However, I think you will soon find that sitting around holding hands with city officials and bought-off "community" leaders kumbaya-style will not net you very much in the way of results.
WM: This is the part that really grinds my grits. Every time some community person who has taken the leadership at one point or another disagrees or fails to jump in, that person has been "bought off." My neighbor calls it "no good deed goes unpunished." What is that about? It makes it sound like everyone should be joined at the hip.
Do people of color get beaten by cops? Of course they do. After tapes like Rodney King, there is absolutely no doubt. Does it happen here? Of course it does. Is it an abomination? Without and doubt.
"Kumbaya-style," in this context is really insulting. What does that mean? That interacting with the powers that be is a Corky no-no for those who are opposed to police beating on people of color? That if you go down to city hall you have to snarl at the mayor and the chief and the council to let them know you're serious? At some point, someone has to go down to city hall and beard the lions in their dens. And kumbaya, by the way would never be my choice, it's kind of a dirge. I'd go for show tunes, much peppier.
The huge influx of immigrants, most of whom are people of color, some from other places in the USA, has been a major cultural shock for Minnesotans. They had developed a homogeneous society simply because the number of people of color was so small that they could be largely ignored. That scenario is no longer the case in the metro area, at least, but huge numbers of Minnesotans are reluctant to give up the cultural norms they grew up with, as one might expect.
In the sixties we were all hot and bothered about the war in Vietnam and other examples of institutionalized misery like the lack of civil rights, particularly among people of color, then women, then, much later, GLBT folk. As well we should have been. We were going to create a revolution and bring down Nixon. Which we did. Took a while and might never have happened if he hadn't helped us so much with the whole Watergate fracas. What we didn't understand was that the revolution is five minutes while the evolution from that revolutionary spark seems to take forever. And there are set backs, many of which have to do with revolutionaries who cannot entirely contend with the changes they wrought themselves and other set backs ensue from those who resist the changes.
But if you're going to play this revolution by alienating your supporters as sell outs who make nice with the power, then you're going to be forced to go it alone and meet resistance at every turn. Some of that resistance will come from those who were insulted by your careless words and because you insulted the work they put their hearts into in their communities. It's another way of nailing your foot to the floor then bitching cause you keep going round in a circle.
WizardMarks, Central
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