Denim Jackets and AR-15's

Dallas, Texas – Dixon, Tennessee Playlist: Chris Stapleton, Jennell Monae, Katy Turr’s book Unbelievable Vic Feazell His name appears on billboards up and down Texas motorways. I know that name. Vic Feazell, attorney at law. I keep staring at the signs wondering how on earth I could forget such a distinctive name. “The jacket,” I remember longingly. My thrift store denim jacket, the one with hand painted colonial men on the back, the one with star-shaped rhinestones down the seams, the one that reads Vic Feazell in gold glitter paint on the left chest. Best $12 I’ve ever spent. Why the hell didn’t I bring the jacket?? This is quite literally a sign! The jacket stays on my mind as I pull into Texarkana, a town of around 50,000 that acts like a small town. The flags are at half-staff as I pull off the highway, even the colossal car dealership flags hang nearly to the ground. They move slowly, solemnly, they are captivating and sad in their oversized grief. I assume they are lowered to honor those murdered in the school shooting at Sante Fe High School. With the frequency of shootings these days, I wonder when the last time these flags were flown at their full height. But even in sorrow, they continue to wave. I mention this to my friend Ricky as we meet up in a small empty baseball diamond, “of course that’s what you notice first,” he jests. The empty parking lot of the public park looks like the sort of spot high school kids would buy drugs in, “Our little democracy drug deal,” I joke. I start asking him about the local issues, “water,” he tells me matter a factly. There was a water crisis years ago that left his family cooking with bottled water, “not on the scale of Flint, but it was terrible.” I wonder out loud if people were upset with the government in the same fashion they are in Flint, angry at the failure to fix the problem. “People don’t make that connection.” They were mad at the water companies, but politicians were never held accountable. “We don’t talk about politics here,” he tells me. To preserve relationships and cordiality, people push political conversation into the shadows. Can we make the connection to political failures if we don’t talk about politics? Can we hold people accountable if we don’t talk to our neighbors? I’m not sure. We also spoke more broadly about the state of politics, “everything feels hopeless. We just have to wait this out.” He noted his ability as a student to study and more fully comprehend the issues today while we wait for the politics to turn around. “We are so globalized now, and people don’t understand the magnitude of their words. What I have to say doesn’t stay in Texarkana.” Too often, he notes, people who are trying to fight for social justice do so in a toxic manner, not comprehending the power of their words on platforms where information spreads so quickly. “I don’t think silencing anyone helps,” he says of the tendency to shout down rather than to listen. “I have this theory,” I tell him, “that people come to college and get some piece of knowledge, some about political correctness or some nuanced history that leads us to now. And for the first time they are in a position of power over the bigots, they know something that bigots don’t. It makes them feel powerful, and they turn it into a weapon rather than a tool.” If even the people who are trying to do good can’t be kind, where does our discourse go? We say our goodbyes, and I continue north. “I still believe in a place called Hope,” I remember the Clinton quote as I start to see the far-off signs for Hope, Arkansas. I decide to pull off and take a tour of his childhood home, the often-lauded space in which the President got his start. I miss the house the first time down the street because my eyes are lingering on the A-frame sign in front of the house, advertising the upcoming meeting of the local Tea Party. Ironic. A National Park Ranger, Sirena, takes me on a solo tour of the family home and we talk about the other visitors. “The kitchen burned down in 2015,” she tells me, “and it was arson.” Could politics be so vitriolic that someone would burn down a politician’s childhood home? The answer, I suppose is yes. She notes that visitors to the home can sometimes be combative, even rude, to the rangers, like somehow, they are a part of the Clinton machine. “We have good and bad visitors. Well not bad, I think there is good in everyone. A lot of people just come here to vent though, and we always listen. We can’t respond, but we can listen.” Her resolve is inspiring.

I move up the road an hour or so the Little Rock, where I pull into Little Rock Central High. It’s 3:45, and to my surprise kids are just getting out of school. It never occurred to me that the sight of the 60’s integration battle could still be a working school. As I sit in my car, a white boy passes with a science board, and a boy scouts of America T-shirt, a young Hispanic girl in cutoff overalls hops in her dad’s car, and an African-American boy in a white hoodie walks home. 50 some odd years later and the school remains integrated and beautiful as the day it was built. The words of the 14th amendment are emblazoned on the outside of the small visitors center across the street. I walk into an exhibit on the evolution of civil rights, and I was genuinely taken aback by how honest the display was, especially one produced by the U.S. government. It begins “We the People didn’t include everyone,” with a small book where you could flip through and see how limited your rights were based on race, religion, and gender. It was bold. Necessary. But bold.

I spoke with two of the school security officers watching the students leave. “These kids they can go to a library and open a book and see that they are a part of history,” one remarks. I ask if that effects the activism of the students are they more involved because of their spot in history. “They are since the shooting in Florida,” he says. The work of the Parkland students to galvanize other young people has been unlike anything we’ve ever seen in politics, to know reach has made it to Arkansas is fascinating. I tell them I am from Texas and they ask, kindly, if I was anywhere near the shooting in Sante Fe. “Thankfully, no” I respond, “but there are just too many to keep up with anymore.” One interjects, “you know what we need to do,” I pause, afraid of a confrontation of guns in an unfamiliar city. “we need to register every 18 year old in every high school, and they need to vote against those who won’t take on the NRA.” I breathe a sigh of relief as I agree. “And,” he continues, “we need to arm every resource officer with an AR-15.” I sigh again, so close.