Long ago, in another universe before now, I was a young man earning my degree in theatre at San Jose State University. I had this crazy teacher. He was "experimental", came from LA, and everyone sort of thought of him as nuts. He directed a show, taught acting classes, and also voice and diction, one of the basic classes you took in your first year as a theatre student. And that's where he taught me. In class, we'd have all sorts of long discussions about politics, mysticism, life, death, and on rare occasions, voice and diction. One day, he announced that there was going to be a speaker on campus, a concentration camp survivor, and we were all to go see his speech. So off I went.
After the speech, I approached him to thank him for his speech. He shook my hand and smiled, and I asked me my name. We spoke briefly, and I told him how I felt guilty when I listened to him. He asked me why. I told him that it wasn't fair that this had happened to him, and not to me. That I had lived a life of privilege. He nodded his head, considering what I had said. And then he said to me, "I have never been raped. I will never know what it is to be a woman who has been raped. But I still can hold her hand."
A lot of hands need holding in the world.
Here's a song. It's You Don't Know How It Feels by Tom Petty.
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I marched in a Black Lives Matter march today (well, yesterday, since it's after midnight now). I have experienced racism, but I've never had the experience of being slowly lynched by a police officer's knee on my neck for the crime of being black while existing. When I walked with 40,000 people on Hollywood Boulevard, I felt the solidarity we were all expressing not just for George Floyd, who was killed by a cop who knelt on his neck for over eight minutes, but also for LGBT and queer people who have suffered oppression. The mood was festive. People were overjoyed. We were rising above the suffering. Our souls had become rocket engines that lifted us to the highest stars of inspiration. People of all races were there. A girl was holding a sign that said, "Filipinx for Black LIves." That meant something to me as a half-Filipino person. People chanted, "Black trans lives matter!" Kids walked with their parents. It was a joyous experience. There was no looting or violence. People handed out free sanitizer and trail mix bars. It was like the Holocaust survivor you spoke to saying that he can hold the hand of a rape victim, and more. People were dancing and smiling and playing drums. When we come together in compassion and love, we can change the world.
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