On Memorial Day, we should stand (or kneel) with those who protest racism

This was never about the national anthem or disrespect for the flag or the military. It is and always has been about systemic racism, and the racist response of the NFL proves that we have a problem.

First of all, let’s get one thing straight: The protest of taking a knee while the National Anthem plays is not directed at the anthem or the flag, nor is it meant to disrespect the military.

Colin Kaepernick originally stayed seated on the bench to protest the police killings of unarmed black men and boys. When a veteran asked him to kneel instead, that’s what he did.

Now the NFL has banned kneeling, and people are screaming that it’s unconstitutional to do so.

That’s not so. Employers are allowed to ban certain behaviors by employees while they’re working. As a newspaper reporter. I was banned from supporting candidates publicly — and that included having political bumper stickers on my car or signs in my yard.

In more and more states, people can be fired for any reason — or for no reason. These are called “right-to-work” states because they ban mandatory union membership.

If the NFL wants to fire people who protest unjust executions and racist policies, it can do so.

That doesn’t make it right.

I am boycotting the NFL because of this and because of its cover-up of the devastating brain injuries its players suffer, not to mention its extortion of money from taxpayers for the construction of stadiums.

But let’s get something straight about those players taking a knee during the anthem. The protest was never about disrespect for the flag or anyone in the military, but about the lives stolen from us by trigger-happy cops who seem to believe these young men and boys’ lives are worthless.

It is almost without exception that young white men who actually have killed people are taken into custody, but young black men like Michael Brown are shot dead in the street for no good reason.

After Brown’s murder, a video of him arguing with a store owner surfaced, as though that justified his slaughter. Dylan Roof executed nine people in a church in Charleston, SC, and he was given a bulletproof vest and fed a burger and fries on his way to jail. But Michael Brown was executed and people used a tussle with a shop owner to justify it — but the cop who murdered him had not seen the video and had no way of knowing the tussle had happened. Michael Brown, an 18-year-old boy, was tried, convicted and executed for walking in the street.

Stephon Clark was slaughtered for having the temerity to use his cell phone in his grandmother’s back yard at night.

Philando Castile was murdered during a traffic stop after telling the officer he had a gun but was not reaching for it. His girlfriend and her 4-year-old daughter witnessed the execution.

Tamir Rice was just 12 years old when he was shot and killed by a police officer while playing with a toy gun in a park near his home.

In Charlotte, NC. Keith Lamar Scott was shot and killed while sitting in his car.

Eric Garner was choked to death by a New York City police officer after being accused of selling single cigarettes.

In Baltimore, Freddie Gray died mysteriously while being transported in a police van.

None of the cops responsible for these murders was convicted of a crime.

In 2012, I attended a gathering to talk about poverty in an African-American neighborhood a few miles from my home. I noticed pock marks in the side of the church where we were meeting. Across the street, an apartment building had the same pock marks and there were holes in the glass.

All of these were caused by bullets, shot by police officers who were chasing a young man suspected of stealing a $300 game console. Fortunately, none of the 76 bullets they shot hit the suspect or anyone else.

When I rose to speak about poverty and health care, I opened with the fact that this would never have happened in my neighborhood because my neighbors are white.

Last summer, here in Asheville, two cops accosted a young man who was on his way home from a 12-hour shift at a local Cracker Barrel restaurant. They beat and tased him. Someone leaked the body camera footage six months later, and the officer, who had been allowed to resign after a four-month internal investigation, was finally charged with assault. His trial hasn’t happened yet, so he still could get off. Despite other officers taking part in the crime and the cover-up, no one else has been charged. And when City Council proposed some changes in policy to reduce the likelihood of this happening again, the police union threatened to sue to stop them.

What we have here is racism so pervasive that it touches people of color every day of their lives — which are all too likely to be cut short by that racism.

So, on this Memorial Day, I will grieve not just for the soldiers killed in our overseas adventures, but also for the innocent African-American men and boys slaughtered by our unjust “justice” system.

May they all rest in peace and may their loved ones find comfort.

Either way, it’s a victory for Democrats

This gives me hope that we can defeat Republicans everywhere in November.

It appears Democrat Conor Lamb has won the seat in Congress vacated by Republican anti-choice philanderer Tim Murphy (you may recall, he resigned his seat in disgrace after pressuring his lover to have an abortion).

