Well, I don't know of a better word than, "We", when I go wandering
off in the Toolies and the DingleBerries, speculating on what I think
"we" need to do to avoid extinction.
I'm back on the ACB Chat list, and I so offended one fellow with my
declaration that our Founding Fathers established an Oligarchy, but
called it a Republic, that he wrote me off-list, suggesting that my
brains are made of shit, and he quit the list. So saying "We"
obviously did not include him. Still, I have no other way of saying
that I personally believe that our Species is on the brink of
extinction unless...We...collectively work to change the direction we
are headed. But in all of that, I never said I believed that enough,
"We's" could get together and move even a small mountain.
I am a great fan of Naomi Klein, and have heard her talk about her
latest book, but I've not read it, yet. She is among a small but very
wise group of Prophets crying out in the Wilderness. Naomi like Chris
Hedges and all the rest of these wise Prophets will be ignored or
discredited, or worse, and Greed will continue to reign. So I don't
apologize for using "We" when thinking out loud regarding how I
believe Humans will need to change if we're going to survive.
Actually, I'm on a break, and am spending very little time reading and
researching on the internet. My forest has crept up to a dangerous
place around our house. I keep at least 30 feet cleared as a fire
lane. Currently the brush has snuck up to within 15 or 20 feet, and I
am busy swinging my trusty brush ax. But it takes me about 3 times as
long to do the job, and about 10 times as long to recuperate. At this
very moment I am about at the eighth level. Cathy tells me I've done
enough for one day...I do believe that I'm going to listen to her.
I'm reading a biography on Patrick O'Brian. That's about as far from
current events as I can get. But I do catch Richard Wolff on Sunday
mornings.
Carl Jarvis
On 7/2/17, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Carl,
Each time you use that editorial, "we", in one of your comments, the same
response bubbles up to the surface of my mind, which is, "we? What is he
talking about? I can't control anyone else's feelings and responses except
my own. And given the complexities and power structure in our society, and
my own individual situation, I'm not sure I even have control over my own
responses". Two books have just been published, No Is Not Enough by Naomi
Klein and Moment of Emergency by Timothy Snyder. Both of them assert that we
are about to be taken over by a Fascist Dictatorship. Snyder provides 20
lessons, and Klein provides 5 lessons, as guidelines to follow immediately
to prevent this from happening. At the same time, I'm reading The Handmaid's
Tale, written in the eighties, which I never read, but which has shown up on
the best seller list again and has been made into a TV series. It describes
a future American religious dictatorship and the author describes the steps
taken by the people who took over the government, and the passivity of the
populace which allowed their freedoms to be stolen. So tell me, did masses
of people come out into the streets to resist the Muslim ban or the
Republicans replacement legislation for the ACA or the introduction of US
troops into Syria or Trump's vile tweets or the fact that on the Holocaust
Rememberance day, Jews weren't mentioned and the press secretary said that
Hitler never put any of his own people in gas chambers? When Trump opened
his new hotel in WashingtonDC after the election, did masses of people
demonstrate in opposition to his using the US Presidency for his own
personal profit? Or bringing it home, when the US Navy began doing those
war games or tests or whatever they were on your peninsula, which were shown
to be clearly damaging to your ecological system, did the population stop
the war games and insist that the Navy leave?
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Sunday, July 02, 2017 11:03 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Ambivalent Pride
A strong reminder that Human Dignity is still under attack until All People
are given respect by All people.
Is that an impossible goal? Only if we allow it to be.
Carl Jarvis
On 7/2/17, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
https://socialistaction.org/2017/07/01/ambivalent-pride/
Ambivalent Pride
/ 21 hours ago
July 2017 Pride 2By JERICHO JONES
This time of year we have reason to look with rejoicing at Gay Pride
celebrations around the world. Their number, persistence, and
exuberance were unimaginable to this lonely queer kid growing up in
the 1970s. To think there was any place you could be openly, even
flagrantly gay was like oxygen. Today, hundreds of pride celebrations
offer queer kids almost anywhere the hope of finding a place of relative
freedom.
Yet in spite of our advances, we still live under the threat of
violence driven by hate. Not two weeks ago, we marked the first
anniversary of the Pulse Nightclub shooting, the deadliest mass
shooting by one person in U.S. history. Barely a week seems to pass
between reports of vicious and deadly attacks on transsexual women.
