If not now, when? — Liberal Street Fighter
Why are we here? How have we become so disconnected, so inured to each other? Why don’t we talk about class, about race, about the divisions that are so apparent to anybody who is honest? We pretend … the world is some of fantasy we project. Yet somtimes, somebody shatters the image:
“I hate the way they portray us in the media.
“If you see a black family it says they are looting if you see a white family it says they are looking for food.
“And you know that it’s been 5 days because most of the people are black and even for me to complain … I would be a hypocrite because I would turn away from the TV because it’s too hard to watch. I’ve even been shopping before giving a donation and so right now I’m calling my business manager what is the biggest amount I can give.
“And just to imagine if I was down there, those are my people down there. So anybody out there who wants to help with the set up, the way that America is set up to help … The poor, the black people, the less well off as slow as possible. I mean, Red Cross is doing everything they can.
“We already realize a lot of the people that could help are at war now fighting another way and they’ve given them permission to go down and shoot us.”
(Mike Meyers tries to get back on prompter, reads from script and then camera cuts back to Kanye. He pauses before
Kanye West: “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.”
When are we going to confront this, talk about it, DEAL WITH IT?
White people dig their toes into the ground. Black people get uncomfortable and circumspect, until frustration breaks free. This question is America’s original sin. … when are we going to treat ALL American citizens as equally important?
Race is the most obvious division, but class is at work too. We LOATHE the poor. We blame them for their plight, and we blame them more when they don’t act with some projected sense of moral rectitude. We love our fantasies of wise slave mamies counseling conflicted debutantes, brave street tramps dropping pearls of wisdom on conflicted students. The wise crazy homeless black man is a weird cultural icon.
It’s past time, as we confront a disaster that rippes bare all of these divisions we tried to pretend weren’t there, for us to have this vital conversation. It’s past time for the left, so long AWOL from the vital questions, to press CLASS WARFARE, for it has already underway. The lower classes, the poor and the black and the red and the brown are already under assault. When are we going to TALK ABOUT this, and why has the public debate become so debased that it take a rapper on a benefit concert to make us confront the ROTTING ELEPHANT in the room?
Yes…because first they come for the least of us. Recommended.
but still, they will deny, they will blame the victims — i saw it all over the TV last night and this morning — the City of New Orleans bears some of the responsibility says Tucker Carlson, being so condescending and rude to Al Sharpton,,, it’s in everyone’s face, but the racism is so deep that many people will feel self- righteous in their condemnation and their safe comfy lives and won’t realize a fucking thing — america has been in a coma about race for many a decade and no feeding tube will save it.
People simply lack the capacity to empathize. I told my mom on the phone on Thursday that anyone who can’t see those people could be them at any point in time in the very near future (especially if Bush is allowed to continue in office for the next 3.5 years), then they are on beyond hope….
Thanks madman — highly recomended as usual.
All he cares about is turning places like CNN into insane shout-fests in which nothing ever gets said.
I have questions. I was going to write a diary about this topic but I don’t have enough facts: how will the south cope? It’s my understanding that the south – particularly blacks in the south – was so economically impoverished before the hurricane hit that some families couldn’t even scrape enough money together to buy pencils for their kids to go to school. Now that evacuees have spread themselves all over the south – many hoping for a new start, a new job, a new life in some other place, I just can’t imagine how these states can possibly sustain the influx. How can evacuees find jobs that aren’t there to begin with? How can townspeople help the evacuees when so many didn’t have enough for themselves to begin with? How will all of these people survive?
I don’t understand how all of this can possibly work.
I don’t know how they will. There is so little “give” in economy as it is. Long term refugee status is in store.
I hope some of them come up to Canada – flashbacks of the underground railroad.
We’re here to help.
While Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters
sons of bankers, sons of lawyers
turn around and say “good morning” to the night
and unless they see the sky
but they can’t and that is why
they know not if its dark outside or light.
Describes the bubble boy and his world pretty well.
>>when are we going to treat ALL American citizens as equally important?<<
Not in our lifetimes. Not in our grand kid’s lifetimes. Maybe never, in a society based on competitive materialism, where human worth is judged by wealth. Equal rights is a dream: an illusion we embrace and can work toward, which makes our lives in an opposing reality more bearable.
The reality we’re in is based on material values, not soft and fuzzy “principles”.. like cooperation, comapssion, fairness, honesty, respect, integrity, or community. It is based on competition, which means we are set against each other in order to “get ours” ahead of the next guy. It cannot produce anything but a class system, with the most sucessful (ie: richest) at the top, and the “least sucessful” (poorest) at the bottom. And in the lowest class, of course, dwell the least “sucessful” whites and minority races.
It results in a society where those who have power (the richest) get to make all the for all, and make them to serve themselves first. It results in a society when the poor have no power, no voice, and are left to drown in well predicted floods. It oculd trun out no other way.
The people who were here when we ‘discovered” America, were a people who planned seven generations ahead, in all matters. They were people who revered this earth, and were grateful and respectful of her. They knew the power of “tribe” and of banding together for the greater good of all. We called them savages, and destroyed their culture.
Now we’re well along the process of destroying ourselves.
I have no mmore illusions about ever seeing genuine “equal rights” in this country. I’ve lived in poverty too long. It has a way of removing the scales of propagandized patriotism from one’s eyeballs. and presenting reality on a big screen with surround sound.
I was pretty pissed. Here is what I came up with.
Water’s Rising in New Orleans (mp3 – 2 MB)
Wind is rising in New Orleans
Wind is rising in New Orleans
The Big One’s here, that’s what they say
And we all knew it’d come one day
Put your finger to the wind and twirl it around
Time to get the white folks out of town
But don’t you worry we can let the black folks drown
Don’t you worry we can let the black folks drown
Rain is pounding in New Orleans
Rain is pounding in New Orleans
Keep the roof on the dome, hold the people inside
Don’t wanna tell them how their neighbors died
Staggered to the closet and hunkered down
Didn’t have a hatchet or an axe around
But it doesn’t really matter if the poor folks drown
It doesn’t really matter if the poor folks drown
Water’s rising in New Orleans
Water’s rising in New Orleans
The levee’s broke and the lake’s coming in
Man versus nature and the water’s gonna win
Put your toe in the water and swirl it around
Bodies are floating but the bodies are brown
Nothing’s happened here, it’s just some niggers drowned
Nothing’s happened here, it’s just some niggers drowned
Crossposted at Dailykos
Er.. let me try that again.
Wind is rising in New Orleans
Wind is rising in New Orleans
The Big One’s here, that’s what they say
And we all knew it’d come one day
Put your finger to the wind and twirl it around
Time to get the white folks out of town
But don’t you worry we can let the black folks drown
Don’t you worry we can let the black folks drown
Rain is pounding in New Orleans
Rain is pounding in New Orleans
Keep the roof on the dome, hold the people inside
Don’t wanna tell them how their neighbors died
Staggered to the closet and hunkered down
Didn’t have a hatchet or an axe around
But it doesn’t really matter if the poor folks drown
It doesn’t really matter if the poor folks drown
Water’s rising in New Orleans
Water’s rising in New Orleans
The levee’s broke and the lake’s coming in
Man versus nature and the water’s gonna win
Put your toe in the water and swirl it around
Bodies are floating but the bodies are brown
Nothing’s happened here, it’s just some niggers drowned
Nothing’s happened here, it’s just some niggers drowned