Thursday, December 4, 2014

We Need Help


Seventy degrees, blue skies, took a walk, it's so beautiful here, so peaceful and what the hell is going on in the world? Listen to me- the backlash is coming. The lash against the back of white entitlement, of unjust justice according to race, it is going to come. This stinking festering wound is either going to burst wide open or it's going to kill us all dead. Too damn late for bandaids and iodine. Too damn late for antibiotics. How many centuries are we going to hide our heads in the sand while we do everything we can to punish other races for what we have ourselves propagated onto them? How long do they have to pay for the sins of OUR fathers? Not theirs. Ours.
I don't know what to say any more. I am not even surprised any more as one Grand Jury after another lets a white officer walk after killing a black man or a black child. What's the answer? We tried that holding hands and singing Kumbaya crap and it didn't work. There were sit-ins and peaceful protests and Martin Luther King and Civil Rights and desegregation and yeah, we even have a black president and so how's it looking now?
Looking to me like massa still has the right to beat and kill the black man for whatever reason he may choose.

It's so damn true that we have two justice systems that it's not even worth remarking on.

Look- I started out with the beautiful weather. I wanted to talk about how fortunate I feel today to live where I live, to be able to walk freely in the woods with the sun shining down through the pines and the bare branches of the sycamores on to the white sand paths. I wanted to talk about how much I love my house and how I spent all of yesterday tending to it. I wanted to talk about good books I'm reading both with my eyes and with my ears.
Hey! Guess what? Both books are about injustice. One written in 1949 about the slave trade in and around Apalachicola and St. Joe, Florida right before the Civil War. One about Mississippi in the early sixties.
The things I'm reading are as relevant today as they were then. Grab up a ship's hold full of slaves, cross the ocean, arrive with fourteen alive. Throw the dead ones over the deck. Put the living ones to work as soon as possible. Beat 'em, rape 'em, use 'em up, sell 'em. Consider them to be less-than-human and treat them as such. Or, burn down a black man's business and kill him in the process if you don't like him. If he's uppity. If he crosses any line which the KKK may perceive to have been drawn in the sand. Or, say that some random black kid is a menace, a threat, and use your tax-payer paid weapons to kill him and then use your tax-payer paid position to claim immunity.

Progress, oh yeah. Let's see how much of the US prison population is made up of black men?
And hey- those were the guys lucky enough not to be murdered before they were arrested.

Fuck me and my posts about cats and kids and gardens and chickens and weather and anxiety and depression and family and love and hope and aging and Christmas and childbirth.

I'm living the good life, the fine life, the entitled life and you know why? Because I'm a white woman who has had incredible fortune laid upon her by her very birth.
Well, I'm not the only person with beige skin tone who can't take it any more.

Have you seen this? #CrimingWhileWhite?

Okay, it's not much but it's something.

Meanwhile, there's so much I could say about how people of color built this nation, quite literally with their strong backs while being lashed across them. How what we so proudly perceive as American music was stolen from them. How we were never taught about the heros and soldiers and story-tellers and philosophers and scientists and inventors and artists of color in our history classes at school. How this country has treated all people of color, whether African or Chinese or Native American (oh- let's not even go THERE) or Hispanic, or, or, or...

Yeah. But. People gotta pull themselves up by the bootstraps, right?
Like I always say, you gotta have boots to begin with. If you're born without them, it's not that easy.

The fantasy of what The United States of America is is so far removed from the reality. You can believe that fantasy all you want and tell yourself that this is the greatest country on earth and that anyone who disagrees with you is a traitor or just plain a Not Good American but you will be bullshitting yourself.
You can recite the Pledge of Allegiance until the cows come home with its vow of "Justice For All" and it ain't gonna make it true.

And with each Katrina, with each white cop or even citizen who felt "threatened" walking free after murdering a person of color, it's going to get harder and harder. Every one has a cell phone that takes video. Eventually, the weight of the truth will overcome the weight of the lies and the pressure within will finally burst and we can let that happen or we can surgically and carefully and thoughtfully begin to truly heal the wound which threatens to kill us more surely than any foreign terrorist could ever hope to do.

That's all I have to say right now.