Stonewall may have been nearly
50 years ago, but we are still awash in hate.
Experience shows that facts and argument don’t counter hate, but
knowing a queer person and feeling empathy can. Decades of painful,
frequently dangerous coming out have given many of us a world where
queer people can hope to find a place to live and prosper. The
importance of showing pride to the world hasn’t become any less urgent.
Even so, Gay Pride is the season of ambivalence for me. Early on, it
represented a radical demonstration that queer people not only refuse
to be silent but insist on making their presence undeniable. In the
years since, it has become something distinctly different. What once
celebrated the freewheeling sense of possibility at the heart of queer
life has become an opportunity for corporate marketing and for
solidarity among queers who happen to live and look like the majority.
This was demonstrated recently by the interruption of Washington Pride
by a radical group called No Justice, No Pride. Primary among their
issues was the inclusion of the police in Pride, with its obvious
approval by Pride organizers.
It’s stunning: never mind the obvious fact that the police have long
been one of the threatening forces that queer people battle to live
normal lives, Washington Pride (and others) included and celebrated an
institution that regularly murders African Americans. Yet there was
widespread condemnation of No Justice, No Pride for interfering in the
party, not for the organizers who planned a party that pointedly
included racist killers.
Then there is the corporatization of Pride. These celebrations nearly
always include corporate sponsorship, i.e., plastering the event with
company logos for advertising. Washington Pride was sponsored by a
number of corporations, among them Wells Fargo Bank.
On the surface, this is normal—the bank is looking for customers, the
organizers are looking for someone to pay the bills. But No Justice,
No Peace was aware of something critical that Washington Pride
organizers
ignored: Wells Fargo is an investor in the Dakota Access Pipeline,
which is being built by force, with (of course) police protection,
next to the water supply of the Standing Rock Indian Reservation,
while the pipeline studiously avoids the white city nearby. Wells
Fargo has also been forced to pay $175 million for discrimination
against Black and Latinx customers.
Thus, with the police/corporate invasion, Pride has become an
opportunity for pinkwashing, which is the use of gay inclusion to
cover institutional misdeeds. In the cases of Wells Fargo and the
police, the cover is for murder and economic violence committed by
powerful institutions at the heart of the establishment.
And it isn’t just corporate sponsorship or the welcoming of
authoritarian institutions that mark Pride’s dedication to established
power; it’s also observable in the make-up of Pride organizers and
celebrants, who are mostly white and cis, and often mostly male. Why
would Pride be any more responsive to the needs of outsiders than
Wells Fargo or the police when they are all overwhelmingly controlled
by insiders?
Even tragedy has not moved Pride. The victims and survivors at Pulse
Nightclub last Pride season were mostly Latinx. The murdered
transwomen mentioned above have mostly been women of color. The names
of Black people murdered by police—the ones deemed newsworthy—appear
in the media almost every week. How do we celebrate Pride when so many
are ignored while Pride celebrates the wealthy and powerful?
All I can offer is a reminder of the outsiders who gave us the origin
of Pride, the patrons of the Stonewall Inn who, early on the morning
of June 28, 1969, decided they had had it with police harassment and
rioted. That is, they protested with violence, smashing windows,
setting fire to cars, and throwing pieces of the street at police. The
rioters were not polite, well-connected cis gay men in suits, but
marginalized queers, trans women of color, butch lesbians, and drag
queens.
And they did not quit, as the rioting continued a second night and
went on to inspire the gay liberation movement in ways polite white
homophile organizations like the Mattachine Society never did and never
could.
These queer forbearers showed us that change does not come from
appealing to wealth and power, but from standing against them without
apology. The struggles for Black civil rights and the history of the
labor movement showed us the same. That Pride would leave trans people
and queer people of color behind is unconscionable. Red Rose
Socialists stands—always—with the marginalized, the powerless, and the
voiceless in their struggles.
The author is a member of Red Rose Socialists in Lancaster, Pa.
Photo by Dylan Comstock: No Justice, No Pride demonstrators in
Washington, D.C.
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July 1, 2017 in LGBT rights.
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