Category Archives: Democracy

remember, remember the 5th of november

by

Allison Kilkenny takes a deeper look.

A quest for accountability really was the root of Fawkes’s plot. Admittedly, he picked the crudest, most violent means to express his disdain for the governing principles of the royals. However, a suppressed people who feel they lack representation in their government usually lash out in “uncivilized” ways. Human beings can only be beaten, mistreated, and marginalized for so long before they snap.

[snip]

The oligarchy is misbehaving once again. Corrupt, overfed, and cruel to their constituents – who are poorer, sicker, and angrier than ever — the residents of the Houses of Power should not raise their brows in surprise when a flaming effigy floats by them. It’s just a sign that the people finally recognize the true villains of history — and it’s not some dead dude who wore a funny hat.

Despite the awesome casting choice of Hugo Weaving as “V” in V for Vendetta, the film overall was… meh. However, watching and reading the news of our times now, the film still resonates. The fact that I value fake news over the establishment, a flu pandemic, the backlash and undeniably repressive stance our fellow Americans take against same sex couples, the fact that we’re debating the legalities of torture and fail to hold ourselves accountable to our own rule of law. Jeez, am I stealing plot lines from a Hollywood blockbuster or am I talking our lives now? Even today, the “Right” and its fringe are convening a rally bemoaning the ‘loss’ of American values and whining about persecution because of the specter of universal health care reform or in its most weakest incarnation, the public option.

This speech in the beginning of the film totes the line between fiction and reality.

Crazy right? Personally, I’m interested in topics and solutions in our national conversation that lead toward a sustainable future. I’m not a mother yet, but I’m an aunt and godmother to some. Somehow, during this time of great difficulty, more of us will have to rise to the occasion and make the ‘right’ choice: to affirm life.

Remember, we’re the ones we’ve been waiting for.

once in a lifetime…

by

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.

Pastime Paradise

by

I posting this as a stub.

As I was reading this post by TNC, my iTunes DJ randomly landed on this classic track. I don’t believe in coincidences. As the summer presses on, and our national debate centers around flash point issues of health care reform and race. Within those two issues are layered complexities of class and the shadow side of our American heritage.

I can’t remember who said it last year during the campaign, if it was a pundit, an analyst or Michelle Obama, but with advent of Candidate and President Obama, someone said, ‘Now we’ll find out how racist this country really is.’ That sentiment loops through my head as I try to sort through the barrage information and misinformation.

If you haven’t watched Alexandra Pelosi’s documentary, I think it’s worth at least a once over. I don’t feel that she necessarily presented these folks in the most objective light, but given the growing populist right resentment towards a reform agenda government complicated by their racial animus, maybe she wasn’t so far off.

There’s a fine line between discourse and disruption. A fine line between civil disobedience and sociopathy.

More later.

The Social Contract

by

It’s a common thread in the narrative of black and brown people in America.

Bob Herbert’s column in the Times today highlights some key points. Police interaction with communities of color, and people of color, cuts to the marrow. It doesn’t matter if you’re Ivy league educated or the average street negro, all brown boys in America have a story about being pulled over or stopped by cops simply because the color of their skin. It’s more than a scene in an Oscar winning film.

Over the weekend, I found that we were still talking about it. Over brunch, another friend expressed her rage as best a poet can, saying simply, ‘Am I to believe then, that their blue line is worth more than my blood?’ An implied deference to law enforcement, without any accountablity to the people they are sworn to serve and protect seems to violate the social contract. Or should I infer from all of these stories that we were never party to that social contract?

Again, I could put it to rest, but then I came across this in my readings today. From Ross Gay’s collection of poems, Against Which,(Cavankerry Press, 2006). I’m hoping he doesn’t mind my posting it here. It struck nerves.

Pulled Over in Short Hills, NJ 8:00AM

It’s the shivering. When rage grows
hot as an army of red ants and forces
the mind to quiet the body, the quakes
emerge, sometimes just the knees,
but, at worst, through hips, chest, neck,
until, like a virus, slipping inside the lungs
and pulse, every ounce of strength tapped
to squeeze words from my taut lips,
his eyes scanning my car’s insides, my eyes,
my license, and as I answer the questions
3, 4, 5 times, my jaw tight as a vice,
his hands massaging the gun butt, I
imagine things I don’t want to
and inside beg this to end
before the shiver catches my
hands, and he sees,
and something happens.

Copyright © 2006 by Ross Gay

Picturing Themselves

by

This is an excellent post about women and their role in the Iranian Revolution from Tehran Bureau.

Women are so prominent in this movement, from mothers surrounding the men during protests to shield them from police and the attacks from the basij. There’s a strong feminine energy here.

I’m still following this. I hope everyone else is too.

Catch A Fire

by

, originally uploaded by mousavi1388.

I don’t know about you, but I’m riveted by the events in Iran since the weekend. If you’ve been living under a rock, Twitter has emerged as the critical source for following the events in Tehran. The Atlantic’s Andrew Sullivan has masterful coverage. A must read. Print media as it lives online has in-depth accounts, images, and analysis. Television has failed. Perhaps today we’ll see a difference in the type of coverage that the cable news and major networks will show than the pallid interest it had displayed over the weekend.

I can’t help but think if we had Twitter in 2003 during the height of the antiwar protests, would we have had a larger impact on the mainstream media coverage? Would that have stopped the invasion of Iraq? Hindsight remains fuzzy. But now? We have this technological infrastructure to support digital communication. And that communication supports civic engagement and action. Perhaps a revolution.

I’m watching these events very closely. We’re getting information in real time. This is the future of journalism. The future is now.