inauguration doubletakes

Did anyone else catch Rick Warren dropping in the Shema and then, immediately after, breezing over a quote from the Holy Qur'an? (I'd chapter-and-verse it, but it's in there 114 times, last I checked.) Thoughts about the supposed inclusivity of simply saying "Jesus" in English, Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic and then still identifying Him as, y'know, the one source of true teaching--plus tacking on the Lord's Prayer for no apparent reason?

How about Feinstein's dis of Malcolm X? I gasped, I admit.

And, for that matter--who else fell over laughing at Warren's...exotic...enunciation of "Malia and Sasha"? Was anyone else tempted to periodically hold up a sign that said "EXCEPT THE QUEERS" during his invocation?

...how many times can white newscasters breathlessly expound on how racism is over?

And Obama, well...hell of a speech, sir. Some nice shoutouts, some truly elegantly brutal digs at the outgoing administration, and some interesting reference choices. And a conscious avoidance of gendered language--"Our forebears," "All are equal"--through variation of traditionally epicene-masculine phrases. Nicely done and much appreciated. For that matter? I actually thought it was sweet, that he was nervous enough to stumble on the oath of office. Michelle gave him a great look when he did.

On the other other hand? Get we please, please stop with the notion that every American came from immigrants, settling this untamed land, bravely marching toward the horizon and striking out into unmapped territory to make new homes and hopes? I know it's a great image to work with, y'all, but some people were here already. For Pete's sake, can we stop erasing everyone whose ancestors managed to handle this continent just fine for a good 12,000 years before--how shall I put this--colonialist genocide reared its head? 'Cause they're still here, y'all. And some had to sit in that amazing crowd and listen, once again, and they got conveniently cut out of the picture.

Anyway. That said, I'm glad I got to see most of it, adorably-snappily-dressed Obama kids and all.

street medics targeted and arrested at RNC

REPOSTED IN FULL. PLEASE DISTRIBUTE AND DO WHAT YOU CAN. I know I haven't covered street medic stuff lately, but a bunch of street medic folks are operating at the Twin Cities RNC, and have been specifically targeted. I believe arrestees include this awesome activist you've met before, and there are some very ugly rumors going around about mistreatment of trans and queer people currently detained which worry the hell out of me. Keep it in mind: it's not just journalists being targeted and arrested--it's those braving those dangerous streets as volunteers to provide medical care. --ll.

Update - Portland Street Medics Arrested at the Republican National Convention
by street.medix@portland-or.net
Weds, Sep. 3rd, 2008

In between explosions of concussion grenades and teargas clouds in
Minneapolis-St. Paul, volunteer Street Medics from all over the country
who have assembled there are continuing to provide much needed first aid
and medical care to injured and frightened people everywhere in the city
where lawful and peaceful assemblies, passersby, journalists and
bystanders are getting attacked indiscriminately and without provocation
by Police, National Guard and teams of unidentified Federal Agencies
without badges or numbers.

Two raw, unedited video items that were just published provide an
excellent documentation of the level of unprovoked and indiscriminate
violence targeted against peaceful non-violent assemblies, against
Street Medics, against legal observers and journalists:

o- Rubber bullets fired directly into a small crowd of peaceful people;
Street Medics attacked:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OnnUTK7QjI

o- Independent journalist caught in the middle of panic and mayhem
during an attack with concussion grenades and teargas against a peaceful
march:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6L8J3L-2Kw


Starting at dawn on Tuesday, Portland Street Medics who were arrested
while treating injured people at the RNC were being released one by one
by the illegitimate authorities who had seized them. One of our
colleagues is still in jail and has not yet been charged with anything.
All of the arrests of Portland Street Medics are entirely illegal.

We have confirmed information that additional unidentified Street Medics
have been seen in jail by other people, but no details about who they
are or why they are being held.

