Pipeline
“I am a survivor of the pipeline to prison.”
-S., in a meeting of the Council of Advisors for Interfaith Action for Human Rights (December 2020)
Image by @abduzeedo
I grew up on a little dead-end gravel road with a name too fancy for the reality: Essex Avenue. There were six small houses on one side of the road, and a farm on the other. From our front room window we could see across the farm furrows to Pipeline Avenue. There must have a pipeline under or near Pipeline Avenue. I knew the name of the road before I knew what a pipeline was! Maybe it ran all the way to Chino Hills, like the road?
Similarly, I have not always paused to consider how we create pipelines in our local communities for our children and young people to be shunted into certain directions. Where I live, in Western Howard County in Maryland, young people are shunted into athletic endeavors, community activities, and college. Our pipelines are engineered for success.
In a meeting of the Council of Advisors of Interfaith Action for Human Rights (IAHR), a member offered the following introduction: “I am a survivor of the pipeline to prison.” I have pondered this matter-of-fact introduction for the past year. It comes to mind when I’m talking with someone in recovery, when I’m replacing drywall on a flooded home along the Kentucky River, when I access another incisive piece about redlining. (A fascinating redlining resource: Rat Film.)
Last night my husband and I sat down on the couch to watch a show while I continue a massive crochet project for my daughter’s birthday. Dave asked me if I wanted a comedy or a drama. I requested a comedy, and he popped on a new show: Abbott Elementary. It’s a mockumentary-style show about teachers in a underfunded Philadelphia school. While I liked the characters and could appreciate the writing, I couldn’t laugh. I could not find the comedy in under-funded city schools where teachers resort to begging for a rug from a guy with connections.
I’ve been in a book club for about 20 years with Baltimore City teachers. These women, whose life experiences, good humor, and companionship have enriched my life deeply, have spent their own money on winter coats for students, faced down vermin, struggled with ineffective administration, grappled with violence and poverty, and loved their students. Fourteen years ago, I shadowed one on the job at Cherry Hill Elementary School. The conditions were shocking. The teachers and students were amazing.
I’m unresolved about the show Abbott Elementary. Does this kind of program deaden us to the harsh realities of our current failings? Is the dysfunctional inner city school simply a trope? I did enjoy the way the one woke white guy (Jacob) was repeatedly shut down as he referred back to his time in Africa, or quoted Robin D’Angelo, author of White Fragility, which has very mixed reactions as an anti-racism resource. That allowed me to laugh at my own efforts as a white person to prove my solidarity with people of color. And perhaps the show exposed the ways I focus on personal awareness and knowledge and growth over action to change the system. Reading Ta-Nehisi Coates is useful, important work. And so is ACTION.
Pipelines are massive and interwoven systems that are a bear to adjust. Where to begin? How to fund the effort? Who is responsible for remaking a death-dealing pipeline into a life-giving one? What action can we take?
I’m investing my energy into the work of Interfaith Action for Human Rights (IAHR). On Wednesday, February 2nd, 2022, at 6 pm, IAHR is hosting a Town Hall Meeting to update us on efforts to change a part of the pipeline via the Maryland and Virginia legislative sessions, which open tomorrow. Sign up if you are a Maryland or Virginia resident right here: https://www.interfaithactionhr.org/iahr_calendar
It is not the only way to act, yet it is a way.
All around me are pipelines that have escaped my notice. I get used to them as part of the scenery, or I ignore them because they are carefully hidden below the surface, beyond my awareness. I want to notice. I want to learn how to contribute to re-engineering these systems.
Perhaps you are working on some aspect of the system and want to share? Send me a message. I’d love to learn the ways that you are taking action to shut down pipelines, or re-direct them, or at least to notice their existence.
