In which I out myself as a communist and hold my tongue about rape

It is funny, I’ve always been firmly in the I’m not a communist camp while pushing for the redistribution of wealth. I’ve been stressing out all month and last month. Things are just crazy and hectic, but on Saturday night I took the afternoon off from all the stuff I had to do and went to a friend’s holiday party. I hate these kinds of things. I never know what to do, and there are always people there I don’t know and don’t know what to say to them. Instead, I stuck near the people I came with. And at some point my friends were talking about poverty and work.

Well, when you play my song. The solution offered had a lot of problems, mostly being rooted in the assumption that unemployed people could and should work. However, it also called for the government to supply jobs, which didn’t go over well. In fact my friend’s husband jokingly called her a socialist. But overall, I don’t interject too much with friends in settings like this. They aren’t particularly interested in the numbers or facts about poverty. I did note that most people on welfare now have barriers to employment, which my friend was like, “we’ll get them a social worker!” Well, that might help, but that isn’t going to solve the problem of a sick dependent or an abusive partner. However, when asked what I was thinking, I said I’m a communist and think we should start by redistributing wealth, and then see where we are. My friend was essentially advocating for a program similar to FDR’s Civilian Conservation Corps, which had flaws, but did employ a lot of men through the Great Depression, but on a smaller scale, specifically, a Baltimore size scale. Of course, we didn’t address the extrapolated consequences from a program like this, which is essentially round up unemployed people of color for manual service work that theoretically everyone benefits from, but most likely will benefit the wealthy. Or we can just do what several researchers have said, which is just cut a check instead of welfare to work programs which would save the most money.

The other strange conversation we found ourselves having was with our hostess’ family, which made things awkward. My friend brought up Bill Cosby and the Virginia rape scandal/Rolling Stone. Things were fine, and then someone begins a statement that can’t end well, “I don’t want to blame anyone, but what do you think a man wants at 10pm?” Pizza? Because that’s usually what I want at 10pm. See, saying the second part of this statement nullifies the first. You are putting the responsibility of the rape on the woman who experienced it because what do you expect. Well, I expect going to someone’s house at 10pm very little, but definitely I expect not to be drugged and raped. Just me? My friend did well driving this conversation back to the non-shamey/balmey side of things. This sort of argument, the women you need to think that every man you meet is a rapist or you’ll be raped and deserved it, makes women responsible for the actions of their rapists. Additionally, it means all women have to treat all men like rapists, when most men aren’t. Start the woe is me, it isn’t fair women treat me like a rapist swan song from men. Well, you don’t get to have it both ways, either rapists are responsible for their actions, the end or women are and we have to treat everyone like a rapist. I did get in one comment that you should always be able to withdraw consent, so even if you knew what he wanted at that hour, around the time he slipped something in your drink you lost your ability to withdraw consent. There was also a sub-discussion on who gets believed and who doesn’t, which was particularly troubling. It was very reminiscent of some women can’t be raped because she is unlikeable/her body is property of the public because she is famous/etc. It was awful.

Professional athletes have the right to speak out against the murder of black people by the police

Obviously, not just athletes, but all public figures have this right. One of the more remarkable instances was on Twitter when John Legend responded to being told to stay in his lane, i.e. entertain not politics, and Legend said he was staying in his lane, that the murder of black people is his lane. This annoys me so much, and partially that is because people have this idea that specific professions are there only for our amusement as if those holding these professions are people.  

Regardless, Andrew Hawkins (Cleveland Browns) adds his name to the list of professional athletes to protest the killings of black people by the police as reported by Cindy Boren. Hawkin’s t-shirt during warmups over the weekend read, “Justice for Tamir Rice and John Crawford.” Both Rice and Crawford were killed in Ohio by the police. Rice’s was ruled a homicide.

Hawkins joins the Lakers, LeBron James, the Brooklyn Nets, St. Louis Rams, Sacramento Kings, the Notre Dame women’s basketball team, Georgetown men’s basketball team, and the Washington football team. All of these people have sported shirts saying “I can’t breathe,” and holding up their hands in the don’t shoot gesture to protest the killings of Eric Garner and Michael Brown.

Of course, someone always has to say something ridiculously stupid, and that goes to Cleveland Police Patrolman Union President Jeff Follmer who gave the following statement, “It’s pretty pathetic when athletes think they know the law. They should stick to what they know best on the field. The Cleveland Police protect and serve the Browns stadium and the Browns organization owes us an apology.”

Shenanigans! First, maybe the Cleveland PD should review the law and stop executing children. Second, Hawkins has every right to his opinion, and to be dismissed because he’s an athlete has some very minstrel show vibes: you can play ball, but we don’t want to hear your opinion ever.

Some of my favorite Christmas songs, Part I

So I love all things Christmas, but I think that is lost on some people. This is me at my most capitalist and consumeristic, and I enjoy every minute. I love lines this time of year. I love yelling at people who are disrespectful to retail workers. I love wrapping gives and making things for people while listening to Christmas carols. I should probably specify that I enjoy alternative Christmas carols. Don't get me wrong I'll sing Wilson Phillips and "All I want for Christmas is you" in my car, but Slow Club and Kate Nash is how I pass the holidays.

