Hillary or Bernie?

Who I’m Supporting for President and Why

Okay, I’ve not talked much about the race this year. I’ve got lots of reasons for that. First the few times I’ve said anything, the opposition jumps all over it with uncommon rancor and ugly accusatory language. I’ve neither the temperament nor the time to deal with these childish outbursts. Second, I’m a Democrat. Whoever is selected will get my support. Their differences are subtle, far more than their advocates would let on. Please understand one thing. If you are voting for someone else, that’s fine. I respect your right and ability to make that decision. Just know that my decision has been made. I can read the papers and hear discussions on issues and evaluate them same as anybody else. We are diverse as people, so our choices will be diverse. DO NOT USE MY BLOG, GOOGLE PLUS, OR MY FACEBOOK PAGE TO MAKE YOUR CASE FOR SOMEONE ELSE. Spend your energy elsewhere with someone whose mind is not made up. I am not the enemy because I am not supporting your candidate. You are not the enemy because you are not supporting mine. Now let me tell you my choice and why.

I am voting for and caucusing for Hillary Rodham Clinton. There are reasons that resonate with me for why I’m doing that. Actually politically I’m pretty far to the left of Ms. Clinton, and much that Bernie Sanders says resonates with me. In a far better world, I could vote for him and caucus for him easily. But I live in the political mess that is America in 2016.

First let’s state the obvious. We no longer live in a democratic republic. Big money elects our Congress and to a great degree our president. This is especially so now with the advent of Citizens United. Congressional districts are gerrymandered assuring the Congressional House will remain under Republican Control. Only one house in Congress has any hope of selecting a Democratic majority. With the infusion of literally billions of dollars of corporate dollars into our political races, we are presented with a dilemma. Though corporate money dominates, the two parties are NOT the same. On a host of issues from lgbt rights to civil rights to war to taxation, they have significant differences.

I’ve heard the other side say repeatedly how Clinton has ties to Corporate dollars. Here’s the thing. In an oligarchy, that is a bit of an advantage. Make no mistake. Whoever gets the nomination will be subjected to the full frontal attack by the Republican attack machine and those corporate interests that support them.

Which brings us to the issue of labels and attack ads. Sanders’ supporters repeat over and over how crooked Clinton is. Welcome to the product of the Republican attack machine. She has been attacked with untrue accusations ever since the days her husband was president. Reality check: If you repeat “Benghazi” enough times, people will believe it. There is not one accusation brought against her, either with Benghazi, emails, etc has ever been substantiated. They didn’t have to be substantiated. By repeating them over and over they have been planted into the psyche of the American voting public. Now imagine what would happen with labels like “socialist” being used. How about soft on defense? Remember how John Kerry was painted as soft on defense despite being a hero in Vietnam? Before they were done with him, people thought he as a coward and a fraud. Clinton for all the attacks stood strong and prevailed. Furthermore in the Senate she showed her ability to work across the aisle, something essential in getting anything done.

Now I’ve heard over and over about what Bernie Sanders did back in the sixties around race. My first inclination is to say, “So what? What have you done lately?” Locked in my mind I can see Senator Sanders being confronted by members of Black Lives Matter in Seattle. I’ve never seen a man look more impotent in my life. He responded with fury and refusing to talk. If he cannot deal with a protest from two women standing up to him, someone tell me why we think he can endure against the massive Republican attack machine. In addition, when he speaks around racial inequity, he keeps going back to the standard class/economic opportunity argument. He fails to see even at this late date that with race, even when a person is economically advantaged, they still face inequity thanks to racism. That is why he has failed to win support among Black and Latino voters overall.

In my opinion, the candidacy of Bernie Sanders is at the wrong time in history. There is a massive struggle required to which Sen. Sanders himself stated that will require people all over America to organize and to engage in a revolution to take back the country. It means dismantling Citizens United and restoring many of the anti-trust protections offered in another time. It means demanding by force if necessary to change the tax structure. When the power is restored to the people, then the election of a Bernie Sanders carries with it meaning. Until then, a president must find ways to work across the aisle, in an environment where moderate is not considered the opposite of progressive.

