Yes, I got robbed in Andersonville

Prefigurative Politics

My supervisor assigned me to drop a package off at the UPS store. Google Maps does this silly prank when you search “____ near me”—it shows locations very far from you. Like a few weeks ago, when I was looking for a Wingstop and Google recommended I drive four miles instead of a couple hundred yards. And on this September afternoon, when Google suggested I trek to the UPS store 15 minutes away on Bryn Mawr instead of the one five minutes down the street, fell for the prank. Not a problem—it was a beautiful day for an extended walk. 

White people, skip the next paragraph. It is not yours to read.  

In case any of our white friends failed to follow instructions, I will code this paragraph. As I walked, I passed a youth— a little younger than me. I mention this because I always nod in such a situation. Nephew, apparently, does not. This is a red flag. I am foreshadowing.

Welcome back, white people. Thank you for cooperating.

As I made my way back from UPS, I saw the same kid I passed on the way there. Not particularly strange. What was strange is his stroll lacked destination or conviction. He was loitering. Now, ask my friend Nozizwe—a fellow proponent of loitering. I truly believe loitering is a lost artform in the US. In fact, some jurisdictions have gone as far as to prohibit loitering. Criminalize it even. Isn’t that authoritarian! Parking lots are a choice third place for teens from the midwest. So, believe me, I had no problem with the youngin loitering. Especially because as we walked toward each other, we both occupied our respective righthand side of the sidewalk.

This lures me on another tangent. If you have an American passport, this is the correct way to walk: on the righthand side of the sidewalk or hallway or aisle you traverse. If your allegiance is to King Charles III, I can forgive you for messing this up (and not much more). If you are American, I cannot. If we’re walking toward each other and you’re anchoring your left side of the hall (my right side) when you almost run into me and have the nerve to open your mouth and joke, “oh….ope…haha my bad…we’re dancing!” as we try and fail to weave past each other, you better sound like a damn Brit.

My concern with the boy came when I briefly looked down at my phone to change my music and upon looking up, he was on the same side of the sidewalk as me. It was an obviously intentional pivot. He was about ten yards in front of me and his stride had gained unprecedented determination. 

Now, I consider myself street-smart. When someone asks, “hey! you got the time?” —an absurd question to ask in this two-thousand and twenty-fourth year of our LORD—I maximize the distance between us as I answer, without checking my phone for precision. “It’s a little after four.” When a man makes a stage entrance through the portal between cars on the moving train, I do not make eye contact. And when a kid, clearly skipping school, walks on the same sidewalk as me at an unnatural pace, I put my eyes down and work to walk around him.

I’ve seen it before: a guy walks into you on purpose. As a polite Southern Midwesterner, you say, “oh my bad,” even though it is, in fact, his. He, escalating the situation, interrogates, “what’s good bro?” You begin to stumble over your words as you try to walk away because in any context, what’s good is a bit of a difficult question to answer. He physically impedes you, asks for money or demands your phone, or just kind of senselessly roughs you up. I’ve seen it before, and I was not going to be next. I put my eyes down and worked to walk around him.

In a flash, my phone was out of my hands and in his. I froze as he sprinted away. After about seven seconds, it occurred to me that I was broke and that he was not particularly fast, but as soon as I picked up my feet, he hopped into a getaway vehicle across the street. A tan sedan. About 2012 if I wanted to be precise, but I don’t fuck with the police. 

The following is an open letter to the young man that jacked my phone in Andersonville.

You know who you are,

First of all, I want to express my disappointment. My sister got me that phone for Christmas. It meant a lot for that reason. I forgive you though. I pray for you. I’d go as far as to thank you. Not for stealing the phone—that was a dickhead move. But for not doing too much more. As we both know, the phone was unlocked when you stole it out of my hands. You had the agency to end my friendships. To bankrupt me. To send a homophobic tweet. You chose only to turn off Find My (masterful gambit), to text a few pinned friends “heeeyyyy :)” and to post on my Instagram story “who got $20? I’ll cashapp you right back.” You knew I would need those $20. My friend Jihad sent it without question. You probably tried to get it but couldn’t figure out my Cashapp pin. I sent it back because an hour’s wage could never be as valuable as the knowledge that Jihad would unconditionally have my back in times of tribulation.

You may have noticed the verse in my clear phone case: Psalm 146. I only could fit a couple of verses in my phone case—I was working on memorizing the entire ten-verse chapter. I hope you read the whole thing. I hope you read this entire essay. I hope you subscribe to my Substack— maybe even pledge to be a paid subscriber when I get to publishing regularly. I hope you share this writing with a friend and follow me on Twitter ampersand jwlcstco. Maybe we can be friends one day.

