Pregame Propaganda

In the not-too-distant future…

On a beautiful fall day, Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Massachusetts was abuzz with a cacophony of football fans and classic rock blaring over the PA. On the field, the New England Patriots and San Francisco Forty-Niners warmed up for their ensuing game. Eventually, the music faded out, and a voice cut through the crowd noise.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to direct your attention to the Jumbotron. US forces are currently engaged with Al-Qaeda in the city of Jeddah in Saudi Arabia. To honor America, they will be performing a surgical strike on an Al-Qaeda base.”

The crowd roared its approval. On the Jumbotron was a decimated Middle Eastern city with a firefight going on amidst the ruins. Tanks and other American vehicles advanced down a street under enemy fire. The video then cut to a fighter jet cockpit.

Over the static of his radio, the fighter pilot delivered a message to the assembled throng: “On behalf of the US Air Force, I’d like to dedicate this strike to the people of New England and San Francisco. Good luck to the Patriots and Forty-Niners in today’s game. We’re doing this for you!”

The next shot was an aerial view of Jeddah, soon punctuated by an explosion that shook the camera and the plane it was attached to. A plume of smoke, dust and debris filled the screen as the fans cheered. The view switched back to the fighter jet cockpit.

“Now, are you ready for some football?!”

Fireworks went off around the rim of the stadium as the crowd lost its collective shit. Of course, there were always plenty of “surgical strikes” to show the folks back home. With all the wars going on in the Middle East and elsewhere, the Pentagon could’ve shown live coverage of an attack happening that very moment.

But this one wasn’t live. It was prerecorded, then meticulously edited and audio-mixed to give it the veneer of authenticity and immediacy. The government couldn’t run the risk of showing footage of a bomb accidentally landing on a hospital or an orphanage, a disturbingly frequent occurrence.

Although, honestly, considering how the fans ate it up, they probably would’ve gotten the same reaction with live footage. But there was some danger that the athletes wouldn’t like it and might stage a walkout. Even though they were millionaires, a lot of people seemed to sympathize with them. Why ordinary people found millionaire athletes sympathetic was anyone’s guess.

No, they just couldn’t run the risk. It had been hard enough tamping down the kneeling-for-the-national-anthem controversy. Colin Kaepernick and the other ringleaders were blackballed, but it took a considerably greater effort by the league to keep the virus of non-patriotism contained.

There had been enough of a fallout when President Palin reacted to video of a hospital getting bombed by the US. She did her best Urkel impression: “Did I do that?” It was actually more reminiscent of Bugs Bunny. “Ain’t I a stinker?” her face and body seemed to say.

The mouth-breathers on the Right were sent into raptures of joy, of course. Tucker Carlson appeared to climax on camera as he watched the press conference on a loop. Sean Hannity offered to be her sex slave. Rush Limbaugh spontaneously danced a jig in his studio and finally dropped dead of a heart attack. Whatever he found on the Other Side could not have matched the bliss he was feeling as he expired.

The mainstream media (or “MSM”) denounced the president, and the Libs had their usual hissy fit. Rachel Maddow poured gasoline on herself and struck a match, opening up a huge whole in the MSNBC primetime lineup. There were many who felt she should’ve thought of her bosses before making that decision, but others shamed them for disempowering a woman, and a gay woman at that.

Who cared that their bread was all buttered on the same side? That they all fed from the same trough? That they all accepted the same basic premises about the righteousness and glory of the American Empire? These Republicans kept saying the quiet part loud and the loud part quiet. It was like they didn’t even believe in the loud part anymore. The Democrats at least had the decency to maintain the illusion of a humanitarian foreign policy.

“Urkelgate” provided media fodder for months. The content mills chugged along relentlessly, gobbling up each new outrage and abomination like ambrosia and spitting out venom, bile and puritanical condemnation. Jaleel White held a press conference to denounce the president’s use of his character’s trademark catchphrase. Predictably, the MSM applauded his principled defense of the Norms, those sacred guardrails that would surely save us from this president-gone-wild.

But, unlike Trump, Palin knew how to milk a scandal. She found the media’s wounds, stuck her finger in and just rooted around, driving the press mad with a pain so intense that it verged on pleasure. They were her slaves. They claimed to hate her, but there were still a few Americans left who knew better.

Picking Up the Pieces

 
My last essay was about the protests and looting in Minneapolis, so I wanted to talk about the aftermath this week. After a week of curfews, they finally called them off this weekend. Things have settled down, but I doubt we’ll be going back to the way things used to be.

Friday night (May 29) was the first curfew night, and that’s when shit started to get real (at least for me). I heard a helicopter hovering overhead in the evening and definitely had that feeling of being in a City Under Siege, in some kind of authoritarian dystopia. There was a little gunfire in the distance, but nothing alarming.

On Saturday morning I awoke to a more real sort of reality. I started off with my usual weekend morning regimen of stream-of-consciousness writing for an hour followed by about 20 minutes of meditation. My roommate Kenny and his boyfriend left to help with the clean-up, which sounded like a great idea. I also stole their idea of making banana pancakes.

As I enjoyed my brunch, I went on Facebook and saw my friends’ shock and horror at the previous night’s events. I had no idea it had been that bad. Suddenly, this was no longer a chance to see history up close and personal. This was a real crisis that threatened my life.

I called my parents to let them know I was OK. My mom had emailed that morning, but I didn’t realize the urgency of replying until I saw the news.

Now I really had to go help clean up, in order to preserve my faith in humanity and find some sense of community to combat my anxiety. Mom said they suggested people bring brooms, so I grabbed one with a dustpan and biked down to Lake Street at the Midtown Global Market, near Chicago Ave.

There were already tons of people walking up and down Lake Street with brooms, garbage bags and masks. It was a very heartening sight. There were tables by the Midtown Global Market where people handed out push brooms, garbage bags and other cleaning supplies.

A woman told us we could head to Bloomington Ave or Franklin Ave. I’d come from Franklin, so I stayed on Lake and walked east to Bloomington. We passed a lot of volunteers heading the other way. I wondered if there were too many of us and not enough work.

People were sweeping up broken glass from bus stop shelters and storefronts. I helped a guy move some plywood off the sidewalk. The plywood was for boarding up windows, which was happening on a lot of buildings.

There were already plenty of people working on Bloomington, so I kept going east as did seemingly every one else in my group. I didn’t stop until I got to the Hi-Lake strip mall by Hiawatha. There seemed to be more to do there. Two stores had burned down. I swept up broken glass for a while and gawked at the ruins.

Where there was broken glass, there was usually water from sprinklers. Where there’d been fire, water was a virtual guarantee. This made sweeping up the broken glass more difficult.

There had been a Savers thrift store here that I’d gone to many times since I got my first apartment in Mpls. back in ’03. It closed last year, another puzzling case of thrift store attrition. The Little Caesar’s, Aldi and a liquor store remained.

I continued on to the light rail station next door, where all the windows had been knocked out. A legion of people was already sweeping up the glass. Most of them were White. I wondered how many had ever used that station. Maybe all of them, maybe none of them.

Like the Minnehaha Mall on the other side of Hiawatha, Hi-Lake was another strip mall I didn’t feel comfortable in. It had the same sense of poverty and despair I mentioned in my last post. Combine that with a latent hostility and you can understand how I felt going there. But it was the cheap thrift store (not the “vintage” kind of thrift store) closest to Uptown, so I had to get over my discomfort.

Then I walked under the Hiawatha overpass. A few people were sweeping up glass. I picked up a few shards, but there wasn’t much left. Normally, there would’ve been houseless people (mostly Native or Black) sitting under the bridge or panhandling to the cars at the stoplight. Now it was mostly White folks like me with masks and brooms.

