry born of the drug wars and the dependency of so many professionals in law enforcement now thoroughly enmeshed in the trials, convictions, and warehousing of those now caught in an underground drug economy that cannot be denied. The profits are too great.

It felt today as if we were dealing with symptoms and that those entrapped in this death ritual will never escape because there is no logic to appeal to.

Today it feels as if we've lost this battle, or, that the outcome will have to be achieved by others. I no longer have any sense of control over a system gone mad -- it was an illusion that I ever could have effected change. I knew that, of course, but knowing didn't prevent the need to act as one of the responsibilities of being human.


There was a familiarity about the feelings. I felt this dispair at least once before -- standing beside the road leading to the Port Chicago Weapons Station. I'd joined the small band of Quakers who were protesting the loading of ammunition being shipped to the Vietnam war front. I knew no one on that line. Had decided the night before to join them after reading of their protest in the local newspaper.

It was a horrifying experience! As otherwise ordinary white suburban families drove by us in their station wagons, grinning parents jabbing middle fingers toward us while driving as close to the protesters as possible -- without actually hitting us. They'd yell obscenities and laugh as they taunted us, and all to the delight of their laughing children. I was terrified! I firmly believed in the constitutional right to protest and/or to engage in civil disobedience -- always expecting to pay the consequences of my actions. This, I was to later learn, was the highest form of ethical behavior according to the Kohlberg Harvard study. In those moments I was acting on conscience, only, and learning where my limits were.

At one point I saw an African American youth -- standing just a few feet behind the lines and obviously as much a stranger to the (all white) Quakers as I. I seriously doubted that he would have known their tenet of pacifism. I saw him slowly draw a knife from under his shirt. I figured that he was preparing himself to defend us -- and I knew that I, alone, had seen the knife. The reason being that -- unlike the others -- I'd not held my ground on the road as the cars shaved dangerously past us -- but had stepped back in fear -- so only I saw his defensive act. I'd not been armed by the godliness of the Quaker belief system so was as defenseless as this boy.

A few minutes later the huge munitions trucks began to arrive. The sign carriers held their ground. I couldn't, but turned and ran as fast as I could to climb into my car and tearfully drive away from the scene in disgrace! I'd never felt so much a failure. I couldn't find the "right" in the picture; couldn't make sense of what I was seeing. I knew that I wanted to help to end the war, but since I'd never had to live through one, I truly didn't know what a war was. I did know what a truck with an evil-grinning driver was. I feared trucks! I could feel the searing hatred in the faces and the voices of those families -- and I couldn't escape the feeling that in some strange way it was I who was causing the rage and the contempt that was all around me. The love and patriotism of the Friends were over-ridden by the hatred their acts of dedication to principle inspired.

There was something of that experience in what I saw today. What? Was I again yielding my place at the roadside in the face of fear? I'm not yet sure, and I may not get to figure this out in my lifetime; not with what lifetime I have left. But I do know that when the logic disappears, hope is diminished. Those to whom the appeals must be made are far away where the logic in our simple acts of protest and defiance cannot be seen or heard. These peaceful logical voices will be silenced by the cacophony of sound bytes and the kaleidoscope of other atrocities in faraway places where life has been so cheapened that our precious war dead are now being shipped home as freight!

Has our nation lost its soul ... ?

And today I'm feeling some unaccustomed dispair, while hoping against hope that others will maintain while I try to pick up the pieces ... .

Photo: Country Joe MacDonald. We met in 1965, before he wrote "We're all gonna die rag!" and Woodstock happened. We shared songs as we wrote them some afternoons in my home in Walnut Creek. He'd just returned from a tour of duty in the navy.

New connections ... newly discovered writers, poets, singers, and activists among those who will follow ...

Young Zena and Yaminah have recently entered from stage left to take their places on that continuum of Reid, Allen, Charbonnet, Parker, Galt, and Moody, "woman lives". The succession goes on as the matriarchs yield the life force to a new generation. Find myself wondering if Mammá or great aunt Alice or great great grandmother Celestine thought about such things in their final years? Did their Catholicism continue to answer all of their questions or were they, too, left with "dead is dead" as it has been for both writer Joan Didion ... and for me? Is this, then, the kind of awareness that develops as time begins to wind down? Am I alone in this?

Maybe Zena Allen's singing and composing ability and Yaminah's budding political activism feel just a bit like extensions of my own life -- and therefore provide a sense of ... what? I knew neither of them until the past few weeks -- so there surely could not have been any influences imposed on their social development -- at least not from me. But I will try harder now to find old tapes of my songs and will offer them to Zena to add to her repertoire. Perhaps that is the "why" of my music, after all. The songs were written for some purpose, though that seemed only serendipitous until now.

We met at her grandmother, Maybelle's, memorial service. She grew up on the east coast, the daughter of Prof. Ernest Allen of Amherst and a mother whom I've never met. Another of the Allen-Reid connections of which there were four such for these large families. Wonder how these bloodlines will play out over the next generations?


Last night brought a phone call from UU minister, Paul Sawyer, who has returned from his meetings at Cambridge -- that jarred me out of the lethargy of holidays and back into the awareness of the pending execution of the oldest prisoner on death row. It's scheduled to take place very soon now. The clock is moving steadily toward another confrontation with the governor's office with another deathwatch to live through. Maybe clemency will be granted this time, and maybe the re-examination of the efficacy of the death penalty as a prelude to the hearing of Assemblymember Mark Leno's bill will gain support. This man's age, poor physical condition, blindness, and the fact that he will be brought to the death chamber in his wheelchair should make a statement about the ritual of death that we'll again have to live through. There could hardly be a more bizarre case upon which to hang this awesome penalty.

This man has become a published poet while serving time. Some of his work will be on hand to be read by those of us who will gather for this new vigil. I'll meet Paul and Country Joe MacDonald and others at the prison gates on Tuesday at noon where there will be yet another press conference and the beginning of a new action in the hope of stopping state executions until we've had a hearing on the Leno bill in the new legislative session sometime in January.

