The danger of a Single Story: Turtle's Webb Raising Hell at Eastern Market

The title of these essays (Turtle's Webb: My View From Here) comes from something that did not manifest when I wrote about my working life as a professional artist at Eastern Market.  But the concept of stepping back and looking at things from varied perspectives was part of me then, and it has stayed with me.  For those of you who have followed the writing I did on

"Turtle's Webb Raising Hell at Eastern Market"
http://www.turtleswebbraisinghellateasternmarket.blogspot.com


 I will start this project with a type of manifesto.  Chimamanda Adichie expresses my thoughts better than I ever could.

At one time I was going to be a person that professed history. I studied the history of Africa, the United States of  America, and Europe for six years.  But in the end I came to believe it was a waste of life to argue with those who fundamentally believed in their own cultural superiority and were unable to view me and mine as equally human. 

In 2009, the City of Washington took over from/disenfranchised/stole from the founders of Market 5 Gallery...everything, including the Saturday Arts and Crafts Festival and the Sunday Flea Market at Eastern Market.

While this was happening, I had an enlightening conversation with the city's choice for interim manager, Mr. Barry Margeson.  He stood in the plaza that John Harrod had built and informed me that he knew more folks involved in Eastern Market after his then-three-months of "management" than I did from my eighteen-year tenure as an exhibitor.  It was thus no surprise that within the year his reign began, police officers were being called on a regular basis on the exhibitor community. In my case, not only were police officers called to remove me from my space three times, but a member of his then-management team yelled and cursed at me, witnessed by a Sergeant of the force who had been ordered to remove me.  I did not move, and this member of the City Managements 'team' was subsequently removed from employment at Eastern Market.

Then came the ribbon cutting ceremony for the new monument--Eastern Market, the building.  The city officials et. al. did not mention, note, appreciate or acknowledge the existence of the Market's largest group, the economic power house that is the exhibitor community at Eastern Market. We were Ralph Ellison's "invisible men".  I noted for years that when Ward Six City Council member Tommy Wells deigned to come out to the market on the weekends, he spoke to, acknowledged, and look in the eye only two men.  He failed to understand  that he was seen by the invisible people and his measure was being taken.  Later, in 2010, Mr. Wells assembled a group to advise him on rewriting the law that governs the overall functioning of the Eastern Market complex, including exhibitor operations.  Mr. Wells "group" is composed solely of folk who match Mr. Wells when he gazes in the mirror.  He apparently did not deem "others" qualified  enough to be included in advising him on a law that will directly affect, one of the most (if not the most) diverse groups of exhibitors in the world.  No exhibitor, nor person with any historical knowledge of the exhibitor community was ever consulted by Mr. Wells as an equal part of his 'group'.

I did not want to waste my life arguing with folk who were perhaps, after a millennium of world domination and destruction, psychologically, genetically, emotionally, or spiritually unable to see me and mine as human.  I thought it was a waste of life.  What I am aware of in both Mr. Margeson's and Councilperson Wells' arrogance  is that an inability to acknowledge the "others" humanity, is what made it easy, and still makes it easy today, to put people in the hulls of boats, to sell, mutilate and breed them.

Failing to see a community can negate its existence; it allows people to demean, belittle, ridicule and ultimately destroy it. It is no wonder that a Pope once posed the question, regarding folk in the "new world", 'do they have a soul?'  He did not see them when he looked into the mirror.  It was impossible for him to posit their depth of scientific, economic, and or political knowledge. Those indigenous folk were not and would never be apart of his concept of 'community.'  So the Spaniards laid waste to what they could not see or value. The English, Portuguese, Spanish and...mastered race-based slavery, worked millions to death for profit, and built and destroyed worlds and souls.   The arrogance,oblivious ignorance and the dismissive mentality of Margeson, and Wells proves that this ugliness is still amongst us today. 

 

Ward 6 Councilperson Tommy Wells

Interim Manager of Eastern Market

DC Department of  Real Estate Services
Barry Margeson

However, destruction starts from within, and the best tools are always fear, self-doubt, jealousy and moral cowardice. If the "others" are weak or disorganized or, worse, really believe in their own inferiority,  destruction is assured.  If the "others" fail to value themselves from within their own hearts, minds and souls, again destruction is assured.  If the "other" fails to organize with common goals, to speak and act on those goals in one voice, then... A conundrum of the human condition-Chinua Achebe's -"Things Fall Apart".

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So I had forty-plus years of living under my belt, six years of "higher education", a strict old-fashioned southern Christian upbringing and...the reality of that inauguration day:  "the word made flesh", the role of my family in history.  I had the faith and beliefs instilled in me by a tough woman, who heard and taught me that "the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice." In July of 2009, "Turtle's Webb Raising Hell at Eastern Market" published its first essay, "In Front of the Monument: Eastern Market". In two years I created more than fifty essays.  In them, I took, as my staff and my shield, love.  As they say around my way, "God don't like ugly."  

And today, as I begin this new project (My View From Here) my essays on the exhibitor community at the historic Market 5 Gallery's Arts and Crafts Festival and The Flea Market at Eastern Market are being read in the U.S., Tunisia, El Salvador and Vietnam.  I check the stats on these essays  regularly; the world is reading them. You know the folk around my way are so right: God is good.

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Turtle's Webb Raising Hell at Eastern Market  was...

my grain in the sandstorm of the single story.

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My View from Here:  A First Person Narrative

Turtle's Webb

In 1998, I started traveling and now I realize I have always been on this journey. When I read about Art Smith, the world renowned Modernist Art Jeweler, I remember having that Alex Haley I found you feeling. Popular and independent media can leave one with my plumage feeling and seeming odd, 'unique' , different or just plan old invisible.  Where are you from... Dedonde estas tu...Vous etes de ou...   I tire of 'certain questions, looks, inferences, stares',- when I speak in general or about art, concepts, languages, travel, life etc.

 I am often asked--with scepticism, disbelief, raised eyebrows, shock, or all four--how did YOU do this or that, why are YOU here, how do YOU know that or this fact, where are YOU from...   At the market I wrote it out as part of my artistic statement. Now folk read it and turn to look past me, trying to find who this Sonda person is... (At these looks of astonishment,  I have been know to bare teeth, fang and claw)

I wish these questions only came from one source or one group, but because of the omnipresence of the single story, they have almost become universal.  Years ago I proposed to some friends that we start writing travel essays, because collectively we had been to and lived on almost every continent and spoke many languages.  I argued that our observations of the world and travel etc would turn most travel books on their heads. My View from Here: a first person narrative, is a nod to my teenage years and will be filled with travel, art, literature (and trash novels), music, film and the angst of a mid-career craft artist making a living at shows, online and at markets, with a touch of Spanish and a dash or two of French.  As the spiritual says, "This is my story, this is my song."

"He Dicho"

Sonda