He defeated a well known Republican, Rick Saccone, who was a member of the state legislature, endorsed by the local newspaper, and who stood for all the Republican “values.”

The win, if indeed it comes to that after the absentee ballots are counted, is huge.

Even if, in the end, Lamb loses by a few votes, this should scare the piss out of Republicans. This was a safe district for them and they spent $9 million to preserve this seat. It looks as though they failed, but even if they didn’t, they all but closed a 20-point gap. That’s huge. If they can do that, they’ll take every close race for Congress in November.

I understand Lamb stands for a woman’s right to choose. That’s important. But he’s more for fixing the Affordable Care Act than for expanding Medicaid. I would still have voted for him in this special election, even though offering everyone a single-payer system is of paramount importance to me.

See what I did here? I compromised, because electing Lamb is an important step in fixing the mess in Washington. I don’t demand perfection from my candidates because there’s no one who’s going to agree with my every stand on every issue except me, and I’m not running.

We won’t get rid of the people who are working feverishly to break every system in our country until we step up and vote in every election for the better of the two candidates. And, yes, I said the better of the two candidates because we have a two-party system, whether we like it or not.

I left the Democratic Party because it has moved so far to the right, but I will still vote in every election and I will probably vote for the Democrat because that’s the candidate who stands the best chance of beating the Republican, and I will NEVER vote for the Republican, even if that person is pro-choice and anti-gun. It’s too likely that moderate Republican will still vote with the party.

We have a very sensible woman running as a Republican in a primary against a man whose stands on the issues are insanely right-wing here in North Carolina. She asked for my support and I turned her down because she will vote with the Republicans if and when she gets to Washington. If she were to pledge to vote for single-payer and against any more restrictions on abortion, if she were to promise to vote against the gun lobby, I might consider supporting her, but I doubt it.

Republicans are wrong on just about every issue, and we as voters have to put a stop to their stranglehold on power. They are dismantling every system they can put their hands on — health care, education, food security (Meals on Wheels, food stamps and school lunches), environmental protection, workers’ rights, justice …

We can only defeat them by registering and voting. Really, we can turn out for marches — women’s marches, health care marches, anti-gun marches, pro-choice marches, workers’ marches … but nothing will change until we all vote.

Historically, higher turnout on Election Day almost always favors Democrats. That’s why Republicans work so hard to reduce the number of people eligible to vote.

What happened in Pennsylvania is that people turned out to vote in a heavily Republican district (the current occupant of the White House won by 20 points here). If people had decided they couldn’t win and just stayed home, we would not be celebrating the probable win of a Democrat in this district.

This race is proof that we can defeat Republicans, even in heavily gerrymandered, heavily Republican districts. All we have to do is register and vote — all of us, every last one.

So, what’s next?

Nine of us spent the day together, much of it holding hands to make sure nobody got lost. What a day!

We birthed a movement yesterday.

Millions of us came out to tell the people in power that we will not tolerate the dismantling of the social contract we have built over the last 300 years.

We came out and showed the world what a peaceful demonstration looks like. More than a million people in Washington demonstrated without a single arrest. Not one.

While we waited in a line a half mile long to board a train to the city, we sang freedom songs, chanted and learned a little about each other.

Things even got silly as we chanted, “What do we want? A RIDE! When do we want it? NOW!”

It took us four and a half hours to get from the bus to the rally, but we never lost our cool. We were part of it from the moment we stepped off the bus, together in our desire to pursue justice and prevent the carnage the 1 percent wants to release on our country.

Signs ranged from simple two-word slogans (Dump Trump) to profane (This pussy grabs back) to clever (Can’t comb over sexism) to profound ( I march because she deserves every chance and opportunity in the world to pursue and achieve her dreams).

One of my favorite signs from the Women’s March in Washington.

My little group of nine women never got into the march area because there was no room. We got close and then couldn’t move in any direction until someone else moved back and we followed, all holding onto each other. We did that three times as we tried to get across the mall to meet the North Carolina delegation, and weren’t successful.

No matter, we were there. We were part of history, and we won’t ever forget that.