Yours in great sadness and anger...Ms. Moon







19 comments:

  1. Wow! May I share your blog on my FB page, Ms. Moon? You said exactly what I'm feeling.

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  2. Lisa- Sadly, sadly.

    LBags- Of course.

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  3. Just got back from Lisa's page.And then there is a butterfly being born.I am not down playing your post as I is spot on.Just oh heck I don't know what i am trying so say,so I will be quiet for a moment...

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  4. oops "it is spot on" very well said and worthy of going viral...

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  5. I go back to tending my tiny bit of earth and I chat up the homeless men and women I encounter and I feed people and I behave decently as I can well aware of my color and privilege and luck.

    With a broken heart. Because my job is to stay open hearted and to witness what is going on. I can't fix the wrongs. I can be pierced by the injustices and the sorrows of grieving parents and spouses and children of the dead.

    So speak it, Mary. Your words have power. And with them you send your heartbroken love to the world.

    XX B

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  6. It's the saddest most depressing thing ever.

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  7. You, dear Mary, are and will always be part of the solution, the healing, the love.

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  8. You've got me all fired up, and I was already quite lit.

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  9. I haven't been home today and didn't see much news. We went to watch the Orion liftoff that didn't happen. I did hear on the radio about the hideous decision today. Like almost everything in life I completely agree with you. Gail

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  10. Ugh. Thank you for saying what I'm thinking. :-( Heartbroken.

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  11. These are the most powerful words you've ever written.

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  12. Ms. Moon, the whole thing makes me stomach ache and my eye brows draw together in a frown. I don't know what can be done.
    Your words need to be on the front page of all the major newspapers.

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  13. Living in another xenophobic corrupt place across the pond I mirror your helplessness. We all need help, but who is there to help? We have to do this all alone.
    We watched while the shit was hitting the fan, didn't we? At least I did and I still do. I prefer to be helpless sometimes. Most of the time.

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  14. I have deliberately not broached this subject on my blog because I just don't know what to say. I continue to believe that we are moving forward and that things are slowly improving, but the brutality and injustice we periodically experience on that long journey is certainly painful. I know that sounds lame. I just don't have any answers.

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  15. I could not agree more. It makes me despair to see and read so much racism towards these innocent black lives that have been deemed worthless. animals, they call them, for finally not taking it, for finally refusing to turn the other cheek, for standing up for their rights. fat lot of good it does them. I just don't understand why white people fear black people. that's what it comes down to. fear. even when they were slaves, white people were afraid of black people. it makes me sick.

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  16. mary i- I did not intend to write about it. It just happened.

    Beth Coyote- For some of us, just tending what we have and acting in as loving a manner as possible is all we can do and if everyone did that...
    Well.
    I love you.

    Angella- I don't know. I feel so helpless.

    Elizabeth- We all are, aren't we? And what do we do with the rage and the sadness?

    Gail- It's not even surprising any more, which is the real tragedy.

    Betsy- Ugh indeed.

    Heartinhand- Maybe. Whatever. Still- what good does it do? Thank you.

    ditchingthedog- I think we all feel completely helpless. I keep saying that but it's true.

    Sabine- We were there. We did witness. We still do. And you are right- we HAVE to do it ourselves.
    There is no god from the machine. None. It is up to us.

    Steve Reed- Obviously, none of us have any answers. And as Kathleen just said to me, these days, at least if you're an asshole, you know it.

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  17. Thank you, Mary, for articulating this rage and sorrow for so many of us. Even some conservatives, even Ann Coulter and George Bush, from what I've read, cannot get behind the New York Grand Jury conclusion. Of course they won't say it's racism, which it so obviously is. I wish they and others who can't see the whole picture could feel the burning of your heart and mine and millions of others. We just cannot allow this to continue. We can't. Thank you for speaking out.

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  18. You know, the sheer numbers of people of color--black, brown, yellow--will outnumber us white people. And I'll be glad to see the fall of those who have tried to dominate and cheat others. I don't want violence but realize that it may be that time to rise up again and scream Enough--enough of the imbalance and the economic enslavement and the social injustice. I am weary of the old white men who do no good but are users and hypocrites.

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Tell me, sweeties. Tell me what you think.