Letter to the Editor, August 19, 2017: The Antiracism March and My Heart

August 21, 2017

By Sandra Hackman

When I heard that people were planning a march to say no to the Nazism on display in Charlottesville and a rally in Boston by white supremacists Saturday, I decided not to go. I knew I did not want to get involved in any situation that could turn violent. Besides, what difference would one more person make?

Image (c) Connie Paige, 2017 all rights reserved – Click to view full-size image

Then a friend from Boston said she wanted to be counted. That notion haunted me as I couldn’t sleep that night. When she proposed leaving the march just short of the Common to avoid any violent confrontation, I began to reconsider. Then a mutual friend from Vermont called and said she was thinking of participating for the same reasons.

I had other plans for Saturday, but the more I considered attending the march, the less important they seemed. Cleaning my house could wait.

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Sandra Hackman (2nd from left) at Saturday’s march – Image (c) Connie Paige, 2017 all rights reserved – Click to view full-size image

I met my Vermont friend at Wellington station before 9 am, and we took the Orange Line to join our friend and others at Roxbury Crossing, the start of the countermarch. As we stepped off at around 10:30, we glimpsed journalists interviewing Police Commissioner Bill Evans nearby. Police were on bicycles, and members of the crowd thanked them as we walked.

Image (c) Connie Paige, 2017 all rights reserved – Click to view full-size image

I have to admit I had not been to the area in decades, and I was amazed at the beautiful historic buildings along much of the route. Many mostly black folks leaned out of windows waving as the multiracial crowd moved past.

As we got closer to the Common, police motorcycles labeled “special operations” replaced the bicycles, and the officers looked more grim, but the crowd remained upbeat. At around Copley Square, my friends and I stepped onto the sidewalk to witness the incredible array of people walking past, with young people and white people composing a large share of the crowd. Clergy were numerous.

After the last of the marchers passed, we walked to the Boston Public Library, the nation’s first, to lunch in its beautiful courtyard. It was a wonderful haven after the tumultuous feelings of the march.

Given recent events and even before, I had been giving a lot of thought to how I have benefited from white privilege. I know that I am lucky enough to live in Bedford because of many advantages I take for granted. Numerous recent articles have recounted how federal housing agencies refused to guarantee mortgages to blacks for decades, how black soldiers were denied access to the GI Bill after World War II, how the federal government built the interstate highway system to help whites live in suburbs like ours, and how banks refused to lend to African American families and more recently targeted black homeowners for predatory mortgages. I have benefited from money from grandparents and parents at key junctures that gave me a foothold in buying my first house and boosts along the way—money that most people of color simply do not have.

I have been asking myself what I can do. I’m not sure. However, I do know that I feel exhilarated for having taken the first step of showing up, and for having had the chance to walk with so many fellow residents of our precious region in standing up against hate of all kinds, including anti-Semitism, and reaffirming the notion that black lives matter.

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