I’m a movie junkie. Growing up in the pre-cable era of six channels (remember UHF?), I would stay up to watch old movies on The Late Show, The Last Picture Show, and my favorite, Bijou Picture Show. With its old movie theater logo and whimsical intro music, it was a special reward for making it past midnight. On many Friday nights as a kid, really Saturday mornings, the last sound I heard was the test signal before I fell asleep as tv actually went off air. Making it that far as a shorty would be my first introduction to FOMO.

My movie taste is pretty broad but historical fiction, stories of adventure or love, gangster movies, or a good political thriller all rank high on the list. My approach to genre has always been pretty straightforward: make me laugh, make me cry, make me think, just don’t scare me. Still holds true today.

One of my favorite movies is All the President’s Men. A widely known film released in 1976, it is the retelling of the events surrounding the Watergate break-in and subsequent cover-up. Starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman (btw, where is he these days?), who are supported by a thorough ensemble cast, it is a masterclass in framing the true role of journalism in supporting the functioning of democracy. Carrying a gaudy 92% Audience Score on Rotten Tomatoes, it is a first rate classic that stands the test of time.

On the other end of the Rotten Tomatoes spectrum, but no less a favorite of mine, is Spike Lee’s 2004 uh, classic, She Hate Me. With a Critics Consensus of 19% and an Audience Score of 60%, it is emblematic of the often wildly divergent space between how mainstream critics and Black audiences receive movies made by Black creators. With no less than three distinct story lines, corporate malfeasance and attempted cover-up, reproductive rights, and family drama, not to mention a fantastic perp walk executed by Isiah Whitlock, there is a lot going on in the space of a little over two hours.

There is much to be critical of in the film, but for me, it is an engaging and entertaining experience that makes me think. Also sporting an amazing ensemble cast, including Kerry Washington, Anthony Mackie, Q-Tip, Ossie Davis, Ellen Barkin, Woody Harrelson, Dania Ramirez, Jim Brown, and my first cinematic crush, Lonette McKee, it is a gorgeously shot and emotionally honest story.

What these two movies have in common is Frank Wills. Frank Wills was the 24-year-old security guard who discovered the Watergate break-in and set in motion the events that led to the downfall of President Richard Milhous Nixon.

Playing himself in All the President’s Men, Mr. Wills is seen discovering the taped door inside the Watergate building while doing his nightly security checks. Portrayed by Chiwetel Ejiofor in She Hate Me, he is seen discovering the taped door in the basement of the building, leading to a surreal sequence where he is confronted by Halderman, Ehrlichman, Mitchell and Dean, along with Nixon, G. Gordon Liddy, and Oliver North. In Spike’s execution, we are given the back story that, while most of those involved with the Watergate cover-up went on to lucrative careers, things don’t go nearly as well for Mr. Wills.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Frank Wills recently. In part, because of the obvious parallels between the Nixon administration and the Trump administration, particularly their attempts to subvert and pervert American democracy. These efforts almost always rest on the sleight of hand premise of law and order for others, while championing forgiveness and redemption for them. In the past week, we have seen a small but steady stream of seditionists being publicly arrested, begging to be taken off of no-fly lists, and in one particular over-told story, having their mother pleading they receive organic meals in jail; all while the state continued with the executions of people for whom, we are led to believe, justice requires death and death alone.

Mostly, though, I have been thinking about Frank Wills in the context of Eugene Goodman. Eugene Goodman, as seen in the dramatic video captured by Igor Bobic, is the Capitol Police Officer whose savvy moves baited and lured the advancing mob away from the unguarded doors of the Senate floor. In doing so, he led them up the stairs and into an area with more Capitol Police, and away from the worst possible outcomes at the hands of insurrectionists with troubling intent. By all accounts, due to his quick thinking and action, Eugene Goodman is a hero.

What happens to Black heroic achievement in defense of the country? In the case of Frank Wills, other than the movies, I had no idea. The most compelling story I found, written by Simeon Booker for Jet magazine, was published on May 17, 1973.

In the months that followed his discovery at the Watergate building, Mr. Wills was called to testify in front of the grand jury. According to the Jet interview, he was quoted as saying, “Man, I was never so surprised in my life, most of the members of the jury were Black. I couldn’t count five white persons in the room. I told them what I told the police. They didn’t ask many questions and that ended my role in the prosecution.”

Offering his experience with the hero’s journey, he went on say, “Everybody tells me I’m some kind of hero, but I certainly don’t have any hard evidence. I did what I was hired to do but still I feel a lot of folk don’t want to give me credit, that is, a chance to move upward in a job.”

Frank Wills’ moment in the national spotlight was insightful, yet fleeting. On the day of Nixon’s resignation, he was quoted in the Washington Star-News saying, “We treat the president like a king, when he should be a man for all the people.” After his moment in the sun, briefly revived around the 25th anniversary of the Watergate break-in, he moved around, slowly slipping from the national consciousness, ultimately dying far from the media eye in 2000, at the young age of 52.

