An essay without a title about a crisis without a solution

Three (sort of connected) thoughts on yet another mass murder

Thought one

One of the places we seem to be wanting to lay blame is the FBI. I am no fan, but let me ask this: with all the deep cuts sequestration (remember that?) effected on various government departments, anyone want to guess whether the FBI might be short on the resources needed to check out Mr. FL high school shooter? 

It's all well and good to blame the agency or the unit manager who failed to deploy staff to follow up on the threats reported, but did they even have the needed human resources to perform the necessary reconnaissance? How many other such reports do they currently have open awaiting further action? Where was this report in the queue? Was the office overwhelmed and understaffed? How were they to know this guy needed to be interviewed and the threat he posed assessed instantly? How are these reports triaged? So many questions.........

It's easy enough to lay blame, but what about responsibility? Whose responsibility was it to ensure that the FBI had the resources they needed to keep the community safe? [Answer: that’d be the federal government] Whose responsibility is it to ensure that the financial resources were available for allocation [Answer: that’d be the taxpayers who fund the government and the taxpayers who vote for the legislature that apportions those funds]? 

I'm suggesting that we should think on these things first before we try to lay blame. Blaming is easy, taking responsibility not so much. Were there failures? Absolutely, but the context matters if we want to stop failing and I’m thinking we should be focused on stopping the failing.

Thought two

All the thoughts-ing and prayers-ing is probably performative. Your senators' and congresspeoples' piety is largely for show because real piety, real love for one's neighbor demands action, not hand-wringing and public posturing.

You want to pray? Pray by all means, but when you've said “Amen”, you have to do. But usually what comes after the tweets of prayerfulness and sorrow? Generally not one shit. That ain't nothing but showboat Christianity. 

In my bible, after Jesus prayed in Gethsemane, he went to the cross; after Jonah heard the voice of God, he went to Nineveh (to save the sinners there, a bunch of people he didn’t think deserved salvation incidentally); after Noah’s talk with God, he built an ark. What these people doin’? Not. One. Shit. 

Thought two (b)
Some of y'all swallowing the thoughts and prayers koolaid like your good Senators, ain't no better than them. Y'all will weep today and vote your hatred of minorities tomorrow never noticing that the two things cannot peacefully co-exist. As I’ve written before, the very legislators you choose so that they will screw minorities and the poor, are the same people who are ensuring that you are more likely to walk into the path of some random ass with a gun. But your need to harm the ‘other’ exceeds your love for yourself. That is an irresolveable tension that you’re gonna need to work out because, quite frankly, it’s killing you. Literally.

For me, there is no tension. I will ever choose me, and frequently that’s going to mean that you have to come along too, you have to receive a benefit too. I’m entirely OK with that. You’re not. Your hate for me and mine exceeds your love for you and yours. That's a serious problem, yours as well as mine, because when the gunman comes, he doesn't ask questions before he pulls the trigger, he just points and clicks. Some of you haven't cottoned on to that yet. I sure hope you get it soon though ‘cuz your disdain for others has made you a target of others.

Thought three

Here’s a question: how many of your kids need to be fatally harmed for you to figure this out? What has to happen for you to stop voting for folks that hate you and your kids? What bell has to go off in y’alls heads for you to see that doing the same thing over and over again, ain’t never gon’ yield some new outcome? Tell me what I have to say and I will say it cuz seriously, this shit is getting old.

There's a pattern here, look closely enough and you'll see it.

The folks some of you keep voting for cut taxes on the wealthy to the tune of millions, but you get a buck fiddy a week.

The folks y'all keep voting for cut regulation, and y'all get listeria, Flint-like water, chicken raised God only knows how in China, and arsenic in your rice.

The folks y'all keep voting for will legislate the hell outta a woman's vagina, ensure that drugs that give priapism (look it up) are covered by insurance but birth control ain't. They'll legislate baby-making but never teenager, pre-K-er or toddler murder and call themselves pro-life. And you'll believe them. Meanwhile, you walk around thinking that doing active shooter training at work is a great and reasonable response to the possibility of a mass murderer showing up at your job. How is that normal or reasonable??? 

This shit would  be laughable were it not for the fact that tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, we will all go to work or school in buildings that could potentially become our coffins. 

If my saying that makes you uncomfortable, I offer you my #ThoughtsAndPrayers. I hear that's good for something. Let me know how it works.

Carry on.

The legacy of Anglo-American law enforcement

Dear Mr. Se(ce)ssions,

It came to my attention yesterday, that you had made a speech to a congress of sheriffs and had thought it appropriate and right to use the phrase "Anglo-American heritage of law enforcement" and remind us of American policing's great past. Since you went there, I thought I'd write and add something to your book learnin'. 

