A New Mourning

¡Hola! Everybody...
Funniest thing: I can write for myself and it’s quite easy, but when it comes to writing for my work, it’s very difficult. LOL

I’m very busy, what with the NYS legislature going crazy (thanks to two slave-catching Latinos who are under investigation). The possible power shift could derail advocacy work on several fronts: mandatory sentencing reform, the anti-shackling bill, and same sex marriage to name just a few. In addition, any legislative traffic jam can result in the delay of funds non-profits depend on. It’s a mess.

Then yesterday, yet another right-wing extremist went on a rampage, spilling blood and killing senselessly...

* * *

-=[ The Pink Wound of a New Mourning ]=-

Cold rapid hands
draw back one by one
the bandages of dark
I open my eyes
still
I am living
at the center
of a wound still fresh.
-- Octavio Paz, Dawn

I have written before that’s there’s a potential upside to the current class war aka “The Economic Crisis.” Namely, what people of color have experienced for centuries as a group many whites now experience as solitary and alienated individuals. Chris Rock’s observation that a white person would never trade skins with a black person has some merit, and truth be told various groups of white Americans might feel they belong, that there is a system that looks out for them. However, today more than ever, individually they suffer the stings of corporate indifference like anyone else.

At a group level, a white man might identify with a white, male, Christian president, for example (though that’s not available today). But how much does that identification mean when on the unemployment line or when a HMO refuses to allow possible life-saving technology?

Every American is a unit of labor. This labor is owned by corporations. Each individual may dispose his or her labor as he or she wishes, but ultimately the employer owes the laborer nothing. In a very real way, this fact can potentially unite the historical experience of people of color and the new day dawning on the rest of our nation.

It can, but we are pitted against one another. Even poor or oppressed whites can look further down and find (false) refuge in the knowledge that the faces at the bottom of the well are mostly black and brown.

I am attempting to understand, by looking at inequality, the problems that face all of us in America. I want to understand how we can free ourselves from the chains that bind us together in this dysfunctional and horrific dance of death and hatred. While these chains are more easily recognized in the experience of people of color, they are also the same chains that shackle us all.

Some of us are looking at social change in fear. We view the reality of a black president as a threat somehow. We see a Latina Supreme Court nominee and fear that our freedoms will be taken away. We see that our religious beliefs will not be enforced on others and we seethe with self-righteous indignation and hatred. It’s an irrational fear with far-reaching potentially catastrophic consequences. It compels some of us to kill and maim.

Today, I am not looking to advance a particular dogma or socio-political agenda. I am not looking to socialist, Marxist, or capitalistic experiments as an answer to our social and economic problems. Rather, I want to look directly into the maws of capitalism to see if there’s a way to survive the onslaught.

I stand at the intersection of knowledge and action. Rebellion is the primary movement of knowledge. Violence and oppression rob us of the ability to understand. Without understanding, there can be no growth, no evolution, no recognition of truth, and no tomorrow -- only an endless reverberation of gray todays.

If we refuse to look at and understand the restraints placed on all of us by history, economics, self-image, the media, politics, and the misuse of technology, we will never be free. The alternative to knowledge and action is ignorance and enslavement. The shackles I speak of threaten to enslave everyone in America and therefore, concern us all.

When the logical consequence of a popular and mass ideology is murder and oppression, we are in a crisis that may enable us to become the first species to make themselves extinct.

My name is Eddie and I'm in recovery from civilization...