Sure, It's Never About Black And White Until It Is

Stolen from Steve Gilliard's great blog, stevegilliard.blogspot.com


Lower Manahattanite wrote this in comments



I had some time to think about this walking home last night, so here goes:

Well…I screwed up last night. I made the grievous mistake of making day three of the transit strike the day I panicked and shopped a bit too heavily for the kids’ gifts. A little Daffy’s, a touch of Old Navy and Modell’s, capped off with a whisper of Steve Madden for the daughter (poor baby’s a bit of a Bigfoot at 11) and before I knew it, I’d loaded myself down with three shopping bags of ersatz Santa leavings in addition to the slim valise I’d been carrying during the strike in lieu of my heavy computer bag.

The delicate balance had been lost. The not too bad walk to Brooklyn became a f*cking ordeal. The top of my right foot began throbbing as I neared the Manhattan Bridge. Midway, it was a hot icepick stabbing through the foot. By bridge’s end, I envied Kunta Kinté, who’d had his foot chopped off by an angry massa.

I rested just after the walkway in front of some high school or other, marshaling strength for the trudge ahead. The traffic was scream-worthy. A call to the wife to drive down to downtown Brooklyn to get me was out of the question—it was inaccessible.

So I walked some more.

Slowly though, as the pain returned. I found myself at Grand Army Plaza. I stopped to gather myself and let out a huge exhale when a car pulled up next to me, honking. It wasn’t a cab, or livery car—just a small black Honda with a mid late 20’s/early 30’s Black woman in the front seat and one in back. Did I know them?

“Goin’ to Rochester Avenue…you headin’ that way?, the squat woman in front asked.

“F*ck yes!”, I screamed in my head—which came out of my mouth as “Yup! Utica and Eastern, thanks so much!” I loaded my bags in the back next to the other woman and fell into the front seat as we pulled off for the final 2 miles or so home.

After a long, pregnant pause (and making sure I wasn’t gonna be mugged by the cast of “Set It Off II—The Reckoning”) I piped up, “I really appreciate this—you heading home from work?”

“Nah.”, she replied. “Just tryin’ to make a little extra paper goin’ between here and the bridge. You’re my last one.” After a pause, she continued, “I know I confused you with this little car an’ all, but I got m’ girl ridin’ with me—one woman in a car is kind of a target, soooo…I’m rollin’ like this. Made about two-hundred dollars tonight.” The butchy friend in the back seat gave a half-nod as if to say “We cleaned up…big time.”

“How much for my ride?”, I asked, figuring I could maybe live without the pint of blood I’d be charged along with fifty bucks.

“Eight dollars.”, she said.

Which was a f*cking steal as on non-strike days, the livery guys’d charge me ten for the same ride.
“No problem.” , I said. “I’ll give you ten.”

The ride was hurtling by now as my foot croaked out a ‘thank you”. The driver continued. “Glad it’s over, right?”

“Yes-I-am.”

“Yeah…”, she went on. “I hope the union gets some of that surplus.”

When I agreed, it was officially “on”—(she felt comfortable with me as a passenger—and my guess is she talked like this to several of her passengers to “feel ‘em out” before speaking her mind) and proceeded to lay down a rather detailed pro-union stance.

Things like, “It was nice to see them stand up to the mayor, regardless of how it turns out.”, and how “Bloomberg never expected Toussaint to defy him—that’s why he went off, calling them ‘Thugs’.” “And what the f*ck is up with “Thugs” anyway? Why go there?—You know why he went there!” “Sittin’ on a billion dollars an’ gonna lie about it—then when time comes to pay some people, it’s ‘I’m broke! I’m broke! I ain’t got nothin’!” The kicker was when she talked about her co-workers at the hospital (at this point, I noticed she was wearing nurse’s scrubs as was her silent buddy in back) on Long Island and how she’d had arguments with them about the strike. She took great pains to point out the background of these co-workers, and let me just say that…well, according to her, they were quite eh…”different” from her own.

Okay. They were suburban White folks who basically wanted Toussaint and the TWU thrown under the jail. There.

As we pulled up to Utica, she also noted how her Black co-workers came down very much on her side of the fence. Imagine that.

At any rate, it was time to get out and walk the remaining few blocks home. (Rule of thumb from daddy—“never have a stranger drop you off right in front of your house---you never know…) And after I handed the woman a ten-spot, closed the door and walked about fifty feet—it hit me.

I had, what Samuel L. Jackson called in ‘Pulp Fiction’, “a moment of clarity”.