There are some stark realities also facing us. Certain court appointments can destroy marriage equality, legal protections against lgbt folk, dismantling of Obamacare and further erosion of laws that protect us against the excesses of industry. There are several protections, environment and social implemented by presidential decree that would go away.

I do not believe Candidate Sanders could withstand the onslaught of Republican propaganda. I know he could not implement the things he says he would do. Not in the system as it exists today. I would hope the Sanders people would join efforts to dismantle the obstacles to true choice by the people. That’s a revolution I willingly join. I hope whichever candidate will embrace Black Lives Matter. That’s a change that simply can’t be delayed.

Then there is his striking naivete' when it comes to foreign policy. Ours is a dangerous world, and he has for decades now been purposefully disinterested in what is going on in the world politic. It's almost as if he has been frozen in time with opinions set in his youth.

These are my primary concerns. I met Hillary Clinton (she was Hillary Rodham then) years ago when I was a paid worker in the George W. McGovern campaign, and I was impressed with her. Sadly the McGovern election was also a campaign with high ideals but nothing in terms of a political constituency to back it up save some of us young folks who believed that change was at hand. Instead we had delivered to us a resounding defeat. Understand though that for friends who disagree, if your candidate wins, I will work for him with all the passion I do my own. Whatever happens, we must not allow a Republican win this next go-round, or the last vestiges of our democratic system surely will be in peril.

Go Hillary!!! (I still like you Bernie!)

Life Death and Impermanence: A Sermon Response

Impermanence and Expanding our Souls: A Response to Today’s Sermon at First Universalist

Some days a sermon reaches and grabs my heart and simply won’t let go. Today was one such day. First, there was a powerful story by member Frederic MacDonald-Dennis. He spoke of attending college at the University of Alabama in the mid eighties, a black gay man at a predominantly white college with a fairly well known racist history and face it, being gay was no easy journey in 1984. His parents supported him even though privately afraid for him. His friends tried in every way to discourage him, but he followed the message in his heart, and as most often is the case, it was the message of truth.

Jen Crow spoke on our reluctance to honor the passages that surround us in life. Our denial of death despite our certainty in truth that it is a journey we all shall take. She spoke of listening to the voices of the ancestors, allowing their knowledge and experience to become a part of our lives. How much richer and expansive is the soul who embraces the experience of all the passages around us. How we grow the soul, in listening to the voices of those who’ve gone before us even as we create new experiences of our own.

I’m sure most of us have our own experience to draw upon. It’s my own experience however, that I know best, though I can say with some certainty others will share some parts of my own journey in theirs.

Let me begin with the things Frederic spoke about. I of course was not born black, so I can hear about the experience of racism, but it’s always obscured in part by the race lens through which I grew up as well. I came along earlier, during the days of the old Jim Crow South. The only black person I knew was as was so often the case in that part of the world in that time, the woman who came to our home and helped with cleanup, washing dishes and vacuuming and paid pitifully little as was also the custom of that day. But, on growing up gay and transgender in Tyler, Texas, that was an experience that was very much akin to my own. You know, I was not out when I began college, but everybody seemed to know, and my earlier years were marked by intense bullying, at least until I learned to express myself in ways that helped me evade some of it. But out of it all, as a matter of survival, I learned to listen to my inner voice. That voice nurtured me and led me along paths where life was possible and glimmers of light seemed possible. Unlike Frederic, my parents were not supportive, and I had to keep my closet firmly in place until my Dad passed in ’67 and my Mom in ’88.

I even in those early years learned of a story of race that I had not been taught growing up. My friends thought I was crazy when during college I went to some of the Black Power meetings of the day on campus, and listened for the first time of other stories. I’m not sure why I did that. I just know I’m a better person for having sat and listened to their voices rather than the ones of a world built upon white supremacy. From them I received my first early lessons that would guide me forward to this day, still learning but in a far different place. Perhaps I listened because it was the same nudge of connection I felt listening to Frederic’s remarks today. Perhaps it was the early stirrings of that little inner voice that has led me to this day. The voice that led me from the encounter with police in a gay bar raid in ’69. For that matter the one two years earlier that led me to take off from college and travel to the west coast and land in San Francisco and see for myself that I was not the only gay person in the world. I also had been writing reflectively since age ten or so perhaps, trying to find my way through the darkness. Oh how that saved me, shining a tiny ray of light in a sea of darkness.