Last Friday, December 29th, would have been the 52nd birthday of Stanley Tookie Williams, had he lived. Barbara Becnel and those who continue to work to clear his name met that day on the steps of the capitol in Sacramento to declare this date evermore as "Redemption Day" and have vowed to meet to memorialize his life annually as they work to bring an end to capital punishment to this state and, hopefully, to the nation. This, done in Stan's name, will have given meaning to his troubled life and senseless death.

It has been a troubling year in many ways, has it not?

...with any luck, the rains may cease ... .

Photo: Newly discovered young cousin, Zena Allen, singer songwriter born on the east coast but currently seeking a career in music in Los Angeles. Her father is Prof. Ernest Allen of Amherst in Massachusetts.

Displaced New Orleans Creoles -- newly "placed" ...

Finding myself wondering -- each time I see a newscast that includes an update on those made homeless by Katrina -- whether they know that life will go on. That, in time, the world will stabilize and some sense of order will be restored. It was so with those of us made homeless in the great hurricane in New Orleans in 1927.

Though only a child of six with little sense of the trauma being experienced by my parents, I am dimly aware still of throbbing, palpable, change that occurred as our new lives began in a strange place called Oakland with little to remind us of "home."

However, New Orleans was gradually replaced by a place where lagniappe and soft-shelled crabs and oyster loaves and coffee with the distinctive aroma of chicory, and french bread as light as air, and lost bread, and cream cheese floating in rich sweet cream in little cartons, and early morning improvised songs of street vendors hawking watermelons, persimmons, and blackberries from pushcarts ... all too soon forgotten by the children. The gumbo and jambalaya and head cheese came with us with little brown-paper packages of filé following in suitcases of travelers who made it back home over time; mostly porters who "ran on the road". There was little else for African Americans (Creole or no) to do in the West. We provided the service workers -- or no jobs at all. It was, after all, the preliminary to the Great Depression years. It was the mid-to-late Twenties.

It was a big night when Papa George came home from the Oakland Athletic Club where he waited tables for (white) VIPs at big parties. We little ones would be allowed to get out of bed -- late though it might be -- to share in the paper party hats, tiny sandwiches, balloons, and sweets that would arrive with him wrapped carefully in dishtowels and hidden under his overcoat. It doesn't take much to make a celebrant of a child. New Orleans had none of this.

Our parents met at novenas at parish churches, or, in mother's social club, "The 500," Mom's social club named for the whist-like card game they played frequently in a round-robin of hostessing.

I look at those years now in retrospect as if I, too, had experienced them as an adult. What rises for me are the kaleidoscopic events that brought such profound social change to my own life, and to the lives of those around me in subsequent years.

My parents died years ago, taking with them all of the pain of the resettlement. I cannot speak to that. But it feels ironic to me that I'm now working with the National Park Service in the process of enshrining a period in history (World War II) that was also marked by racial segregation and that, despite all of the intervening years, Katrina's shocking exposure of the wounds; the scars, the degradation of racism that has revived the fears and the shame of sins long thought forgiven and atoned for.

It's the scabbing over then re-infecting of the awful period of the Civil War and Reconstruction -- never quite resolved ... only dormant for periods ... ever to be revived then matastacize; to go into temporary remission in an endless progression toward ever-freshening rejection until we stop still and take the time to speak the terrible words of hate aloud; do the incantations; burn the incense, bay at the full moon; meditate on our sins; make appropriate apologies; pray to whatever God deemed powerful enough to save us; deal with reparations; then to do whatever it takes to fully acknowledge the awfulness we've lived through in our always tragic and tainted shared unaddressed national history of shame!

It is quite impossible to not see a re-living of the separation of families now spread far and wide as creating yet another diaspora for black peoples. It takes very little imagination to not see a replay of my own ancestors being sold off the slave blocks -- husbands, wives, and children sold to landowners widely separated -- never to be reunited. Katrina aided by an uncaring bureaucracy has mirrored the nightmare, and each day of uncertainty for those still scattered throughout the states makes a mockery of our nation's quest for replicating this "Democracy" through the known world.


Maybe that's why a discovery this morning of mother's "500 Club" snapshot meant so much. It is a testimony to the determination of women to rebuild broken lives; to survive in the face of what appears to be irreplaceable losses.

Despite all, we have survived, and against great odds at times. My own life attests to that truth. Today's families will find ways to do likewise. I truly believe that. But one would have hoped that more progress would have been made after so many years of struggle. There is comfort in the possibility that the percentage of "the Enlightened" has grown exponentially, and that one day soon we'll hit a tipping point and be saved from ourselves. There was surely evidence in the numbers of people who responded with shock and horror at the callousness of the administration's first responders in the wake of the great tragedy of Katrina. We could see it in the faces of those who entered the inundated city as jaded journalists but who've since returned to deliver the updates as concerned citizens demanding change.

Maybe this time ... .

Photo: Back row; Albertine ?, Marie Gaudette Allen, Ruth Smith, Mabel Lashbrook Allen, Annabelle LeBeouf Therence; in front, Lucille Towns. Some of the members of the "500" social club.

Yet another Christmas ...

Dorian and I de-decorated the tree this morning; the earliest deconstruction on record. Its needles were already shedding badly when we brought it home on Christmas Eve. Probably left the forest about three months ago, and -- despite the fading green still visible in its needles -- it surely died soon after the cutting. It seemed fitting to remove the time-collected holiday fancies from its branches and lay it to rest.

Everyone was gathered around the hearth (except for Rick), but the pain of his early death has lessened now and feels more like a resolution to a life of torment than the tearing away of one I still miss, though the missing is less active than before. In place of the pain and guilt that invariably accompanies the loss of a son, I'm now experiencing a deeper appreciation for those still with me.