I kept moving past Hiawatha to the epicenter of the uprising, the area around the Third Precinct. It looked much different from Thursday. There were a ton of people at the Minnehaha Mall cleaning up outside of Target, Cub and the other stores. (I didn’t even know it was called the Minnehaha Mall until this day, when I took a picture of the graffiti on the mall sign.)

I walked past Target and a few more storefronts before stopping in front of a Minnesota Transitions School (MTS) location. MTS is a charter high school. It seems to cater to kids who don’t function well in traditional schools. I know it mainly from its seemingly improbable (albeit coming in Class A, the smallest class) state championship in boys’ basketball in 2010.

The graffiti on Target was painted over.

I was just standing there looking through the empty window frame at a guy sweeping up a pool of water and broken glass. He asked if I wanted to help. That’s all I’d been waiting for, so I stepped through the window to help him.

I shouldn’t have needed that kind of encouragement, but such is my personality. Even in the midst of this outpouring of goodwill and generosity, I was still reluctant to speak up. Of course, the mask didn’t help either. It feels like an obstacle to being heard. It obscures the source of your words. But maybe that’s just an excuse.

A petite, young woman and I collaborated on sweeping up inside, switching roles as the sweeper and dustpan or bag holder. I asked her if she had any connection to MTS. She said no, she just lived nearby.

A guy came along and asked us to get out of the building. He didn’t want us to get hurt. We obliged and swept up glass on the sidewalk.

Another woman asked me where I live. I told her. She said she’d just helped paint a mural at a brewpub in Nordeast (a local nickname for Northeast Mpls.). It was kind of a weird non-sequitur, but I didn’t mind. It was nice how she skipped ahead in the conversation instead of just telling me where she lived.

She seemed to be there with her husband and another couple. They had some tattoos and looked like middle-aged hipsters, so I felt right at home.

A man of East Asian descent came over and asked me to help him carry what looked like about a 6-foot-long light pole. He gave me the heavy base end, which was OK, but it was a bit awkward trying to keep up with his pace. I managed to follow him to the dumpster without tripping, and we threw it in. He said it had been used to smash windows. He seemed to be a proprietor of one of the stores.

Some people had come around with water bottles, one of which I had accepted, so now I had to pee. I really wanted to bid adieu to my fellow hipsters, but I chickened out. I remembered seeing a porta-potty by the light rail station, so I walked back there. I was afraid there’d be a long line, but as soon as the current occupant came out it was free.

Then I went to the Cub Foods, which had been my primary grocery store. I felt no compunction to help clean up Target. They’re a huge transnational corporation. They’ll be fine. But I did feel the need to help Cub out, since I’d depended on it so much.

There was a bucket brigade line of people leading out of the entrance. They were passing food out of the store and setting it on shelves that had been set up on the sidewalk. There were even price signs hanging over some items, but I didn’t see anyone ringing up customers. They were just giving the food away. It was essentially a more orderly version of the looting I’d seen 2 days before. People loaded up on groceries and took them to their cars in the parking lot.

At the exit, a mass of people was raking through the river of water streaming out of the store. There was garbage mixed in with the water, packaging and food that had been turned into pulp by the sprinklers. I joined in this project with my broom and dustpan. A woman offered me her push broom, which I took and set down my broom and dustpan on the storefront.

The woman was there with her daughter, who might’ve been about 10. The girl was quite industrious, as was a boy a little younger than her. It was really cute to see them busily sweeping the garbage downstream or into someone’s waiting dustpan. For some reason, people kept giving the boy pennies. He must’ve asked for them.

I got frustrated, because I was not on the same page as the woman who gave me the push broom. She was operating a dustpan, but we had different theories about the most effective sweeping and dustpanning techniques. I thought my methods were universal, but apparently they’re not.

It was dumb of me to get frustrated, of course, but I wasn’t willing to just tell her what I wanted her to do with the dustpan. I could’ve nicely let her know what I had in mind, but that would’ve been extremely out-of-character for me. Again, the facemask felt like an obstacle to that. And I didn’t wanna ruin the esprit de corps of the occasion.

One of the hipsters at MTS wondered why no one had turned off the water or power to these buildings, leaving the sprinklers running and live wires hanging in the window of the store next to MTS. Somebody wondered the same thing about Cub. It seemed like an excellent question.

An older woman said the water might make it easier to clean out the store. I questioned that, but I couldn’t think of a good rejoinder. After I got home, of course, I realized that the water was causing the mess, not helping it. (I’ll leave you, dear reader, to make your own parallel between this and the role of the police in our society.)

The woman was from Hugo, the exurb where I’ve spent most of my year-and-a-half at Habitat for Humanity working on a development of 4-plexes (and one 5-plex). I was really touched by her willingness to drive a half-hour from the boonies into the city to help us clean up. I wasn’t expecting that from an exurbanite.

We scooped the garbage into plastic garbage cans with our dustpans or snow shovels. The cans were then hauled off by people with a power jack for pallets, who took them around back, presumably to be dumped into the dumpster.

After doing that for a while, a man shouted and whistled to get our attention. He was standing on the hood of his car and, once everyone was quiet, introduced himself as a vice president of the company that runs this Cub. He said he’d been told there were “a couple people” helping to clean the store, so when he pulled up he cried at the sight of all of us. He said they would do whatever they had to do to reopen the store as soon as possible. He thanked us, and everyone clapped.

It was a heartwarming scene, and I was moved. But I wasn’t satisfied. Returning to the status quo ante isn’t enough. We’re going to need big, structural change (a big, structural Bailey, if you will) if we wanna move forward and right these wrongs. I overheard a young Black man say that we were all helping clean up because we wanted to restore the System. I wanted to tell him to shut the fuck up, but he wasn’t totally wrong, although he overestimates how many of us actually wanna restore the System.

I was there to facilitate change, and I think a lot of others were there for the same reason. Our mere presence was a big change from the norm. I’d never seen that many people in those neighborhoods, and certainly not that many White people. We were there to pick up the pieces, because the authorities had clearly lost control or were no longer willing to maintain it.

We were there to pick up the slack, fill the vacuum left in their absence. As with the largely peaceful looting and protests that occurred there, the fact that the community stepped up to begin the rebuilding won’t soon be forgotten.

A Taste of Anarchy

I wrote this on Thursday and Friday. My perspective has changed radically today, Saturday, as the riots have grown. I'm in a much more sober, scared mood. But I think this is still worth posting as a look into one mindset behind the unrest.

My employer shut down its construction operations Thursday afternoon because of the riots. I was working out in Hugo, a small town well north of St. Paul. I hadn’t been following the news closely, so I only had a vague sense of how extensive the looting and arson were. We took off at 2pm, so I probably got home around 2:30.

I live in the Phillips neighborhood of Minneapolis, about a mile from the Third Precinct, the epicenter of the uprising sparked by the murder of George Floyd. Everything seemed tranquil. I tried to catch up with the news at my apartment.

When I saw the reports that looting had spread to St. Paul, I thought anarchy must be engulfing the Twin Cities. The police had secured Maplewood Mall and Rosedale (another mall). It reminded me of The Simpsons episode when Helen Lovejoy keeps crying, “Won’t someone please think of the children?!” Won’t someone please think of the malls?!

My roommate Kenny showed up with his bike in tow. He said he’d been to the Third Precinct and that the scene was crazy. I decided to have a look for myself. My anxiety was piqued, but I thought staying home just thinking about the riots would be worse.

