earthweal weekly challenge: PROTEST IN A TIME OF PANDEMIC Posted on
". . . Take your pick. Unfurl your banner. Tell us about what keeps you
awake at night, what worries you most, what you feel needs to change.
What is happening in your part of the world that concerns or appalls
you? Give us your outrage or, if you can muster it, give us some hope,
and a direction to head in.
"Valerie Kaur has said this time can be viewed “not as the darkness of
the tomb, but the darkness of the womb”; that we can emerge from this
time of transition transformed, and begin to live on Mother Earth as one
part of creation, rather than the unthinking, dominant species we have
been. We live in hope.
Another police shooting of black victims kept me awake last night, this time without guns. A knee on the neck of a handcuffed suspect cut off the air. "I can't breathe," the condemned man croaked out again and again as he lay there dying. Not Corona Virus--no pandemic--could keep the protest in check this time. Police took out tear gas and rubber bullets when a small portion of the protesters began defacing police property, breaking windows, graffiti-ing cars.
If I ever thought restricting weapons would cut back on hatred and violence--no--it would cut back on immediate violence that prefers to keep its distance. We have to pull out the roots of smug superiority and entitled competition for resources where they are born--in greed and fear. There is enough for all. If there are bad places to live--and there are--we must divide up those places proportionately so no one class or color gets the brunt of pollutants, floods, crowding, and disease. Who would enforce this? I fear the change to fairness will be brutal, but I am ready for a different kind of brutality.
Even if I am displaced from the very little privilege I carved out for myself, I am ready. Let there be reversals, let the pendulum swing to the other extreme. When unhealthy conditions surround those normally protected from them, people with power will do something about it. Selfishness can be used strategically.
And now 68 minutes pre-launch of Falcon 9 and Dragon, a flight test called the Space-X test, commercial space travel in cooperation with NASA for a trip to the space station. Here's a change of focus from the protests trying to prove that Black lives matter. Two astronauts are going, two highly-qualified white men, both Americans. There is not a hint of racism here despite what's happening elsewhere in the USA.
This is the first manned space flight from the USA in 9 years. Demo One already proved that this Dragon vehicle can dock and return. The addition is human. The addition is all eyes watching. I wonder if citizens of other countries are watching too. Our President flew over the launch pad an hour ago. He's supposed to be present for this historic launch. I pray he doesn't spoil it by smearing it with tweets.
This reminds me of one of my few published poems:
Your challenge: Bring us your protest poem. Let’s join our voices in this forum to speak of all that is wrong or, conversely, all that we can make right.
I look forward to reading your words.
— Sherry
If I ever thought restricting weapons would cut back on hatred and violence--no--it would cut back on immediate violence that prefers to keep its distance. We have to pull out the roots of smug superiority and entitled competition for resources where they are born--in greed and fear. There is enough for all. If there are bad places to live--and there are--we must divide up those places proportionately so no one class or color gets the brunt of pollutants, floods, crowding, and disease. Who would enforce this? I fear the change to fairness will be brutal, but I am ready for a different kind of brutality.
Even if I am displaced from the very little privilege I carved out for myself, I am ready. Let there be reversals, let the pendulum swing to the other extreme. When unhealthy conditions surround those normally protected from them, people with power will do something about it. Selfishness can be used strategically.
And now 68 minutes pre-launch of Falcon 9 and Dragon, a flight test called the Space-X test, commercial space travel in cooperation with NASA for a trip to the space station. Here's a change of focus from the protests trying to prove that Black lives matter. Two astronauts are going, two highly-qualified white men, both Americans. There is not a hint of racism here despite what's happening elsewhere in the USA.
This is the first manned space flight from the USA in 9 years. Demo One already proved that this Dragon vehicle can dock and return. The addition is human. The addition is all eyes watching. I wonder if citizens of other countries are watching too. Our President flew over the launch pad an hour ago. He's supposed to be present for this historic launch. I pray he doesn't spoil it by smearing it with tweets.
This reminds me of one of my few published poems:
Big Earth Ball (the 2017 version)
Lawn party for the March 1970 solar eclipse, me
sitting on a blanket in an army jacket and long skirt,
embroidering inserts to bell jeans and holding thick
negatives for the sun show when . . .
“Uncle John’s Band” plays from dorm windows lining
the quad and both the stoned and the merely happy
rise in swooping dance, eyes closed, inner harmony . . .We needed a break from anti-war demonstration,the Black platform and certainty of right and wrong.Clarity grew from confusion, a sharp diamond setin too much all at once . . .“Say it, A Ball of Confusion” “The first days arethe hardest days, don’t you worry anymore . . . “The disco ball had not yet turned, rock ruled ~Temptation to “Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out”was hard to resist: I cut all my classes that spring,started smoking, played hours of duplicate bridgein the Student Union . . .parted my long hair straight, wore wire-rimmedglasses, carried Sartre’s Being and Nothingnessin my pocket, took on Nausea and avoided the gazeof those who just didn’t get it: We walk in space.We build things to destroy people and we walk in space.We walk and look up at the sun, see its angry glare . . .Who cares if we go blind?Sight from blindness grows as clarity from confusion“You know all the rules by now and the fire from ice”Darkness rises as the moon bites into the sun.
"Big
Earth Ball" is about the March 7, 1970 Solar Eclipse. I was a freshman at
Clark U in Worcester, MA. Here's what I recall:
1970 was the year "Uncle John's Band" appeared on the Grateful Dead's 4th studio album "Workingman's Dead," and the year the Temptations recorded the hit single "Ball of Confusion (That's What the World Is Today)." Both songs helped shape my take on world, sun, and moon on that grey day. "Turn on, tune in, drop out" is a 1967 quote from either Dr. Timothy Leary or Marshall McLuhan to popularize a psychedelic counter-culture (of which I was not a part). On 21 July 1969, the Apollo 11 moon landing with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin was televised live, and we heard Armstrong say his famous words "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." I watched in a little bar near the Hunter Mountain ski resorts where I was during the 1969 Woodstock Festival (but that is another story). !970 was the year the Vietnam draft lottery began and set male students on edge. Protest against the US involvement in Vietnam and its undeclared war there had escalated since 1964 and was particularly heated by 1970. It was one year after Black student protests took over the campus, and finally gained them some scholarships and courses. On May 4th, 1970 ~ 2 months after the solar eclipse of my poem ~ the U.S. National Guard killed four young people during a demonstration on the Kent State campus in Ohio. "As a result four million students go on strike at more than 450 universities and colleges" (Wikipedia).
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© 2020 Susan L. Chast