Then there was Jen’s message. Oh Jen if you could only know how your message resonated within my heart. For me, death was virtually impossible to ignore. As a very young child my grandfather on my Mom’s side died. He lived in the back woods in Arkansas. When we arrived, his body was laid out on the kitchen table. He had not been embalmed yet. We slept in the adjoining living room on floor pallets, the light shining on his dead body even as it periodically twitched. Before embalming, those movements are not uncommon, even after death. Also there were the coins in his eyes. I was maybe five at the time, and that was fodder for nightmares for years after that. ::chuckling:: I used to dream repeatedly that Jesus was chasing me in my dreams and that if he caught me, I’d be dead.

Then at age 10 thereabouts, my other Grandpa came down with brain cancer. There was a tradition in those days, and each family member, first the parents, followed by the grandkids, entering individually for a formal last talk. It’s then the one who is dying imparts a final message of wisdom. I remember that conversation so well, then days later he died. My cousin Sandie and I had been downstairs at the snack area in the Dallas hospital. We heard two young doctors talking about a death and a coming autopsy. They seemed quite excited about it. We realized they were talking about our grandpa and cousin Sandie screamed and sobbed uncontrollably. Later he went to the funeral home, and per tradition, we took our turns, even the kids, sitting with the departed. The body was not left alone until time for the funeral.

It wasn’t over yet. My uncle died in a car wreck in ’67, then two weeks later my aunt died. Exhausted, I was caring for other family hurt in the car wreck, then off to Arkansas for another funeral, and then two weeks later, my dad died from a heart attack. We’d fought just a week before and I returned to Dallas to care for family. He called once, but Dad could not say he was sorry and I was quite stubborn myself, then I get the call and he was gone. You know, I had a tremor that lasted for the next two decades, until I finally set down and made peace with him in my heart. Then all sorts of wonderful things happened.

The eighties were not any better. So many friends passed on from AIDS in the eighties, people I’d grown to know and love. I’d moved to Houston where I could be more like me. I kept count for a while, but then I lost count and just quit. Memorial services and funeral parades in my world, even as the outside world simply seemed to wish we would go ahead and die off. I call this my radicalization years. Then in “88 my Mom died after contracting lung cancer. Starting in ’84, we had made our peace and got to have an adult to adult relationship and I love so much that happened. We talked together right up to the last day of her life. It was some of the most intense living one can do.

Then came ’97, my year of the dark night.. My partner, the love of my life, the man who taught me how to truly love, became ill from viral encephalitis. I cannot sufficiently share the depth of our love. I’d lost family to transphobia for I’d transitioned, was barely holding onto my job, and then this happened. He was in coma for a few weeks and then passed over, literally dying in my arms. Then a couple of weeks later, my friend and I are talking, ready to walk street patrol against bashers in our gay neighborhood, and suddenly she drops to the floor, and dies in my arms as well. I felt the life go out of her body. I sat on the stairs as the paramedics tried and failed to resuscitate her, rocking back and forth sobbing quietly. I’ve never been so lost. Oh what blessing for beloved community, people slipping into my life holding me aloft as I healed.

So, after all this darkness, there is light to be found. I stand here as testimony to that reality! When people speak of talking to their ancestors, it’s always been very real for me. Their voices whisper in my ear. Long after he passed away, my father would enter my dreams. You know, as adults, there are still times to hear good fatherly or motherly advice. In the dreams, it was as if he and later they were always alive, and we had he most wonderful talks and I’d hear the answers and ask the questions I needed to go on.