Peace and love,

Onyeka

Prefigurative politics is the term for what I am about to write about. I went to a panel discussion between Ricardo Gamboa and Mohammed El-Kurd on the Southside. That’s where I learned the term, coincidentally, the day after I mapped out this essay. I learned a lot more so here’s a screenshot of the notes I frantically stenographed into my notes app. Treat it like those children’s books where there’s a mouse carefully knit into each illustration and your challenge as a sprouting reader is to find him at each turn of the page.

I am super-setting colons, semicolons, and em dashes today. Bear with me.

Talking about how you vote is like talking about how much you get paid: you should do it more often. I printed off two absentee ballots: one for the primary and one for the general election. I’m registered as a Democrat but will be voting undecided in both. That doesn’t matter: Missouri will go red no matter how or if I even fill out those forms.

Unless Joe Biden has a drastic change in morals     and in mental cognition, Trump will win the election.     And we’ll be ok because we take care of each other.     This is not to say that material harm will not increase under a second Trump administration. It will. His rhetoric will be more unabashed, his supporters more empowered, and everyday life more violent than in his first administration. But we’ll be ok because we take care of each other. 

In 2020 — the last election year and the era of “everythinggoingon”™ — I had a conversation with a religious friend of mine. He was picking me up from the airport. Maybe he was taking me to the airport. Midway— I know that detail with certainty because he takes a principled stand against chauffuring people from O’Hare. All the bridges in downtown Chicago were raised, the city boarded up due to police riots. I remember now. He was taking me to the airport. I was running late because the raised bridges and closed roads made what should have been a 40-minute drive through downtown an hour and a half. That Google Maps was not accounting for the road closures was not of much help.

The night before, thousands of protestors had been kettled in The Loop. They were upset about police violence, and they were met with police violence. All train lines were halted. Emergency vehicles had to detour to avoid the whole of downtown.  It was impossible for our conversation to dodge politics, even though by that time in the summer, we were all tired of politics. 

The election was coming up, of course. In this time, so many evangelical Christians were rehearsing their Biblical justifications for supporting the incumbent Donald J Trump. Some other evangelical Christians—the ones that wear a lot of denim and cuss sometimes—were beefing up their Gospel-centered rebuttals for why they were voting for Joe Biden. Of course, there was the large subset who couldn’t begin to give a fuck. They had their scriptures to back this up too. So at first, when my friend quoted Psalm 146, I mentally grouped him with the latter group. Put not your trust in princes… But I knew him well enough to know he wasn’t just irresponsibly apolitical. He’s Black and has radical views about racial justice. He was one of the most hospitable people I knew. Once, he had told me to pray for him to find an apartment with a sizeable living room just so he would always be able to offer people a place to stay. He wasn’t speaking boastfully of himself by any means, but I started to piece together that his outlook wasn’t one that ducked electoral politics; it transcended them. He underscored the temporality of the system that dictates our entire world every leap year. He said the only constant is God. That no matter who we elected, nothing would change unless we changed it. 

Aaron Bushnell set his own life ablaze in front of all of us a month or two ago. I have lost track of time. May he rest in peace. Someone, in some way, has said everything that can be said on this and then some. So I will not loiter. But his ashes are a reminder that our anger should compel us to drastically reflect our beliefs with our entire being. And maybe to remove ourselves from the systems we condemn so strongly.

To practice prefigurative politics is to shape your daily life and personal relationships to reflect the world you hope is one day created—or, more optimistically, the world you believe will one day be created. Examples: if you are a police abolitionist, you use as many de-escalation alternatives as possible instead of summoning the police to an altercation. If your economic views lead you to describe yourself as “leftist,” you redistribute your excess funds. So on. So forth. I saw a documentary at the Brooklyn Museum where one of the interviewees proposes we keep “one foot in the real world, one in the ideal.” I think this synopsizes prefigurative politics effectively. The only point I would add is that by keeping one foot in the ideal world, we are creating the ideal world, even if in a small way. 

I work at a high school right now. I’m one of those teachers who’s not actually a teacher which is— I think— the American dream. My job revolves around connecting students to community service opportunities.

The other day, when I was standing with students outside of a grocery store as they collected food donations that would be distributed to local families, I made a mental note… Why don’t adults do things like this anymore? 

