THE ASBURY VOICE

You are not voiceless but are often unheard

We can change that together

July, 2019 # 2

In This Issue:

Introduction and Purpose

Rev Gil Caldwell's Letter to his son, Dale

Living in 2019 Asbury Park with HIV- Barbara's Story

The Event of 1970 in Asbury Park wasn't a Riot but an Uprising

The Road to Asbury - The Story of Sister Isis - Part I

Introduction and Purpose

This is the second issue of the Asbury Voice . You may have received it as a “link” from a group, an organization, a church, a school, a friend, a neighbor or a family member, or found it on social media. Keep passing it along, don’t let it stop with you.

We are in our infant stages as a publication and are in process. We are working towards creating an inclusive editorial board and are looking to spotlight the stories of the young, those experiencing homelessness, long term residents of Asbury, as well as those who are struggling because of the structural injustices of sexism, transphobia, homophobia, ableism, colonialism, classism, racism and its nephew: gentrification.

We often hear stories from each other that never reach the printed page. We believe there are critical stories right here in our Asbury communities that aren’t being told. We want to courageously share these stories, not by putting people down, but by honestly correcting misrepresentations of neighborhoods and people in Asbury. Our aim is to be both responsible and non-inflammatory. We are aware that this can be a fine line and we commit to operating with integrity and accountability as we share our stories. We depend on you to tell us what you want from us.

Rev Gil Caldwell's Letter

to His Son, Dale

June 23, 2019

Dale,

This is such a significant time re: Blacks in the USA, that I wanted to “think out loud” as a way to express my aspirational thinking. These moments:

1. “Juneteenth”: an illustration of “Justice Delayed Is Justice Denied”

2. 2019: The 400th anniversary of Black slaves arriving in the USA

3. Discussion of Reparations in Congress; June 19, 2019

4. Former Vice President Biden’s boasting about his ability to work with anti-Black, segregationist Democratic Southern Senators.

My long time thought: The slavery, segregation, lynching, destruction of Churches and businesses, police violence against Blacks, etc. has not impacted the American psyche, as has the Holocaust impacted Germany.

Tim Wise, the important southern white anti-racist Scholar said on a tv program today: “White Progressives in the south, unlike progressives in other parts of the USA, have to factor Black Justice into their progressive philosophy/action”. There is the possibility that Black empowerment with racial integration, is better understood in the south, than elsewhere.

I have tested the following with my Indigenous, Jewish, and Japanese colleagues as a way to ponder reparations for Blacks:

Reparations/Empowerment for Native Americans has been expressed through Casino approvals for them.

Reparations/Empowerment for Jews has been expressed in the establishment/support of/for the nation of Israel.

Reparations/Empowerment for Japanese who were held during WW II was in the form of a cash payment.

The failure to give “40 acres and a mule” to Blacks, post slavery, and the later burning of Black businesses, expressed resistance to Black Empowerment. To Integration, a reluctant “yes”, but to Empowerment, “no”.

James Baldwin in “The Fire Next Time” asked the question: “Do I really want to be integrated into a burning house?”

Mitch McConnell as he expressed his resistance to Reparations said, “We have elected a Black President”. His desire to make President Obama a one term President, reveals the inability of America to comprehend that the legacy of Black slavery, segregation, lynching, police violence is not countered just with racial integration. It requires Reparation responses that empower collectively, and compel the USA to remember its 400 plus years of Black disempowerment.

If the USA had acknowledged its 400 years of second class treatment of Blacks, it would not have elected a President who has a history of housing discrimination of Blacks, seeking the death penalty for innocent Black and Brown young men, and politicizing white fear of Black men, with his “Birther tirades”. How could a nation that glorifies the Declaration Of Independence,Bill Of Rights, the Constitution, The Pledge Of Allegiance, standing for the Star Spangled Banner, etc., elect a President who violates all of the above?

Could it be that during the Donald Trump era, we could at last realize the diminishing of our democracy today, results from our failure to admit the contradictions and compromises of our 400 years of Black oppression? Our “Racist chickens have come home to roost”, and they have polluted every aspect of our democracy.