The Portland Street Medics who were released are well, except for
tiredness. We are not able to communicate with the one of our members
who is still in jail to ascertain wellness - our colleague is being held
in a situation where legal observers have repeatedly confirmed that
people are being denied access to medical care and targeted with
selective abuse. {Please see the statement from our lawyers below,
titled "Over 300 Protesters, Bystanders, Medics and Media Arrested:
Update from Coldsnap Legal Collective".}


All of the arrested Street Medics' personal items, money, medical
supplies and tools were confiscated and are still not being released by
Police despite repeated requests, even though the items in question are
not relevant to any legal proceedings (they are not being held as
evidence, nor are they proscribed materials). Seizure of these materials
is an illegal tactic to prevent our members from providing first aid and
medical care to the people who are now in the streets and parks in
Minneapolis-St. Paul. This is in direct violation of the US Constitution
which in the Fourth Amendment provides protection against unreasonable
searches and seizures. {Please see the Constitutional reference from the
Cornell Law School below.}


We are still in need of funds for bail, and for replacing lost medical
supplies and tools for our volunteers. If you are able to give, please
consider donating through this page (every little bit counts!):
http://www.portland-or.net/street-medics/Donations-Portland-Street-Medics.html
or, please write to us about making alternative donation arrangements here:
street.medix@portland-or.net

Some details
The Portland Street Medics who were arrested include a long-time Queer
liberation and radical performance artist; two trained Emergency Medical
Technicians (EMTs), one of whom is also a Wilderness First Responder;
and a Nurse Practitioner in training, who is also an Herbalist with more
than fifteen years clinical experience.

It's plainly obvious to everyone that our members, sworn to the primary
directive of all healthcare workers to "First, Do No Harm", should have
never been arrested and must be allowed and supported to return to their
duties immediately without any interference whatsoever.

Contacting the authorities
..has proven to be very difficult. As one of our supporters reports here,
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2008/09/379093.shtml#315129
phonecalls to the Ramsey County Jail, the Sheriff, and Mayor Coleman,
are being redirected through a maze of sometimes incompetent, sometimes
purposefully dysfunctional routes and individuals who are making the
process of leaving messages and official complaints nearly impossible.

Still, we are asking people to please call these (new) numbers and to
politely ask that:
o- all Street Medics be released immediately and allowed to resume duties;
o- all people who were arrested and are not being charged, to be
released immediately;
o- all personal items and medical supplies and tools that were
confiscated from Street Medics to be returned immediately so that our
teams can provide much needed care for injured and ill people in the
streets and first aid stations all over Minneapolis-St. Paul.

Please call these numbers:
St. Paul Police chief:
651-266-5588

Help line:
651-266-9333

Please send letters to:
St. Paul Police Department
Chief John Harrington
367 Grove Street
St. Paul, Minnesota 55101

Ramsey County Jail
Sheriff Bob Fletcher
425 Grove Street
St. Paul, Minnesota 55101


Please keep distributing and re-publishing our updates

We really are grateful for all of your letters and phonecalls of
support. Without your love and care, none of our work would have been
possible.

Portland Street Medics
http://portland-or.net/street-medics/


Resources and Related Materials

"Over 300 Protesters, Bystanders, Medics and Media Arrested: Update from
Coldsnap Legal Collective"
http://twincities.indymedia.org/2008/sep/over-300-protesters-bystanders-medics-and-media-arrested-update-coldsnap-legal-collective

" US Constitution - Amendment IV:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers,
and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be
violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause,
supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place
to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitution.billofrights.html

Our previous Communique:
http://seattle.indymedia.org/en/2008/09/268617.shtml

did someone whistle? I couldn't hear it.

It's amazing how many layers of meaning you can pack into a little sermon if you know what you're doing. I know: sermons are my stock in trade. And they're also the primary arsenal for aw-shucks just-plain-folks evangelical Republican Mike Huckabee, who stumped for John McCain at the Republican National Convention with a speech that made my jaw drop.

