We’re about halfway through Between the World and Me.

They read the escalator story for tomorrow.

We’re going to talk about situations where you’ve felt like you had no power.

Then we’re going to talk about the story Coates tells in Between the World and Me.

Then we’re going to look at this excerpt from Rebecca Solnit:

Democracy itself is based in trust in strangers and a sense of having something in common with them (which is part of why xenophobia and fear of crime serve fascist agendas so well). Circulating freely among them – especially in the diverse places most cities are – helps inculcate this feeling; it gives you a sense of confidence, of being able to coexist with difference. It orients you, literally, and it’s very useful knowledge in an emergency. That’s what’s celebrated in those old movies and shunned in the rhetoric and designs of the new technologies.

Then we’re going to look at an excerpt from Garnette Cadogan:

I realized that what I least liked about walking in New York City wasn’t merely having to learn new rules of navigation and socialization—every city has its own. It was the arbitrariness of the circumstances that required them, an arbitrariness that made me feel like a child again, that infantilized me. When we first learn to walk, the world around us threatens to crash into us. Every step is risky. We train ourselves to walk without crashing by being attentive to our movements, and extra-attentive to the world around us. As adults we walk without thinking, really. But as a black adult I am often returned to that moment in childhood when I’m just learning to walk. I am once again on high alert, vigilant. Some days, when I am fed up with being considered a troublemaker upon sight, I joke that the last time a cop was happy to see a black male walking was when that male was a baby taking his first steps.

Solnit, Rebecca. “Turns out the Zombie Apocalypse Isn’t as Fun as They Said It Would Be – Rebecca Solnit on Our Dangerously Disconnected World.” The Guardian, November 16, 2024, sec. Society. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/nov/16/zombie-apocalypse-dangerously-disconnected-world-rebecca-solnit.

Cadogan, Garnette. “Walking While Black.” Literary Hub (blog), July 8, 2016. https://lithub.com/walking-while-black/.