I worry about my 18-year-old grandson -- but know that he'll eventually survive a troubled adolescence into young adulthood because he is so loved by us all. "Ms. Hermione Ginglehopper" looks reasonably well-launched with a steady love and a brand new Yorky-Maltese puppy, Sophia. The two little ones, Alyana and Tamaya, are vibrant and consuming life in beautiful ways right now -- they're learning and growing and adoring ... I have such pride in them all.

Bob is quiet -- there was little time to catch up with his life, but I'm reading his thoughts and finding a new appreciation for his life on the horse ranch in San Juan Baptista now that he, too, is blogging. He brought me a very contemporary gift only possible through technology. It's an introduction to a philosopher he's discovered -- he'd taken the time to download several hours of a very special documentary produced by the BBC. It reminded me of the day long ago when he gave me a book he'd discovered saying, "...this book changed my life, Mom." It was something about "...a small planet" (can't recall the exact name but it had to do with his introduction to organic foods somewhere along the way in his travels, I believe." At any rate, I then introduced him to the "Adele Davis Cookbook," with the comment. "This is the book that changed my life." Now we'll exchange philosophers, and it feels good -- appropriate.

David and I will work together on getting Reid's (our store) online early in the new year, and that feels good. It's been something I've wanted to do with him for years but the pressure of running the family business while a single parent fathering four children always proved too consuming for new ventures. We may have finally reached the place where we can do that now.

Christmas seemed bittersweet this year. It surely is related to so many deaths over the past 3 months; some near, some distant -- but all traumatic and reminders of the fragility of life.

Enough of that:

Received the preliminary draft (ready for release) of the March 2006 recipients of those women being honored by the National Women's History Project, "Community Builders". I'm listed as "Betty Reid Soskin, Cultural Anthropologist" for want of a title, I suppose. Made me feel more important than I did yesterday -- and maybe that's okay. Not sure what I would have called myself had I been asked.

Also had a call from the "Labor Something Something of San Francisco" asking if I would agree to being interviewed for a radio (KPFA) show on racial discrimination in the labor movement, and -- while we were at it -- would I be willing to serve on a panel on the same subject next July? Next July??? Laughed and told him that I don't buy green bananas these days ... despite the fact that my bank has granted me another 30 years on the last refinance of my condo!

Didn't realize until that exchange that I really am beginning to have some doubt about longevity.

Maybe it is all those deaths ... .

Photo: David's daughters, Alyana and Tamaya.

All things in their own time ...

Maybelle's memorial service was touchingly beautiful; but it was the living left in her wake who served to set my legs under me again -- full balance has returned -- and an appreciation of the rightness of the succession of life, in an odd way, brought peace. The children in that room were amazing.

Today I attended the 58th annual Charlie Reid's Christmas Party at Shields-Reid Community Center -- a center named in his honor years ago.

Charlie was my first husband's uncle, a man revered in Richmond by all who knew him. He was an icon who effected the lives of the children of North Richmond for many years. He is a legend who still walks these streets and is held up as the paragon of virtue, especially to non-white children. He was the playground director, disciplinarian, baseball, basketball, and football coach, grounds-keeper, benefactor for whatever children needed (including parenting). There is a touching videotape of Charlie and his work that is occasionally shown on the local cable channel. He has provided the model for Reid young men over the years, and is the source of great pride.

At a meeting I attended last week (the Main Street Initiative), it was interesting to see that in the draft of a mural that is in the planning stages for the intermodal train, BART, and AC Transit bus station, Charlie is featured prominently among the many scenes of Richmond life. It will be a 6'x30' montage that will immortalize this loving man who meant so much to so many. There will be lots of bits of civic life shown, but our family will see only Charlie.

Fifty-eight years ago Charles Reid gave the first Christmas party that featured a black Santa. He wanted African American children to experience the holiday love and giving within the context of their own lives and culture. He was far ahead of the black consciousness movements.

His family has continued the tradition now for all these years since his death several decades ago, and has formed a nonprofit that collects toys that are given away each year to over 3000 children of every age, color, or race. Gifts are distributed from one until four o'clock on an afternoon near Christmas to anyone who turns up. Today the lines were shorter since the weather was stormy, but they came as always, and the two Santas (one black and one white) were wonderful.

There was caroling and dancing and a cheer-leading exhibition by our prize-winning team. The kids who participate in the drill team marched to their own drumming. Proud parents took photos of gleeful kids, and Christmas was suddenly here in living color and palpable love!

...and just about in time, too. I needed to be lifted out of the awfulness of so much that has transpired over the past few weeks.

Tomorrow I'll go with Tom and his family to visit Union Square in San Francisco -- then to Japan Town -- and finally to Tadich's in the financial district for supper. San Francisco's skyscrapers are outlined in lights now, and there's nothing quite like Gump's windows to wake the spirit and turn on the internal holiday glow!

I still can't bear to share the most recent conversation with my devastated friend, Barbara Becnel. She is still facing what will be the equivalent of a state funeral for Stanley Tookie Williams in Los Angeles on Tuesday. I can hardly imagine the pain she must be having to live through. But she has a family in Southern California and won't be alone through it all ... .

As a final irony -- Did I think to tell you that -- Stanley Williams was executed on the birthday of Jamie Foxx -- the actor who played him in the film "Redemption," and who visited him in his final hours?

Photo: One of the dancers from the neighborhood. The second pic is self-explanatory, but do notice the racial diversity. There was an interpreter to be sure that the Latino families were brought along. This is how the world should look everywhere. (Click on the thumbnail for a full picture of the room. It's wonderful!)

This is the Stanley Tookie Williams whom I met and mourn ...

The Apology

Twenty-five years ago when I created the Crips youth gang with Raymond Lee Washington in South Central Los Angeles, I never imagined Crips membership would one day spread throughout California, would spread to much of the rest of the nation and to cities in South Africa, where Crips copycat gangs have formed. I also didn't expect the Crips to end up ruining the lives of so many young people, especially young black men who have hurt other young black men. Raymond was murdered in 1979. But if he were here, I believe he would be as troubled as I am by the Crips legacy.

