Night Music: Djelem, djelem

“I Have A Dream”

We just passed the 58th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech.

While some progress has been made — notably a black President who survived his term — much of this dream has turned into a nightmare, with racist cops killing black men in ever greater numbers and getting away it, with a famously racist cop receiving a Presidential pardon from an openly racist President, with armed Nazis openly parading with swastikas and uniforms.  We have yet to see serious action from Biden’s DoJ as police departments stand by and watch while people and press are beaten by Nazis on the streets of America.

We have certainly not reached King’s dreamland of equality, but rather we seem to be sliding toward a race war pursued by an all-white far-right mob encouraged by GOP and extremist elites.  Covid-19 and vaccines have provided cover for actions that have at their base hard-core racism, and take attention away from the plethora of race-and-class-based voting rights restrictions they have enacted across a swathe of States, and the full-on gerrymandering of districts to extract the wanted result.

These are sad days, and they can only get worse if the the GOP ultras manage to capture the House in mid-terms.

Wise Words

Poem: Calculation

 

It’s the poor that give

to the poor.

Those who can actually afford it walk by

the outstretched hand and box

with sneering dismissal.

 

“Get a job,” they whisper under their peppermint breath,

knowing, as bosses,

they would never hire some bum

begging on a street corner.

 

“Have a nice day, anyway”

 

Spitting on a well-polished shoe

gets you six month’s jail time;

letting the poor starve

gets your picture in “Fortune”

 

Go figure.