While the official government count was 500,000, the mayor of DC said at noon (as crowds of us were still trying to get into the city) there were 680,000. Before the Administration shut down its Twitter account, the Metro Police estimated 1.5 million people. Now, there’s a real fact.

This is as close as we could get.

Then, the alternative-fact-er in chief came out and said he had 1.5 million people at his coronation.

He did not. Metro Police told us there were empty seats on every train into the city on Coronation Day. An elevator operator at L’Enfant Plaza told us he was able to squeeze in a quick nap or two, but that on March Day, he hadn’t had a single break.

There are those who say the march was all white people whining about losing, but the diversity was everywhere I looked. I walked beside blacks and whites, Christians, Muslims, Jews, Pagans and more.

This was not about losing an election (which actually, we didn’t, since we won the popular vote by 3 million). We were there for a purpose: to tell the people in power that we expect them to use it with wisdom, compassion and justice.

Now we have to show them we mean it.

I know how wonderful yesterday felt; I’m still basking in the joy of its solidarity. I plan to spend all day today basking in it.

But we have work to do, and lots of it.

What is your next step? What will you do to ensure we keep our liberties intact and move forward rather than backward toward hate and division?

The man who won the Electoral College but lost the popular vote by 3 million is already talking about “alternative facts.” I call them lies and I will continue to call them out. We all have to do that.

They know that if you repeat a lie enough times, people begin to believe it. It’s how we got climate change deniers. It’s how people came to believe Hillary Clinton is a murderer. It’s how that man “won” the election.

This government already is talking about dismantling the entire social contract we have built — public education, Medicare, Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act, the Environmental Protection Agency, Veterans services, disability services and more.

They actually are in the minority, but the public apathy they have fostered, the distrust of government, have had a profound effect on our elections.

We must vote, at the very, very least. As they try to take away our votes with laws aimed at suppressing the votes against them, we have to turn out in numbers so large that they’ll still lose.

And our votes must be informed votes. We must learn about the issues so that the “alternate facts” don’t blind us.

We need our legislators to know our names because we call, write and e-mail each of them at least once a week. If enough of us do that, they’ll know we’ll send them home if they don’t do OUR business.

Several years ago, when I approached Rep. Mark Meadows and introduced myself, he sneered, “Oh, I know who you are.” I was thrilled. I’m trouble.

We all need to be trouble, to keep showing up at demonstrations and letting our legislators know that we’re watching what they’re doing and how they’re voting.

We need to run for office, locally, at the state and at the federal levels.

I felt an energy yesterday that I haven’t felt in many, many years. There was an air of hope that we can change the course of history, and I believe we can.

But we won’t change anything if we just go home, share photos and say, “I was there.”

One friend, a former editor, just bought the Internet domain, www.alternativefacts.me, where I believe he will call out lies. He’s known to call out fake news posts; I assume he’ll do that and more with his web site.

You don’t have to build a web site, but you can call out lies on social media when you see them. Before you share a story, find another source so you know it’s true. I’m pretty careful, but I’ve been fooled a couple times when I didn’t check.

It is our job to continue the work we started yesterday.

We birthed a movement. Now we must nurture it, grow it, work for it and make sure it makes the difference we need.

What are you going to do next?

 

 

 

Stand against hate, fight against tyranny

I will protest. I will put my body on the line, but I will not be violent.

I will protest. I will put my body on the line, but I will not be violent. Let us take to the streets in PEACEFUL protest.

This week, the daughter of an African-American woman told her mother that she, her Latino husband and their children would be moving out of the country following Tuesday’s election of a man who has promised to show nothing but contempt for them.

Another woman’s biracial grandson was called the N-word on the school bus.

A lesbian friend was called a reprehensible name and told her marriage would be annulled.

A Muslim friend is afraid to go grocery shopping.

These examples are just among my friends.

In our schools, Latino children are being taunted with threats of deportation and gay and trans children are being harassed.

This is the new America.

On Facebook, a high school friend complained that Democrats are bad sports because a white man reportedly was beaten up by black men because he voted for the man whose name I refuse to utter.

I reminded that friend of the verified news reports of gays, Muslims and people of color being beaten up as their assailants named this man who might move into the White House.

The hatred is palpable.

I will not hate. I will not commit violence in any form. It is against everything I believe, everything I stand for.

That does not mean I won’t fight.

