Welcome to part two of a pictorial essay highlighting Oakland, California’s colorful, artistic reminder of America’s struggle for social justice and in particular the events of the past few weeks (Click here to see part I). The many murals that have appeared almost magically on walls and sheets of plywood are not just presentations of recent events, they are an artistic voice that reminds residents and visitors of a too long struggle.
These murals are memorials to innocent lives taken; names that if not for our national shame we might never know. All that these men and women wanted was to live normal lives, be ordinary people, have families and not end up immortalized on sheets of plywood because they died for our sin.
“No matter how big a nation is, it is no stronger than its weakest people, and as long as you keep a person down, some part of you has to be down there to hold him down, so it means you cannot soar as you might otherwise.” ~ Marian Anderson, American singer (February 27, 1897 – April 8, 1993). Continue reading
For days following the killing of George Floyd, the city of Oakland was in flames, if not literally then figuratively. Peaceful protests turned into confrontation which turned into violence leaving the city littered with tear gas canisters, rubber bullets and broken glass. As calm returned and peaceful protest prevailed, the city took a moment, a moment to catch its breath, to begin to clean up and to speak out in a loud and stunning artistic voice for justice.
Many of Oakland’s downtown businesses put up sheets of plywood to cover smashed windows or to prevent any possible damage during future demonstrations. As a part of the cleanup, as a part of taking that deep breath, artists saw an opportunity to turn sheets of wood into canvases on which to paint works of art honoring those who have died due to racial injustice and to honor the Black Lives Matter movement.
“I wish I could say that racism and prejudice were only distant memories. We must dissent from the indifference. We must dissent from the apathy. We must dissent from the fear, the hatred and the mistrust…We must dissent because America can do better, because America has no choice but to do better.” ~ Thurgood Marshall, Associate Justice, United States Supreme Court excerpt from his speech upon acceptance of the Liberty Medal.
Justice Marshall (the first black Supreme Court Justice) delivered his “America can do better,” admonishment on July 4th,1992 just two months after America erupted in protests and riots following the jury acquittal of four Los Angeles Police officers accused of beating Rodney King. Twenty-eight years later the world witnessed the police killing of George Floyd and once again America has erupted and rightly so. In recent days we have in fact seen a worldwide eruption against injustice against blacks that has gone on for 400 years in America. 400 years. That’s a long damn time to pass without being able to solve a problem.
George Floyd’s murder was just the latest in a shameful litany of violence against blacks perpetrated by law enforcement, vigilantes, hate groups or by individuals fueled by just plain venom.
“America has no choice but to do better,” said Marshall. He was wrong. There’s always a choice. It just isn’t always the right one.
“America has a race problem.” How many times during your lifetime, however long that may be, have you heard that spoken? After 66 years I couldn’t begin to count.
America has had a race problem since before it’s founding. Upon the founding of their new nation, the so-called “fathers” had a chance to start a new country with a clean slate. Instead they baked racism into the cake. Justice Marshall addressed the constitutional inequities in 1987 when the nation was celebrating the bi-centennial of the U.S. Constitution. In a controversial speech Marshall said of the Constitution’s framers that he did not find their sense of justice, “particularly profound.”
He went on to say that the government they devised was defective from the start, requiring several amendments, a civil war, and momentous social transformation to attain the system of constitutional government, and its respect for the individual freedoms and human rights, we hold as fundamental today. When contemporary Americans cite “The Constitution,” they invoke a concept that is vastly different from what the Framers barely began to construct two centuries ago. “…we need look no further than the first three words of the document’s preamble: ‘We the People.” When the Founding Fathers used this phrase in 1787, they did not have in mind the majority of America’s citizens. “We the People” included, in the words of the Framers, “the whole Number of free Persons.” Two hundred and thirty three years later it is STILL defective. It it wasn’t defective, if it was running smoothly, we wouldn’t be having the same conversation after another police stop gone bad, a beating, harassment, or a killing.
Marshall’s speech was not universally well received. After all it was a rebuke of the founders. It went counter to the perception of the founding fathers as sort of folk heroes and it was delivered during the middle of the Ronald Reagan Presidency, a time when America’s general perception of itself could be found in a Norman Rockwell painting. How would Marshall’s speech be received 33 years later in 2020? Times have changed for certain but much of America still wants to view the nation through the brush of Norman Rockwell. Continue reading
Mid-May is past and we’re plunging right into the heart of summer, that time when a schoolboy’s thoughts, in this case grandson Jackson, turns to summer vacation. He hasn’t seen the inside of a classroom in a little over two months but he’s still looking forward to the end of the Zoom Meetings; 45 minutes of online learning that’s supposed to supplant 6 hours at the school.