Let me explain why. Excerpts of Huckabee's homily follow, in fine sermon style; toward the end of his speech, he pulled out a seemingly-unrelated story, then called forth a moral and a theme, and then wove that theme back into his prior subject matter, the imperative to vote for the McCain-Palin ticket. The first parts of his oration are basically irrelevant boilerplate about how Barack Obama hugs terrorists and blushingly gives them boxes of candy. And then he gets into the oft-told tale of McCain's capture and torture, following with remarks about McCain's efforts to lift his arms and how he gave for us, so we should all be grateful. That's when Huckabee slides smoothly into Sermontown:

Allow me to tell you about someone who understands this type of sacrifice better than anyone.

McCain? No, not yet: a schoolteacher who is in no way a stand-in for Sarah Palin, a young woman who overcomes doubt and skepticism to teach people about how we ought to be more grateful to veterans like a certain J.M.

On the first day of school in 2005, Martha Cothren, a teacher at Joe T. Robinson High School in Little Rock, was determined that her students would not take their education or their privilege as Americans for granted. With the principal's permission, she removed all the desks from her classroom. The students entered the empty room and asked, "Mrs. Cothren, where are our desks?" "You get a desk when you tell me how you earn it," she replied.

And this is where, reading this aloud, I said suddenly to my partner, Oh, I hope this doesn't go where I think it's about to go. If you've spent much time in evangelical circles or surrounded by them, you'll know what I'm talking about any moment. The golden question of the moment is: how, Teacher? How do we earn our place in...the classroom?

"Making good grades?" asked one student.
"You ought to make good grades, but that won't get you a desk," Martha responded.
"I guess we have to behave," offered another.
"You WILL behave in my class," Mrs. Cothren retorted, "but that won't get you a desk either."

Being good won't earn it for you, see. You're required to work hard and succeed and follow the rules in order to show you're among the people who have a right to a desk, but there's nothing you can do--no action, no works--that can earn the desk for you. Listen to the Teacher--there's a price for the desks you can't pay. They'll be apportioned according to some other criterion. Getting warmer?

No one in first period guessed right. Same for second period. By lunch, the buzz was all over campus... Mrs. Cothren had flipped out ....wouldn't let her students have a desk. Kids had used their cell phones and called their parents. By early afternoon, all 4 of the local network TV affiliates had camera crews at the school to report on the teacher who wouldn't let her students have a desk unless they could tell her how they earned it. By the final period, no one had guessed correctly. As the students filed in, Martha Cothren said, "Well, I didn't think you would figure it out, so I'll have to tell you."

Now, this is sermon-ese for "I am about to use this character as a stand-in for a moment while she (I) hammers home the big arrow-shaped sign toward my point--her point--you know." I'm a preacher at heart, you may have noticed, and I know these things. It helps that the character is beleaguered by parents and media who don't understand, sort of like teachers who push Creationism in schools, or like unpopular political leaders we know are really misunderstood maverick heroes doing what they have to to get a message across. She'll try novel things, that teacher who isn't Sarah Palin, in order to show you the light. Nobody can comprehend the answer on their own, after all. They need someone to spell it out for them, because there's no way any of these lowly mortal students can think their way to a desk, either. It's almost like those desks stand for something all metaphor-like.

Martha opened the door of her classroom. In walked 27 veterans, some wearing uniforms from years gone by, but each one carrying a school desk. As they carefully and quietly arranged the desks in neat rows, Martha said, "You don't have to earn your desks...these guys already did. They went halfway around the world, giving up their education and interrupting their careers and families so you could have the freedom you have. No one charged you for your desk. But it wasn't really free. These guys bought it for you. And I hope you never forget it. " I wish we all would remember that being American is not just about the freedom we have. It's about those who gave it to us.

Okay, so this seems pretty straightforward, a repeat of the earlier message: freedom is dearly bought, and everything you will ever have in this country is due to our military, and you should be grateful to them for all of it. And hey! One's running for President!

Ladies and Gentlemen, John McCain is one of those people who helped buy the freedom that we enjoy and the school desks we had.

Wait, wait, hold the phone, though. That was the theme before. What were all those metaphors and allegories? Let's back up and review. Why should we be grateful to these military veterans?

"You don't have to earn your desks...these guys already did."

