When the oppressed are ignored...

I'm not a fan of violence and this current situation does not change this.

Look at what's happening. A man is shot and killed and it takes a month and two weeks after video is made available to arrest and charge the people responsible. A man is killed as a Police Officer kneels on his neck and he gasps for breath. Also, on video and the officer is charged with 3rd degree murder and manslaughter - meaning we aren't holding him responsible for intentional acts, only the result. But these are just the last of years and years of this. Yes, we made strides in civil rights in the 60's but the promise of the post MLK world is still unachieved. Black people live in fear because white people are afraid of them and the very people who are paid to protect have that bias - to the point where black people are arrested, brutalized and killed at rates that far exceed that of white people.

Peaceful protests since the 1960s whose results can only be measured in millimeters since the right to vote and the "ending" of segregation laws. When the French people were starving and the king ignored them, they had to take to the streets to affect change. The king lost his head.

All that Black Americans (and every other nob-white ethnicity closely following behind) have gotten in regards to equal rights since the 60s are platitudes. Promises. Hopes and Prayers. What will it take to affect change? If voices were being heard and change was happening, we wouldn't be having this national conversation. And the world is watching, with many of the same issues to a lesser or greater extent.

The establishment wants this to fade into the news cycle. But it's not and it shouldn't. The system is broken and needs to be fixed. People are dying. Dying.

We cannot ignore wrongful death. Cannot. Want to fix the protesting? Change the system. Announce a national task force to revamp law enforcement and the criminal justice system. Show that real work is being done to get root cause and solve it. Platitudes won't work. Ignorance won't work.

Want to solve it, government? Do something real, holistic and immediate.

Memorial Day 2020

Here we are at the cusp of Memorial Day and there the coincidence of lots of things for us. There’s the day itself and the honoring of the sacrifice made by so many that we might live together in a free society. I’m grateful for it and the importance of that. More on that in a bit. There’s our current ordeal with Covid 19 and the incredible toll it is taking on the people of our nation – both in lives lost – almost 99,000 people, and in economic hardship, especially for the poor, the self-employed .and the small business person. The illness has similarly affected the rest of the world, with over 300,000 deaths so far and economic hardship of varied levels depending on the responsiveness of their governments. 

On a personal note, my late father’s birthday was last Tuesday. He would have been 84. It’s been 21 years since he passed and I miss him very much. He is on my shoulder as I think about what’s happening.

As we celebrate the lives of those who sacrificed them in defense of our Democracy, I want to reflect on who that sacrifice was for and why it is important.

As a people, we are involved in a divide in what a free country means. We are living in a time when our self-categorizing pushes us to choose labels and is amplified by a system that can be manipulated by those with self-serving agendas they wish to push upon all of us – willing or not.

There are some that interpret this as the right to do anything they want – but that’s not a democracy. That would be Anarchy if applied to everyone equally and oppression for some if applied unevenly.

The Declaration of Independence says “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…”

If all men (people) are created equal that means we have Freedom up to the point in which our exercise for that freedom infringes on the rights of others. That means;

• We have freedom to create and practice religion freely. That does not mean we get to subject others to our religious belief, unless they are in mutual agreement.
• We have freedom of speech. But not to the detriment of others – it is why fraud, liable and slander are part of our legal system.
• We can pursue livelihood and make our own decisions, unless they infringe on the rights of others. It’s inherently why we make it illegal to drive recklessly, it’s why we make it illegal to produce poisonous food, it’s why we prosecute for theft and murder. It is why civil liberties are protected (even though these are still not applied universally). These laws are protecting us from some of the harm we do to others.

In all of this, we have the right to challenge laws that we believe infringe on our rights – but we do not have the right to disobey them until we go through due process. 

The test of our democracy now is to see if we can survive the misinformation that’s provided to push those that would act in their own self-interest to take actions that harm others. Clearly, we’re struggling with this. 

We are acting in ways that endanger others and put our own interests first. We are blaming the sick and those who are pushing us to do the right thing for economic suffering, which should be offset by our safeguards – unemployment benefits, safety practices in food and drug processing, – but the radicalized “conservative” agenda has worn at and dissolved many of these and prohibited advances, like healthcare for everyone, so we are left with suffering, when we could be taking care of each other.

The whispering that these groups are pushing – that we couldn’t possibly afford to take care of each other, is counter to the actual facts. The money that was looted from the public till in 2007/2008/2009, in the tax breaks given early in this administration and in the multi-trillion amounts that have been pushed to the already ultra-wealthy tells us the money is there – it is collected from us but not being spent on us.
You can continue to believe that Democratic Capitalism means that there are a few winners and many losers or you can understand that our democracy is being looted and there could be a better balance, even while we preserve our Democracy and our Capitalist economy.

We will have to make it so. We need to insist on better protections. We need to insist on insurance of personal and small business continuity when a pause is needed, when we’re in crisis. We need to insist on a healthcare system that can take care of the poor in addition to the median and the wealthy.
We need Republicans to get back to an un-radicalized agenda (it is radical, conspiracy based, pushing religious special interests and is primarily focused on the wealthy now) of conservancy and responsibility. I cannot tell you how many Republicans I know that were disenfranchised when the party started to pander to millionaires and people that wanted to exploit our resources in the name of profit. Even more of them jumped the tracks during the last election. 