With that, pieces and molotov, kids! 

Legal vs. Moral Judgments

Lean in guys, I know it would suck to be falsely accused of rape, but that is not on the same level as surviving rape. #I DONTCAREWHATYOURMOMTOLDYOU. I know we’re all special snowflakes, though as the media, law, government, #ALLTHETHINGS would have you believe, white, hetero, cis men are the most special snowflakes.

I read the Rolling Stone article that is all over the place, and it was horrific, triggering, and awful. Might “Jackie” be embellishing or misleading in parts of her story? Sure. Maybe she even lied, though statistically speaking that is hella rare, and she took leave from university at the time of the alleged rape, her health suffered, grades slipped, withdrew from friends and family until she was finally forced because of suicidal ideation to ask for help, but yeah, bitches lie. Of course, the Rolling Stone article and retraction, where they sacrificed a source and is so offensive to sexual assault survivors and journalism, came out when the Newsroom aired an episode where a rape victim was interrogated by a random man (Don) because her rapists weren’t convicted, which obviously means she is making it all up. We’re not going to get into the politics of throwing a woman who is disagreeing with you in the writer’s room over the rape storyline because why would you need a woman’s opinion?

The character, Don, claims that he can’t air this story because he can’t make a moral judgment. Now, I’ve seen a few episodes of the show, and Don makes moral judgments all the time. But he can’t believe a woman about her lived experience because those poor boys (sounds like CNN and those poor rapists whose lives are ruined, one of which is already out of jail). I don’t have empathy for the falsely accused. I don’t wish them ill, but that inconvenience of a false accusation lasted how long exactly? A semester? Did they even investigate? Was your name made public and then you were shunned by friends and family? Are you triggered when you sleep with someone else? Because rape survivors have long term consequences like being triggered years later. Having another person’s actions define you. Having to explain to a new partner why you’re freaking out over what they perceive to be nothing and the shame associated with that. PTSD, depression, therapy bills, difficulty holding employment, trust issues, physical injuries, nightmares, and the band plays on. So play your tiny violin bros.

I always believe the victims/alleged victims. I believe them because I know the stats, and I know rape culture. I know that it isn’t that bad for accused rapists, and I know this because national media talks about the poor boys that were found guilty of raping an unconscious girl. Because she was asking for it. Because apparently all woman are asking for it if you survive. And I believe victims because most of the survivors I know never reported. That is a moral judgment. Have I been wrong? Yeah, probably. But at the end of the day, I’m not sorry I believe the victims, no matter how unbelievable she might be, because anyone can be raped, and while everyone isn’t a rapist, I’ve knew people I didn’t think could be rapists that were.

Do I feel that all accused men should be jailed and lose their jobs? No. I think you have to go through the legal system if you want that kind of justice…we can discuss whether that is real justice, what justice means, and justice for whom. That is a legal judgment. See there aren’t legal consequences unless you go through the legal system. Now in the episode, the girl in question named her rapists, after she didn’t receive justice from the school or the police, and she made her own website which allows people to name their rapists, sometimes anonymously. Anyone else, having flashbacks to the women jailed for naming her rapist after a judge ordered her not to?

Moral judgments aren’t equivalent to legal judgments. You are free to make the former about things based on how you perceive them. Legal judgments, not so much. But as we know, from recent instances of police brutality/murder, sometimes the justice system fails, and it fails people who aren’t considered the most special snowflakes more often. A lack of legal conviction doesn’t mean a person is innocent. It means a broken and biased system that disproportionately targets men of color said they were innocent.  

Eric Garner

I'm not sure I can even be angry anymore. I'm just sad and tired. I'm not sure what we do now. The legal system is going to continue to fail the most vulnerable. So what then? What is the game plan because I'm out of ideas. Tonight my friends joked about being murdered by the police because that seems like an inevitable fate. One called himself a "thug" and put up his hood, and then said, better not wear this outside, police might shoot me.

I don't know what it is like to live in that kind of fear of the state. But it scares me. It scares me that this is what we've become. The people who believe it is ok to murder black people, because black women are being killed too, are not…I don't know how to finish this sentence. Maybe because I'm tired and can't sleep but maybe because there is no way for me to finish that sentence. The white men who are murdering black people are part of my race, and I can't distance myself from them. Not only are they part of my race, but they are probably working class, right? I mean the police have been a staple of Irish employment. I see the people running to defend Wilson on my Facebook feed, and some of them are distant cousins, but there it sits. They pull up these joke arguments about how white people have been killed by the police too, as if it is the same. It isn't, black men are disproportionately murdered by the police. But they are going to fight that it isn't just black people instead of seeing the militarization of the police as the problem, classism as the problem…I'm not holding out for miracles, my racist cousin is never going to recognize racial oppression and the connects to the before mentioned problems. But at least realize this isn't for the greater good, these sons didn't have to die, this is to preserve the status quo, to reinforce the inconsequence of blackness, to keep people in their place. This is terrorism. This is how genocide begins. As if we're not already seeing it with the systematic imprisonment of black men.

