if it’s broke, fix it, if i ain’t then don’t

for the 2nd time in a week a white cop got away with the murder of an unarmed black man. the grand jury in the eric garner case declined to indict daniel pantaleo just like the grand jury in the michael brown case declined to indict darren wilson. apparently in both cases the prosecutors basically manipulated the evidence presented to the jury to get the desired verdicts which resulted in both cops getting off with no accountability and no consequences. if the saying “a grand jury could indict a ham sandwich” is at all true then you basically have to look at the system in place and in cases such as these 2 things are obvious: black lives matter less than white lives in the american justice system, and cops are above the law. both facts are extremely ugly indictments of the american version of “law and order” and underline the total corruption of the phrase “to protect and serve”. the last time i felt protected or served by any policeman was never, and i’m white. what we’re left with are completely militarized police forces across the country who view the general population(particularly the african american population) as the enemy and have the backing of the laws and the courts to deal with that population in whatever brutal and repressive manner they choose, they will never have to answer for it. it’s a shitty system and should be dismantled and replaced and the sooner the better.
my frustrations are not limited to matters of (in)justice but have also crept into the work i am attempting to do, i have 4 new pieces that initially came together quickly but have at this point screeched to a stall/halt that’s been dragging on for about a week. this sort of momentum-thwart sorta pales next to all of the terrible shit confronting us in other areas of existence but it at the same time perpetuates any and all feelings of helplessness one might experience while staring into the belly-via-mouth of the beast. this sort of frenetic stagnation scrambles perspective and brains alike and disables the focus-function so necessary for tackling the larger picture in any meaningful way. meaning getting stuck in your art can get you stuck in your life and being stuck is no way to be unless you’re a pig, and while that wasn’t intended as a cop pun it IS time for our mid-post song so i’ll just continue w/the day’s leitmotif:

i re-read yesterday’s post and it was confusing because i mixed up 2 jeffs and one of them’s not even a jeff, he’s a geoff. for anyone who wondered what the fuck was going on, jeff is my friend in japan who has the tape-only label while geoff is the one who went to med school and is now doing his residency in yakima, washington. geoff is the one i saw yesterday, i know in the blog it seemed as if there was one jeff who was in 2 places at once but that’s impossible and it didn’t happen. geoff came over limping from a groin pull he incurred while slipping on some ice like a buffoon. he was grumpy at first but after 2 cups of coffee he chippered up somewhat and bought me lunch at the east side deli on hawthorne. i’m plugging that place because they have something called “field roast” which i’ve never heard of and is a meat-substitute for us non-cow/pig/chicken/turkey gobblers and it’s the only non-meat meat that i’ve had that doesn’t taste like sawdust or worse. after lunch we walked around the neighborhood and he told me a long story about a speed-freak lady(“she had about 40 hard years on her” he says) that showed up at his door one night and led him on a little adventure involving pissing herself, grabbing his dick, and demanding to be dropped off at a “biker house”.
wookie went out last night to a vintage sale that stayed open until 9(or so she says) but didn’t buy anything because all the stuff there was too uptown for her tastes or her wallet. speaking of her wallet she left it at home when she went to work yesterday morning so i had to run it over to her and i got to see her workplace and got to meet a couple of the alzheimer’s patients/residents that wander around the ward, they seemed confused but sweet. then after the vintage sale debacle she decided to go by the lloyd center mall to return something and when she came back out her car was gone. she thought it was a goner for sure and it was a goner but it hadn’t gone that far, her and the security folks found it in another parking lot on another level with the lights on and i think she said it was running, too? i can’t remember that part but the good news is that the honda fit is back in the family and my truck is still running even though the frigid temps these days seem to create a little barrier to my battery sparking the engine and turning it over, but i ain’t gonna replace nothing because i like to live dangerously but i’m actually just cheap. or broke. but if i ain’t broke, don’t fix me.