So today I apologize to you all -- the children of America and South Africa -- who must cope every day with dangerous street gangs. I no longer participate in the so-called gangster lifestyle, and I deeply regret that I ever did.

As a contribution to the struggle to end child-on-child brutality and black-on-black brutality, I have written the Tookie Speaks Out Against Gang Violence children's book series. My goal is to reach as many young minds as possible to warn you about the perils of a gang lifestyle.

I am no longer "dys-educated" (disease educated). I am no longer part of the problem. Thanks to the Almighty, I am no longer sleepwalking through life.

I pray that one day my apology will be accepted. I also pray that your suffering, caused by gang violence, will soon come to an end as more gang members wake up and stop hurting themselves and others.

I vow to spend the rest of my life working toward solutions.

Amani (Peace),

Stanley "Tookie" Williams, Surviving Crips Co-Founder,
April 13, 1997


Note the date on this letter. It was written after a seven year period in solitary confinement, a period during which he educated himself in the silence and isolation of that experience and found personal redemption.

There is some need to recall the context in which the Crips were formed. Investigative reporter, Gary Webb, of the San Jose Mercury News wrote a sensational series on the deliberate flooding of the East L.A. and Compton -- as well as other innercity areas with cocaine that provided funds with which to finance the Contras in the not-so-secret wars in South and Central America. The Reagan administration's cabal with the players Ashcroft, North, Negroponte, Rumsfeld, et al, brought together the forces that co-created the Crips and the Bloods. A fact conveniently forgotten in subsequent recollections of the period.

Though most of the revelations brought forth in those dramatic pieces proved out, Webb was demonized, lost his position at the newspaper, and eventually 'committed suicide.' All of this runs hard and deep and has been and will continue to be largely ignored in the writing of the history of the times.

Read Tookie's apology again, and decide for yourself whether this was a man who would have submitted to the pressure to proclaim remorse for crimes that he did not commit -- even to influence the decision for clemency.

When I have the emotional stability to relate my first conversation with Barbara Becnel (yesterday) post- execution -- will do so. For the moment the feelings are simply too raw ... maybe tomorrow. It may be enough to say that the fight goes on; that she will clear his name; and that I won't accept her invitation to attend the huge memorial service being held in Los Angeles on Tuesday. Instead, I will continue to quietly work toward the goal of achieving the moratorium -- will join Paul Sawyer at the prison gates when he returns on January 10th to protest the next scheduled executions. I strongly suspect that there will be no more state killings, though 5 are scheduled over the next several months. A number of the bills now making their way through the legislative process will halt them all until we've had a closer look. Fewer of us now have the heart for this, I strongly believe, and that fact will continue to show up in the polls.

I will do this in his name.

I firmly believe that the state of California, in the name of us all, last night executed an innocent man ... .

My friend and Stanley Tookie Williams's stalwart supporter, Barbara Cottman Becnel, has vowed to spend the rest of her life proving his innocence. She was one of the five who witnessed his death by lethal injection. The process took 22 minutes. That, she will accomplish with the help of others who shared her (our) conviction of both his innocence and his redemption.

Yesterday, on his day of execution, after a long day of meetings connected with work, I was just about to leave for home -- heading for the elevator -- when a colleague followed us out to announce that, on a break, he'd learned from a radio report that the governor had ruled against clemency -- in a six-page letter. I was shocked and distraught -- and angry. Walked with another co-worker to the parking lot in silence, climbed into my car, and headed into the commute traffic of congested I-880.

I had another meeting scheduled at 5:30 to deliver a talk to the Main Street Initiative gathering, and had intended to drive over to San Quentin to join with others in awaiting the midnight execution despite my earlier misgivings. But, after detaching from the pain of the awful news for the drive back to Richmond -- holding it all in suspension through my talk before a group of community members -- my car headed for home with me at the wheel, passively, and made no attempt to enter the Richmond Parkway or head for the prison. I felt like an automaton -- alive but just barely.

Tried to reach Barbara on her cell, but got a message that her service was completely filled. I had no idea what I'd have said to her even if I'd gotten through ... surely she was devastated. She'd devoted the last ten years to saving this man and pressing for a moratorium on the death penalty -- and now it was over. The only chance left was the last minute appeal to the Supreme Court. News of that denial came within an hour after I reached home.

At around nine the telephone rang sharply through my empty apartment (couldn't bear to listen to radio or watch television) and there was my friend and vigil partner from the past week, Rev. Paul Sawyer, calling from Cambridge. It was only then that the tears came.

I told him that I was feeling guilty for not being with the thousands of others gathered at the gates, or, at least mentally standing with Barbara in the death chamber, but that I couldn't bear it! I only wanted the night to be over and some sanity to return. He was comforting, "...of course you couldn't. You've done enough. Truly. But we've only begun, Betty. I'll be back on January 10th to begin the next protest against the death penalty."

After a period of quiescence, with only 11 executions since the restoration of capital punishment in this state, three are scheduled over the next 2-and-a-half months. The Leno Assembly bill will be heard in January. How could this be? Wouldn't simple compassion suggest that these next two state-sponsored deaths be held off until the bill was heard? Should not the governor have been guided by that as well?

I will join Paul at the gates for the next -- then the next -- and for however many state killings it takes before a moratorium is granted and sanity returns. He will never know how much his call meant to me in those hours.

Why was I feeling such fear combined with the sorrow -- as though my world had suddenly become even more hostile than I'd sensed even yesterday? Suddenly this execution became an extension of all of the death and destruction in the world, and the governor an extension of those associated -- rightly or wrongly -- with natural disasters, and mad-made cruelties from Abu Graib and Guantanomo; to Iraq and Darfur. My world had become a terrifying place.

Stanley Tookie Williams will be exonerated posthumously. I'm certain of it.

