A Powerful Weapon
"Regular" white people have a lot of power. We should use it.
Robin Whetstone’s kids still talk about one of her favorite stories. Technically, it's a story about a time she did something good. The reason she is telling it is because she want everyone to realize that they can and should do the same thing she did. Also, her kids' reaction was priceless.
by Robin Whetstone
It was mid afternoon and the kids and I were driving through the Kroger parking lot. We'd just gotten a big load of groceries, and were heading for the exit to the parking lot to turn on Alps Rd., a very busy main street in Athens. We were nearing the exit when I spied two police cars pulled up on the sidewalk of Alps Rd. The two policemen were out of their cars and were closing in on a very tall, very hefty, very fancily dressed black woman. She was wearing the kind of hat you might wear to the Kentucky Derby, and a long, gauzy white dress with sparkles all over it. She had both hands up in front of her with her palms out, like "stay back, please," and was taking small steps backward, away from the cops. She had a look of terror on her face and I could see her mouth moving, saying "no, please, no." The cops were closing in on her, one on each side of her, their hands on the guns at their hips.
My kids were 4 and 6 at the time and, like all young kids, were immediately curious about the police activity. "What's happening, mom?" they asked me.
"The police are harassing some poor black lady," I said, and then I said, "Wait a minute, that's Lily!" Lily (not her real name) is a person I know quite well. She is a transwoman, and when she was born everyone assumed she was male. She is a 6' 5", 270lb black person who definitely is much more authentically a woman, but because of her gender and her race, her penchant for dressing very extra wherever she goes, and her refusal to apologize for who she is, I bet her life is pretty hard. It is immediately clear that she is trans, and she makes no apologies for it at all and lives her best life. I bet the cops and other people hassle her a lot.
I pulled the van over to the side of the parking lot and jumped out of it, leaving the engine running, the doors open, and the kids in the car with their eyes goggling out of their heads. I ran straight for Lily and the cops, who were yelling at her and demanding that she get in their car. "I'm not arrested!" Lily was shouting as I ran up to them, "You have not arrested me!"
I had no idea what I was going to do. The only thing I could think of was "Get Lily away from those cops." I ran up to Lily and put my body between her and the cops, who immediately were confused and alarmed. "Lily!" I yelled, "I missed you in church this past Sunday (Lily goes to my church, that's how I know her). What are you up to? Look, the kids are in the van! You should come with us, right now!"
The cops were so surprised that I guess their protocol went right out the window. "You KNOW this guy?" said one of the cops, misgendering her on top of everything else.
"Of course!" I shouted, because I always shout when I'm scared. "Lily is a great friend of mine and an important member of our church!"
"We were trying to get him to go to the hospital," said one of the cops, "but he was resisting."
"I don't want to get in your car!" hollered Lily.
"I'll take her to the hospital," I told the cops, "She can ride with me."
They looked at each other, not sure about what to do, and then I guess they decided it'd be too much trouble to snag Lily with a middle-aged white-lady Methodist and a van full of kids watching them. "OK," they said, "We guess so."
I stuffed Lily in the passenger seat (she is so large she barely fit) and, when I got behind the wheel, said "OK! Where do you want to go?"
"I really do need to go to the emergency room," said Lily. "I've lost my medication because I'm homeless right now and I think I'm having a psychotic break."
"OK then," I said, "Hospital it is."
I drove Lily to the hospital while she chatted with the kids, who were amazed by this unexpected turn of events. The thing that seemed to impress them the most were Lily's clothes, because they were so beautiful and sparkly. "How do you keep your clothes so nice if you are homeless?" asked my 6-year-old, which was something I was wondering, too, but didn't want to ask.
We pulled up in front of the ER. I asked Lily if she wanted me to go in with her, but she said, "Oh no, it's OK, they know me here. I'll tell them I need a 1A classification and they'll keep me here for a couple of days. I'll have a place to sleep and they'll give me my meds." We hugged, which was not easy, and she walked toward the sliding doors, waving as she went.
A few weeks later, Lily was back in Sunday school. She seemed much more stable, and said she'd found a place to stay and was back on her meds. She said she had a new man in her life and that things were looking up. She was dressed just as ebulliently as always.
The thing I told my kids, and the reason I'm telling you this story, is because I want people like me to know that we have a powerful weapon just because of who we are. If you see people on the street in an interaction with police, especially vulnerable people, do your best to pull over and at least observe. You might get yelled at, but you are allowed to watch them, and to film them. Let them know that someone is watching, and someone sees them. I don't believe that all cops are out to do harm, and it would be a very difficult situation to be a cop confronted with a person who is having a mental health crisis, which is why these episodes so often end badly, and why police should not be the ones handling these types of things. Mental health problems are not a crime, homelessness is not a crime, poverty is not a crime. Lily's existence is not a crime. "Regular" white people have a lot of power to change the outcome of situations where law enforcement has been brought in to a non-criminal event. We should use it.
Robin Whetstone is a Georgia-based writer who previously serialized her memoir about living in Moscow in the early ‘90s. As we’ve seen from her earliercontributions to The Experiment, she has a remarkable comic voice, but what makes her memoir unique how it retains that voice while describing the peril she finds herself in. You can find the first chapter here.
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