No, I’m not a Spiritualist. My wife is and I respect her journey, but it isn’t mine. I can’t tell you if they truly are my ancestors who speak to me, or my own subconscious actively at work to help me stay centered. See it really doesn’t matter. There are voices beyond me who help me find the way forward, assuring voices, voices that protect. I remember a police officer trained our work group after a brutal crime took place in our premises. He spoke of that gut nudge. Whatever it is, I treasure that little voice inside. That same voice makes itself visible in my dream life and speaks to me with such clarity as to be real. I still see Skip in his real form, smelling his scents and feeling his presence and my beloved Robin who is still very much alive stands alongside, providing a continuity of love and compassion/passion. It’s warned me how to avoid moments of danger well before consciousness revealed the same. Once I was surrounded by bashers and my life seriously in danger in my inner city Houston neighborhood, but there was the voice, leading me out of harm’s way. I do not have to know where it comes from to understand its value in my life journey. Speaking of it in term of my ancestors resonates, even as it has with people worldwide for thousands of years. I treasure my ancestors, past and in the relatively more recent times. Embracing the realities of all the passages in our lives I think really do make us more complete as people of compassion, as beloved community.

So thank you Frederic, and Jen for speaking today to my heart. Jen, I love the idea of an ancestors’ garden for our church hope that when in the not too distant future I pass on, my ashes will find a place there. The music by Ghost Revival was awesome as well. I’ve also spent time at Lakewood, and sat on the hillside at James Tuttle’s grave looking out over the lake below. For those in our church not familiar, he was a charismatic pastor of our church for the last half of the 19th century. He came from Rochester where he knew Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony, and brought the breath of the liberal spirit to our First Universalist congregation. Nearby was the gravesite for Charles Loring, another church member and the founder of our amazing park system. Somehow it was fitting and special to be bringing in new members of the church family on the day we spoke of our ancestors as well. Thanks to Elaine and all of those who now are part of our beloved circle. It was a very special day for this soul, and I and the ancestors thank you for it!

A World at War and the Search for Peace

All about us we see, a world at war. Oh not massive armies in combat. Skirmishes, terrorist attacks, civil wars. Displaced persons become the other. We have at seemingly unprecedented levels found ways to divide ourselves against one another.

I cry for the people killed in Paris, in Beirut, in Kenya, in Ukraine, in Somalia, the list goes on and on. Yesterday the pastor (Elaine Tenbrink) at my church spoke to this. She related a story she heard of a young Palestinian girl, out after curfew when two IDF soldiers approached. Beneath the car she hid shaking. But then she did a remarkable thing. She began to focus on how those soldiers were feeling. Didn't they want to go home safe as well? In doing so, she tapped into that strand that connects us all. We all feel fear, suffer, etc. By opening ourselves to the universal humanity we share, by practicing deep empathy, there is healing.

You know, there is nothing new under the sun. Civilizations have been under crisis before, life has become insecure, and yes some of those societies have ultimately failed. We so often respond by building higher walls, employing more military, surrounding ourselves with a false sense of security. Then that sense vanishes when mass killings or destruction happen anyway. The responses out there have been interesting. Blame the Muslims. Not just these Muslims. All of them. Stop all immigration and try to contain them in the cesspools of death and destruction where they are currently fleeing. What a terribly NON HUMAN thing to do. Some decried that if only everyone in Paris had been armed then it might have been different. Some blamed Obama, because, well why not. Why did we make a major thing of it happening in Paris but not when it happened in Beirut or Kenya? Racism? Probably so, but yet another divide in a terribly fractured world. Take a map and mark every place where conflict currently exists. Yes, the world is at war, turning inward and eating it's own.

So where do we turn? For me, I try to remember the one common thread held by all world religions. Not the orthodoxy but the core message each one offers in it's own way. It's the law of compassion. Do unto others, phrased in countless ways. From our imperfection, from our struggles in this uncertain times grows empathy, and from that the capacity to see our common humanity, complete with fear, pain, and imperfection.

I hasten to add, I'm not talking about letting people off who commit such horrors. If you kill a theater filled with people, there's a price that must be paid. Justice is important. What I am saying is, don't blame it on Islam, a population well over a billion people. It's not the fault of the conservatives or the liberals or any other group that becomes easy to lump them into. A Christian blew up the Federal Building in Oklahoma City but to the blame it all on Christians is insanity. Yet I've seen that too.