Last night, I listened to Rev. William Barber on a conference call with hundreds of other people, as he told us he believes we do not have to be gracious about the political victory of a man who has promised to be cruel to immigrants, Muslims, LGBTQ people and more.

We do not have to offer congratulations to a man who has shown no compassion, no honor and no regrets for the violence of his followers.

This morning, I spoke with my friend, Rev. Rodney Sadler, who echoed Rev. Barber’s sentiments.  Rev. Sadler and I talked about the protests we plan to organize and/or attend, and about our fears for the safety of people we love.

Sitting at home is the same as doing nothing. Silence in the face of tyranny makes one complicit. As this man tries to implement his hate-driven policies, we who enjoy privilege must stand against all of it.

I will stand with my brothers and sisters whose lives and bodies are under threat. You will have to go through me to get to them. I will do everything in my power to protect them, except violence. I will not stoop to that.

I am a follower of Christ, who instructed us to love our enemies, to care for “the least of these” among us. I will feed the hungry and love the marginalized. I will defend the defenseless and give voice to the voiceless.

To me, loving my enemy does not mean being gracious toward someone who would let children go to bed hungry, who would deport millions, who would strip women and LGBTQ people of their legal rights, who tweets vile insults to people who disagree with him.

Loving my enemy means not harming them in any physical way and believing that they are deserving of redemption if they seek it.

Loving this person him does NOT mean any form of approval for his policies or beliefs.

I will stand against this person as I stand for peace and justice for everyone. I will not sit down.

I will take to the streets with my brothers and sisters. I will do no violence. This is my promise.

 

Can love win? I hope so

Middle Passage and "Granny" Ruth Zalph walking along Highway 401 in North Carolina during the NAACP's Journey for Justice last year. We are called to stand up for justice, we are called to love one another, now more than ever.

Middle Passage and “Granny” Ruth Zalph walking along Highway 401 in North Carolina during the NAACP’s Journey for Justice last year. We are called to stand up for justice, we are called to love one another, now more than ever.

The sun came up again this morning.

Yeah, somewhere deep down I knew it would, but I was still just a little surprised.

My husband spoke to our financial advisor, who said we’re OK for now. I’m not sure I believe him, but his voice was soothing and calm.

So, now begins the fight on a national level. I will keep the news turned off, since I blame the corporate media for this mess we are in. They jumped all over Hillary’s e-mails while allowing Trump a pass on all his criminal activities.

The upshot is, what has happened here in North Carolina in the last four years is about to happen nationally.

I will lose my access to health care for at least the next year (in 11 months and six days I can get Medicare — if it still exists), as insurance companies take advantage of the repeal of the Affordable Care Act and once again refuse to sell policies to anyone who might get sick.

My LGBTQ friends will lose their rights to be married to the people they love.

My African-American and LatinX friends will lose access to the ballot box in larger numbers than we have seen in a half century.

Multi-national corporations will pull out in protest and people will lose their jobs.

At least 20 million people will lose their access to health care. Thousands will die.

We’re likely to get into some real and nasty wars. Tens of thousands will die.

Climate change will continue its inexorable march, and perhaps millions will die.

This is what I can see from where I sit, in a state where much of this is happening already.

But we here in North Carolina have developed a coalition of groups and individuals who are answering this hate with love. We have been using nonviolent protest to send our message, to change hearts.

We haven’t won the war, but we have banded together and we have the love and support we need to continue this fight and take its model across the country.

Hate won the election, I will not let it conquer me. I will stand with my brothers and sisters against injustice, against hate.

I am a follower of Jesus, who taught me that I need to love my enemies, as difficult as that is this morning. Gandhi and Martin Luther King followed in the steps of Jesus — not the Jesus of the modern American evangelicals, but the one who spoke the word of justice and love, the one who embraces the poor and marginalized, the one who went to his death for what he knew was right.

Not all of us will survive this fight, but we must engage in it if we are to survive as a society.

We are entering a dark age. Let us be the light.

 

 

The lies of racism

Clergy from around NC and other parts of the country led a peaceful protest in Charlotte Thursday night. No none was violent and no one was injured.

Clergy from around NC and other parts of the country led a peaceful protest in Charlotte Thursday night. No none was violent and no one was injured.

