Category Archives: Politics

Yet We Are Still Dying In The Streets

Politics, Uncategorized,

Look at it from the perspective of the protesters. The proper placement of protest tactics and targets are mattering less and less as #YetWeAreStillDyingInTheStreets. We’ve used a variety of tactics before, only to get little product from it.

In Christianese, people like Bernie, Martin and Hillary are barely reachable, so they get these pearls, while all the GOP candidates are the proverbial swine. Yet, Bernie speaks at safer grassroots areas like Iowa, Colorado and Washington State, where he can expect a large turnout from his message’s resonance.

To date, AFAIK, he has not spoken in campaign mode in Chicago, or Atlanta, or New Orleans, or Baltimore, or St. Louis, or Houston, or Birmingham, or Jacksonville.

Meanwhile, we can get Sen. Ted [#GrandpaMunster] Cruz coming to a church here in COLUMBUS, GEORGIA with the help of State Sen. Josh #RFRA McKoon. But yet, it’s in these areas where PoC are heavy, and their issues intersect largely with “urban” crises.

This is why #nn15 and #Seattle happened. Bernie, Hillary, Martin and the pitiful number of Dems running this season (and their pitiful number of debates) are going where it’s safe, not where their ears and eyes are needed. They’re not going where their vulnerability can be lent, without the expectation of a large crowd, but with the expectation that they will find recourse for our greatest domestic concerns.

Like Usher said: “Where are you now, when I need you around?” Be here now. Don’t have us come to you. #BlackLivesMatter

President Obama still has yet to visit a top number of sub-Saharan African countries as President. With his stop in Ethiopia in the next few days (the first-ever U.S. presidential visit to Ethiopia), he will have visited 6 countries as the U.S. president (Ethiopia 2015, Kenya 2015, Senegal 2013, Tanzania 2013, Ghana 2009).

By comparison, George W. Bush visited 10 countries (Benin, Tanzania, Rwanda, Ghana, Liberia all in 2008; Senegal, South Africa, Botswana, Uganda, Nigeria in 2003), and Bill Clinton visited 8 countries (Nigeria and Tanzania in 2000; Ghana, Uganda, Rwanda, South Africa, Botswana and Senegal in 1998).

The first to have visited an independent African country was Franklin D. Roosevelt in his 1943 trip to Liberia, followed by Jimmy Carter’s visits to Liberia and Nigeria in 1978, and George H.W. Bush’s visit to Somalia in 1992-93.

The Fake “Black Genocide”

Politics, Uncategorized, , , , , ,

Christian anti-abortion folks who harp about a “black genocide” are some of the most uncaring, hard-hearted, shame-projecting liars.

  • As if any of them care one bit about AfAm women’s lives, equities or freedoms as much as their uteri.
  • As if any of them care that the fetuses which develop into infants will grow up into less-than-desirable AfAm women and men.
  • As if specifically *our lives* matter to the anti-abortion activists.
  • As if any of these activists think of AfAm women outside of the “welfare queen” “poppin’ out babies” stereotype.
  • As if any of these activists consider that birth control, condoms and other tools of hygiene should receive more investment and less demonization.
  • As if any of them are not the ick-attracted authoritarian jackasses who never offer solutions beyond “ban abortion” and “make sex sacred”.
  • As if you care much about the growth of the AfAm population for as long as abortion has been legal in this country, but that’s an inconvenient truth which disrupts your feigned “black genocide” martyrdom.

Seriously, I wonder why the Southern Baptists ever allied with you lying jackasses after their racist hissy-fit over integration. But you lie about a lot of things to get your ban in place, especially about AfAm women, their bodies and the women and men who love both.

