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?

The Edge

“It’s badly organized,” my friend told me bluntly.

Well, I had sought her out for her opinion—what right did I have to be offended?

And she may well be right—organization is not my strongest point. You want ideas? Hey, sit down, grab a pencil and start writing. And probably you won’t be able to keep up.

But there was more. An ardent supporter of independence, she took umbrage at being included in a project involving the fifty states.

“We’re a separate nation,” she said, “and we’re recognized by the international community as a separate nation….”

I learned long ago—this is the thinnest of ice. I heard her out, and agreed on several points.

Virtually all the guns here in Puerto Rico are illegal, and come from the United States, where they are cheap and plentiful. And since we are a colony of the United States, we rely on the federal government to police our borders—if we were independent, we could do the job ourselves.

In addition, it’s our status as a colony that has made us a major entry point for cocaine and other drugs, which we ship up north. What comes back? Guns.

She made another point—we are about to privatize our airport, and to whom? Well, critics on the left say to a company which has ties to the drug traffickers. If true, the situation will be a mess—the drug lords will have assured their logistics, better than even Sam Walton could. And there will be guns littering our streets like cigarette butts.

Well, her suggestion was to focus on the Puerto Rican angle, organize better, get the media involved, and especially get well-known people involved. That’s how it’s done. One person sitting in a square reading names? Just another lunatic.

Or maybe a writer. I spent seven years inside a cold grey building. Then I spent another year alone in an apartment, creating a new life for my mother. Now it’s time to get out, get stirring, take the plunge, talk to people.

I’m scared, of course. Scared that some nut will pull out his gun and kill me, or worse, incapacitate me. I can’t look at Gabby Giffords without wondering—could I do what she’s done? Would I have that strength, that courage to come back after that kind of trauma?

Scared of looking ridiculous, though that’s lesser. I pretty much AM ridiculous most of the time—unlike organization, it’s really one of my fortes.

Scared of the passion that some gun owners have: the blind fury and paranoia that, mixed with fear and hate, makes them seethe with rage.

Which may be why I had a waking dream—a dream in which, inadvertently, I had stepped from a tall building, and was falling, falling to the pavement below.

“Courage is a muscle,” said Ruth Gordon, “and like a muscle, it gets stronger with use.”

Or words to that effect.

I say that it’s time to move out of the comfort zone. If you’re not out there poking around, hearing stories, getting people to talk or rant or weep, you’re not where you should be.

On the edge. 

Tire 'em Out! Revisited

Well, it was looking as if my father’s worst fear was about to come true. What if he woke up one day and everybody was acting normal? Nobody was looking for treasures in the sandbars of the Wisconsin River, or trying to memorize the Iliad so that he could recite it to inner city kids with the message that they too could be a hero, or teaching dance to convicts as a way to channel energy and foment creativity. So what would he write about?

This, Dear Reader, does not qualify as a sizzling newspaper story: Mary Smith woke up, took a shower, feed the kids, and headed to work.

Read that, and you instantly think—what’s gonna happen to Mary? Will someone shoot, will she see something she shouldn’t and go into hiding, are the kids all right?

Remember—this was before the electronic age. I’ve spent two hours on the Internet, trolling for anything, anything to write about. My father, in contrast, burnt up some shoe leather every day, poking around town, looking for news.

So he might have happened on Father Michael Pfleger in person, had Jack been loping around the South Side of Chicago these days, not as I met Pfleger—electronically on YouTube via Diane Sawyer and ABC News.

And Sawyer had this idea: get all the gang members—or as many as would come—together in a big room and talk. Set a goal: get one idea about how to end the gun violence that is plaguing Chicago.

Which has, as the NRA will tell you, some of the toughest gun laws in the country. It also has young men who can’t find jobs and lots of gang activity. So they have the meeting, and people start to talk. Then Sawyer meets Father Pfleger, who has an idea—a basketball tournament for peace.

Other things are happening: a guy is giving boxing lessons on the street corner; Sawyer dons her gloves and tries it out. People are organizing job-training programs, programs to get kids off the street.

And it may be that there is some hope—Pfleger notes that after the tournament, there hasn’t been a killing in the neighborhood. Twenty kids signed onto the training programs, the police are using new methods to focus on the killers, not the place.

Well, certainly an interesting bit of news. And what’s the deal with Pfleger? Who’s he?

Well, a guy whose natural element seems to be hot water. Which got him, as recently as 2010, suspended, which meant that he could no longer perform the sacraments, except for the Sacrament of Penance in an emergency, which even laicized or excommunicated priests can do. For a priest, that’s a big deal.

Pfleger had come out swinging for the ordination of women three weeks earlier, in a 70-minute homily in his church, St. Sabina, which has been his parish for an incredible 30 years. (Average tenure is five to ten years….) Well, the predictable happened, and the Archbishop of Chicago told him, essentially, to go to his room and not come out until he was sorry. So he apologized, and then went onto his Facebook page and recanted his apology.

Nor is it just ordination of women. The guy has adopted two kids, and is fostering a third. Cardinal Cody is apoplectic and threatens to fire him, but Pfleger goes ahead anyway. He fights against tobacco and alcohol, at one point getting up the ladder and defacing advertisement for cigarettes and booze. Then he gets into a little tussle with Hillary, during the 2008 campaign. Here’s Wikipedia again:

"I really believe that she just always thought, 'This is mine. I'm Bill's wife. I'm white, and this is mine. I just gotta get up and step into the plate.' Then out of nowhere came, 'Hey, I'm Barack Obama,' and she said, 'Oh, damn! Where did you come from? I'm white! I'm entitled! There's a black man stealing my show!'" He then pretended to wipe tears from his face, a reference to Clinton's emotional speech before the New Hampshire primary, and added, "She wasn't the only one crying. There was a whole lot of white people crying."[23]

Pfleger is German-American, the congregation is predominantly black. Right, so now it’s Obama who calls and asks him to apologize, so he does, saying slyly that his words “were inconsistent with Obama’s life and message.”