In one respect I can hardly blame Jack’s eagerness for the end of the meetings. I’ve been accused of complaining about retirement but I can say with surety that one thing that I don’t miss is meetings; virtual or in the confines of a conference room. There is no greater time suck known to man than a meeting and there’s hardly a greater sense of loss than that realized over the hours and hours expended over hooey; hours that you’ll never, ever get back. Do I warn Jack that his Zoom meetings might be a portal into his future or do I let him enjoy his childhood in ignorant bliss?
And since we’re on the subject, “I discovered that I hate working with idiots, especially when I’m working alone at home in isolation.” ~ Anthony T Hincks, Author
I did express concern to my daughter over the abbreviated online class time. Granted 6 hours at the school doesn’t translate to 6 hours of actual schooling; take out recesses, lunch, getting a classroom of 30 or so kids under control and that eliminates a fair amount of learning. Jessica has monitored a couple of these Zoom sessions and has seen the live classroom as well. She offered that, given some of the unruly characters in Jackson’s class it isn’t easy to get that group focussed in person let alone online. Apparently there’s a lot of assigned work outside of the online sessions. Continue reading
It was called Decoration Day when I was a child. When first coined, the name reflected the day’s original purpose as stated by General John A. Logan, who led an organization for Northern Civil War Veterans. “The 30th of May, 1868, is designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers, or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village and hamlet churchyard in the land.”
This week’s Lens-Artist Photo Challenge comes from Ann-Christine who suggests that we find images with delicate colors in celebration of Spring.
While sunrise and sunset often treat the viewer to brilliant, bright and vibrant views, dawn and dusk can also deliver the softest hues.
Below are two views of nearby San Pablo Bay at sunset. In the lower photo with the railroad tracks I took a lot of editing license and went for a watercolor effect while fooling around with some Photoshop gadgetry I’d never tried before. Continue reading
“Unfortunately, we all go through bad phases.” ~ Sushmita Sen (Indian actress)
Woo hoo, it’s phase two. California’s starting to open up, an event I’m greeting with mixed emotions. On the one hand I’m glad for the small business owners and workers who’ve been holding on through a rough two months and can now start to go back to work. On the other hand I feel for the employees and business owners who just weren’t able to ride it out and now face an uncertain future. They must feel like the ones that didn’t get invited to the party; on the outside looking in.
There’s no stone cold lock that reopening is going to quickly repair a cratered economy. Not everyone is going to feel comfortable immediately poking their heads into a barber shop or dipping toes into the pedicurist’s foot bath. Still it’s a new beginning. Brand new because things aren’t going to be like they were. Do I really want to go to a restaurant with partitions between tables?
I’m looking forward to the opportunity to go places that have either been closed off by order or that I’ve chosen to avoid out of an abundance of caution. Getting together with my son and his family seems to be on the horizon. We haven’t seen them since we were at their house to watch the Super Bowl. Was that eons ago or does it just feel that way? For the time being though the rules makers have ruled out the extended family visits, or at least discouraged them which is in fact discouraging. Continue reading
The end of another shelter in place week and we’re officially two months in. This week the weather decided to turn back the clock to the beginning of our lockdown nine weeks ago, mid-March. When it hasn’t been raining this week it’s been blustery and chilly, for the Bay Area that is, a qualifier that I have to add because there are people who live in places where cold is really cold and not the mid-50’s. The rains have turned the front yard project into mud and the weekend rains aren’t going to allow for any drying.
Two things to take away from the weather. Well, three if you count my cursing the messenger, the various weather forecasters who can’t seem to get it right. One positive takeaway is that it keeps people from going to parks and beaches and the homicidal/suicidal from hitting the streets to protest, maskless and shoulder to shoulder. Continue reading
dipstick noun dip·stick | \ ˈdip-ˌstik \ Definition of dipstick 1: a graduated rod for indicating depth (as of oil in a crankcase) 2: [euphemism for dipshit] : NITWIT
Another morning, another bout of depression. This one weighs especially heavy, keeps me in bed until past seven, a good hour and a half beyond my usual rise time. It isn’t the coronavirus per se that’s causing the malaise although the virus is, as usual, the root cause. Nothing has changed between our household and COVID-19. We only do what we can; limit our trips, maintain social distance, wear our masks, wash our hands and continue in our quest to find a gallon of bleach.
