A Little Solidarity

Colin Kaepernick is no longer playing in the NFL because wealthy team owners decided collectively to silence his protest. Merrick Garland remains on the DC Circuit Court because millions of Republicans, who can't stand Donald Trump, voted for him anyway to get tax cuts and more conservative federal judges.

A little solidarity goes a long way.

The federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour, unchanged since 2009, largely because middle-class folks won't fight for low-wage workers. As Michelle Alexander laid out in The New Jim Crow, one of the reasons mass incarceration became national policy is because leaders of legacy civil rights groups were focused on issues that impacted their children, like affirmative action in college admissions. Police killings continue unabated, at over 1000 per year, because polite white folks don't think it's their problem.

A little solidarity goes a long way.

I tend to avoid Wiemar Germany comparisons, but if you want to sell to me that we're living through pre-Franco Madrid or pre-Mussolini Rome, you'll have my attention. What is happening today is not normal. Separating kids from their parents as a form of political brinkmanship is not normal. Revoking citizenship from naturalized citizens is not normal. Equivocating between violent white-supremacists and the people who rally to oppose them is not normal. Ethnic paramilitary forces euphemistically calling themselves “Western chauvinists” and holding rallies is not normal. We can't become numb to it.

Earlier this week, my dude James Ford shared a video of Latinx factory workers walking off the job en masse in support of two colleagues. They shut their entire factory down because they were united, in solidarity. I often think about the Spanish Civil War. When Franco rose to power, he did so largely because the political left in Spain was divided over how to oppose him, until it was too late.

The aforementioned video, there’s some NSFW language here, just warning you

It's easy for us to get tunnel vision around our own issues. It would frankly be easier for me to stick to class size, teacher salaries, and school funding. But now more than ever, people who desire a more just and equitable society must show solidarity. I'm not a Marxist, but I speak the language. Capital and power seek to distract and divide us, but we're often too willing to do that work for them. Our lives are all improved by the contributions of immigrants to the cultural milieu. We were all birthed by mothers who deserve equal rights, pay, and treatment. We're all threatened when law enforcement operates unchecked in our communities. We're all harmed when the LGBTQ+ population has their humanity questioned or lives threatened. We're all worse off when Black lives don't matter. But, none of these struggles is more important than the other.

A little solidarity goes a long way.

I Don’t Fear White Supremacists, I Fear Liberal Indifference

Early in my student-teaching, I had a theory. When students behaved poorly, I ignored them, hoping they'd realize the folly of their ways and modify their behavior. If you've taught for more than a week, you know how this worked out. Lesson learned: if someone lets a homophobic, racist, anti-trans, etc. slur rip in class, your immediate response communicates your values and expectations. Your first response to someone saying “that’s so gay” will dictate whether there’s ever a second time.

It’s no different in everyday life.

American liberals are currently engaging in the same faulty reasoning regarding white-supremacist and neo-confederate activity. Throughout the post-civil rights era, white supremacists lingered on the fringes of the political right. However, through YouTube self-radicalization, internet communities like StormFront, and the wink-wink nature of the president’s response to their support of him, they’re moving from the fringes toward the mainstream of the American right:

• Neo-Nazi Arthur Jones secured the GOP nomination for Illinois’ third congressional district.
• Radio talk show host Diane Rehm gave Jared Taylor a platform for his “racial realism” on hundreds of NPR affiliates.
• White nationalist Stephen Miller currently serves as a speechwriter and Trump’s main advisor on immigration issues in the Whitehouse.

The “if it triggers the libs, then it’s good with me” ethos that Trumpsim has brought to the American right has brought white-nationalists figures out of the shadows. They’re leveraging our political tribalism to gain a foothold in conservative media and online spaces.

Meanwhile, the preferred liberal approach “the best way to fight white supremacists is to ignore them” has proved ineffective. This is certainly the easiest path for (seemingly) unaffected white liberals but is also incredibly dangerous for my students and our democracy. When you ignore white supremacists, they “hear” your silence as indifference--if not a tacit endorsement. We saw this with David Duke’s near-orgasmic comments after the president failed fully to condemn the events in Charlottesville.  

The danger is real and I’m convinced the liberal weapons of choice: satire and longform essays, are insufficient to combat the 15-24 year old, YouTube self-radicalized, alt-right/Nazi horde about to break into the political mainstream. We need a new playbook and it has to include white liberals taking a risk and confronting white supremacists.

