Global
Freelance journalist for PeterbCollins.com
At approximately 5:30 AM Wednesday an advancing phalanx of police brandishing batons and pepper spray canisters enjoined by a federal judge and reportedly using rubber bullets also banned by the same judge, cleared out the the 4 block Capitol Hill Organized Protest (CHOP) zone as well as nearby Cal Anderson park.
Topple a few statues, remove some iconic names from American institutions . . . and the ghosts of the past start to escape from history, filling the present moment. It’s called awareness.
Too much awareness can feel like chaos. Not surprisingly, a lot of people would prefer to stick with the old historical narrative, the one that’s so tried and true: This is the land of the free, the home of the brave, the birthplace of democracy. God bless America! (And forget about slavery, Native American genocide, racism, packed prisons, nukes, endless war, etc.)
The question of the moment is whether this narrative is gone for good. Are we merely in the process of making some superficial adjustments or has the national soul truly torn itself open? Will we stop short — once again — of creating a society of compassionate equality? Will we eventually (as soon as possible) retreat to another narrative of American exceptionalism and . . . uh, white power? Or are we in the process of real change?
The past month’s activism has changed a great deal. One thing it’s helped with is brushing aside the tired old argument over whether government should be big or small. In its place we have the much more useful argument over whether government should prioritize force and punishment, or focus on services and assistance.
If we want local and state governments that provide experts in de-escalating conflict, professionals to assist those with drug addictions or mental illness, and skilled experts at handling traffic or responding to various sorts of emergencies, the funding is easily and logically found. It’s sitting in the oversized budgets for armed policing and incarceration.
The most commonly reported mainstream media account of the creation of the Coronavirus suggests that it was derived from an animal borne microorganism found in a wild bat that was consumed by an ethnic Chinese resident of Wuhan. But there appears to be some evidence to dispute that in that adjacent provinces in China, where wild bats are more numerous, have not experienced major outbreaks of the disease. Because of that and other factors, there has also been considerable speculation that the Coronavirus did not occur naturally through mutation but rather was produced in a laboratory, possibly as a biological warfare agent.
Sometimes listening to the morning news on television is a bit like entering into an alternate universe. Last Wednesday, the day after primary elections in New York State, CBS News reported that New York Congressman Eliot Engel was “facing a challenge” from Democratic Party challenger Jamaal Bowman. NBC News reported that Engel was “trailing.” The reality, according to the New York Times tally of the results that morning was that Bowman had beaten Engel by a margin to 60.9% versus 35.6% with more than 82% of votes counted. Even though it posted the numbers, the Times felt compelled to describe the apparently impending lopsided loss as if it were something less than that, as a “stiff challenge” for Engel.
After defying the odds and defeating corporate opponents on Tuesday, the strong progressives Jamaal Bowman and Mondaire Jones are headed to Congress from New York—and there’s no way it would be happening if they hadn’t been willing and able to put up a fight in Democratic primaries. The same was true in 2018 with the election of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar and Ayanna Pressley as they beat the party establishment.
After three decades of contributing mightily to the blight of congressional militarism, Rep. Eliot Engel couldn’t be rescued by the high-profile endorsements of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Nor could Engel be saved by the eleventh-hour support of Hillary Clinton.
Other Democratic incumbents are being challenged by progressives in difficult and inspiring campaigns: intent on doing what, according to conventional political wisdom, can’t be done.
BANGKOK, Thailand -- The Black Lives Matter (BLM) call to action has
come to this Buddhist-majority society which is grappling with
discrimination against dark-skinned Thais, while some foreign black
people say they personally suffer racism here but not as brutally as
in the US and elsewhere.
In Bangkok, "I've been denied entry to bars, asked to pay at
restaurants before even getting the food, denied service in shops,"
Zipporah Gene said in an interview.
"I am British but of Nigerian and Egyptian heritage. My previous
hometowns include London, Cairo, and Kingston, Jamaica," said Ms. Gene
who has worked in Thailand for about a decade in media-related jobs.
Thais often call her 'kohn pew dam' which translates as 'person with
black skin.'
"While it’s not necessarily derogatory, it focuses on my skin color --
a lot -- which I‘ve always found quite weird.
"I could always tell when it was derogatory because some people would
scream it at my face, they’d have a hostile tone, or just spit after
they’d say it. It’s been a while since I’ve had that."
Maybe CHOP won’t last, but something is changing. Our national groupthink, as maintained with such stalwart certainty over the last half century by centrist politics and the mainstream media, seems to be crumbling before our very eyes.
And as the groupthink crumbles, a larger awareness opens. Progressive thinking is finding its way back into the collective conversation, allowing the nation to begin transcending situation normal — you know, militarized policing keeps us safe, racism is a thing of the past, etc., etc. — and opening up the possibility that we can begin creating a complexly compassionate future.
This small beginning has emerged from the police murder of George Floyd and the global uprising that followed. The media and many political and corporate leaders, instead of uniting to marginalize the protesters, as they have always done in the past (with the help of the police, of course), are sitting there in a stunned semblance of agreement: Yeah, something’s wrong. We’ve got to make changes.