When I first stood up to Authority

The Power of "No"

I was 15 sitting in study hall. A Sophomore in High School. The woman who ran the Study Hall was a very disagreeable human being. She simply didn’t like students, especially black ones. I’ve developed this term I call, “Woke racist.” Sometimes when I see people calling something racist, I’m like, “Yeah, that’s woke racist.” Do I really even need to explain what that means? This woman was real racist, it wasn’t even subtle. Even though she didn’t like anyone, there were the ones she disliked more than others. I was one of them. This was made clear to me early on.

Not sure why, don’t care really. One day she chose to make an example of me. She chose the wrong person for that cause it completely backfired.

I’m studying for a test that I have later in the day. Doing exactly what the Study Hall is for. The woman (I will not call her a lady, that’s an insult to ladies) made a rule that there can be absolutely no talking whatsoever, nothing. Keep in mind this isn’t detention but anyways that’s the arbitrary rule she made up on the spot for this day. The penalty for any noise was a trip to the principals office.

I’m thinking this won’t be a problem for me cause I’m studying, nose in book. There are two girls sitting next to me giggling and talking. It’s slightly distracting because the rest of the room is so quiet. It would have been better if everyone was talking. The two girls were white, if they were black I have no doubt they would have been gone. This goes off and on for ten minutes.

For some reason, this “rule” didn’t apply to them. After so long of this, really wanting to study, I leaned over, quietly and kindly asked them to please keep it down. I didn’t say mean words, just asked, whispered it. This conversation didn’t need an authority butting in. This was being worked out voluntarily between people. I also didn’t raise my hand and snitch on them. Peaceful Anarchy in action.

“You talked,” with a grin. She pulled out her note for the principals office and wrote it out.

I was stunned and pled my case.

“They were making noise and I quietly asked them to stop. I’m seriously studying here.”

“Doesn't matter, you talked.”

“It doesn’t matter? It seemed easier to ask them quietly and nicely, being that they are sitting next to me. I didn’t want to tell on them and you were not doing anything about it.”

“You talked, you’re admitting it.”

“Yes, but there is a legitimate reason why I did.”

The spirit of this rule was opening up now to the bad willed intentions behind it.

She dangled the note out there for me to come and grab it with a smile. As an adult now looking back at her actions with a 15 year old, what a shameful sham of a human being. She had willingly handed over her humanity. You know the saying, “They have to live with themselves.” Yeah, she did.

“You talked, come and take this and go down to the office.”

I sat there looking at the paper dangling, the smirk on her face. I had seen many kids snatch these notes out of teachers hands. It was an art form. However, I had no practice, wasn’t a trouble maker by any stretch of the imagination. I knew that one way or another this would get back to my parents. At that point, realizing this, I had no fear of the outcome. What is true and just only came out within me. I uttered the cosmic word.

“No.”

“Excuse me?”

“I said no.”

“You violated the rule.”

“I did nothing wrong.”

“You violated the rule.”

“I did nothing wrong.”

Kids sat there stunned. I wasn’t even going up and snatching it, I simply wasn’t participating in her make believe. I opted out. Even the behavior disorder kid (yeah, they shared Study Hall with us) was like what’s wrong with this dude.

“I’m going to have to go down and grab the principal and bring him down here. Do you want that?”

No lie, true stuff. I said, “I’ll wait.”

I had my tussles with bullies in the past. Blows had been given. I won some and lost some. But those bullies even that won, took enough blows from me that it just wasn’t worth their effort anymore. They were going to have to earn it in blood. They learned very quickly that my kindness was not a weakness. There’s a saying in sports, “I hate losing more than I love winning.” Kobe Bryant said that once. I hate being messed with much more than the bully loves messing.

As an authoritarian bully she was no different. I wasn’t going to cooperate. You were going to have to put in work and move that garbage truck of a soul down the hell hallway.

She came back with the principal. He said, “You have to come with me.” This particular principal was actually a decent guy. He knew my grandfather, had worked with him when my grandfather was the head football coach at my high school.

I got up, had no beef with him. I smiled at her as I walked out. She looked down.

When we got outside the class and started walking towards his office he said, “I walk down here not knowing who, just the situation, and it’s YOU?”

“That’s right.”

I walked down that hall in a way different that I’m sure she did. It was a proud walk, not scared. The lights shined down on me. I had conquered fear and the thought of retribution for doing what’s right. And I had done it by disentangling, disengaging, simply saying, “No.”

I told him what happened. He said he wanted to believe me but he wasn’t there. He could only go on what she said. He acted as if his hands were tied. Personally, I think he could have done more but looking back I’m glad he didn’t. He looked at me with a curious face at one point and said something about my grandfather. I’d like to think he saw some of him in me.

