Part 3 of My Series Eight Years a Washingtonian, On My Relationship with this Town’s Largest Industry.

Everything I’ve done that’s paid more than the (quite high for the United States) minimum wage in this region has been in service to or in the influence of a form of a sanctioned state. This concept of “the state” is something I learned while living here and I aspired to, going back to what we are told at home in North Carolina. I have a Master of Public Affairs, specifically from UNC Greensboro which was a hybrid of hands-on and theory work, that allowed me to shape what this platform has become.

Let me keep it real. Even when I was growing up in Greensboro, both of my parents worked for Guilford County Schools. Unlike in some places where each school system has to figure out its own collective benefits package, all of our school systems are considered sub-entities of the State of North Carolina, which administers a large benefits plan, and some of those folks created a credit union for its workers. That leverage has allowed my parents to maintain solid health insurance and secure homes. My mom financed my first car through the credit union and my payments were under $200.

In addition to graduating from two state universities in North Carolina, I worked for a HeadStart provider and a National Endowment for the Humanities grantee.

So, I get why people here in DC, especially Black folks, really live and die by the movements of the federal government, our state-level jurisdictional governments, and the local county and city governments, as well as things like Advisory Neighborhood Commissions in DC.

And as you saw in the images above, I was that person, so, so excited about the ideas of the National Capital. I mean, I was squarely in that Obama generation after all. And of course under the spell of the TV series The West Wing too. Both the real-life presidential administration and the one portrayed on TV made me think that our hope and salvation were in good governance.

However, a few things happened. September 11, 2001, was my sophomore year in high school, so that was already going on, but I still held on to the myth that DC was the be all end all for a while, while also unpacking a lot of other personal learnings that I’ll share more about in future emails. But as soon as I got here to DC to live in 2016, that myth shattered.

Friends who were concerned that I would choose this town over say my hometown or Baltimore or even New York on my quest to design my life after illness curtailed my time in Kansas City and I realized I still needed to be away from North Carolina for a time.

Jobs running scarce as we were in an uncertain election year and said friends not being close enough for me to be warned against that and trully understand what that meant.

Over time of being here, I began to miss that energy of using your own skill sets to make objects and your own way, along with coming together and making decisions in consensus without being told to by a government or in service of one.

I was finding that outside of my makers groups, and yes, even among some multi-generational Black households and folks of DC, many people do not know or even desire to understand how things are made and they think ideas, rhetoric, and defense are the only worthy ways of living and sharing information.

Yes, living here can be like the Congressional Black Caucus Annual Leadership Conference (CBC ALC), but all day every day. And not to say that ideas and rhetoric aren’t fun.

But the dawn of the 45th presidential administration, especially 2018–2019 when many government agencies were shut down due to conservative fiscal policies winning out and in 2020 with the onset of COVID, shattered any remaining myth of this magical Chocolate City of governance and culture.

However, while I can never forget that our government has serious issues, other people have chosen to forget these events ever happened. Plus, this last year especially has broken the glass for real of how much the federal government is spending so much time and money on war and defense that we are not just hurting fellow humans, but hurting ourselves because we barely have time to do anything else.

And far too many Black folk think it’s a literal sin (and some are being told such by their congregations all over the region) to not put your head down and be in service to the government of the United States no matter what. That leads me to part three’s lesson… The African Diaspora is vast, that vastness is reflected here, but it doesn’t mean you can just look any Black person in the eye and expect at least a hello. Put a pin in that and we’ll get back to that in my next newsletter.

Far too many Black folks also don’t want to comprehend or remember that we are doing all of this in un or coercively ceded lands of folks who were already here, as victims of a human trafficking and apartheid scheme, that barely was doing the function it was given to be a seat of a federal government in its early years, a seat that wouldn’t be able to have a voice besides three white men from 1879–1974.

Once again, folks here really love to forget that part.

But before I go today, let me make it clear that I don’t think working for the government is bad necessarily, depending on your role and your part in everything.

However, let’s sit for a moment on what each function of the government is, at least in these so-called United States. The executive branch of our government is here to enforce laws. The legislative branch makes them and the judicial branch upholds them.

If we chose to end our relationship with electoral politics and the systems we have, our anarchy would still need some principles and ways of being we all agree on.

While most of us may have had a civics class, that was long ago in grade school. Others have not or maybe didn’t have enough of a base to help them understand what they were learning. Many have had their ability to be a human being without persecution filtered through having to learn our flawed civics and pass a test on them, to get the same rights many of us were born with (paid for by that ancestorial debt of enslavement and apartheid I mentioned above).

So say we all got to sit in a class without coercion and pick our laws and our principles of being with each other. Instead of our current form where laws that demean people have the most funding given to executing them, we could use all that money and time in our new system to make sure we help and heal each other.

After all, what would we be without our arts and crafts? My makers’ group in Hyattsville on Wednesday nights is a delightful crowd of folks, many of whom are government-adjacent, who spend their time learning crafts and sharing stories about them. When I found them and managed to figure out how to do so while still taking COVID precautions, my world opened up again.

And, thanks to the Library of Congress’s National Book Festival, especially this year, I was reminded of the power of words and the literary. This week’s companion video features me taking advantage of a few other government-sanctioned things, like my local branch library and the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture (aka the Blacksonian) that are actually fun and helpful.

And my partner Les, I have to thank you for introducing me to the government-adjacent folks in Buddhist sanghas that are for non-white folks and for queer folks and a dope metaphysical store The Crystal Fox. And of course, look at us giving Loyalty Bookshop and Mahogany Books their love. Our economy does pay-it-foward into helping us release these raggedy ways and ideas of colonialism and militarism.

My big lesson is that I’ve learned over time to find ways to govern myself, do my part to finanically break empire and capitalism, determine what role I want to have in the world going forward, and be the master of my happiness, while still working and pushing for global liberation. And ignore those who don’t share my values, but be willing to help them if there is a need or a disaster, like another government shutdown or a massive hurricane or other weather event, maybe even the one they said might be years away, but with climate change, it’s right here.

Keep that in mind when you think about what you want your ultimate role and legacy to be here on the earth and next time, we’ll talk more about my expanded view of the African diaspora!

PS. There are two books, both of them named after the Parliament Funkadelic concept of a chocolate city in my Bookshop store, one that expands on the Black American diaspora and one that focuses on DC’s specific history around race and culture. These are affiliate links, but I think you’ll like both books.

Oh and check out my companion video to this post on three things I think the government does do well:

Until next time,

Kristen