Tag Archives: Black Lives Matter

Living in Weimar 10: On the Next Eve of Destruction

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Living in Weimar 1: On the Brink

Living in Weimar 2: Creative Ferment

Living in Weimar 3: How Bad Can It Get?

Living in Weimar 4: Ideal Bodies

Living in Weimar 5: On the Eve of Destruction

Living in Weimar 6: This Cannot Stand

Living in Weimar 7: Persecution of the Unfit

Living in Weimar 8: Stark Days

Living in Weimar 9: Shadow on Your Doorstep

I wrote this post exactly two years ago, when most of us believed that Hillary Clinton was about to become the first woman president of the United States, and most of us knew that she was a flawed and disturbing choice who would be a thousand times better than the alternative. Then we got the alternative.

Comments on my two-year-old post below in italics.

Debbie says:

I haven’t spoken to a single soul today who isn’t in some degree of concern, anxiety, fear, or panic about tomorrow’s U.S. election results. Me, I’m calmer than most. I’d say I’m more optimistic than most, except I’m not willing to jinx anything.

I’m less optimistic now, especially in the short term. I am pretty confident we’ll have some victories, maybe even a lot of victories, but they won’t give us the White House, they won’t save the Supreme Court, and they won’t stem the tide. What I hope they will do is show the world, and show us here at home, what the people want.

And here’s what I think, very personally. (I’d rather write this with Laurie, but she’s not available; we’re in this together but right now you get just me.)

Basically, tomorrow can go two ways in the United States (and let’s face it, what happens here will affect the entire world):

If it goes one way, we’re in the same fine mess we’re in now, living in the 2016 analog of Weimar, facing an emboldened white-nationalist segment which will have to be contained and dealt with. There will be much to hope for and look forward to, much to fear. As always, the more marginalized you are, the more you have to fear. Much work will remain to be done.

Oh, how I long for that set of problems. But we didn’t get them.

If it goes the other way, it will probably be cataclysmic. The emboldened white nationalists will have the government’s blessing. The reins of power will be handed over to the alt-right, to people with indefensible political, economic, and social beliefs and plans. Everything we rely on will be undermined, destabilized, put at risk.

Well, I hit that nail on the head, not that it was a hard or clever prediction.

Even the cataclysm (may it not come to pass!) will not be the end of the world, or even the end of the United States. We can expect for some very dark times. I categorically reject the concept that “heightening the contradictions,” a high-falutin way of saying “making people more miserable” is a defensible or smart way to bring about change.

I don’t have to believe in “heightening the contradictions” to embrace the belief that it is our task to take care of one other. In cataclysm, in despair, in hell, that job becomes far more intense, far more demanding. More of us will have to take it on. No number of us will be enough to protect anywhere near everyone, but each of us can do our part. While 2016 U.S. is not 1930s Weimar, and while no current U.S. presidential candidate is Adolf Hitler, nonetheless the American people may well be called upon to show ourselves on the historical stage, as the German people were in the mid-20th century. Another thing I don’t believe is that the outcome of that test was inevitable.

Although the two paths are so vastly divergent, so starkly in contrast, the task on November 9, when the votes are counted, is the same. We will each have to find our part, do our part, take care of one another, and be gentle with those who need care and unrelenting with those who need to be stopped.

And here we are. It is our task to take care of one another, and in the face of extreme opposition, I think we have shown up pretty well. Let me be clear that “we” is a vast group of people with various levels of commitment and passion, and that very specific individuals and groups have led the changes I note below. We have gathered in airports, at borders around children in cages, at mass-shooting victim memorials, at Supreme Court hearings, and as close to the halls of power as the cowards will let us get.

We (where we is women of all races and economic levels) have changed the face of acceptable gender behavior with the #metoo movement which, backlash or no, failures or no, does appear to be here to stay. And we will not let us stop. When the conversation is about powerful men being frightened or daunted, then you know something has changed.

We (where we is Black people and their allies) were making our opposition to police violence felt long before Trump took office, but we haven’t stopped. Everyone in government knows that the unprovoked death of a civilian at the hands of a cop will be publicized, and serious attempts at accountability will be made. Everyone knows those civilians are mostly Black and brown, often children, often completely harmless. We haven’t made much visible headway in this one, but we have changed the conversation.

