And Now, for a Change of Bigotry….

You know, it’s a day when I miss being marginalized, not being part of the group, being shunned and despised. Remember those good old days? You could do fun things like wear your grungiest clothes, stay up all night smoking and drinking, get arrested the next morning in whatever protest was on for that day, and then straggle off to plot whatever wits were left in you against whatever exam they had decided to give you. Were you going to join the racist, sexist, heterosexist, materialist, patriarchal, capitalist system?

Fuck that!

Which meant that virtually every institution was your enemy, and would you win the battle? Probably not, but you’d fight it as much as possible. In the meantime, ‘hey, you know where I can score some dope?’

Paradoxically, for gay people, we have won…and lost. Because now, guess what we get to do? Well, this is a copy and paste, so you can be sure I got it all correct….

… join the racist, sexist, heterosexist, materialist, patriarchal, capitalist system.

So that means instead of heading for the baths—which we periodically had to do to proclaim that having the most anonymous sex we could in 8 hours was a political act of rebellion against the (second copy and paste, here—so you can do an eye skip…) racist, sexist, heterosexist, materialist, patriarchal, capitalist system—now we’re putting on ties and going off to work after being up all night with the sick baby. Um—somebody out there tell me who really won.

Well, I haven’t had to put on the tie this morning, but I really dreaded getting to the computer, since my task today? Fearlessly, unflinchingly, this blog has raged against the most powerful of enemies, enemies who no doubt even now, quiver and quail at the memory of my incendiary words. So the work of today? It couldn’t be denied—I had to step in and do something about the 50,000+ children, victims of gang violence and poverty, kids who have walked from their hometown in Honduras or El Salvador, who have walked all the way through Mexico. Enough kids to get the world watching. And what is the world seeing?

I don’t watch television, so I couldn’t tell you, until I came upon the clip below of Jon Stewart, and saw, through it, what everybody else is seeing: good old American bigotry, this time directed at kids. Kids who have walked through the fifth largest country in the Americas to get to the land of the brave and free.

Why? Because at home, gangs have developed to supply our taste for drugs, which previously had moved through the Caribbean—which accounted for Puerto Rico’s murder rate of 26.5 murders per 100,000 people, several times the U.S rate. But the Feds got busy in the region. So now the drugs are moving up through Central America, and kids are being pressed to join gangs and deliver our drugs.

And so we have a problem on our hands, because where do you put 50,000 kids? And you know the answer from the right: these aren’t kids, this is an invasion. There, for the world to see, is a woman chanting, “not my problem.” So these kids should be gathered up and sent back over the border?

Yeah? Back to the communities they left because the gang had killed their brother or parents? We’re gonna send these kids back?

It’s amazing that hatred and ignorance can trump what should be the most basic instinct of all: caring for our young. But that word—“our?” It’s “our” to you and me, but “their” to a lot of other people.

Why am I thinking of Little Rock, Arkansas, in September of 1957?

I knew about the Little Rock Nine, but I didn’t know how bad it was. Because the Supreme Court had ruled on school segregation in 1954, and the message was pretty clear. Still, Little Rock waited until September of ’57, and then decided to admit the nine brightest black kids they could find to Little Rock Central High School.

Nine kids. No problem, right?

Yes, a problem in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957. So the governor, who was a moderate, decided to do what anyone would do. Call out the National Guard to…

…prevent the black kids from entering.

Right, if you going to do something like this, you’re going to do it in a group, so no wonder that the nine black kids, with their parents and ministers, presented themselves en masse, or as much of a masse as they were. As you can see in the clip below, there was a hell of a lot more masse standing around jeering at the Nine.

Which was actually only Eight, since one girl, Elizabeth Eckford, hadn’t met with the others. So when she showed up, it was she against a whole crowd of white folk. Unbelievably, she attempted to get into the school, but was turned away as well. Then, an angel appeared. Enter Wikipedia:

On their first day of school, the Nine were to arrive together however this instruction never reached fifteen-year-old Elizabeth Eckford who arrived separately and found herself facing an angry mob threatening to lynch her. Grace Lorch arrived, having just dropped off her daughter at a nearby junior high, rescued Eckford and escorted her home. Lorch's rescue of Eckford made the Lorches a target. Dynamite was placed in their garage, they were harassed in the press, Alice faced bullying at school and Grace was subpoenaed by the Senate Subcommittee on Internal Security.

So the nation sat and watched as the National Guard busily flouted a Supreme Court order. And was anybody gonna do anything about that?

