Do you know your neighbor’s name?
My grandmother constantly immersed herself in bending to what the community needed. When there were stories that were asked to be told; she wrote them. When there were voices that demanded to be amplified; she was doing her film work and critique. When students and volunteers just needed help licking envelopes in preparation for a conference she was speaking at; she was front and center.
My grandmother, Toni Cade Bambara (cultural worker, organizer, filmmaker, professor, activist, and author) knew there was always something that needed to be done in the communities she loved and the spaces she occupied. I feel this is something that is lost in our current movement. How do we answer community needs, and not automatically assume what the needs are? We do what Grandma Toni taught my momma, and what my momma taught me.
We talk to our neighbors.
In Savoring the Salt: The Legacy of Toni Cade Bambara, author and student of Bambara, Linda Holmes discusses how often Toni Cade Bambara stressed the importance of making community your training ground, “Toni urged us to anchor ourselves in communities in ways that allowed community voices and culture to influence our work. At Livingston, students reported on visits to the Schomburg, the Chad School, an independent black school in Newark, and visits to grandmother in rural communities on Easter breaks to tape-record life stories. We went back to the neighborhoods where we grew up to sit down with elders and kitchen storytellers” (Holmes, PG 190).
My grandmother constantly immersed herself in cultural work with community being her central focus, and she understood that state funded and recognized institutions like non-profits, universities, corporations, etc., were not the beacon of radical change. We had to get in the streets, and learn from our elders, our peers, and anybody who’d be willing to talk. When The Black Woman was published in 1970, she adamantly pushed for it to cost .95 cents in order for it to reach the masses. When Spelman denied my grandmother’s request to teach a Black Women Writers course, that didn’t stop my grandmother from teaching the class from her home for free to any and everybody in the community who wanted to join. Bus drivers, students, teachers, mothers, and anyone my grandmother passed on the street were invited to come to her yellow house on the hill on Simpson Road. They all sat in the crowded living room, learned, and engaged with one another.
When institutions tried to stifle her organizing, she shifted, because she knew the work had to be done. When she taught in academia she would state, “Do not write your term papers for me. Make sure they are useful for somebody else as well,” (Holmes, PG 190). I have seen many lose sight of what our main focus should be in our struggle for liberation of all peoples. Community. Who do you center in your work? Is it sustainable outside of an institution that answers to Uncle Sam?
Do you know your neighbor’s name?
When you think about your own legacy what comes to the forefront; Is it your degrees, your publications, your art? For my grandmother, it was all of these things that she contributed to Black feminist writing and understanding, but for some people, she was the woman who would watch your children when you just needed a day. She was the woman who would help individuals write letters to the bank when they needed a loan for a house. She was the woman who taught script writing at her kitchen table.
I am not condemning any scholar, cultural worker, or activist in this movement who writes, educates, and organizes. The work we do within state funded institutions can be deemed important to spark the ideals of radical thinking for some. However, my grandmother proposed a question in Redbook, January 1970: “For isn’t the main purpose of an institution the perpetuation of its cultural heritage?”
All I’m asking is, do you know your neighbor’s name?
“One of the greatest afflictions in American society for both the teacher/student and the writer is the affliction of disconnectedness,” my grandmother expressed in an interview with Sonia Sanchez, “The separation between the world of academia and the world of knowledge that exists beyond the campus gates, the seeming dichotomy between politics and ethics, the division between politics and art, [between materialism and metaphysics] etc…. In this society, forgetfulness is a virtue, amnesia is a virtue . . . And we carry this habit, this outlook, into our daily lives. This is extremely dangerous. So, I teach about the necessity of being connected, and about the necessity of resurrecting the truth about our experiences (and revising the texts) in this place called America.”
How do we all connect if we don’t talk to one another? Organizing in the same spaces and talking to the same folks isn’t doing our people justice. How do we talk to all Black folks across the diaspora regardless of sex, class, age, and political understanding? As a self proclaimed feminist, Pan-Africanist, Black nationalist, internationalist, a socialist, and being a woman in North America; my grandmother’s interconnectedness didn’t start or end at an institution, a colleague at work, or a friend that would stop by for dinner sometimes. All Black people would always be her business, because she knew it would be the masses that would make revolutionary change. She knew there was work to be done in here and out there.
As I reflect during this African Liberation Month; I think about my Grandmother’s words consistently in my cultural work. As a full spectrum doula, I do birthwork, I teach childbirth education in the jails, and I work at an abortion fund full time. Being in community, and working for community has always been a dream of mine. I like being with my people, and I like serving my community however they deem fit or necessary. I know the state and extensions of the state (federally and state funded institutions and programming) will always leave Black people, across the diaspora, in the dust. It is my community responsibility to help fill those needs, and it is yours. I always tell people; my radical organizing will never start or end at a non-profit or in academia. I love teaching. I love giving away free emergency contraceptives and other reproductive wellness resources, and of course I love providing free doula care to any and everybody. I also love cooking for folks, watching some kids, paying a light bill, and taking someone’s momma to the doctor; I am outside.
My radical being doesn’t stop when the clock hits 5:00 pm; we have shit to do. Radical organizing will never send you a W2. Radical organizing will never give you a student refund. I didn’t get the chance to meet my grandmother, but her teachings live through my mother. My mom raised me to center community in everything that I do, and that I can never be with community if I am never IN community.
My grandmother consistently vocalized that you must “Organize where you are.”
So go talk to your neighbors, and organize where you are.