I’m Alive
Today in the crosswalk, on my way to acupuncture, a car turned right (really left) in front of me—I could hear her apology as I waved her on. If I’d been jogging or walking a bit faster she would have hit me and I would not be writing this now. I had another half of the crosswalk to go before I was – as the kids say, “safe.”
I am invisible. No really. This has happened to me too many times. Normally, I am not at a light—I am at a crosswalk and the person driving doesn’t let me step off the curb or I get to the middle of the street and everyone does not stop. Sometimes the light is not green for the cars and they start anyway. The other day on Otis and Grand, the car never stopped crossing Otis. If the cyclist in the crosswalk had started riding, she would have been hit. People wave at me and mouth “sorry” when they make a right turn before I step off the curb, so miss me. They mouth “sorry” when they look up as they back up and would have hit me if I’d kept walking. They don’t mouth sorry when I feel the wind on my butt as cars turn behind me before I can get far enough away.
I am just saying. Invisible? Yes. Black women who are 50+ are invisible. I have lived in Alameda for ten years and have worked on the island for 25 and I think glowed in the dark up to 59-60. Now, I wear a reflector jacket and that doesn’t save me from near misses, but today was a first.
The driver came too close to hitting me. I was trembling. It is a good thing I was going to get a treatment not leaving afterward.
When I got home, I jumped on my bike. I had to get back into my body. I think she was still gone. She left me in the crosswalk. I had to reclaim my person, so I went for a two hour bike ride.
It was nice. When I got back home—I was in one peace again.
As I rode to the blue bridge—the bike bridge, I thought about how drivers might think cyclists are rude when we take up space on the road. However, we have a right to ride in the center of the street like cars. The reason we can’t always stay in the bike lane, if there is one, is because sometimes the road is not safe—full of debris or we’re riding defensively.
Have you ever been hit by a car door opening?
Another problem is drivers do not signal and we can get hit as a driver turns right, right into us. Again, like the pedestrian scenario earlier—it’s death or injury. I do not choose either, so I proceed cautiously and do not take any chances.
How can you help?
Do not turn when there is a person in the crosswalk. Do not rev your engine or inch forward if the person doesn’t move as fast as you want them to. Some people are not able to walk any faster. Imagine yourself at 65, 70 or 80 years old? My friend just turned 99 at the end of February and another is 101 last August. We are out there walking, riding bikes, taking up space—look closely.
By the way, babies don’t walk fast either. My three year old grandson was frightened when a driver almost hit him and screeched his brakes as he backed and then pulled back into his driveway. He was shaken. Imagine that on his conscience?
People like myself—invisible or not pay taxes. Our taxes are why you can drive on the nice roads. Shouldn’t we have the same courtesy, to be able to walk safely across the street?
Let’s not talk about the sidewalk, another place where pedestrians are harassed.
Dogs and their owners take up the entire sidewalk. The owners do not pull their animals to one side. Dogs bite people. They have teeth and they are dangerous. Sometimes on paths they are unleashed. I have been attacked as I waited for the light to change on Encinal and Grand. The owner says, “I don’t know why he is behaving this way. Really, put your dogs on leashes and put a muzzle on the ones with jaws that lock once engaged and dogs who are for protection.
I have seen people walking dogs as tall as ponies without a muzzle. A dog bit my brother between his eyes when he was 6. He could have lost his eye. The mark is still there. You do not know who you are passing in the street. Have a little courtesy. I do not know your dog or you. I just want to enjoy the nice day and breathe fresh air.
I had an anxiety attack in the store the other day when two huge dogs were running through the store. I tried to avoid them and there they were in the aisle with me or in line with me. Dogs and food do not mix. How unsanitary.
Back to walking while Black and over 60. I want to get back home in better shape than I left it.
Dogs are not people. Dogs do not pay taxes. Dogs do not have human rights. If I defecated on your lawn, would you be okay with that? Stop using people’s lawns as toilets. It’s trespassing and its nasty. Who gave these dog parents the right to make all the lawns their toilets? People want to argue with me when I protest. One man said as his dog peed on my grass: “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Can I shoot him? Can I shoot the dog? Can I shoot them both? I think about the birds on the beach that dogs are prohibited on and the owners break that law daily when the dog park is up the street. When I was a kid, dogs did not have parks. In some neighborhoods children do not have parks.
Dogs?! The thing is, these people who can’t or won’t see me, see dogs and give these animals human rights.
Yes, this note has been in my head for a while—invisibility and human rights. Even if you can see me, you know I am there. It is a case of: “I don’t see you because you are not anyone I need to recognize.
It’s real. It was why my ancestors were worked for free and showed up on ledgers next to farm equipment. Now that slave labor is illegal unless one is a possession of the state, slavery is over, so this Black woman is useless and so invisible.
It’s bigger than microaggressions—if a person driving a car or a person walking an animal with teeth that can harm me hits or attacks me, I am hurt. I want safeguards. I want protection. My person is valuable to me, if not to the person who puts me in danger. I want the city of Alameda to enforce the no dogs on the beach laws. I want the City of Alameda to enforce the traffic laws. I want the City of Alameda to make all the street lights pedestrian friendly, that is, have the walk sign turn on before the cars get the green light.
I want the City of Alameda to change the laws so that cars cannot turn right on a red light and that if a perdestrian is in the crosswalk and a car does not let the person get to the corner, the driver gets a ticket.
I want drivers who do not stop at stop signs get tickets. I want drivers who do not let a person cross the street before going either in front of them or behind them get a ticket.
I want drivers who will not stop at an intersection and let a pedestrian cross get ticketed.
I want all the speeding cars, that is, the cars going faster than 25 miles ticketed.
I am trying to get to 99, 100, 101 like my friends and if I keep living in a town where I am invisible in crosswalks, I might not make it.
Objectification is not a concept for me—it is why I look four ways before I step off the curb. The problem is—even if I could have seen the woman about to hit me and stepped back, I might have been hit by another car anxious to turn into the space I’d just cleared.
I am just saying. . . I cannot solve this alone and I am getting this treatment while white women and white men around here get the royal treatment. Our beloved supervisor Wilma Chan was killed two years ago in the places where I walk and ride my bike and the City of Alameda has not put any safeguards in place so that this doesn’t happen again. It can happen again. It almost happened again today to me and I was at a light. Supervisor Chan was walking across the street where there is a stop sign. At this 3-way stop sign, cars do not stop and if you walk too slow, I have had the cars speed in front of me before I get to the curb. Yes, just like the woman did today.
It was totally unexpected and scary. I am a driver too and some of the experiences I have had as a pedestrian and as a cyclist are unbelievable. I remember to be kind when I am behind the wheel and drivers drive around me speeding to stop lights on 25 mile an hour street.
Something has to change, so people are safe. Should we make everyone walk? Ban cars during certain times and days like they do in The Gambia, West Africa? On Saturdays, once a month when I was there a number of years ago, the community walked and were encouraged to beautify their neighborhoods with cleanups and plantings and household repair.