Juneteenth

Today is Juneteenth. I don’t remember when I learned the meaning of it, but it hasn’t been long. I think that’s shameful I never learned about it in school. In fact, during my entire 12-year experience, we never got past the War of 1812, although Robber Barons (1890s) sounds a tad familiar from ancient American history twelfth grade.

Slavery is our nasty sin no one wants to talk about. We fought a civil war over it. President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. The news spread quickly enough in most states and the Thirteenth Amendment, basically ending slavery in the US, came into being earlier in 1865.

News traveled slower than molasses in Texas. On June 19, 1865, some Union soldiers came to Galveston, TX as a part of the Reconstruction. In Galveston, TX, they discovered Black people who were still enslaved! So, the commanding officer broke the news to everyone that they were free and had been for two years. Naturally, the newly freed enslaved celebrated.

When did I learn this? I’m embarrassed to say it’s only been in the last few years, ever since the controversy began over the book 1619. I read it and, in many places, my hair about stood on end and I felt like I was going to throw up. Yes, I felt uncomfortable. I also wished I’d learned about Juneteenth earlier.

I read Juneteenth by Ralph Ellison.

I wanted to read other books, too. I wanted to learn what I hadn’t in school.

I read:

Across That Bridge, by former Congressman John Lewis

Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

A Way Out Of No Way by Sen. Raphael Warnock

The Hate U Bring by Angie Thomas

Punch Me to the Gods by Brian Broome

Didn’t Nobody Give A Shit About Carlotta by James Hannaham

The Sweetness of Water by Nathan Harris

These are books related not just to the Black experience but also to the experiences of marginalized, mistreated groups.

I mentioned that as a kid and teen, most of what I learned about what went on in history was from reading books.

I learned about Jim Crow and racial discrimination from To Kill A Mockingbird

I learned about ongoing racial discrimination from In the Heat of the Night and a boatload of other books.

I learned about Christian missionaries wiping out the native Hawaiian population from Hawaii by the ideas and diseases they brought. From the same book, I learned about Japanese Americans interred in concentration camps.

I learned about the slaughter and decimation of the Native tribes from Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee

I learned about the Holocaust from Exodus

I wish I’d learned these things in school. As I read, there was no guidance. There was no teacher to help explain more of the history and the whys of it all. There was no one with whom I could share my shock and grief that these horrible things really happened.

Especially when you are a child (and I mean right through the teenage years), learning historical facts as awful as these are “discomforting” and that is ever so true. But feeling uncomfortable can be a good thing in the right hands of a teacher. These are events in our history and to learn them doesn’t mean we have to feel uncomfortable or guilty. It just means that we admit the wrong and take responsibility for it. In that way, we don’t keep repeating the wrong.

I am still learning more historical moments I didn’t know before, and I have to say I was today old when I learned it. I can live with the discomfort. I wish half the country would say the same.

 

Another State Goes Fascist

There was yet another school shooting two Mondays ago, at a Christian school in Nashville, TN. Three little kids and three adults were shot and killed by yet another rampaging person trying to murder as many people as possible. The police responded quickly, thankfully, and killed the shooter.

And what was the response of Rethuglican lawmakers in Washington? Crickets.

But some of the Rethug legislators in TN did say something, mostly having to do with a cowardly it sure was horrible but "we're not gonna fix it." Cowardly because they all depend on their campaign contributions from the National Rifle Association. I knew nobody was going to do anything productive. The best the Rethugs could offer was more hypocritical and useless “thoughts and prayers”.

Something very encouraging happened the other day. Thousands of young people, the Gen Z folk, walked out of their high schools and colleges and began to march. They were joined by other supportive adults but these were mostly the young.

I was so proud of them. They reminded me of my generation once upon a time. It was a time when we Boomers were young, had enough of Establishment ways, and took to the streets. Gen Z were on a march to save their lives. They’d had enough of Rethuglican excuses and deflections and denials. Now they wanted action. They were amazing.

