Brenda blog

August 7, 2006 at 12:14 am (Uncategorized)

As it appeared in the Sunday Sun-Journal:

On the morning of Aug. 2, I woke up and was low on Coffee-Mate, had no milk, and out of dish soap and toilet paper. If I go buy these things, I will be short on my utility bills. So, I thought I could see if I could at least get powdered milk from the food pantry. I haven’t been there since they moved to the street at the top of Kennedy Park.

As I crossed Kennedy Park, I saw a group of people gathered at the Spruce and Knox streets side of the park. I saw many African women, and there were also white Americans there and a dog. I looked to see if there was a fight or an injured person on the ground; it just didn’t look right. Then I saw that they were gathered at the back of a truck which said: “Good Shepherd” on it. A woman was balancing a box on top of her head, and people were bending over boxes of food.

I wondered if it was like the SHARE program, where you pay $13 and get a big box of produce. I haven’t seen that since I came to Maine.

So, I walked over, thinking maybe the food bank was working out of a truck instead of the building now. I asked an American lady in the line (I picked her because she’d speak English and would be able to explain easier) and she said to get in line, it’s a giveaway from “the church.”

I went to the back of the line. A 40ish white man was in front of me and asked for a light. I happened to have matches because I was camping recently, but as I gave it to him, I said, if you smoke here it will bother my son’s asthma. He said he’d smoke “over there.”

Well, he meant that he would be pushing in close to the African women and children in front of him and blow his smoke on them instead. I touched his arm and asked him not to smoke so close to the children, which interrupted his rude yelling about the line not being straight enough or something.

He said if I hadn’t given him a match, he still would have gotten a light somehow, but then he did walk away, commanding to not let “them” cut in line, pointing out the lady who had just walked up behind me.

I turned and saw the pregnant woman who was now behind me.

In my Native American tradition, I’d be shamed to take food before a pregnant woman or an elder, so I let her stand in line in front of me. I also let a grandmother stand in front of me in line.

Then a group of white women and men lined up behind me and began talking loudly criticizing that “they” are taking too many boxes, have too many kids, cut in line, etc. At one point I turned and said it bothered me to have to listen to their hatefulness. I wondered, did they really think they wouldn’t get enough if someone else got some?

There was a truck-full; it was ice cream, Pepsi and ginger ale. I realized I would not die or even suffer one bit if I didn’t get a box of that. A carton or two of ice cream would be a special treat for my son, and I could even melt some ice cream into my coffee instead of milk.

The group behind me was complaining nonstop about being taken over by “them.” One person said, “We can’t even use the park. They’ve taken it over.”

I turned around and replied, “Well, I’m glad, because now I can take my son to the park, and he doesn’t have to listen to all that swearing.” She actually stopped for a moment.

As I heard them going on with their complaints, I said a silent prayer of thanks.

Thanks for putting me there as a buffer between these people, because surely if I hadn’t been placed in this spot, there would have been violence.

Thanks for letting me absorb the negative energy here, and help me to deal with it.

Thanks for the discomfort in my stomach, and thanks for the way my heart was pounding.

Thanks for me being a person who is emotionally and physically uncomfortable in the presence of hateful attitudes and white privilege.

“I’m going up there,” one woman said. She went up to the truck and said something, and then a woman in the truck loudly told the people in line “That’s got to stop! No cutting in line.”

The woman in the truck didn’t know who, if anyone, was actually cutting, but her statement made those behind me feel justified in their complaining.

I think a boy had saved a place for his mother and, when she came, the people behind me perceived that as “cutting” and unfair, and said, “They shouldn’t allow any kids in the line!” and on and on.

When I was up to the truck, I asked a lady to just give me two gallons of ice cream instead of a whole box, and maybe a ginger ale. I ended up with several individual bottles of Diet Pepsi also, and I left.

We did go over to the food bank, and did get a carton of shelf-stable milk so my son could have cereal, and we were also given so much food it was hard to carry. I am so grateful for the abundance I have received, and I hope that others are also getting what they need here in Lewiston.

In Native American gatherings, I would be disgraced if I were seen not allowing an older woman or a pregnant woman ahead of me for food. I’d be ashamed to be heard grumbling and complaining that someone might be getting too much.

We teach our children to make sure everybody gets some, not to compete for who gets the most first. I was thinking it’s possible that the African ladies in front of me have a similar way of doing things. I don’t know what their relationships and social structure are enough to say if someone is actually unfairly “cutting” in line.

If we follow the example of our local white American neighbors, we would indeed be yelling and fighting over whatever there is being offered, and pushing and shoving.

Is this what we want our immigrant neighbors to assimilate into?

These are my thoughts about my daily experience of life in Lewiston, Maine.