So, without further ado, here is some of the great legacy to which you alluded.....

Slave catching

Even as you alluded to a great and glorious law enforcement past, did it occur to you consider the ugly and inglorious parts of it? I'm guessing no so let me help you there, 

"In the South, however, the economics that drove the creation of police forces"were centered not on the protection of shipping interests but on the preservation of the slavery system. Some of the primary policing institutions there were the slave patrols tasked with chasing down runaways and preventing slave revolts, Potter says; the first formal slave patrol had been created in the Carolina colonies in 1704. During the Civil War, the military became the primary form of law enforcement in the South, but during Reconstruction, many local sheriffs functioned in a way analogous to the earlier slave patrols, enforcing segregation and the disenfranchisement of freed slaves."

 [emphases mine] From How the US Got Its Police Force.

I'm going to guess that this isn't the past to which you were referring. But it would seem that when we celebrate a thing, we should celebrate its totality no? Or should we pick, choose, and refuse (P, C, & R) aspects of the past? Oh I'm forgetting myself! P, C and R is wholly American. That's how we do history ain't it? eg We celebrate Jefferson and pretend he wasn't a slave-raping brute......

Rape ignoring

Years later, more of the same. The story of Recy Taylor refers. Relevant to your "legacy of Anglo-American law enforcement" in her story is this nugget: 

"Despite the rapists being identified, and at least one man's confession to the crimes, none were ever punished." 

But yes, do let's talk about the great legacy of Anglo-American law enforcement shall we?

Depravely indifferent to Black life

Apart from coddling murderers and rapists, law enforcement also has a sad history of doing various dirty deeds themselves. We all know the stories of Sandra Bland, Aiyana Stanley-Jones, Ramarley Graham, Tamir Rice and Jordan Edwards. How do these stories square with that proud history of Anglo-American law enforcement of which you spoke? What about Khalief Browder, who spent three years in Riker's for allegedly stealing a bag? The case was eventually dropped but before that could happen, the law enforcement and judicial systems worked in concert to keep him incarcerated for three years. Three years, much of that time in solitary confinement. 

In many of the cases listed above, the officers involved in the shootings either faced no charges or faced charges and were acquitted. Rare is the instance where an officer is criminally indicted and found guilty of killing an unarmed civilian. Walter Scott's killer is a rare breed. The legacy is a proud one indeed.  /snark font/

And lest we begin to think that the 'legacy' stops with sheriffs and police officers, there's also this.....

Willfully using the power of office to incarcerate and kill the innocent
The story of Rodricus Crawford 

From the linked story:

"Despite autopsy results and credible expert evidence showing the child died from pneumonia and sepsis, Caddo Parish prosecutors alleged that Rodricus Crawford, a 23-year-old black man, smothered his one-year-old son, and charged him with first-degree murder.

Prosecutor Dale Cox improperly removed black jurors from Mr. Crawford's jury, and in his closing statement, he told jurors that Jesus Christ commanded the death penalty for those who killed a child. Mr. Crawford was sentenced to death that evening." 

Despite compelling evidence, a death penalty verdict was handed down by an all White jury. Tell me again about your legacy Jeff. Tell me again.  

So yeah, let's talk about the great and proud history of "Anglo-American law enforcement" why don't we? Let's talk about how Justice Taney once said that "the Black man had no rights that the White man was bound to respect". Let's talk about the lack of law enforcement response to the brutality in Tulsa and the costs in lives, property and psychic balance to that community in particular, and Black communities in general. Let's talk about COINTELPRO and how that was used to terrorize Black folks.  What about the FBI's attempts to get MLK to commit suicide, the MOVE bombing, the war on Blackness as evidenced by the recent declaration of a war on Black Identity Extremists (whatever those might be) even as White identity extremists have actually killed folk but continue to be treated with kid gloves? Yeah Jeff, let's talk about the long and proudly brutal legacy of Anglo-American law enforcement with respect to Black and brown communities. This should be instructive.

When I see comments like this coming from people with histories like yours, I can only sigh and wonder what it might take to get you  to not be so publicly and smugly racist? 

When I hear things like this I want to give folk like you the benefit of the doubt, after all, the nation's history texts and curricula ain't exactly completely truthful. Many school books do an excellent job of obfuscating (read: omitting completely) the uglier facts of American history, cuz yunno, no room for truth telling, acknowledgement or mea culpas.  But there are other books. And Lord knows the internet is still free. So no, no benefit of the doubt for you. Read. Learn. Grow. Choose to end your ignorance. 