May he rest in peace. By all reports, he left this life bravely and with forgiveness for those who failed to hear his pleas ... .

Amen.

Photo: Stanley Tookie Williams shown here in a photo that displays the post-transformation man of peace. The pictures used so widely in the media -- of the monstrous muscle-builder -- pictures were so fierce and fear-producing appeared to be deliberately distributed in order to support justification for his execution.

There are no words ...

only the pain of inexpressible sorrow.

Maybe tomorrow... .






Photo: Signs posted in the area where we gathered in protest to the execution of this innocent man. Barbara Barker is seen in the left picture - on Friday evening. She was packed for moving on, leaving others to man the barricades until the end. I've wondered about her ... in the hours after Stanley met his death, and whether she was alone when the news came ... .

Trying terribly hard to not think about the governor's decision ...

and writing about those feelings only increases the tension. Such thoughts when combined with the emphasis on death these past days (the three Reid sisters, Richard Pryor, Eugene McCarthy, the anniversary of John Lennon's, etc.) bear heavily on my sense of vulnerability. But I'm sure that I'm not alone with such feelings, and that the weight of these days will transition into the holiday spirit at some point over the next few days -- unless the decision is the one dreaded... .

It's so hard to understand why -- when so little is being done to alter the downward spiral of so many lives of young black men in the innercities; when the conditions that created the monster whom even Stanley Tookie Williams denounces (his former self) continue to go unaddressed and unabated and cloning murderer-producing internalized self-hatred reflected from an admittedly racist society ... . not sure how to finish this sentence, or, even to unravel it in order to make more sense ... . These days are filled with incomplete sentences and limited understandings ... .

Maybe what I want to say is that this man who rose from the absolute bowels of rejection and dispair in the bleak aloneness of solitary confinement -- rehabilitating himself in the process-- if he can be allowed to continue his life and his work to help to save other lives -- maybe ... .

My mind is disorganized this morning. The words won't come. Won't organize themselves into coherence ...

Yesterday I attended the annual Sharing the Spirit event at the East Bay Center for the Performing Arts. It lifted my spirits for a few hours. Last night I dressed in my finest to join others at the annual Senior Ball held in the beautifully-decorated downtown Convention Center. Yet I was home and in my pajamas, in bed with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a (Kaiser Permanente) cup of hot cocoa by nine. Listened to my bedside radio for hours when sleep wouldn't come ...

It's mid-morning now, and I'm off to attend a chamber music concert with Tom this afternoon. That will eat up more hours. We'll have dinner someplace interesting, shrinking the waiting time by a few more.

If it's not too late, I may drive over to the prison tonight for a visit with those who continue to hold the vigil, but without Rev. Paul Sawyer and peace activist Barbara Barker -- it will be different. With the time drawing near, the tension will be almost unbearable. Been here before to protest the death penalty when I didn't feel any particular connection with the prisoner about to be executed. This is so different from those times. So intense ... .

But, however it goes, I will meet Paul and the others back at the prison gates on February 12th when the next man is scheduled to die. He is a diabetic confined to a wheelchair and is also a person of color, though not African American. The following execution is that of a Latino man, scheduled for some time in March. It feels somehow that it should be unimportant to mention race in connection with these pendings state deaths, but with such a large percentage of those on Death Row being from the poor and the non-white population, it's unavoidable -- a part of the sad story.

Tomorrow I will write again. The decision may have come in and this awful teeth-grinding worrisome pain of waiting will have ended.

Still holding that strong sense that this life will be spared and that the decision for a moratorium will be enacted come the January session of the legislature.

I do have this formidable sense of intuition that has served my life so well ...

It will be so.

Photo: Lovely crystal clock, a gift from my co-workers. It bears the inscription taken from a painting on my bedroom wall, "Against the ruin of the world there is only one defense, the creative act!" The painting is by Clarise Bois and often followed me to hang in my offices here and there. It's back home now and hangs behind my bed.

"Death comes in threes" has new meaning this morning ... .

In less than three months, three sisters; Dorothy Reid Pete, Florence Reid Lewis, and yesterday, Maybelle Reid Allen, ceased to exist -- at least in this dimension. They died in their birth order as it should be -- with Maybelle being the youngest. All lived long and productive lives. All left grieving progeny and a legacy of warmth and love.

This morning I called David to tell him of Maybelle's passing -- he was very fond of her. About ten minutes later the phone rang again and it was he. "Are you okay, Mom?" Of course he would be concerned. These were my contemporaries. The edge was coming closer. His concern for my state of mind was surely understandable. In fact, I really hadn't reacted to her death as one being pushed closer to the edge of existence, but with the sadness of loss -- as might be expected. Hadn't really identified with death in the abstract except in a casual way, I guess. Though each leaving diminishes us all, and fear of non-existence is surely a factor in creating the preciousness of life that grows with each day now. I'm acutely aware of my mortality -- but not with the kind of dread that might be anticipated if I spent much time thinking about it. In these years I'm far more involved with valuing the time left, and using it well.

I suppose it would be more frightening if I could truly imagine non-existence. I can't. Tried hard to experience "The Void" in those days when trying so hard to understand the Tibetan Buddhist belief system -- in support of Bill. Nothing took me there. No amount of meditation techniques worked for me, including the one time that he convinced me to try -- to meditate after sharing a joint. Nothing. Either my resistance was too strong, or, my intellect over rode the effects. I simply don't have the power to imagine non-being. I only know, for sure, what is here and now, and the here and now has always been quite enough.

After cradling the phone I sat quietly for a few minutes. Was aware that I'd tossed off David's concern rather casually. "I'm too busy living to worry about dying," and, "I live each day as fully as possible have no intention of leaving anything to bury!" "I plan to be all used up." Maybe it was too lightly said ... I wondered if he was reassured?

