Monthly Archives: September 2009

Tensions Flare at Vigil for Teen Beating Victim #derrionalbert

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At one point between 15 and 20 people were banging on the doors of the high school, trying to get inside. Police barred them from entering the building. Meanwhile, students watched from classroom windows.

via chicagopublicradio.org

I’m behind on a news and twitter cycle about @derrionalbert by at least a couple of days. As I searched through the trending topic (#derrionalbert) I read the above callout quote.

I don’t have the stomach to watch the video. It may because it’s somewhere between weakness and desensitization. I can’t watch any human suffering, yet I fear that we all see it too much to really to feel anything. I hope that’s not true.

But now? Who are these kids? Have we been raising our kids to beat each other savagely like this? Where’s our moral center? How have we as a community failed to teach and affirm life to this generation?

What hurts me as much as the death of this kid, this honor student, and beyond the bloodlust of the mob, is the police. The spectacle, the gladiator style savagery, and seeming appearance that the police did nothing to intervene to stop the slaughter of the innocent, standing like sentinels inside the fortress.

My god, my god. What have we done?

Affirm Life.

never dreamed you leave in summer…

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I don’t think we could have ever anticipated that the Summer of 2009 would be marked by the passing of giants and innocents.

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Neda Agah-Soltan
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Farrah Fawcet
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Ed McMahon
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Michael Jackson
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Walter Cronkite
Shem Walker
Shem Walker
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John Hughes
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Eunice Shriver
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Ted Kennedy
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Patrick Swayze

A generational struggle continues in Iran, despite Ahmadinejad’s ‘re-election’. And as that conflict still unfolds in the limited information we’re able to gather from the internets, our own civil society bristles in a debate that’s ostensibly about regulation and values. The racial animus came out of the box swinging, masked in rhetoric questioning the legitimacy of the president’s citizenship.
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While we debated the race/class conundrum surrounding Henry Louis ‘Skip’ Gates’ arrest in Cambridge, an army veteran in my own neighborhood was shot and killed by undercover police officers at his front door step.

This wasn’t exactly a reprise of the Summer of Love. Perhaps this summer will be remembered as the Summer of Mourning. Mourning the deaths of young dissidents in Iran, mourning the death of cultural giants, lions of the senate, trusted men of journalism, and artists that defined a generation. And in their wake, I wonder how will we fill these shoes they left us.

once in a lifetime…

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I’m posting this as yet another ‘stub’.

Indulge me a little bit here. Talking Head’s dance interlude aside, the sentiment and lyrics of this track strikes hyperreal nerves. This track is twenty years old and still struggles with all of our middle class, bourgeois aspirations. Compounded with my Mad Men obsession and simultaneous crash course in Feminist history (I’m currently reading Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique) and the uber-timely post on Huffington Post about modern woman’s happiness (or lack thereof) there seems to be an issue worth looking at closely.

Over the last couple of years, I’ve been deeply engaged in conversations with friends, or just people of my generation about the pursuit of happiness. We’re still parsing out our answers. However, the key question for my generation at present, prior to our economic woes, has been, is this it? All the hard work, staying in school, brand name education, mountains of student loan debt, inevitable marriages and mortgages, the job… and we still find that we still trying to find our bliss. I’ve had too many conversations these past two years where people from my generation still feel that something is missing once we achieved some measure of success in our careers, or in owning a home or condo, or marriage or baby. There is this lingering longing that kinda hangs in the ether, some gnawing sensation that says that the individual desires something more that brings them closer to wholeness.

Friedan referred to it in the context of mid 20th century housewives as ‘the problem with no name.’ I’d even posit that ‘the problem with no name’ in early 21st century America cuts across gender, class and ethnicity. I think the problem with no name lives is present in the lives Generation X and the millenials as we try to determine our economic and cultural future going forward.

Same as it ever was? More later.

In The Shadow of No Towers.

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I’m talking here about being a child of my time.

When I think of September 11th, 2001, I am thinking more of the days just before it. I am remembering Sunday, September 9th. It was a light Sunday afternoon where Lynne, Bassey, Seed and I met up in Fort Greene, had brunch and then not quite ready to part ways  —there was so much more for us to say to each other— we went to Fort Greene Park, hiked up a hill to the highest summit in the park to the Prison Martyr’s Ship monument, laid out a blanket and took in all that was beautiful, young and full. Seed was visiting town from Knoxville and had a gig at the Nuyorican. We talked about writing and music. I brought my camera along, for no particular reason. I had stopped taking pictures for a year after college, but I was getting serious about it again. Seed had an idea for a musical. I think we talked poetry, nationals, dreams, plans… always, always about writing and art.  I don’t remember the details of what we talked about. I do remember feeling content and connected. We felt possibility with each other. We were all together. For no particular reason, I looked over my right shoulder and said, ‘Hey, you can see the World Trade Center from here.’ I don’t remember if it was Bassey or Seed or Lynne or if they all said ‘Yeah, you sure can.” I snapped my shutter. We were in the park for hours until the September wind chilled and we decided to go to Chez Oskar for dinner. There are gaps in my memory; they bleed into the following night. That night before, it rained so hard. A punishing and wrenching rain. I thought to myself, God is weeping. I remember earlier in the day that I couldn’t see the towers from the window of my boss’s office at work. The sky was muddy. And my memory flashes to a bar, and there we were again, together. Al had joined us. He had just finished a show at PS122 and we all went to a bar on University Place that wasn’t Reservoir. Al and Bassey spontaneously broke into characters, our private comedy improv group. Seed, Al and Peter took turns wearing my glasses, and goaded me to take their pictures. Elana mocked Al and Bassey’s schtick. Everything was lively and our conversations glittered. We were fully present in our innocence. Before the collapse of towers, before two wars, before Bin Laden, before cancer, before tumors, before…