We have continued to make it clear (where we is everyone) that we care about our climate and our environment, that we know the heat and the storms are not coincidence, or “God’s will.” North Carolina has joined the Paris accords on its own, since our country has reneged on that agreement.

Eve of destruction? Or not? Here’s what to do. Vote. Volunteer. Do something in your community today; it will make you feel better. And breathe.

Me, I’m on my way to staff the Election Protection hotlines (1-866-OURVOTE).

This year, I didn’t get a chance to do that work, but that number will help you out tomorrow if you need it. I’m voting, talking, blogging, and breaking my back to see economic change in my community, most notably in the form of a local public bank. That’s something I wasn’t doing before November 2016. And it helps.

Take care of yourself. However tomorrow goes, the road ahead is rough and rocky.

Good luck!

Follow me on Twitter @spicejardebbie.

In Court: Watching Bail and Injustice

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Laurie says:

My brother Mike does ongoing serious work on issues of incarceration and I asked him to write this post for Body Impolitic.

21 year old Shahiem Winbush of Bushwick NY, charged with felony assault with bail set at $25,000. His case was dropped 8 months later by the Court for lack of ANY evidence.

Michael Edison says:

Once a week I sit in Manhattan Criminal Court for four hours and watch the parade of Black and Latino men and women get arraigned for misdemeanors and felonies (90 percent are Black and Latino; 90 percent of the judges, defense lawyers and ADAs are White). An organization called Court Watch is trying to document what happens in court, particularly with bail to Latino and Black men and women. They hope to bring to light, through verified statistics, the oppression of the poor and disenfranchised in America.

Bail, for the poor, is really just the criminalization of poverty. A $5,000 bail or bond demand from a judge, to someone who hardly makes enough to survive, is more than the million dollar bail set for Harvey Weinstein. Harvey Weinstein had the million to put up, while thousands don’t have the $500 necessary for a bail bondsman to get out of Rikers Island (a notorious jail in NYC). Bail is supposed to assure that a person charged with a crime returns to Court for their trail. By law, their means are supposed to taken into consideration. But in America it is a form of punishment, jailing people for the crime of being too poor to pay.

I helped a young man raise bail for a crime he didn’t commit. His bail was $25,000, arbitrarily set by some judge in Brooklyn. He has no criminal record. He was charged with assault, but he was simply at the wrong place at the wrong time and Black. His mother is on food stamps and is raising two children, and didn’t have subway fare to bail him out (literally), let alone $2,500 for a bail bondsman. His trial kept getting delayed because the DA could not produce the evidence of his crime (because there was none), and finally 8 months later the case was dropped, and he was set free. He would have spent 8 months in jail for a crime he didn’t do for the crime of being too poor to raise bail.

Kalief Browder, a 16 year old Black boy, was sent to Rikers Island accused of stealing a backpack. He didn’t commit the crime, and refused a plea offer (most poor men and women accept the plea to get out of jail, something that ruins their life because they can’t live in public housing, nor get a decent job with a criminal history…a true Hobson’s choice). Kalief sat in prison for 3 years awaiting trial. And finally when his situation was brought to light, he was released because the police had no proof of his crime. Like Shahiem, he was guilty of being Black and poor. Kalief committed suicide when he was released, because the horrors of his 3 years in Rikers, where he was raped, beaten by gangs, and emotionally overwhelmed by his treatment by the guards.

While no white collar criminal was ever prosecuted for nearly ruining the American economy with their greed in 2008 (and for the most part for various illegal acts today), Black and Latino men and women are arrested every day for seemingly minor offenses and put into America’s prison-industrial complex. NYC still has, despite statements to the contrary, stop and frisk. A young Black or Latino woman stopped while carrying three condoms can be charged with prostitution. It is considered prima facie evidence of prostitution in NY State (that is changing, thank God, on Aug 1, 2018). A young male with a small amount of pot, found while frisked, for the crime of being Black, goes into the system. Can’t afford bail? Then it’s Rikers. They have a choice to plea down and have a criminal record, or await trial for 6 to months to a year in prison if they can’t afford bail.

The Harvey Weinstein’s of the world get a “Get out of Jail Free” card because of wealth; the poor men and women of America get prison, their rights revoked, and lives ruined for the crime of being Latino or Black and/or poor.