Where does this confidence come from? I don't truly know. Denial? Maybe. Each day of life now I'm aware that on that very first day of life I entered an imperfect world and that I will one day -- surely sooner than I'd wish - - leave one. I know that. I'm also convinced that there is but one life and that we're all living it. I know that the power is in the living of it with intentionality -- no drifting by -- with responsibility -- but not without mistakes or brief trips up wrong pathways. Without them we could not possibly learn to make the corrections necessary to live more productively, or to develop empathy or compassion. Such attributes come from experiencing the full variety of human experience and learning from them and moving through. That's the life process. For some (like Stanley Williams) that process is deeper and more wildly traumatic. For others, like me, it is relatively problem free in comparison, but not without its share of pain and suffering, but manageable.

Though my beliefs are still ever-changing, at the moment I'm sure that each of us born into this life stream from whichever "tributaries," have the power to either enrich the collective existence or impoverish it. We had no choice about how we entered, and through whom, but how we use the time is for each to determine. Had I been born in the first centuries or the Middle Ages -- had I been born to wealth and privilege or a life of peonage -- I would be someone else. And in a way, I was. We all were. Maybe that "star stuff" that connects us all is what science has named DNA. I carry the DNA of slaves; Celestine of No Last Name, Leontine "Mammå" Allen Breaux, but also (from one fascinating possibility that turned up in my research), Sacagewea's son, Jean Pierre Charbonneau; and that French Lieutenant, Louis Charbonnet, who fought Toussaint L'overture in the Haitian Revolution and who later settled in New Orleans to begin the long line of Creole Americans who contributed to history in ways both large and small.

I have little belief in reincarnation per se, but I do have a strong sense of having blood connections to the lineage out of which I've come, and of the character of the lives that I will have influenced upon leaving. My immortality is in the children and grandchildren whose lives will have been marked with the quality of my own life, for good or ill -- and how they remember me -- as have the lives of Mammå, and Aunt Vivian, and Aunt Alice, and my imaginings about the Sacagewea connection, and my father, Dorson Louis Charbonnet, and his steadfast pride in family; all contributors to mine.

Nothing is lost, ever. At least not until the bomb is dropped and all life is obliterated from the planet. And, life will remain imperfect -- a laboratory for each succeeding generation to shape this wondrous collective existence through the living of it.

I truly believe that every day left on my Calendar of Destiny must continue to be lived fully and that the moment I stop -- I will be simply waiting to die. May I be blessed with a quick and relatively pain-free ending.

This is one of those days when I wish fervently that I believed in an afterlife and that Dorothy and Flossie have met and ushered Maybelle into their heavenly circle where, together, they will join the other Reid's who preceded them into eternity. And perhaps this is so.

Would that I, too, could believe ... .

Photo: Another picture of the lovely stained glass windows in the little Chapel at Sea Ranch. Spent some time this morning with eyes closed -- imagining myself there again -- recalling images of Maybelle and her family. She left to me the gift of a strong and loving friendship with her youngest son, who has become one of my closest and dearest friend -- across the generations.

Thursday, December 8th, another day to remember -- the anniversary of the death of John Lennon, the day after the anniversary of Pearl Harbor, and ...

the completion of a park project that Naomi (my co-worker) and I have been working on for weeks. We conducted the first of two planned Leadership Tours of the identified structures that form the widely-spread Rosie the Riveter/Homefront National Historical Park. It was a total success that brought together a cross-section of community leaders and townspeople in a spirited 4-hour adventure that -- as it should have -- taught us more than we've previously known before about this city and its people history. Our goal was to begin to increase the awareness that this is a host city and that its people will soon be living in an urban national park. Richmond is in the process of becoming the place where the nation and the world will come to learn of and reflect upon World War II, a seminal event in world history.

We'd leased a 28-passenger tour bus, filled it with local folk who knew every building on our route but who may have never put them together into what is now identified and congressionally designated an urban national park. We started out with coffee and bagels at city hall, then an exhibit of the artifacts collection; proceeded to the marvelous woman-designed Rosie the Riveter Memorial, then headed out to view many structures: The supermarket of the day, the Greyhound bus terminal, Galileo Hall, the Park Florist, Winters Building, Carquinez Hotel, Old Post Office, Mechanics Bank Building, Old Main Library now housing the Richmond History Museum, the Whirley Crane and SS Red Oak Victory Ship at Shipyard 3, Atchison and Nystrom Villages, The Maritime Child Development Center, the Kaiser Permanente Field Hospital (now a Mosque), and finally the beautiful newly restored Albert Kahn Ford Assembly Plant that will eventually house the Rosie the Riveter Park's reception center. We left the bus for an inside inspection guided by a representative of the developer. The tour wound up at the Harbormaster Office building on the shoreline for lunch and a discussion about what we'd visited and to elicit their suggestion for further tours.

I saw "the Park" quite literally forming before us. These were the oldtimers, some nonprofit reps; the education specialist from the East Bay Center for the Performing Arts, the project manager of the Macdonald Avenue corridor from the Redevelopment Agency staff; a woman from Point Richmond Neighborhood Council, an officer from the Police Athletic League; the president of the Main Street Initiative board and his wife, a pioneer dress shop owner; a community Activist from the Iron Triangle among others; plus our entire Park staff including interns and volunteers.

What surfaced was an almost fierce pride in their city as these structures began to evolve in their minds into the park. Naomi stood next the bus driver narrating what we were seeing and inviting comments -- a process that quickly evaporated as our busload of veterans of those historic times and long time residents began to takeover the telling. It was terrific! It was as if they were suddenly realizing what congress had given to us; that the mission of the National Park Service -- which is to tell the stories of the nation's history through the preservation of structures -- held great meaning now. That they were a critical element in that telling, and that we (our staff) would be the instrument through which that will happen.

