Maria Ramos Chertok

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You are here: Home / Archives for racism

July 8, 2020 By Maria Ramos-Chertok 6 Comments

Interview with Deborah Santana

This is my third Gemstones piece, a blog post featuring people who lead with an open heart and work to uplift others. I’m honored to have the chance to introduce you to the work of Deborah Santana

Tell me about what you’ve been up to since we last saw one another?

I’ve been through some huge changes.  In June 2018 I rented an apartment in Los Angeles to be closer to my newborn grandson and, after being there on my own for two and a half months, I awakened to the realization I was happy on my own. I ended my marriage and began exploring Los Angeles more than I had in the past. I spent time looking at neighborhoods close to my son and his family and eventually bought a home.

The sale of my house in Marin closed the same day as the LA house, which happened to be my father’s birthday.  It was divine order.  My life embraced a new path and it felt that I was being carried along without having to expend effort. I moved into my LA house last June (2019) and continued my philanthropic work and began a new venture, Temple Tree Sanctuary.

Temple Tree.  Tell me about that.

Last New Year’s, I went to Maui and stayed at a retreat center with no TV.  I walked a gorgeous, outdoor labyrinth, following a stone path to the center.  In the warm breeze, I sought guidance for my future.  I was filled with a calming energy and envisioned being in that kind of healing environment to continue my life work. 

Since 1998, I have provided funds for women, children, and girls in the areas of education programs, domestic violence prevention groups, art services, my beloved Daraja Academy in Kenya, and more through my Do A Little Foundation, and before that, Milagro. On my labyrinth walk,  I felt that G-D and Spirit were telling me I could create something new — a place where people can come and have a healing experience.  I began a journey to create Temple Tree Sanctuary.  I have been invigorated by the prospect of housing a center with healing practitioners who share their gifts. 

Temple Tree Sanctuary will to provide wellness experiences in a peaceful, uplifting environment. Our core beliefs are that humans can commit to work for the highest welfare of all beings. We can promote the unity and similarities in us all through the practice of compassion and love with a genuine sense of sisterhood and brotherhood.

The Sanctuary will offer reiki, meditation, stretching, fitness training, NLP, sound baths, cooking classes, chanting, writing workshops, and teachings in indigenous wisdom. It is a place for seekers to gather to heal our world through individual and group practice.

My main focus right now is building my Wellness/Healing Center Temple Tree Sanctuary, a nonresidential healing center.

Tell me about your experience of living in Marin versus Los Angeles.

The first thing that happened when I was in Los Angeles for the first two months was feeling the impact of the traffic and pollution.  In Marin I lived in an idyllic house where deer and racoons were my neighbors, and I lived a rather monastic life, let’s say.  When I moved to Los Angeles, I moved to Studio City.  It was so much more crowded, and it took time for me to adjust.

What I love about being here is there is so much diversity and there are so many museums and the landscape is larger.  I’m thriving here:  the organic food, the restaurants, the little villages of people.  I love not crossing bridges anymore.  If we are lucky and have the privilege to follow our heart, we find the right place for the moment.  I miss my friends from Northern California and I miss the events we had for All the Women in My Family Sing,  but I know quite a few people in LA and have sweet connections here.  

In a virtual event I listened to earlier in the week you said, “…[t]hinking things I won’t let myself think.”  Can you say more about what that means?

In this time of the pandemic of racism where we are all having to live with the reality of what people of color have had to deal with for 400 years, my wounds from racism have been opened. Growing up with a white mother and black father I knew I could be assaulted physically or verbally for how I looked.  San Francisco was relatively liberal, but knowing that people were looking at me because of my skin color and hearing my parents’ stories:  my mother being spit on when she was with my father; my father being shot at in the stomach by his landlord because he had a white woman in his apartment —  that history lives inside me. I’ve worked through various healing modalities to get those horrible wounds out of myself (e.g., neurolinguistic programming/NLP, therapy, Reiki, Ho’oponopono, etc.).  

I want to love everyone.  I don’t want to look at a white man who looks at me harshly and think he’s going to go home and get a gun and shoot me.  I want to get those thoughts out of me.  I don’t want to make any assumptions about a person’s character before I know them, as Don Miguel Luis writes in his book, The Four Agreements.  But when I see the faces of the four men who murdered George Floyd and I see men on the streets who look like them, I think they are going to kill me.  

I was listening to an interview today on KPFA from June Jordan where she’s talking about Dr. King, the riots in Chicago, how Black people were being murdered and assaulted by police — the same things we are talking about today and the millieu in which I grew up.  Those memories live inside in black people’s bodies.  I don’t want my mind to dwell in that place because my spiritual purpose is to live in the present. When I saw non-black allies go out into the streets getting rubber bullets shot at them, surviving tear gas, I was so grateful.  There can be no progress without the participation of every person who can empathize and foment change.