They flooded the capitol building, where most of the legislators there just brushed right by them. There was one State Assemblyman that did agree to meet with them and why he did, I couldn’t begin to guess. He was the most useless Rethuglican spokesman ever. All he did was ask the young people to show him which firearm they’d be most comfortable being shot with. What the fuck was that?

Three legislators inside interrupted the session briefly to support the protestors and they were promptly kicked out. The angry Rethug majority threatened to expel them permanently. They voted to do so and then truly showed their racist colors! Two of the legislators were young Black men. The other was a middle-aged white woman. Two were expelled; one was not. Guess who. If you guessed only the Black guys were expelled, you’d be spot on.

They were initially accused of instigating an insurrection ala January 6^th. Then I guess the charge was disorderly behavior. But still: why was the white woman spared?

So, does the Tennessee state government reject the First Amendment? Or is it only when it’s the minority objecting to the majority’s way of doing things?

And while we’re talking about disruptive behavior, why do we still have traitors and legislators who engaged in treasonous behavior still service in the nation’s House and Senate?

This is in-your-face-we-don’t-give-a-fuck-how-it-looks fascism, racism, suppression, and repression going on right out in the open for everyone to see.

Rev. Barber might ask: “What are we going to do with this?”

Our votes aren’t enough. People need to be speaking up and pulling a Howard Beale: “I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore.” We need to get into “good trouble” like the Tennessee Three. We need to be joining with other organizations that are fighting fascism and the attacks on democracy. We need to start paying attention to what’s happening around us.

I felt better this morning and into the afternoon when I began reading and hearing about the pushback going on over what happened to the two Black legislators. I’ve been reading articles today in which the Tennessee Assembly is condemned for an illegal action in violation of the Constitution’s First Amendment.

One of the expelled legislators is from the Nashville area and their city council is moving to reinstate Mr. Jones to his seat. They are outraged by what happened.

Mr. Pearson is from the Memphis area and there’s no word on what will happen with that council. He should be reinstated too.

I will not set foot in any fascist state. Increasingly more and more red states like Florida, Texas, North Carolina, and now Tennessee are going on my do-not-go-there list.

We are having issues with spreading fascism because once the Rethugs began to realize they weren’t going to be able to steal elections by crying they’d been cheated of a win, they began stacking the school boards, township councils, city councils, and state legislators with ultra-right wing conservative and/or evangelical MAGA QAnoners. Now we have these people trying to run democracy into the ground.

I got an email from an organization called Run for Something. They are encouraging that WE start running for these positions too. I thought about Rev. Barber again. “What are we going to do with this?” I thought about what I could do. I saw that there would be a position on my district’s school board, and I decided I would run for it.

We must DO something.

Other worthy articles I read yesterday and today:

Dan Rather

Alternet

Truthout

Huff-Post

Raw Story 

It doesn't feel like Black History Month

 

It’s day three of Black History Month but, to be honest, it feels more like Black Suppression Month to me.

Yet another Black man, Tyre Nichols, was on his way home and in his neighborhood when he was pulled over by Memphis policemen. Now why it was necessary to have 5 or 6 cops at a traffic stop is beyond me. Five of the cops were themselves Black and part of a special force called Scorpions, a rather deadly name for those who are supposed to be the “good guys.” And just like so many times before, Nichols ended up dead.

I was surprised that the killer cops were Black. I’m used to killer cops being white. Well, after I read a bit about systemic racism in our society and in the police force, I came to understand that Blacks can be racist against other Blacks too. That comes from a lifelong experience of being made to feel inferior, less human, than whites. Disgusting and sad, but I do understand.

Not more than a day later, Los Angeles police went after a double amputee in a wheelchair. A stabbing victim had accused the man, Anthony Lowe, of assaulting him. When Lowe saw the group of cops coming for him, he got down off his wheelchair and ran as quickly as he could on his two stumps. He was tased repeatedly and then shot in his upper body ten times. The police claim they feared for their lives because they thought he still had his knife. Riiiight, feared for their lives my ass!

Today I was ready about a Black state legislator, Rep. Travis Nelson, in Oregon who was stoppedby white policemen twice in the last couple of days. He says he’s been stopped by police over 40 times since he began driving. He thinks the Oregon police may be biased. I think he’s right.