The 2020 election is about much more than defeating Donald Trump. It must be about enabling the USA to realize its future will be bright if it corrects its historic and current inability to heal the National wound caused by 400 years of overt and covert anti-Black discrimination. Defeating Donald Trump can be linked to defeating our reluctance to admit and transform our mistreatment of those whose ancestors free slave labor made the USA possible. “Yes We Can!” My multi-Racial/Ethnic extended Family, can lead in doing it. I know they/we can!

“They who do not remember their (racial) History, will live to repeat it”, and much more than racial injustice will take place. Apologies to Santayana.

Dad/Gil Caldwell

Living in 2019 Asbury Park

with HIV

Barbara’s Story

Our reporter met with Barbara, an Asbury Park resident who’s been living with HIV for over twenty years. “Over twenty years” may seem like a vague period of time for such a critical event, but she had HIV before her official diagnosis in 1999. Her HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) story begins with her diagnosis. She really doesn’t know how long she’s had it.

She was pregnant with her fourth child, at age 40, in 1999. At that time a standard test given to all expecting Mothers was an HIV screening. Hers proved positive. Her fourth child (her second daughter) was born HIV-free because she was delivered via C-Section. It is actually the delivery process that infects a new born. Unfortunately her first daughter was not so lucky. She had been born four years earlier when the HIV screening was not standard procedure and she was infected; Barbara didn’t know. It was when she discovered she had the HIV virus that she also then learned that her first daughter was also HIV positive.

Barbara had been living a drug addicted life style in Red Bank, Asbury Park and New York City. After she was diagnosed with HIV she spiraled downward. She was given five years to live and was told only 2 or 3 would be good years. As her drug use escalated she became homeless and she and her Mother went different ways. She was living in parks, abandoned houses and anywhere she could find shelter. She lived that way for ten years losing custody of her children to DYFS.

The change to her life came in 2008 when she was arrested for stealing copper. This is a felony. But it was her Judge who may have saved her life. He told her to get clean or face prison. She could not face going to prison so she got clean. At 47 she was clean long enough to get hers kids back. She’d been thinking all this time that being clean on weekdays would be enough. She planned to start using again on weekends. Sound incomprehensible? She explains that it is drug addiction thinking. However, once she got her kids back she realized she did not want to lose them again. She’s been clean ever since.

THE EVENT OF 1970 IN ASBURY PARK

WASN’T A RIOT

BUT AN UPRISING

From an interview Dan Harris gave

not long ago to a college student

Many call the EVENT of 1970 a riot; I call it an uprising. In a riot you have people fighting an adversary. There were no punches thrown between those breaking windows and those looting. I don’t believe that even one police officer or National guardsman was shot. Yet young people from the surrounding areas were injured.

The unfortunate part of the uprising was that it took place in the area that employed the community. You see, Springwood Ave was the economic centerpiece of the black community. Grocery stores, drug stores, barber shops, restaurants and other businesses lined the blocks and employed many people of color. Entertainment venues, pool halls and even a shoe repair shop were prevalent. Still that was not enough to keep the underserved youth of the city employed.

The lucrative jobs on the beach front went to out of town white folks; much like today. Blacks were relegated to one area of the beach by the sewer plant. Representation on the City Council and the School Board was nonexistent. So when young people started breaking windows on the evening of July 4, 1970 it was not a surprise. The biggest question was, “What took so long?” Newark, Detroit, New York and other cities were already war zones. Asbury quickly became one.

Obviously the politicians sought to protect the lucrative downtown and beach front area. What other reason could be given for close to 50 people of color being shot. Official count, 46 blacks shot- police 0. Kind of obvious, being that they had the guns. When medical care was overwhelming for the hospital, a local black doctor, Dr. Lorenzo Harris, set up a Triage Unit at the West Side Community Center.

Folks from the community made demands on the city officials. One in particular was a Citizen’s Review Board which is only now being considered. What took you all so long? 700 youth applied for summer jobs that year, but there were only 250 open spots. That demonstrates the need for jobs and the lack of availability of jobs in the government sector. It is necessary that the private sector pick up some of the slack. But it is not being done, because many are hiring young people from outside the city. Still whites from out of town worked the private jobs on the beach.

