Content Warning: this piece makes explicit description of the forced detox and murder of my friend, Rob Talbot, by police in March 2018, and contains descriptions of the somatic reactions I have when trying to work as a Peer Writing Tutor with police around. Please take care of yourself if you decide to read this article.
I could start at the beginning, or I could start here—at the thick pane of insulated glass in between the Evergreen Writing Center, and Red Square. Looking out the large window wall of the WC, one can see the huge leaves falling off the improperly pruned trees filter past the glass. The wind picks them up, the rain weighs them down. Rain falls and streaks the glass in needed tears. Folks walk by, to get to the library, to the CAB, to class. The window nearly always inspires the empty focus needed to get some words out onto a page, both for myself, and for the many writers that come in and out of our center.
But it’s nearly always interrupted.
It’s a November evening, dark enough that the lights lining Red Square have turned on, illuminating the piling leaves up against the glass. I am sitting at tables we pushed together for Writers’ Circle, where myself, my co-tutor, and a handful of writers—both students and alums— have come in to share in the camaraderie of another week of trying to get words down on a page.
Lights flash outside the window.
A dark grey vehicle with tinted windows, a nice, large truck, moves deftly and spryly, spinning in front of the glass window. Barely hesitating, the vehicle throws itself in reverse, quickly backing up up to the far wall lining the Daniel J. Evans Library entrance.
I freeze. I stop mid-sentence. I can feel my eyes glaze over. I have worked hard to prepare our agenda for today, to make space for the writers that have showed up to receive my services, which I am paid for by the State of Washington, at least in part funded by our tuition money.
Cops.
My co-tutor knows me well, sliding a hand forward and leaning towards me, while steadily making eye contact, he says softly “It’s ok, Fern, it’s ok”. The voice and physical presence of a trusted coworker pulls me back into the room. I try to get my brain back on track. I pull my eyes away from the light, the glass. I will my shoulders to relax. My heart is beating fast, my breath is frozen, unreachable. I want the pain in my knuckles to go away. I will my voice box to make words, which are usually my greatest asset, my labor, my love.
I speak. We continue. I never want this to happen again. Of course— it happens again.
As an educator and peer tutor, I am tired of cleaning up after capitalism and our carceral education system. I’m tired of trying to create safe learning spaces for our writers, our students, without addressing systemic violence. As outward-facing, service-oriented workers, teachers will nearly always face pressures to be “neutral”, lest we avoid alienating students, peers, other teachers, administration. We’re asked to swallow our opinions, our experiences, our gender identities, to do our jobs, and—in spite of the emotionally-informed pedagogy expected of us—we swallow our own emotional experiences. Are we really in a safe working environment, and are our students in a safe learning environment when regularly exposed to violent agents of the state?
No. We’re not. And “neutral” silence doesn’t help.
There’s no amount of nonverbal communication, ritual, slowness, bringing in outside support, meta-communication, inquiry and emotional support I can extend to other my peers and the writers that come into the center, which will change outside conditions. I’m happy to create sanctuary under capitalism, and I am beyond grateful to be trained with these skills to do my job. The Writing Center has been more of a home and safe space for me than I’ve felt in quite a while, and I don’t want the safety to stop at the glass, because it never does. I want it to be truly safe. Not just emotionally safe; I want armed members of a racist, ableist, classist “security” force out of our library, the Daniel J. Evans Library.
A very dear co-student has a sticker on their water bottle, which sits on a shared table while our professor lectures: “Kill the Cop in Your Head — ATL”. We met just months before Tortuguita was gunned down, but many years after Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin’s essay outlining the many hypocrisies of American Liberalism. As educators, we’re constantly putting our whole being into growth, because we can’t just “make” education; teaching requires our whole presence, our mental, emotional, physical bodies. Often caught between institutions that demand we act as authorities, and students who are un-doing years of carceral, colonial educational trauma, we are constantly taking individual, personal responsibility for the Cops in Our Heads. Our teaching practices actually rely on empowering our students, often to the detriment of factory-based educational systems that track learning through worksheet productivity, test scores, and colonial language standards. Considering all the work we are putting into letting go of any authoritarian teaching practices— especially at the Writing Center whose pedagogy champions writer empowerment and non-hierarchical peer relationships— when do we move towards getting the cops out of our community spaces?
