Redefining American Revolution, Part One
“This is not a concert. This is a protest.”
In June, Ebony Harris wanted to march. Protests erupted. News feeds flooded with black squares, retweeted petitions and 4K footage of every overturned cop car and shattered window across the nation. Massive movements were unifying in real time against pathological systems of racism and injustice in every major city. Citizens armed with cloth masks and cardboard signs were facing down against walls of tear gas and faceless mercenaries everywhere — and the United States was responding with terrorism. Americans had spent two months cornered in their homes, scared shitless by the invisible horror that had conquered the world, before George Floyd was murdered. Now the camel’s back was broken in three places and America was in flames.
In June, Bellingham, Washington was like it is often: quiet. Ebony called friends and local organizers. She searched through Twitter, and then Instagram, and then Facebook. Hours looking for Bellingham’s protest, or its march. After a while she would settle for a vigil, or moment of silence. Anything she could do to release any part of the outrage that pooled in the pit of her stomach. Ebony had sat at home for two months before George Floyd was murdered. Now she wanted to take to the streets.
Too late she learned of a march taking place halfway across town. A vigil was held the night before. Ebony is one of the only Black women in a city whose Black & African American population comprises 1.56% of its population — and she hadn’t heard about any of it. In a quick clip posted to Instagram, Ebony laid out her frustrations with Bellingham’s particular variety of activism: it was sloppy, misdirected, and lacked intention. If there was a movement in Bellingham, its goals were not clear. The city, whose white residents make up 82% of the population, was staying quiet in a moment that demanded white Americans speak out for justice in a way they had never had to before, and loudly.
Ebony ended the Instagram Story with a directive: “If you’re wanting to help, if you’re wanting to do something, you can help me.”
Skai Johnson showed up at her door the next day.
Skai Johnson has lived in Bellingham since 2016. After an academic year trying at grad school in Atlanta, he moved from his longtime home of Los Angeles to the Pacific Northwest. At first jumping between jobs and sublets, Skai made it work as a dance instructor and then event organizer and connections made through work on Bellingham Arts & Music Festival and at the Sylvia Center immersed him deeply into Bellingham’s music and art scenes. A lifelong artist and self-titled movement specialist, Skai only started calling himself an activist this summer.
“I was hurt. I was fucked up,” says Skai. In the week following the murder of George Floyd, a darkness was eating Skai from the inside. But it began as a numbness. “Having seen all the things that I’ve seen, I felt, ‘Well, there’s another one of us. There’s another story. Happens all the time.’”
But something was different in June of 2020. The dismal, enduring anxiety of the pandemic had worn everyone hollow. The president at war with his citizens had torn away any illusion that the federal government was on our side. But strip away the deadly virus and all the fascist tweets and at the center of this moment was this: the country watched a human being get choked to death by a cop and was now wondering, “Is this okay?”
“The culmination of the entire world reflecting on this broke me mentally.” Skai Johnson, one of the only Black men in white Bellingham, asked, “Why is this even a debate?”
After four years as a member of the Bellingham community, he suddenly found himself wondering if his neighbors really believed his life mattered, if their allyship was any more than a black square. This injustice turned that darkness into gasoline. Skai was trying to keep himself from swallowing lit matches when he saw Ebony Harris’ video.
Slowly, Ebony and Skai talked one another off of their respective ledges. They envisioned what a protest in Bellingham should be: What should it demand? Who should it center? Shouldn’t it be led by Bellingham’s Black citizens? Violence unfolding 88 miles south of them in Seattle and seemingly everywhere else, Ebony and Skai wondered if a protest couldn’t also be a celebration.
To be continued..