Almost 50 years after the uprising, the area is just starting to see signs of revitalization. But businesses and cultural landmarks have disappeared. With that, much of the history has gone. After forming a committee to name a newly built park, the City Council refused to take the committee’s recommendation and name the park after Dr. Lorenzo Harris who set up the triage unit at the WSCC. That we call subtle racism.

The same issues that fueled the uprising in Asbury Park in 1970 - lack of jobs, racism, police brutality, and drugs, still exist today.

Don’t be surprised if history repeats itself .

‌

CALL TO CONSCIOUSNESS

Our wellbeing depends on our natural world. Thankfulness keeps us grounded to the purpose of taking care of that life-giving source. Consciousness helps us to never abandon this goal. We are the people.

Joyce Grant,

Environmental and Social Justice Activist

ROAD TO ASBURY

The Story of Sister Isis

Part I

Rosalee McNair was born in Warbaso, Florida on January 2, 1943, the youngest of four children (two older sisters and a brother). Her mother died during childbirth when she was two years old. Rosalee sat by her mother's rocking chair for days crying inconsolably, until one day, the rocking chair began to rock by itself, and she stopped crying. Rosalee now feels that she must have sensed her mother's spirit at that moment. She remembers her early years being filled with many unexplained premonitions, dreams, and images, which became a normal part of her everyday life.

She and her siblings eventually moved into the care of their grandparents, Rosalee and Clinton Harris, in Jacksonville, Florida. Her grandmother had sixteen children. One strong memory Isis keeps was the story that was told about her Uncle, Doc Harris, whenever the family got together. Doc and his wife, who were living with her grandmother, were walking home with their groceries. Something fell out of a bag and rolled over and hit a white man's foot. When Doc's wife went to pick it up, the white man slapped her, and Doc slapped him back. Doc and his wife then ran off and later that night a group of men came to the house and made threats until they got Doc to come out and then they hung him.

Her grandparents had a large piece of land and a vast garden with everything in it. She was really raised up on a farm in the city. They had chickens, cane, cabbage, sweet potatoes - you name it. She did not know what going to a store was all about, until her grandmother died. The only items they got from a store were a bag of flour and a bag of meal. Rosalee was to learn cooking from her grandmother and farming from her grandfather.

Her sister's husband had a job building and repairing railroads in Ft. Pierce, Fl. Isis lived with them and went to school there. Rosalee had her first child at the age of sixteen. And when her boyfriend's mother found out she was pregnant, she forbid him to see her again. When Rosalee was just beginning to show, she met a man who sweet-talked her into how he would take care of her and her child. She married him out of fear she would lose her baby to adoption. His name was John Wesley White, and she had four children with him. Her husband was called "Mr. White" because he worked for Backus Boat Company, one of the biggest boat companies there. Many times Rosalee helped him clean the boats and other times found jobs scrubbing floors on her knees. She was a nobody. He would beat her often, and since he was friends with all the police, her complaints were in vain. Every year they had a baby, but her husband would not sign for birth control pills. People were marching in Orlando protesting this archaic law, which Rosalee participated in without the knowledge of her husband. When her husband caught wind of it, that was when the fights began. Ultimately, they were successful in overturning that law.

Another young man lost his life to gun violence in Asbury Park. The best beach town. When they came for me no one stood for me. When they come for you there will be no one to stand for you. You know why .

Duane Small

Did You Know...

...What Ta-Nehisi Coates told Congress about Reparations?

CLICK HERE

...about the Adultification of Black girls as young as five years old?

CLICK HERE

...the cost of imprisonment

CLICK HERE

A Change is Gonna Come

Brian and Thomas Owen

‌

All articles we print are the experiences and opinions of the authors. An editorial board reserves the right to make any changes they deem necessary to submitted articles that will keep The Asbury Voice from any liability. Authors will be informed of these changes to give them the opportunity to change or withdraw the writing.

‌