There are actual, real cops, in real time, in our very real library, and they are… shaking hands with staff?
It’s mid-January. I am working with a writer who is an Evergreen alum, on their master’s thesis in their MFA program, at a small liberal arts school in NYC. I am overjoyed at the prospect of working with this person, in my favorite medium, in the intimate, safe setting of our video platform, in one of our breakout rooms. Before I know what’s happening to me, my eyes move to motion outside the window. Two white, able-bodied people, dressed completely in blue-black, walk swiftly to the circulation desk. The white curl of headset microphones travel from their ear to tactical pockets on their chest, white letter-badges stand out: POLICE. I hear myself say, out of habit, out of survival, to the writer who is across the country in our video chat: “There’s… cops, in the library”. My eyes move through the window to their belts, as whenever there are police in my space I immediately begin to assess their weaponry: at least one gun, probably pepper-spray and a taser. I can’t tell from this distance, their weapons blacked out in their holsters. The cop is dancing back and forth, lithe. They’re… smiling? Laughing even, and shaking hands with the bosses at the circulation desk. I tell the writer that everything is safe: “there isn’t an emergency”.
I am lying. I am trying to make myself, and the writer, feel calm.
There is, however, an ongoing emergency: of giving armed forces access to our public spaces— spaces specifically designed for learning, safety and calm— under the guise of “community policing”. In My Grandmother’s Hands, the author Resmaa Menakem argues that to prevent police violence, we have to engage with police at a community level, advising us to… play basketball with them? The argument is that if we hang out with cops, they will have more empathy for community members, and they’ll have less somatic stress and trigger reactions, resulting in a less violent police force. Surely, if we can “co-regulate” with these armed agents of the state, essentially co-dependently using our trauma reaction to fawn over violent oppressors, they’ll stop murdering black and indigenous people at such high rates? My heart beats fast, my tongue tingles and dries. Part of me goes limp, and part of me tenses. I will not be co-regulating with police, in the library or anywhere. We need to stop dumping money into training, paying, and welcoming police into our spaces. There’s no amount of Neo-liberal somatic practices, no deep breathing, no basketball games, worker chit-chat, no smiling and waving, no office jokes that will change the historical reality of policing in America.
I pull myself back into the session with this writer, who inspired me two years ago to come into the Writing Center. My life is coming full circle, and I am being asked to give back to someone— who had given me so much— by starting me down this path. I pull my eyes away from the police, I pull my mind away from my many critiques of the Social “Justice” center, who gladly invites police into their space while also hosting films deploring police violence. I am trying to not be angry that this is the same office spreading “self-care”, at the same time they would welcome police into their space.
I do agree with the author of My Grandmother’s Hands that I have a choice, although it is not the one the author would want me to make. I chose, instead, to co-regulate with my people. We read poetry, this writer pushes me when they push themselves. We go. We revise, fearlessly, beautifully, taking risks and diving in.
It’s February. It’s cold. It’s hard. There are so many anniversaries of so many deaths. I love the crisp light on the snow, but I spend most of February waiting for my subconscious to turn itself inside out, as it does mid-March. I have to watch my mind do this every year, because if I don’t, it could get really bad.
