O P I N I O N

THE SOAPBOX

Stand up. Speak up. It’s your turn.

I am very lucky.

While I’ve felt nervous and had sweaty palms before using my three minutes at a BMA meeting, I never felt like I was in danger of violence or even witnessing violence while in the chambers at City Hall. 

I do a lot of work to regulate myself and help my friends who were going to speak do the same. I always bring a repetitive motion task that can be worked on before and after I speak, like sewing or mending. It is a time honored tradition for American women to do fiber work during and as civic engagement.

Before we went to talk about our challenges accessing the city as people with disabilities, we worked together to write our statements. We gave ourselves time to sit with our statements and receive feedback on our statements from one another so that when we read them to the people present they would not see our raw grief at being excluded from our community.

We chose our words carefully, working very hard not to offend people but still tell our lived experiences. I nest myself in data. I tell myself that my feelings don’t apply to everyone, like the feelings I experienced at Market Basket when I was told my ability as a disabled person to access their store “wasn’t a priority.” Not everyone would have felt that crushing sour rejection like I did. But when I say 40% of people over 65 have a disability, that feels grounded and stable.

Sometimes an issue is so egregious that no amount of preparation can adequately regulate someone to present in a meeting full of people that are supposed to represent you, but don’t look like you. Don’t have the same experiences you do. A problem can be so vast, and affect certain people with such disproportionate weight that your voice cannot do anything but be loud. One cannot fit all that needs to be said into the time permitted. The hurt is too big. 

Just because someone is so hurt that their system cannot be regulated is no reason to remove them from a community meeting. We did that at the BMA meeting of 5/19, Manchester.

Not only did we remove a person that was so hurt that the despair in her voice could be felt, but we arrested her. There is a case to be made for following procedure and stepping down when one’s time is up. We do need to provide individuals with reminders that their time is up and tools to return to a regulated state when finished. We provide the time reminders, which protect others, but no calming tools for the speaker. 

A member of our community, a veteran, the first speaker of the night chose not to aid the speaker to return to our community group in a calm state, he instead chose to escalate the situation by growling something angry at her as she walked down the aisle. 

He chose to make the situation worse. A person who had just spoken about trauma and military experience then participated in behavior that heightened tension in an already emotionally charged room. 

I don’t know why he continued to make choices that increased the tension in the community. He turned 180 degrees in his seat and stared intensely at the visibly distressed woman and did not stop. The room changed. This woman was emotionally escalated because she was asking for accountability from the Manchester Police department who shot and killed a young man in her community. She made that very clear in her statement.

Yet the veteran went out of his way to direct his eyes and stance at the woman escalating tension in the room. I felt threatened and he wasn’t directing his eyes and body at me.

This stare scared me and it wasn’t directed at me.

The dark stare elevated my stress levels as I sewed to keep them down and I hadn’t just spoken about the loss of a young life at the hands of the city’s police department. The woman was calming down and the Veteran decided to poke at her and escalate the tension in the room instead of allowing the de-escalation to continue.

The Veteran chose to continue that aggression as the next speaker began. He did not have to. His prolonged stare over multiple rows of people, including a 9 year old child in my row who had just spoken to the BMA for the first time, toward a visibly upset woman layered the emotional charge of the room. 

Police walked down the aisle and spoke to the Veteran. It was whispered, I did not hear what it was, but the Veteran turned his head and looked at the front of the room. He had raised the stress levels in that room such that the speaker was forced into fight or flight, a natural response when presented with someone threatening you. 

Then the police, the same group of people that shot her community member this winter, aggressively approached her and forced her to be removed from the city gathering, further escalating the situation. 

All that was needed to chill the room down was to keep the Veteran’s eyes pointed forward. 

I am a professional de-escalator. I run classrooms full of kids at the end of their school day. 

That room would have calmed right down if police removed the Veteran and not the hurt woman. The room would have stabilized if the police just asked the Veteran to keep looking forward. But instead, the officers present chose to increase the tension in the space and remove someone who had every right to be present.

She was not the aggressor here, but because she let her emotions through during her statement, she was targeted. Those of us in the marginalized communities know this. It is why the people there to talk about our lack of accessibility in our community did so much work ahead of time to regulate ourselves.

She was speaking out against a certain group of people and then she was removed from the community by that same group of people. They seem to hold all the power in this situation. 

The Veteran was not removed. 

If one was removed, the other should have been. 

I cannot ignore the racial dynamics of what happened. A visibly upset Black woman criticizing police conduct was removed from the meeting, while the armed white man who escalated tension remained seated. 

The child said he was scared.

I am disappointed that the first civic engagement for the 9 year old child who shared his thoughts about sidewalks with the mayor had another speaker arrested directly behind him for doing the same. What does that teach him if he has something to speak about in the future that brings up similar emotions in him?

Amber Nicole Cannan is a disabled nonprofit founder and artist who volunteers with the city as a DPW Commissioner.