In elementary school, I learned how to plant flower seeds in a cup, something I do all the time now. I learned a few other things too. When I was maybe four or five years old, maybe six though no older, a girl who I thought was my friend did something not nice to me and so I hit her. She may have hit me first but that didn’t matter, did it? In the principal’s office, the principal looked at me and said, “Cynthia, you knew better.” When I was in middle school, maybe 8th grade (I hope it wasn’t high school), in homeroom there was this girl who was bigger than the rest of us, wealthier than the rest of us, and she bullied people. In fact, she didn’t bully me very much at all in ways that I could notice. But some of my other friends were bullied and bothered by her behavior and one day, because of an accidental arrangement of desks and chairs, they were able to inflict silent revenge by leaving her sitting unto an island by herself. I sat with her for a while, because I didn’t understand what my friends were doing. Why had they gotten up and moved to the other side of the room? I began to understand when they beckoned. I hesitated but I did join them. I hope I always remember the sad look on the other girl’s face as she stared at us. It did not feel good to have helped cause someone to look like that. To feel like that.
The homeroom teacher saw what had happened. She made everyone rearrange their chairs and desks to form more of a community, and she pulled me aside at the end of the day to say, “Cynthia, you knew better.” When I look back I know that I had some awfully good teachers and that they reinforced what I was learning at home: how to be a good human being, how to be kind to those around me or at least not treat them with disdain, how if I had nothing nice to say, then say nothing. I learned, and continue to learn to this day, how to hold myself accountable for my actions. Ignorance is no excuse. That is what I thought today as I read about a man in Alabama who disrupted a peaceful protest parroting that idiot who made the “womp, womp” sound. He held up one of those signs that have become too familiar once more in this country. If the article was accurate than the man had spent time as a high school teacher and I could not help but wonder how had this man grown up, how did he live each day, and what had he taught those children in his care.
Did you notice what I did above?
I referred to Corey Lewandowski as an idiot. This, after having mentioned, that I grew up learning that if you have nothing nice to say, then say nothing. But the other thing I’ve learned as an adult, and continue to learn, is that sometimes you do have to say something. You call the jackass a jackass. But do so with purpose. The unholy brilliance of a Trump and his minions like a Lewandowski, or channels like Fox News and Breitbart, is that they spout complete and utter garbage, manipulating the human psyche with words and altered images, seeding and cultivating fears, and fostering once more a white nationalist agenda (and I say white regardless of how many brown people on occasion are sent out to repeat their vitriol). And they stir up in those who disagree a malignancy as well. I don’t like to curse. I don’t like to think harmful thoughts about other people. It infuriates me that these men and women threaten to make me less than what I am by devolving to their level of speech and action. I hold myself accountable for my actions but who is holding them accountable?
We hold them accountable with our votes and with our pocketbooks. You don’t have to be a billionaire to make a difference with your dollar. Every effort makes a difference, at every level. Involvement is key. Tiring though. But who said democracy was going to be easy? There is no endpoint to the struggle. The same issues of today I find in newspapers from the late 1880s and early 1900s …labor, immigration, emigration, exclusion, economics, wealth inequality … perturbations in the system causing people to experience fear and to isolate themselves with the greatest benefit to those wealthy enough to live in a bubble anyway. An endless struggle to find the “right” balance.
July 4th is on the horizon. I already see the shenanigans starting, stories about who’s patriotic and who’s not, the flag and what does it mean today, the anthem, bending the knee and so on and so forth. My father and forefathers, once they were no longer slaves, fought for this country in the various wars and the idea of what America stood for and the potential for what it could still achieve. They fought for the idea of democracy and a United States, ever changing, where their children would have the opportunity to become their fullest self. They fought for the idea that others, as brown as them or far whiter than them, would be able to come here and do that as well. I despise this administration but I do not despise this country. I still see the potential. That is what I fight for.
Words + Images 