Your desk, your place in the room, can't be earned. You can't behave well enough to get one, work enough to get one, think enough to get one. It is impossible for you to deserve a place to sit before your teacher, see. Looks pretty hopeless, doesn't it? But wait! You don't have to earn Grace--I mean, a desk--someone else has already earned it for you. And you can have it, for free! Someone else bought the desks by sacrifice, by spilling their blood on foreign soil, so that even though you can't earn a desk, it can be given to you by your benevolent authority figure because a heroic intermediary bled to provide it for you.
Are we getting some clarity yet? Shall we break it down? Good sermons come in layers, and Huckabee is good at sermons. Here's the first layer of the story:

An innovative teacher chooses an offbeat way to illustrate to her young students that everything they have is owed to soldiers, who should be honored for their sacrifice and given deference.

Okay. Check. Here's the second layer:

Standing in front of you is a military veteran John McCain, who is like the soldiers in this story. He sacrificed a lot to provide to you, the people, your luxuries and your very way of life. He, like these soldiers, is being presented to you by a younger woman who wants to use innovative methods to showcase his worth. Honor his service by voting for him.

But we're still missing a layer. Let's back it up--who else are these soldiers like? Allow me, gentle reader, to sum up:

There's something you need, a right to be in a particular place, that you can't earn by any kind of exertion, virtue, or intelligence. It has to be given to you, but you don't actually deserve it, and left alone, you will never figure out how to get it. Luckily, someone's showed up to tell you how to get it for free. It's already been purchased by someone else, someone better, who spilled their blood in order to secure the blessing of this thing for you even though you don't deserve and can't earn it. And all you need to do is honor them in order to benefit.

Sound familiar yet? Please tell me it does. This is the doctrine of "Grace, Not Works" or "Grace Alone," a theological position expounded during the Reformation, cuddled by Calvin, and popular among evangelical Christians. It's not a desk, it's a place in Heaven. And it's not soldiers we're talking about, it's Jesus Christ. Don't buy the connection of this story as an allegory for the doctrine of Grace Alone? Here's a few ways to put it. And the guy talking is clergy in a denomination that holds this doctrine dear, so he knows what he's doing and who his audience is. Let's plug this little revelation back in to Huckabee's sermon at RNC and see what happens:

Let me tell you about a guy who can't lift his arms because he was tortured by enemy soldiers and sacrificed for your freedom. Think about it like desks in a classroom, where you can't earn or deserve a place to sit--but someone better than you or me went out there and sacrificed himself, spilled his own blood in order to dearly purchase for you your place at the table. His sacrifice redeems you when you wouldn't have been able to make it there on your own, and now you can have a desk, a place, a spot in Heaven if you just believe in and honor him.

Who's that man who sacrificed for you, who could have bought his own freedom by simply renouncing his creed, but stayed to be tortured in order to free you?

Allow me to tell you about someone who understands this type of sacrifice better than anyone.

Ladies and Gentlemen, John McCain is one of those people who helped buy the freedom that we enjoy and the school desks we had.

Has your jaw dropped to where mine was yet? Because I'm pretty sure, in this campaign where they're already painted the opposition as the Antichrist, they just labeled their candidate Jesus Christ.

vigilance

So last night I ganged up with Katz of Athens Boys Choir and some amazing folks from Portland State University (I'm looking at you, Tash, Zena) and we had ourselves a Day of Remembrance. It was the first time in more than three years that I've read my work publicly, and I have to admit I shook like a leaf getting up to a microphone and reciting "The Seam of Skin and Scales." There were a few things I had in mind to maybe read for people, and the 'net was well represented; Tash Shatz read a piece from TransGriot before the reading of the names of the dead, and it sent a shiver through people. But I'm meandering.

I got up in front of the largest grouping of trans people, let alone their allies, I had ever seen. And I leaned out and made eye contact and I said it, all of it. "We are not mistakes." "No more being afraid." And whoever it shook out there, I think it shook me the most, after seventeen pages of the names of the murdered were read, in chronological sequence, and minutes in I would recognize a name, finally, and then realize it was someone who'd been killed when I was still in high school, and we had years yet to go in the chronicle of the brutalized and lost. No matter how many of us stood out there in the amphitheater, it was such a tiny, bright candle on such a cold night--this brief moment where we were, once in the year, literally shoulder-to-shoulder, shivering, some heads bowed, some held high.

