I'm Major Jackson, and this is the slowdown.

As kids with rocks in our pockets, my friends Darnel, Walt, lefty and I scaled a 10-foot wall that enshrouded a group of buildings that resembled Greek temples.

John John lived across the street. We often looked out his bedroom window, down at students in ties and

jackets, with the letter G emblazant on their chests. We presumed that the exquisitely kept grounds

belonged to a private school filled with private school kids. With marble Corinthian columns, its buildings looked like opulence itself,

stately compared to the modest two-floor row homes that we lived in. We stood on each other's

shoulders, then pulled ourselves up. Darnel slipped and badly bruised his arm, but we did not care about the wrists.

We were determined to give expression to our feelings of unfairness that the school stirred in us.

What we didn't know was that the school housed orphaned boys. Girard College was founded in 1833 by the shipping magnet Stephen Gerard for the purpose

of educating poor white male orphans.

The students were not to blame.

I long felt guilty about our need to retaliate in reaction to our relative poverty-stricken lives.

It would be many years later before I developed an empathetic imagination and an art practice to channel those emotions of anger and rage.

That wall, however, contributed to my attitude in life about all walls. They must come

tumbling down. It also engendered a desire in me to be emotionally self-sufficient, to not give

over my power to the injustices in the world.

It is why I collect art, broadsides by favorite poets,

old vinyl of musicians I love.

Grounding myself in beauty,

grants me the mental fortitude and wherewithal to resist without fear.

Today's poem reminds me, in the midst of rapid changes and the assault on freedoms,

that we must find ways to protect our health and each other, to harness our capacity for joy,

...