In Mr. Wills’ NY Times Obituary from September, 2000, Rep. James Mann of South Carolina, in the process of casting his vote for impeachment as part of the House Judiciary Committee on July 29, 1974, was quoted as saying, “If there is no accountability, another president will feel free to do as he chooses. But the next time, there may be no watchman in the night.”

Fortunately, Eugene Goodman was there, in broad daylight, doing his part to protect democracy from the latest iteration of a destructive American-president-as-king. This time, I want the brother to get all the props now, with the opportunities that come with, for his courageous and clever actions, while living a long and fulfilling life. At minimum, I’m hoping we are better at telling the stories and remembering the names that fight the good fight, often lost in the pages of history.

As a child, I saw a significant portion of America from the backseat of a car. My family road-tripped often, throughout the Midwest and South heading to family reunions, out West to the Black Hills, the Grand Canyon, Vegas and various points in California. It was a great education and a source of personal pride as I checked off my ever growing list of states I’ve visited (hit Alaska and Maine and I’ll be done).

I loved these trips, primarily because my father was a funny dude prone to telling wild, outlandish stories about the made up life of the various cities and small towns we’d drive through. At the same time, he would share a lot of history of the country from the perspective of a Black man who grew up in the South from the Great Depression forward.

As an adult, it feels like I’m in the car all the time. Many adventures up and down the East Coast, though these days it’s mostly as the driver for the various comings and goings of my children. School, sports, drop-offs at friend’s homes, concerts, you name it and I’ve hit that corner.

In all these travels, I’ve always been intrigued by the bumper stickers on cars, particularly the ones that are worn and tattered, hinting at both the age of the car and the commitment to the cause to which the sticker speaks.

While the themes run far and wide, the most intriguing category is political campaigns. If you’re looking, you can still see the occasional Gore or Bush the son bumper sticker, but these days it is mostly a mixture of Obama, Romney, Hillary, and of course, 45. Curiously, I do not see a lot of Biden stickers.

To their credit, the 45 supporters rep their dude the hardest and in the most creative of ways. MAGA, 45 to the second power, and straight Trump stickers are the most prevalent. Importantly, they are never alone, frequently accompanied with a thin blue line American flag sticker, a SIG Sauer sticker, the ubiquitous NRA logo, or a multitude of more offensive anti themed stickers, whether it be Obama or Hillary caricatures, dares to come take their guns, or variations on anti BLM sentiments.

Taken together, they are a sort of hieroglyphics to be decoded, usually requiring Google to play the role of Rosetta Stone to decipher what is going on here.

Over the recent holiday, my family and I hit the road from Southern California through Arizona up to Sedona, then back down, attempting to get off the grid for a moment. A lot of highway to unpack the emotions of the year that was 2020 and all that occurred. During this trip, the Georgia Senate runoff results dropped in the same time frame as the insane events unfolding in and around the Capitol.

By now, everyone has seen the unending loop of scenes from the events of the past week. Rabid, aggrieved mobs, foaming at the mouth as they stormed the Capitol, leaving a trail of destruction and death in their wake, and then, incredulously but unsurprisingly, walking out and away as if leaving a Black Friday shopping spree. They defecated, mobbed, looted, posed unmasked, ran roughshod over law enforcement, if not posing for selfies with them, while carrying, among other things, the avatar of American white supremacy and failed treasonous sentiments, the Confederate flag. A flag, as has been noted many places, never seen in any part of the Capitol, in any of its flag variations, not even during the Civil War.

Being on the road while all this was playing out was surreal. Driving by all manner of pickup trucks, decked out with every variation of 45 bumper sticker, accompanied by the consistent head turn and knowing glare from the drivers of these vehicles, was a reminder of how widespread the support is for the events of the past four years.

There are no surprises here. This is what it has always been and, while shocking in its execution, how else was this chapter of American history supposed to go? Certainly none of us familiar with the ways of white folks expected the current administration and the 74+ million who voted for a second helping, to be like “You got this, congratulations and good luck to the next administration.”

It was always gonna be venom, real outrage about feigned oppression, a continued fight for the liberty and freedom to literally shit on everything and everybody who represent the “others,” those preventing the fullest expression of white nationalism that is the animating feature of everything since the nation had the audacity to elect a Black man president of “their” country.

And the most galling of it all, the thing that vexes me most, is the insistence of the incoming administration to focus on page-turning, reaching across the aisle, and seeking out the support of an opposition who operates with integrity to make their administration successful. With an opportunity and mandate to push an agenda focused on restoring and securing voting rights access for all, economic equity, a true plan for alleviating the trauma of the pandemic, not to mention holding accountable those who criminally subverted the functioning of democracy, the signs are already concerning. There will be no reckoning beyond that which the people claim for themselves.

It is an untenable opening position to focus on bridging a divide premised on false equivalency. It portends a frustrating next four years of middling progress and lowered expectations of real justice and a more perfect Union.