As my job description suggests -- Community Liaison -- next steps were suddenly as bright as day. Can you imagine a series of bus tours that each carried a member of the district school board, a member of city government, two public school teachers, and the rest of the bus split evenly between elders and teens? Rather than a few outside experts boning up on the history of World War II and then conducting traveling lectures for the locals; we would put together 80-year olds with young people -- take them on the same tour -- and simply allow history to be transmitted live! by those who lived it. We don't have much time to take advantage of their presence -- but can you imagine the richness of such an experience? We might tape or film these events against the day -- and quite soon -- when we will no longer have access to that living history. I cannot imagine that funding could not be found for such a venture after yesterday's resounding success.

However, that was only Thursday from 8:30 to noon. By 12:30 I was off to join the vigil at San Quentin through two o'clock, then back to check email at my cubicle, and catch some impressions from the rest of staff on our morning bus tour. It was all enthusiastic.

Left for home around 3:00 to shower and get ready to be a guest at the Kaiser Permanente 60th anniversary celebration where -- with other survivors -- I was to be again "honored at" as a Rosie the Riveter. This would mean another celebratory coffee cup this time with "Thrive!" painted thereupon, a Rosie dogtag, a little plastic 60th Anniversary bracelet, a photograph with dignitaries, and then home by 8:00 and a final check-in to see what had happened in Sacramento and how the wind might be blowing in the clemency matters.

Today I'm at home -- to listen for word from the governor -- to rest up from yesterday's marathon - to absorb as much as possible from reflecting on events that are moving me much too fast through time ... and to get ready to drive out into the valley to a sanctuary with Tom who drove down yesterday for the weekend -- then to return to San Quentin for a sunset vigil -- if there has been no word from Sacramento on Stan's fate. I'll drive Paul Sawyer to the Oakland Airport for the red eye late in the evening since -- after a week of living out of his car at the prison gates -- he fly across the country for a ministerial conference in Boston before returning to Pasadena. He and the others will return to the prison gates in February, in time for the next scheduled execution -- and a month later, another.

But ... I must tell you about a woman whom I've met at the prison who is an Evangelical Christian against the death penalty. She came here on November 30th from Camp Casey in Crawford, Texas. She lives in Colorado. She's not left the prison vigil -- but has been at the gates -- day and night since that date. She has college age children and is spirited and dedicated to her cause. She told me yesterday that prison people (I'm assuming spouses of employees) have wandered down to talk with her from time to time, offering her a chance to take showers and to bring fruit and water. She's been offered sleeping space on a boat harbored nearby as well. People do respond to dedication of others, even when we disagree. She told of stories of how many prison people stay away on nights when executions are scheduled, out of their own discomfort. I loved meeting her and will see her again tonight. Yesterday most protesters had gone to Sacramento for a demonstration on the steps of the capitol -- and only she and Paul Sawyer were still at hand holding the vigil.

My small world continues to be well-peopled, despite all.

Photo: My newfound friend, Barbara Barker -- from Colorado and Camp Casey where she stood with Cindy Sheehan until the camp disbanded for the move to Washington. She's one of the heroes of the movement to abolish the death penalty.

Wavy Gravy as "Sanity Clause" and other clowns I've loved ... .

Yesterday dawned like springtime -- except for the warning of an early morning chill that strongly suggested layering for the trip to the prison gates. Today's version starts with panty hose under blue jeans; great solution. Now to find ways to dress properly for a morning of ordinary daily job stuff and also to be ready for a quick noontime drive over the Richmond San Rafael bridge to meet the others. Today would be Wavy Gravy Day and from past history, it would surely hold some surprises.

As I parked and walked up the road toward the gate I could see a small group gathered around the prison post office entrance -- with several members of the media hovering nearby - waiting for some good footage they were sure they'd catch today.

Today there were fewer protestors, but those few who have formed the Alliance Against the Death Penalty to which Paul Sawyer has belonged since it was reinstated in the mid-nineties. But there he was -- Wavy Gravy now renamed "Sanity Clause" dressed in a tie-dyed rainbow-colored santa suit with an awful synthetic beard that he kept having to shift in order to clear his mouth for speaking. A bit later in the proceedings he renamed himself again, this time it was "Escape Clause." He was holding a bag filled with lifesavers, packages of Twinkies in which files had been placed very visibly, and Paul was out looking for a life preserver that Wavy would announce as a gift to be offered (on camera) to the governor. It was Wavy nonsense at its best.

He is a serious clown who runs a clown school, Camp Winnarainbow, in the Santa Cruz mountains, where the clown tradition is faithfully taught and practiced. He is in the Emmett Kelly mold -- but with a social conscience. He is one of the Pranksters from the Ken Kesey crowd. Paul, Wavy, and I lightly touched lives many years ago. In my copy of Kesey's "Sometimes a Great Notion" is a small bunch of dried wildflowers gathered on the beach at Asilomar in Pacific Grove by Ken and presented to me on a day when he was wandering around the dunes with a piece of adhesive tape over his mouth bearing the word, "hello." We were attending a UU Conference where he was the keynoter. He found me sitting on the dunes between workshops, playing my guitar, and silently motioned me to sing a song. I did. He listened quietly and when it ended -- he jumped up and -- like a small boy -- ran to the nearest cluster of wildflowers and gathered up a bunch then -- very formally -- presented them to me with a flourish. It was a delightful moment that I'll never forget. Those little dried blossoms are still with me. Ken died a few years ago. I thought of him and of his Merry Pranksters, and of Wavy and Paul and me, still here and still caring about humanity and willing to do whatever it takes, including dressing up in a clown suit, tucking his now white hair into a Santa's cap, and demonstrating at the gates of a prison to stop state murder in our names. There's just a bit of whimsy about it -- even under these oppressive circumstances. Wavy is sensitive to just how far to push the limits and the ways to maintain the necessary serious note to balance the nonsense.

It's the way of the clown, I suppose.