The NAACP got into the act, went to court, and Eisenhower? Our president at the time? He had a meeting with the governor of Arkansas, in which he thought he had convinced him to admit the black kids. But nope, that wasn’t how the gov saw it. What did he do?

Buckle up, Dear Readers, because it gets no better.

He removed the Guard, leaving the city police in charge of assuring the safety of those nine kids, as they finally made it into the school, through the side door.

You can see it in the clip below: to whatever degree the cops were inclined to protect the order and peace, when the crowd began pushing the wooden barricades and scrambling towards the school? Well, those were the friends, family and neighbors of the police. So by this time, the kids were huddling in the basement, when somebody came up with a great idea—allow the crowd to lynch one kid as a decoy, and the rest could escape!

Fortunately, the Assistant Police Chief spoke the obvious—how are you gonna choose which one? Draw straws? So the cop got the kids into two cars, and told the drivers: once you start driving, do not stop.

Finally, Eisenhower acted, calling in the 101^st Airborne Division of the Army, and putting the local National Guard under federal control. So the situation was stabilized—except for minor little incidents like a bunch of white girls trapping one of the black girls in the lavatory, and dropping burning pieces of paper on her in an attempt to burn her up. Girls? It works best if you douse with gasoline first….

So they got through that year, and then what did the governor decide to do? Well, how logical could it be—close all the schools! Of course, there had to be a referendum on that but no problem, because that was easy. The referendum passed, and the schools were closed for a year.

Wow—the kids must have loved it, or at lest the white ones….

Well, I had really feared that I’d have to weigh in on the 50,000 kids that have walked through much of Central America and the entire length of Mexico, only to find hate at the other end. I thought I’d have to get down, get dirty, mix it up a bit and get it settled. All in a day’s work for this blogger! And what have I done? Well, I’m heading into page four and 1400 words. But the good news? Jon Stewart has done it far better than I could. And just in case there’s anybody out there who still needs to be convinced, who still can shout “NOT OUR PROBLEM!” well, let me repeat Jon Stewart’s question, this time without the bleep:

What the fuck is wrong with you?

Judgement down the Centuries

She was, by all accounts, a pretty tough woman, this woman born in 1881 on the border of Illinois and Wisconsin to a 58-year old man and 35-year old woman, both immigrants from Norway.
 

She was my father’s mother; her name was Sarah Gustava Tillotson, though her father was Ole Trondson Tillorson. Had the name been changed in Ellis Island? Or was Ellis Island even operating at that time? Because the family came in the first or second wave of immigrants: her father’s first child, Henry, was born in New York in July of 1846.

I barely knew her, though I distinctly recall having to eat beet greens that had been boiled from about the beginning of time. And I remember that her hair was falling out, probably due to the chemotherapy she was taking at the time; she died of cancer when I was ten.

“She was a fine woman,” said my mother, with real respect in her voice. And the feeling must have been mutual; apparently my grandmother had remarked, when told that my mother couldn’t come to a family gathering, “but how will we have any fun?”

So I don’t know the woman, and I may not even know the stories. Because I seem to recall that she heard that the ladies in church were scoffing that she was too poor to buy a car. So what did she do? Went out, bought a Cadillac, drove it to church, and then drove it back. Then she parked it on cinder blocks in the front yard.

True? Cousin Ruthie says no, and she should know, being slightly older than I, and having known the woman.

OK—so what about the story about my father, who wanted a quarter to go to the movies? “Move the woodpile to the side of the house,” said his mother, “then come back for instructions.” Jack appeared half an hour later.

“Now move it back,” she said.

She was a religious woman, this lady who endowed a wing in a Chicago children’s hospital, and who bestowed an annuity from the Moody Bible Institute on my mother. The annuity was for twenty-five dollars or so; notwithstanding, the institute was in the habit of sending a man out every year to make sure that Franny was still living. Invariably, he arrived in January; just as invariably, he got stuck in a snow bank on the long road to my mother’s house.

“Would you like to join me in prayer,” the man would ask.

“No,” my mother would reply. But pleasantly….

“She was tall, and ramrod straight, and pretty unapproachable,” said John, my brother, who remembers her, apparently, just as vaguely.

What is it about old pictures? Did she believe, when this was taken, that this would be one of the few photos of her that would be taken, photography being—relatively—in its infancy? She looks out at us, as if challenging us. Have we measured up? Are we slackers? Giving in to vice?

I do my best, or so I think. I have my collection of people to whom I give money—one of whom invariably asks for more. I try not to cheat or steal or bear false witness.

Why do I think that’s not enough?