I was looking at a poster for some Reggae jam and the club throwing it was in Brownsville. Then three words came to me.

“Ocean Hill-Brownsville”.

Ocean Hill-Brownsville—the infamous battle in ’68 where the experimental (in that it was locally controlled) Ocean Hill-Brownsville school board wound up in the hands of an elected group of Black parents who wanted a more culturally sensitive group of teachers in the district—so they ditched nine White teachers they’d had a problem with and the White-run UFT went berserk, shutting down the entire public school system three times in protest of the dismissals—bringing about a coalescence of then disparate White groups, namely the predominantly Jewish UFT and the suburban Jewish population and the White Catholics they up until that time, distrusted. The two groups came together and forced Ocean Hill-Brownsville to re-instate the teachers and forged the now-larger White right-tilting alliance that would depose the liberal Lindsay and bring in Beame and Koch to bring the dusky masses to heel.

Black folks finally get a chance to be something in this town and got smacked down for it.

As I walked, my mind flashed ahead to 1975, when due to mismanagement, the city’s finances had gone into the sh*tter and the D.C. GOP said “Drop Dead”. One of the casualties of the city’s budget crisis was the end of free admissions to the City University system. Free since the 1850’s and right through the Great Depression, the system changed all that in 1976—which affected me drastically because as one of seven kids, I knew my folks could not afford to send us all to college. So I was counting on my grades getting me into CUNY. But alas, that was not to be. Took out a huge loan for college that f*cked me financially for years. Oh yes…did I mention that the year CUNY went to a paid system, 1976--was also the year that minorities became a majority of the students? Rudy Giuliani, who loved to throw venom about not granting special rights to special interest groups got a free education via CUNY years before. Funny, that.

Black folks finally get a chance to be something in this town and got smacked down for it.



My mind was whirling now as I trudged down the hill—I thought about the Knicks team of the late 70’s—coached by Willis Reed and boasting a first for the team--an all-Black twelve man squad. I remembered how ownership complained about how attendance was down and then…the derisive nickname the team got during this time began to repeat in my head, as if chanted by a 14,00-strong Garden faithful crowd.

The New York “N*ggerbockers”. N*ggerbockers. N*ggerbockers.

Black folks finally get a chance to be something in this town and got smacked down for it.

A pattern was, shall we say…”developing”. Or rather, had developed and I was just really noticing it.

Remember when in a fit of upheaval, the New York Post wound up being run by Abe Hirschfeld in the early 80s? Remember when he appointed Wilbert Tatum as Editor? Wilbert Tatum of the Amsterdam News? Black, liberal, friend of Percy Sutton and every major Black politico in NYC, Wilbert Tatum? Remember what the staffers at the Post did the day after Tatum took charge? They went berserk, mutinied and put out a vicious, racist (for them), crazed edition of the paper full of fat gorilla caricatures of Tatum and scandalous, scurrilous headlines showing their disgust at the man who was going to be their new day-to-day boss. I remembered that as I crossed Crown Street. They forced him out after three weeks.

Black folks finally get a chance to be something in this town and got smacked down for it.

David Dinkins is elected mayor and BEFORE he can even screw up, Staten Island, the 90% White one of the five boroughs with a population of 450,000 declares it wants to secede from the city. F*cking secede. The NYPD stages a riot against Dinkins near City Hall, led by the curse-spewing loser of that mayoral election, the free CUNY educated Rudy Giuliani. The battle lines are drawn early in the disastrous Dinkins term. He would not be given a fair chance to govern unencumbered.

Black folks finally had a chance to be something in this town and got smacked down for it.