I started by biking to 38th and Chicago. I didn’t even know that was where George Floyd had died. I just knew it was a locus of protest. I crossed Lake Street to get there, which I expected to be a war zone from all the reports I’d seen that day, but it looked normal to me. It was busy, but that’s typical for 4pm on a weekday.

The Midtown Global Market and a warehouse towered overhead. I headed south of Lake, down a residential street. There was a guy just mowing his lawn, as normal as could be. I thought the MSM had seriously exaggerated the threat. I didn’t see the protest until I was 3 blocks away, and I got no sense of menace from it.

There were a few cars parked in the middle of the road in all 4 directions to block off the intersection. Maybe a few hundred people were gathered to listen to a Black woman on a mic with a PA. There were some tables set up on the sidewalk behind her with water bottles and other things I couldn't identify.

The crowd was racially diverse: Whites, Blacks, Latinx, etc. There were some White girls with dyed-pink dreds standing in front of me. Almost everybody had a mask on, which I’ve come to think of as a political signifier as much as a safety measure. I put my mask on when I got there.

It was an open mic, the woman said, so they had other people speak, all of them Black for the half-hour I was there. One lady had us raise our arms, lean back and face the sun (which was at our backs) and then bend over to touch our toes. It was like a sun salutation in yoga. Then we put our right hand on our heart. It was like doing the Pledge of Allegiance except the opposite, because we were trying to get our country to pledge allegiance to us.

Another Black lady exhorted Black people to get their GED and go to college. She wanted them to put down their phone and pick up a book. The one man who spoke had on a shirt with the Wu-Tang Clan “W” that said “Wakanda.” He had us raise our right fist in the air. I joined in for that, but I was wary of letting go of my bike. It’s just some middle-class suburban paranoia, but it’s hard to shake.

I was trying to let down my defenses. But it’s not easy to do that while wearing a mask. It enhances my sense of social distance from others. If they can’t see me at least try to smile, then how can I put them at ease? Somebody told me last year that I have a “mean stare.” I don’t want that to be all people can see of my face. That’s the main reason I don’t always wear a mask in public. The mask also makes me anxious, reminding me of the seriousness of our situation. These aren’t excuses, just explanations.

At 4:40 pm, I moved on, kinda disappointed that I seemed to have missed the excitement. After a few blocks of mask-less biking, I realized that the Third Precinct wasn’t at 38th and Chicago. I looked it up on my phone and discovered it was next to my local Target and Cub Foods, my primary grocery store. I’d planned to check it out anyway, having heard about the looting there.

I got on the Greenway and headed east. The Midtown Greenway is a block north of Lake Street and occupies a former rail line. It’s in a trench dug out for the railroad over a century ago, so you get to bike under bridges in a grassy little valley. It’s very nice. I passed a collection of tents some houseless people were living in. That’s a new development to me. I’ve only seen that this year on the Greenway.

I took a bike and pedestrian bridge over Hiawatha (a highway) to the strip mall where my Target and Cub are located. I couldn’t see anything from the bridge, but that’s where I found all the excitement. That’s what all the hubbub was about.

I came around the back of the mall. There was some graffiti, but nothing serious. When I turned the corner into the parking lot, then I understood what Kenny and the MSM had been talking about. There were people walking toward and past me, some carrying clothes and other wares. 

Slowly, it dawned on me. Oh, wait. These are looters. But they weren’t the evil, greedy people I’d been told about (a label that, ironically, far more accurately applies to the people doing the labeling and trying to maintain the status quo). They were just regular folks, basically the same people I saw shopping at that Target and Cub on a normal day.

They weren’t the scum of the earth. Many of them were smiling, not maniacally, but in a dizzy, giddy glee at this momentary upturning of the System. I felt it too, but it scared me at first. They had violated the sacred code of Private Property. As a middle-class, straight, White, cis-gender male, when push comes to shove, I’ll often cling to the System for protection. To see it overthrown like this was terrifying, dizzying and exhilarating.

I saw the steaming ruins of the Auto Zone across the street from the Target parking lot. It gave the scene the look of a war zone. I wasn’t sure if I’d be safe, if someone would push me off my bike and abscond with it, maybe beat me up. But that didn’t seem to be happening to anyone else, so I kept biking through the parking lot.

There was a line of cars slowly moving toward the Target entrance. I passed through them. A car with teenagers hanging out the windows and whooping it up, hootering and hollering, drove over a median in the lot, but in a surprisingly careful manner. So, yes, there were some hijinks, some unfettered hurly-burly, but not the unrestrained bacchanalia one might expect.

I kept biking to the intersection between the strip mall and the precinct. There was a truck broadcasting a message from a disembodied man. I couldn’t tell if he was on the scene, in the truck or in some remote location. It said something like “Mad Dads” on the side. Many of the hundreds gathered in the intersection were listening.

When I got to the intersection, I put my mask back on. There wasn’t a lot of social distancing going on, but a lot of people were wearing masks. I hope I didn’t get the ‘Rona there. That would suck.

I got off my bike and walked over to the precinct. A crush of people stood vigil opposite a line of silent, motionless police officers. It looked like the cops were in riot gear and had clubs at the ready. The people keeping the police at bay all seemed to be wearing black. I could’ve sworn someone was playing NWA’s “Fuck tha Police.”

The racial mix was just as diverse as at the other protest site. There was a White gutterpunk guy walking around, carrying those little milk cartons they have at schools and offering them to people. There was a table with young women offering free stuff, mainly water. I saw gallon jugs of milk under the table, behind the “Free Stuff” sign. A young woman in the crowd took a picture of the police with her middle finger in the foreground.

The man speaking through the truck said this was our community and we shouldn’t be burning down buildings. That got a round of applause. He encouraged us to help the people picking up litter. The truckman’s words were then accompanied by Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On.” I saw an orange peel on the street, picked it up and put it in the trash bag held by a Black man in his 20’s or 30’s, thanking him.

I took a picture of the Auto Zone’s smoking remains. There are suspicions that the arsonists might’ve been undercover cops. Given the history of police in this country, it wouldn’t surprise me. They haven’t exactly bathed themselves in glory, especially in recent decades.

Then I biked toward the Cub Foods 2 blocks away. Along the way was another burned-out shell of a building. I think it had been an apartment complex still under construction. I’m not surprised if protesters set that one on fire. I’ve certainly resented how apartment buildings have shot up like weeds in Minneapolis for the last 15 years while rents have shot up almost as fast.

On the berm at the end of the Target parking lot, someone was lying on the ground having an emergency of some kind as people gathered around trying to help them. A woman in a hijab driving a minivan was filming the scene on her phone as she glacially turned through an intersection. Her attention was fixed on her phone and not at all on the road. The weird part was the cars behind her didn’t honk at her to hurry up.

I got to the Cub and took pictures of the graffiti and shattered windows. A young woman said “sorry” for walking in front of my picture. Bemused, I said, “No prob.” There was a group of people near the Cub exit. The entrance was blocked by shopping carts and hastily-posted police tape. The windows were all smashed. A few people were coming out of the store.

The parking lot had some parked cars and people milling about. I biked over to the Target entrance. Cars slowly drove through the lot. It wasn’t the kind of chaos you would expect in a “riot.” (Frankly, I think riots get a bad name. The Clash were pro-riot, as illustrated by their song, “White Riot.” “Riot” doesn’t have to be pejorative. Embrace it!) Someone was playing Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power.”

Honestly, I couldn’t tell if people were actually playing these songs or if I was hallucinating them, because they were all the exact kind of songs I would expect to hear in a riot. (I’m surprised I didn’t imagine someone playing Rage Against the Machine.)

