First, old people must chill.
Communication strategist Jeff Johnson often talks about the difference between old people and elders. Elders ask questions and learn how to build intergenerational movements, even when they do not understand younger generations. Elders build.
Old people? They die. They judge and die. I submit that they kill young people in the process.
Protestors who curse have rights. Protestors who sag have rights. Protestors who exercise their freedom of speech by saying "shoot back" or "fuck the police" have rights. Yesterday, Minister Barbara Reynolds wrote that activists in the movement should condemn these types of Black people. These words justify each police killing by affirming a racist belief that some Blacks who look and talk a certain way have a right to exist, while others do not. She is leaving behind those most at risk to police brutality. In fact, she expects us to sacrifice the constitutional right to speak freely in order to be taken seriously. Her words are killing us. That is not the work of an elder.
A few days ago, a member of local clergy called me to say that she, and others like her, does not risk getting tear gassed with all of those young people in the streets who curse and sag. But her absence as a clergy member does not mean that the church is absent. We are the church. I told her about Pastor Renita Marie, a white clergy member who stood in the streets with us past curfew. About Rev. Traci Blackmon, who has prayed with too many mothers who have lost their babies. And about Rev. Sekou, who has physically and spiritually fed many rising leaders in our movement. In fact, Dr. Leah Gunning Francis chronicles the role of the church and spiritual leaders in Ferguson & Faith, the very first book published about this uprising. Elders are working.
Second, old people must remember to ask questions.
Historically, they pick up bits and pieces of stories from other people who are becoming old themselves, and assume that ten months have lapsed without any work being done. They think we are freestyling.
I have been fortunate to meet a lot of elders in the current movement who ask tough questions. These elders work hard to know the difference between Black Lives Matter, the organization, and the Movement for Black Lives, which encompasses many organizations and interests. Elders know that in the days following the murder of Michael Brown, hundreds of organizations released demands across the country that included, but were not limited to, body camera legislation, laws to end racial profiling, and laws to demilitarize the police. Elders not only know about these initiatives, but were and are present in conversations to create them. They know that just because mainstream media does not promote the demands from our work, it does not mean that demands were not created.
Old people also quote Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Nelson Mandela when it is convenient for them. They attack the small number of looters and rioters yet forget Dr. King's words that "social justice and progress are the absolute guarantors of riot prevention." There is no social justice or progress. Thus, riots. Old people refer to the nonviolence of Nelson Mandela, but forget-or don't know- that he trained to use weapons to defend Blacks against whites in apartheid South Africa. So when old people hear Black youth say "shoot back" to avoid being unjustly and unconstitutionally murdered, they don't know that the chant is in Mandela's young spirit of self-defense.
Lo, I am grateful for elders who work to ensure this movement is intergenerational and interfaith. In Ferguson, we see churches open as food pantries, community spaces, and safe havens for tear-gassed protestors. We participated in clergy demonstrations on Moral Monday. Baptists, Unitarians, Muslims, Buddhists, atheists, the like and unlike prayed and worshipped and eventually, were arrested together. Minister Reynolds is wrong. We prioritize the church and spirituality by embracing both in a manner much more welcoming than ever before.
Finally, old people must chill on hip-hop.
Minister Reynolds disses Kendrick Lamar's song "Alright" because he says: "pretty pussy and Benjamin is the highlight." She's mad because he likes girls and money, and says it unapologetically.
But she completely misses where he admits that we are "fucked up," and we don't know all of the answers, and we are in pain. And of all places, where does Kendrick say he ends up? The preacher's door. Her claims that we reject church and spirituality unravel. Kendrick's song, our anthem, articulates what it means to be human and flawed: hurting and seeking divine intervention. This, too, is the church.
Beyond the lyrics, Minister Reynolds further opined that the beat is "too harsh." Michael Dunn killed Jordan Davis because he, too, thought that the rap beat was too harsh. The clergy in our moment teach that these words literally kill Black folk.
Today's movement demand more than accountability for physical death: we demand the preservation of life. This means that the parts of Minister Reynolds that refuse to ask questions about the Movement for Black Lives, that refuse to love all of Black life, has to die. The parts of old people that is proud to say that "all lives matter, except for those Black people who curse, sag, and exercise their free speech"--must die. Our lives depend on it.