Our politicians do not serve us well. They thrive on division and creating "the other." Perhaps the people will reach the point where they simply say no more. We aren't there yet. My prayer, that it happens sooner rather than later. Meanwhile, as the hymn sings, "Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me. It's not Je suis Paris or Je suis Beirut.It's Je Suis humanite'.

Say Their Names

BEAUTIFUL TRANS SOULS. SAY THEIR NAMES: THIS TRAGEDY MUST END!

new update 10-16-15

updated 10-6-15

Here they are. Say their names. Remember their lives. Trans hate speech translates to trans killings. My heart is weary, but the killing must end.

2015 TransgenderDeaths per Wikipedia

Note: Counts vary according to who is counted. I’ve chosen to include all those who are not gender conforming, while others require for their count that they have declared themselves to be transgender. I’ve copied Wikipedia’s list through Tamara Dominguez. I will add them myself going forward.

Papi Edwards of Indianapolis Indiana, and Louisville, Kentucky, died of a single bullet wound to the chest at Fern Valley Motel on January 9. Henry Richard Gleaves was arrested for Papi's murder and is being held on a $500,000 bond. The Advocate, among other media sources, originally reported that Papi Edwards identified as a gay man answering to Lamar and/or Goddess, who likely participated in drag.[38] It has since been confirmed by others close to Papi, and reported by various sources that Edwards identified as a female.

Lamia Beard of Norfolk, Virginia was found with life-threatening gunshot wounds on the morning of January 17. She was taken to the Sentara Norfolk General Hospital, where she died.

Ty Underwood of Tyler, Texas was found in her car, dead from three gunshot wounds, on January 26. Her roommate feels she may have been targeted because she was a transgender woman.

Yazmin Vash Payne of Van Nuys, California was found stabbed and burned to death in her apartment on January 31. The following day her boyfriend confessed to the murder and surrendered to police.

Taja DeJesus was stabbed to death in San Francisco, California on February 3, 2015. She was 36 years old. The man believed to have stabbed her, James Hays 49, was found dead hanging a short distance away.

Penny Proud of New Orleans, Louisiana was fatally shot multiple times on February 10.

Bri Golec of Akron, Ohio was stabbed to death by her father, Kevin Golic on February 13, 2015. Bri was 22 years old. According to a bandmate, Brian dropped the trans identifier about a year ago. He now identified as an androgynous pansexual man. His father called 911 after the stabbing claiming it was "the cult" that had broken in and stabbed Brian. The cult he referred to is believed to be a local trans support group. Police determined that no one had broken in. Kevin Golic is being charged with murder and felony domestic violence.

Kristina Gomez Reinwald of Miami, Florida, was found dead in her apartment on February 15. She was 46 years old. The case was initially considered a suicide, but news broke on February 19 that police are now treating it as homicide.

Sumaya Ysl of Toronto, Canada, was found dead on February 22. She was 26 years old.

Keyshia Blige, a 33 year old from Mongtomery, IL, was killed March 7, 2015. Blige was shot while driving and crashed while attempting to drive herself to the hospital. "Police declined to comment on the motive for the shooting, but described it as "not random.” Though she had performed for many years under the name, Blige just started transitioning in January of 2015. "Stiff's mother said, though her [child] had begun taking the hormones in January, already she noticed a new glow to [her] skin." Blige was reported as male in the news.

Vanessa Santillan, a 33 year old from Miami, Florida, was fatally beaten on the head and neck in an apartment in Fulham, London, England on March 28, after responding to a neighbor's phone call.

Mya Hall, a twenty-seven-year-old transgender sex worker from Baltimore, Maryland, was killed by police on Monday, March 30, after taking a wrong turn in a stolen SUV and crashing into a security post on the National Security Agency's campus. Police assumed that the accident was a terrorist attack and immediately opened fire on Hall and her companion, Brittany Fleming, aged twenty. Fleming survived.