There was a guy in a delivery van who pulled up to the Cub entrance and was taking pictures with his phone. I saw a young woman lazily drive by. She appeared to be smoking marijuana. I think she was just digging the scene. I couldn’t blame her. It was intoxicating, addictive.

The Target façade was covered in graffiti. The inside was dark. People were walking in and out of the entrance. I saw exactly one person run during my half-hour in this free-for-all. Everyone else was moving at a leisurely pace.

I walked up to a window with a group of people standing in front of it. The glass was gone. We were all taking pictures and video as people went in and out the window. A group of 3 White guys in their 20’s came out with some clothes and the top half of a mannequin. A guy outside exclaimed, “You got a mannequin!” The looter responded, “I’m takin’ this baby home!” They were smiling.

 

There was a shallow layer of water on the floor and cellophane-sealed sandwiches strewn about. It was smoky inside for some reason, but there was enough light to see a few people walking around. (I can’t stress this enough: NO ONE WAS RUNNING! So get that looter stereotype out of your heads, my fellow bourgeoisie!)

I walked my bike along the sidewalk with the people leaving Target. A steady stream of folks was still flowing past us, toward the entrance, as well as that line of cars I’d encountered when I first arrived on the scene. The employee entrance was open, around which lay a pool of water and clothes. A guy grabbed a push broom and started sweeping the clothes away (or was it toward?) the door. I have no idea what he was trying to accomplish.

Then I turned the corner and was heading back out the way I came. As if on cue, police sirens sounded in the distance, and that’s when people started running. But there were still smiles all around, even from the guys trying to convince the girls they were with to jump in their car.

I headed back up the bike trail, north on Hiawatha to my apartment. The back of the strip mall was all I could see now. Whatever hasty retreat might’ve been unfolding was out of view. But I’d gotten my fill of anarchy. It gave me a strong feeling of freedom, and I knew that, in time, I’d want more.

The Powers That Be had better hope we don’t develop a taste for this kind of anarchy. In the absence of Law and Order, there was no descent into barbarism that I could see. I’m not saying that situation would’ve lasted forever, but it was a powerful lesson, even for just a half-hour.

It’s also a dangerous lesson, because it teaches people that the rules that are supposed to protect them are actually holding them back. The same System that has protected me has also forced me to collaborate in a ruthless, heartless empire (which is redundant, because all empires are ruthless and heartless). As I (and the empire) get older, the costs of that bargain grow while the benefits shrink.

Before the riots, I spent a lot of time at that strip mall, going to Cub and Target, but I was never comfortable there. There was always a sense of poverty and despair. I sat in the Starbucks in that Target a few times, and the tables were mainly occupied by poor people. Some would be chatting, but most of them would just sit there alone, looking forlorn. My shock isn’t that they finally rose up and destroyed this arrangement (even if only temporarily), but that they waited this long.

My familiarity with the area also gave me a sense of the possibilities of revolution. (That surely also contributed to my sense of disorientation.) Before, it was just my usual grocery store and the nearest Target. Now it’s a scene of civil unrest, where the police have been defeated.

Earlier that day, I’d heard one of our U.S. senators, Tina Smith, condemn the violence on MPR (Minnesota Public Radio). After seeing the riot firsthand, I have no patience with her pleading. She’s done more damage with a single vote (for the CARES Act, for the USMCA, for the take-your-pick-of-bills) than the rest of us could do in a lifetime.

And she sees no problem with exporting violence to other countries. Do you not see the inconsistency, Senator Smith? Do you not understand why we ignore you? Why you don’t have a moral leg to stand on?

The riots are a predictable outcome of a culture that values profit over people. The violence we wage across the globe (for profit and power, not peace) has boomeranged on us. We thought if we fought them over there, we wouldn't have to fight them here. But the war zone was here all along. The only difference is that now the resistance has decided to strike back against the empire in the only language the empire understands: force.

Clocks Against Humanity

I performed this essay at The Encyclopedia Show Minneapolis on Tuesday night. Video of the show can be found on Strike Theater's Facebook page. The show's theme was "Clocks."

I thought I had plenty of time to work on this piece, but, per usual, the time got away from me. Such is the nature of Life. The Clock is an insidious hypnotist. It ticks along slowly, but remorselessly, always, when we’re looking, when we’re not looking. It lulls us into a false sense of security and then feeds us to the Past, that huge Dust Monster waiting to gobble us up at the end of the line.

Steve Miller was wrong about Time. It does keep on slippin’, slippin’, slippin’, but into the Past, not the Future. I don’t know why he made that mistake. It must’ve been all those drugs he did. I don’t actually know if he did drugs, but he was a big rock star in the 70’s, so he probably did.

Clocks have increasingly become an unnecessary accessory. They used to be furniture. They used to stand on their own, or occupy a place of honor and reverence on the wall or mantel. We may still have those old-fashioned stand-alone clocks in our homes, but they endure primarily for decorative rather than practical purposes. Soon, our children will think of clocks as just those things that float by when you’re traveling through Time.

Clocks have been integrated into nearly all of our household appliances and electronic devices: our phones, our computers, our microwaves, our stoves, our coffee makers, our waffle irons, our TV’s, our DVD players, our VCR’s, our Betamax players, our stereos, our hi-fi’s, our 8-track tape players, our electric shavers, our curling irons, and even our vibrators. Not coincidentally, this process has unfolded while our time has become more regimented and less our own. Through this infiltration of every facet of our lives, the Clock’s grip on our time has only grown stronger.

For this reason, we must endeavor more vigorously than ever to defeat the Clock, to transcend Time. In the olden days, it was easier to conserve Time, because Life was lived at a more leisurely, humane pace. People were still being exploited terribly, but at least the Economy was taking its sweet time about it. Not like today, when you can’t even open the morning paper without seeing a story about a whole generation of English majors being turned into baristas.

So how do we escape the Clock’s insidious clutches? I recommend listening to the words of Robin Williams’ character from that fine motion picture, Dead Poets Society. You’ve got to seize the day! You’ve got to stand up on your desk and say, “O captain, my captain!” I think there were some other parts to it, but I’ve forgotten them. I’ve been too busy seizing the day!

Well, that’s not really true. I spend most of my free time these days watching YouTube videos about how Game of Thrones is actually an allegory for the decline of the manufacturing sector of the US economy. Or how The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is an allegory for the alienating effects of living in a society wherein the concept of community has been shattered, and each person has been thrown back on their own resources, left to fend for themself as an atomized individual. Or how the John Wick film franchise is really freakin’ cool.

The point is: I’m no role model. No one should be looking to me as a paragon of virtue. I’ve always been petrified of the Clock and its power to steal my Life away, yet I’ve mainly expressed this fear through watching TV and snacking. Thanks to this regimen of avoidance, I know more about surviving quicksand than I do about living a Good Life.

And while we’re on the subject, what was the deal with all those TV and movie characters who encountered quicksand? Was there some sort of quicksand epidemic in the late 20th Century? Was it part of an undercover PSA campaign aimed at reducing quicksand-related mishaps? Was a mountain of quicksand migrating north from Latin America, like those infamous killer bees?

Perhaps I’m being too uptight, but I didn’t find any of this quicksand-related content helpful at all. It would’ve been nice to see more practical scenarios played out on these shows. How about an episode wherein the main character applies for a small business loan? That would’ve been extremely useful.

Well now I’ve gone and wasted your time with a lot of frivolous nattering on about quicksand and such. But, like I said, I’m no role model when it comes to making the most of one’s time. However, I will try to justify the quicksand digression with an epic segue.

