The Day I Learned About Social Justice: For Donald Trump Supporters Who Feel Stupid CauseThey Now See What Everyone Else Been Talking Bout

When I was about 6 or 7, I was standing in my grandparents' front yard raking leaves with BB (my grandmother). The garbage truck came around the corner and the garbage workers started collecting trash and returning the cans as the typically do- well not really- they were dumping the trash and then flinging the garbage cans in the middle of people's yards. BB watched them come all the way down the street. One house after another of flippantly returned garbage cans. When the truck got down to our house, the workers- seeing her standing in the yard- dumped our garbage and gently stood the can back up. BUT before they could pull away! BB raises her hand to get their attention and called the young man over.

As fierce as I had ever seen her (and BB was FIERCE) she raised her manicured arthritic finger in that man's face and said, "I done watched you throw all them people's cans in the middle of the stews house by house. Why didn't you do my can like that? -he didn't answer- These folks doe took the time to place their trash in a can and set it on the street and that's how they deserve to pick it back up. Not throwed off in the middle of their yards. Now on your way back up that street, you fix them garbage cans, hear." He replied (visibly annoyed) "Yes Ma'am". And she watched him as he fixed every garbage can until the truck left the street.

As a 6/7 I was kinda confused. I thought she was being knit picky. I asked BB, why'd she made him pick up all those cans. She looked me straight in the face and said "Moni, the garbage man go to everybody house on the street. What I see him do to them, he eventually gone do to me. You got to learn to respect folks even when nobody's making you."

It took a good 25 years for those words to sink in. And even today, they come back to me at the most convenient times. I think what has drummed them up today is the new realization for some folks that Donald Trump is a vile human being, now that he has been caught on tape perfectly modeling rape culture towards a privileged married White woman. That one act was when the garbage man showed up at the Conservative moral right White privilege voters house, and he flung that garbage can right at the front door.

Those same folks weren't bothered by Trumps attack on The country of Mexico or Mexican people.

They didn't have an issue when he made fun of people with disabilities.

They weren't affected by Xenophobia or Islamaphobia.

They  didn't ask questions when he was blatantly racist and received endorsements from White supremacist.

They didn't feel pain when he openly attacked LGBTQ+ folks or other women outside of specific spheres of privilege.

They weren't up in arms when he cheated the poor.

But NOW that he is at their yard... they expected something different. -just don't work that way.

Human beings have got to learn that respecting and protecting others is the Only way to truly respect and protect oneself. That, for me, is at the heart of social justice. Glad BB modeled that for me.