Staying with the trouble
Tension
Chuck Hoffman + Peg Carlson-Hoffman
2011 Acrylic on canvas
101.6cm x 101.6cm (40in x 40in)
© Genesis+Art
Minneapolis, Minnesota
This month, Chuck and I, like much of the rest of the world, have been watching the Derek Chauvin trial. We are shocked and broken hearted at the recent murders of Daunte Wright, 10 miles away from the site of the trial, and of 13-year-old Adam Toledo in Chicago. We have worried to pieces about our own family members being unsafe.
It is especially heart rending to be in Minnesota at this particular time. We have friends protesting in the streets, and we have friends that can hear flash grenades in the night. There is a certain vibration and anxiety that one can feel in the center of the heart that has only grown since we arrived here last fall. The anguish from the black community is being shared and communicated, and beginning, God help us, to be heard.
I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. Chuck and I have found it so important to feel and stay with this pain over time to understand and clearly see this double system of policing, and the double systems of so many things. I have benefited so much by being shown and alerted by our black reporters, news analysts, attorneys and friends, how persistently our systems continue to perpetuate the false narratives that black and brown people are “big and scary”, “probably on drugs” and “undoubtedly, armed and dangerous.”
We appreciate all the local news reporters, people that live here, that refuse to turn away. Most local reporters and broadcasters have leaned into these concerns with open hearts, searching for core issues in our communities, and listening deeply. The presence of community members reporting on their own community is vitally important. Without the voices of community the chance for policy changes remains remote. Chuck and I have been taking classes in bystander intervention, which we recommend. Check out ihollaback.org.
Whether the issues are racial, environmental or anything else, Chuck and I will practice what we learned in Northern Ireland and in painting together. Stay with the problem. “Staying with the trouble,” with kinship and kindness, can give rise to something new. It can reveal new ways of understanding, new ways of creating and foster the way to imagine an encouraging future for justice in the human and more than human world.
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