Much like with quicksand, the more you struggle against Time, the more it pulls you down. (See? I had a plan for that all along.) So remember what Robin Williams said in that one movie: Seize the day! And, if you must buy a vibrator, try to find one without a clock.

Shadows of the Pat (Benatar)

I performed this essay at The Encyclopedia Show Minneapolis on Sunday night. Video of the show can be found on Strike Theater's Facebook page. The show's theme was "Shadows."

What do you think of when you think of shadows? They’re creepy, right? If you’re like me, you imagine a netherworld of crime, iniquity, opium and the dens thereof. It’s where people go to smoke thin, black cigarettes and reject the triune god. They are the hiding places of the occult, the decadent, the profane.

But you must descend into the gutters to get a sense for how Life really is. This is where Polite Society puts its garbage, its trash, its human refuse. This is where the people who don’t fit in go to hide. This is where even the respectable people go to indulge their vices.

I don’t know what goes on there, because I don’t actually patronize those establishments. That’s one of the advantages of living in the Internet Age. But just the fact that these activities are hidden makes them all the more monstrous. I can’t imagine all the unspeakable things they must get up to down there.

Lucky for me, Pat Benatar was not so timid. She had the guts to delve into this underworld, as evidenced by her oeuvre. What she dredged up from that cesspool offers us all a glimpse into the seamy underbelly of Life.

Just take a listen to the chorus from her song “Shadows of the Night,” which I will try to reproduce as adequately as I can while still falling well short of the perfection of the original recording.

We’re running with the shadows of the night
So, baby, take my hand, it’ll be alright
Surrender all your dreams to me tonight
They’ll come true in the end

Now I ask you: What encapsulates the idea of shadows better than that? In a word, nothing. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the music video of that song. For some reason, they went with a story about fighter pilots in World War 2. The only highlights of the video are appearances by the then-unknown Judge Reinhold and Bill Paxton, as a pilot and Nazi, respectively.

So then I turned to the video that I’d actually been thinking of, “Love is a Battlefield.” It starts out with Benatar walking the mean streets of a city. These are intercut with shots of her riding a Greyhound bus through the country. Flash back to her running away from home, as her dad says that, if she leaves now, she can forget about ever returning.

Next, we see her on those mean streets again, this time during the day. She passes by a neon sign that says “Girls Girls Girls.” Then she’s in what appears to be a mall and walks by a person sleeping on the floor. Back outside, she valiantly maintains her singing and her focus on the camera despite the intimidating glares of rough-looking men on the sidewalk.

Meanwhile, back home, Dad is plagued by lingering doubts about his decision to kick her out. Listlessly, he stirs the contents of his dinner plate. Did he make the right choice? Was he too hard on her? She is young, after all.

Back in the Big City, Benatar climbs a dark staircase to a shadowy club inhabited by denizens of the dark. There are many scandalously-clad young women, dressed in the rags apparently favored by loose women of the night in this time period. A sleazy-looking man in a cream-colored suit beckons her with a devilish grin.

Next thing you know, she’s dancing indifferently with another man. This is her john, no doubt. She lazily drapes an arm over his shoulder. Her face betrays the resignation to her fate working for a pimp who looks like a third-rate bad guy from Miami Vice.

In the next scene, she sits at a dressing room mirror writing a letter to her younger brother, who reads it on his bed back home. There may be some horrible exploitation going on here, but at least they get a decent dressing room.

She sits down in a lounge chair in the club and declines a man’s request to dance, which would seem to violate the terms of her employment, but I’ll let that one slide. Then, diegetically, we hear one of the women scream, “Leave me alone,” as she frees herself from the pimp and runs away.

Suddenly, the tables turn. Benatar blocks him from chasing after the fleeing woman. The other women join her to surround him. He retreats to the bar and cowers in fear as they unleash the deadliest weapon in their arsenal: a spontaneously choreographed group dance number.

He looks for reinforcements, but he must withstand the barrage alone. Left with no other choice, he joins the dance. It’s his only hope for survival. The seeming détente is shattered when Benatar throws a glass of water in his face. She will not be denied justice.

Having liberated themselves from the pimp’s iron grip, the women head out onto the streets to continue their dance until the night gives way to a bright, new morning. Benatar bids adieu to her sisters-in-arms, with a hug here, a high-five there, and even a fist-bump over there. (Yes, they had fist-bumps in the 80’s, but they were vertical instead of horizontal.)

Then we see her back on the bus. She’s headed somewhere on that bus, but where? Back home to confront her father? On to another vaguely salacious club to liberate some more possibly-maybe sex workers? Who knows?

But does it really matter? The world is her oyster. She’s escaped the shadows of the night, even though that’s not technically the title of this song. But, still, you get the idea. She’s escaped the battlefield that is love, I guess? Sorry. I wasn’t paying much attention to that lyric.

The important thing is she got out, and, thanks to her courage, we all have a cautionary tale about the darker side of Life from our old friend, Pat Benatar.

Honduras: Epilogue

UPDATE: As one should expect, the situation in Honduras has deteriorated since the onset of the COVID-19 global pandemic. Corie has written about this for the Witness for Peace Solidarity Collective’s blog, noting that the US continues to deport people to Honduras in the midst of this crisis. On Facebook, Emily posted a link to an article on the MADJ website and a translated excerpt by the Honduras Solidarity Network:

From the Broad Movement for Dignity & Justice: "The Tolupán People in Honduras are about to die of hunger

“The measures imposed by the Honduran government to prevent the spread of #COVID has been a form of death sentence for indigenous communities, as the classist and elitist nature of the government does not take into account the socio-economic realities of these populations...

“MADJ cites the high levels of poverty in these communities as well as the state-led dispossession of indigenous peoples from their lands for mining, dams, and logging projects. This has threatened their livelihood, land control, and food sovereignty.”

Suffice it to say that things are getting worse for the people we met there. I encourage everyone to donate to the Witness for Peace Solidarity Collective to help them weather this storm.

Ya know when ya get that one comment on your blog that confirms all your worst fears about yourself, as a writer and a human being? Well, I got one of those recently. It was submitted to the Day 6 post:

“This is painful to read. I wonder what your colleagues think about your condescending attitude and constant judgement towards them? Maybe you are trying to portray yourself as vulnerable, but it reads as whiny and entitled. You need to sincerely consider why you are doing this blog as well as why you shouldn't.”

I don’t know if I should exalt this one anonymous comment to earth-shattering status, but it sounds so thoughtful that I find it impossible to ignore. I could say that it doesn’t really matter. The commenter didn’t bother to leave any identifying information, so it seems a rather cowardly pot shot in the dark. But it’s so biting and incisive that I can’t just dismiss it.

I initially deleted it, being too upset to think rationally. When you’re as socially isolated as I am and have as much emotionally invested in your writing as I do, a comment like that is devastating. But then I decided to post it, because I didn’t want to be scared of some fucking anonymous blog comment. And I wanted to deal with it instead of sweeping it under the carpet. Yes, I was devastated, but, if I deal with it head-on, I could get over it and, hopefully, become stronger, so this shit won’t keep punching me in the gut every time.

It’s also a source of energy for me, engaging with my fear and pain. If I try to avoid thinking about it, that energy gets redirected in harmful ways. I told my parents about it and nearly came to tears. They empathetically told me that I shouldn’t let it get to me. That helped a lot. Obviously, the comment isn’t the problem; it’s just the trigger for another round of fear, shame and self-flagellation.

After I decided to post it, I was hoping for a torrent of good comments to drown it out. But that didn’t happen. This was the only comment submitted to my blog for the Honduras series. I was disappointed by that, so I checked to see how the comment looked on the page. To my shock, it was almost impossible to notice. There’s just a little link for comments at the end of each post. For most readers, it would’ve been easy to miss. Until this post, I may’ve been the only one who saw it.

