Hello everyone out there in Internet land, and a Happy Juneteenth to any African American readers I might happen to have. May we all one day liberate ourselves from the chains of racism. Past and present. I’ve got a few things I want to talk about today. Books and movies and shit getting realer in my town by the day. So where do I start?
So I don’t really like to say where I work, but if you’ve been reading these for awhile you can probably figure it out if you didn’t know already. In any case you might see them start popping up in the media for a bit. At least I kind of hope so. Apparently earlier today some fellow workers at the very store I work it were kicked out for refusing to remove their “Black Lives Matte facemasks. They were. told that it was a political statement and that we’re not allowed to display those while working. . One irony here is that the store has a Pride flag hanging at the front door. And of course I’m all for it, but it’s basically saying the same thing for LGBTQ people. So either that is a political statement, or BLM is not. Personally, I don’t think either of them are. They’re just people who want to live. There shouldn’t be any controversy about that. But of course it is because we live in Amerikka, so it is. Where people get mad if you kneel for the national anthem and then fight for their right to wave a traitor’s flag and call themselves “Rebels.” Let me tell you a secret about rebels. They don’t fight to PRESERVE the status quo. They fight to change things for the better. And they sure as hell aren’t trying to live in the past.
Yesterday I I took a brief trip down to our new localpit of anarchy and chaos. Formerly known as the Autonomous Zone. Now known as the Occupied Protest Zone. I like the way CHOPZ sounds better anyway, honestly. It is sort of chaotic, but in a good way. Certainly not what the media is trying so hard to make it look like because the idea that it could work out is a disaster for capitalism. A kind of spontaneous organization. People figuring shit out as they go. Beautiful. The police vacated their precinct and left it unlocked, most likely hoping they would torch it. Instead they’re protecting it. Any violence that has happened there has been from the outside. In fact, while I was there I learned that police downtown have been telling homeless people to go up there to sell drugs. They just have to prove how necessary they are. Of course I had to check out the gardens, which are much more impressive than the picture’s I’ve seen. I’ve also seen a few pictures online of the sign that says it is for black and indigenous people. And of course dumb white people say that’s the same thing as Jim Crow.. What I haven’t seen anywhere online is the sign next to that one that explains that black and indigenous people have historically been denied access to farmland. So i’m not bothered by a garden for black and indigenous people because I, like many white people in the city, have my own garden. And there’s white people all across the country sitting on perfectly good dirt and letting it go to waste on grass so I’d better not hear them bitchin’.
So I started reading a Cornel West book my best friend gave me the other night. It’s called Black Prophetic Fire, and it’s a series of interviews where he talks about African American leaders through history.. FIrst chapter was on Frederick Douglass, who he heavily criticizes because he believes that in his later years he fell into the the trap of American individualism which causes people to forget about the communities and the people who helped make them who they are and view everyone as self-made. But, as West puts it, there is no Frederick Douglass without the abolition movement. Anyway, I’m not qualified to speak about Frederick Douglass and I don’t write nearly as well as Dr. West does. But I do agree that this whole “Rugged individualism” myth is a trap because all it really does is put our mutual dependence on each other at a distance. It tells us to worship individuals like Jeff Bezos and forget that there is no Jeff Bezos without Amazon and the millions of people who work there. It makes us judge drug addicts and ignore all the things that lead people to get addicted to drugs. It makes us tell murder victims that they should have just done what they were told. Most importantly it keeps us from working together for our own common good. In the end, it only help the people at the top.
Anyway, that flowed nicely into the movie I watched next. There’s a new Spike Lee joint on Netflix, and I have to say I love the way he tells a story.. This one is called Da 5 Bloods. It’s about 4 black Vietnam veterans who go back 50 ish years later. Officially to find the remains of their squad leader, unofficially to pick up some gold that they liberated back in the day. It is a war movie, so there’s some intense moments and just a bit of ultra graphic violence. It touches on the rugged individualism myth as well because one guy wants to use the money to help the community while the others are all saying “I got mine. Do what you want with yours.”. This movie also hit me kind of personally because one of the characters reminded me of my dad, who was a traumatized veteran who took it out on his family. Then it made me wonder how many black soldiers took their trauma out on their families? Add that to the fact that they were coming home to neighborhoods that were on fire and all the good jobs are going away. Now toss in the CIA smuggling in coke, and we wonder where these violent drug gangs come from.. And on the other side of it, how many traumatized veterans become cops? Or raise traumatized kids who become cops? I really don’t know. What I do know is that we never really know the true cost of war. We know statistics. How many were killed? How many wounded? How many still dumb enough to think there were WMDs anywhere. We know how much money we spend, but we don’t really know that because black budgets are a thing. We know that could be going to schools, or to healthcare. But we can never really know the human cost and the cost to society. In the end we are all casualties of war.
Ok, so this is like a page and a half now. Much longer than what I usually write, so I feel a bit accomplished. So thanks if you read through all that, and I’m gonna go ahead and call it a night and say Fuck It, before it fucks you.