“You’re going to have to attend Saturday Morning Detention.”

I don’t know if any of you have ever attended Saturday Morning Detention but that is the Detentions of Detentions in High School.

He told me he would contact my mom the next day giving me time tonight to tell her myself. He knew my mom because my mom had been a teacher before she had me. Aced the test later that day.

I told my parents that night. They didn’t punish me, they believed and understood why I did what I did. I’m very grateful for that and for the fact that they didn’t butt in. They told me I still had to go to detention on Saturday. I’m glad I did. I accepted ALL the repercussions of my actions, no substitutes. This has served me well throughout life.

People were surprised to see me in Saturday Morning Detention. My friend, Brandon, a big brother who went by “Down Down” was there. He was there a lot, like John Bender from Breakfast Club. “Down Down” went to prison for murder a few years later. My buddy Gene, Brandon’s cousin, was there too. They were both like dude, what did you do? When I told them they were like man, we wish we had seen that. They knew about that woman. Her reputation among the black community at the High School was legendary. She wasn’t asked to come back the following year.

Quick side story. My senior year, for whatever reason, I can’t remember why, I went back to Saturday Morning Detention. I hid this from my parents and no teacher told them. Saturday morning I said I was going to the gym and took my dad’s car. I knew I would be there for a few hours so I had to have some kind of plan to call them and placate any concerns. I got sentenced on like a Tuesday so I had a few days to plan. My mother was working again so no one was at home during the weekdays. On Wednesday, after I figured out my plan, I used a pay phone at the High School to call home. We had caller ID so I wanted to see what the ID would say. It just had the phone number listed as pay phone. I checked later, erasing it from the caller ID. I used that phone to call my mom on a bathroom break from Detention to tell her, “Yeah, I’m done lifting but there’s a whole bunch of us here about to start a basketball tournament. We just set teams.” It worked! I told my parents this story later in life and we had a good laugh.

No society can exist unless the laws are respected to a certain degree, but the safest way to make them respected is to make them respectable. When law and morality are in contradiction to each other, the citizen finds himself in the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense, or of losing his respect for the law - two evils of equal magnitude, between which it would be difficult to choose.

Frederic Bastiat The Law

No Rulers, not no rules. Are those rules moral? Are you going to respect moral law and not respect immoral law? I decided a long time ago on this. In my 20s the code I had established along with my interest concerning people who had done the same and suffered led me to volunteer for “Free Mumia Abdul Jamal,” and the sister organization for freeing Leonard Peltier. I left the organization quietly when I felt a COINTELPRO infiltration, that’s another story. It wasn’t lost on me that we walked in the same streets and moved in the same circles of Fred Hampton, reminding me of what happened to him.

Understand that you are divine. You have the divine in you, waiting to be let out and shared. No one can take that from you. The word “No,” has so much power.

My heart, which will be weighed on the scales against the feather of MAAT cares not about following the unjust whims of men. The imprints that are left on my heart care not about the interrogations, lost friends, threats, bribes, etc. My heart is light in the sense that it is not heavy. So I think, so I feel, so I act. So I AM.

The dreary halls I have walked down from my own sacrifice of false self to the true Self are made brighter, a glass darkly of my final hall’s magnificence.

Tap into the heart, your spine, the breath of life. Know the divine within, act on what is right and just. Defend yourself with honor.

In Ancient Egypt, temples dedicated to certain Gods were up and down the Nile River. With certain eyes, these temples can come to house the various archetypes or Neters (Gods) residing within all of us. These forces also reside in nature; order, justice, wisdom. These cosmic forces or emanations from the nameless reside in our temple, the body. Protect the body, nourish it, exercise it. It is sacred. For those who come like thieves to defile it, kick them out as Jesus did. They will not burn the lighthouse of Alexandria within and without.

You are the builder of your temple. Build it and repair it accordingly.

Once you have your true Self, even a little, the people with a clouded Nous will have no sway over you.

Begin with reason, compassion for these as I did with the Study Hall teacher. Once the reasonableness has been met with unreasonableness, cooperation is no longer an option. Even non cooperation is nonviolent.

Gandhi to Hampton, if need be.

Right action, right speech. When you do this, if others are watching, you will create something in the aether with your voice. Divine. However, even if no one is watching, you know. Your heart knows, and it goes with you.

Be light as you are light. That light can be bright and shiny or fiery and sharp, like lightning. The weather at the time depends.

When you walk away from it though, if you have done what is true and acted with integrity, essentially what is you, the heart will weigh light.

Right action leads to light heart. The fetters are untangled, the chains broken. Light as a feather.

Make those that oppress work so hard that they see the feebleness in sacrificing their humanity. May your vital reflexion of what they could be shine back to them.

Hetep.