I was up so late that I barely slept, Seed crashed at my apartment and kept me up talking about his grand idea for a musical he was writing. My dreams were a mashup of Moulin Rouge and Stevie’s Fulfillingness’ First Finale. I still woke up at my usual time. And the only thought in my head that morning was that I had been meaning to go to the World Trade Center for days to pick up something I ordered at one of the stores.  I remember saying to myself, if I don’t go today, I’ll never go. How was I to know the truth of such words?

I remember listening to the radio because the TV signal was out. Answering my phone to tell everyone that I was home in Brooklyn, that I hadn’t left my house yet. I remember Bassey telling us to come to her apartment. I remember that night we left Bassey’s and went to Park Slope to eat. I had an inexplicable craving for tabouli. I remember that we ran into Matthew who was comforting a friend who worked in the Towers. I remember that Al, Bassey, Lynne and Seed were my family for those days and will always be family because of it. I can’t remember now if Al had worked for American Airlines as a Flight Attendant, but I do remember him saying that he could’ve been working one of those planes because it was a route he’d worked frequently, and if he hadn’t had the gig at PS122, pursuing his art…

But all I know is that we felt blessed to be with each other. We were all where we needed to be, holding each other, waiting for the new world to begin.

You Got The Look…

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Hello World.

Welcome to The Bellewether State’s new home in fabulous webby 2.0 WordPress.

I hope you like the new look. I’m still looking for suggestions for themes, but for now, the simple elegance of Redoable Lite is going to hold this down.

It’s been a little more than a year of me blogging. My earlier posts have safely migrated to WordPress for your viewing pleasure.

Change is good.

Rhythm Nation – MJ Dance Party in Prospect Park 8.29.09

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The County of Kings represented for the King of Pop. Rain and barricades couldn’t keep this crowd back. All ages, all colors, all… getting together to celebrate the music and life of the King of Pop on his 51st Birthday. It was bittersweet. These lyrics ran through my head like a tape:

We’re Sendin’ Out
A Major Love
And This Is Our
Message To You
The Planets Are Linin’ Up
We’re Bringin’ Brighter Days
They’re All In Line
Waitin’ For You
Can’t You See . . .?
You’re Just Another Part Of Me . .

For my part, it was hard to decide between dancing or taking pics. Not sure this small offering of images can do justice to the spirit of the people of Brooklyn in the park last Saturday. But if you weren’t there, here’s some highlights from DJ Spinna and Spike Lee’s Party Saturday in Prospect Park.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Public Option Hullabaloo 2.0

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I signed one of those petitions to support the public option. I feel really strongly about it. There was a space for a note to POTUS. I doubt he'll read it personally, but I'm so peeved about the affair, I might have gone a little overboard.

Dear President Obama,

While I respect your team’s efforts to work with Congress and the Health Care Industry to develop mechanisms for reform and regulation, I must again reiterate my support for a public option. I'm not clear on what we gain if there isn't a mechanism that allows for uninsured, self-employed, freelancers to buy affordable health coverage that allows for preventive care.

I'll never regret my vote for you and your team, but I need you guys to 'man up' and push reform through that will benefit my generation. I'm 35 years old, unemployed, uninsured, now freelancer, with a pre-existing condition. This pre-existing condition is treatable, however, the medication is $300 a month, which well exceeds my budget at present.

I’m not sure how we find ourselves in this class and ideological warfare with our fellow Americans. However, my mind is on the future, my generation and the one behind me that will carry the burden of an over-bloated system that seems to support deep corporate interests rather than the welfare of communities. I’m not sure how our value system became so skewed that our choices are to include a bill that covers tort reform to limit recourse for patients who have legitimate complaints against negligent doctors. I’m not sure how we’ve come to accept that the only way uninsured can secure treatment is to go to the emergency room where they will incur costs that far exceed a modest premium if a public option existed. I’m not sure how we’re the only westernized nation in the world that refuses to acknowledge that quality health care is critical to the growth and health of a nation. I’m not sure how, with relative ease it seemed, we went to war with a nation for which we had no legitimate quarrel, and committed countless dollars to support it. I’m not sure how we failed to recognize in doing so, we would be engaged in nation building for probably the next twenty years. I’m not sure how we haven’t made the connection that our bloated national debt mirrors our values and our belief that we can leverage debt personal and communal without consequence. I’m not sure how we got here. But we’re here. You said we’re the ones we’ve been waiting for. Well, here we are. We are at the most critical ideological crossroad here. I’m not in office so I don’t have the power to push key legislators like Baucus, among others to do right by us. You do. You’re the leader of the party; you’re the leader of our nation.

We can do this. I need you to be my fiercest advocate to get this done. Or at the very least, sell me on how an alternative to the public option will actually help me purchase affordable health insurance without relying an employer.

With respect and grave concern,

 

Syreeta McFadden

Native of Wisconsin, Resident of New York