When Coretta Scott King put pen to paper to resist your elevation to the federal bench, it was because she knew who you were. Thirty some years later, when Elizabeth Warren tried to read Mrs. King's letter into the record, it was because she too knew who you were. And now, thanks to your speech on Monday 12 February 2018, even more know who you are.

In the intervening span of 30-some years since Mrs. King's writing, you have read no book, no article, had no conversation that caused you to rethink your approach or consider anew the equality or humanity of folk who don't look like you. So compelling is the supremacist koolaid, that you have spared no thought for how you might move differently in the world.

With your smug I-got-the-power-to-put-you-in-your-place smile, you continue to show up in the world spewing a brand of old-fashioned ignorance that does your name proud. Is it any wonder I've renamed you Se(ce)ssions? The universe sho nuff named you right! And despite all we knew beforehand, perhaps because of it, here we are: you're the chief law enforcement officer of the land. And you outchear talkin' 'bout the Anglo-American tradition of slave catching pardon me, I mean law enforcement. 

Some days, scratch that, most days, I can't even believe this is real, that you really are the AG but hey, elections have consequences. You are ours.

Carry on.

Dear General......

From The Daily Beast 

Dear General Kelly,

Oh my! Where to begin with you? So much to say, so little time!

Let me start with an apology. I apologize for so badly misjudging you. Like so many others, I assumed (and you know what happens when you ASS-U-ME!) that you would bring some discipline and order to the chaos that is the White House of DJT. I apologize for leaping to that conclusion the resulting fall has been painful. I do most abjectly apologize. My guess is that there is only one person on the planet who may be qualified for that role and it ain't you. You're very clearly not it. Evidence abounds.

Evidence of your unsuitability for high office? The Rob Porter Affair. I must say that I understand that you are a military man and y'all are, yunno, *different*. I appreciate that for you mission matters more than morality but you ain't on the battlefield John, and the White House staffers ain't soldiers in the trenches. Morality matters dude! Decency matters! Abiding by the law...... ok lemme stop cuz your posse ain't about that life. Still though, spousal abuse is not an uncrossable line? Again, lemme stop cuz I know your boss has some issues in this regard. Allegedly. 

I appreciate that you valued the work of former staff secretary Porter, but his problems sir, his problems! And yes, if a man cannot control his rages and violently assaults his ex-wives/girlfriends, he has problems, serious ones. Any man who stands accused of physically assaulting not one but two ex-wives oughtn't to be anywhere near the House of White, not even this vile one! No one should have to tell you this dear John, but apparently we do....which makes me wonder about other things like reports of rape, physical violence and sexual harassment among your troops.

To be clear, I don't hold you personally responsible for the numbers of incidents but I sure do think that given your response to the Porter situation, a few questions about how you responded to incidents of sexual violence against the women in your command could reasonably be asked. Would women under your leadership report attacks more or less frequently? Would they have known better than to initiate complaints against those who had harmed them? I mean, given your willingness to overlook Porter's 'alleged' (never mind the photographic evidence) odious behavior, who could blame me for having questions?

And then there's your loose-lipped ugliness about immigrants. Lawd! Lemme ask you a question: how do you feel about immigrant soldiers, documented and undocumented ones? They shoot just as well, they shed just as much *enemy* blood, and when they're hurt, they bleed the same red as your good native born (White) soldier. Still, I'm pretty sure you have them filed in some different category of humanity from the rest. Why wouldn't you? Your comments about non-DACA registered immigrant children being "too lazy to get up off their asses" refers. Those kinds of words don't fall out of the side of one's mouth accidentally. Those kinds of words were first fully-formed thoughts, cogitated and contemplated at length long before they issued forth from your mouth.

The lack of insight you show only exposes your ugly privilege. It doesn't even occur to you that there's a reasonable calculation to not signing up for DACA. It is people like you, Jefferson Beauregard Se(ce)ssions, Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller, Jared/Ivanka and all 30+ million of your boss' voters who are the reason DACA-eligible kids didn't sign up. The possibility of an administration hell bent on some version of ethnic cleansing is the reason folk ain't want to put their names on any damn list. You and those you represent are why they were afraid. And you  have proved their fears well-grounded. But such is the power of privilege that none of that occurs to you. 

For those of us looking on, aghast, we know that the way in which you are talking about these young people is born out of the same funky swamp in which fetid policy grows. We know this. We have long known this. There is no separating ugly prose from ugly policy dear general. We know this too.

General, you expose yourself as being entirely as devoid of decency as your boss and the entirety of his staff. Truly, you prove the maxim, "It takes one to know one", or better put, "It takes one to work with one". We should have expected no less really. In a White House full of ravening wolves, only another ravening wolf - likely a more vicious one - could possibly hold sway.