There is a wonderful book, Stand Your Ground:  Black Bodies and the Justice of God written by Kelly Douglas Brown, a black woman.  She writes about how white supremacy has been perpetrated and how the Stand Your Ground defense was used when Trayvon Martin was killed.  White people have been taught these negative myths about people of color.  They were taught that stealing land from indigenous people and owning black people is acceptable.  There has been no reckoning here like there has been in Germany about the Holocaust.  In Germany everyone has to study what Hitler did.  If not, people continue to learn the lies.

There are so many important things being done by people of color and our book All the Women in My Family Sing was influential because so many people have never read narratives written by people of color.

During the virtual event, I also learned that you are a Reiki practitioner.  Tell me about how Reiki impacts your life?

I’ve had Reike done on me for thirteen years.  It is a healing energetic treatment that originated in Japan.  It is made up of two words:  God’s wisdom and chi – the life force energy.  Practitioners become receptors of spiritually guided life force energy.  I started doing research to find out what the practice was about because it left my body feeling transformed.  I studied level one.  It’s very simple to learn.  Reiki acts in harmony with others.  Reiki practitioners want to be pure vessels for what Reiki wants to give to others.  

Dr. Mikao Usui is believed to have started Reiki.  But there were four other styles of Reiki healing practiced in Japan before him. The secret is inviting happiness and healing into your body and leaving anger and worry outside.  You practice on yourself for the first thirty days and then you learn the symbols. I have also completed the level two course.  

When you practice, your hands get really hot because of the energy flowing through you.  I love when my hands become hot and tingly.  It’s such a funny thing.  Sometimes practitioners receive images or messages when they put their hands on your body.  But you also have your own experiences.  I’m connected to healing energy – I can just feel warmth or light and that gives me clarity.  The more we use the skills, the more in tune we become.

You asked me if I’ve ever heard of Peace Pilgrim.  No, I haven’t.  Please tell me about it.

I started reading Peace Pilgrim when my children were little.  She was a daring lady who had lived a normal life until, in 1953, she felt she was called to begin a pilgrimage for peace in the world.  She made a shirt that said Peace Pilgrim and she walked 25,000 miles for peace – a penniless pilgrim.  Her principles are:

“This is the way of peace:  Overcome evil with good, falsehood with truth, hatred with love.”

I’ve attended many churches, have had a guru, and always sought spiritual communities where I could thrive, yet I always come back to her.  She walked out of her life. I don’t think I could do that, but I want to live by her principles in every way I can.

As I was thinking about our interview, the notion of beauty kept coming to me.  Tell me about the role that beauty has played in your life?

It is an interesting question, now that I’m older.  Our family was beautiful.  My dad was stunningly handsome.  My mom was movie-star beautiful.  My sister and I drew attention because of our looks.  It’s such a false way to live in the world.  The more people judge you outwardly in a good way, the more you judge yourself.  I’ve met many women who are free because they are not measuring up to someone else’s expectations. What people are attracted to is glamour.  Glamour is temporal and fleeting and human-made.  It has a very low energetic vibration.  Beauty comes from the inside.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: deborah santana, healing, healing center, Los Angeles, race, racism, spirituaity

June 17, 2020 By Maria Ramos-Chertok Leave a Comment

Sad

I am sad.  June 9th was the anniversary of my father’s death in 1979 and June 8th was his birth date.  That’s how last week began.  One of the things that rocked me on Monday morning (June 8th) was not realizing what day it was until I sat down at my desk.  Never had I not anticipated my father’s memorial and birthday.  I felt mad at myself for not remembering.  The barrage of emotions surrounding the pandemics of COVID and racism aside, this is my father.              

On top of not having the presence of mind to anticipate the dates, I had no yahrzeit candle — the candle Jewish people light in remembrance of someone who’s passed.  My father was Catholic, but I still light the candle and put a photo of him next to it every year.  This year, I only had a small, scented, blue tea light votive to light. It went out in a couple of hours, unlike the 24 hours that the memorial candle lasts.            

The sadness really hit on Wednesday. I didn’t connect it to my father at first.  I connected it to my macro and micro preoccupations:  mass protests seeking justice for black lives, the rise in COVID cases due to the economy opening back up, my son wanting to go surfing now that the beaches are open, and feeling horrible about all the Netflix my teenage boys are watching.  But all those things had activated familiar anger and frustration – I’d stayed far away from sadness.  I know how to be angry.  I know how to be frustrated.  Sadness takes me out, makes me want to crawl up and disappear.  I tell myself I can’t afford that luxury.       