But that was yesterday. Today my workday didn't allow for a visit to the vigil. Tonight I came home to a message from Paul on my answering machine -- saying that Barbara Becnel, Lynne Whitfield (who played Barbara in Redemption,) and Snoop Dog had visited the prison. He told me that 25 demonstrators had engaged in acts of civil disobedience, had been arrested, and that they were mostly women. He asked that I call two members of the clergy that he hoped would join the vigil tomorrow, but he didn't have their phone numbers ... would I call? He sounded a little forlorn. The weather has been wet and cold with darkness falling early. They're sleeping in their cars and have been since Sunday. I felt guilty. Tomorrow I'll try to bring hot coffee, but most of all -- another witness -- myself.

Tomorrow I have an impossible schedule but there's a hole in the middle of the day that I will use to again visit the vigil and lend moral support. He flies out tomorrow night on the red eye to return to southern California. Others will carry on at the gates until either there is executive clemency, or, the unthinkable takes place on December 13th.

I lack the heart to wait it out at the prison. I cannot. But I will return on Saturday and Sunday. Not sure I'll try to make the march from the Palace of the Legion of Honor to the prison. Let's hope that the governor makes his decision before Sunday at eleven so that we can transform that march into a victory party!

... I cannot spend that last night at the prison gates. I just don't have the heart for that. This would be the first time that I will see the life of one I've come to know -- destroyed by lethal injection -- in my name and that of every Californian.

I can't think of a single thing to do now, except hope ... .

Hope for the future embodied in a lovely young girl named Yaminah ...

At a point late in the proceedings today, a woman stepped out of the crowd to tug ever so lightly on my sleeve. "I'm Mira. We met recently at Flossie's family memorial service at Geoffrey's." Flossie was the Florence Reid Lewis whose life we celebrated only two weeks ago. The young woman continued, "...Yaminah remembered you (she's standing over there). She's Flossie's granddaughter. I'm Yaminah's mother."

And here she stood. The personification of "Youth on Crusade." Except for Michael Franti's little boy, Yaminah was the youngest demonstrator in sight. But she was here after much thought, obviously, since -- deep into the proceedings after many had testified -- she asked to speak. She was articulate, clear and dedicated to a strong belief in the democratic principles of justice and fairness. She spoke as only a young person can of the predictable effects we can anticipate should clemency be denied and Tookie's life taken. She was Betty at 15-16, and it's hard to express how much her presence meant to me seeing her there. On the drive home across the Richmond-San Rafael bridge, Sondheim's "Children Will Listen" imagined itself into my head and played softly behind our conversation.

Later Yaminah's mother told me of a march for clemency and a moratorium being planned for next week that will start at the San Francisco Palace of the Legion of Honor, cross the Golden Gate Bridge, and end up at San Quentin. "She would like to participate, and we'd love to have you join us."

We exchanged email addresses after I learned from Mira (Yaminah's mother) that this beautiful young cousin had read our family history website (California Black Pioneers) ... and maybe this journal....?

I do hope I can do this ... if work allows ... and if the aging body holds out under new and crushing demands. If not, it's just possible that the young woman replacement I've been waiting for these past years may now be in the wings preparing for an entrance when the time is right ... .

Photo: Yaminah Abdur-Rahim making her statement -- perhaps her first public stand but certainly not her last. Mira is standing just behind and to Yaminah's left -- head down with face showing just above the eyebrows.

Home again, and the tension has broken ...

In all of the days leading up to this one, I've not known just what to expect of our San Quentin Prison gate protest.

The Stanley Tookie Williams case has shadowed my life for about five years, ever since meeting Barbara Becnel and through her, moving closer to the prison and judicial systems than I could ever have anticipated. In the abstract, capital punishment was indefensible to me -- but after meeting Stan -- it was no longer an abstraction, but had living breathing corporeal reality -- all leading up to this day.

I've wondered over the years how it would feel when someone I'd come to know was facing the death penalty? Wondered how Barbara would fare in the aftermath -- when the cause of saving this life had dominated her own over the past ten years? She is stronger than anyone I know. A statuesque black woman of unique beauty and brilliance. But would she be strong enough for what this week may bring?

Today I'd committed myself to silence. There were lots of people who might be anxious to be on camera and to make statements. I mentioned to my friend, Marilyn, that I would not risk my position by being too visible here at the prison. I insisted (when she protested) that there would surely be no pressure brought against me for stands I may take on my own time, but that I wanted to be sensitive to public image in light of my work and the doors that were just now opening up to so many dreams I've held for so long.

I listened for a while -- sure that anything I might have said would surely be expressed by others and that it wouldn't be necessary for me to be more than one more supportive smiling face in the crowd. But it didn't happen. I hadn't counted on the fact that I would be the only person in that crowd with the distinction of having actually met Stanley Williams, and could speak firsthand of what that might mean in this context.

I asked for the mike and all of those cameras suddenly turned toward me. It was not intimidating. It was as though all I could see were the faces beyond them. I don't remembers my exact words, but whatever it was must have been effective since those faces smiled and heads nodded in agreement and it all felt right.

Country Joe Macdonald sang, Paul read from Walt Whitman and Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Justice Brennan. But we were from the old revolution for social change. Beautiful young dreadlocked Michael Franti appeared from the edge of the crowd with his lovely little boy, bare feet despite chill and the hard pebbles underfoot, guitar slung carelessly over his shoulder, and I knew that the baton has been passed and that our revolution continues toward changing this recalcitrant world! His music was all the more inspiring in his presence. I've only heard his voice on the air. Joe and I exchanged knowing glances and relayed them to Paul. The revolution is in good hands.

I was glad to have thrown caution to the winds and said my piece. I won't watch the newscasts tonight. Whatever words I spoke did their job and to try to edit myself at this point would serve no purpose. I just don't want to know.

It was a good day.

I'm hopeful.

Photo: Singer Michael Franti whose songs were the highlight of the experience for me. His lyrics were chosen for relevance and were a strong reminder of the period in history when Paul Sawyer, Joe Macdonald, and tomorrow's vigil participant, Wavy Gravy, held the same magic and power for change that is emanating today trom a new generation. Was reminded that I, too, was one of them.