I'm surprised at my surprise.

A likely unpopular thought about Black History month

There was a thing floating around on Facebook commemorating Sandra Bland's birthday on February 7. I wasn't sure it was accurate, so I checked. It was. Happy birthday Sandra. A few days earlier, there'd been a thing commemorating Trayvon Martin's. His is/was February 5. Happy birthday Trayvon. During Black History months, martyrs like Sandra and Trayvon weigh heavy on my mind. And they aren't the only ones. In this month when we remember our contriubtions and our successes, how might we also say something about the ugliness of the soil in which we POC find ourselves planted? How might we also call to the attention of an unwilling public, the myriad ways in which we have overcome but they have yet to 'come over' or be converted to the idea of liberty and justice for all?  

I know that's not the usual  modus operandi for Black History Month, but I do wish we would try something different just one time. 

The thing that frets me about Black History Month is the way we focus exclusively on the ones who 'won' and the way we fail to (refuse to?) think about the ones who died before progress could be made; the women and men who died brutalized and enslaved; the women and men who died by lynching; the women and men who died terrorized. Perhaps Black History Month ain't for that. Perhaps, Black History Month is the month in which we cast all our burdens aside and celebrate MLK Jr., but don't think about his assassination or the social ills - many of them still very much in existence - that led to that violent death; we praise Maya Angelou, but don't think about the fullness of her story and her childhood trauma; we quote James Baldwin but don't consider his entirely reasonable perpetually rage; we remember Muhammad Ali, but fail to think too deeply about the attacks on his character and his loss of his place in the ring because he took a principled stand against the Vietnam War. And on and on the list goes. Marian Anderson, locked out of Constitution Hall? Paul Robeson and Jackie Robinson and their appearances before the House Unamerican Affairs Committee? Ta-Nehisi Coates, taking himself, his mind and his family to France? 

I'm not ungrateful, though don't get me started on the concept of 'gratitude' cuz that is a whole 'nother story by itself! I appreciate that we take 28 days to recognize the contributions of African Americans to America. I also realize that in this Trump era we should be glad we still have a month (he's the kind of guy under whose leadership a month could be one a day, and a dark one at that), but the whole BHM exercise makes me twitchy. 

I've watched the movie Remember the Titans about a dozen times. Seventeen years ago, I watched it with a White family and I think that's when my first sense of the problems with those images, ideas, and the celebration of the team's 'coming together' came home to me as being problematic. 

Imagine sitting surrounded by nice White people (and they really were some nice folk to me whom they knew. I don't know how they were to Black folk they didn't know and therein, I believe, is where one's I-don't-do-racist-things bona fides lie.), watching a movie about the psychological warfare a group of young men had to survive to play football; the psychological and physical risks a grown Black man had to face to do the job he knew he could do. Imagine further what's happening in these nice White folks' minds when the obligatory White Saviors do their obligatory White saving. 

Watching myself watching that movie in that company, I discovered what was wrong with movies like that and by extension BHM celebrations that leave out the filthy underbelly of America that gives rise to the triumph. True enough, Remember the Titans exposed much of the ugliness, but you know as well as I do that every White viewer sees him/herself among the Saviors,  the good guys. Everybody is one of the good guys. Much like, on MLK Day, every White person is quoting the I Have A Dream speech and pretending that had they been there, they woulda marched with Martin. They would have been on the front lines. They swear it up and down, but ask them when last they mindfully chose not to do a racist thing? Weird this world we live in: there are no bad guys, and yet there is much badness around and about us. 

By avoiding looking directly at the ugliness, by refusing to confront the ugliest parts of our past, folks are able to exculpate themselves from all responsibility - direct or tangential - for what obtains in this society. After all, they firmly believe we should all stop living in the past, they swear that love trumps hate and they don't see color. They never used the en word or so they'll tell you, but they sure do believe in Black on Black crime tho. 

I love the celebration of Black achievement. I love that we celebrate the ones who, despite everything, were creators, inventors, authors, thought-leaders, but what of the rest? We remember the Titans. We remember Corporal Brashear, who was so vilely tormented in his quest to be a a Navy diver, but what of the rest? What of Sandra and Philando? What of Terrence and Walter? What of the Charleston 9? What of Jordan and Trayvon? What of Tamir? And then what of Eric and Erica Garner? What of Khalief and Venida Browder? What of the parents of Tamir, Trayvon, Jordan, Richard, Aiyana..... The Titans were able to triumph, what about those who never got the chance? And what about their next of kin, who must now triumph in the names of their dead, like Mamie Till? I don't know, call me a glass half-empty-er, but that's where my mind goes every February. 