We need Democrats to focus on social reform (safety net and civil rights), ecological and economic renewal and protections. We need both to walk away from the money from special interests.We need investment in technological research that can be used for public and private good, in medicine, in energy, in the next generation of work and production.

Freedom for us needs to be about living free and responsibly with each other. It needs to be about building each other up, not tearing each other down. We need to get where we are going by helping others get where they’re going. 

That has to be what we fight for. Fighting for an agenda that kills or oppresses someone else is not what our predecessors were fighting for. They were fighting for the equality of all people. The prosperity of all people. The right of everyone to live, to worship (or not), to learn, to pursue happiness in ways that are important to them and don’t step on the rights of others. That’s noble and an ideal, but we can move closer to the ideal rather than further from it. 

We just have to start ignoring the spin. We need a responsible dialogue on our differences. We need to recognize that laws need to work for the best interest of people, of society. We have to demand accountability from our elected officials and make sure we are given the authority to enforce it. Now and this November and going forward. Please vote and support others right to vote. Please vote to change the current state to one that will allow a broad national conversation between our many viewpoints.

Masks, Opening, Freedom

The mask is not primarily for you. It's for the people you come in contact with. It prevents you from directly breathing, coughing or spitting on them - not that you would intentionally do any of that, but your mask prevents that.

 

Yes, it also helps protect you, from touching your face, from getting sprayed by someone else - at least for your mouth and nose.

 

Yet there's a set of people who say masks are violating their rights, obscuring their freedom. But that's not the case. It's just the opposite - not wearing one could violate the right of others to safety.

 

And certainly, I'm not perfect. The other day a contractor doing some work knocked on my door (painting our townhouses). I had talked with him before, at a distance without wearing a mask. This time he wanted me to show him some spots on one of the townhomes and was asking me to "come now". I followed him outside without thinking, no mask with me.  We walked a block and I showed him the wood that needed to be replaced. Each time he moved toward me to see where I was pointing, I stepped away.

 

Later in the day when he came back to my house, I grabbed my mask (to give him access to paint in my garage) and I could see in his eyes he was questioning why I was wearing a mask. After all, he wasn't sick, coughing, sneezing or anything like that. That pressure is an issue.

 

The fundamental misunderstanding between people - that it's some kind of affront to wear a mask around them, that you are somehow judging them individually by wearing one is palpable. I assure you I am not. 

 

I'm protecting you and yes, protecting me. I wish you could afford me the same courtesy.

 

But the people railing against using masks are the same ones who are angry when I don't let them make their illegal left turn before traffic starts (a Pittsburgh courtesy, but one that completely opposes the law. They expect me to hold traffic to let them turn after the light turns green as opposed to letting them wait until opposing traffic has cleared. They give me the finger as I legally and safely start driving in my lane.

 

It's the same people that carry their pistols and rifles to public events to show their privilege.

 

It's the same people that say the Governor (pick any one) is a tyrant for not opening up a county that still has a high death rate or new infection rate, or that has been statistically determined to be a potential death zone. It's the business owner who opens up despite being in one of these areas.

• You endanger others merely by doing what you are doing. Stop putting yourself ahead of others. It's not your right. Your right stops exactly at the point it endangers others.

• You use freedom and economic urgency to argue this.

• Look, I get that not running your business means no cash flow. We need to be looking to the government to push taxes we've paid back to us in aid.

• We need to establish business continuity insurance as part of the taxes you pay - so that in the event business must pause like this, it doesn't break us or keep us from paying employees.

• For those that say this is not government's job, I say to you bullshit. This is exactly governments job. Business only takes care of business. Religion takes care of the devout (sometimes). Charity takes care of the non-devout (sometimes) - none of these can be relied on. Government is here to protect people - all people. That includes invading armies and includes issues like keeping people fed, housed and medically well. 

The hurry to open is driven by impatience and economic necessity, the latter being created by a system that effectively endangers the poor and the independently employed. It's artificial because if these people had a source of income to help them wait out 90 days and not ruin their lives, the wait would have little impact other than boredom. Need proof? People with savings, income and food are complaining of boredom. 

 

So instead of protesting that waiting and protecting others is violating your rights, protest a system that leaves you, your business and your neighbors without a safety net. Protest a system where the wealthy grabbing 3/4 of the stimulus money in addition to the huge tax breaks they got just before that. Protest an administration that wants to privatize social security and education rather than provide. Who wants private research rather than shared government research (after all, the Government cannot do anything that benefits business - except for huge advances in technology from the space program, the CDC, The Internet, Project Management, Food Production and Distribution - literally getting us closer than ever to solving world hunger, and on and on). Protest the downfall of publicly funding the success of Americans and America. 

 

Blaming politicians that are taking steps to keep people safe and are pushing for programs to help keep people fed and in their houses, is ignorant. Protest the system that makes your endangering everyone else a necessity.

 

Make sure you are registered to vote. And vote.