Saturday, March 2, 2013

Time To Speak Honestly

At some point, you have to stop being polite and speaking in collaborative terms and tell it like it is.

The Sequester is here, happening, and simply because a bunch of rich, old, white, conservative men hate answering to the black President, the one who came up through the social reforms that enabled many previously poor people to step into the middle class, and like the President, the upper income class.  The Sequester is white male resentment being played out on the public stage.  It is a manufactured crisis and they refuse to compromise, the very ones who redistricted themselves into a majority in the congress, the ones who insist on a super majority.

I once told my many white friends, back in 2007, that it is about to get very ugly in America and they had some power to make a change, simply by speaking up the way many black, Latino, and liberal minded people have for decades, for the past 30+  years.

Why are the American people being pushed aside?

The rich white Koch brothers have wanted to eliminate the middle class as have the entire `1% for over thirty years.  This is the reason they fought against public sector unions and teachers unions because these were the primary avenue where black and Latino people stepped into the middle class, being members of the Teamsters that were more inclusive than the craft unions, working in state and federal government jobs, they were able to step off the Jim Crow farms and out of the kitchens of their rich white wives.  This is what they have wanted to destroy.

But the hit will not be to black people because black people took the hit during the economic crisis that dates back to Reagan.  The housing impact was felt more on black people - Detroit is gone - and the unemployment crisis was felt on black people - even as the economy recovers and there were more hiring, it wasn't black people being hired, educational impact is felt on black people's backs - St. Louis alone is closing more schools in primarily black areas.

They, the ruling class, have always wanted America to be the United States of Britain and to have a aristocracy - why else are they so enamored with the goings on of Prince William and his pregnant princess, why is Downtown Abbey so well viewed? The first ones to come here from Europe were the working classes of England and in their greedy incompetence (knowing nothing of how to grow anything), they took over indigeneous lands.  Then for centuries they have "otherized" anyone of color from the Native Americans, to the blacks as slave or marginalized free people, to the immigrant negativity against mostly Mexican Americans.  The sins of the country are here for all to see.

Justice Scalilia called Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act a "racial entitlement" and we who lived on the other side of the Civil Rights Movement are scratching our heads like what is wrong with this man?

$48M loss in educating funding in Pennsylvania because of the Sequester, a "manufactured crisis" will be rippled across the country.  Even as I am a candidate of my local school board, I am sitting here thinking what in the world will be we do with $1.3 BILLION AND $1 BILLION in special education cuts? I live in a district that is not as racially diverse as I'd like but is a welcoming magnet for special needs families, all our schools have Austim-spectrum and Asberger's kids mainstreamed into all the classes, taking orchestra classes just the same as my daughter.  How will we handle this>?

It is like we were already reducing the nation's debt and then this manufactured crisis of a bunch of the white boy fraternity members of congress led by the chapter president, Boehner and McConnell, are being given a pass while they still get to keep their money, their paychecks, their wives are sitting pretty.

They created a crisis.

They want these across-the-board budget cuts, man-made disaster  self-inflicted wound, to become law because they do not want the least among us to have anything. The Senate Chaplain prayed "save us from ourselves" and it is a tiny, tiny group that made this mess worse.

They are slapping the country in the face because we chose, as a nation, to elect President Obama, to elect a sensible Senate, and actually congress, except for redistricting.

It is time to stop speaking politely and take the gloves off, to stare this bully in the face and tell them STOP. You may have hit us, the nation, with a sucker punch and we may have to eat more ramen noodles (thank you Monsanto for all the GMOs), but we will stand back up and we will not forget.

 There are more white people that will be hurt by this sequester and I believe, I hope, that more of them will finally find their voice and speak out against the ones who have destroyed the many because of their hatred of the few.

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