The Community

by N. Jamiyla Chisholm

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. —Martin Luther King Jr.

You have to grow from the inside out. None can teach you, none can make you spiritual. There is no other teacher but your own soul. —Swami Vivekananda

Old habits are said to die hard, and the same is apparently true for traumas.

These traumas are irritatingly unhealed because they are cyclical, because this is not the first time that race has intersected with the systemic breakdown of families and the abuse of children.

She said she knew she was in a cult, knew that York just made things up to maintain control and feed his god complex.

She argued that York’s shape-shifting philosophies were proof he was a charlatan, and she couldn’t understand why the adults didn’t see it.

Today, four decades after leaving the Community, I have since learned that the need to find the good in something is universal, even when what is found has devastatingly harmful effects.

To our left was the shattered storefront of an Egyptian restaurant. The cracks in the glass spread like splayed fingers. The restaurant’s employees were as far away from the door as physically possible. Looking into the restaurant, we could see them huddled together in the back. Oddly, there were no police or news cameras present. Christina and I wondered if the police had been called and just didn’t show. Was all of New York City’s law enforcement trying to save the buried? Or did these Egyptians think calling the cops was as scary as facing a mob of angry men?

As we walked away, we agreed that this was exactly where African Americans had been for at least a hundred years, post-Emancipation, and where Chinese Americans were in 1871 after a mob in Los Angeles murdered more than a dozen people.

Our ancestors had walked different paths in this country, but we both knew they had faced fear head-on, stared down terrorists, and refused to leave a shop simply because a brick or crowbar had been launched through the window.

The feeling that one suffers alone but also as a collective, the belief that someone else’s situation is worse, and there’s no need harping over a busted window when someone else could as easily be crying over a busted head, eye, nose, face.

Racism was such a powerful concept, we thought, that people who lacked power often hesitated to see themselves as victims. Instead, they think if they hadn’t been there, this wouldn’t have happened. If they hadn’t made eye contact, they might not have been noticed. If they hadn’t been Black or Muslim or a woman or gay, they would be safe.

I wondered if a Dwight York or a Jim Jones would have existed and amassed a following had the citizens of this country felt like citizens who could expect justice and respect.

Cultural vulnerability, when up against powerful arms of society that control all resources and ultimately livelihoods, have led many to seek their own forms of liberty in the people and places who appear to share their vision even when they don’t.