Month: July 2016

Tubthumping

Sisters and brothers in struggle with Bernie: I love you.

Thoughtful, caring, compassionate, brave, insightful, dedicated, spirited, peace-loving, justice-seeking, hard-working folks of all ages and races, you have revealed a country that I realize now I never believed was there. A country where a substantial number of people share my worldview and my commitment to justice, peace, and liberation. A country where neither the slow death of late industrial capitalism nor the quick death of violent fascism is acceptable.

We in middle age may be the bridge generation between that of our disillusioned parents trying to toughen us up for reality and the young people who overwhelmingly without regard for race or class share our vision. We may have been the biggest target of the insults and disdain, too young for the charge of nostalgia and too old for the charge of not knowing anything about anything. We may not see these changes in our lifetimes–although I think we might!–but we have tasted the freedom of standing shoulder to shoulder with millions of likeminded people and knowing that we are on the right side of history. We know now that we are not alone.

My people, let me raise a glass to you and to never again being content to be dying alive.

Your X-Rays Have Just Come Back From The Lab

The governor is in the news; a thunderstorm has broken the humidity and left behind blazing blue skies dotted with white clouds.

I grew up in a land of blazing blue skies dotted with white clouds. A land of racists and homophobes, crop-dusted cornfields and trailer parks. Getting punched in the stomach just to prove you can take it. Catching frogs in a bucket and finding porn mags stashed in holes in trees in scruffy border woods. Baby snakes coming up through the same grates where you hear the neighbor’s kids crying.

I couldn’t leave fast enough. I couldn’t go far enough.

You can hardly ever see the sky out here. Not properly. Trees, buildings, hills calling themselves mountains; smoggy humidity making everything gray and hazy.

On certain perfect summer days it’s all right here. Same loud cicadas and cool streams. Same creeps chewing tobacco or leering over menthols.

Oh, Indiana. You’ll fight ’til we’re all knocked out.

Stereotypes

It’s been a hard month. Shootings coming so quickly on top of shootings, the circumstances of each more egregious and difficult to rationalize away than the one before.

Still they try in a ceaseless barrage, neither video nor logic stopping white people from tying themselves up in knots to justify killing black people.

Most black people are killed by other black people. (As are white people thanks to the enduring effects of residential segregation.) What does that have to do with what we’re talking about?

Nobody talks about how black people were enslaving other black people 400 years ago. (Or how white people were enslaving other white people or how human trafficking is still going on in this country and around the world.) What does that have to do with what we’re talking about?

My white friends don’t want to talk about the points I bring up. (Nor do we want to talk about other twisted fictions of a culture of fear.) What does that have to with what we’re talking about?

Every day I’m further disappointed to see more white people I know dig in their heels and deny deny deny. Why not listen? Why not believe? Why not see? It costs nothing.

Nothing except your place in the system of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.

Fat Bottomed Girls

The rest of the country may worship at the altar of twiggy girlwomen, but the rocking world knows where it’s at. Add these guys to the short list of giants of 70s rock whom I like.

To all the dudes who’ve ever grabbed what my high school friend once referred to as my “eminently squeezable ass,” this one’s for you. Just keep your hands to yourself, I’m one of the olds now.