London Chanel, a 21 year old, died May 18 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania after being fatally stabbed in the back and neck by Raheam Felton, who was the boyfriend of one of her roommates.

Mercedes Williamson, a 17-year-old from Alabama was killed in George County, Mississippi by Josh Vallum. Her body was found June 2 after Vallum told his father about the murder.
India Clarke, 25 years old, was found dead in a Tampa, Florida park on July 21st. She died due to blunt force trauma and her death is being investigated as a murder.

K.C. Haggard, 66 years old, stabbed in the neck from a vehicle in Fresno, California on July 23rd.

Amber Monroe, 20 years old, shot in Detroit, MI on August 8th. This was her third time being shot, but her fear of the police kept her from reporting other times.

Shade Schuler, 22 year old woman of color, found in a field in Dallas, TX on July 29th. There are no leads on the murder as Ms. Shade's body was so badly decomposed when found that it took two weeks to identify her.

Kandis Capri, 35, was shot in Phoenix, Arizona on August 11th.

Elisha Walker's body was found in a shallow grave in Johnston County, North Carolina on August 15. She had been reported missing a year before.

Jasmine Collins aged 32 of Kansas City, Mo was stabbed to death in June in a dispute. She was first labeled as male but the record has since been corrected to reflect her female trans status.

Tamara Dominguez aged 36 of Kansas City, Missouri was run over by an SUV truck multiple times on 15th August at 3am local time.

Keisha Jenkins, age 22 from Atlanta Georgia, shot twice in the back and killed on 10-6-15.

Zella Ziona Smith, age 21, shot in the head following an altercation. Gaithersburg, Md. 10-16-15.

The Flag, The School, Brown V Topeka Board of Education

It's amazing to me how sometimes the world leads to new realizations from seemingly disparate sources. In my last blog post, I wrote about how we were taught a false history, a mythology that glorified the indefensible. I talked about my former high school, Robert E. Lee and the role the Confederate Flag played in my life in those years.

So today, I watched an interesting set of interviews regarding the new novel, Go Set a Watchman, a sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird, where Scout visits her Dad as an adult. Though it was written before Mockingbird, Watchman is about the adult visiting her aging father. No longer the crusader for justice, he is filled with the segregationist fervor common in the 50's in the south. It was about the difference in how we see our father, one vision of perfection as a child but covered with warts in our own adulthood.

Amidst all this, we've seen the Confederate Flag removed from the capital in South Carolina. We've learned that the Confederate Flag wasn't really the Confederate Flag, but rather was the battle flag for the Army of Northern Virginia, Lee's army. The creator itself proclaimed the flag to be all about white supremacy. Robert E. Lee after the war asked that it be put away and not be flown, and that it was only resurrected in the 1950's in response to the Brown Vs Topeka Board of Education that ordered desegregation as a symbol of segregation and hate. It was in that environment where my high school, Robert E. Lee was opened in 1958. We had the second largest Confederate Battle Flag, second only to the flag flown at Old Miss where we played Dixie and were immersed in the mythology of a Confederate mythology that never really was.

My question is simple. How can we possibly hope to truly move forward as a people if so many cling to a mythology that really never was. It hearkens back to a day not of happy white folks with their "colored" help gathered around supporting their kind "massa," but rather a time when people in order to be controlled had to be whipped mercilessly until they were broken. Segregation and Jim Crow laws were designed to maintain second class citizenship and continued oppression. Then of course came the Civil Rights Movement. Robert E. Lee Rebels became the Red Raiders, and the flag after a protest was retired. Then we replaced Jim Crow with Racism where race need not say its name. It's Mass Incarceration, and while race is not mentioned, statistically it is proven that racism never went away. It just changed its name.

Perhaps in a world obscured by incessant obfuscation, asking for truth rather than myth is simply asking too much. I'm not ready to give up however on the idea that seeking the truth is a worthy goal. Recently I suggested a film idea, and am pitching it to folks like Spike Lee, Ken Burns, Henry Gates etc. We've had tons of documentaries focused on black people. We need to have a really well done documentary on the history of whiteness, race, and our (White People's) culpability in creating and perpetuating the system of race and privilege that remains with us today after all these years. How we tell ourselves lies to avoid the guilt and the culpability for our actions. How white fragility is little more than a copout. We need to face it once and for all so we can all move forward instead of finding endlessly new ways of oppressing others.