The Apollo Theater comes into focus. Let’s just say…I did some work up there for a few years and got to know the folks there pretty well. The folks at Inner City Broadcasting in particular. They ran the theater as a performance venue AND as a television and music production facility, producing two TV shows from there as well as broadcasting live, community radio from the theatre itself (inviting audiences in free). All this after the Schiffmann family who owned the place in its salad days had run the place into the ground and let it sit vacant and decaying for years. Former Boro Prez Percy Sutton got enough money to buy the Apollo and got it back to its glory, cross-pollinating it with his Inner City Broadcasting holdings. Soon, there were rumblings, rumors and leaks that the city wanted him out of the picture, and wanted that considerable media entity in the hands of someone more “responsible”—a.k.a., not challenging the city’s power structure. The rumor, and it was laughed at out of hand when Mayor Dinkins worried about it publicly, was that Time-Warner wanted the Apollo as an anchor holding for the gentrification of 125th Street. People howled at that idea—it was “tin-foil hat” stuff. But Zuckerman’s Daily News got in on it, and for years, crawled up the butt of Sutton and ICBC and the Harlem politicos who held on fast. He and his attack dog, editor Michael Goodwin, and Black hatchet people Jonathan Capehart (who would later go on to work for Bloomberg News and as an advisor to Bloomberg’s campaign—fancy that!) and Karen Hunter went after the theatre management, hounding them and blowing small differences out of all proportion until eventually, thanks to their mighty Wurlitzer of white noise, the years-long campaign (coupled with an investigation by GOP Attorney General Dennis Vacco) ended with the Suttons losing the theatre, the Daily News with a Pulitzer for muckraking and a new board taking control. Who runs that board? You guessed it..Time-Warner…of-f*cking-course. And the theatre did become the anchor in the gentrification of 125th Street. Never mind that the place was turned over to actual crooks (who tried to break the theatres unions and stiffed them to this day on payroll—as well as stiffing outside vendors) and mismanagers who after five years in charge…just fixed the f*cking marquee.

Black folks finally get a chance to be something in this town and got smacked down for it.


I’m passing the White Castle on Empire Boulevard when Roger Toussaint’s face pops into my head. The leader of a key city union—the mover of it’s people, the beneath-the-skin “bloodstream” of NYC TWU, decided to stand up to a known crooked management and its equally duplicitous political muscle-men in the Mayor and Governor. The moment he does that, the moment Toussaint and his 70% minority (sounds so stupid to say 70% “minority”, but hey…) stands its ground (after cutting the city a break a few days before), the tabloids—Zuckerman’s Daily News and Murdoch’s Klan-screed of a rag Post try to lead a virtual lynch mob against Toussaint and the union. The News fantasizes in its pages about Toussaint’s being tossed into the river by Brooklyn Bridge walkers, while the Post—God bless it, runs a photoshopped pic of Toussaint behind bars on its front page (White collar crime like accounting fraud, two sets of books and disappearing hundreds of millions of dollars doesn’t warrant jailbird photoshops on major metropolitan daily’s front pages I guess.) and mocks his Caribbean background with a page two headline “Here’s Your New Island Getaway—Rikers Island!”, replete with a spread of pics of the interior of a jail cell and Rikers amenities. “Mad As Hell!”, “You Rats!” “Jail ‘Em!” blared the headlines. You’d think he was the one ranting like Bloomberg and Pataki, or screeching like a crazy, old ninny like Koch the other day, but no…their venom was turned on a 70% minority union and it’s leader in a futile attempt to sway the populace towards practically killing this guy and his workers. But it didn’t f*cking work. The most reliable polls, the targeted ABC and now the NY1 poll out today show the heated anti-union rhetoric didn’t take and in fact, the Mayor, Governor and MTA caught a sh*tload of hell for what went down.

http://www.ny1.com/ny1/NY1ToGo/S...tid=1&aid=55816

Take a read of the breakdown of the poll racially insofar as opinions.

Yup. It wasn’t a factor in this, my *ss.

As I neared my door, I thought about an episode of “Eyes on The Prize II” about Martin Luther King’s final battles against racism in the north. Having won huge battles in Birmingham and Montgomery and all over the south, he tried his hand at fighting entrenched northern racism and found himself running into a brick wall of resistance. The venomous, over-the-top reactions he got in daring to challenging bigotry in Chicago and the suburb of Cicero, Illinois depressed him and he basically went back to the south to fight, having tasted defeat in the allegedly more “sophisticated” north.

Up here, racism has never really been discussed frankly. It’s always easier to simply make fun of Southerners for their alleged “backwardness” in their clunky practice of racism instead of ever focusing on our own up-north silky, subtle, but just as destructive meting out of race-hatred. It has…never been confronted honestly. And thus, it festers…from Cicero, Illinois, to Boston Massachusetts, and yes...to so-called “liberal”, “blue” New York f*cking City. What we saw this past week in the handling, coverage and opining about this strike had a lot to do with class and economics…but the easiest, at the tip-of-the-tongue, quick-reaction venom that got spewed about this strike had an undeniable racial edge to it…and you have to live here awhile to understand it in a continium—from Ocean Hill-Brownsville, to CUNY, to the N*ggerbockers, to the Post, to Dinkins, to the Apollo, to the transit strike just ended. Yahoos who freep a CNN poll sitting in a cubicle in Sandusky have no clue. The post-strike polling done here in NYC bears the truth, and a bitter truth at that. A truth that doesn’t sadden me at all, but rather is just a given—something you just learn to deal with in this town and somehow work the hell around.

