Mother Knows

How do you know that you're doing the right thing?
Robin Williams once said, "What's right is what's left after you do everything else wrong." If that seems a little trite, consider where we are now. All those people who threw caution to the wind four years ago and voted for Donald Trump saying, "Well, what could go wrong?"
Briefly? Everything.
Even the billionaires aided by tax cuts lost some slim percentage of their ridiculous fortunes. The National Rifle Association is currently on lockdown, and CNN beat Fox in cable news ratings for the first in nineteen years.
My mother, who has lived long enough to see a few twists and turns on the road of life found herself once again surprised at just how awful things had become in such a relatively short period of time. Even though she is my voice of reasonable doom, she continues to marvel at just how many days have trended anywhere but up. Hers is the so-called "silent generation," but I don't recall a time when my mother lived up to that label. She was the one who was ready to climb on the back of my older brother's motorcycle with him to ride to Canada if the draft board ever came looking for him.
They never did, so she came in on the first wave of the women's liberation movement. It was my father who used to fuss about "Equal Rights." He would insist that he would be fine if there was a constitutional amendment that ensured equal rights for bald-headed printing salesmen. Dad didn't always get it.
My mom did. Does. Always has. Incredibly patient, but not willing to take any serious malarkey. Well, from her sons periodically, but certainly not from anybody in elected office. She raised us to be conscientious members of our community. Do not litter. Do vote. Do not act like a sheep. Do question authority.
Do the right thing.
The good news is this: Right now, figuring out what the right thing to do is easier than ever. If you see a bunch of red baseball hats all headed one way, go in the opposite direction. Over the past few weeks we have seen characters such as George W. Bush and Mitt Romney make choices that made them appear clever or courageous. It's pretty absurd company to be keeping, but as I mentioned earlier, these times are curious, and getting curiouser. But when it comes to mom, don't bet against the house.

Funny

September 29, 2001, Saturday Night Live came back on the air after a three week hiatus brought about by the terrorist attacks three weeks earlier. The episode was introduced by New York City's mayor, Rudy Guliani. At one point, producer Lorne Michaels came out and asked The Mayor, "Can we be funny?"
Guliani replied, "Why start now?"
Nineteen years later, things are about as awful as they have ever been. The folks at Saturday Night Live were doing a Zoom variation on their "live" show for three weeks during late April until the first week of May. Were they funny? Opinions vary. They were, at the very least, a distraction from the moribund sameness of the first month of quarantine. The May ninth episode was the season finale, with the cast and crew released to go about their summertime plans which probably didn't include the standard vacation or movie production. My guess is that they are all at home feeling much the same way their counterparts from two decades ago. Cane we be funny?
I feel that too. I know precisely how dark and troubled my writing has been over the past few weeks. Even my always reliable nostalgia machine has left me high and dry. I have drifted past the point of satire and cynicism to full-on troubled. I wake up in the night feeling despair that I cannot push into the corner of my mind. The focus of my waking hours seems to be the ongoing pain and suffering felt everywhere. Unrelenting.
There are still folks recovering from COVID-19. There are still birthday parties taking place. There are moments of joy, not the least of which was experienced on the streets of Oakland last week when protesters danced on past the curfew. Only one arrest was reported that night. Which is happy, but it's not funny.
There is a sea of angry comments out there being directed at the powers that be, some of which could be described as "funny." Not "funny ha-ha," but "funny sad." A contradiction in terms, it seems to me. But contradictions seem to be playing a big part of our collective lives these days. What we are told and what we see are two very different things. "Things are fine, go back to work!" No thanks. Not until people aren't dying by the thousands. "There is no systematic racism problem in law enforcement."
Um. No.
It's not funny.
I miss funny.
I miss a lot of things right now, but funny is right up there at the top.

All Apologies

I don't know about your inbox, but mine has been littered over the past week with companies with whom I am either directly or indirectly connected telling me how they are going to deal with the institutionalized racism in our world. My son highlighted and sent an article to me about what LEGO is doing: A four million dollar contribution to  “organizations dedicated to supporting black children and educating all children about racial equality.” It may not have come as any kind of surprise to anyone that Ben &Jerry's had their own statement to make: We Must Dismantle White Supremacy. Great. Ice cream and building blocks. 
Now what else?
Amazon put a big banner on their web site that read, "Black Lives Matter," and billionaire Jeff Bezos defended that choice to an angry customer thus: “‘Black lives matter’ doesn’t mean other lives don’t matter. I have a 20-year-old son, and I simply don’t worry that he might be choked to death while being detained one day. It’s not something I worry about. Black parents can’t say the same.”
Okay. Next?
How about the video posted by a group of NFL players telling their fans and owners that Black Lives Matter? These voices were being heard at about the same instant that New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees was having his own reckoning with the voices in his head and his heart. After initially coming out stridently against those who might kneel during the National Anthem, he reversed course and apologized, saying "I stand with the black community in the fight against systemic racial injustice and police brutality and support the creation of real policy change that will make a difference." The "president," no fan of kneeling or apologizing, tweeted "I am a big fan of Drew Brees. I think he’s truly one of the greatest quarterbacks, but he should not have taken back his original stance on honoring our magnificent American Flag."
To which Brees replied, "Through my ongoing conversations with friends, teammates, and leaders in the black community, I realize this is not an issue about the American flag. It has never been. We can no longer use the flag to turn people away or distract them from the real issues that face our black communities." 
Something was in the wind, because later that same day, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell issued his own apology. “We, the National Football League, admit we were wrong for not listening to NFL players earlier and encourage all to speak out and peacefully protest. It has been a difficult time for our country. In particular, black people in our country. First, my condolences to the families of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and all the families who have endured police brutality.” 
"We were wrong." 
Meanwhile, the "president" retweeted one of his minions who insisted "Leaders lead. Cowards kneel." These folks seem to believe that tear gas and rubber bullets are a sign of strength. 
And though they will most likely never apologize, they were wrong.
There will be a lot more of that before this is all over.
More apologies. 
All apologies.