Why do so many people, comfortable in their middle-class homes and neighborhoods, buy into the rhetoric that black people hate whites?

Why do so many insist that black people bring all their troubles on themselves?

Did black people buy tickets to sail from Africa to America during the Middle Passage?

Did they voluntarily submit to being bought and sold and used as livestock?

Did mothers voluntarily offer their children up for sale?

Scientific studies have shown that these kinds of trauma are written into the DNA of humans and can have an effect for generations.

So, after slavery ended, did black people volunteer to be arrested off the street and placed in prison camps where they labored for free?

Did they offer themselves up for lynching?

Did they freely choose to live in abject poverty because they couldn’t get a decent education in segregated schools so all that was left to them was sharecropping so white people could profit?

Were segregated and inadequate schools the ones they wanted for their children?

Did my friends in the 1950s and ’60s choose to be relegated to the backs of buses and back doors of restaurants and balconies of theaters — if they were allowed in at all?

Did they not dream for better lives for their children?

And today, as schools have been re-segregated, and black children trapped in crumbling school buildings with lead pipes and mold contamination, schools with far fewer computers and not enough textbooks, why are black children cruelly held to the same standards as the children in wealthy districts, where there are no school-to-prison pipelines?

Did you know that for-profit prisons calculate future “inventory” based on fourth-grade reading scores in mostly black neighborhoods? Doesn’t that sound like black children are being set up to fail so they can make profits for somebody?

When black people are trapped in poor neighborhoods with no banks, no grocery stores and lousy public transportation, are they supposed to look at the lack of opportunity and be OK with it?

Don’t talk to me about how people can rise out of poverty because a few have been fortunate enough to be able to do it. Before you can pull yourself up by the bootstraps, you have to have boots.

I was raised in a white town. We weren’t wealthy. In fact, when I was young, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, we were downright poor. But we were white. Doors were open to us that weren’t open to black families.

We attended excellent schools, even though we lived in a house that once was servant’s quarters on an apple farm in Massachusetts. We didn’t have central heat or hot water, but we did have access to great schools.

I had — and still have — a healthy dose of white privilege. Cops don’t see me or my husband or my son as a threat just because we exist and walk into their field of vision.

I have been accused of being driven by “white guilt,” the racist term for people who care about what is happening to our black brothers and sisters.

I am not guilty of anything more than having that privilege I described. It’s what I do with that privilege that matters. Do I sit in my living room and watch events unfold in Charlotte, or do I go there and stand in peace and love with fellow human beings who are being oppressed and try to protest the blatant racism of our public policy?

Do I try to understand the pain that is inherent in their existence or do I pound my fist on the arm of my sofa and wonder why they want to destroy everything “we” built?

Do I criticize every effort oppressed people make to be heard as “inappropriate,” even when it’s peaceful, or do I stand (or sit) with them?

I choose to be part of the protest.

I choose to stop waiting patiently for change and to demand it begin now, with the release of the police video of the execution of Keith Lamont Scott.

I choose to stand with my brothers and sisters in peaceful protest of systemic racism.

I choose to get angry when people judge the violence that breaks out when militarized police forces show up in riot gear and begin pushing people back and using tear gas and billy clubs if people don’t want to move.

I have been in such situations and I can tell you, I feel furious when it happens. It feels as though our valid concerns are being invalidated by people who have all the power and care nothing for our lives.

For some people the only answer is to fight back. When nonviolent protests are met with violence, some people will become violent. I’m not excusing it; I’m saying it happens, and it might not happen if there was any evidence people in power would listen to the grievances of the protesters.

And don’t talk to me about “proper channels” because those have been closed off. I have been arrested twice for trying to exercise my Constitutional right to talk to lawmakers.

It began with the death of my child, but it continues with the deaths of other people’s children because I know the pain of losing a child to injustice, and I know it happens more often to people of color, and I know that’s wrong.

 

 

 

We the people mean business

This was taken May 13, the night I got arrested.

This was taken May 13, the night I got arrested.

Moral Monday is rolling around again, and I plan to go to Raleigh to support those people who are volunteering to be arrested.

I was arrested on May 13 and I am banned from Legislature property until my case is resolved. I go to court on July 1.