Apparently, they aren’t road-tripping enough to see the real energy of the faded stickers that will be here long past any attempts at reconciliation with folks who seek to erase any attempts at justice for all.

Read more. But when you study the history of America, study it the way you’ve studied Nazi Germany. Treat the horrors of the Transatlantic Slave trade and the US domestic slave trade like the Holocausts they were, including the fact that many of the Nazi techniques were learned from America. If places like Auschwitz are painful to learn about, wait til you study centuries of American Plantations. Btw, stop going to weddings and retreats at plantations. It’s like getting married in a gas chamber. WTF. Look it up. Do not just study chattel slavery, but the economic model, oversight organization (overseer…officer…slave patrols…police) and division of labor, the spread of Christianity in America in all its flawed applications, public education, intellectual property rights (so much of the innovation of the 18th and 19th century is either learned from the horrors of slavery or created by enslaved people who never got the credit or the cash). Read some more.

Once you’ve done that, then see the Confederate flag like the Swastika, never unsee that. So that when you go to your favorite country music concert or SEC game or NASCAR race, you can imagine yourself surrounded by Nazis.

Then fight for a school curriculum that isn’t based on American exceptionalism without focusing on the chasm between the exceptionalism on paper and the hypocrisy in practice. Make it your business to challenge the lies you were taught so your kids don’t learn the same lies. Why? Because the young people you think are inherently better become the old people who are inherently racist. Force yourself to process how does that happen. Then read some more. And start the conversations with your children at much younger ages, say around the same time you tell little boys how to act towards little girls. Yep, that early. Seriously. Fixing the school curriculum and confronting how you introduce these topics to your children is the single. Biggest. Thing. You. Can. Do.

After that, when you want to ask how to use your voice, use it the same way you will use it this week to support Pride month. Imagine using all those same energies and posts and pictures and statements of support for your LGBTQ family and friends for all of your Black family and friends. Not that the two movements are grappling with all of the same issues or living the same struggle, because they aren’t, but it’s clear you have no problem being vocal about one of them. If you don’t have any Black friends, think about all the ways your life is segregated and try to figure out why that is. Here’s a hint: by design.

If you’re still not sure where to start, take all your enthusiasm for the women’s/feminist/suffrage movement and try to figure out what your solidarity looks like with Black women. Do you know the full history of the movement. Do you understand what it means to say women got the right to vote in 1920 when many of the “allies” who helped make it happen couldn’t fully vote until 1965 with the VRA. But while doing that, think about everything you’ve ever said regarding fighting for the full equality of women and ask yourself how you can apply a similar framework to understanding systemic racism at every level, from the playground to the boardroom. And while you’re doing that, remind yourself to contemplate why does history refer to slave holders and their wives? What were their wives if not slave holders as well. Then spend time with the libraries full of stories outlining that, at its core, white supremacy is based on protecting the purity of white women. Still is. Read more. Again, the issues aren’t the same, but the analytical framework to understand already exists in your software.

If you’re still not sure what to do, imagine taking all your energy and explicit activism in support of dogs, cats, gerbils, elephants, bumblebees, newts, whatever your animal of choice is, and channel that into one question: how would I feel if I saw a police officer with his knee on the neck of (insert animal of choice) for nine minutes while it cried for it’s life. Not at all comparing the humanity of my people to any animal, but rather pointing out how laughable it is how you need no help in your advocacy until you get to dealing with the issues Black folks deal with on the regular. Generally, as we are dealing with members of your family, because of course you’re not racist.

Then add all of that work to the hardships of your personal journey. The broken families. The abuse. The poverty. The discrimination. The being looked over. The unfair ways life has thrown curveballs your way and ask yourself: how much harder would my life be if I were Black? And do I care?

Once you’ve done all of that, think about your favorite music. Think about how often you consume Black music with no Black people around you. What does that mean? Does it happen all the time, most of the time, some time, or never? Do you really understand the stories, the emotions, the nuance, the runs? If you do, then why aren’t you in better community with Black folks. Why aren’t you in spaces where, given how much you love the music, there are more Black people than white? What are you afraid of? If you have to make Black music “universal”, when everyone knows the origins of so much of your favorite music, why?

Then, once you’ve done all this 100 level course work, revisit your question, read some more and then come back to me with a better, more thought out, self reflection oriented, action oriented, question for me. If that is too much to process, then maybe you should call someone else.

And if you’re actually one of the white friends I do have, you know how we talk to each other and the depth of the discussions we have, this will land differently for you and I’m grateful for the authenticity of our conversations and our friendship. Get your people.

Also, Google is your friend too. Well, not really, but you can get answers to questions.

Post posting script: by all means, please stop supporting movies like The Help, The Blind Side, Green Book among so many others. They are ahistorical, grounded in lies and distortions, and centering perpetrators as the emotionally flawed heroes and the “negroes” as simultaneously inherently flawed and magical people who can only realize their magic through the graciousness of white folks. Trash. All of them. If that’s your kind of movie, you’re doing it wrong.