So, let’s go back to the beginning. I can’t pinpoint the moment I met Rob. He was just… always there, knit into the fabric of our little city, just a two hour train ride south of NYC. There was no one thing that was most beautiful about Rob: from whistling RnB, his love for my more-than-just-a-little aggressive rescue dog, his lipstick, his sweaters, and the many, many people he brought in and out of our home. Community and love circled around Rob, and, after we had both experienced so much housing instability due to our shared diagnoses (bipolar, schizoaffective, addiction, and just being plain weird), living with Rob was a dream. I was a little farther along in my sobriety (ok, Rob was not sober, and not exactly trying, but whatever), and I think I hadn’t let go fully of the care-cop in my head. I loved him like a big sibling, asking him firmly to put the glass away and never leave drugs out for my dog—my only two rules. We didn’t ask each other to do dishes (our third roommate did, but whatever), or to change who we were. Then, after a particular party involving umm… a few too many loud folks late at night, our landlord had had it and threw us all out. Without knowing we could fight eviction, we all packed up. I was pretty heartbroken and frustrated, and had minimal contact with Rob after that. It seemed this idyllic, post-addiction, post-institutionalization world we were trying to build together, one of poetry and food and people and music, was always out of reach.
A few years later, Rob tried to add me on Facebook, sending me a message that he wanted to talk. Struggling to set boundaries with addicted family members and just rather exhausted by the world, I did not respond. A few years after that, Rob was on methadone, and struggling with his psychosis. Rob had been rejected by the hospital where he had been trying to check himself in. Alternately, I could write this scenario as it truly was: society fails neurodivergent people seeking housing, supportive structure, and community, so they become “frequent fliers” at medical institutions. The hospital had tried to “set boundaries” with Rob, denying him medical care. Frustrated, he pulled the fire alarm at this fine medical establishment, immediately garnering the attention of the Real Cops— not just the ones in our heads. While in custody, they failed to give Rob his methadone, which he was legally prescribed and physically needed. Forced into a medically un-assisted detox (a painful, hellish and dangerous process), Rob … pooped himself, while in solitary confinement. Upon finally being able to shower, he refused to leave. I can only imagine how good warm water must have felt while detoxing, without any kind of care. Instead of meeting my friend’s needs, they placed Rob in 5-point restraints, physically assaulted him, pepper-sprayed him, and left him alone.
Then Rob died.
Or rather, I could write that sentence as Rob was murdered by people paid by the state, trained to hate and murder black, indigenous, poor, crazy, sick, trans people. Rob was killed by a historical lineage of slave-catchers, debt-enforcers, and people bent on criminalizing “abnormal” behavior in the form of gender non-conformance and neurodivergence.
None of my truth-speaking will bring back Rob. I hate February. I hate March. I don’t really hate months, or winter— I’m just tired. As someone who loves a lot of things: animals, people, ideas, writing, trees, dogs, other lovers, learning, poetry, I hate that I lose time like this every year. Maybe I have Cops in My Head left to let go of— I hate that I hate, but I will never find love for the police. Love implies I find community with those in blue, and I will never find that to be true.
Rob loved poetry. He wrote and read a lot of it on our couch, the couch he lived on in our living room. Normal people thought that was “a bad idea”, but I loved waking up in the morning, making coffee, and Rob was just.. there: singing, drawing, petting my dog, who also passed away two Februaries ago (that’s harsh February, why?!). What was a transient home for some was a longterm home for us, and I honestly think if it hadn’t been for the landlords, the police, we could have lived like that for a long time. We were so happy.
Especially towards the end, Rob was not perfect. He was wild. He upset us sometimes, he scared us, and towards the end, he stole from us and was doing all sort of… unfortunate things. No one deserves to go out the way he did. Yet, he loved like no other: Rob was the one who showed me that our weird, neurodivergent mumblings were indeed— beautiful. I do not know always why I am here, and Rob is gone. None of it is fair, but I can try to right some imbalances, by writing poetry, by using the powers I have remaining to love on the world, to make and honor our art, to use our voices, and encourage everyone to do so. We simply cannot do that with police wandering in and out of our spaces, no matter how much we can evict them from our heads.
Please, help me do my job. Get them out of the way. Schedule a session with us, come experience me doing what I truly love to do. Perhaps there will not be police in the library on that day.
Sincerely,
Fern Roush— Writing Center Peer Tutor.