My friend, Sarah Skinner, and I are going and there’s room for two or three more people in my car. If we get enough people we can rent a 12-passenger van for the trip.

Sarah has been my traveling companion on several trips, including two to Washington for rallies and another two for the Occupy movement and one to Charlotte to take part in the Planned Parenthood demonstration during the Democratic National Convention.

We are fellow unreconstructed hippies.

Because Sarah is a breast cancer survivor, she started dying her hair pink during October for National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Now she calls the pink hair her “war paint,” so you’ll be able to spot us on Monday by her shocking pink mop-top.

We need more people to go to Raleigh and tell the General Assembly they work for us, and we are not happy. They may think we’re a nuisance, but they’re about to find out we’re much more than that — we are a movement.

So far, 157 people have been arrested for second-degree trespass, which is a misdemeanor. I doubt we’ll be placed on the no-fly list or locked up for an extended period.

I spent three hours in the jailhouse — some of the early protesters who were arrested have spent as much as eight or nine hours being processed. I think the processing is streamlined now that they know we’re going to be there in ever-increasing numbers.

I went to protest the refusal to expand Medicaid and the proposal to privatize it; others were there to protest the laws that harm unemployed people, students, workers, the environment, voters and low-income people.

There are so many reasons to protest it’s hard to pick just one. I have never seen anything like this group of legislators, and I’ve been aware of government abuses of power for 50 years.

When I have tried talking to these legislators, I get the brush-off or I get excuses filled with half-truths and out-and-out lies. When you call them on their lies, they change the subject or move on to another talking point. They aren’t listening.

They were elected to serve us, not corporate overlords, and yet they are serving the wealthiest and most powerful at our expense.

Sen. Tom Apodaca said we should know how he feels and he isn’t about to change his mind, no matter what the people think.

I don’t know what it will take to change the minds of some legislators, but we only need to reach a few to stop them from having a super-majority. Then we can work to throw the bums out in 2014.

As I said, Sarah and I are going. Anyone want to join us?

If you’re don’t stand up to protest injustice, you become part of it.

Wrong again, Mittens

I couldn’t stay away from the Civic Center yesterday. Mitt Romney was coming to speak and I had to be there to counter his “the emergency room works fine” lie.

See, Mitt believes people can get the care they need at the emergency room and that they won’t get a bill.

Wrong and wrong, Mitt.

My son’s story is proof.

Mike was born with a birth defect that left him vulnerable to colon cancer — a pre-existing condition. Since no company would sell him health insurance at any price, he was left to fend for himself. It wasn’t a matter of wrong choices as those on the Right would like to believe; it was a matter of no choices for him.

He tried the emergency room four times. But they don’t have to find the cause of your problems, they only have to address the symptoms, in Mike’s case, pain and constipation. So Mike was sent home with the wrong medications and a bill four times. By the time anyone was willing to do anything for him, the cancer had spread and it was too late to save his life.

People need to know Mitt Romney is wrong, especially since he’s been repeating the emergency room lie a lot lately.

So, I stood with other protesters across from the line of people waiting to get in. One man jeeringly asked me what emergency room had turned my son away, so I told him. It was Memorial Health Center in Savannah, Ga. He sneered at me and turned away, so I went closer to the line. A police officer started to step in front of me and I told him I had no plans to cause trouble.

“Excuse me,” I said to the man. “I see you have a son. You need to know that the emergency room only has to stabilize someone. It’s not a solution.”

He sneered at me again and turned away.

“I do what I do so your child won’t die the way mine did,” I said as he walked away.

One woman read my sign and looked me in the eye.

“Do you have children?” I asked.

“I do,” she said. “But I take care of them.”

Does she really think my son died because I failed to take care of him? I wanted to tell her how desperately I tried to get help for him and how deep into debt I went doing it. I wanted to tell her how much I loved him and how pissed off I was when his heart stopped and mine didn’t. I wanted to tell her how I still cry almost every day because my heart is still so shattered.

But I just stood there, shocked at her answer, as she walked away.

Several people laughed at me. They looked at my sign and laughed. I asked a few of them why they would laugh.

“What about this is funny?” I asked. But they walked away.

A reporter asked me how I felt as he watched it happen.

“It comes from fear, I think,” I said.

