Or Argentina.
Or Brazil.
Or Yemen.
Or Sudan.
Or Somalia.
Or Ethiopia
Or Syria.
Or Afghanistan.
Or China
Or Philippines
Or Russia
Take your pick. They don't have civil rights in those places. Or open, fair elections. Or an independent judiciary. If the great orange asshole continues on the path he is on, neither will we.
As we speak, I am dispatching thousands and thousands of heavily armed soldiers, military personnel, and law enforcement offices to stop the rioting, looting, vandalism assaults and the wanton destruction of property.On the surface that may sound reasonable, but take a moment to unpack that statement:
...thousands and thousands: who is commanding this force and what exactly is their mission?One of the delays in deploying the Minnesota National Guard was the lack of a mission statement provided by the mayor of Minneapolis. Without those specific instructions the Guard could not be deployed.
...heavily armed soldiers, military personnel: what constitutes "heavily" armed? Tanks? Bazookas? M2s? M249s? Concussion grenades? Flash bangs? Anyone wanna guess?Is he really going to turn the guns on his loyal MAGA members? The ones who are fine people? The ones with guns who demonstrated in Lansing? Is he really going to hold his alt-right cabal accountable? This is the guy who called the Neo-Nazis in Charlottesville and the gun-toting "protection" squad in Lansing "very fine people."
Sure he is.
Meanwhile, back in DC, peaceful protesters were gassed so the coward of the bunker could visit St. John's Church across from the White House. He used it as a photo op with a bible. Bishop Mariann Budde of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, took exception to this and published the following statement:"The President just used a Bible and one of the churches of my diocese as a backdrop for a message antithetical to the teachings of Jesus and everything that our church stands for. To do so, he sanctioned the use of tear gas by police officers in riot gear to clear the church yard."I am outraged."The President did not pray when he came to St. John’s; nor did he acknowledge the agony and sacred worth of people of color in our nation who rightfully demand an end to 400 years of systemic racism and white supremacy in our country."
Congressman Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), meanwhile, has sent General Milley at letter:
That's a real and very serious question without a good answer at the moment. I'm waiting to see if there is a response.
I am sitting on the Saint Paul side of the Mississippi, close enough to Minneapolis to feel the pain and the dismay at the events of the last week. Not that Saint Paul and West Saint Paul have remained unscathed, but the center ring of this circus is Minneapolis.
"Minnesota nice" is pretty much Minnesota for "screw you" for anyone who is not like "them" which means anyone who is not a white Christian. Minneapolis has a looonnnnng history of overtly practiced discrimination, and it's not just against Blacks. It includes Jews, Indigenous Peoples, Latinx, Asians, just about anyone who is different. Pejoratives are still common language here. And not too many people see anything wrong with jewing down a neighbor or going out for greaser tacos. The Indigenous Peoples have been so invisible for so long in this state that when the Walker Art Center erected a scaffold and gallows by LA artist Sam Durant supposedly to commemorate the Dakota 38, people were shocked when the Sioux population went ballistic. Why? Because no one ever really sees them.
(It was huge when Tim Walz picked Peggy Flanagan as his running mate. She's Ojibwe. She was not the first Indigenous Person to be elected to statewide office, she was the second. Still a very big deal.)
But getting back to Minnesota. It's true we had provocateurs setting fires. We had cars with no license plates here in little ol' Mendota Heights. But overall, Governor Walz, the two mayors did pretty well after some early confusion. The community, however, pulled together to get supplies and funding for the areas affected. This is the part of Minnesota the rest of the country can learn from. Neighborhood watches banded together to protect their own neighborhoods. Why? Because they were protecting themselves from those who would do them harm.
George Floyd's brother, Terrence Floyd, flew up from Houston to join the call for justice. He spoke so eloquently today. This is part of his speech:
I understand you all upset, but I can deservedly say, I dealt in y’all’s habits of society. So if I’m not over here wilding out, if I’m not over here blowing up stuff… if I’m not over here messing up my community, then what are y’all doing?
What are y’all doing? Y’all doing nothing, because that’s going to bring my brother back at all. It may feel good for the moment, just like when you drink, but when it come down, you going to wonder what you did.
My family is a peaceful family. My family is god fearing. Yeah, we upset, but we not going to take it, we not going to be repetitious. In every case of police brutality, the same thing has been happening. Y’all protest, y’all destroy stuff, and they don’t move. You know why they don’t move? Because it’s not their stuff, it’s our stuff. So they want us to destroy our stuff.