Finally, I'm looking forward to reading Harper Lee's new novel. Even as time opens Scout's eyes, perhaps it can work that way for the rest of us too. It's time for the old south, and the national disgrace around race be put to bed once and for all, never to rise again.

It Takes a Village

Photo of Tyler Lee Rebel Guard 1965 from my High School Yearbook


Last night John Stewart set aside his comedy to speak seriously about the deaths of nine innocents in Charleston, and about race and our failure to come to grips with the elephant in the room His video can be seen here:

https://www.facebook.com/116687955016786/videos/vb.116687955016786/1027868420565397/?type=2&theater

His words moved me to respond on my church list after viewing this. I realized I should share it to a wider blog audience. Here's what I wrote:

Let me share a piece of my own history. I grew up in Tyler, Texas. There was a confederate arms plant there during the civil war. I attended Robert E. Lee High School. We were the Tyler Lee Rebels and at our football games, one of the largest confederate flags in the nation was marched out onto the field held aloft during football games and Dixie was played by the band as we all sang along at the beginning and through the games, especially after touch downs. We also had the rebel guard, dressed in confederate uniforms who fired a cannon after every touchdown.

In American History, we spent over a semester just on the Civil War. There was a distinctly southern bias to what was taught. I used to point with pride to the ancestors who had fought for the south. Our myths were about great courage, and the great tragedy when a way of life had been destroyed by the yankee invaders. I knew people older than myself who spoke with pure hate about Sherman and his scorched earth policy. Our schools back then were segregated and our lives were segregated and I knew several in my home town who were racists and some who went on to become klan members. I graduated from high school in a hospital bed, a result of a motorcycle accident, where I remained for 3 months with my leg strung up in traction while the missing bone grew back in. At my graduation, the principal and superintendent were there as was the local press to photograph this proud young person at graduation, with a confederate flag draped across my pillow. The only black person I knew growing up was the help. Underpaid of course and she came in to clean every Saturday. She would be considered "one of the good ones." Then there was Grasshopper, who I only knew one day. He planted our lawn. I was five years old and he wove the most amazing stories for this young child, and to this day I remember him if not the stories with incredible fondness. I'm sure he's long since passed on, but his presence lives in my heart.

Here's the thing. I was lucky. I went to college and met real black people and the stereotypes began to melt away. I chose a career in public service and especially when I got to Houston, many, sometimes most of my co-workers and managers were black. I'd had an entire childhood of cultural myths to unlearn but they had no qualms about telling me how it really was. Unlike Minnesota, folks there can be pretty direct. But heres my point. This guy committed these murders in South Carolina, but he did not act alone even if he was not affiliated with any group. The phrase "it takes a village" resonates with me on this. There was family, friends, the community who nurtured the mythology of a dying culture stolen from them. A belief of the immoral black villains raping their women and resting control of their perceived image of white superiority and control. It's Lyndsay Graham hastily portraying the killer as some kind of crazy person and not like the rest of them other white people. Nikki Haley says the flag remains because she hasn't had any complaints from corporations. Seriously? A comment probably true in her world as those are her bosses, but really? Never mind the really large population of Black South Carolinians who've been gerrymandered out of representation. It's two politicians defending that flag, the very symbol of white supremacy coached in the very same terms that existed when I was a young person attending Tyler Lee. Lots of winking and nodding, code to conceal a very real racism and a commitment to maintain white supremacy. We've had a civil rights movement in the fifties and sixties, yet despite all that, we really haven't moved forward far at all.

Today I read the guy who did this heinous deed said he almost didn't go through with it. Those folks had been so nice to him he said. Here he had confronted real compassion and real love. But the messages, the mythology of his own being trumped reality. So now there are nine dead. He will go to prison. He's going to find other white supremacists there and they will commiserate together. Meanwhile, the community continues to hide from the truth, and perpetuate the myth of racial superiority. Until we change the community, this will be but one in a string of the attacks on the innocents stretching well over 400 years/ It does take a village. But one filled with compassion, not racist bulls**t.