I think it does something to people, to grow up transgendered in this world. It does something to grow up knowing you are considered expendable if not an abomination, that crimes committed against you don't matter, that laws aren't for you, that futures aren't. It does something knowing that in most places the best you can hope for is to be a punchline, and the worst a pulped, shattered, ragged statistic. It does something to grow up constantly having your perceptions of reality called delusional until the only way to survive is to convince yourself that you are indeed insane. It does something to go so far off the map, even leaving aside our own experiences, the batterings small and large, whether we have families who look out for us or families who cut us deeper than anyone, the endless funerals for people we'll never be.
I think it breaks most of us a little, knowing that sometimes the only time in a year we all get together is to read a thick stack of names of those of us who have been ground into the ground, punctured, stolen, crushed and rent apart, all in order to satisfy someone else's ideas of what the world ought to be--and to tell all the rest of us, look out. You could be next.

And yet we were shoulder-to-shoulder, shivering together, and raising our voices. And all of those people we were assured someone had tried to erase--because that's what so many of those murders were, efforts to erase the fact of a trans person from the world with the crudest and cruelest of instruments--rang out, remembered, even the ones called "unknown trans woman" and "unknown person" and "woman in man's clothing, name unknown." Real. Missed. And important.

No matter how many torches and pitchforks, there were were, refusing to forget. Refusing to allow that erasure. And that's what the day is about. It's about mourning those losses, and about telling all of those murderers and aiders and abettors that we are still here, we are not erased, and we will go arm-in-arm into the next day no matter the threats.

Many of us have lost someone in this struggle, whether they wanted to be part of the struggle or not. Many of us have lost parts of ourselves, and many of us have been hurt by people who wanted us on that list. But we endure, and we continue, and we light more candles, and we refuse to stop remembering, because it must be done.

At the end of the night, when we go our separate ways, we take each other home with us, every one--not alone, not over, not forgotten. We make it another day. It breaks all of us a little, living with the reality of the situation, but we keep it up, those of us who survive, and we live to keep a fire burning for those of us who don't.

Sacred dead, you are not forgotten. You matter. And we miss you.
We will carry this on for you. Let the weight pass from your shoulders to ours, for a while, and we will carry this struggle on for you until it doesn't need carrying any more.
Go, and rest. We will not forget.

fixes and fast talk

Well, goddamn.
You know those ads before the movies about random acts of kindness and helping out strangers--or the billboards about compassion and overcoming adversity and integrity? We have 'em all over, here. They're done by the Foundation for a Better Life, in cooperation with the Ad Council.
Honestly, I'm enough of a sap to like most of them. I think people need more reminders in their daily lives of their connections to each other and their moral potential. Call me an old-fashioned preacher that way, I guess.

Well, the Foundation for a Better Life has a very shiny website. They showcase all their billboards and such, and they talk about their core values, and they leave a contact email if you want to donate. What they don't do is tell you where all the money comes from, who they are, who founded them, or what their greater goals are. I dug for months, trying to figure out who the hell was funding all these expensive ads apparently in the name of nothing but altruistic fellowship. They made themselves hard to find.
Someone else did the necessary digging where I couldn't, though, and any ideas I had of maybe working for them at some point are gone now.

This may not be news to you-all, but the Foundation is funded by billionaire Philip Anschutz, and he's bad news. Really bad news. As in, his other campaigns to change society are, well--frankly, they read like a rapsheet of the current American poisons, from corporate predation to institutionalized homophobia to fundamentalist anti-intellectualism to environmental destruction to neoconservative politics. His contributions are huge.
Read that article I linked if you're in any way on the fence about it.