Very few of the people in line yesterday are more than six months away from poverty. What if they lost their jobs and could only find part-time work that didn’t have health benefits? Then what would happen if they got sick? If it’s true that the emergency room isn’t the solution, then what happens to them?

So, as a self-defense mechanism, they have to believe it can only happen to people who make “wrong choices.” Looking at my son’s photo and hearing his story bursts that bubble unless you dismiss it with a nervous laugh and walk away.

Then there was the woman who caused me to lose my cool.

“You need to read your Bible,” she hollered, pointing at me.

“I do read it,” I said.

“You’re a liar!” she jeered.

I snapped.

“Who would Jesus deny?” I yelled back. The police officer in front of me stepped away as though he was hoping I’d slap her miserable face.

“Do you think God let him die because I didn’t pray enough?” I yelled. “Tell me! Who would Jesus deny?”

I took a deep breath and stepped back in among the protesters, ashamed that I had allowed someone to get to me like that.

Getting angry at mean, spiteful, self-righteous, ignorant people doesn’t do the cause of health care for everyone and justice.

But she got to me. How dare she think that I didn’t care enough about my son to do all I could? How dare she judge my level of religious faith?

Looking back on it, though, I have to believe she is one scared, ignorant and helpless-feeling human being. I don’t believe anyone can be that mean without some fear and helplessness mixed in.

 

 

Dr. Margaret Flowers confronts Wall Street robber barons

What they say vs. what I saw

Security guards pepper-sprayed protesters as we tried to enter the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum.

I was with the protesters at the Air & Space Museum today. We had marched there from Freedom Square, probably a mile or so, hundreds of us, chanting and waving. We got to the museum and I was pertty close to the front, perhaps 10 feet back, when I saw people in front of me start to fall down and others running away. My eyes, nose and throat started stinging, but my journalistic instincts kicked in and I ran toward the door with my camera.

I was close enough to the front to know there was no warning. No one asked us to move back in a voice loud enough to hear 10 feet away.
Someone might have pushed a guard although I didn’t see it. I did see guards knock over an older man who was carrying a camera. He was pushed with enough force to fall down and lose his glasses.
We had planned to go into the museum to the drone exhibit and have a “die-in,” meaning some of us would lie down under the exhibit. When we were told to move, only a few of us would remain (the ones willing to be arrested to bring more attention to the use of unmanned drones, which kill civilians).
The guards claimed at first that we were the ones who used chemicals first, but that wasn’t true. No one had any chemical spray of any kind. I heard no one tell us to move back; I only saw people in front of me dropping or running, covering their faces and coughing.
We did not perpetrate any violence. In fact, we all signed a pledge of nonviolence and several of us calmed frightened protesters who were cursing at the guards.
I think the guards themselves were frightened. I’m certain they haven’t had to deal with hundreds of protesters asking to come in.
The Smithsonian spokesperson told the media that we had sprayed first and that they closed the museum because there had been a bomb threat. The truth? They closed the museum because so much pepper spray had been used that you couldn’t get near the door without feeling it.
Hours later I can still taste it, although it no longer stings.
The crowd did NOT disperse, contrary to what the spokesperson said. We sat down and waited for word of the three people who had been detained. We talked to each other, sang, did some improv puppet theater and waited. Some chanted, “Whose museum?” “Our museum!”
When we heard the 19-year-old who had been detained had been taken to jail, a couple dozen of us walked the two miles to the jail and sat on the lawn outside, waiting for her release, which we were told would be within two hours.
When she came out, we decided to take the Metro back to Freedom Square rather than walk. Most of us were pretty tired.
As we waited in the train station, we sang again, and as the train approached, we chanted, “Whose train?” Our train!” The other passengers were supportive, waving, giving us the thumbs-up or peace sign. At our stop, we chanted, “Whose stop?” Our stop!” as the other passengers laughed.
We marched back to the plaza, chanting, “We are the 99 percent!” and arrived to a cheering crowd.
During all our marches, we have been met with enthusiastic support. I think the American people are frustrated with a government that ignores their needs and their wishes just to kiss the butt of corporate donors.
The three days here have felt like something really historic is happening. The crowd has grown each day and people are enthusiastic and positive.
I hate to head home tomorrow.
But I will hook up with the Asheville occupation once I get home. This is just the beginning.