Someone suggested to me that the other eleven months of the year are for focusing on those stories. But is that really the case? It seems to me that the other eleven months are filled with POC shouting into the void about the challenges we face on a daily basis. All of which shouting is roundly ignored. 

This one month, I believe, is our opportunity to juxtapose, to critique, to present our data points in meaningful ways. Telling me who invented the traffic light is great (Garret P. Morgan) but I'd find contextualization of that success more informative. Tell me about the systems and structures that prevented him from bringing his other inventions to market as that offers me much more from which to draw insight and learning. It might also offer the same to the broader society, hell bent as it is to pretend that the truth is a lie. 

Black History Month frustrates, and sometimes infuriates, me because it is the month we celebrate the winning and take our eye off not just the ones who never even made it to the starting gates, but the ways in which even those who 'won' lost too. 

I think we need to figure out how to celebrate while at the same time offering the world ways to ameliorate their understanding of the journey of American Blackness. But that's just me. As you were. 

Dear Paul, a letter of gratitude for my six dollar tax cut

Dear Paul,

This letter must be damn important cuz I'm trying to scribble it while squeezed between a girl, her school  book and the side of the train.

Anywho, I really wanted to reach out and thank you for the $1.50 per week raise that your trillion dollar (trillion and a half actually but what's five hunnit million between frenz?) tax cut has brought me. I swear couldn't be more thrilled!

Since I know it matters to you, I and folks like me matter to you, and you want to have #TaxScamErBreak success stories to tweet, let me tell you what I'm about to do with those precious coins. 

First, I'm thinking about buying a house. Who am I kidding? No. I'm not going to buy a house. It's a buck fiddy a week.

You know of course, that home ownership is the way in which the White middle class of the 1950s was able to build wealth. Of course you know this, your parents did it! Other groups weren't as lucky as you cuz, yunno, colored and all, they didn't work hard enough. These days though, it seems no matter how hard some of us work, $1.50 is all we get for our labors. Don't get me wrong though, I'm very grateful. (Gotta keep saying that lest you take back those coins!) 

While the princely sum of six whole additional dollars a month is terrific (again, my gratitude is deep and abiding), it's unfortunately not going to be quite sufficient to enable me to buy a home. Perhaps if I had been a nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand, ninety and ninety-four dollar-aire, this six bucks would have made me a millionaire, but unfortunately, that's not the case. My million is further away than six dollars. 

This six dollars won't ee'm allow me to move to a slightly larger apartment. I know that's not what the goal of the tax break was (what was the goal again, I forget?), but I will be able to spend that extra moneyh on one more cup of joe from Starbucks so woo hoo! Or maybe one more gallon of milk? Less "Woo hoo!" but a good thing nonetheless. 

Next, I'll be able to send my eldest to college. Yeah, no, that's not happening either. Shucks! 

I've been trying to save to get her into the nearby state school, but with in-state tuition routinely running nearly $10,000 a year, and Pell and other need-based financial aid taking hit after hit, that's not looking too hopeful either. But hey, six bucks right? I ain't sneezin' at them six bucks you gave me!

Third, I will at least be able to fix my car....... sigh, I just got the quote from my mechanic. Yeah, that's gonna take closer to six hundred than six. 

I'm currently in need of a tire and a number of other things and while my gratitude for your $78 per annum tax break knows no bounds, I'm reliably informed that the mechanic won't accept *gratitude* as a form of payment. Additionally, given the stare of roads in my state, I suspect I'll be needing some shocks any day now. They don't take honorable mention in the Speaker of the House's tweets as payment for shocks either. I know this for a fact cuz I checked.

I could probably point out how much guys like the Koch's, your proud sponsors, realized in just the first week (some serious ROI for the measly $500,000 donated to your 're-election' effort) but that might strike some as either churlishness or jealousy. Actually, it's neither. I am not them and they are not me. I have no right to expect the same recompense for my one measly vote that they wholly appropriately receive for their millions of dollars in support. This makes perfect sense to me. 

from Americans for Tax Fairness

This is America after all, and he who pays the piper calls the tune. I can barely pay my rent, how could I expect to pay a piper? Or a politician? 

Anyway, thanks. I thank you. Starbucks thanks you. Starbucks thanks you twice in fact, first for the cut taxes and then again for transferring my six dollars in relief to their pocket. So much winning...even if not for me. I can't wait for whatever you and the Koch's have lined up for me next! Lifetime caps on Medicaid perhaps? Woo hoo! Can't wait! 

Signed,

Nickeled and dimed in PA