No wonder they keep it so well concealed. Whatever president Gary Dixon's intentions, the Better Life they want isn't for me.

broken news

Read this now. Do whatever you can, please.
My commentary later. For now: This. Cannot. Stand.
--ll

EDIT: I want to point out that I'm working to corroborate sources. While cases like this have verifiably happened before, the Audre Lorde Project's website currently lists no Action Alerts, and all the sources I've seen for this story seem to come from the same document. I've verified that there is indeed a trans woman of color named "Chris Sforza" in that area, so we already know it's not made up out of whole cloth. More information when I can get it. --ll, 10/08

Amnesty International has picked this up, along with another case of police abuse of a transgender woman of color, and that says to me that sources are good. They have a page up of information and addresses and channels to go through, which I recommend you go to. Please do what you can. Thank you. --ll, 11/06 (bumped to accomodate new information in bold; original posted was dated 10/07/06.)

National Action Alert: MCDONALDS MANAGER ASSAULTS TRANSGENDER WOMAN OF COLOR WITH LEAD PIPE; NYPD REFUSES TO ACCEPT HER COMPLAINT /Call Inspector McCarthy and Officer Bonner at NYPD Midtown South PCT to Demand anti-trans violence complaint is filed Tel. (212) 239-9811

On July 10th, 2006 at 10pm, Christina Sforza, a transgender woman ate with her friends at the McDonald's at 341 5th Ave. After eating, she tried to use the bathroom. The men's bathroom was out of order and all evening men and women were using the women's bathroom. She asked the person behind the counter which bathroom she should use and was told to use the women's bathroom. The victim is diabetic and entered the bathroom to give herself an insulin injection. While she was in the bathroom, she heard someone banging on the door yelling that they were going to "kill her." She waited a moment and then opened the door. An employee in a blue McDonald's shirt began beating her with a lead pipe and telling her he was going to "kill her." He used anti-gay and homophobic language. He hit her on her arms and in the groin area with the pipe while the rest of the McDonald's staff cheered and chanted, "kill the faggot."

The victim's friend called the police. When they arrived they refused to let her speak and arrested her for assault. During this time, the victim discovered that the man with the pipe was a manager. They left her bag at McDonald's and it contained all her medication, which she must take four times a day.

After the victim was released from jail, she attempted to file a complaint against the Manager at McDonalds on six separate occasions; July 18th, July 21st, July 23rd, July 26th, August 3rd, and August 7th. On each of these occasions, her request was denied and she encountered harassment, extremely long wait periods, and was threatened with arrest for "filing a false report."

The determined victim went to the precinct alone, with legal advocates, and with friends. Each time her request was denied. In addition, her attorney, Pooja Gehi, of the Sylvia Rivera Law Project has demanded that the arresting officer allow her to file a complaint. She supplied photographic evidence of the victim's injuries as well as eyewitness testimony from people who were at the incident. This too, was denied.
The officer informed Ms. Gehi that the "case was closed." The Victim filed a Complaint with the Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB) about the police. But this is unlikely to help her in any way. Ms. Gehi states, "This incident was illegal on multiple levels; my client was assaulted, discriminated against, denied her medication, falsely arrested, and denied her basic right to file a complaint against her assailant."

Now, the victim of a brutal, public assault faces criminal consequences because of a false arrest and a transphobic perpetrator.

*****
TransJustice, the Trans and Gender Non-Conforming People of Color political group, is demanding that the NYPD, allow her to file a compliant and to stop their historic discrimination as well as brutality against Transgender people. The group is calling for police accountability in regards to the treatment of NYC Trans and Gender Non-Conforming communities. TransJustice is calling on elected officials, community leaders and social justice activists to support this effort.


TransJustice Needs You To:

1)Inundate Officer Bonner and his superior officer Inspector McCarty at the NYPD Midtown South Precinct with phone calls demanding that Christina Sforza be allowed to file a criminal complaint against her attacker.

Call (212) 239-9811 COMMUNITY AFFAIRS (212) 239-9846 or Write 357 West 35th Street New York, New York 10001

2) If you live in NYC or NJ: please attend Action Alert Meeting on Wednesday, October 11th. 6:30 pm Allies Welcomed. This meeting will be held at Housing Works, 320 West 13th Street on the 4th Floor.