But there’s a creeping, single minded hopelessness about those things that we can’t control; the protests, the suicidal/homicidal nuts who frolic on the beaches against orders, the science deniers, anti-vaxxers and the outright lunatics who assault rent-a-cops doing their subsistence pay jobs in asking shoppers to wear a mask.
But it’s the extraordinarily stupid who trouble me the most, the ones who bluster about their rights and their individual freedoms and all the while allow themselves to be led by the nose by a cadre of assorted knaves; corporate interests, politicians worried about where the next feathers for their nests will come from, a yo-yo in the White House and an ever growing cast of charlatans and rapacious aspiring apostles who manage to infiltrate youtube.
I see trees of green Red roses too I see them bloom For me and you And I think to myself What a wonderful world
It’s mid-afternoon and I’m taking Jessica to an eye appointment in Oakland. She’s certainly not “my little girl” anymore. I long ago stopped being surprised by her cogent views and the way she so forcefully and eloquently expresses them when we have serious, and sadly infrequent discussions on politics, society, culture and news. We’ve crossed into that stage of life when I’ll ask her for her counsel on the occasional life crisis. I suppose that makes sense. She’s been through more in her 33 years than I’ve been in my 66. Jessica has degrees in Political Science and International Negotiation, neither of which are directly applicable to her current job. That’s like many of us. How many fellow history degree holders do I know who are doing something besides teaching history or practicing law?
I wonder how her life might be different if she’d pursued something applicable to her education. Sometimes life pushes you, hard, in directions that you never anticipated. Now my daughter the aspiring baker dreams of having her own little shop. Politics to pastry seems like more than a fair exchange.
Like the rest of us (well, the ones who follow the rules) the COVID life has her staying home on weekends when she might normally be out and she’s filling up part of her spare time baking. It fills the house with luscious inviting smell and our bellies up with countless carbs; bulging chocolate chip cookies, cakes, cobblers, honey laden Greek desserts. Used to be that my mom would let me lick the batter bowl, now my daughter hands me the bowl and the spatula. We need to leave shelter in place ASAP. I feel pounds coming on.
During our drive she tells me about a documentary she saw about how the news is often delivered with an end game of shaping public opinion. It brings to mind Walter Cronkite and Huntley and Brinkley – dour, no nonsense and not even a hint, spoken or unspoken, of any bias. That’s not to say there was never any emotion. I remember Cronkite falling into tears when he reported on the Kennedy assassination.
We both agree that it’s often, too often, difficult to separate fact from partisan fiction. That’s unless you’re watching CNN or Fox in which case it’s an open and shut case of bias, one from the left the other from the right and there’s nothing really right about either. They aren’t supposed to be in the business of shaping public opinion or makingnews when they should simply be reporting news. Jessica tells me that she’s sick of the back and forth bickering, as sick of the “fuck Trump” stuff as she is with the “fuck Pelosi.” I have to agree although I’ve been, and probably will continue to be, guilty of the former.
We’re turning off of Highway 80 onto 580, normally a crawl but in the COVID days the traffic flows. As we cross into Oakland I tell her that it’s my belief that America is so ideologically divided that we’re far beyond the point of any rapprochement. The silos too hardened, the anger too malignant. Anyone running for office claiming that he/she will be the unifier is either lying or delusional or a mixture of both.
“It’s my opinion, and it’s frankly just recently come to me, that, not necessarily in my lifetime or yours, but at some point the United States will no longer be united. I just wonder how it’s going to divide. From a philosophical point of view California, New York and the northeast and maybe Colorado could make up one nation and let the rest fend for themselves. It just doesn’t work out geographically.”
It’s a notion that I’ve thought a lot about lately. How would it work? Would it be like the EU with open borders and a common currency and a NATO-like defense compact?Currently America is “a house divided” and we know what Lincoln said about that.
It isn’t a notion that hasn’t been explored. In 1981, journalist Joel Garreau wrote The Nine Nations of North America, which proposes a North America being divided into nine nations based on economic and cultural similarities. The problem is that the divisions would include Canada and Mexico. Do those two nations really want to adopt a petulant, child such as America?
Continue reading
The Life in My Years 