But it brings up a point worth addressing. If my fellow delegates or colleagues found that my account treats them with a “condescending attitude” or “constant judgment,” I apologize. That wasn’t my intention. I hold so much in that, when I finally let it out like this, it’s often messy, overheated or ill-conceived (or all 3).

Since I started posting this series, I’ve been worrying that it was hurting the very people I wanted to celebrate. I only revealed my thoughts and feelings in the hope of purging my grief and bringing attention to the plight of WFP’s partners in Honduras, not to shame or embarrass anyone.

When I questioned why Corie and Ale were “waxing rhapsodic” about Power Chicken, I didn’t understand the value of their seemingly silly devotion to a fast-food joint. But they were coping with despair on a daily basis. In order to keep from being overwhelmed by it, they had to take advantage of any opportunities for joy, no matter how trivial.

It was only my bourgeois, soul-dead perspective that found this behavior improper. But, over the course of the delegation, I began to understand the importance of embracing both the silly and the sublime, the horrible and the hilarious.

After learning of the evil that undergirds my First-World way of life (about 16 years ago), I became wary of joy, thinking it a selfish indulgence. But this prevented me from grieving. As a result, I got stuck in a rut of self-pity that blotted out the sun and kept me from seeing the joy and beauty in the world.

Rather than processing the sorrow, I tried to avoid it. But this only stopped the flow of all emotions, and I became like an old house: moldy, dusty and empty. The more I withdrew from the world, the more my emotions curdled into resentment and bitterness.

They loved Power Chicken because you have to embrace it all, the absurdity, beauty and horror of Life, if you want to do good. I may not have written this series in a humble-enough voice, but I have the utmost respect and admiration for them. To do what they did while preserving their sanity was a herculean feat.

From the start, I was worried about centering myself in the narrative over our Honduran partners. But I found it impossible to engage with others’ pain without addressing my own. I also thought it might engage fellow First-Worlders who, like me, struggle to relate to people in the Third World. This seems to have been borne out by the blog’s pageviews. As of this writing, the Prologue has 42 views, and no other installment has more than 25.

It took me about 3 weeks to get over the sadness when I returned home, but I was able to let myself grieve. I didn’t feel the need to hide it at work, in public or in front of my roommates. That felt like a big step. I’m not even sure why I was sad though. The detachment obscured the connections between my emotions and their causes.

I think it had more to do with leaving the delegation than with what I’d seen. But maybe I should just let myself be sad without questioning my motives so much. Maybe I really do care about those people in Honduras. Do I really need to beat myself up over it? I don’t know.

Once the sadness passed, I was able to start writing the blog. The first draft was done within 2 months of the trip (which is fast for me), but I kept procrastinating on the revisions. I think I was afraid to finish the blog because I didn’t want to close the book on that experience. It would force me to say goodbye to my fellow delegates again.

That made it hard to finally post it the last 2 weeks. But that’s what I’m doing now, saying goodbye to the experience and trying to move on. Now I have to find the next project, the next group of people I can vibe with, and that’s the really scary part, because I don’t know if I can find another experience and group like that. But that’s life. Those of us with abandonment issues just have a harder time dealing with it.

I shouldn’t be so worried. The Oaxaca delegation was great, and the Honduras delegation was even better. If I keep taking those chances, doing what I believe in, I should be OK. There’ll be stumbles along the way, but the more (reasonable) risks I take, the stronger I become. The more I push myself (again, within reason), the better able I am to handle the pitfalls.

Of course, this is all obvious, cliché bullshit that anyone with half a brain understands intuitively. So why do I have such a hard time with it? Besides the aforementioned emotional issues, I think it may have to do with the Western concept of history as a March of Progress.

I used to subscribe to this belief, common in the West, that history is leading either to a techno-utopia or apocalypse. But now I know that history is cyclical. Some things get better, some things get worse, and then the process is repeated, just with different variations. There will never be a Reckoning when all these conflicts are resolved, so there’s no point in waiting for the Rapture when you’ll be proven right, because it’s never gonna happen.

You’d might as well just work for your idea of justice while you’re alive, because there’s no Great Scorekeeper in the Sky who’s gonna come down and proclaim a winner based on who’s the most virtuous or righteous or whatever. The meek shall not inherit the earth; they aren’t gonna inherit shit until they get their act together and stand up for themselves. And even then it’s a long shot.

There will be no ultimate defeat of Evil and no ultimate victory for Good. There will always be pain, suffering and injustice. These are immutable features of the human condition. In one of the articles in our delegation binder, it mentions a popular protest chant in Latin America: ¡Adelante! ¡Adelante! ¡La lucha es constante! “Forward! Forward! The struggle is constant!” I would amend that to: La lucha es eterna. “The struggle is eternal.” (But then it wouldn’t rhyme.)

So you’d better enjoy the journey, because there’s no guarantee you’ll ever reach your destination. That’s what makes it so hard for me to keep fighting, because my journey has fucking sucked. My inability to get my personal shit together has kept me from fully committing to the struggle. I’ve tied my happiness to the success of the fight for social justice, and that just doesn’t fucking work.

I have to accept failure as an option and the limits of my ability to change the world. Being able to process emotions healthily should help a lot with this. I have to grieve for what’s been lost so I can let it go and move on to the next fight. And I need to be able to revel in the victories so I have enough hope, strength and courage to carry me until the next victory.

But the good news is that I’m making progress on that front (all this self-absorbed navel-gazing notwithstanding). In the past year, it honestly feels like I’ve developed new muscles in my cheeks for smiling. My smiles feel bigger, better and more convincing (at least to me).

My brain seems to be rewiring so I can feel greater empathy and joy. I didn’t even start to like kids until my late 20’s. However, since I became an uncle almost 4 years ago, I’ve been thoroughly enamored of my nephew. I’m more delighted by him every day and less concerned about his future.

It’s easier to celebrate others’ success now. I’m getting over my envy and starting to feel real happiness for them. This is because my life has improved thanks to the risks I’ve taken, and I’ve come to believe (for real this time) that my happiness is mostly up to me.

I didn’t write about my fellow delegates nearly as much as I wanted to. I was (and am) afraid of saying the wrong thing. (See anonymous blog comment and my emotional fallout.) But it should go without saying that they’re all really smart, highly principled and deeply caring people. I’m content to keep the rest of my memories of them and the delegation offline, which I will treasure always.

Honduras: Day 9

From March 25th to April 3rd of 2019, I was part of Witness for Peace Solidarity Collective's delegation to Honduras. The theme of the delegation was "Migration and Social Movements."

I woke up early (natch) and did my Morning Pages writing exercise (3 pages of stream-of-consciousness writing, as prescribed in The Artist’s Way).

Meredith and I got to the dining room before breakfast. She playfully said I “ghosted” them the night before. She hadn’t been around for my midnight encore. I remained quiet throughout breakfast despite my eagerness to chat.

Meredith, Lisa and I took a Minnesota group shot on the front patio by the fountain. I left a bunch of my clothes behind so as to create more space in my backpack, which was the only luggage I’d brought. I hope the staff appreciated my underwear and socialist t-shirt.

The hotel had washed my underwear, and it felt a bit coarse, so I didn’t mind leaving it behind. I should’ve left my Honduran money behind too, because I didn’t spend or exchange it before I got home. Now I’m stuck with 240 lempiras (about $15) for the foreseeable future.

Finally, we hugged our goodbye’s. I really wanted to break down in tears then, but I just couldn’t let myself fall to pieces like that. I couldn’t show these people I’d just met how much they meant to me after just 10 days together.

