Tag Archives: resistance

White Woman Rant and To Do list

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This is a long post, only partially a rant.

What a razor’s edge: judgment!

Step forward! Shut up and listen! Step back! Silence is violence!

The voice of the hour responds: try being Black for a half hour.

Marshall your hatred and your good person biases and give them license, or don’t, for the hatred and biases both good and bad need no license. They like to go rogue. They operate on the sly. The rotten impulses will thwart and harm another’s soul, a Black person’s soul, whether you grant them permission or not. Being otherwise decent has nothing to do with it. Do a little reading for Christ’s sake.

So why must discrimination law require demonstration of INTENT? So bogus. Such a loophole.

So many ways to pose as ally, whether silent or speaking up. But, oh hallowed white person with every advantage coded into your DNA, silence from your earthworm lips surrounded by freckled skin prone to burning, no no silence is not acceptable.

Shout loud and clear and worry about getting it right and redeeming your moral points later.

(This business of hoping to earn badges toward redemption is not just a White Woman thing, BTW, it’s a very Catholic thing. So — fucking crucify me on two counts).

History shall condemn us if we do not, oh darling freckle-faced politicos, put our bodies on the front lines, yes, even our raggedy, lumpy bodies and yes, even during a pandemic. Protests? Maybe not. But calls and donations, yes. I’ve said it before.

TODAY: I shall call my reps in support of H.R. 51 — a bill regarding Washington, D.C.’s statehood. Why don’t you, too?

TODAY: I shout out the importance of all those down-ballot races. It’s not just the protests shrinking the response time between racial murder and indictment, it’s Black mayors and Black DA’s and Black police commissioners. Progressives of all races.

I long for the day when progress is measured by the absence of Black bodies gunned down by police and not by the swiftness of justice.

TODAY: I shall rest in the satisfaction of a Supreme Court acting like a court and not like an adjunct of the Executive (even though I’m inclined to move straight to dread about the tax case and did just that yesterday). In particular, I say HALLELUJAH AND FUCK YOU to trump for Neil Gorsuch authoring the LGBTQ opinion.

Have I lately been so satisfied by a court’s result?

(Well, yes, Judge Sullivan in the Flynn case. I CANNOT wait for him to sentence that traitorous ass).

TODAY: I shall finish one of the books by a Black author that I purchased in support of a week of buying Black writers (Instagram) (‘course, I’ve been doing this for years, letting myself buy bestsellers penned by Black writers LOOONNNG before they come out in paperback). Today? Jamaica Kincaid’s Annie John. It takes place on Antigua where Kincaid grew up and incidentally, where Eliza Lucas Pincnkey also grew up.

The Solstice is nigh (she said). With Leo on the ascendant, and a problematic 12th house, this time of year always comes as a kind of relief to me, a psychological blossoming as well as a literal one.

I will also make two more masks. The elastic I ordered back in March finally arrived. These two will be birthday gifts for a Cancerian friend who is coming over tomorrow to write POSTCARDS to Florida with me. If she’s lucky, I’ll use some of the batiks that Tina sent me.

They say the postcards make a difference, but what do I know? What do any of us know?

In the category of things that surely don’t make a difference but that make ME feel better: this week I sent a postcard to the White House, saying, “You’re Fired!” as part of a campaign to get millions of people buying stamps because — you know — ahem, absentee ballots, the Constitution, the USPS, Jeff Bezos.

I also made a complaint to the Virginia Bar about William Barr (OK impeachment might be out of the question, but can’t somebody disbar the fucker?)

Since this blog is PATTERN and outrage, here’s some noodling from this week, done in anticipation of some hot pink threads from Deb (due to arrive any minute).

P.S. Don’t give to the Minnesota Freedom Fund as I recommended a bit ago — they’ve been SWAMPED by donations! A wonderful problem for them. Also in case you don’t know, don’t give to anything Shaun King is rustling up. He’s reviled by many of the Black woman I follow on Twitter.

PPS. I do not mean to hassle those who are taking time to absorb things and order their thinking and staying quiet. I can’t tell you how tentatively I posted our Hearts for Charleston quilt on Instagram yesterday, it being the 5th anniversary of the Mother Emanuel AME massacre.

Near and far

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Last night my city, Newton, Massachusetts, became the 14th community to pass a local resolution asking the federal House Judiciary Committee to investigate whether there is cause for impeachment based on Trump violating the two Emoluments Clauses of the Constitution (there is).  And, for Obstruction of Justice.

I helped! It was K’s birthday last night so I didn’t attend the second of two hearings, but I dutifully wrote my letters and spoke at the last hearing. I’ll admit that I didn’t think it was going to pass.

The Resolution can be viewed as a formal way of asking the House to do one of its most important jobs: performing oversight of the Executive Branch.

The resolutions have been passed by cities in Massachusetts, California, and Vermont. Hopefully, more and more towns and cities will do the same.

The idea of these resolutions is to create tangible evidence of the citizens’ will to adhere to the Constitution. It is all about applying pressure. It is not to make the argument for impeachment.

As you all know, the delay in impeaching this autocratic, corrupt and destructive president is not a problem of evidence. It’s not a problem of having too many possible judicial interpretations of the Constitution. It is solely a problem of the failure of political will. Party over country, etc.

I’ve said enough about this elsewhere, so I’ll leave it at that.

 

 

 

 

The digital collage was chosen for its juxtaposition of near and far views — the window into a home and the observatory with a view of the heavens — which goes to the relationship between local and federal power. Detractors of the resolution argued that it overreached the correct exercise of local power. Bah, I said to that and will say to that again: Bah!

Flow vs neoprene suit

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Why sometimes does caregiving feel part of a flow, not effortless exactly but free of the stickiness of resistance, and other times not? Today the thought of going up to Salem and doing whatever it is I’ll do for my sister feels like donning a neoprene suit in sweltering heat with no body of water in sight.

Is there a trick of mind that could turn the latter state into the former? A practice of the heart that could cool the hot refusals?

And then on my (sweltering) walk with Finn look what I find! The ultimate symbol of freedom, even if fallen from a bird that rarely resorts to flight and has all the grace of a velociraptor (I speak, of course, of our neighborhood turkeys).

Here’s the miracle for the day. I return to a message from my sister: if you don’t want to come today, please don’t.  It’s okay!

thread sketch

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Taking little bits at a time.  Like this teeny thread sketch.  It’s ten-thirty and I haven’t started tidying the work space yet.

Pulled an old book off of the shelf yesterday, “Live the Life You Love” by Barbara Sher.  I love the contribution she makes to working with resistance.  Genius, really.  I’ll leave you with a couple of her thoughts:

“If you think your inability to stick with your resolutions is a sign of weakness, I have a surprise for you:  it’s more than likely a sign of strength.”

“… if resistance is universal… then… it must be as natural and biologically based as sleeping or eating, built into our system for a purpose.”

She doesn’t believe we should combat resistance (or even, vilify it) until we recognize its purpose.

I will leave purpose aside for now and just go with some of her tricks for getting around it.  Number one listed strategy for loosening its grip — “Find the smallest unit – and do it.”

This is such a useful technique.  ‘What can I say YES to in this moment?’  There is always something I can say YES to… even if it is just cleaning the iron (actually, bad example, I hate cleaning the iron) — even if it is just — sweeping threads off of the floor, or sewing shut a tiny little seam on something I’ve already made, or locating the fabric I’ll use for straps on a purse in progress.

(Can you tell the pile of cut-out pocket books is NOT feeling very attractive this morning?!!)

Off I go!  To find the smallest unit, and do it!