He gets it. #BlackLivesMatter
Tag Archives: politics
On the #BlackLivesMatter Disruption of Sanders’ rally in Seattle
(x-post from my Facebook)
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.
Yet We Are Still Dying In The Streets
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
The Fake “Black Genocide”
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
#RachelDolezal:
- 1) Tumblr’s “transracial” meme might have come to life.
- 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) 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) 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) 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
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
Of note in re Netanyahu’s policies: As of right now, there is no civil marriage system in Israel, and there are only 5 integrated, bilingual schools in Israel. One of them is the embattled, world-famous Hand in Hand school.
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.