Carlos drove Ellen, Lisa and I to the airport. When we got there, he helped us unload. With a big smile, he shook my hand and said he hoped I’d return.

This was Lisa’s first time traveling abroad, so Ellen and I tried to guide her through the process, but we got separated at the check-in stations. We were still looking for her in front of the security checkpoint when she swept by, saying, “Goodbye!”

She had to stop and come back though to get through security, so we went through together. (Ellen called it “security theater,” which I think is an apt name.)

Lisa’s plane was the first to board. Ellen and I hugged her before she left.

While waiting at the gate, Betty, Diana, Emily and Meredith showed up, so we chatted a bit with them. Another round of hugs ensued before Ellen and I took off for Houston.

Ellen was in first class thanks to her frequent flying. From my seat in coach, I could see the Mary Poppins Returns trailer playing in perfect synchronicity on the back of almost every seat.

I was back in the immaculately clean and orderly First World. But I was alone again. That’s the problem with the bourgeois lifestyle: It’s nice and neat, but lonely. I stuck in ear buds, but it didn’t feel good, so I took ‘em out after a few minutes.

I knew writing was the way to go, to deal with the sadness in lieu of talking, so I started working on this account of the trip. I looked at the young woman next to me. There was an empty seat between us, so I put my jacket there after she put something on it.

The Houston airport was a long series of lines to go through customs and security again. Someone thought breaking up the lines was their way of fooling us into thinking we were almost done when we got to the end of each one. I think it might just be their way to get Americans to do more walking.

Ellen texted me after I got to my gate, and I responded. That was our only interaction. The flight to MSP was fine, I guess. I took the light rail from the airport and got back to my apartment around 10pm, but I had to work the next day.

Of course, I was up ‘til midnight snacking, per usual. The trip hadn’t freed me from the sense that I was stuck in an endless rut. There wasn’t even a nice afterglow.

(Fear not, dear readers. I’m not gonna leave ya flat with an ending like that. There will be an epilogue.)

Honduras: Day 8

From March 25th to April 3rd of 2019, I was part of Witness for Peace Solidarity Collective's delegation to Honduras. The theme of the delegation was "Migration and Social Movements."

I always stayed up later and woke up earlier than I wanted to, but such has been my fate for many years now.

That day saw us meeting in the hotel’s conference room with 2 journalists: Dina Meza and Jairo López. Dina had to take off early, so she only spoke briefly.

Dina Meza and Lisa

She addressed the state’s attempts to stifle free speech. In the capital, the press follows the official government line. Self-censorship is most journalists’ method of self-preservation. But alternative media have sprung up to counter the mainstream narrative.

In response, the government monitors these alternative outlets. They’ve also come under physical attack, with 75 journalists killed since the 2009 coup that deposed the democratically-elected president, Manuel Zelaya. (The Obama Administration endorsed his ouster after the fact.) They believe these attacks have been directed by the Ministry of Security or the President himself.

Dina helped found the Association for Democracy and Human Rights (ASOPODEHU), which provides legal assistance and self-defense and security training to journalists. They also monitor international treaties and pacts that Honduras has signed regarding freedom of expression, which it has violated. Pasos de Animal Grande is their online newspaper.

After Dina left, Jairo told his story. Until recently, he hosted a TV show called El Informador (“The Informer”), but he can no longer broadcast because no one will rent him a time slot. The government forbade advertising from being sold to run during his program.

Us with Jairo and his wife

This is thought to be retaliation for Jairo’s coverage of protests against JOH’s dubious reelection and other examples of government corruption. He exposed the scandal of teaching jobs being sold instead of being given to candidates based on merit. He also revealed the phenomenon of “ghost jobs,” no-show jobs given to the well-connected.

Jairo and his family have received threats against their safety. As a result, he has been placed under the “protection mechanism.” This is an Organization of American States (OAS) program that charges the Honduran government with providing around-the-clock security to individuals considered to be at high risk, mostly journalists and human rights defenders.

But the police providing this security were the same ones harassing him, so it was small comfort. As a “precautionary measure,” the government has prohibited him from leaving the country.

European organizations have offered to get Jairo out of Honduras, but they’re either unable or unwilling to do the same for his wife and daughter. His wife was with him. They got more emotional as the meeting wore on, though she remained quiet. He mentioned that the extreme stress of their situation has caused her and their daughter health problems.

He’d been brought up on charges. While awaiting trial, he had to check in at a courthouse far away twice a month.

Moved by the obvious torment Jairo and his family were going through, I promised to contact Ilhan Omar on their behalf. She’s my Congressmember and, as luck would have it, a recent WFP delegate to Honduras.

It was my last chance to make a face-to-face emotional connection with a WFP partner in Honduras, and their emotional distress compelled me to act. Also, by making a promise right to their faces, I hoped it would force me to follow through. But it had another effect as well: I began to feel personally responsible for their safety.

Thus ended the partner meetings. In the afternoon, we had a debriefing. Corie and Ale took us through some more issues in Honduras. There was hope that the Misión de Apoyo Contra Corrupción y Impunidad en Honduras (MACCIH), an OAS commission, could fulfill its mission of fighting corruption and impunity in Honduras.

A similar commission in Guatemala had resulted in the president being forced out. (Update: The MACCIH’s mandate expired after 4 years with little to show for their work.)

To demonstrate the corruption and impunity in Honduras, they discussed the elite Atala family, which is involved in the bank that funded Berta Cáceres’s murder. Penal courts are used to silence critics of the elite through defamation charges and convictions.

The newly-created crime of “illicit association,” which was meant to target organized crime, is being used against dissidents, like the political prisoners Edwin Espinal and Raúl Álvarez in La Tolva prison.

We formulated our Action Plan up on the 4th floor open-air lounge. Our dreams were big, but that was encouraged, so as not to arbitrarily limit our ambitions. Meredith and Ellen wanted to do a podcast series about the delegation. Lisa wanted to go on Democracy Now! I wanted to blog about it (like I did with Oaxaca) and give presentations around the Twin Cities.

I also offered to contact my favorite podcast, Chapo Trap House, with the long-shot hope of getting an interview or at least a shout-out. Originally, I assumed I would be the interviewee, but then I realized Corie or Ale would make more sense in that role. (Update: There’s been no response to my 2 emails. I should probably try a few more times.)

Lisa

This was followed with a final reflections session. Not surprisingly, a few tears shed were shed. Unfortunately, I couldn’t quite contribute to the pool. I may have gotten a little misty, but that was about it.

I thanked Corie and Ale for all their hard work, giving them “mad fuckin’ props” for reorganizing the itinerary on the fly. It’s pretty amazing what they did, given all the emotional weight of the work and their youth. It took me years after college to learn the truth about the American Empire. I’m still working on the emotional resilience.

That night, dinner was followed by a party in the lounge. Our Closing Ceremony Committee read a list of 10 lessons from the trip, some silly, some serious. ("1. Be bad because the world is going down. 2. Appreciate and protect the water you have.") Then we dug into the alcohol and food. Raúl showed up, as did Eduardo García from the previous day’s press conference.

 

I tried not to be a wallflower, but I kept falling into the cracks between conversations. The music playlist was compiled by Emily. I’d submitted a list of requests at dinner that night, but it hadn’t occurred to me to include any Latin music.

Ellen, Meg and Betty

Everything on the playlist seemed to be recent Latin American pop. After a while, Emily played one of my choices, “Feel Good, Inc.” by Gorillaz. It came out in 2004, when I was 26, back when I was still hip and up on the latest in music and fashion (as I recall).

