Be Woke

Conservatives have trivialized an important concept. Liberals should own it.

Peaceful protestors in support of LGBTQ+ rights at the Iowa State Capitol in 2021

To be “woke'' is to have an active awareness of systemic injustices and prejudices, especially those related to civil and human rights, which is apparently a “bad thing” to conservatives, as they have turned this powerful word into a pejorative, implying one who is woke, or even a “woke mob,” is overly sensitive, and weak. They use it in this derogatory way, ridiculing those who are sensitive to civil and human rights abuses so they can maintain tenuous generational power over those who challenge their privilege. But they are wrong. To be woke is to be powerful.

I’m woke because I learned, indirectly, from Edna Griffin to be woke. Six years before I was born, on July 7, 1948, Army Veteran Edna Griffin, her daughter, and friends wanted to buy ice cream at the lunch counter at Katz Drug Store in Des Moines. They were denied service because they were Black. Boycotts, sit-ins and picketing supporting Griffin followed, and on December 13, 1949 the Iowa Supreme Court affirmed her right to be served under Iowa civil rights law, seven years before Rosa Parks’ historic protest.

I’m woke because when I was so young that in those pre-seat belt and pre-carseat days, and when my legs weren’t long enough to reach the end of the bench back seat of Mom’s old Chevy, my Mom often told me and my sisters Edna Griffin’s story as we would drive by the Katz Drug Store on the way to Grandma’s nearly every Saturday.

I’m woke because Edna, and the Des Moines Black community in general, taught Mom to be woke and Mom taught us we all need to be.

I’m woke because I know it’s wrong that Republican legislators are erasing history, making it illegal for teachers to teach Edna’s story and others like it in schools in Iowa and other Republican-controlled states, to all of our detriment. 

I’m a woke white man on the wrong side of sixty–woke in part because I grew up in a small ramshackle community in Iowa called Dogpatch, which people from the city made fun of, and I know the shame of not being considered “good enough.”

I’m woke because Dogpatch didn’t have running water, and we all had outhouses, when a mile or so away was the mansion of the family of the publishing giant Meredith, and as a boy when I walked barefoot past the mansion, I wondered why some people had everything when they were born, and the rest of us had mostly nothing, except for each other.

I’m woke because before I was ten I remember evacuating my aunt and her neighbors from their shacks made of tar paper, wood pallets and scrap lumber from where they were squatting, otherwise homeless, on the floodplain of the Des Moines river when it flooded nearly every spring. I saw the love in her eyes when she looked at me, as my Dad and I worked beside her in water up to my thighs, and also felt her desperation.

I’m woke because I remember my Sunday School lessons.

I’m woke because as a boy I realized others had it worse than we did because of the color of their skin.

I’m woke because a Black buddy I went to grade and high school with spent his first five years in an orphanage, and who then worked his way through college and law school to eventually become the Chancellor of a midwestern University tells me that one time he left town on university business, leaving his wife alone at home, and a pickup decorated with Trump flags pulled up into his driveway in the middle of the night, blasting “Dixie.”

I’m woke because I know my friend who holds a government position is afraid that the wrong people will learn she is Muslim, and she fears being harrassed.

I’m woke because I know a trans teenager who tells me he has been beaten up so often he fears walking the streets of nearby Pella, not only because of threats and actual violence, but because so many middle aged white women he passes tell him, sometimes screaming, that “he’s going to go to hell!”

I’m woke because I know my taxi-cab driver Sikh friend in Albuquerque started to wear a NY Yankees baseball cap after 9/11 because of fear he might be mistaken for a terrorist.

I’m woke because as a boy I didn’t understand why so many white adults I knew hated black and brown people when they didn’t know any. And as a man, I still struggle to understand why some do.

I’m woke because my uncle came back from serving as a communications officer in the Navy in the Pacific in the early 1960s and gave me a shortwave radio, from which at night I could hear people from all over the world tell their stories, and I learned to appreciate our differences and commonalities.

I’m woke because in 1969 I nervously watched an ambulance pull away from the high school gym, rushing a 16-year-old friend to the hospital because her boyfriend tried to give her a coathanger abortion in the locker room.

I’m woke because standing next to a gay friend, I watched some gay, trans and straight high schoolers blossom with pride at a campaign rally for Mayor Pete in Knoxville when he was asked what advice he would give to gay and trans kids, and he told them that WE needed THEM to be all they could be.

I’m woke because I remember when police arrested men at the gay Blue Goose Bar in Des Moines in the 1960’s for being gay and today one of my best friends is a farmer who met his husband at a gay bar in Des Moines.

I’m woke because I’ve been disappointed by friends who have kicked their gay and trans teenagers out of the house for being gay and trans, which is completely beyond my understanding.

I’m woke because at least one of these kids spent a night or two on our couch, and who looked at us with appreciation in the morning because they knew we loved them for who they are.

I’m woke because I’ve been proud of friends who loved on their gay and trans teenagers, telling them to be their authentic selves.

I’m woke because about 2% of children are born with ambiguous genitalia, supported by science that says biological sex is chemically and genetically more complex than XX, XY, and isn’t binary, and I’m confident enough in my own gender to be inspired by the diversity of humanity rather than frightened by it. 