They’re not going to move. So let’s do this another way. Let’s do this another way. Y’all right. Let’s do this another way. Let’s stop thinking that our voice don’t matter and vote. Not just vote for the president, vote for the preliminaries, vote for everybody.
Educate yourself. Educate yourself. Don’t wait for somebody else to tell you who’s who. Educate yourself and know who you’re voting for. And that’s how we going to hit them, because it’s a lot of us.
It's 10:44 PM here in Minnesota. There are peaceful demonstrations in memory of George Floyd going on. The City of Minnesota is warning people in the affected Minneapolis neighborhoods to check their yards and surrounding areas for left-over homemade incendiary devices, specifically water bottles filled with gasoline. And people are finding little caches in their yards and apartments dumpsters. There is a strong police and state patrol presence, but they appear to be in protection mode. There is talk of a "credible threat."
Truth is that when these guys are in protection mode, they aren't gassing people, or banging them over the head. They are doing the protect part of protect and serve. One of the things We, the Minnesotans learned this past week is that there are people who will come to destroy. They are looking to cause racial strife, to start a local civil war, to ignite a powder keg called civil war. We need the cops and the State Patrol, and even the Minnesota National Guard in an alliance with us to stop the provocateurs. Not to recognize that reality is to make sure history repeats itself.
I cannot speak to what's happening in New York, Philadelphia, Atlanta, or Los Angeles. I can only speak to living in this state with this curfew and this community that has, at least for this moment, come together to protect itself. Minnesota might not always be nice, but at least we're efficient. Very Scandinavian. Ja, sure, you betcha.
That said, what everyone across this nation must understand is that this may be going on in your city right now, but for Black Americans, right now is all the time.
The Wifely Person's Tip o'the Week
If you still believe there is a real alt-left antifa organization,
I would strongly urge you to get your tinfoil hat adjusted.
Thank you Terrence Floyd. People - please VOTE! Vote in every damn election and for every damn level of government. Think about it...what has the federal government done for us lately? In times like these, we see how important it is to have competent state and local officials. They matter in our every day lives, especially during times of crises.
ReplyDeleteWe must overwhelmingly come out to VOTE in November. Please do something to make that happen. Write postcards to voters to encourage them to register to vote by mail, or to people to just please register, period. Do that now. Write postcards and letters to voters in primaries and special elections that are occurring prior to November and beg them to vote. Then write postcards and letters to every damn person you can to implore them to VOTE on November 3. Walk precincts for your local candidates - leave flyers at doorsteps or make phone calls. We can do all of these things and stay safe during the COVID era. We need to have the largest turnout in history to bring down this corrupt and dangerous administration, and the Republican cult who blindly support this administration. Four more years of this will completely destroy this country. Every day I wake up thinking that things can't possibly get worse, yet they do. My heart and soul and brain are fried.
Sign up at Vote Forward, Swing Left, postcardstovoters.org, various Indivisible groups, just to name a few. I am now starting on my 6,000th batch of cards and letters. Even my 93 year old mother is writing letters! So, no excuses!! They do make a difference. Write something heartfelt to those you are reaching out to - why this election will likely be the most important one in our country's history. And, as Terrence Floyd said, remind them that their vote = their voice. I have written that phrase over 6,000 times now, and I still believe it.
And support candidates you feel will help restore our country, and more importantly, truly do the hard, but critical, work to move us forward to achieve our goal of a more perfect and just union. No donation is too small, and please don't limit your support to just your own region. Think country-wide if we want to have a government that will work for all of us.
And please, let's grow up and realize that we will never agree 100% with any candidate - but we can vote based on their track record, stands on critical issues, integrity, empathy, morality, etc. I get so tired of hearing people pick one stupid thing they don't like about a candidate and then don't vote at all. Really??? Think about the cretin in the White House. Does he have ANY redeeming qualities?? And you nit pick other candidates??? Not one person on this earth would come through a vetting process unscathed. But you can still differentiate a decent, but humanly flawed, person from the soulless scum we currently have running the country.
We all have to do something...enough hand-wringing - pick up your pens, buy some envelopes and stamps, send donations to candidates, volunteer in campaigns, and encourage everyone you come across to do the same. Get involved. Make a difference. Please!!!