You Stupid Darkness!

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One of my favorite strips from the old Peanuts comic begins with Charlie Brown asking why Linus is standing in a dark night with a lit candle.  Linus replies, quoting a Chinese proverb - "It is better to light one candle than curse the darkness".

Tell me the Chinese don't have a culture that is 3,000 years old.

Charlie Brown agrees, but then observes "of course, there are those who might disagree with you..."

Cut to Lucy, screaming at the night sky, "You stupid darkness".

Sometimes that's how it feels when I attend these rallies - and for good or ill, I tend to show up at most of them.

For those not in the know - last Sunday our local paper published an AP story cataloguing the increase in racist speech around the country since the election of Barak Obama.  I have some theories about this, which I might get into later.

One of them was a sign from a store in Standish, advertising Obama Bingo and offering a pool betting on when the President-elect would be offed - and how.  There were takers - and a note at the bottom: "I hope someone wins".

Needless to say there were letters to the editors, a Facebook group and, of course, a rally.

I wandered over with Sandy from the Orchard, who was acting as a freelance photog for the PPH.  I borrowed C's camera - the nice DSLR - and sat down to observe.

Oh yes - also to adjust their sound system to the darn thing would work - you'd think that people who do so much studiously public speaking would know how to adjust a sound system so there would be no feedback and both speakers would work.  I'm just sayin' ....

Sandy and I walked down from Parkside - the wind was howling off the Bay, it was insanely cold - the kind of damp cold that goes right through your parka and into your toes and bones.   Being diabetic doesn't help as the circulation in those small arteries isn't what it once was.

Still, it was interesting to see it all happen.

And so I listened to all the usual suspects I have always heard at previous events through the years:

- the "Aryan brotherhood recruiting response" rally

- the "rolling the pig's head in the Muslim worship center" rally

  - the "spray painting anti-black/Muslim graffiti" rally

- the "beat the crap out of the gay guy" protest rally (several of those)

- the "ham steak on the Muslim kid's lunch tray" rally

- the "take back the night against rape" rally

...and on, and on, and on ....

The rally itself was very moving.  Most notable was Steve Wessler of the Center for Prevention of Hate Crimes (who lives in Litchfield, of all places).  He always shares the most incredible stories from his work with kids in schools, keeping it incredibly real - the least academic feelings coming from an educational context.

The Governor was there, the Mayor-elect (always liked her, now I'm really impressed), the new Episcopal bishop was at a conference in New Hampshire and sent a rep.  Cops and DA's  and Mark Dion, the sherrif who shared a story about his daughter and how she dealt with injustice when a child - which was when I was teaching her - all of them saying what was obvious, what was needed to be said ...

... and all of it being things that I have heard all of them say before.

After a while you don't know which side of the comic strip you want to come down on - are you Linus, faithfully, confidently holding up a single candle against the dark of the entire universe?  Or are you his sister (his sister, we forget that) Lucy; just getting your mad on against the entire nature of it all.

What is the right response.  And why the hell do I keep showing up at these things?   If there are incidents against Natives in this state I know they're not showing up in the media.

Doesn't mean they're not there, it's just that they're not making it into the media.  To give everyone their due I suspect that any overt examples would make it quite easily.

Still, if you are the kind of person for whom these things register then it can get a little daunting.  The list of incidents and their attendant rallies is long.  If you're not the kind of person for whom this registers, well, you're probably posting things on the newspaper comment web pages and complaining about how all of this is a waste of taxpayer money to punish people for being stupid.

There is a clear movement to change - or to want to change - some of the fundamental attitudes of people in this country. An attitude - as we say in Oklahoma - of being "someone just looking for a dog to kick".

My own thinking - adumbrated above - is that everyone, without exception - can be in a place where they are looking for a dog to kick.  We just get there, that's how we feel.

The catch - or one of the fundamental burdens of our human nature - is that we can generally know what it is we think, what it is we feel.  More rarely are we conscious of what we think about what we think, what we feel about what we feel.

And that is what those dogs get kicked by.  

So I suppose that's what we do.  We keep holding up the mirror and telling people this is what you do, this is what you are.  We judge each other's actions by a standard - whether those for whom such things register will hear it, accept it - that is another issue.

But voices still must be heard.  I don't know how mine fits in, I suppose the radically different life I lead now will show me - but these voices must still be heard.

Either by lighting candles or by yelling at the darkness.  Either way will warn the dogs against the boots.