You are as fake as the Exodus, Willie Lynch, the “War on Christmas” and American exceptionalism. We won’t live by your savior narrative. Look at yourself, and say no to #misogynoir. #BlackLivesMatter

On #RachelDolezal

Politics, Uncategorized,

#RachelDolezal:

  1. 1) Tumblr’s “transracial” meme might have come to life.
  2. 2) The case of this woman may get to the heart of how externally-enforced that “blackness” and “whiteness”, as polar opposites, have always been. The one-drop rule. Good hair/natural hair. Adjusting early and silently to living within the external confines and internal networks of the African-American community. To have lived the experience, known it from within, entrenched oneself within the network and its effects for so many years, advocated for the dignity of the adopted “ethnic family”, effectively ceded the societal higher ground for a platform which is still constructing itself, is an experience which is odd, complicated and ethically gray. She may have experienced racism or colorism against her person because of this, and she reacted proactively against racism by joining/leading her local NAACP chapter. That’s how deep that Ms. Dolezal was. She subverted the personal tyranny of birth and blood to live as, and experience the good and bad of, the African-American experience.
  3. 3) I don’t begrudge those who actively “pass” as skin-color-related ethnicities, whether one “passes” as being of European or African descent (see Walter Francis White of the NAACP, and how he infiltrated the KKK). I just don’t like it when that pass, or even one’s advancement in social class, is used as a means for raging against the dignity of suspect class(es).
  4. 4) Euro-Americans who intermarry with slave-descended African-Americans, for example, often experience a closer interaction with the ramifications of race and skin color relations, being privy to many of the interior conversations which happen within African-American families. Anti-racist activists are privy to similar levels of interior conversations. Dolezal was even more privy than that, and she lived and breathed it.
  5. 5) I also disagree with Xeni Jardin (Boing Boing) in her comparison on Twitter with women who fake cancer to receive sympathy, since (a) it’s not a “disease” unless we consider the history of cultural perception of dark skin and African descent as a “problem” (b) one may consider oneself pregnant to the point of symptoms of a false pregnancy and (c) she freaking LIVED this and didn’t discard it at the end of the day. This is why I don’t call this a case of “blackface”, but of “passing”. Heck, this is the difference between drag and transgender. Do you take it off at the end of the day, or do you wake up, live your day, go to bed (or, as Diane Sawyer asked Caitlyn Jenner, “do you dream”) as the identity that you’ve crafted for yourself? And when your experience entitles you to interior conversations with people of like station in life, do you exploit those convos for personal gain while trumpeting your identity or do you pay it forward by working in their network and improving their lot in life? I’m fascinated by this experience and how people are taking it.

Something has to stand in the gap between (ir)religion and state

Politics, To Export 2, Uncategorized, , , , , , , ,

Reading this post by Winnifred Sullivan on the Hobby Lobby and Wheaton College decisions, I got the gist of her argument: that we, no matter our political persuasion, have extended the legal “religious freedom” idea to its logical point of absurdity.

But something caught my eye in this paragraph:

But when the church and the state went their separate ways—when the church was disestablished—the intimate articulation of political, legal, and religious fictions lost their logic on a national scale. They no longer recognize one another. The legal and religious fictions of religious freedom have become lies designed to extend the life of the impossible idea that church and state can still work together after disestablishment. There is no neutral place from which to distinguish the religious from the non-religious. There is no shared understanding of what religion, big “R” religion, is. Let’s stop talking about big “R” religion.

This perhaps best articulates the disconnect between religion and the state in which organized religion – and the various means of power which it can assume – is much more free to run amuck over the rights of individual human beings.

I think that, rather than being content with this current separation of religion and state, in which the two “agree” to separate from each other (which has stopped applying in many places), something should stand in the gap between the two. Some sort of fiction – not just an institution, but an entire legal fiction – should act as a buffer between religion and the secular state, in such a way that the state would be able to eliminate any reference to the words “religion” or “faith” from documented law and jurisprudence.

In fact, for any institution or fiction which considers itself secular or nonsectarian (such as education), something should stand in the gap between religion and such-and-such nonsectarian institution.

But what could be strong enough, conducive enough to hold together that wall of separation?