Just as when George Floyd was murdered in 2020, there have been protests and calls for the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act to be passed. That act passed the House twice and died in the Senate twice. The reason why it’s not passing is because the Act it would allow families of the victims to sue the killer cops. God forbid, say the Rethuglicans. And so, cops continue to kill Black men at traffic stops or Black women sound asleep in their homes (Like Breonna Taylor) invaded by cops going to the wrong place.

White supremacy reigns supreme and the Rethuglicans in Congress are working overtime to see that it stays that way.

The way to heal this country is for white people to face some ugly truths. First, there was slavery. There was the cruel theft of land and decimation of the Native American population. There was the unjust incarceration of Japanese Americans. These are horrendous things and white people don’t want to have to look at or learn about it. Americans refused to help Jewish refugees and many of them perished because we turned them away.

White people seem to think they’re the chosen ones; they’re the ones who must take charge of the inferior “others”. What they don’t recognize is that the Jesus of their faiths was Middle Eastern and not white. They don’t give credit where credit is due to the advanced civilizations of African and Asian countries.  An investigation just uncovered a couple’s agenda to spread Nazi teachings to white children, and they’ve attracted thousands of parents.

If only these small, close-minded people were willing to learn about “others” and accept them as equals.  We are never going to be united at this rate.  Here is what will happen: open-minded people are appalled and tweet and complain and post for a few days. Then they move on to the “next thing” and forget about social/racial injustices until another Black man is killed at a traffic stop. Rinse and repeat.

There was an effort to introduce Advanced Placement African American Studies in Florida high schools. The A/P classes give high school students college credits while they learn from a rigorous program they take when they’re juniors or seniors. What a great idea, I thought. This A/P course was going to cover true history, not the white-washed watered down non-version you get in high school history or social studies.

But wait! “Woke” comes to Florida and dies there. Gov. Death Santis loves to brag about his “Anti-Woke” legislation. Therefore, the A/P course was rejected because it would cover topics that might hurt the feelings of white students. In Florida, we mustn’t have that.  To appease Death Santis and the other Rethuglican legislators, the College Board watered down the A/P class, eliminating topics and the mention of people deemed offensive and too “woke”.

Crickets from the Floridians.

Are they OK with this then? Are they all racist, or are they too scared to speak up? And so, Fascism marches on. One article I read compares Death Santis to the Fascist Benito Mussolini from the WWII era.

Do people read? Do they think? Or is complacency the easy, comfortable way out of confronting the truths of our bad behavior toward “others”? In Germany, people were complacent and forgiving of Hitler’s awful policies because they felt comfortable—they had more money, more food, and more fun things to do. So, what if the Gestapo pushed a few Jews around and broke windows?

Here we go again, this time in the red states of America.

Red states have begun passing legislation to restrict voting rights of minorities. They haven’t come right out and claimed to be reviving Jim Crow laws. They hide behind redistricting and making it harder for people of color to vote.

The tRump leaning Supreme Court can totally turn our voting rights upside down. The Voting Acts Right that President Johnson signed into law almost 60 years ago has already been stripped down. SCOTUS tRumpers have shown that precedent doesn’t matter to them. If they can make it hard for people to vote and impossible for women to decide what to do with their bodies, why wouldn’t they go about dismantling other fundamental rights under the 14^th Amendment?

Justice and the police clamp down hard on “regular” people, including whites and people of color. If any of us had done what tRump and legislators like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Jim Jordan, Kevin McCarthy, and others had done, we would all be languishing in jail. Not them. They not only continue to walk free, but they’re also still in office. Clearly, law and order doesn’t apply to them.

So, it doesn’t feel much like Black History Month this year. Books are banned. True history is forbidden to be taught. Black men and women are erased from history when their stories need to be told. It’s sickening.

But where is everyone?  I know there are others who feel this way. Where are they? I’d like to find them. I don’t like to feel this way, that I’m in the dark, just talking to myself.

There was a voice and it said something moving and meaninful. It was Dan Rather's Race Matters.