ferguson rising

i hear from my cousin paula from time to time, she reads the blog and we exchange emails and it’s nice, we were pretty out of touch for a long time but she heard about the website(kcascell.com)(shameless plug) and i guess got to the blog from there and started writing. actually the last time she wrote me she accidentally put it in a comment and not an email and the next day i got a short note that said that and ended with “btw wtf goes on in mo”? which i’m pretty sure means “by the way what the fuck goes on in missouri?” which i’m pretty sure means what’s going on in ferguson with the protests and the “riots” and all that stuff and it just so happens that i’ve been trying to figure out what to say about it since before the verdict even came out and have had a hard time getting started but since paula was kind enough to give me a little push in that direction here we go.
the first unfortunate fact is that you have to write a not-so-small segment of the population off right off the bat because they’re just straight-up racist. and i’m not just talking about the KKK. at this point pretty much anyone affiliated w/the republican party is MORE than suspect, and anyone who actually BELIEVES the shit that drops from the mouths of hateful fucks like paul ryan or eric cantor or boehner or ted cruz have aligned their thinking w/an openly anti-black, anti-immigrant, anti-poor faction of the extreme right, so fuck ’em. they will soon be assuming control of the senate as well as the house so we’ll get to see them in all their vicious, vile “glory”. the democrats(though very problematic) are much better on the topic of race but how much of it boils down to votes is hard to gage. they CAN count the majority of african americans and immigrants as part of their constituencies so at least publicly they have to put their best foot forward.
on topics of “law and order”, which basically means a kind of deference to general police tactics, most people in positions of wealth or power know why the police are there. the police protect THEM. their positions, their money, their property, etc, the cops are on the ground serving as troops for the continuing war against minorities and the poor by the upper classes and the powerful. the reasons for this seem sort of obvious. these populations are almost completely disenfranchised and have no access to the levers of economic OR policital power in this country and as a result they need to be CONTROLLED. because when people realize that they are being systemically victimized through the laws, the workings of the economy, the courts, and the justice system, all the way down to the cop on the beat, they get upset and it’s hard to predict where that will lead. in revolutionary france it led to the guillotine, in other countries it’s led to the dismantling of entire systems of political and economic power(apartheid, dictatorship) and in places like israel it’s just become ugly, the israeli power structure, preying on anti-muslim sentiments fanned by leaders and media alike(in order to pass laws that target palestinians and others in the same boat), has simply become blatantly anti-arab. they don’t even try to hide it. but the palestinians simply refuse to be destroyed, no matter how many of them israel kills, and for this we should be thankful.
we should also be thankful to the people in ferguson(and now across the country) who are resisting the powers and the laws who are aligned against them, and doing so with incredible determination and bravery. in answer to paula’s question “wtf goes on in MO”? i think what we’re seeing is the birth of the new civil rights movement right there in little ferguson missouri. people are standing up and challenging a racist power structure that has abused, humiliated, and straight-up murdered them for five hundred years. obama’s description of a “post-racial” society is a lie. who are the ones that are discriminated against in the areas of employment, justice, influence, and control? it’s true that poor whites are also preyed upon by the system but it’s the people who are outwardly “other” who have to absorb the bulk of the violence and degradations visited upon them on a daily basis with little outcry in the media, the corridors of power, the courts, or anywhere else. what happened to michael brown is what happens to black people in america every day and the sooner we all realize it the better. it takes awareness to produce the empathy and the rage that we should all be feeling for our friends and neighbors who have to put up with this shit day after day. no cop is going to leave the body of someone they just killed laying in the middle of the street for 4 hours if that body happens to have white skin. it just wouldn’t happen.
as for the stories about violence and looting, those are par for the course. police hate to be taken to account and they know that getting people to focus on the minute percentage of incidents of property damage can be exploited, and the media(as always) is eager to aid in the fight to preserve the status quo. they did the same thing during the LA uprising in ’92, focusing on the sometimes destructive results of the rage that everyone in the country should have felt and completely avoided examining where that rage comes from. that examination is long overdue and an honest accounting and addressing of the many legitimate grievances held by the systemically marginalized african american population in the united states, STILL prevalent after 500 fucking years of racism, is where the people of this country should start. and until they do, i hope that the bravery and determination continues. the people of ferguson deserve our support.

i’m ready, and i hope you are too.