Can the interfaith/intervalues coalitions – those organizations which classify themselves specifically as explicitly welcoming of multiple religions – be part of that wall?

Perhaps

Last night, I learned that the reason why #Alabama’s 1901 constitution is the longest extant constitution in the world is because it has a whopping 856 amendments to limit local rule, preserve white supremacy and solidify the hold of the Jim Crow Democrats. To date, most of these amendments have not been struck down or repealed. It’s a f*cking embarrassment of a document, ya’ll.

I just called Senator McKoon’s office, left my name/work with PFLAG Columbus, GA/opposition to his bill (which goes up for a floor vote in the State Senate today).

All this time, I’ve thought that these sorts of protections for homophobic expression are hypocritical. They’re being passed only – ONLY – because LGBT people are working for civic protections under law.

It reminds me of how Jim Crow laws were passed after slavery ended in order to protect racist ideology and a vengeful social architecture.

For every inch gained by the debased, someone feels “attacked”. For every expansion of the social contract to the unwanted, someone’s morality is offended and needs civic protection. Let’s be more inclusive.

#disclaimer Again, the craven bootlickers will say “FALSE NARRATIVE” and “OBEY THE LAW LIKE WE DO” and “DON’T RESIST”, just to derail this train heading off a cliff. Just know that I don’t care for your derailing or concern-trolling at this time. I really don’t.

You may be human and an American, but you still lick the boots of people who are trained to see their jurisdiction’s community, and often people who look like me, as a mortal threat worthy of death. It’s nicer to see that in #BDSM fantasies, not in real life. Please stop licking police boots for a few seconds and think about more than yourself or your personal resentments. Otherwise, law enforcement will continue to dehumanize every last one of us, including you. Yes, YOU.

Not Surprised by #Ferguson or #Occupy

Politics, Rants, To Export, , , , , , , , , , ,

“A system cannot fail those it was never built to protect”.

– W.E.B. DuBois

As I see how the demonstrating public lashed out in Ferguson against the state of their community, and I see the prevailing national reaction to the local reaction – “violence/looting/burning buildings isn’t the answer”, I think back to #Occupy 2011.

I remember the police abuses of young white Occupy protesters, from New York to California. I remember how the police were defended by those who decried Occupy as “dirty”, “lazy” “thugs” and “trust-fund babies”.

I remember how they were exceptionally othered by those who are incredibly addicted to their own comforts and distance.

I remember the gross class resentment against college students, from people in a likely-similar income bracket as those protesting. I remember some bastard who screamed “stop raping people!” for his online fans’ shits and giggles.

And when Zucotti Park was forcibly cleared, signifying a formal end to the Occupy period, the police were cheered for “bringing law and order back to the streets” and “allowing businesses to function again”.

That moment was about class inequality. This moment – Ferguson – was about racial inequality.

And yet the militarized police, once again, show their ugly head. And their groupies itch for the police to save them from those who would “bring down America” through upsetting the status quo.

It was Martin Luther King, Jr., who said it best, so long ago:

And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the negro poor has worsened over the last twelve or fifteen years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity.

Most concerned about tranquility. Damn the urban peasants, especially those “colored” ones. Damn the college students. “Get out of our country if you don’t like it.”

The “Founding Fathers'” Revolution can’t repeated with these defenders of the status quo. Another Constitution can’t be drafted with these people.

The folks who defend police conduct toward unarmed protesters/AAs are likely the same folks who decry jackbooted government thugs elsewhere. I find this comfort for hyperviolent forces of the favored status quo to be funny, in a gallows-humor kind of way.

Stop inconveniencing the thugs in black and blue. Stop inconveniencing their slavish, status-quo-defending groupies. Stop disrupting the flow of traffic, of capital, of bigoted values, of firearms, of military training.

Worship our agents. Accept your inferiority. Do what we tell you. Appear how we want you to appear. Never resist us.

Then tell yourself: I AM FREE.