Black folks finally get a chance to be something in this town and got smacked down for it.

I got to my door and realized I’d forgotten about my foot pain entirely as I’d walked and thought.

Walked and thought.

Ain’t that a b*tch?
LowerManhattanite

Letter To NY Citizenry

Dear New York,

My love for Wu-Tang knows no bounds. I haven't slept in years because I'm lost on my way to Brooklyn. You make the best pizza on the planet. I love you and I've been only twice in my life.

But you have to treat your transit workers like human beings.

Currently we're on a worker's rights trend that will certainly leave us broke, blind, bedlam, or all fucking three. The people that are striking are doing it to protect people they've never even met: the future transit workers. Some of them may be your sons and daughters. It's important work because you need to use the subway to get to fucking work, don't you? And now you're left with the proverbial dilznick because "the workers are greedy," right? Wrong. MTA has a huge surplus this year, and rather than share it or at least use it to improve the service, it will probably use it to pay top officials. In short, the greed you see is on the top not on the bottom.

Not only that, but they're going to go two-tier wage system. The workers don't want it not because it doesn't benefit them (which it doesn't) but because it will hurt future workers (a definite truth.) By going two-tier, it means that people in the future will make less and get less as a raise when they start after this contract. In theory, the workers under the previous contracts should be happy (they get to keep their good wages and other people start lower) but they KNOW ITS WRONG.

NY, show some nuts. I know you guys have them, you're the home of Law and Order and of NY Undercover, and those guys were fucking tough. Show people that you're not the greedy, selfish, dickheads that the public thinks you are (and oddly strives to be) and be the asskicking, nutbusting, don't-take-any-shit-off-nobody-because-I'm-from-Brownsville-and-I-live-in-a-ninth-floor-walkup kind of town that I think, know, and admire you for being.

No deal, no work, no discussion.

Live+die=Bedstuy

PS - Give my regards to Brooklyn.

Next Question

"I thought you didn't like organized religion."

Well, not to get all semantical, but I just don't like religions that say that they love people yet do all that they can to screw them. It doesn't seem like the Salvation Army does that. The people that I've worked for/under here seem devoted to doing the best that they can for those that come to them for aid. They struggle with common problems like love, anger, frustration, and exhaustion, but in the end they are there for those that they are there to serve. I like that. I think it deserves some aid.

Just wanted to handle that one first since I got it the most yesterday.

Fundamentally, this has been an incredible experience. Once I get the chance to do some hard research, I'll put some stuff out there about my talks with people while wearing my red apron and ringing my bell.

Who I Am Temping For... :)

In 1865, William Booth, an ordained Methodist minister, aided by his wife Catherine, formed an evangelical group dedicated to preaching among the “unchurched” people living in the midst of appalling poverty in London’s East End. Booth’s ministry recognized the interdependence of material, emotional and spiritual needs. In addition to preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ, Booth became involved in the feeding and shelter of the hungry and homeless and in rehabilitation of alcoholics.

Booth and his followers, originally known as The Christian Mission, became The Salvation Army in 1878, when that organization evolved on a quasi-military pattern. Booth became “the General” and officers’ ranks were given to his ministers.

The Salvation Amy has functioned successfully within that unusual structure for more than a century. As of 2005, its outreach has been expanded to include more than 100 countries, and the Gospel is preached by its officers in more than 160 languages.

Services

The basic social services developed by William Booth have remained an outward visible expression of the Army’s strong religious principles. In addition, new programs that address contemporary needs have been established. Among these are disaster relief services, day care centers, summer camps, holiday assistance, services for the aging, AIDS education and residential services, medical facilities, shelters for battered women and children, family and career counseling, vocational training, correction services, and substance abuse rehabilitation. More than 30 million a year are aided in some form by services provided by The Salvation Army.

Structure

The General, with headquarters in London, is the international leader of The Salvation Army. In the United States, the functions of The Salvation Army are coordinated by the National Commander, whose office is at the national headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia.

For administrative purposes, the nation is divided into four territories: the Central Territory with headquarters in Des Plaines, Illinois, the Eastern Territory with headquarters in West Nyack, New York, the Southern Territory with headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, and the Western Territory with headquarters in Long Beach, California. Each territory is under leadership of a territorial commander.

Nationwide uniformity of policy is the responsibility of the Commissioners’ Conference, whose membership includes the National Commander, the Territorial Commanders, the National Chief Secretary (COO) and the four Territorial Chief Secretaries. Standing commissions devise and evaluate strategic initiatives to further the mission and ministry of The Salvation Army and then make recommendations to the Commissioners’ Conference.

