September 22, 2017, marked the one-year anniversary of the weekly witness, White Birminghamians for Black Lives. Several community activists brought greetings. Lee Gaston tells about what has been for him “the main engine of my transformation.”

Transcript of the video: I am a shy, anxious guy. This is very difficult for me. But I’m happy to have an opportunity to try to put into words in what an entirely different place my head is this day than it was a year ago. What was going on in national politics wasn’t really what motivated me directly to get out of my race denial, my coccoon of comfort. It was people that I was close to who were activists who inspired me to do it. Many of them, perhaps most of them, are here today. I’ve talked to some of you individually how much you touched me and moved me. It’s been a very painful and scarey process for me to, for the first time in my life, really have the words and the skills and the support to even look at my own internalized white male supremacy, and figure out, how do I take that apart and begin to divest myself of some of this privilege. I went to a lot of gatherings and speakers and I asked a person who’d been doing it for a long time, basically, what do you do with the pain? And part of the answer was, community.

The first time I came out here I expected bricks to get thrown at me, and I expected people to try to force me to join the Communist Party! I didn’t know what to expect! But instead I met graciousness and friendship, and slowly over time I began to feel a part of the community. And that is kind of a stepping stone for me to begin to go out and get involved in other groups and to feel like it’s okay for me to do that.

It’s been an incredible period of rapid transformation for me, and one of the ways that I think I can tell that I’ve changed is because how different things look. The people who do this are tremendously supportive, the people that stop by and talk, the people that wave and nod, and then the gentleman that drives by occasionally and gives us the good advice to “get a job”! I’ve been shouted worse. The first time that happened I felt that threat response, kind of angry. Then a few times later I noticed I began to feel kind of amused by it in a kind of a condescending way. But as I was thinking about this speech and what I really wanted to say was, You guys affect me. You know, the reading, the study, the information, the skills are all very important, but that personal contact is the main engine of my transformation. And so I realized that part of what he was saying in that message, as he shouts out that to us is, he’s telling us we affect him.

I need a lot of support and help through this process, and it’s rich. So that’s all I wanted to say. Thank all of you.

-Lee, Birmingham, AL