A loud high-pitched hissing sound abruptly stops our conversation.  
Someone’s tires just got slashed.  
Greg looks out the window to see what’s happening. 
Then the shots begin. 

Death did not come this time.  But bullets entered people’s bodies.  Pierced skin. Spilled blood. Caused trauma.  Two people hit.    

It was evening time.  We had just gotten our children to bed after a full day.  I spent most of it working on reconciliation. Holding space for a restorative justice process and a community gathering too.   A gathering where we were engaged in visioning. We’d tried to imagine what it would be like to experience a community beyond racism. What would it feel like?  In what ways would the absence of racism free each of us? What would be possible in our lives?  

And how can we get there?  This vision feels so far away.  

We are broken. So very, very broken. 

When we pretend everything is OK.  When we pretend we are not part of the problem.  When we don’t hold complexity, nor create space for the bad and the ugly.  Then we can not build relationships of trust. We can not be part of the solution.  

White people are taught to put up a mural of perfectionism.  To wear innocence. While we materially benefit from and are spiritually wrecked by a social order that kills people. That takes Black and Brown lives everyday.  

We are living in the reverberating trauma of unrighted historical wrongs, fueled by racism. 

The shooting was a reminder of how many people live on the edge of despair.  Guns and violence, so readily available. 

My kids and I walked to the farmers market the next morning. The blood stains creating a trail the whole way there. They were holding their little friend’s hand. Cute neighbor kid love on top of a blood stained sidewalk.  Someone else’s blood literally spilled on the ground we walk. 

On the way our neighbor stopped us to talk about the shooting. He wants the apartments across the street gone. Some of the only affordable housing left in our neighborhood.  He thinks these neighbors invite their cousins, who cause problems. Maybe that is so, but getting rid of the only affordable housing in our neighborhood certainly is not the answer. 

I see the link between violence and over priced, unaffordable housing that has pushed so many people out of this community.  A pattern of gentrification and displacement that is well documented throughout DC.      

A few doors down from us, the “green house,” now painted and all prettied up has a for sale sign in front.  Someone tagged it, so it now reads:

gentrify the District 

Gentrification and displacement are part of the story of this house and this neighborhood.  The banks stole the “green house’ from the older Black woman who got conned into an impossible loan scheme. The grandson stayed behind trying to hold onto the place. Before it was fully taken away from them he lost his friend and neighbor to gun violence. A murder that happened on our block, steps away from his front door.  He talked about how the guys who grew up on the block are now so few that they are targets from nearby crews who want to claim the turf. 

This young man’s life was not taken, but his home was. Then it sat, in the possession of the bank, abandoned for years. Until someone bought it, fixed it up and is now asking $1.2 million for it. Attached to the wrought iron fence, immediately in front of the for sale sign was the crime tape of the most recent shooting.  Creating a visual reminder about the link between housing exploitation and violence.

“Some people think housing is a commodity.  But I know housing is a human right” Robert Warren, Director of People for Fairness Coalition.

What would it mean to truly live as if housing is a human right?  What if we put more value in human life than we do material gain? How would that alter our personal and political decisions?

Our country's history of racist housing policies and politically designed and manufactured segregation is brilliantly illustrated in this short video, Segregated by Design. I highly recommend watching it. The video offers history and context we all need to know. It shows the political and historical framework that my community now operates within.  

I ask myself everyday, what will I do to break the cycle of violence and injustice we inherited and continue to reproduce. 

Will you join me in this quest?  What will you do to help break the cycle?