Maybe you know about the Black Panther Party’s breakfast program. Maybe you don’t. I would recommend this webpage from MAPPED Chicago which archives community projects and links more information about them. To summarize though, In 1969, members of The Black Panther Party in Oakland were concerned that kids were going to school on empty stomachs, so they started serving free breakfast out of a local church. The free program quickly expanded to over 40 chapters of the nationwide Black Panther Party including the Chicago chapter. It was scoring The Party a lot of popularity so the FBI became determined to end it. They raided and looted the basement where the program was based and spread rumors that the food was poisoned. Of course, they killed Fred Hampton—that is for another Substack post. They eventually determined the only way to end The Panthers' breakfast program was to start a Federal one. Now, schools across the country serve free breakfast to students. 

As I stood in the cold, I lingered on it. The Panthers collected food for that program the exact way we were: they stood outside supermarkets with a box and solicited passersby to drop off an extra item on the way out. One foot in the real world.

Some have both feet in the ideal. The Revolution must be coming up—the way people talk about it. If I only overheard the date, I could add it to my Google Calendar. “It’s three days until the revolution!” I would set out my outfit the night before. I would wear a loose-fitted sweater and some cargo jeans—pragmatic. You’ll probably need pockets in The Revolution. I’d have exchanged all my cash for gold by that point. And prayed to every God for forgiveness. I’d have taken a few gardening classes by then. Gotten good with an axe. You’ll need that. And I’d charge my phone to 100% the night before. I forget to most days. 

Creating the ideal world is about taking care of each other. As much as we should pressure our elected officials to do that, we shouldn’t rely on them in the slightest. I am inspired by community fridges such as those in Evanston, Illinois. It’s a community-upheld solution to food insecurity and it’s so intuitive. I would like to work on a community fridge project back in Kansas City. I connected with some art students who were interested in the same a few years ago, but I don’t think they ever were able to get it going. I also want to create more third places for kids in Kansas City. I want to connect with more creatives to make this happen. There are more immediate ways I’m working to take care of people around me. On a smaller scale, I am striving to make a habit of withdrawing small bills from the bank so whenever someone asks for money outside Target, I can’t say “sorry I don’t have cash.” 

Another small thing I’m doing is refusing to vote for anyone. Biden isn’t going to demand for the vacant hotel to become a housing option. Governor Pritzker isn’t going to give our friend a ride to her doctor’s appointment. Mayor Johnson isn’t going to de-escalate a teen’s run-in with the police or learn to administer Narcan or buy a meal for a Haitian migrant. At some point, I’m done putting all that in their hands.

Maybe we are discouraged from taking personal action because we practice “activism” from a selfish place. Not every action will have the national ripple of the breakfast program. Sometimes, you only help a couple of people in the community. You’ll collect food outside the grocery store, and only a few families come to the distribution. That’s beautiful. Sometimes, your idea will fail. That’s part of this whole thing. Other times, you raise funds to support a homeless camp but instead of being inspired to create housing options, The City bulldozes it. Maybe you bike to work every day; there is still a hole in the ozone layer. You may refrain from buying a new iPhone; Apple is still exploiting child labor in The Congo. And you can quit your job at the New York Times or your internship in Washington or your position on the school board. You won’t free Palestine. That’s ok. You freed yourself. 

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Put not your trust in princes,

in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation.

When his breath departs, he returns to the earth;

on that very day his plans perish.

Psalm 146: 3-4

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I had a conversation with a friend on the floor of my unfurnished apartment. There was nothing in the room, so our voices reverbed, spreading and spinning and coming back in echoes. It’s always beautiful to sing in a place like that. You sing to yourself. We talked about where things should go: the bed, the desk, the shelf. I bought the coffee table for more money than I ever thought I’d spend on one and spent an evening constructing it. It’s the kind that hinges up into a laptop stand. We talked about art—neither of us had worked on projects for ourselves in a bit. From the empty room in the belly of The Beast, we talked about Palestine. Aaron Bushnell. The New York Times. We decided no one has imagination anymore. That’s why we can’t imagine anything other than the things that are—The things always have been and always will be. Prison is eternal. Israel is omnipotent. The Republic is The Most Merciful. I have no business in Dubai. It is a cheap imitation of The West. Everyone in the world wears t-shirts because we’re all supposed to be the same. We are coaxed to meld into one another, without thought. That’s colonialism’s fault. Globalism or whatever. The internet. We talked about that too. I’m gonna put the bed near the door which may be a little jarring when you first enter the room, but that’ll let the bay window area feel more like a living space.