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Talking Story  by Polo

From The Asian Reporter, V17, #42 (October 16, 2007), page 7.

"We draw our strength from the very despair

in which we find we have been forced to live.

We shall endure."

It’s Monday, it’s real early, I’m walking west on our slumbering city’s big black iron railroad crossing. The Steel Bridge.

Morning is still so early that I’m thinking: If I shape up right now, I could still brush my teeth, still comb my hair, and still climb inside my bright-white, fine-twill shirt and my best Giorgio Brutini tie. I could still be at my desk before our boss settles behind hers. If only I wanted to.

Aduh’illaah, if only I wanted to. But I don’t.

I don’t and I won’t — that’s what I say to no one. To no one but our swollen silent river and those overfed gray pigeons and this low-slung moody sky.

I’m looking, looking, looking for a way to bridge from here to tomorrow. From where we struggle, sometimes under awesome inspiration, more times in deep sorrow, to where we want to be on our vast continent, with our chaotic times. In Portland, Oregon.

And it’s not just me.

African America and America’s Indian nations are troubled too. Maybe stuck like me. Maybe Asian and Pacific Island Portlanders, maybe Spanish-speaking Oregon, need not get stalled like those families did and do, not get lost and late for work like I am on this overcast October morning.

Last week, S.W. Broadway’s lovely performing arts center presented a musical about Columbia River Indians losing their sacred falls, losing their ancient salmon harvest and their elegant way of life. Buried by 40 feet of black icy water behind the Dalles Dam. For the purpose of electrifying Northwest industry and Oregon homes. The Ghosts of Celilo is a play about submerged ancestor spirits and their un-suppressible lament.

Last week also, on the other edge of our country, Africans and African Americans sorrowed and celebrated the completion of our newest National Monument. The somber site is a cemetery smack in the middle of high-rent Manhattan. Square in the center of New York City — that place American historians have always insisted was bought for rock-bottom dollars by clever Dutchmen, then raised to scraping the sky by industrious Englishmen. That is, until someone suddenly "rediscovered" 15,000 dead Africans.

We now know that free and enslaved black African builders of that great city were buried by white Americans under all that selective history. And oh ampun’allaaah, how those ancestors wept when so finally found and respected and revered. Tears of joy and tears of grief.

So too, last week and the week before that, this week and this new morning, indeed this very moment delivers me. I’m often overwhelmed by the weight of our dark-dark history. Sad ancestors who will not stay buried. Angry spirits whispering daily in my ears.

And of course, it’s not only my family’s past holding fast to these bruised bones, to my bad heart, while I’m walking this cold iron river crossing. The same is true for way too many dutiful Mexican sons and protective Muslim fathers, for all too many more hard-working Asian and islander husbands.

What can we do today, this very moody morning, to keep bitterness from becoming so elemental to immigrant and ethnic minority America? What must we do, real soon, to ease fear away from being so central to mainstream America?

Fear. So much fear. Fear of us.

At their August 29 public session, Portland’s City Council approved a resolution to consider changing the name of North Interstate Avenue to César Chávez Avenue. Our Council also authorized the Offices of Transportation and Neighborhood Involvement to get Portlanders engaged in a vigorous discussion and an eventual decision.

Mayor Tom Potter endorsed the change.

Our Mayor knows what we all need to know and do. What we need to do if we’re going to end our shared ugly legacies. Where we have to begin changing our tragic points of reference, and begin building a different kind of relationship between white folks and every shade of brown, from cocoa to ebony. From our dark past, buried in hasty shallow graves, to a brighter community based on values we all can share.

Imagine César E. Chávez Ave. over an I-5 exit arrow. Imagine that gentle man, his farmwork-hardened hands, his humbling manners and his demanding justice. Imagine Sr. Chávez’s soft chocolate eyes instead of bookmark after bookmark in a history text packed with humiliation. Imagine relieving our walking wounded — wounded perpetrators, wounded deniers, wounded victims — from our awful shared history.

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