Tag: equality

Upcoming Women’s Marches

A disturbing new movement is taking place in the opinion of this average white heterosexual male. After watching women of color under the Democratic Party banner win Congressional seats in the mid-terms, stories are emerging about why women shouldn’t march or wear pink during marches, or support and attend these marches. Three different reasons to date have been raised, about women of color not being involved and the marches being too white, about wearing pussy hats because that’s excluding or offending some, and now, the latest, that the group is anti-Semitism. Because of these stories, fewer marches are being planned. This year’s turnout is projected to be much lower.

I suspect that other reasons for not supporting the women’s marches will be raised in the coming days. I’m suspicious that the unification of women and their rise are terrifying the established powers — like the Koch Bros. and the white, male-dominated GOP, groups that prefer that women, no matter their education and accomplishments, their religious beliefs, or color of their skin, need to be kept in their place — and they’re fighting back through a whisper campaign to divide women.

Women’s success in the 2018 elections buoyed my hopes for the future. I love hearing and seeing women raising their voices to promote equality, justice, freedom, and democracy. Men have been dominating our politics since our nation’s founding, and look at the state we’re in. Look at our priorities and how ineffective our government has become at the highest levels.

I hope women keep strong, rally, stay united, and overcome these issues. If not, our country will be set back, yet again, at a time when we really need to push forward. Please, don’t let them break you.

Resist. Fight back. We need to change the status quo.

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Asterisks

Everyone is equal*

No -ism alters that basic right*

*their gender doesn’t matter

*their sexual orientation does not keep them from being equal

*the gods that they worship are N/A

*where they come from or live is not a concern

*skin color is not factored in

*their politics, language, and culture doesn’t affect the basic premise

*their education, age, wealth or lack of it, what diseases they may have, or who their parents are, doesn’t change a thing

Everyone is equal.

Full stop.

 

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Longings

I hate myself on days like this.

I confess, I have longings.

Some are very simple and basic. Many will claim them as impractical and idealistic, even absurd.

Like, I have longings to be young again, and to have a nice cup of coffee with a pastry or donuts without worries about its healthiness or origins, longings to walk around, preferably on a warm, pleasant beach, smiling and nodding in friendliness to other people, who simply nod and smile back in friendliness.

I have longings for success, comfort, happiness, fun, and security in all its forms.

I have longings for freedom, equality, liberty and justice.

I’ll bet those longings are shared with many others.

I bet many people on the right and left share these longings.

I bet many politicians and CEOs share these longings, along with teachers, minorities, refugees, shoppers, consumers, teenagers, the elderly, the rich and the poor.

The nut is in the details of how we get satisfy these longings.

When the United States was founded, it was another step as part of a long walk to satisfy these longings, and the founders walked on the backs of many others. We’re shocked, angry and dismayed by their declaration that all men are created equal even while they were stealing land others already lived upon, deciding women are less deserving, and so are people who were slaves, because slaves were slaves; they were property. That was a compromise. A good one? Hell, no, I hear some shout. We’re still arguing it. It was a different era, with different values, views and principles.

I have sisters and friends who wish the protests going on in the U.S. to be over because, well, the elections are over, and isn’t that what this is all about? They have longings for a happier, more relaxed life.

But the protests and elections are part of a process. Both are symptoms of desires and larger arguments about what is right and wrong, and whether freedom, liberty and equality is even possible for everyone. Aren’t we humans simply animals at the heart of the matter, and shouldn’t it be that the strongest shall rule and take what is theirs by right of strength and power, whether it’s physical or intellectual prowess, military force, or the power of our gods?

These are arguments about longings and principles, perceptions, hopes, dreams, emotions and frustrations, resentments, hostilities and dreams that go back to separations derived from where we live, what we speak, our differences and similarities, all the way back to the most basic and fundamental questions of why we’re here, how we came to be here, and what we want to become.

I hate myself on days like this because I have longings. I want to go write. I want to enjoy my comfortable routine of writing fiction, dreaming of breaking out, working toward the horizon that I’ve created for myself to keep myself going while staving off bitterness, weariness and depression.

Some will read this and remark to their screens to me through their screen, you are a self-indulgent idiot.

I can’t argue that I’m not. I know too well the limits of my talents, intelligence and abilities. I tell myself that if I try harder and persist, promising myself, “I can do better,” and that, if I do, I can overcome my shortcomings.

Which is what these longings are all about, really. You understand.

And I hate myself on days like this, because others have longings, and I think of myself as one person but part of a larger body trying to make a difference. So I set aside my personal longings to take up the longings of others, those longings that were there long before I was born as an American, and march for what we believe is right against an agenda that we believe is wrong.

History will not judge us. History is written by the winners. It’ll be the winners who judge us. If we lose, we’ll probably be forgotten. Hell, if we win, we’ll probably be forgotten as well.

That’s the nature of being part of a larger longing.

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Today’s Theme Music

When a man is running from his boss
Who hold a gun that fires “cost”
And people die from being cold
Or left alone because they’re old
And bombs are dropped on fighting cats
And children’s dreams are run with rats
If you complain you disappear
Just like the lesbians and queers
No one can love without the grace
Of some unseen and distant face
And you get beaten up by blacks
Who though they worked still got the sack
And when your soul tells you to hide
Your very right to die denied
And in the battle on the streets
You fight computers and receipts
And when a man is trying to change
But only causes further pain
You realize that all along
Something in us going wrong…

You stop dancing.

Many of us contemplate our lives and wonder, will it ever become better? W’re always trying to define what ‘it’ is – equal rights, fairer pay, less war, less poverty, less starvation and disease. As we watch the political firestorm intensify in the United States and other countries, we wonder, how did we arrive at this moment. It’s educational to look back on songs like the above. These battles have been going on for as long as humanity.
Progress is being made. It used to be that such problems and challenges were accepted as ‘that’s the way it is’ or not acknowledged as issues. It used to be that some humans could hold other humans as slaves and decree their fate. Women were held as inferior. So were people who weren’t like us, whether it was by religion, skin color, sexual orientation, or their ethnicity or cultural heritage. We are moving on to equal rights and better lives for all, but it’s a shift as slow as the Earth’s tectonic plates.
‘Helpless Dancer’ is a song by The Who. It was included on ‘Quadraphenia’, an album that was released in October, 1973. Speaking to my teenage angst and frustration and laden with drums, guitars and angry lyrics, it became one of my it albums, alongside ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ by Pink Floyd.
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