Stop. Police.

The past few days I have spent what feels like far too many hours staring down into the abyss. Millions of Americans, equipped with high definition video cameras are posting ugly encounters with police. Some of them are given the tag "viral."
Which is funny, since we're still in the midst of a global pandemic. A hundred thousand plus Americans have died from a virus.
Okay. Maybe it's not funny.
Maybe it's tragic.
The image of a seventy-five year old man being shoved to the ground by Buffalo police in riot gear is one that won't go away. The officer who pushed him just kept walking. Just. Kept. Walking. Another officer paused as if to check on the fallen man was urged to keep moving. Two medics walking with the group of officers stopped to attend to the man who made the mistake of being in front of this unstoppable blue wave.
All of this was captured, not by cell phones or security cameras, but by a local news crew who was on the scene.
Now it's time to get to the ugliest part: This old man was white. He wasn't carrying a sign, or screaming epithets. This old man was standing directly in front of a local news camera crew. Additional footage was taken by others across the street. Not in Selma, Los Angeles, or Minneapolis. This happened on the mean streets of Buffalo, New York. So if the police will do this in Buffalo in front of TV cameras, what makes anyone believe that their behavior is any better in any other city when the cameras are not present? How many black men, women and children have been pushed to the ground and left behind by police who just kept walking? How many black men, women and children have been killed by police who just kept walking?
The answer to the question about what about all those cops taking a knee and fist bumping protesters would be this: The exception that proves the rule. This realization comes as a great shock to me, as I have known a great many law enforcement officers and I have never considered any of them to be bad people. Exceptions do not make a rule untrue. Which shakes the foundations of my life. Visions of cops and robbers as distinct groups and how we used to know who the good guys were fade away. How could this have happened? When and where did it all begin?
I do not know.
But I do know it's time for it to end. Now.

What's Left

Father's Day is coming, and I have failed.
I have failed my son. In spite of all my best intentions and efforts to the contrary, the world is not as I had hoped to present him as he becomes an adult.
I wanted to hand off a planet that was in better shape than I had inherited from my father. I know he tried too. It was from my father's house that I watched the fires burn on the University of Colorado campus. I was born into a world where political assassinations were part of a campaign to quiet the voices of freedom. I watched it on TV. I listened to it on the radio. I heard it in the music. I saw it on the movie screen. I began to hope for a world that would see that arc of history bend all the way to justice.
It's still not there. Voices still cry out in pain and fear. Wars are being waged because one world just doesn't seem to be enough.
I am deeply ashamed of the lack of progress my generation has been able to create. Somehow, I still feel like I'm part of the resistance. How can this be?
Black Lives Matter.
Climate Change Is Real.
Pro-Choice and Pro-Life shouldn't be two different things.
This is a nation built on dreams and dreamers.
Peace.
When I was nine years old, I painted peace symbols all over, well, everything. I grew up in a summer of love, and I don't know where it went. Maybe it was never really there. Maybe it was just a cleverly poised ad campaign that made me think that I really could buy the world a Coke.
When I moved to Oakland, I was already on my way to being an adult. I was ready to take my place behind the wheel of Spaceship Earth. And I'll be darned if I didn't manage to run it into a few ditches along the way. Meanwhile, my son was watching. He is the voice I heard when I made bad choices. He's the one to whom I tried to explain the murder of Oscar Grant. He was twelve when riots tore through his hometown. He watched it burn from my house.
I am sorry, eleven years later, that I still cannot explain how far from the world I had hoped to present him is.
I am happy, because he is the one who is teaching me. Leading me.
It's time for me to listen.