One last thought. The confederacy was about traitors, not heroes. Their symbol of the flag was a symbol of treason. Time to quit pretending otherwise. I've spent a lifetime undoing my own damage. But I'm just one. This time compassion did not succeed. But in the long term I think it will. Regardless, it's a far better mythology than the one being perpetuated.May the healing begin.

Reflections on Terror in Charleston

Ironically, day before yesterday my wife and I were having a conversation. I was thinking about the huge increase in militias, hate groups plus the increased rhetoric around hate, racism and the absurd denial by politicians who don't even recognize the racism that surrounds us every day. With a sigh, I told her that we were not dealing with it now, and things could get a lot worse if we don't.

The very next day, I hear of the terror attack in Charleston. I'd love to say I was surprised. But I wasn't. Saddened, yes. Angry? That also. But how could I be surprised in a climate of hate that surrounds us each day? A world where police continue to gun down unarmed citizens and target black and brown people as if they were somehow inherently evil by virtue of the color of their skin. A world where educational priorities go to affluent white neighborhoods at the expense of those without resources. A world where prisons operate for profit and there is an incentive to arrest and incarcerate. A world where preschool and early elementary kids are expelled from school because of the incompetence of their teachers.

Two news broadcasts stand out in my mind. One I didn't see but heard about. Fox News who as a matter of policy denies that racism even exists, decrying the very idea this was a racist attack or a hate crime. In their fantastical world that is not possible. I listened to a broadcast on so called liberal MSNBC where it was noted this was the worst mass killing in South Carolina's history. Um I suppose if you ignore the lynchings, the state sanctioned killing of 33 black folks involved in a slave revolt, mostly from this very church. Everyone acts as if this were a singular event. I suppose that's essential if you're trying to preserve the myth of white supremacy. But reality, yeah I know, uncommon these days, demands that one acknowledge the open racism, the blatant attempts by politicians to exploit that divide for their own benefit, the ongoing attacks on black and brown people around the country by a whole bevy of so called "lone wolves." Privilege demands I think, that we ignore the real role we as white people are playing in this ongoing slaughter.

Here's truth however. The population of white vs non white Americans is changing and whites are moving towards what will be a clear minority. If we persist in this evil that grants us privilege over others, and allows us to label each perpetrator of these heinous crimes as a lone wolf, a disturbed individual, but not part of a larger event, the anger of a people thus denied justice or fairness can only grow. If we scream bloody murder about a small group of New Black Panthers carrying arms while militias and white gun freaks tote their weapons openly and with abandon, that anger will grow. White people, the choice is ours to make. Confront our own racism, our own privilege and work towards healing of our humanity of which we all are a part, or sit about complacent in our advantages and face a bloody resurrection sometime in the future that will truly hurt us all. Those of us who are white must raise our heads out of the sand and confront our own evil. We must work together to end these killings by a succession of terrorists that seem to have no end. I chose the photo of the Edmond Pettus Bridge. Because the struggles of the early slaves and freedmen in America, of the Civil War, of Jim Crow laws the divide, and of Mass Incarceration that serves the wealthy seeking low wage workers are all part of one struggle.

I look at the history of this church. Good people, prayerful people, people committed to justice and fairness. The wrong people lost their lives. My prayers join that of many others for them, for their families, and for their community. My prayer also is that this will serve as an awakening within white people everywhere. We must actively join our black and brown brothers and sisters and and strike a death blow to that evil we call racism. If we can construct racism, we can take it apart. But it's going to take all of us. Listen to the black people you know. Here there stories and embrace them We've listened to our own lies for generations. Now it is time to hear their truth and to be moved by it. This killing was NOT an isolated event. It's part of an ongoing national history, a part of an ongoing national shame, and it's got to end, sooner rather than later. We need to confront media when it gets it wrong. We need to openly advocate regardless if it costs us friends. The killing and injustice must end.

May it be so.