Territories are made up of smaller units known as divisions. There are 40 divisions in the United States and each is headed by a divisional commander. Divisions consist of corps centers for worship and service, which are the basic units of The Salvation Army, and various specialized centers. The functions of each corps include religious and social services which are adapted to local needs. Each corps is under the supervision of a corps officer.

The Salvation Army is a participating member in various religious and human services associations, coalitions and conferences having similar principles and practices. Legally, each of the four Salvation Army territories in the United States functions as a tax-exempt corporation with the National Commander as Chairperson of the Board.

Fundraising

Salvation Army fund-raising campaigns are conducted on a local and regional basis. There is no fund-raising at the national level. The normal source of funds are the traditional Christmas kettle campaigns, direct-mail programs, corporate and foundation gifts, planned giving, and government contracts. In most areas, The Salvation Army is a member agency of local affiliates of the United Way of America where such affiliation has proven to be beneficial to The Salvation Army. The organization’s stewardship of its funding is noted throughout philanthropy; 83 cents of every dollar collected by the Army goes directly to client service – among the highest percentages of any non-profit in the world.

Advisory Organizations

Advisory organizations, comprised of representative community, corporate, and civic leaders, perform a valuable service by providing advice and acting as liaison between The Salvation Army and the community. The advisory organizations interpret community needs to The Salvation Army and facilitate the development of resources, enabling The Salvation Army to respond to critical community needs. A national advisory board makes its recommendations to the Commissioners’ Conference.

The People

The Salvation Army’s membership consists of 3500 officers, 60,000 employees, 113,000 soldiers, 430,000 adherents , and more than 3.5 million volunteers. Adherents are people who have elected not to be enrolled as soldiers but consider The Salvation Army to be their place of worship. Soldiers are those who have signed a declaration of faith and practice known as A Soldiers’ Covenant and worship and serve through a local corps. Employees are personnel hired to perform specialized duties in fields such as social services, youth service, accounting, development, law, and property. Volunteers are those who give freely of their time, enabling The Salvation Army to meet far more community needs than otherwise possible.

Officers are the clergy of The Salvation Army. They have either completed training as cadets or auxiliary captains and have been ordained and commissioned to officership. All officers are engaged in continuing education. With its Christian heritage and motivation, The Salvation Army continues its unique service to all people in the name of Christ.

Fast Food Fridays Returns!

How to Make Coca-Cola by Penguin

The following recipe produces a gallon of syrup very similar to Coca-Cola's.
Mix 2,400 grams of sugar with just enough water to dissolve (high-fructose corn
syrup may be substituted for half the sugar). Add 37 grams of caramel, 3.1
grams of caffeine, and 11 grams of phosphoric acid. Extract the cocaine from
1.1 grams of coca leaf (Truxillo growth of coca preferred) with toluol; discard
the cocaine extract. Soak the coca leaves and kola nuts (both finely powdered;
0.37 gram of kola nuts) in 22 grams of 20 percent alcohol. California white
wine fortified to 20 percent strength was used as the soaking solution circa
1909, but Coca-Cola may have switched to a simple water/alcohol mixture. After
soaking, discard the coca and the kola and add the liquid to the syrup. Add 30
grams of lime juice (a former ingredient, evidently, that Coca-Cola now denies)
or a substitute such as a water solution of citric acid and sodium citrate at
lime-juice strength. Mix together 0.88 gram of lemon oil, 0.47 gram of orange
oil, 0.27 gram of lime oil, 0.20 gram of cassia (Chinese cinnamon) oil, 0.07
gram of nutmeg oil, and if desired, traces of coriander, lavender, and neroli
oils, and add to 4.9 grams of 95 percent alcohol. Shake. Add 2.7 grams of
water to the alcohol/oil mixture and let stand for twenty-four hours at about 60
degrees Fahrenheit. A cloudy layer will separate. Take off the clear part of
the liquid only and add to the syrup. Add 19 grams of glycerin (from vegetable
sources, not hog fat, so the drink can be sold to Orthodox Jews and Moslems) and
1.5 grams of vanilla extract. Add water (treated with chlorine) to make 1
gallon of syrup.

I certainly can't make it rain, but I can let the sunshine through.

Today is the start of the big move.

Today I find out where I'm going on my next big organizing adventure.

Today I also buy boxes.

Hooray for me!

I'm happy to rejoin the social justice experience.

I'm terrified.

I'm excited.

Hooray for Pepto Bismol!