Black Lives Matter

For eight minutes and forty-six seconds, three other law enforcement officers stood by as their fellow officer killed George Floyd. Go ahead and set a timer if you'd like an idea of how long that is. Or maybe you have seen the video enough times by now to know exactly how long it takes to asphyxiate a man by putting your knee on his neck. It's not like there was a lot of other action to distract them. Four adult males standing over the man in the street.
None of them considered checking the condition of the man face down, handcuffed behind his back. Scared? Confused? Stupid? Not one of them had the presence of mind to say, "Hey Derek, why don't you get off his neck?" None of them shouted at the top of their lungs: "Hey man! You're killing him!"
As so many people before me have pointed out, this time there were cameras. And let's take a moment to remember what all that surveillance is about: Catching bad guys.
There aren't always cameras. There haven't always been cameras. And even when there is video evidence, an "investigation" takes place. There were no cameras four hundred years ago. One hundred years ago. When the cameras showed up, it did not stop the brutality and the killing. The system wasn't set up for that. The system was set up for Black Lives to be institutionally less than white lives. It was written into our Constitution. This is what is meant by "institutional racism."
When slaves were finally freed, we couldn't even make good on our promise of forty acres and a mule. 
Another hundred years passed, and someone got it into their head to create a Civil Rights Act. In 1964, one hundred eighty years after the writing of the Constitution, legislation passed that outlawed discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin, required equal access to public places and employment, and enforced desegregation of schools and the right to vote. Magically, racism disappeared overnight.
No. Legislation passed and was systematically countered, overturned, and ignored. Black Lives were minimized and cut short by institutions that had been in place for centuries. Forty years passed and we elected a Black President. Problem solved!
No. The same forces that kept Black People from voting, getting jobs, walking the streets without fear were the forces that Barack Obama wrestled with for eight years. And his replacement? The guy who insisted that his predecessor was not born here. 
A few nights ago, as people across the country gathered to insist that Black Lives Matter, this guy ordered a path be mowed through protesters with rubber bullets and tear gas so that he could stand in front of a church, holding a Bible. He did not pray. He did not go inside. He just wanted the picture. No one standing nearby said, "Hey, sir, do you think this is a good idea?" Not a one of them walked away in disgust. Scared? Confused? Stupid? 
The time it has taken you to read these words is less than half the time to kill George Floyd. Time to think. Time to breathe. So with the little time we have left, let me give you these words: Black Lives Matter. 

Merry-Go-Round

The group I sat with in Fourth Grade was a bunch of clever boys. There was myself, Ron, Kent and Warren. We were held in special regard by our teacher, Ms. Stuart. There was little we could do wrong. Best at math, spelling, reading. Warren and Ron were athletes and Kent was a four-square wizard. I was a burgeoning author. Which is why there was such a hush when the door opened and our principal stepped in.
"Are those the ones?" The principal was nodding in our direction. Me, Warren, Ron and Kent. The kid standing next to him pointed.
At us.
The kid was a Third grader. His name was Marvin. He was also the only African-American student at our school.
"Ms. Stuart," the principal said, "Can I please see these boys in my office?"
There was a pause of incomprehension, then she replied, "Certainly Mister Schwartzvegger."
Warren, Ron, Kent and I got up slowly from our desks, looking at one another with jaws agape. What was going on?
We followed Mister Schwartzvegger and Marvin out into the hall and began the long walk down the hallway past the fifth grade classes, around the corner and all the way to the Office. None of us had ever been inside the Office before. We had only stood outside the glass window to hand in attendance or receive notices to send home. Now we walked into The Principal's Office.
The chairs had been arranged so that the four of us sat in front of our principal's desk. Marvin sat at the end. Mister Schwartzvegger settled into his. "Boys, I brought you in here today because Marvin told me about something that happened today on the playground."
My mind reeled. What had happened on the playground? The same thing that happened every day. What was different? What was wrong?
"Marvin, would you like to tell your side of the story first?"
Marvin started by looking at the floor, slowly his account began to roll out. These boys had come up to him and shoved him off the merry-go-round. These boys kept him off. Then they called him the N word.
Kent, Warren, Ron and I did not look at each other. We knew we were "these boys." But we had no idea what Marvin was talking about. There was stunned silence until Mister Schwartzvegger turned his attention to us. "Well?"
It was Warren who spoke first. "It wasn't us." Pause. "It couldn't have been us."
For the first time in ten minutes, I breathed out.
Warren continued, "The merry-go-round is way over on the little kids' playground. We were on the blacktop."
"I was playing four-square," offered Kent.
"We were playing basketball," Ron gestured at Warren.
I wasn't playing four-square. Or basketball. I was doing what I usually did. I was standing around watching Kent, Ron and Warren. I looked at Marvin. He had gone back to staring at the floor.
From there, it was only a few more minutes of tension before we were turned back out into the general population. It was never made clear to me or Warren or Ron or Kent what had actually happened across the playground on the merry-go-round.
Was it some other kids? Somebody in Third Grade? Fifth maybe? How did he pick the four of us out of the entire school?
Marvin didn't come back to our school for fourth grade. I do not know if it had anything to do with what happened on the playground that day.
I can only assume.
If he were here today I would apologize. I wish I had found my voice way back then. No, I didn't push Marvin from the merry-go-round, but I know he was angry. And scared. And he needed a friend.
I'm sorry Marvin.