3) If you live in NYC or NJ: PACK the Court for Christina, October 26th, starting at 9am. 100 Centre Street -Part C (between Chambers and Canal Streets) Take 4,5,6 Trains to Chambers Streets or Q, N, R, W Canal)

To find out ways you can support this case and other cases of NYPD discrimination/ brutality against Trans and Gender Non-Conforming people of color, please call The Audre Lorde Project (718) 596-0342 ext. 18

what matters more than this?

I am an enemy combatant.

Right now is a tipping point. It is one of those Moments in history that will, God willing, be in textbooks someday, if there remain textbooks, as a great marker of the dimming and crumbling of our age. It will be remembered with horror, if not by our neighbor's children, by their children, and its echoes have already shaken the globe.

It is the moment when the world's only superpower declared to the world, without hedging or subterfuge or shame, that they approve of the torture of other human beings as a standard practice; that they are not bound by international law; that, once and for all, no begging or decency or bargaining will sway them, and that the only ones left to stand against them are those without the immediate power to do anything about it. It is the moment that the supposed Great Hope Of Democracy gave up on pretending that things were all right and said, right out, in clear words, that it would not be morally bound to treat others as human beings, and that no-one would define their others but themselves; the moment that the world knew of secret prisons and manual-approved tortures and the suspension of fair or represented trial perpetrated by those who promised to protect these things, and that those with the power to end it shrugged, and smirked, and said try and stop me.
It is the day the United States shod itself in iron, once and for all and without sugarcoating, and deemed itself proud to do so.
It is the midnight when the Shining City on the Hill let its lights go out, and all that was heard in the dark was the cocking of many guns.


Some of us saw it coming, yes. We saw the clouds on the horizon, and were roundly mocked for it. We called out at staged photo-ops and Potemkin villages. We cried out at laws rescinding basic civil rights that would surely, surely be suspended as soon as the need was gone. We called out when protestors were called terrorists on Senate floors, when dissenters were called traitors and enemies of the state, when the wretched specters of our past were hauled out, spit-shined, and called glorious victories, from the camps on our Pacific coasts to the slaughterhouses on that ocean's other side. We cried out when our neighbors disappeared, only to turn up nameless and orange-clad in Cuba. We called out at the abandonment of the International Criminal Court, at the laying waste of the authority of the U.N., the Kyoto Protocols, the Geneva Conventions, the Army Manual, the Bible, the Qur'an, the United States Constitution, the basic human conscience, bit by bit by bit. No more checks. No more balances. No more rules but because we can.
It was a slow erosion, and every little bit counted, but no-one wanted to call those bits what they were--our high ground, our morality, our decency, our hope. Our ability to cooperate went first in a storm of arrogance and wrath, but then our ability to see what we were doing went, and our ability to discern lies from fictions, and then our ability to see each other as real humans and real families, and then all of our perspective on mercy and law.

The smoking gun was, indeed, a mushroom cloud. It's just that that cloud was half a century ago, and those who saw forward were called fools and maniacs.
We did not learn from the Philippine War, where butchers blamed their crimes on their victims and the newspapers ate it up, where allies who'd given their lives alongside our own soldiers were turned on and killed because they were too brown to run their own homeland.
We did not learn from the senseless waste of a generation's youth in World War One's trenches.
We did not learn from any of it. Vietnam, Iran-Contra, the rise of the fascists, the turning over and over of People's Revolutions that ended up starving their people and grinding them down, dictators beheading dictators, coups begetting coups, many on our dime. We did not learn because neither had our ancestors learned from the Sicilian Expedition, from Poike Ditch, from Qin Shih Huang Di. We refused to learn from torn-out Aztec hearts and the charred mouths of murdered Sufis, and we have been infected with this thing, this basic original sin of humankind:

Separation. Solipsism. The old lie that this is how it must be, that we are alone, that a balance tipped means everyone's death, and that even that doesn't matter, because first comes Me. The vile and noisome Father of Lies, that Us and Them is the way of things, and Them needs to be beaten to death and ground into the dust before Us can thrive.