I recently saw this unfold in my own community. In February, a local group of activists identified a group of Neo-Nazis living and operating a tattoo parlor in East Tacoma. Dozens of people shared the piece on social media, but the collective response was muted. The Nazis in question felt no pushback once their presence became public knowledge, so in the spring they began flying a Confederate, German flag, and a Viking Raven flag in the neighborhood. Members of the community began putting pressure on them: letters, phone calls, several “this is not okay in our community” in-person conversations, and the Neo-Nazis wrapped themselves in "patriotism" instead, replacing those flags with US flags and bunting.

This may seem trivial, but the lesson is clear: ignoring them was a signal that their conduct was acceptable. So they escalated. But, the community collectively saying “we will not tolerate this behavior” provoked a change.

Ignoring white supremacists is a tacit endorsement of their ideas and presence. Collective condemnation and confrontation send them scurrying. Bigotry and courage usually don’t coexist. Dear reader (especially teachers), it may go against your non-confrontational nature but it’s a must. Look, I have tough skin. Up until Twitter made such activity an account revoking offense, I got called a "nigger" online basically weekly for my various posts. Y'all, it shouldn’t be left to people of color to police white supremacists. Neo-Nazis may not seem like a threat to you, but they are a threat to your students, their families, and our communities.

Their plan is simple. They seek to normalize their presence and then their activities and beliefs. Ignoring them grants an air of legitimacy.

We mustn't allow that. We can’t.

Our Rightward March into Oblivion on Guns

I’m a gun owner. I bought my first gun in 2011, when I became a homeowner, after reading about one-too-many black folks being mistaken for burglars and killed by police in their own homes. I own a 12-gauge shotgun and a .40 S&W carbine. I enjoy going to the range and going away for my semi-annual dude trip, where we go trap and target shooting. Obviously, I’m not a gun abolitionist, but I think our current gun policy conversation borders on the preposterous.

NRA Spokesman Wayne LaPierre’s “the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun, is a good guy with a gun” might be the dumbest piece of propagandistic claptrappery to penetrate common parlance in my lifetime and is one of the clearest indicators of the drift into absurdity of the US gun debate.  

Like most Americans, I’ve watched in horror, the recent spate of mass shootings. Pulse Nightclub in Orlando: 49 dead, 58 wounded; the Route 91 Festival in Las Vegas: 58 dead, 851(!) injured; Stoneman Douglas HS in Florida: 17 dead, 14 of them children. Sadly and predictably, there will be more.    

This is a uniquely American problem. We are an outlier. We choose to let this happen.

A contributing factor to our current situation is the insular nature of American politics. Too few Americans travel abroad, consume international news, or have friends who live abroad. We don’t understand how preposterous and atypical our levels of gun violence are. We are literally the only developed nation where people are murdered with regularity using weapons of war. We are literally the only developed nation where the open carrying of guns is viewed as acceptable behavior. We are literally the only developed country in the world where the idea of arming teachers is being treated as a serious policy proposal (it isn't).  

One of my colleagues, Ms. Bockus, does a lesson in her AP Language class about the syntax of the Second Amendment (quoted in full for those unfamiliar): “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” It is a complex sentence: several subordinate clauses and one independent. Certain folks in the gun debate focus on the “shall not be infringed” clause, while conveniently disregarding the “well regulated” portion of the Amendment. But, under any reasonable reading of the entire amendment it is clear: Americans have a right to bear arms and the government has the right to put reasonable limits on said right.  

But, reasonable policies that were passed on a bipartisan basis a generation ago are somehow considered radioactive in our modern politics:

• In 1967, under the leadership of Governor Ronald Reagan, California passed the Mulford Act, banning open carrying of firearms in the state

• In 1994, in a bipartisan vote, Congress banned the sale of new assault weapons. This ten year ban was allowed to sunset by Congressional Republicans in 2004

• In 1999, following the shooting in Columbine, Wayne LaPierre came out in support of gun free zones in schools stating, "We believe in absolutely gun-free, zero-tolerance, totally safe schools. That means no guns in America’s schools. Period."

Our current gun policy debate, with the president proposing the arming of teachers, is a fundamental departure from common sense and historical trends and precedents. This is a recipe for more mass shootings. More extensive background checks, red flag laws, magazine capacity limits, and an assault weapons ban (grandfathering-in existing weapons) are examples of sensible policies that can save lives and make more sense than arming teachers.

We need to learn lessons from abroad and locales with lower rates of gun violence. We need our politicians to show courage in the face of the gun lobby. We need reasonable gun owners to speak out for sensible policy.  None of this is Earth-shattering, but it requires putting aside pride and getting out our political bubbles. The mass shootings are becoming more lethal; five of the ten most deadly US mass shootings have occurred since 2015. Our children deserve better than to inherit a broke, hyper-violent, dystopian Wild West. We can do better.