Lisa and Meredith

Emily and Diana liked that song, and I couldn’t help but "get down," which seriously cracked them up. Apparently, my dance moves haven’t aged well (if they were ever that good to begin with).

Diana, Emily and I

I guess I could see it as a point of pride, like when I made Q’orianka Kilcher laugh with my dancing at the CodePink party following the big anti-Iraq War march in DC in ’07. But back then it was intentional comedy, so, yeah...

Ellen and Ale

Diana was dancing, but she was usually the only one. The rest of us weren't as confident in our moves. Ellen struggled to open a wine bottle. Eventually, they found a corkscrew. There were many strawberries and other goodies to feast upon.

Corie and Ellen

I went to my room around 10, not bothering to bid adieu. It was a classic “Irish Goodbye,” but I was too sad. I couldn’t handle goodbye’s right then. My fear of crying in public, especially in the middle of a party, was stronger than my fear of hurting their feelings.

Raúl and Meredith

I lay on the bed and stewed in regret while watching a Pixies video marathon on VH1 (which, under normal circumstances, would’ve been awesome). After an hour-and-a-half, I returned to the festivities to try and tie up the loose ends.

There were a few people still chatting. I said I didn’t wanna leave with an Irish Goodbye, and Corie seemed very amused by that. (She, like me, is of Irish descent.)

I took off again at midnight or just before, saying my good night’s. Somebody gave me a hug. It must’ve been Meg. (They were the big hugger in the group.) I went back to my room and took a while to get to sleep.

Honduras: Day 7

From March 25th to April 3rd of 2019, I was part of Witness for Peace Solidarity Collective's delegation to Honduras. The theme of the delegation was "Migration and Social Movements."

Honduras Solidarity Network press conference

We had a press conference at 11am to present our findings along with a delegation from Canada. Three speakers sat at a table: Corie representing Witness for Peace, Eduardo García of Alliance for Global Justice and Victoria Cervantes of La Voz de Los de Abajo. Those 3 organizations fall under the umbrella of the Honduras Solidarity Network.

We stood behind them in our WFP vests, as did the members of the Canadian delegation, wearing lanyards. Victoria read a statement detailing the violence and repression carried out by President Juan Orlando Hernández’s (or “JOH”) government since what she called the “fraudulent” election of 2017.

Protests erupted across the country following that vote, as the result seemed to have been rigged by the president. “Fuera JOH” (“Go away, JOH”) was a common graffito on our travels. The government violently repressed those protests and imprisoned many.

Victoria expressed the Honduras Solidarity Network’s support for the Berta Cáceres Act. This is a bill in the US Congress that would suspend US security aid to Honduras until the perpetrators of the violence against protesters during the post-electoral crisis are brought to justice.

They read the English version of the statement first, but only a few reporters were around for that and the TV cameras were still being set up. By the time the Spanish version started, the cameras were on and the press was there in force. The speakers took questions following the statement.

After the presser, we chatted with the group from Toronto, who had gone to visit 2 of the 3 political prisoners remaining from the protests that followed the 2017 election. Their names were Edwin Espinal and Raúl Álvarez. They were being held at the maximum-security La Tolva prison, 25 miles east of Tegucigalpa.

To her great amusement, Corie was interviewed by a reporter from a trashy TV show. She wondered if the footage would make it onto that day’s episode. The press conference was followed by a simple lunch for the attendees.

Thence we drove to Comayagüela, Téguz’s twin city, where most of the working and middle-class folks live. We were actually early for our next meeting, so we stopped at an indoor market with clothes, straw hats and other touristy wares for sale.

That’s where Diana was (mildly) attacked by a man through the window. I was walking near her when it happened. I heard what I thought was a cat screech. I asked her what it was. She said a guy had reached through the window and grabbed her leg and made that inhuman sound. The sidewalk along the street behind the building was 3-4 feet below the floor, putting his arm at the same height as her legs.

She was startled but amused. I was a bit horrified. This is what Capitalism does to people: We’re turned into animals.

Three kids in single digits(?), 2 boys and a younger girl, were watching the Cartoon Network in Spanish on a little TV. The animated program was Teen Titans Go!, one of the few TV shows of the past decade that I’ve actually watched enough to become a fan of.

Corie was sitting in a chair by the little snack stand. There were some tents over the plastic tables and chairs, even though it was inside.

Outside, Carlos had locked the keys in the bus, which extended our stay at the market. There were some men sticking a long wire in the driver’s-side window. They climbed up on top of the cab, maybe trying to get in through the emergency hatch? It took a while, but they got it, and Carlos finally had a reason to be embarrassed. (Until this miscue, his job performance had been above reproach.)

We drove nearby to Arcoíris (“Rainbow”), a shelter for LGBT people, where we had stopped before the market, but no one was there at the time. So, instead of being early, we were late, even by Latin American standards. This time we went up to the 2nd floor lounge.

It was stuffy inside, but I managed to stay awake despite the heat and my fatigue. To be honest, I was uncomfortable with the muñecas (“transgender people”) and lesbians there. I resented having to focus on their problems when there were so many bigger issues afflicting almost everyone, primarily of the economic and geopolitical varieties. But I was ashamed of my reaction and tried to empathize.

The issues they focus on are health care, employment and education. It’s difficult for LGBT people to access all three. Homophobia and transphobia are common among health care workers. Discriminatory hiring practices are the norm, and many schools won’t accept homosexuals or trans people.

Religious fundamentalism is fueled by the media, leading many LGBT kids to be kicked out of their homes. This leaves them vulnerable to violence and exploitation on the streets. But the primary source of violence against their community is the police. They have no legal protection from discrimination.

Many feminists exclude lesbians and trans women from their movement. TERF’s (Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists) have caused a rift between the LGBT community and feminists.

For those trans people who attempt an identity change, economic hurdles come up that can prevent access to bank accounts, housing and even buying appliances.

Arcoíris’s current policy campaign is for marriage equality. They’re also lobbying to make May 17th a “Day against Homo-, Trans- and Lesbophobia.”

Following the meeting, we exchanged hugs. One person offered me their hand for a handshake, but I smiled and hugged them instead. A handshake would’ve seemed woefully inadequate.

We finished the visit by going to the roof and taking some group shots as the sun sank toward the horizon. On the bus, we had a mini-reflections session. A full-sized version happened in the evening.

Dinner followed at Cadetur. The hotel’s dining room was also a carport with a soaking pool. (It wasn’t big enough to be a swimming pool.) That may sound kinda trashy, but it was actually quite nice. I never noticed the car exhaust.

The Canadian group from that day’s presser was also staying at Cadetur. I saw them a few times meeting in the lobby or in the dining room, but we didn’t chat much.

That night Honduran VH1 had a marathon of AC/DC videos. Great band, not great videos.

I’d gotten toothpaste a few days earlier after going the first few days without. It was Colgate, but the baking soda in it was extremely abrasive. Some of it had dried onto the back of the toothbrush head and irritated my lips. I thought it was a cheap, Third-World version. Or is all Colgate baking soda toothpaste like that?

It reminded me how the Triscuits and Better Cheddars crackers I got at a grocery store in Beloit, WI, during college didn’t taste as good as the ones back home. I thought maybe those companies sent inferior products to Beloit because it was a poor city.

In my bathroom, there was a heater or something built into the shower head with exposed wires sticking out. Emily had mentioned that the same was true in her and Diana’s room. This convinced her not to turn up the water temperature for fear of being electrocuted.

I hadn’t had any trouble when I cranked up the water temp the first night, so I figured it was OK. (Spoiler alert: This may sound like foreshadowing, but I never got electrocuted.)