Guest Post: Suzannah Porter on Names and Community

 

Today’s post takes us out of The Bubble. Like most of us, I took in a lot of information yesterday, both in images and verbal responses to a horrific tragedy. The following short essay stayed with me. Suzannah Porter lives in Baltimore and her words about calling places and people by their true names moved me. It is shared here with permission.  

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Biden is not my favorite person, but ngl, his address on the Key Bridge weirdly comforted me. And it wasn't just that he pledged to fully front the cost of rebuilding the bridge. I mean, America has to. The money they will lose each day is massive. I had to sit in it a bit, trying to figure out why I was down with his address. Then I figured it out. 

He pronounced it "right". 

I heard "balmer" and "bawdimore" several times. And it was his default. Like it was his backyard and he was a little territorial the way I was.

Last time Baltimore made the national news this big it was the death of Freddie Gray. Every anchor on the scene purporting to know all about Baltimore and the police culture and racism here were clearly a sham to me because they hadn't spent a second here otherwise they would have pronounced it differently. Baltimore was just a links-getter and hot button topic, and white people saying Baltimore with that offensive "T" sticking out like it was the center of the world grated my last nerve every second of their "reporting". How can you do any in depth knowledge-gathering in this town and still pronounce that 't" with your whole grown-**s chest? I was grateful when that one blm activist took down Geraldo letting him know we all knew he didn't know sh*t about this community and what it was doing to support each other during that time, he was just there to paint Baltimore as some sort of riot town, not the struggling community - but community nonetheless - that it was. 

And Biden actually saying our name right hit differently. Reconstruction here clearly has economic motivators, but at least I knew he had been here when it wasn't a hot topic. When it was just Baltimore, the city I know and love.

You gotta call people by their name. It's true for everyone. It's true for the people who have been murdered by law enforcement, you gotta say their name. It's true for naming lgbtq people in your welcome statements instead of just saying "all are welcome." It was true when Jesus called the fishermen by their name, (because what fishermen really were gonna assume he wanted a fisherman for a holy journey?), it's true when you gotta use people's pronouns.

It makes community happen. It makes you connect to a person's personhood.

Just my musings for the day. My brain is in a weird place.

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Suzannah Porter (she/her) is a former Field Director for various congressional campaigns and political action committees and women’s advocacy organizations such as NOW and NARAL. Currently she is a member of the ELCA Delaware-Maryland Synod Council and worships at Dreams & Visions church in Baltimore Maryland. She currently consults on technology, live worship, database management and other technological needs of small faith communities.