A good friend of mine told me a few months back, "You're not really white." Or something like that. I immediately corrected her. I am white. I didn't launch into it, but I am white, and I benefit from my whiteness. I have had opportunities because of luck, but without my whiteness I wouldn't be so lucky. I wrestle with class and gender performance everyday. My friend thought I meant it the way she means when someone tells her she's not really black because she is some kind of exception, which is intended to be a compliment, but totally racist.

These were Eric Garner's last words. Recorded by a man being indicted while the murderer is not.

Last night was magic

I’m a fan girl, which is obvious to anyone who knows me. I have books all the places beside my bed subbing for a nightstand and by my couch subbing for a coffee table…perhaps I should buy more furniture. But last night, one of my childhood dreams came true, I heard Jack Kelly sing about the power of unions.

Summary in brief, Newsies is the best Disney flop of all time. It was my favorite movie and immediately behind that was Dark Crystal  #dontcare. It came out in 1992 (and for those of you doing the math I was about seven) starring Christian Bale or as you know him, Batman. The general story is Batman takes on newspaper barons by organizing the child labor in New York at the turn of the 20^th Century. It is obviously more complex, but at the end of the day it is a feel good story about class war where the underdog wins. The whole thing centers around child labor pre-child labor laws, or most labor laws as we know them, work place injuries and the underclass getting screwed. I am happy to have a screening at my house if anyone doubts the wonder of this movie. The role of women might be the biggest differences between the movie and musical. Essentially, in 1992, the only active women characters were Davey’s sister and Ms. Medda. In the musical, my guess to reflect more diversity not only are there more men of color, it transforms the reporter from Bill Pullman to a girl. We’ve come so far.

I could also talk for a while about the addition of a girl reporter and her relationship to Jack, and essentially the promise of class jumping as a new ending, vs. the movie version where everyone stays in the appropriate class. While there are some flights of fantasy in both the movie and musical, this last one where Jack gets to class jump kind of ruined it for me. Because, I can suspend belief, but no way in hell would the powerful of New York in 1900 give power over to someone who then believes himself their equal and class jumps. They would have rather seen the city burn because the way this works is if we all go back to the place we belong, but I digress. All of this comes from the real life Newsboys Strike of 1899, where I believe a 14 year old boy stop New York by blocking traffic, sounds kind of familiar.

This movie is the first real exposure to the power of collective organizing for a lot of kids (I’m not kidding, I can think of a handful of progressive bloggers, podcasters, etc. who feel the same way, and they are overwhelmingly women—Batman). As babies of the 80s we didn’t get to see the power of unions, only their decline and this from a daughter of two machinists in Ohio where the belief of the good union job is still strong. Notably, this is the first positive representation of unions I can remember receiving from the media, outside of folk songs, which I’m guessing many of my peers weren’t exposed to.

I can’t help but wonder if the resurgence of plays that discuss class hint at something larger. It isn’t just Newsies and Les Miserables that saw a revival; Rent never went out of style. Additionally, Wicked, Chicago, Dirty Dancing (someone explain how this is a stage production), and Annie all have class elements, and those are all coming to Baltimore in the next year.  It was interesting sitting in the Hippodrome, a location that has had some ups and downs. While Baltimore gentrifies there has been a continued push to leave the Hippodrome alone. My friend explained to me that the Hippodrome is the last real theatre left in Baltimore. It is also right off of the University of Maryland, Baltimore, and not the best of neighborhoods. So having paid a significant amount, I’m sitting there in a theatre full of disproportionally white, young people in the middle of a predominantly black city watching a musical about class resistance was pretty surreal. I mean, the boys sitting behind me were in designer jackets singing along with a song called “The World will know.” Don’t get me wrong I love the song too, but even as a kid I knew what that song was about and why it was so clever…PUNS!

Of course, this interest in class is seen in books. For example, We were liars, The Girl who Saved the Kind of Sweden, and The Interestings are bestselling, critically acclaimed books I’ve read in the last year that have strong class commentary. How about movies? Anyone see Snowpiercer or any of the Hunger Games films? There has been a strong push for media that address class clearly. You can obviously read into media and see the class implications, but the production of Les Mis I saw, and the movie, emphasized class more than the stage productions had in the past. I mean the closing scene where Jean ValJean goes to heaven, the barricade is there with all those lost to the cause revolution and poverty. Notably, Hugo strongly pushed the redemptive nature of love; meaning to love another person selflessly is to redeem your soul. It comes across in a lot of his work. The movie asserted revolution for the poor counts as redemptive love. That’s not in the play, and maybe not the novel, but it has been a love time since I read that.

I’m going to conclude with a comment on creators and their agendas. I don’t think Disney meant to revive the image of organized labor in anyway, in fact I think they are banking on the nostalgia of my generation. However, I know JK Rowling was writing about Parliament and the relationship with Blair and Bush in Harry Potter. With that knowledge, I want to know what Suzanne Collins was really writing about in The Hunger Games. I want to know what the agendas are behind this new push for discussion of class within media.