I’m woke because I have a multi-ethnic/racial family of varying gender identities and I want every single one of them all to have the same opportunities I’ve had. And the same for everyone like us. And I find it intolerable and indefensible that anyone would seek to deny them these opportunities in the United States of America.

I’m woke because I’m an old wrestler who learned to be respectful of everyone because the littlest guy in the wrestling room just might be able to kick your ass. And his color didn’t matter.

I’m woke because Grandpa Leonard told me when he was on the road crew the only thing that mattered was how fast the guy next to him holding a shovel could move dirt, not the color of his skin.

I’m woke because of all the mistakes I have made in my life that I’ve learned from.

I’m woke because I’m horrified by the experiences Native American women have shared with me about being involuntarily sterilized.

I’m woke because my hard working parents lost their life savings and were driven into bankruptcy because of medical bills even though they had health insurance, and I want our medical system to work for us all, even the least among us.

I’m woke because I believe public education is the most powerful institution in the country for creating equal opportunities, and I’m willing to call out Republicans who want to destroy them, because public schools expose kids to broad ideas, and by the way, if you treat your children like property that has to see and experience life through only your vision of the world, things just might not turn out well.

I’m woke because I’m a proud product of public schools before Republicans banned teaching the truth about history, and because I honor our hardworking teachers and librarians. 

I’m woke because I hear our Republican legislators lie and tell us our water is clean, when kids aren't able to share the joy of swimming in lakes or rivers like we could when we were kids.

I’m woke because if you are like me, and if you have ever pounded a bazillion nails, busted your knuckles day in and day out turning wrenches, waited tables until you drop, stacked shelves until you can’t raise your arms any more, or have a bad back and carpal tunnel syndrome from being chained to a keyboard all day, or something like that, and had the boss treat you like dirt, I appreciate the protections unions gave us, like the 40 hour work week and child labor laws.

I’m woke because the world is burning, and Republicans don’t want to help address the problem. They’d rather the world burn than admit Al Gore was right.

I’m woke and embarrassed that white men tell me racist jokes, thinking I will appreciate them like they do simply because I am a white man of a certain age.

I’m woke because I’m outraged when an attorney tells me it’s nearly impossible to get felony domestic abuse charges to stick to a man who beats his wife, because juries tend to think the family and church should handle it, and they don’t want the man to lose his right to own a gun that would come with a felony conviction.

I’m woke because I have a Black friend whose parents weren’t allowed to vote in Mississippi until the Civil Rights Act was passed, and now Republicans want to restrict voting rights.

I’m woke because I’ve talked to many Native American men and women of about my age who weren’t allowed to speak their languages in public spaces while growing up, and can’t imagine the personal and cultural harm and pain that it inflicted.

I’m woke because I’ve spent untold amounts of time at the Mexican border, seeing hopeful, hardworking, potential immigrants and asylum seekers wanting to be future U.S. citizens and fill the jobs we so desperately need to be filled in our labor crisis, and I know, with their introduction to our workforce, our economy would sizzle.

I’m woke because I’m old enough to remember when Martin Luther King, Jr. went to speak at Central College in Pella on March 22,1967, crosses burned along the highway all the way from Des Moines.

I’m woke because my heart aches for the victims, alive and dead in Uvalde, Buffalo, and Orlando, and countless other mass shootings and other gun deaths that happen only in America.

I’m woke because as a taxi driver in Albuquerque, as the bars closed downtown, I saw a young Black man who was about to get into my cab tackled by five cops when he had his back to them, and they handcuffed him behind his back, threw him to his belly to the sidewalk, and then one cop put his knee in the man’s back, and lifted his arms up by the cuffs until the young man screamed, and then the cop smiled at me, let the man's arms back down, then lifted them again, until he screamed, and the cop smiled at me again, and then let them back down again, doing that five times, always smiling at me, until he pulled the man to his feet by the cuffs, arms behind his back, screaming, to take him away in his squad car, and when I went to court as a witness for the young man, the cop didn’t show up and the charges were dropped and the judge told me it happens all the time.

I’m woke because I’m an American patriot who loves our country despite our flaws, and to understand the values and history of our country, is to be woke. 

I’m woke because I realize America isn’t a perfect nation, but to be better we have to understand our past and appreciate the diversity of who we are today.

To be woke is to walk arm in arm with Edna Griffin, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Cesar Chaves, Dolores Huerta, Rosa Parks, Richard and Mildred Loving, Nikole Hannah-Jones, Judy Shepard, Matthew Shepard’s mother, the March for Our Lives Kids, and all of our other great civil rights leaders, to help make America a better place. 

And if you are truly anti-woke, rather than merely ignorant of what the word really means, I pity you and your cruel vision of our world you’ve been gifted to share with me, cowering in fear and hate--for you are surely a victim, mislead by the lies of generations of racists, homophobes, religious zealots, and the politicians who continue to build their power on these lies. 

I’m not only proud to be woke, I’m oozing woke. It pulses through my veins, fires the synapses in my brain, and drips from my fingertips. And one of the great consequences of being woke, is it doesn’t just empower me, it elevates others, and ultimately makes our communities, our country, and our world better for us all. 

Be woke.

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Purchase Bob Leonard’s book, Deep Midwest.