Now is that great lie's ultimate moment: the moment when power, given every chance to know itself and its shortcomings, to rise to its better self, to atone, to evolve, to nurture the garden of human greatness, looks that hope in the eyes and says, smugly, no.

Weeping will not fix it.
Nor will screaming.
It is time, you who are wrapped in your mantle, to stand up and settle the responsibility of being a human being on your shoulders, because right now, nothing matters more than this: that those with the most power, with the power to draw scars across a world or to deliver into birth its decent future, with the power to declare you a person or not, have declared that you are not, and that nothing is more important than their power, not even their longevity, not even their profit, any more.
It has happened before, on smaller scales, with smaller but no less heartbreaking betrayals.

Stand with me and dedicate your beating heart, your shaking hands, your bones and tongue and pride and blood and moving feet, your very future, to oppose this--to call our brothers and sisters back to remembering themselves, remembering each other. Throw yourself with me against the wheel. The machines of hate and control and exploitation and, yes, fascism, will leave none of us un-ground, in a macrocosm of that basic street rule, that nobody who enters a knife-fight leaves uncut.
It is worth everything we have to keep this monster from growing any further, because, in the end, it will be worth everything everyone else has if we do not. If we do not stand together now, there will be nothing to stand on. No-one is safe, any more. No-one is safe and no-one is free until we topple this abomination and expose its innards to history, so that our children and our children's children may see it for what it was, and shudder, and set their hands to never allowing it again.

It is already grinding you. At least use its workings against it, until it is no more. We owe it to each other, and to the unborn.

This is a moment that echoes in history, that will be in whatever books there will be. How do you want to be remembered, in that story? Who will you tell your children you stood with, and what will you tell them you stood for?

on marriage

Editing to follow.
__________________________
So here I am. Grand and Holgate. 2nd/3rd March 2004. 1:39 am, by my watch.
It's awful cold out, and people are getting married in the morning.
Someone dropped by a bunch of bottled water, and some pink tulips, with a note to share the love.
Someone else, maybe fifty, sits in front of a lit candle on a silver candlestick, with a dark-glass bottle of champagne and a Dixie cup. He and the man next to him--bluff, handsome, black knit cap--are huddled together in a bright blanket.
It's awful cold out. Five or six newsvans sleep, empty, on the curb. There's maybe twenty-one couples gathered here already--twenty-two--young and blushing, silver-haired, drinking, laughing. Mostly shivering. Two interracial couples. Some affluent; some not. Camp chairs are set up, and sleeping bags, and bottled water, on the cement at the Multnomah Building.
They're getting married tomorrow. Twenty-five couples, now. Twenty-six. Laughing to leach other. Shivering. Radiating hope. Calling relatives on cellphones, pacing in long jackets, sitting down for the long haul; they've got almost nine hours to go.
More phone calls. Someone brings more flowers--carnations--and bagels, and dog treats. Cars speed by on Grand; a couple gun their engines. Old lawn chairs, new blankets. A handheld UNO game. A handful of novels. Someone passes out Xeroxed paperwork.
"So exciting," I say. "Yeah," one middleaged woman replies. "History."
On one level, it is.
And on another, it's not. It's just some folks getting married. They might as well be waiting for concert tickets--they love each other, they're together already. They're getting a piece of paper, some legal benefits.
And yet. They're also getting sunlight, and I'm so thankful I could burst.
The world feels new. I know it's stupid, but it does.
I feel eminently single. And I realize I'm surrounded by, well, just people. They're no different than any other crowd I've been in. One guy shows off his tiny dog; some brides-to-be coo.
I always thought courthouse weddings would be unromantic, but I feel so full. For the moment these are legal--maybe the first ones in America. In my city.
I'm so goddamned proud, here at the vanguard.
I'm illegally parked next to my generation's new Stonewall.
And people in love are getting married.
It's awfully cold out.
But morning's coming.
___________________________

There's some more notes, some quotes from the affianced, that sort of thing. This is already a jumble.
But it's four-thirty, and my homework's not done yet, so I'll let this rest for now.
What a beautiful day.