Then, someone texted me and asked if I was “hopeful.”  No.  I’m not hopeful that racism will finally be addressed in the U.S.                          

That really made me sad.       

On July 13th Rayshard Brooks was shot in Atlanta, Georgia by a white police officer.  Rayshard was inebriated.  I read that he had been in the area to visit his mother’s grave (and to celebrate one of his daughter’s birthdays).  I envision the sign, “I am Rayshard Brooks” as I think about us both grieving the loss of a parent.  Had I let myself get drunk, had I gone to Wendy’s, had I passed out behind the steering wheel, had I black skin, might I, too, be dead?

Yes, I am sad.  

That’s all there is to say.

Photo by Annie Spratt www.unsplash.com

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: Covid-19, racism, rayshard brooks, sadness

June 3, 2020 By Maria Ramos-Chertok 6 Comments

What Love Looks Like

When I was a little girl, my grandma, an immigrant from Russia, cautioned me against using the word “hate.”  Like many little ones, I’d toss the word around like a nerf ball: “I hate chicken livers; I hate it when my mother leaves us to go to work; I hate the boy in my class who pulled my long braid.”  As a young person, the word seemed right.  It captured strong emotion and had powerful energy behind it.

Last week, watching a video of a police officer smash his knee on George Floyd’s windpipe I gained a new understanding of my grandmother’s admonition.  Seeing the ease and apparent comfort with which Derek Chauvin applied his body weight to a struggling black man’s neck, I saw what hate looks like.  Hate is terrifying.  Hate kills, Hate is intentional. Hate is persistent.  

On the same day that George Floyd was killed, Christian Cooper was birdwatching in New York’s Central Park.  Another video that went viral showed a white woman calling the police to report “a black man threatening my life.”  As my mentors in anti-racism taught me years ago, racism is white skin privilege plus power.  Amy Cooper understood thepower of those six words.

As I process two traumatic, albeit very different events, from Memorial Day 2020, I am not able to speak eloquently.  I find word pairs just reeling around in my head:

George Floyd

Windpipe Crushed

George Floyd

“Can’t Breathe!”

George Floyd

Broad daylight

George Floyd

A Man

George Floyd

“Can’t Breathe!”

Enough, Enough.

Broad Daylight

Call Police!

Dead. Dead…

George Floyd

Black Lives

Must Matter

Christian Cooper

Bird Watcher

Christian Cooper

Harvard Grad

Christian Cooper

The Ramble

Christian Cooper

Amy Cooper

Christian Cooper

Same Surnames

Different Colors

“Police, Help!”

“Black Man!”

White Privilege

Christian Cooper

Black Lives

Must Matter

Yet, I won’t spiral completely into the sadness and despair.  I won’t because I’ve seen what love looks like.  Love is when people take to the streets with their signs and their voices during a pandemic to protest the killing of black people and to let George Floyd’s family and friends know that he will not be forgotten.  

For years we’ve used a myriad of nonviolent approaches in attempts change America’s heart and mind by:

Passing federal and state anti-discrimination laws against you

Premiering the first interracial kiss on Star Trek

Developing Diversity trainings

Writing books like The New Jim Crow

Working alongside you

Praying for you

Making movies like Get Out!

Marching on Washington

Protesting nonviolently

Coming to your weddings, funerals, baby showers

Sitting on your Boards

Enduring endless microaggressions

Watching the ACLU defending white supremacists on basis of the First Amendment

Letting you cry when we raise the issue of race and even getting you tissues

Dealing with your upset becoming the issue so we never address your racism

Partaking in endless hours of Diversity Equity and Inclusion Committee meetings

Becoming news anchors, CEOs, beauty queens, president

And the truth is, like a weed, a deadly virus, a guest that won’t leave, hate persists.

We are not okay. America is not okay.  The protesters are here to tell you that.  The looters are using a different form of protest.  The people engaging in violence are communicating that hurt people sometimes hurt other people.

My grandma wanted me to take the word hate seriously, so I’m now warning you: institutional practices and policies that sanction hate, greed, violence, will not be tolerated.  We’re wearing face masks, but our voices will not be silenced.  

Love is in the streets (regardless of what it looks like to you) and it’s not going to shelter in place.  

Photo by Renee Fisher www.unsplash.com

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: christian cooper, covid 19, george floyd, memorial day, racism

About Maria

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A graduate of UC Berkeley and the University of Pennsylvania School of Law, Maria was a fellow with the National Hispana Leadership Institute, where she attended the Center for Creative Leadership and Harvard School of Public Policy. She received her mediation training from the Center for … Read more...

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