Rebellion

I own the DVD for Milk  and I recently watched this movie for the second time.  For a second time I have been given pause to consider then and now. Then Proposition 6 was the issue of the day, legislation designed to fire every teacher who is gay, and designed to fire everyone who offered support to gay teachers.  It was draconian for sure and in those days it seemed to be a shoe in to pass.  Yet it did not; it lost by a 2 to 1 voting margin.    We fast forward to now and Proposition 8 preventing gay marriage passes by a small margin, true; and still passes.  Surely this is an issue of civil rights and it still fails.  I’m not sure I understand that difference and failure.  So I’ve been thinking about it; and all I have so far are scattered thoughts.

In the sixties and seventies we revolted against the dark ages of the fifties.  The fifties were a time when the Jim Crow laws were still on the books preventing Black folks from sitting at counters, using bathrooms, having jobs, sitting in the front of buses, voting just like white folks do.  It was a time when the model and sole benefactor of privilege and rights was white male.  The cause for civil rights morphed into various liberation movements.  Our emergence through a constricted dark tunnel had a volcanic effect and was set off with the self expression of our political activist push for self expression and civil rights.  We were angry and passionate which gave us an edge and a focus.  Then days of rage built momentum for many groups of us to shout out.  Eventually there were a lot of us: blacks, women, gays, students, antiwar activists, communists, unionists.

Now sure it’s a good thing to talk nice to one another in even tones, be reasonable.  Yet underneath all this reasonable niceness there is something dangerous going on that inhibits us from having any kind of passion about what matters to us.  Late in the seventies the federal government engaged in COINTELPRO which essentially knocked off the various liberation, left groups -- finding grounds to kill or jail just enough of us to ensure our fragmentation, paranoia and niceness.  My generation suddenly understood that these persistent risks had become just too great.  We grew quiet from fear and from the Machiavellian bribes we were given as rewards for our silence.

That same federal government has continued to this day in an insidious and sinister manner to shore itself up and bind us up:  the Patriot Act, the “war on terror” being great examples.  Students these days are hemmed in by having to work and study; and later when they graduate are subjected to indentured servitude to repay their student loans.  The general population is being controlled, subdued and concerned by financial constrictions intentionally created by the  elite, obscenely rich few and their cronies to shut us up, put us in our place. If we speak out, there are many ways we can be killed, held against our will. 

We also have no plethora of eloquent and most importantly, passionate speakers like Martin Luther King, Bobby Seale, Malcolm X, Robert F. Kennedy, John Lennon.  Oh right, they were assassinated; and let that be a lesson to us. It has been.   Now the air is being filled with the words of Limbaughs and Palins and Tea Partiers, CEOs, homophobes, bigots, and extremists; bureaucrats, politicians, economists.   Right now I rhave a need to hear more of what Rev. Jeremiah Wright has to say.

It’s not reasonable that people lose their homes, go hungry, live in fear; are indentured servants, denied civil  rights, decent and low cost education,  habeas corpus and justice.  It’s not okay that the US Constitution is still not made whole after being shredded.  It is not okay to be reasonable in the face of egregious hubris. complacent compromise or mercenary avarice.  Some passion, shouting, relentless demonstration, fierce risk taking  are quite appropriate.   Raise our voices, create unseemly coalitions, organize and disrupt, make our selves apparent. Come out.  Rebel.  Write. March.  Power to the people.  Si se puede; oh, yes we can.