Off-switch

Having Fun Yet?

Not really. Not with the latest murder in Minneapolis, a city I have connections with and memories of. I flinched when I heard the gun shots that killed Alex Pretti yesterday. So very loud. 

Only a couple of weeks earlier, again in Minneapolis, Renee Nicole Good, was killed by ICE. Her last words were "I'm not mad at you guys." After - after - she was shot, one of the ICE agents called her a "fucking bitch." Professional attitude there, buddy. 

But let's not forget others who were shot, either killed or injured, across the country.

Last September, undocumented immigrant Silverio Villegas González, a 20-year resident of Franklin Park, was killed by ICE thugs in that Chicago suburb, after dropping off his children at school. The narrative from ICE was one we're very familiar with now: he "severely injured" an ICE agent, and dragged the agent with his car. 

That agent told his buddies at the scene of González' murder that his own injury was "nothing major." Oops. 

American citizen Marimar Martinez was shot five times by CBP agent Charles Exum, who later boasted about it in texts to friends. She survived, and charges against her were dropped. It turns out that she didn't ram any agent's car. Someone rammed her car. Quel surprise. 

There have been at least eight other shootings by ICE or CBP agents across the country since last September, of U.S. citizens,and non-citizens. They were lucky enough not to be killed, but some of them are still in ICE custody. 

They were all domestic terrorists who used their vehicles to ruthlessly hunt down blameless ICE and CPB agents. At least, that's the message that ICE Barbie and her Trumpian buddies like Greg Bovino have repeatedly given out at press conferences. Not only are they lying, they're not even creatively lying. 

Can we have the midterms next week, please, before That Man and his criminal team figure out how to shut elections down?

No? 

Well then, we'd best be on our guard. 

He Had More Than a Dream

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had grit and determination, and strength and righteous anger that he controlled in the name of peaceful progress, and pride that he wanted Black Americans to recognize and adopt for themselves. He believed in this country - god knows why, given how much hell America put Black people through, all the way from 1615 to the then-current day - and he worked like hell to make it a better one. 

He risked himself and his family, with constant death threats and a firebombing at his home in 1958. He almost died after being stabbed in the same year. He risked his reputation and his legacy, surviving several arrests and jailings. He risked those who believed in him and in what he had to say, because he knew those who hated him would hate those who believed in him.

He fought for what he shouldn't have had to fight for; true understanding of what Black Americans deserve, and what White America has resolutely refused to admit was required.

He fought against nasty, petty, and powerful men like J. Edgar Hoover, who spread filth and lies about Dr. King. Why? Because he was afraid of Dr. King. He hated what Dr. King stood for, so he tried to erase the man. He wasn't the only one. 

After his stabbing, Dr. King had one more decade to shake the foundations of this country, to start the Poor People's Campaign and to oppose the Vietnam War. And then White America killed him. 

Who called for the assassination? Did someone pay James Earl Ray?  All of that kind of misses the point. Ultimately, the real conspiracy is what people in this country have insisted on doing ever since that April morning at the Lorraine Motel.

For more than 57 years America has worked tirelessly to erase his truth. America wants everyone to remember him only as he spoke during the March on Washington, choosing to turn those powerful words into an anodyne formula they want to speed the erasure of real history. Some of them manage to listen to Dr. King's "I've Been to the Mountain Top" speech and cry tears about his unnervingly prophetic commentary. 

But they don't like reading his letter from a Birmingham jail. They can't stand his anti-war stance. They loathe his pro-union beliefs, his support of poor people of all colors. 

It's still White America that fears him the most; rich white Americans, anti-union white Americans, pro-capitalism white Americans, the people who understand that he had grown so much larger and more dangerous to their power than they'd thought he would be. 

Let's remember him for what he was. A warrior.

And I'll try not to be part of the problem, but part of the solution, as difficult as that will be.