Then Pfleger invites Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s pastor or ex-pastor who made an incendiary remark or two in the 2008 campaign, to come and speak and give a blessing when Maya Angelou comes to call. Wright, according to Pfleger, “is one of the great Biblical scholars of our country,” and has been “shamefully demonized.”

Right—Pfleger then takes on disrespectful-to-women rappers and hip-hop singers, and then turns to helping prostitutes. Oh, and did I mention that he invites Al Sharpton….

Granted, he’s had thirty years to do all this stuff, but just reading about it makes me yearn for an afternoon nap. The guy is the Schwarzenegger of muscular Christianity, a fly in the ointment of the diocese of Chicago, a straight shooter unafraid to take on anyone.

And two things strike me. First: the people, who are intelligent, articulate, and as children were filled with ambition—to be a doctor, a policeman, president. Now? They’re gang members.

Second thing: they may be sitting on a gold mine. I couldn’t see much, but you get glimpses of the neighborhood—the insanely wide streets (Chicago had all that prairie to cover, it seems—or maybe it was just a little scheme to use more concrete and up the kickback…), the mature shade trees, the architectural jewels that have fallen down, but could be wonderful again.

If they could get just one house, use it as a training lab for roofers, carpenters, electricians, turn it around and sell it, where would it lead?

Tire the young men out, says a nation builder. Give ‘em jobs and put ‘em to work and get them believing that they’re doing something right. Guys without jobs drink, pick fights, and take the guns out of their pockets and kill.

Tired guys are home in bed.

On Edge

Tell me again—when did we agree that it was OK to play your music into my ears?

I know, I know—you must be tired of this rant. Look, everybody’s life is hard, and mostly getting harder. You don’t need this.

So here’s the good news. It wasn’t I, this time, who lost control. Just the guy next to me, on a supremely jammed subway train on the upper West Side of Manhattan at 8AM.

Well, we crammed ourselves in, and a black woman and boyfriend were having sharp words. I tuned them out, of course—do I need that? Isn’t getting to the airport on time with two bags in a subway car holding people in the low three figures enough?

Well, miraculously, a seat became vacant. I sat, figuring to chill until Columbus Circle. That’s when the black guy flipped on a transistor radio and treated us all to some (I think / presume) hip-hop.

Let me put this gently, Refined Reader. Every stanza made explicit and very street reference to the pudenda of African-American females.

We all stood it for a couple of minutes. Then the eye telegraphs began among us—the brows furled, the eyes flicking heavenward, the shoulders shrugging. And then the guy next to me said, loudly but politely…

“Would you please turn that down!”

Guess the response…

Second time, and note the absence of “please.”

“TURN THAT DOWN.”

Just realized—it can’t be a response since it wasn’t a response. It was…what? Ignoration? Ignor-ance? Ignorance? You choose….

The guy has the insight to say…

“I’M LOSING MY CONTROL!”

But he doesn’t have the power to act on it. Instead, he lunges across several people to get at the black guy.

I don’t do well in emergencies. I look on, a stunned witness, as the lion mauls me, or the scorpion plunges its stinger into my foot.

So I was not among the group of guys who separated the two.

I did hear, however, the screaming rage of the black woman as she soundly (pun intended) berated the white guy. Must have had some effect—the guy sat down, and then said, “I apologize for my behavior.”

“I am leaving this train,” said the black woman, stomping out of the car. Her boyfriend / husband sauntered out—every movement a “fuck you.”

The man was shaking with rage—I could feel it just sitting next to him.

Well, first question—am I gonna go there?

Nope.

I’m not letting that into my day. Which was very nice—got to the airport with plenty of time, came home, scolded / caressed the cats, talked with Mr. Fernández.

Second question—why did the guy act so explosively?

Well, first there is the…right, it’s not music, so let’s call it “aural incitement.” Because make no mistake, the stuff is there to provoke rage. I once heard a song blaring down the street (started up by the Governor’s mansion, ended down by the plaza) in which the last word of each line was the endearment “motherfucker.” Took twenty minutes of meditation to wash that out….

The city is also on edge. No, not up in Upper Manhattan. But the train was coming from the Bronx. When was the last shower the guy took?

Third question—what about the black guy? Why didn’t he react? Yeah, he was trying to throw punches too—who wouldn’t? But when the situation stabilized—or perhaps was stabilized—he went back to being his insouciant self.

Well, a blogger on his toes would have the answers to all these questions. The Internet, however, is slow these days. The best I can do is to provide the conclusion of a research paper by an admittedly less-than-stellar source—The Journal of Undergraduate Psychological Research. Eliana Tropeano, in 2006, wrote the following:

This study examined whether or not watching a violent music video would provoke individuals to answer questions with violent responses. Eleven participants watched a violent music video, 11 participants watched a non- violent music video, and 11 participants were in the control group and did not watch any videos. It was found that watching the violent music video containing violent lyrics, aggressive behavior, and degrading behaviors toward women did make an individual feel and react more violently with regards to responses to questions about fictitious scenarios. The conclusion was that watching violent music videos does negatively affect behavior.

Well, well, so the dog bit the man. Nice to know.

Now, here’s my absolutely un-researched theory. This music does what pornography does. It blunts you, stupefies you, and puts you into a mindless state of inert violence.

And what happens when there’s a trigger?