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

Early on, I guess shortly after college, I learned I could not save the world, though

I felt passionately that so much needed my attention, our attention, homelessness, discrimination

against immigrants, income disparity, LGBTQ rights, climate injustice.

I believed in that strand of black culture, an American music and art that sought to

make a difference. Bob Marley, Nina Simone, Faith Ringo, and many others fed my spirit

and youthful idealism.

My showing up at a rally, protesting police brutality, or holding poetry workshops and homeless

shelters for children or in prisons for incarcerated youth, was acting on values of responsibility

and fairness.

Like many, my upbringing also inculcated a strong sense of care and service.

I am the recipient of such compassion and goodwill from people who understood quite clearly

the challenges I faced as a human and member of the black underclass.

Elders, teachers, coaches, even college administrators returned to me now as angels.

Those humane folks exhibited love, and what we call back then a consciousness, they

model an essential aspect of existing that is vital to any community who, as Dr. Martin

Luther King phrased it, are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, where whatever affects

one directly affects all indirectly.

I often wonder how do we really learn to put into practice kindness and charity?

Although I still carry that sense of purpose into adulthood, it became important for me to

not become exhausted, nor jaded.

All those marches and protest lines can shade one's world view and sense of humor.

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